Transcript
September
6, 2005
Dr. Conner
Bailey, Chair: Good afternoon, I’d like to call the September 6th
meeting of the University Senate to order.
Let me remind senators when you come in I hope you have signed in at the
back and if you are a substitute, please sign in for the senator you are
substituting for. We’ll follow normal
practice of allowing anybody of any represented group, group represented in
this Senate who wishes to address the assembly to do so when questions are
before the body. I would ask that in the
event there are numbers of people who wish to speak that we provide opportunity
to senators to go first and when you speak, please go to one of the microphones
that are at the side. That’s necessary
so that we can capture the substance of what you’re saying on tape and that’s
important for developing accurate minutes and transcripts of the meetings. And I’d ask you also to please state your
name and the unit that you are representing.
The minutes of the July 12th meeting of the University Senate
have been posted on our website and distributed to you in advance. I’d entertain a motion to approve these
minutes. Would you identify? Howard Thomas moves, seconded by Charles
Gross. Are there any changes to the
minutes that anyone wishes to bring forward?
Seeing none let me ask for a vote to accept these minutes. All in favor say Aye. Opposed, nay. The Ayes have it. Thank you very much.
Dr. Richardson is with us this afternoon and I’d like to invite Dr.
Richardson forward at this time.
Dr. Ed
Richardson, Interim President: Thank you, Dr. Bailey. I’m sure you’ll be relieved that mine is
relatively short. Let me just hit on
four basic issues. The first one deals
with our anticipated SACS visit, which will occur on the 18th of
September. Dr. Linda Glaze is here and
is our point person in that regard. I
wanted to just comment just briefly on the three issues-this is not for
reaccreditation-we’ve achieved all of that last December. This is what I would call, and if I use the
wrong term Dr. Glaze will correct me-a monitoring report to see if we are in
fact doing what we said we would do, and so this is not something that is
reviewing our accrediting process because that has been completed. But it is a legitimate part and actually I
think it is a very good idea to check after an institution, in this case such
as
I wanted to very briefly hit the three issues that were placed on the
table and I’m going to hit the high points there. The first one deals, is that the institution
would give a progress report on the search for a President. I think we would all know the question as to
whether that is a standard or not, that is strictly a prerogative of the
Board. But that aside,
we will fully comply with that. I
would point out to you that the Board of Trustees and I attended an Association
of Governing Boards workshop, about a three or four hour workshop dealing with
conducting such a search. We also, of
course, have documents and so forth that advise us in that regard. I made my announcement last June. I would think it’s time to start such a
search. There has been a chairperson,
Mr. Miller, appointed to select a search firm.
I believe he will give his report during the September 16th
Board Meeting and I think then we’ll see things move from that point
forward. So I would say that in terms of
in my view, moving to meet the expectations of the search that would certainly
constitute a progress report and I think we’ll see it pick up speed as we go
forward.
The second one was a little more difficult but was completed prior to
last December. We were asked to have-and
just one-external body to review the Board for possible conflicts of interest. We completed that prior to the meeting but
because they had a 15-day advance notice, those documents were not submitted to
the Commission, so what we have done is to submit those three reports that I
had conducted in terms of external review and have asked the Audit Committee to
review if there are any violations of any policy, and if you’ll remember that
was declared not be the case. I would
say to you that was a little more comprehensive and really back in September,
October, November was a little tense but those deadlines have been met and I’m
sure are fully included in the report. I
would simply remind you that of those three, there have been two that preceded
that in the prior year, so that now gives us five separate reports on that one
topic.
The third one deals with the, provide a report on the periodic
evaluation of the President; of course, that is the term that was used; that is
what has already been done and I think that you will see annual evaluations of
the President as we go forward. Again,
we capitalized on the Association of Governing Boards’ documents provided for
that very specific task and I believe we have fully met that.
I would like rather than to just go through the other two or three to
just pause on the SACS topic and see if there are any questions in regard to SACS,
probably I’ll relate to Dr. Glaze. Thank
you. They’ll be…yes, ma’am, Virginia…
Dr. Virginia
O’Leary, Psychology: Dr. Richardson, you said that you thought we would
see the process of the Presidential Search speed up. Is there a timeframe that will be presented
for the Board at their September 16th meeting that will lay that out clearly?
Dr.
Richardson: I don’t think there will be a specific time, but I will describe for
you why I think it’s going to speed up.
First, they’re making a very diligent effort to get what is considered,
and I know that’s people with whom they’ve been speaking, a very top nationally
noted search firm. I don’t know who will
be selected but I think upon the selection of that person, then you start to
get the notices and everything so I think it won’t move too quickly until we
have a search firm and then I believe once that's selected and I would
anticipate this fall, hopefully in September even, but I’m not sure, but
hopefully in September that firm will be selected and at that time, then they
would identify here’s a rough timeline as they see it. But I do not know that is not something that
I would be involved in the discussion but as far as the timeline I offered,
it’s certainly no later than the end of the calendar year ’06.
Dr. O’Leary: For the
calendar year ’06, for…
Dr.
Richardson: For having someone to replace me.
Dr. O’Leary: For having
someone to replace you. Ok, I wasn’t
sure…
Dr.
Richardson: Ok, yeah, sorry about that. I
forgot you were a world traveler this past summer and you may not have had the
benefit of my speech, so…
Dr. Cindy
Brunner, Department of Pathobiology: I’d like to follow up on the comments that you
made with regard to the report on Periodic Review of the President’s
performance. You said that you
anticipated that there would be an annual review and my question is: Do you also anticipate that that review would
take the form of the most recent review, which the process was carried out by a
subcommittee of three members of the Board itself or do you expect that that
review might be more comprehensive and involve other parties?
Dr.
Richardson: The latter. I anticipate
that. I think timelines and just meeting
that and not having experience led to, really I think there was three trustees
appointed to gather information and conduct such an evaluation. I think any evaluation should be extended to
involve those who have direct knowledge of the performance of the individual
beyond the trustees, and that would be my recommendation. Now again, let me make it clear, that’s not
an issue that I decide. So that’s an
issue for the Board solely. I’m just
offering my opinion.
Ok, the second topic that I wish to deal with relate to the Board
meeting. I would remind everyone that
we’ve changed the formats in terms of times and so we wanted to make sure that
you were aware of those. The Committee
meetings will actually be held on the Thursday, September the 15th
and then the Board meeting will start around 9 o’clock, we’ll be more specific
as we get a little closer, but I would think 9 o’clock on Friday morning, but
that will not be Committee meetings.
That will be straight into the heart of the session and we should finish
by 11 or 11:30. So instead of coming and
expecting that to be in the afternoon, I wanted to make sure that everyone was
aware of that change. And that will be
consistent for the rest of the meetings.
Committee meetings on Thursday preceding and then the meeting on that
Friday morning, and there are several reasons for that, but unless you have to
ask me that, if it would be of any interest to you.
I wanted to call to your attention two items that are on the agenda for
September the 15th, which is the Thursday preceding the
meeting. That will be held in the
conference center and I’m sure we’ll get the room a little bit later. But there are two workshops that are
scheduled right now to start at 1:00 and another around 2:30. We’ll just have to, and we’ll have the
specific times as we get past this coming week.
It will be somewhere very close to that time. The first one deals
with one of the initiatives that I’ve asked staff to review and that is cost
management. What they are proposing to
do and we’ve got an AUM representative, Jacqulyn
Roberts, and Don Large and John Mouton involved from our side of the street and
they have identified topics that would be reviewed, or areas for review and
they will identify those during this meeting.
