March 10, 2009
General Faculty Meeting
transcription
Bob Locy, chair: I’d like to call the Spring Meeting of the Faculty of Auburn University to order. The first item is the approval of the minutes of our October 10 meeting. Those minutes were posted on the Web and have by that means distributed. Are there any additions or corrections to the minutes as they’ve been distributed? (pause) Hearing and seeing none those minutes will stand approved as they were distributed. Our first item on the agenda will be the State of the University Address by Dr. Gogue.
Dr. Gogue, President: Thank you, Bob. I’m honored to be with you today, I certainly appreciate the chance to visit with you a few minutes. I want to start by telling you that assuming the Federal Budget goes through this week, the 2009 Federal Budget, Auburn has within that budget various directed appropriations is what I would refer to them as, for about 23 million dollars. And that is really good news for us, it’s probably the largest we’ve ever had that has not just been for a massive building that we receive at the institution so there’s a lot of program money there. The last I was told the Senate still had not acted on the bill and it was to come up this week. But hopefully that will come through and the reason I bring it up is that we opened that process up a year and a half ago and we invited comments really on a much broader basis than we had been historically, and so we actually prepare a Federal Agenda Book that contain virtually all ideas that come from our faculty and we sit with staff, I don’t, but Brian Keeter and John Mason sit with staff, go over that document, find out the areas they’re particularly interested in and then obviously begin the process to try to encourage support for those initiatives. We just completed the round for the 2010 budget, and I think you probably know the Feds are under a continuing resolution, but this offers a real opportunity for us assuming again that the Senate passes that, it was supposed to have been passed last week but was not. Brian is that you back there?
Brian: Yes sir, it is.
Dr. Gogue, President: Is it still on the agenda this week?
Brian: Yes.
Dr. Gogue, President: Alright. I want to talk to you today about two things. One I’d like to give you a brief update on a few of the elements in the Strategic Plan and then the second part I’d like to talk to you about is budgets and where we stand. So let me start on the Strategic Plan. I think you recall last year we went through a rather lengthy process, tried to invite as broad an input as we could. We came up with about 65 different elements within this plan. We knew last year as we developed the plan as it came down was actually approved by the Board in June of last year, that because of the budget situation we would not be able to address all the elements in the plan in our first year. So we selected 35 of those and last week the cabinet we had a full review of where we are on each element in the plan and I would just say in a general sense, we’re making progress on all but a couple of the 35. Let me mention a couple that were in the plan that very, very good progress has been made that relayed are on the academic side. We wanted to go to full implementation of the ACT Writing Exam for entering freshman. That has been done, all the various parties have been notified and the class that comes this fall the vast majority will have taken the ACT writing exam. Provost’s Office did develop policies in case there was that special student that for some reason just didn’t get the word. Timing was a problem where we did not have to turn a great student down, so we feel good about that progress.
Number two, and there are those of you in this room that worked very hard on this, a look at our Honors College and to see if they are better models that may fit us. They’ve written a report that is absolutely on track in my judgment, which means I like it. I think it’s a great report and it offers really a lot of opportunities for us. We still, and the issues if you recall we have a lot of very bright students, they start off in the Honors College, but when we come down to graduation it is a very small number. And I don’t know what the right number is, but we go from (I may get the numbers wrong.) but we go from maybe 2,300 kids that are involved and then we show graduation of about 35 or 40 on an annual basis. So it seems like maybe we are loosing too many out of that particular area when it was such an important part in their decision process.
We also had a goal to try to establish a Writing Center and we were able to cobble together some resources, there’s an advertisement out for the director of the Writing Center there is an interim Writing Center Director that we have in place, but that’s something that over time we know we have to do and we need to do it well. And it will start this fall in earnest primarily focusing at the freshman level, ultimately to work through the institution where there are writing intensive courses at the upper division level.
We ask that each College develop a Study Abroad opportunity for their students and that has been done. All Colleges have at least one Study Abroad opportunity for our students.
One of the elements of the plan will stay for many years is how do we increase our graduation rate and I think many of you know we’re about 62 percent of our students graduate in six years and for us to move up to where we will feel good about it as an institution is probably about 75 percent is a number that you might look at. That would put us close to being average among our land-grant peers, so we’ve got some work to do there. We’ve looked at some of the reports that deal with better advising, that deal with better use of summer school, that deal with better use of class loads, so we are making some progress in that area. Remember that’s a metric that you really will look at this fall’s class six years from now to tell how well we did. So it’s not something that we can put on for a year or two make and effort and then not think much about it.