What we’re really asking from the Board at that time is ‘Do you have any
other areas that you think deserve review?’ and at that point we will have
identified the topics and then we will proceed from there. And we will not answer any questions and when
I say questions, we won’t attempt to say ‘Do we lease too many cars?’ or
something like that. If that is an
issue, then we will go forward and examine to see what our expenditures are and
what perhaps can be done. I bring that
up because I would say for the vast majority of it, it would deal with
administrative matters, I don’t foresee it getting into that area, but I think
inevitably it will be considered as we look at Academic Program Review. I want to not alarm you in that regard, I
don’t foresee that being an issue, and I really would see it more in terms of
staffing. We’ve had our SACS report of
last February, which indicated some of our colleges are understaffed, some are
overstaffed and we’ll be looking at those issues as we go forward. So cost management will be discussed first to
be followed by the Strategic Plan. I
again, would encourage your active involvement and many, if not all of you have
been, and I commend you for it. It’s one
of those things that this is your chance and if you don’t actively participate,
you’re going to be stuck with it. So I
would say to you in this regard what the purpose of this workshop will be is to
one, to have somewhat of a review, and I’ve already sent the Board a very thick
packet on the forums, a summary of the forums that were held by Dr.
Sauser. Now I’ve also submitted samples
of other institutions that have already completed theirs, so the format would
be at least they would be aware of the format that is commonly used and then
there is some background information that the Board requested. But, making a long story short in this
regard, after describing what has been done, we are attempting then to involve
the Board of Trustees in a very open discussion as to the direction of the
University that is part of the role of Trustees.
I wanted to make sure that we’re
together here and I think this will work very smoothly. I do not anticipate problems but just like
any other chain, there is a potential for issues to arise. If there was one thing, I’ve said this
publicly and I will repeat, if there was one task that you would put on a Board
of Trustees’ desk and that was all that Board could do, this would be it. So the Board will really approve a Strategic
Plan. What I’m hoping is that we will
provide is one, a much broader knowledge of the university-some of the fine
points that are left to you that even in my case would be unaware of and
certainly trustees would be unaware of in some cases but we would want to be
sure to inform them in a way that would lead the Board to establish a Strategic
Plan that would be acceptable to all of us at least as best we can. I would anticipate that plan, the structure
of the plan, being placed on the table for the November 18th meeting
and I would ask that the Board then review it and be prepared to approve it
during the February 3rd meeting.
So we’ll have after it being placed on the table in mid-November we’ll
have until early February to decide what if anything the Board wishes to
do. I think this can be a very healthy
undertaking in that it will clearly define priorities and directions, it will
drive some of the budget process, it will provide for annual evaluations to see
in fact we are adhering to what we call a strategic plan, and what we intend to
make a strategic plan and as we discussed this morning, this is really an
attempt to consolidate a number of efforts for strategic plan that have been
conducted in reports, commissions, and so forth and really try to, not only
review those reports but to provide for future focus for us for this plan. So the strategic plan will be placed on the
table in November, November the 18th, hopefully approved on February
the 3rd, and then we would move to start with our operational plans
and we’re going to have to move fairly quickly the first time around, because
operationally that’s what we would say as an institution, that we intend to do
to address whatever the priorities that the Board approves.
I would also say the reason we need to move quickly is because the
budget process will start at about that time.
The legislative session will have already started two weeks before. So we will need to make sure as best we can
we will have the operational plans at least roughly worked out so that we can
affect the budget for the following year.
I would then say then in conclusion on that during the June meeting, and
I have to admit that I didn’t look that one up so I can’t tell you when, but
sometime in June we will meet, of ’06, and at that time the President of this
campus and the Chancellor, as he is called at this time, of AUM will then give
annual reports and so that will be the first step toward issuing annual reports
that will deal with the strategic plan.
And you might say well ‘What kind of annual reports that will be?’ Well, it’s going to be very brief obviously
because not much will have happened at that point but we will have identified
the criteria, we will have some background information at least and perhaps in
one or two areas we will be able to say some progress has been made. I would point out to you that the February 3rd
meeting is on the Montgomery campus, so that’s a little bit inconvenient
because this is an issue that is of great importance to all of us but that’s
just the way we have scheduled it for a very long time, so would remind you of
that. I would stop at that point in
terms of the workshops; of course, the agenda will be on the web shortly, we’re
getting ready to pull that together and go to print sometime this week. Anything else on the
initiatives?
Dr. Bailey: Any questions
at this phase on the initiatives for Dr. Richardson?
Dr.
Richardson: Great. The
legislative…Richard? I wouldn’t
have a meeting unless Dr. Penaskovic asked me a hard question. I was waiting for it, Rich, so thank you.
Dr. Richard
Penaskovic, Chair-elect: Dr. Richardson, there’s a great deal of
apprehension, even anxiety, among faculty about post-tenure review. You and I have discussed this matter
ourselves. Would you care to share with
the rest of the Senators your rationale for post-tenure review at this
particular point and time?
Dr.
Richardson: Sure. Thank you, Dr. Penaskovic. That’s a fair question. That’s another initiative along with academic
program review. Just to give you a
timeline and then go more to the heart of your question. I anticipate during the November 18th
meeting that criteria for conducting such reviews will be placed on the
table. So we’ll be able to have those
hopefully by that time. The other
timeline that I think that will be of interest is that we will then use the
rest of the academic year to do what I would call a pilot, that is, to let’s
see if these criteria will work before they really get into it and then it
would go into the fall. Part of, and now
to your question, Dr. Penaskovic, the reason that the agenda I offered to the
Board last June was more extensive than I originally planned, if you do
remember, originally there were six initiatives. As we go through this whole process, one of,
if we identified one of the major themes that I’m trying to establish, which I
think will serve my successor very well is that the idea that the President and
assistants and faculty and all within the university, do maintain institutional
control and I’m not saying that I’m concerned about that, but obviously that is
an issue if you boil it down in my view, for the SACS problem last year, that
was really the bottom line in my opinion.
And so I would like then, to make sure that the institution is driving
the agenda. Now, why do the post-tenure
review? As I have had discussion with
individual trustees over these several months, several things popped up:
workload, class scheduling, all of those and here’s why post-tenure review
popped up. And the reason that I’ve
added those three and specifically to answer Dr. Penaskovic’s question
regarding post-tenure review is that I knew this was going to come up in the
discussion. You have two choices in that
regard: one, to admit you didn’t do a thorough review of the issues, and
therefore the trustees are back telling us what to do; or two, that you are
trying to be deceptive and I assure you there have been no problems with the
trustees telling us what to do. And I
assure you, I am not going to be deceptive.
So I really felt that we need to put it on the table and as you look at
the vast majority of institutions do it in some way but here is more
importantly what I would add to this part-I believe that if we, and I’m not
involved in this, this is really an issue for the Provost-but if we identify
the criteria for such post-tenure review, then we drive the process. I do not foresee this being in the Board bylaws. That would give us sufficient flexibility to
make amendments, which we would inevitably do as time goes along. So as I would say then as we push the
criteria forward, one we’re saying again, yes, we can deal with the
issues. Two, we have a process here that
we think reflects a comprehensive university with people in many different
roles. For the outsider, and that would
include some trustees, you would think that how many classes you teach is the
sum total of your work and as most of you know, that is not an accurate
description. So I would say the
intention then is to make sure that we’ve asked and answered the question that
we have established criteria that we feel are legitimate and that we maintain
flexibility to change. Finally, every
week you read an article on various aspects of legislative bodies that are
attempting to effect accountability, if you will, upon some phase of higher
education. I had such a discussion as
late as today. And so I would say to you
in that regard, this again is an attempt by the institution to effect changes
that most people think need to be made but by maintaining control in the
process. I think if I did not do this,
and it came up later, then we would not have nearly the opportunity to design
it as we would like. I think I could see
consultants coming in and advising the Board and then we would go from
there. I believe it can be done
effectively and we can do it without regret.
I think it would also serve, and this is one other area I should add to
this, we’ve got tremendous people on this faculty and administration, too. I believe as I’ve said publicly, that this
institution has done remarkably well in spite of all the turmoil over the last
20 or so years. And I hope we will have
a clear and solid reward system as post-tenure review would reflect high
performance, we would be able in tangible ways to reward and recognize those
many people that we have that do tremendous jobs. So that’s my answer, if that’s ok. Dr. Brunner?
Dr. Cindy
Brunner, Department of Pathobiology: Dr. Richardson, this question that I have pertains
to your comments about the first workshop that would be held on Thursday,
September 15th with the Board…
Dr.
Richardson: Cost Management.
Dr. Brunner: Excuse me?
Dr.
Richardson: Cost Management.
Dr. Brunner: That’s
right. Cost Management workshop. You said it would mainly deal with
administrative matters but it would relate to academic program review in that
it would deal with staffing and you referred to reports of over or
understaffing. I’m wondering if those
reports to which you referred were ever made available to the public. I know we’ve all heard various rumors about
colleges having 2.8 times the number of faculty they need, etc. Is that information available?
Dr.
Richardson: Well, the reports to which I referred are, because that really was
identified in the SACS’ tenure study.
They identified, for instance, Liberal Arts was under so much and that
where I think the 2.8 really came from the College of Agriculture by one of our
staff people in which there’s considerable debate as to whether that accurately
reflects that or not. And so what I
would think as you look at in terms of faculty loads, number of students, that
sort of thing, I believe then that we’ll be able to say in terms of cost
management, that if we’re going to continue to have classes that are relatively
small, that we’re going to need X number of professors and that’s part of
it. You’ve just got to do it. Or if we find some that do have, maybe not
2.8 but if they have 15 more than the student body would reflect and other
demands, then I would think we would have to address that as well. But the one to which I referred was the SACS
report which identified two colleges, I do remember Liberal Arts and I think
maybe Business was as well, but it’s in that report.
Dr. Rik
Blumenthal, Chemistry/Biochemistry: I have two
questions, one spurred by what you’ve just said in your last comment. When you say addressing the issue of excess,
15 excess faculty, most of the faculty of that 15 are tenured and have careers
here and intend to be here another 20 years or so. Are you talking to slim down by retirements
and in a very slow process or are you actually contemplating finding some mechanism,
such as post-tenure review, to go through that department and wipe out 15
tenured faculty to reach some ideal staff size?
Dr.
Richardson: The former, not the latter. I do
not foresee any heavy-handed staffing issues except on the other side, which is
to say, if you have justification for additional ones, then we should try to
put that into our budget to meet those requirements. I would say through attrition, in some cases
if you have skilled people that could fit into other assignments, then that might
be a possibility. But as far as saying
to you we’ve got too many Biochemistry people and you’re the last hired, so
you’re out of here-no, that’s not compatible nor do I see us going there. But again, the only reason I brought up
academic program review is that as we look at staffing, as we look at the
number of assistant deans or whatever we look at, I just wanted you to know
that would also be considered, but primarily cost management deals with
Facilities, Construction, indebtedness and those type of issues.
Dr.
Blumenthal: My other issue, my other point, is really, or comment, rather is
really, I’d like to make is that I’ve heard you mention and I’ve seen in
articles where you’ve mentioned where it comes to accountability, what can you
say to the legislators when they say they have this opinion that we on the
faculty are overpaid fat cats who don’t work hard enough. Comment is, you should be out there telling
them what we really are, not talking to the newspapers about our “deadwood”, of
which I think you’ll find there will be very, very little identified.
Dr.
Richardson: I agree.
Dr.
Blumenthal: I think, and specifically, when somebody asks you, you know, are they,
when someone makes a comment to you about overpaid professors, why didn’t you
just pick me as an example? My last graduate
student, finished last year, he’s working for Intel, is making $120,000 a
year. I’m at
Dr.
Richardson: I understand. John, do you want
to say something. I’m not asking, but
you’re welcome to do.
Dr. John
Heilman, Provost: Just a thought.
Rik, I take your point. But one
thing that Dr. Richardson is saying is that one of the Board objectives during
the time of the commission was to get faculty salaries to, as close as
possible, to regional averages in peer disciplines and what you offer is one comparison. I accept that upfront. It’s what we make as faculty members compared
with what we would make out in industry and we know for the most part that
there are large disparities there, but I do think it’s fair to point out that
progress has been made in recent years in getting our salaries up to levels
comparable to, and I’m not sure what the most recent percentages are, but I
think they’re in the upper 90% of regional averages by discipline and so I
think how you answer the question depends somehow on how you ask it. I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t ask the
question the way you have. I take your
point completely, but there’s another way of asking the question, too. That’s it.
Dr.
Richardson: I would say, if I could just respond to your question more directly-we
have a tendency, and I’ve caught myself since I’ve been here more than a year
and a half-to talk about the inner workings of a university as if everyone else
is listening, and they’re not. And you
could pick other state institutions, state agencies, and you could make the
same comparison. Be assured they do not
restrict it to faculty; they say the same thing about me. They say the same thing about administrators,
so here’s the deal: if we have workload policies in which we identify clearly
established standards, say, one’s for research, one’s for graduate students,
office time, all the other things that will end up being in there, then I am
for the first time in a position to say, yes, but right now all I can say to
you is that like anything else in life, those handful, those less than half a
dozen that create bad impressions or say things that would lead you to believe
that they’re almost flaunting the workload, that’s what people are reacting
to. And you could take the same thing
about youths or politicians or anything else and take the bottom 5% and you
would wonder whether you would want to keep them. So I would say to you, getting this
information and agreeing on the standards, which I’m going to leave that to you
and the Provost, will enable me to be more supportive in that regard. So I would say to you, you must recognize
that when we come into a legislative session, there are issues you have to deal
with. They’re not going to sit down here
and listen to a long story about faculty or administrators or coaches or
anybody else and so what I’m saying to you that if they raise a question to me,
then I’m going to be able to say ‘Here’s our standard and 80% of our people’ or
whatever percentage it turns out to be-I think they will be better informed as
to what constitutes a workload rather than how many classes are you teaching
this semester, which is basically as I said-I’ve served on the university Board
of Trustees-and that’s basically the criteria that is used-how many classes are
you teaching and not the rest. And I
think we’ve got to do a better job of educating.
Dr. Bailey: Thank you.
Gary Martin,
Curriculum & Teaching: I had a question or comment related to the post
tenure review. Having been part of such
a process at another institution, where in fact, it wasn’t cumulative, it was
proactive developmental, very supportive of faculty, I would suggest then, in
addition to looking at criteria, it’s also important to look for goals. Why is this being done? How is this going to be used? I heard echoes of that in previous
comments. And also to really look at the
criteria carefully and I’m just wondering, you’re setting a target of November
18th. How are you going to
get the faculty buy in and the faculty involvement in that timeframe to be able
to put forth something that really does represent the university, including the
faculty, well?