One of the areas in research that we talked about was the establishment of 501C3, Research Foundation that facilitates classified work, international work, large-scale work. John Mason and the Research Park Group have come together and by the end of the term we will have a fully functioning Research Foundation that I think will serve our faculty for certainly large types of projects.
We have a goal to look at increasing the number of graduate students in the institution. I know that the goal and sometimes it’s misunderstood, it’s not just have a lot more graduate students, but is to carefully look and see are there programs, are there areas that in essence would like more graduate students and for us to then be in the situation to try to market and be able to help and assist at a central level to bring additional students into those areas.
I would complement the Cooperative Extension Unit, we asked that at least one masters course be up and available electronically and the adult education program in the College of Education with Extension work is up and as I’m out in the state I run into people in many counties that are taking that course, they are very excited about it, leading to a master’s in adult education.
Another goal was to establish 50 joint appointments, faculty appointments. I don’t recall the number the Provost shared with us last week, I we got 35 or so in that range. We’re trying to get 50. This is not where department A pays half the money and department B pays the other half. It’s, really what we’re after is courtesy appointments to encourage some interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary types of work. So it may be that individual that is in History that has a strong interest in the history of technology that find that it is useful to have a joint appointment in engineering or in certain other programs. So help us with those if you have any interest in any kind of joint appointment relationships.
I’ve mentioned several times to the faculty, to the faculty senate groups, I don’t know to the full group, but we set a goal to try to bring to campus this year to at least make a serious offer for one member of the National Academy of Science or one member of the National Academy of Engineering, at this point Auburn has two members of the National Academy of Engineering and I think we interviewed one about two weeks ago for a third individual. Those become very important to us as an institution and as we look at many of the metrics that compare academic strengths.
We had a goal to try to establish our extension outreach offices. A technology based English as a Second Language (ESL) and extension tells me that they have about nine sites set up and I visited a county last week in which they actually had people coming in scheduling their time and trying to use that. Remember the reason in part is the demographics in Alabama are changing and in some of our rural areas the cooperative extension office is a key place to try to help that individual with no English skills begin to develop those first set of skills.
We had a goal to add three faculty positions in those departments that were more than 20 percent out of line in terms of their student credit hours and we were able to do that I think in the fall term, we were able to provide the money to those three departments that were among the ones that had the worst student teaching type ratios if that’s the correct term.
We had a goal to establish 80 new professorships that recognize our people. These are not to bring in new people but to carry a named professorship with a stipend of and extra $15,000 on an annual basis. The Vice President for Development, at our meeting last week wanted to lower that goal to 60 because of the economy and the things that are going on; we’re going to keep it at 80 and see what we end up with, but they’re somewhere in the 30s as I recall now and that’s one of the goals that will not come due June but will come due October 1. We had tried and we were not successful. We had tried to convince one individual that they should do the entire 80 and we didn’t have luck and we tried another individual or two and we didn’t have luck but the idea would have been that if you had a single name, The Calloway Chairs or the Calloway Professorships in Georgia, they’re spread through the whole state, that would have been nice. So we will have many additional names, which are still important and I think are a great deal in terms of faculty recruitment to some extent but more importantly in faculty retention.
I was asked last year that we look at post tenure for it to be a triggered process as opposed to everybody every five years type process and that was approved by the Senate. It’s being implemented currently, so it’s a triggered process.
We also had a goal to provide small grants, I think about $5,000 was the number we talked about for faculty to get an international experience. So we did find the money this year we did put it in place and I’ve seen several calls for that. The purpose; as you try to think about an international campus you try to think about providing the best skill sets that we possibly can for our students knowing workforce is very different over the next 30 years, it’s important for all of our faculty to have had some international experience. And what I think they found in the Provost’s Office was, those with international experience were the most rapid in terms of the ones that submitted proposals to do it again. We’re trying to find individuals that may have very limited international experience or no international experience, where they’ve at least had a little bit because our belief is that almost regardless of the course you teach or the area you work in, you’ll bring some different views and different thoughts back to the classroom.
So I wanted to mention those, feel good about it. The process on the Strategic Plan is each year it’s updated. Out of those 35 probably 15 or 20 of them will be removed, we’ll actually complete those this year. They will be replaced with things that we have yet to do still out of the Strategic Plans. [14:18] So we’ve asked for input from anyone looking at it the plan, looking at ideas they think should rise in the next year in terms of focus. We will try to make some recommendations to the Board at the June Meeting in terms of what we believe are the important elements for next year’s planning effort.