Dr.
Richardson: That certainly, Dr. Martin, a very good question. I hope that-I’ve said
this before but I’ll just reiterate that again-basically what I’ve done is
identified some issues that I know will come up and therefore I am opening the
door for us to fashion the answer. I do
not consider myself qualified to enter into that discussion and that’s why I’ve
delegated it to the Provost and others and will come forward in the
recommendation. You’re going to see
periodically timelines; I mean we had a change in the timeline on the
institute, which was another initiative.
So we’re going to work as hard as we can and we’ll, we’re not going to
rush to meet some artificial deadline.
So if we needed a little more time, that’s not going to be phased one
way or another, but yeah, if we’re talking about we want to think about it
another year, sure, six months, then obviously that won’t work. Be assured that was a target date and I leave
that to the Provost to answer and I’m not involved in that discussion so I hope
that the faculty will be fully involved.
John?
Dr. Heilman: Dr.
Richardson, I think the questions and suggestions that were made by Dr. Martin
are very good ones, and particularly in terms of developmental uses for a
process such as this, we know because-and we in we means both in my office and
Conner and the Steering Committee-have been looking at a range of systems that
are in place. Development is an
important part in any of those. With
response to the specific question, which is ‘On what basis might we hope for
faculty input?’, the way in which I’ve tried to address that, working with
Conner as chair of the Senate, is to ask the Steering Committee to provide
leadership in developing proposals and Conner, you’re in the process of doing
that so I hope that will give the process a sensitivity to the kinds of issues
that you are raising and a legitimacy that really an administrative effort doesn’t
always seem to have at this institution.
Dr.
Richardson: I would say again to Dr. Martin and others, this is not an issue that
is being driven at this time by anyone other than this President putting it on
the table, because I know it will come up later. No trustees are bringing this up, nobody
saying ‘Do it’ or that sort of thing. So
I really believe that now that we have an opportunity, we can establish the
criteria, if it gets down to crunch time, we can flex a little bit to make sure
that we have some comfort level. As far
as involving the faculty, like you said, isn’t there committees and others that
are…just the, I heard you say Steering…
Sadik Tuzun,
Entomology & Plant Pathology: I think the idea of going through a critical
academic review is very healthy. Every
institution should go through that every five years, every seven years, every
ten years and because the time is changing.
Science is changing, technology is changing, and we have to keep up with
these technologies and what I am looking at now, at the distribution of the
faculty in Auburn University, like just as you said before, academic program
review, and if we reestablish the goals for academic program review, I think
the problem of post tenure review process will be resolved, because many
faculty here can teach or do research in many different areas, including their
own, with maybe a little bit training, with maybe a little bit, maybe a year’s
sabbatical. But you have the faculty,
you have the power behind you and I think that your initial, you first came
here with five proposals which had not included academic review, if we go
through those processes which introduced academic program review, I personally
think that we absolve ourselves of the post tenure process, the post tenure review
process.
Dr.
Richardson: Thank you. And I hope it turns
out, that was my intention. Let me just,
I know you’re about to gong me here, let me just hit a couple of things
quickly. Legislative effort, I’ll just
make that very brief, that does reflect somewhat to the prior
conversation. I wanted to make sure that
you understand that Sid McAnnally is with us at this point and Sid, we’re very
glad you’re with us full-time. I would
say to you that we will be sharing an agenda with the
Very quickly, Katrina’s efforts and I’m sure for others will deal with
that. John, do you have that event on
yours?
Dr. Heilman: I’ve got a
few notes that I can speak on.
Dr.
Richardson: Ok, well let me just leave that to John.
I want to thank all of you, many of you sent emails, made suggestions, I
want to thank-I see Dan here from Building Sciences, who had two students who
came up with designs to use the containers and others. I know some of the colleges have started to
accept students, so we’ll continue to work in that regard. So next week, or this week I guess, when we
do play
Secondly, I wanted to call to your attention a survey, if you’re not
familiar with that, in which they identified all the colleges and universities
within
And finally, I would call your attention that during the Board meeting
on the 16th, we will recognize several people, but we certainly, as
I understand it, have three Fulbright Scholars to recognize at the appropriate
time and serving in that means a great deal, too. So that’s my report and I’ve answered all the
questions.
Dr. Bailey: Thank you,
Dr. Richardson. Dr. Richardson covered a
number of points that I was going to make.
One important one was the timing of the Board meeting. There are two workshops, as Dr. Richardson
said. In addition, I think the budget of
the University is also going to be covered and the budget is probably a matter
of some importance, too. We’re not
anticipating any changes from what was brought forward earlier in the year at
the June 8th meeting, I believe.
At the beginning of fall semester, I sent to senators a welcome back
message updating faculty who were out of town on developments that had taken
place over the summer. We’ve discussed
at some length here already Post-tenure Review, the development of Strategic
Plan, Academic Program Review and what has become known, or what has been known
as the Ag Initiative. Dr. Heilman is
going to talk on this latter topic toward the end of the agenda today and he’s
also at that time going to give us an update on efforts that’s the university
has taken on issues related to Katrina and disaster response.
Each of these four topics, Post-tenure Review and the like, are going to
be addressed in this body and also probably at the University Faculty Meeting
on October 18th. I anticipate
that will be an opportunity for open discussion of Post-tenure Review and the
proposals that may be coming out of the university Steering Committee. We don’t have anything to present at this
time and so we’re not on the agenda for today.
Regarding this Post-tenure Review, I’m pleased to hear Dr. Richardson
say we have some flexibility. Steering
Committee is moving forward in reviewing what other universities have been
doing, what has been the experience at these other universities as well. The Steering Committee is undertaking this
task with no, I think it’s fair to say, joy, but as a sense of responsibility,
understanding that if we don’t do this, we will have a policy given to us and
we felt it more responsible to put our efforts to developing something that we
could all live with. There will be an
open forum that the AAUP is going to hold the day after the next Senate
meeting, I believe is the schedule and the topic will be Post-tenure Review and
a couple weeks after that we’ll have this on the University Faculty Meeting on
October 18th.
The Ag Initiative, as I said, Dr. Heilman will address and I leave that
to him for now. The Strategic Plan has
also passed through a second phase and Dr. Bill Sauser will come back before
this body, perhaps at the next meeting if there is sufficient detail to the
Strategic Plan document that we can have a useful discussion.
The Academic Program Review which is chaired by Art Chappelka of
Forestry and Wildlife Sciences, they’ve been meeting regularly through the
spring and summer and continuing into the fall and we will come forward-I will
ask Art to come forward and report to this body as soon as we have anything of
substance to discuss. I’ve written most
of the chairs of Senate committees-there’s a couple that I’ve
not yet gotten to-with specific charges for the coming year. One of these relates to the Non-tenured Track
Instructors Committee and noting that there’s been an expansion in the number
of non-tenured track faculty, not simply instructors but are faculty, in
particular, clinical faculty, also research faculty-these are two tracks of
non-tenured track faculty that was developed after the Handbook was originally
written and after the charge to this committee was developed. I’ve asked this committee to look into the
needs of these faculty and also into an issue related
to faculty status among certain faculty in the Alabama Cooperative Extension
System.
Dr. Richardson mentioned SACS is coming to town in a couple, just over
two weeks and that Linda Glaze is coordinating that visit and he’s reviewed all
the points that they’re coming to Auburn to discuss.
Those cover my comments. Are
there any questions of the Chair before we move on to
the agenda? Seeing none, I invite
Kathryn Flynn to come forward please.
The first of the action items refers to Appointments to Senate
Committees. The Senate Rules Committee
has been working hard and I think has completed the appointments and recommendations
to this body. Kathryn…
Kathryn Flynn,
Secretary-Elect: Thanks, Conner.
On behalf of the Rules Committee, I’m bringing forward a list of people
that have been nominated and that have agreed to serve on committees and we’ve
brought their names forward for review for you to approve their serving on
these committees. Since this is coming
from a committee, there is no requirement for a second. If anybody has any comments, discussion,
questions?
Dr. Bailey: Is the body
ready to vote on adoption of these recommendations, these nominations to
committees? All those in favor, signify
by saying Aye. Opposed,
nay. The Ayes have it.
Dr. Flynn: Thank
you. The second item, we have two
revisions relative to promotion and tenure.
These again are brought to you from the Rules Committee-I’m sorry,
Steering Committee. I apologize-wrong
committee. Too many committees! I’ll read this resolution:
The justification for this-I’ll go through that first: currently there
are no professors in the clinical track and only one professor in the research
track. Allowing a tenured faculty member
with knowledge of these tracks to serve as the standby member has been the
practice in the past, although that is not something that is spelled out in the
Handbook. So this Handbook change would
make policy consistent with practice.
This is language that we looked at during the July meeting and we were
asked to revisit it by Sandra Clark-Lewis, who is clinical faculty’s, I guess,
unofficial spokesperson and so they have looked over this current language and
the resolution is as follows. Should I
read the current language first? Would
you like me to go ahead and read…I don’t have to read it?
Dr. Bailey: Not the
current language.
Dr. Flynn: Ok. What we’re asking is the following:
Any academic year in which there is no clinical faculty member on the
committee, the resource person for the clinical track will be appointed as a
standby member of the committee. Any
academic year in which there is no research faculty
member on the committee, a resource person for the research track will be
appointed as a standby member of the committee.
The resource person for the clinical track will be a faculty member
holding the rank of professor who is in the clinical track or in the event that
no professor in the clinical track is available to serve on this committee, the
resource person will be a tenured faculty member who works in a department or
school that has clinical track faculty.
The resource person for the research track will be a faculty member
holding the rank of professor who is in the research track or in the event that
no professor in the research track is available to serve on this committee, the
resource person will be a tenured faculty member who works in a department or
school who has research track faculty.
And as a representative of the Steering Committee, I’d like to make a
motion that this be accepted.
Dr. Bailey: Is there any
discussion?
Tony Moss,
Biological Sciences: I’m sorry, I might be a bit slow, I’m coming down
with a cold, but what committee are you talking about? Are you saying any committees that might be
appropriate for non-tenured track faculty to be in or is this some other…
Dr. Flynn: This is
strictly for Promotion-the P&T Committee.
Dr. Moss: Oh, ok,
excuse me, I’m sorry. Thank you.
Dr. Flynn: Is there any
other discussion on this resolution?
Dr. Bailey: Are we ready
to come to a vote then? Those in favor,
please signify by saying Aye. Those
opposed, nay. The Ayes have it. Thank you.
Dr. Flynn: The next
resolution stipulates that the committee membership, the P&T Committee
membership, must include at least 9 tenured faculty members, not 7 as currently
stated. Justification for this is that
the change would ensure that there are always nine tenured faculty members to deliberate
on tenure issues. The revisions suggested
or proposed is:
Promotion and
Tenure: The Promotion and Tenure Committee shall consist of the Provost as
chair and eleven faculty members, at least nine of which will be tenured
faculty. The faculty members will be
from the tenure track faculty, the clinical faculty or the research
faculty. Non-tenure track clinical
faculty members and non-tenure track research faculty members will not vote on
tenure.
Would anybody like to comment on this resolution? Discuss?
Dr. Bailey: Is there any
discussion? Are you ready to…
Dr. Virginia
O’Leary, Psychology: I just want to point out that this body
deliberated for a very long time before instituting the clinical track and I
think it was important to do that and I come from a department where we use
that track and need to, it’s appropriate given that we train mental health
practitioners and by expanding the number of tenure track faculty serving on
the P&T Committee, I am concerned that we are further disadvantaging those
people who come up through the clinical track route for promotion to Associate
and Full Professor, at least until such time as the reason and criteria for
promotion in those categories becomes part of the institutional fabric of
Auburn University, and I just want to point that out because it now makes it
even more difficult and it’s my understanding that this, at this level, has not
gone all that smoothly and I certainly understand that selecting someone to be
a representative does move in the direction of trying to accommodate for this
awkwardness, which I presume is temporary, but temporary can last a very long
time and in the meantime we have colleagues who have every reasonable
expectation they should be moving along this clinical track apace.
Dr. Bailey: Cindy?
Dr. Cindy Brunner,
Pathobiology: I’d like to speak in favor of this change. In fact, I think I may have been one of the
people who encouraged the change and I would like, I think the previous speaker
is interpreting this change as an increase in the number of tenured faculty on
the Promotion and Tenure Committee. If
I’m not mistaken, what we’re actually doing is restoring the original number of
faculty on the committee, which was nine prior to the inclusion of clinical
track faculty and research track faculty and when prompted by the Secretary of
this body to look at the history of the number 7, which is the current version,
we all on the Rules Committee went back and read the minutes of the Senate
meetings at which these deliberations took place and what transpired was when
the Senate approved the change to include clinical track faculty, a clinical
track faculty representative and a research track faculty representative on the
P&T Committee, there was no stipulation at all about the maximum number of
those non-tenured track spots that there might be on the P&T Committee and
thus a threshold or minimum number of tenured members on the committee. So it was possible that the committee could
be overwhelming comprised of non-tenured track faculty, which obviously
wouldn’t, I don’t think, would be what most of the tenured track faculty would
want. So we proposed some threshold,
which turned out to be at least 7 and I suggested that we ought to restore that
number to the 9, which it was before we put clinical and research track faculty
on the committee in the first place. So
what we’re not saying that we want to reduce the number of clinical or research
representatives. What we want to say is
that we would like there to be 9 tenured members of this committee, which is
what it was before we had clinical and research tracks at
Dr. Bailey: Is there any
other discussion? Rik?
Dr. Rik
Blumenthal, Chemistry/Biochemistry: Maybe I’ve just confused myself and answer this
quickly. If somebody, if there are no research
faculty to be appointed on there from the previous statement and we’re going to
have these replacements, that also was the P&T Committee, will those be
additional tenured faculty voting and deliberating on tenure, or would those
people be restricted to the role of the untenured clinical track and research
track faculty that they are there to replace?
Or have we not considered that?
Dr. Flynn: We’ve considered the role of the clinical and
research faculty and correct me if I’m wrong, Patricia, but I believe that if
it were a person who was clinical or research track, it would be left to at the
current time the provost as chair of the committee as to whether they would
participate in all of the promotion debates and votes or not. And I assume that would be the same for this
individual that it would be left up to the provost. I don’t think we really spent a lot of time
debating that, so I think it would be probably again left up to the views of
the provost as chair.