Let me mention the budget briefly, I’d like to mention it very briefly (laughter). I guess I want you to think with me a little bit. You have read and you are bombarded on television and you talk to colleagues all across the country and what we basically know is there is a lot of hurt, there’s a lot of pain, and a lot of fear, and some reality involved. I was in Washington I guess two weeks ago and it struck me as interesting when you think about the housing situation, 92 percent of the people in the United States–92 percent have never missed a mortgage payment nor have they ever been late on a payment. The belief is that probably half of those that have missed or been late are really not in jeopardy, so they missed a payment or they were late, there was a death in their family, they had to get finances together, so it’s really not a substantive sort of thing, about 4 percent is what you come up with and out of that about half of those are second homes, so now you are down to about 2 percent and I’m just amazed that that level hurt, now don’t dismiss it, has created such a tremendous ripple throughout the entire economy effect and all walks of life and everything that we do. It’s hard when you watch companies that you grew up with over the last 40–50 years that were really sort of icon companies in this country, and then suddenly you look and you see they’ve gone out of business, they no longer exist or they’ve been acquired by somebody. So there really is clearly some fears, some panic, some concern that is out there. We’ve seen it in our colleagues at other institutions. I want you to think of the number of schools that you’ve read about that are furloughing their employees this year, the number that are terminating, actually having rifts in some universities, the number of programs that some are abolishing…I always love the story of Brandeis University that invested in Madoff and they are selling their art collections. Many of the private schools their endowments have been hit very hard and scholarships that used to pay X are now paying .25X, so there are some dramatic shifts that are going on that we read about and that we all know about. I guess what I would ask us to think about is that we took a 69 Million dollar cut at Auburn, that’s what the cut was. Now that cut includes Auburn University, AUM, the Experiment Station, and the Extension Service, so there are four budget lines, out of those four our cuts were about $69,000,000.
The governor in Alabama has the power to declare proration and so we got to our number quicker than some states did. We went into the year with a budget cut and then proration was declared around Christmas. If you go to many of the states, what they are debating in their legislatures as we speak are their current year additional reductions they are going to make. We’re not likely to make additional reductions for the remainder of our fiscal year. How did the institution address $69,000,000 in cuts? I have to tell you that when I first came to Auburn and I saw that there were some proration reserve accounts and I saw that you all were very stingy in the way you spend you money, I began to think about, You know we could spend this money and make Auburn much better much quicker. And this is the only time publically I will ever do this, and it needs to be at least 10 year before it happens again, but Don Large, thank you very much for being a curmudgeon and stingy and all those things because it truly did make a difference in the way the institution was able to address the current year.
[19:37]
Let’s talk about moving forward. As we go forward October 1 of this year and a new fiscal year for Alabama the tax collections in the state are about 800 million dollars below what they were last year. So about 800 million dollars down from what they were last year. If at our 68–69 million cut, if they prorated that the same way they did this year, Don tells me our cuts would go to 100 million dollars across the four budget lines of the University. So if they prorated it like they did last year, remember they gave us a greater cut than the two-year schools, they gave the two-year schools a greater cut than K–12, but if they prorated the same way it would be about 100 million dollars that we’d be short. So along comes the stimulus bill, and if anyone tells you they are an expert on the stimulus bill, be cautious too, I certainly don’t pretend to be. But Alabama got about 3 billion dollars, that’s the ballpark number that’s the number Jim Main has used, he used it last night. So you’ve got 3 billion dollars coming in, theoretically spend a billion this year, a billion next year, and a billion the next year; for a three year period of time you have an extra billion dollars to spend. There are restrictions on the way they spend it and there will be politics going to the way they spend it. So what is happening right now in Montgomery is that the governor has two weeks, based on the stimulus bill, to prepare another budget and be able to present that, and apparently soon after their spring recess they will begin to take up the budget issue. Again in Alabama the budget issue for 2010 not 2009 that you are reading about in many of the newspapers. We do not know where it will be. We do not know exactly how much money will be applied or taken away or added. There are a number of items in the stimulus bill that are education related, how they make the decisions for K–12 verses higher ed. verses this program or that, we truly do not know the answer to that, and probably will not know with any great deal of assurance until they finish their business in the middle of May. So that’s sort of what we’re looking at as we go into the future.