Dr. Bailey: If I may, for
information purposes, in our discussions with Tom Hanley when he was provost,
it was handled variably. In one case
with a research professor, my understanding was that person was a resource
person who sat in and took part in discussions of P&T, I don’t know about
vote, but the case of the individual representing clinical faculty, the person
only came for discussions on clinical faculty promotions. We need to regularize this clearly. Neither of these resolutions entirely does
that. We have spoken with Dr. Heilman on
this matter and he is new to this job as we all know and I guess that’s about
as far as I want to go, other than saying that we’ll work through it in this
coming year. We need to have something
reutilized and I’m hoping in the not too distant future, we will have full
clinical professors in numbers, and numbers of full research professors as
well, so that these issues will no longer be relevant. John?
Dr. John
Heilman, Provost: Thank you very much, Conner. Those are very fair questions and as you have
pointed out, Conner, we’ve already had some discussions about how is that going
to be worked out rather than try to figure out, here on my feet, ok what will
really be the best thing to do. What I
would like to suggest is, this is one of the numerous areas in which, I think,
the representative role of the Senate leadership can be extremely valuable to
the Provost and I would encourage those who have views on these matters, if I
may say so, Conner, to convey them to the Senate leadership and I can assure
you I will pay careful attention to what is being said. I think this is a case of, which as you know,
you and I talked over the weekend by email about the Federalist Papers, and
maybe in one of them, I think it’s Federalist Ten, there’s phrasing about refining
and enlarging, I think, the Senate leadership, and refining and enlarging the
views that come to it and I look to you to perform that role.
Dr. Bailey: Are there
further questions? If not, are we ready
to move to a vote? All those in favor,
please signify by saying Aye. Opposed, nay. Thank
you.
Dr. Flynn: The next item
on the agenda is a revisit of an issue and we’ve come to you with a suggested
change in a resolution dealing with intimate relations. The reasoning for this is that this language
was approved in March 2004 and when the Staff Council and A&P Assembly were
aware of the wording, they asked for us to reconsider some of it. They felt like while outright prohibition of
intimate relations between students and faculty was understandable and
appropriate, they had a little bit more trouble with the same type of
prohibition in the case of adult employees and felt that the existing
harassment policy and the nepotism policy possibly with some tweaking would be
enough to cover the issues that they saw.
So the resolution that I bring forward to you this afternoon is from
Steering and it states:
Whereas, the
University Senate on March 9, 2004 passed a resolution on intimate relations;
and
Whereas
subsequent review by Staff Council and the Administrative and Professional
Assembly resulted in a request that the proposed intimate relations policy be
revised;
Therefore, the
University Senate recommends that the following policy (the March 9, 2004
resolution as modified below) on intimate relations be adopted by
Auburn
University prohibits all faculty, administrators and supervisors, including
graduate teaching assistants, from pursuing or engaging in romantic or sexual
relationships with students, both graduate and undergraduate, whom they are
currently supervising or teaching.
We would strike the next sentence and finish with:
Violations
should be promptly reported to the University’s Affirmative Action Office. Violations of this policy will be addressed
through appropriate disciplinary action.
Dr. Bailey: Resolution
coming from the Steering Committee; does not require a second. Is there any discussion?
Dr. Ruth
Crocker, History: I understand that this revision is the result of
deliberation by the A&P and Staff Council and I respectfully have studied
the wording here but I still have to say that I have strong reservations about
this, cutting this out the way it has been shown to us here, because I do feel
that this is a workplace policy and I think that a sexual affair in a workplace
is going to have repercussions, for example, supervisors giving differential
rewards or punishing or rewarding, in other words, it’s going to mess up the
workplace so I just wonder if we could instead of for the bit that is crossed
out, perhaps maybe this is a friendly amendment, suggest that we put in that
Auburn University strongly discourages instead of forbids, strongly discourages
faculty, administrators, and supervisors from engaging in sexual relations- I
don’t think we need romantic in that, meaning I’m not romantic enough-ok,
engaging in sexual relations with employees whom they supervise. I still think that would be, and perhaps if
we put discouraging, at least we’re putting some guidelines that this is a
workplace and it involves power relations, it doesn’t just involve students but
employees too need protection and that’s my suggestion.
Harriette
Huggins, A&P Assembly Chair: Do you have the copies of the nepotism policy and
the affirmative action/equal employment opportunity policies that I gave
you? One of the things that has been
disturbing for Staff and A&P is the whole process of being able to police
such prohibition and both organizations felt strongly from the beginning that
policies that were currently in place, with a little bit of tweaking, is
related to Staff and A&P Assembly employees would definitely be covered and
we wouldn’t need to mentioned in this.
Everybody agrees that we don’t need to be involved with students,
whether we are faculty or staff or administrators, but there is currently
underway some beginning revisions of nepotism policies. There is definition here that talks about
family, which will probably be expanded.
I’m not putting words in anybody’s mouth but we’re trying to work
through the existing policies and procedures manual for Staff and A&P
Assembly employees that would cover these situations and it’s not so much the
relationship that’s the problem, it’s what happens as a result of the
relationship and how other folks perceive it and problems may arise with
favoritism in one way or another. And we
recognize that and we think that revising the manual to cover those situations
is a much better way to go.
Dr. Bailey: Sadik?
Sadik Tuzun,
Entomology/Plant Pathology: I am strongly opposing the change. The reason is that, like my colleague said,
this is a workplace. Now the nepotism
policy exists, but today, at present time,
Dr. Bailey: While
Virginia is coming to the mic, let me note, the reason this has come forward,
has come back to the Senate is that two constituent groups represented in this
body, Staff Council and the A&P Assembly requested that we do so. That’s the reason.
Virginia
O’Leary: I guess my concern about this change deals with the force of the
prohibition, because what worries me more than anything else is possible
retribution when one of these relationships goes awry, which I think is a
reality. Human beings, being what we are
collectively, and the question becomes: Do you put this in the handbook that
gives someone the force of that document in the, ultimately, were it to come to
that, the eyes of a court, or do you keep it at the procedural level where it
doesn’t have the same force and so I’m speaking against accepting this change
for that reason because my concern is protection. We’re all on the same page, I suspect, about
the need to protect. The question is,
how do we best accomplish that and I guess my feeling is I want to make
absolutely sure that the less powerful, regardless of which unit within the
institution they are affiliated with, are always afforded the best possible
protection. And I just want to make one
other comment because in the text of the material about policy in general, I
don’t know if we ever resolved the issue of sexual orientation and I want to
urge us to include that as a protected category. Thank you.
Scott
Phillips, Theater: I just have a question, purely informational. To what extent does
Dr. Flynn: I don’t know.
Dr. Bailey: Are there any
other questions? Sadik.
Sadik Tuzun: I think
there’s some misunderstanding. It is not
relations, it is power. You can date one
of your faculty friends, as long as you don’t have any power on that person or
you are not the supervisor, you are not paying or anything like that. So what, who cares? I mean, we are human. You know certainly that the problem is the
power and the financial issues.
Dr. Flynn: The thing
about it is that for the resolution the statement is prohibit, so it is about
prohibiting the relationship. I think
the underlying issues are power and influence and that type of thing, but in
terms of what we’re discussing here, it very plainly states that there’s a
prohibition against these relationships and that’s really what’s on the table.
Ruth Crocker: I’m going to
come back again with my suggested amendment that instead of prohibit, we put
strongly discourages. May I make a
motion to that effect?
Dr. Bailey: Made, and
seconded. We now have on the floor an
amendment. I’d like to restrict
discussion…
Dr. Flynn: Ruth, you had
also asked for the removal of romantic, is that right, earlier…
Dr. Crocker: Sorry?
Dr. Flynn: You had asked
for the removal of romantic earlier, do you still…
Dr. Crocker: Oh, I did.
No. Do we want to debate that? We’ll be here all night.
Dr. Flynn: We may be
anyway.
Dr. Bailey: What we have
on the floor at the moment is the amendment.
Is there any discussion on this amendment? No change on the question of romantic. Is there any discussion on the
amendment? As I understand the
amendment, it would be to retain the stricken sentence with the word changes as
indicated.
Dr. Crocker: Yes, that’s
right, to retain the bit that has been stricken out and just to change prohibit
to strongly discourages.
Dr. Bailey: Is that clear? Is there any discussion on this matter?
James Shelley,
Philosophy: This is a grammatical point. If
there is going to be a clause about discouraging as opposed to prohibiting, it
should go to the end of the paragraph. I
don’t know what it means to violate a discouragement. It makes sense to violate a prohibition, but
not a discouragement.
Dr. Bailey: I think I’ll
accept that as a friendly editorial change.
We did. Cindy
Brunner…any further discussion on the amendment? Vote now then on the amendment. Is this someone now coming to the floor?
Roger Wolters,
Management: Could you give an example of what constitutes appropriate disciplinary
action for a violation of this policy?
Let’s say you have a consensual relationship that’s reported as being in
violation of this policy. What might be
an appropriate disciplinary action that would result?
Dr. Flynn: I had a
discussion with Lynn Hammond about this issue and one of the things that first
off would be most logical, if you have two people, one of them being supervised
by another, if there’s a way to shift supervision. Now that may not be the best answer, beyond
that it would escalate depending, I assume, depending on the situation that was
in existence. But this is a resolution
for a policy, but there is not yet any procedure spelled out.
Dr. Crocker: Could I come
back with a discussion point?
Dr. Bailey: Yes, please.
Dr. Crocker: it may not be
possible to do this by Roberts’ Rules, but I see the problem grammatically here
and I would, it might be best to put in, to suggest eventually, strongly
discourages engaging in romantic or sexual relationships with
employees/subordinates whose work they supervise, adding this clause: where
such relationships are seen I think passive there, can be seen to disrupt
workplace relations, in other words, if they’re out at the movies together, it’s
not really going to affect…
Dr. Bailey: I’m going to
suggest, Ruth that you bring that in as a second. Do you have a comment on the amendment?
Tom Smith,
Human Development and Family Studies: I apologize, I just came
in late from class. I’m recalling that
two years ago I was in the Senate and this was hotly debated. The Senate worked very hard to come up with
the language that we have but also at that time it was suggested that the other
two groups on campus really needed to look at this. And apparently now they have, and we’re back
with some suggestions. What seems to be
missing in relation to this amendment and any other, I would speak against the
amendment of, on the fly, let’s start changing something that we spent a long
time getting the way we wanted it at that time and I would propose that maybe
we need a joint committee, representative of these three groups, to go away,
work together, seriously think about it from the three perspectives and then
come back with something that’s thought through that’s, what we would call in
my lingo “board-ready material”. It’s
always dangerous on the fly to do what we’re doing right here and I would speak
against that, something as important as this and obviously there’s a lot of
feeling about it in all three entities.
It’s a serious issue and I think it demands some serious input from all
constituencies and let’s come up with a thoughtful response, which is what I
would urge.
Dr. Bailey: Thank
you. Before Jenny speaks, who is chair
of the Staff Council, I would say that Staff Council, A&P, Senate
leadership and others in the administration have been working on this for some
time, whether effectively is your judgment.
Jenny…
Jenny Swaim,
Staff Council Chair: The three governances have gotten together and talked
about this in extensive amount of time.
Where we came into the picture is at the Cabinet Meeting at the
President’s Office, he turned to us and asked us if we had seen the policy. At the time we had not and that’s why it’s
back on the table. Our concern was that
we were already being told by the Affirmative Action Policy, Harassment Policy
also the violation, we had a question about what exactly could that be. We do have our policies intact that we felt
we would be covered under any circumstances and that the way our policies are
written, it would protect us as much as you guys, and that’s why we decided it
would be more beneficial to take us out of the picture so that we wouldn’t have
to go back to all three governances again to be approved. All of our, I believe Harriette I can speak
for your group, also has looked at this policy-campus wide, all the staff and
we all agreed on the same situation, to remove that sentence.
Rik
Blumenthal, Chemistry & Biochemistry: I basically want to reiterate what
was said over at this microphone previously.
I think that it’s very unwise for us to be, to take a very important
policy like this, as much as I voted against this policy originally, I think it
is ridiculous for us to stand up here, make up words and alter this policy with
words that were created on the fly as I’m standing here trying to reedit it to
get a new intent. So I’m speaking
against any amendments to the initial proposal, in that those amendments are on
the fly changes in the wording. This is
much too important a policy for us to be making on the fly wordings and then
have to live with them until somebody else finds a problem with the on the fly
wording that we just changed. I think I
would vote against this, and support anybody opposing all amendments on the
fly. I think we should consider this
original motion, but I don’t think amendments made of wording on the fly should
really get much merit, not that I don’t think Ruth may be right about what she
saying, I just think that it’s not as well considered as the wording that we
had before, which we spent much time working on and apparently the change,
which also much time has been spent on.
Dr. Bailey: Thank you.
Robin Fellers,
Nutrition & Food Science: The first sentence deals with relationships
between the people named and students.
The stricken sentence deals with relationships between the parties named
and employees. We’re getting ourselves
all tangled up over the second sentence, but I’m wondering, aren’t we talking
about apples and oranges here? There are
faculty, and certainly administrators, who are supervising employees within the
academic setting, i.e. department heads and so forth and it seems as though in
that first sentence we’re just talking about relationships with students. What are we trying to do is my question. Are we trying to address relationships with
students only or are we trying to address relationships also with employees in
that kind of setting and if so, it seems like we almost need two different
policies, two different similar, but two different policies addressing a.
students, b. employees.
Dr. Flynn: The proposed
change would have this resolution addressing only issues between faculty,
administrators, employees, and students.
It would strip out anything dealing with relationships between faculty, staff, just employees.
Gary Martin,
Curriculum & Teaching: I’d just like to point out that there’s a pretty
long distance between strongly discourages and prohibits. Maybe it should be really, really strongly
discourages or something, but it’s really conceptually two different
things. I think with students it’s a
pretty straightforward matter. I think
with, when you start talking about employees, faculty and so on, it could
become a lot more complex and I think it really speaks to the issue of the
improper use of power and there should be very clear guidelines for how that’s
dealt with, but I’m not sure that saying strongly discourages really does much
of anything.
Dr. Bailey: Tony, you’re
also speaking to the amendment?
Tony Moss,
Biological Sciences: Yes, I am speaking to the amendment and I agree
totally with the previous statement that Dr. Martin just made. Unfortunately I have to leave for an
important departmental matter so I wanted to catch this on the way out, but
that’s my position also. It’s very
difficult to say anything specific about what a response would be in the case
of a violation with the kind of wording that’s indicated there. You know what the response would be in the
case of a prohibition. I think we need
to use this as guidance for future behavior and I don’t know, I can’t really
see what we would do in a case of strongly discourage, again, how strongly
would one discourage such a relationship?
It gets too complicated.
Dr. Bailey: Dr. Locy.