Don and financial people are very concerned about paying off your deficit, if you will the 69 billion, billions and million just run together—I’m sorry, but the millions, because we used some one time money. So what we’ve got to do if you think back a couple of years ago the state pumped into our budget about $150,000,000, roughly $100,000,000 of it went to salaries and about 50,000,000 went to program enhancements across the campus, so what we’re trying to do is to know that we’ve got to stay in balance, we’re going to try to use some of our limited one time money, we know that we will have to make some cuts. Every operation in the university is going to receive some level of cut. The cuts that will be the least will be in the teaching and the academic side of the university. The highest cuts will be in the administrative side of the institution, so we know that that will happen. [23:20]
We are trying very hard to do our downsizing, correct-sizing, whatever the right term is, not in a single year but over several years to in essence reduce the impact that it has. We are going to do everything that we can where we don’t get into the business of putting people on furloughs, that is not a valid discussion at this point, we’re not talking about laying off large numbers of people, we’re not talking about abolishing programs; we are trying to look at ways internally we can save a little bit of additional money. I was proud of our students last Saturday, they had a sustain-a-bowl ceremony, and they saved by paying attention and turning their lights on and off—now that’s boring stuff, I mean it really is, …but they paid attention to that. If we did that as a campus, if we did that one thing as a campus and we are really vigilant about it, they come up with savings of about 3.7 million dollars on an annual basis. [24:22] It’s just in paying attention to leaving our computers on, turning off the lights, those kind of things. So we’re trying to look internally. There is a group looking at the way we do purchasing, it will probably move into the way that we do travel, it will probably move into the way we deliver health care. And I say health care there are some alternatives are being looked at they will not impact the quality of your health care, but it has to do particularly in the pharmaceutical areas in terms of the way we may try to look at that. We are trying to look at those things as opposed to furloughs and riffs and layoffs and so forth as part of the institution.
That’s where we are today and I have to tell you that because we don’t know what tomorrow may bring in the environment that we are in, but certainly today we feel like, I feel good about the capacity of the institution to try to get through a very bad year and certainly to be positive as we move forward. Anybody can get through a bad year, but can you come out of it where people are still excited to come to work, still trying to do the best they can in their professional areas and working hard to make the place better, that’s what you want to try to achieve. So we are going to do this as compassionately as we possibly can do it in terms of the dollars and the resources that we have. We’ve got to balance the books and you all understand that we’re not going to end up getting in trouble like places you read about so we will balance the books but we want to try to do it in a stepwise fashion that creates the least pain while still moving the place forward. I’ve never been a proponent of freezing all positions. I think that’s hard to do. There are times in which programs have been very successful, I mean 23 million new dollars is likely to come in to deal with programs, my guess is that you probably have to have some compliance people there are components of that that are necessary to administer those monies. Probably it’s important to spend that money. I never believed that you ought to blanket say nobody can travel, because your circumstances in each unit are somewhat different. So we are trying to stay out of the micro management part, we will give deans as much freedom as possible within some boundaries. The extension workers will be under Gains Smith to try to look at their numbers and make judgments on that. The numbers, when I gave you the 68 million and Don correct me, it’s about 38–39 million dollars for Auburn, is that roughly right?, in that range is actually what we are looking at as a target.
We will mix part of pain with tuition. We are trying to not price ourselves out of the market. And we know that our families where our kids come from, they feel pain also. So we don’t anticipate the large tuition increase percentage wise that you saw a year ago. Remember our students from a couple of years back, they in essence when the administration and the board recommended a three percent tuition, the kids recommended a five percent tuition increase and asked us to hold that money in abeyance and when you really need it don’t raise it quite as much and use that money. So there are some options in terms of what we’re trying to do to be as sensitive as we can to price points for you and I think you know this already, the Board policy is we cannot exceed the mid-point of the SEC public universities, we’re below the mid-point on our instate students and our out-of–state students. So as expensive as some of us when we look at the numbers still realize that our peers in this region are more expensive than we are.
I’ll be happy to respond to questions. [28:21] While Connor is coming up, when you leave there is a sheet in the back that tries to give you the bullets that spell out specifically the things about the budget where you’ll have something that you can at least talk with colleagues and look at. Connor
Connor Bailey: Thank you Dr. Gogue, can you tell us what the projections for enrollment are for the coming year? When you read news about universities this has become an issue, how are we handling what our projections for fall 2009?
Dr. Gogue: That’s a good question Connor. [29:05] We at this point we’ve not seen dips in applications, admissions, and deposits and so our assumption is that we will have, this past fall we had a freshman class of 3,900 and some odd students, our goal actually this year was for slightly less than that like 3,850, slightly below 3,900. Part of the reason was we anticipate some growth in graduate student numbers and it’s probably important to keep that in balance. The total university is about 24,800 students and the Board policy limits us to 25,000 students. We don’t anticipate that, but I know what you’re saying I’ve seen that. Typically when the economy is bad, your number of applications and your number of people that go back to school increases. If you were in an urban area you would be overrun with applications and particularly at the graduate level. People that have lost a job, companies change, that are displaced in any way typically go back and get degrees during that time. Since we don’t have many electronic degrees and people in a way almost have to be here for our graduate programs, I think the graduate dean told me our graduate applications and admissions are relatively flat, but on the undergraduate side the numbers continue to grow.