Dr. Robert
Locy, Steering Committee: When we discussed this in Steering Committee, my
recollection is that we discussed whether, in fact, did this need to come
forward with at least someone here to represent what changes would be made in
the Intimate Relations and/or Nepotism Polices, specifically Lynn Hammond, as I
recall, and apparently that hasn’t been done which I think is leading to a lot
of the confusion. I think if we had the
full package of changes that were taking place so that everyone could see how
all of our concerns were represented in all the myriad numbers of changes, I
think everyone would have the feeling then that the issues about which we’re
speaking and expressing concern are adequately represented in the changes in
several policies that are necessary to make this package work they way in which
the concern is being expressed needs to work, so I wonder if it’s not
appropriate then to consider tabling this until that total package can be
brought. On the other hand, if there are
reasons for proceeding, that’s fine. I’d
like to speak against the amendment. Re
broadening the policy is, with the wording changes suggested, inappropriate.
Dr. Bailey: Is there any
further discussion. Did I hear…if not,
we’ll vote, we’ll go ahead and vote. If
it is…then we’re going to vote then on the amendment, if we have no further…if
we have no further discussion, then I’m going to ask Katherine to read the
amended version so that we’ll all know what we’re going to vote on and then
we’ll proceed to vote. Is there any
further discussion before we do? The
amendment, she’s going to read the resolution as amended and then we’re going
to vote on whether or not we accept that amendment. I don’t know if I stated that clearly. We’re going to vote on the amendment. So would you please read what the amendment
would sound like if it passed?
Dr. Flynn: This is the
amendment from the Steering Committee:
Auburn
University prohibits all faculty, administrators, and supervisors, including
graduate teaching assistants, from pursuing or engaging in romantic or sexual
relationships with students, both graduate and undergraduate, whom they are
currently supervising or teaching.
Violations should be promptly reported to the University’s Affirmative
Action Office. Violations of this policy
will be addressed through appropriate disciplinary action.
Dr. Bailey: And
then? And then she had the…
Dr. Flynn: I excluded
the…
Dr. Bailey: No, no, no,
and then with
Dr. Flynn: Ok, I
apologize.
Auburn
University prohibits all faculty, administrators, and supervisors, including
graduate teaching assistants, from pursuing or engaging in romantic or sexual
relationships with students, both graduate and undergraduate, whom they are
currently supervising or teaching. Auburn University also strongly discourages all faculty,
administrators, and supervisors from pursuing or engaging in romantic or sexual
relationships with employees/subordinates whom they supervise. Violations should be promptly reported to the
University’s Affirmative Action Office.
Violations of this policy shall be addressed through appropriate
disciplinary actions.
Dr. Bailey: The order’s
wrong. The order was that violations
would before the prohibition, before the strongly discourages. Is that clear enough or does it need to be
read? Ok. All those in favor of the amendment to this resolution,
please signify by saying aye. All those
opposed, nay. The resolution goes
down. We now are back to the original
resolution. Is there any further
discussion? Seeing no movement, I will
ask for a vote on this resolution as proposed by the Steering Committee. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed, nay. I’m going to call it in favor of aye. Dr. Brunner.
Division of the house is requested.
Rich and Willie, will you please.
All those in favor of the resolution, please raise one hand.
Gary Martin,
Curriculum & Teaching: I think we voted on the motion, but I think there's some really important points that came up. Will there, in fact, be movement to address
the Nepotism Policy and so on, is there a process in place that that will
happen in due course so that everyone will feel comfortable with the policies
that are currently in place?
Dr. Bailey: I believe so;
the heads of Staff Council and A&P are here. I will work with them to make sure that is
going to happen. I would hope Lynn
Hammond would be here today, she is out sick.
I was in a meeting with Lynn Hammond, John Heilman, and one or two
others of the Central Administration.
This was discussed; I have no reason to believe that we will not move
forward effectively on that. I believe
the harassment policy that exists is also effective. If people have concerns about that, please
review that policy. It’s available
online and share what concerns you have with that. Thank you.
Sadik?
Sadik Tuzun,
Entomology/Plant Pathology: Some colleges, including ours, have their own
nepotism policies, which grandfather already wives and husbands who are working
together. How are we going to deal with
this issue? This is conflicting against
nepotism policy of
Dr. Bailey: Thank
you. I’m already aware of the cases you
mentioned. We’ll talk about that and if
there’s an inconsistency between university policy and college policy, I would
imagine that university policy would be effected. Ladies and gentlemen, we are moving late into
the day and David King, David; I hate to do this to you-can I ask you to come
back at the October meeting? I hate to
do this to you. I do want to ask because
of the timing matter, to ask John Heilman to speak very briefly on Katrina
related matters and we’ll probably, unless there’s great interest, we’ll break
for the day and leave the Ag Initiative for the next meeting as well.
Dr. John
Heilman, Provost: Conner, thank you very much and to David King, I’d
like to say that I received the material that you sent. I haven’t acknowledged it before this, but I
studied it and appreciate it. It was a
clear presentation so I didn’t want you to think that I hadn’t paid attention
to it. Also I’d say with respect to the
Ag Initiative, as you know, Conner, the Senate leadership and I are talking
about this on a very regular basis so there’s continuity in discussion between
the Senate and the Provost’s office, but I would like to take just a couple of
minutes to talk about Katrina. The
university’s position in this, I think, is clear and it’s completely
unsurprising that we want to be able to help these people in need through a
range of initiatives. This is being done
not only at the university but also through the city and through churches. In terms of what the university is doing
academically, I think our first reaction has been to try to help our students
to stay in school and students have been asked to work with their deans to
address the specific needs that they have.
As far as other students are concerned, I point out that there are two
circumstances that we face that complicate our ability to handle additional
students who may want to come to Auburn from other schools affected by Katrina,
that is, we start earlier in the academic year that some of the other schools
and some of our courses have moved along quite a bit. A second is that we are in some ways in a
very good position of being overenrolled this year so that there is a limited number of places. That said, colleges are working with students
on a case-by-case basis and I think there’s receptiveness to doing what we
can. I know that our students have
undertaken a lot of initiatives and I would need to ask someone from Student
Affairs to speak to the specifics of those, but I know there’s been a great
deal of attention to that by our student body.
With respect to other faculty, they are, interest has been expressed to
my office and in a couple of cases, can we try to accommodate faculty from
other schools who have been dislocated by Katrina? Certainly I think the starting point for the
discussion has just begun in my office, is that if we have resources available,
for example, space, our starting point is that we want to help. I’d note that as I understand it, many,
although certainly not all of the faculty in the affected areas, certainly in
Dr. Bailey: Thank
you. Any questions for
Dr. Heilman? Thank you,
John. Hang on, Sadik’s got a
question. Did you have a question,
Sadik? Can you come to the mic
please? Sorry.
Sadik Tuzun: Just for
information, how many of our students have been affected by Katrina?
Dr. Heilman: Drew Clark
may be able, whether Drew is still here, he’s been looking into that quite
extensively and I’d ask him to comment.
Thank you.
Drew Clark,
Institutional Research and Assessment: Approximately 1590 currently enrolled Auburn
students have an address with a zip code in one of the counties identified by
FEMA as being eligible for assistance, that is, the disaster area. Of those, almost all are from
Dr. Bailey: Thank
you. Any further
questions? Thank you, John. I would entertain a motion to adjourn. Dr. Brunner.
Is there a second? I see a
second. All those in favor, signify by
saying aye. Opposed,
nay. See you all in a month.