Bob Locy: While Andy’s coming to the mic let me remind you all that when you rise to speak, please use the microphones and please announce your name and departmental affiliation when you ask your questions. [30:48]
Andy Whorley, at the Library: I have a question about you spoke about PAC at the last Senate meeting, do you have anything more to say about that?
Dr. Gogue: Pardon me, the pre-paid tuition program? I’ll make a comment but I’ll ask Don if you could help me at least, make sure I say it correctly. About ten days ago the state treasurer invited Mac Patera from the University of Alabama and myself down to Montgomery to go over where they were in the pre-paid tuition program in Alabama. They made one request of us and we both agreed to the request. The request was, “Will you supply us with somebody who knows something about finances?” So Don Large is our representative and his counter part at the University of Alabama is their representative. I do no think you all have met yet, is that correct? They meet tomorrow. Their goal of those will be to sit and look at what monies they have and to try to make judgments on recommendations in terms of things that may make sense for the program to live up to what its commitments were over some number of years. I think I shared last time that they had a very high rate of interest they had to bring in on an annual basis. I want to say from their book that I read through, it’s like 9.8 percent. And if you have that kind of pressure on you then you’re going to invest in the market, you’re not going to be investing in your passbook saving accounts that are fairly safe, you’re going to invest in things that are a little bit more speculative. [32:31]
Things that I have heard them say and what I’ve read in the newspaper are fairly accurate. They’ve lost about half of their corpus in the last they say, 12 months the paper said 18 months, I don’t know but in the recent times they’ve lost about half of their money. They have enough money to fully fund students in the way they have for about six more years, but then they have real problems unless they begin to address what those issues are. The problem with finding a solution is that I think it’s important for all of us to know this is not a state of Alabama program even though if I had my money in it I probably would think that when I see how the Board is pointed and you see that the treasurer serves as the chairman of the Board, but the contracts all state that, hey, this is no guarantee at all and those good things, but that’s in the fine print. I think the belief by certainly people that ought those programs was that it was going to be there and it was a sure thing. It’s 36 thousand people in Alabama, I think, is the number they used that are involved in that, and Don help me, I think at Auburn we have something between 2,500–2,900 students that are on the PAC Plan and at our institution. And so we’re concerned, but then I’ll tell you a policy concern that you run into. Let’s suppose there was a way to figure out how to address their shortfall, I’m not suggesting I know how you could do it with the monies that are out there, but what are you going to do for the people that have 429 plans that they invested in and that have lost money also? And What are you going to do with in fact I think Mac mentioned that he bought Regents Bank stock for his grandson when the kid was born, as that being the pool that he would use to help his kid go to school and it’s set up as an education fund, so I’m getting all over the waterfront, but they are to meet and then my guess is they’ll be asked to share their ideas with the Board and then from that there will be some announcement. I will tell you that in some states that have set them up even in good financial times there was the will of the legislature to figure out a way to take state money and subsidize those things. That’s as much as I know, it’s still in flux. Hopefully there will be some clarity within a month or so.
Andy Whorley, at the Library: Okay, and I have one more question. This makes me think about the investments and PAC makes me think about the investments and the AU endowment how’s that standing?
Dr. Gogue: Was your question, how are the AU endowments? How are they doing?
Andy Whorley: Yes.
Dr. Gogue: I’ll share with you, Jeff MeNeil presented to their Board recently, Auburn has lost almost 100 million dollars out of its own endowment. The endowment was right at 500 million dollars, it’s lot a little bit less than 20 percent as I recall. In the southeast the school that managed their money the best was the University of Florida, they lost about 17 percent, the average is about 30 percent; and some were right at the 40 percent rate of loss, so relative to the pain that everybody else has it wasn’t quite as bad, but obviously when you loose those kind of monies through you investment portfolio your not excited about it. [35:59]
36:09
Richard Penaskovic, department of philosophy: Dr. Gogue we have a number of costly construction projects underway such as the basketball arena, the new dormitories, and we have some other projects lined up in the future not quite as much as these. As a fiscal conservative, I’m like Don Large, these kinds of things make me nervous. So I’m wondering is there any thought of cutting back at all on any of these construction projects?
Dr. Gogue: That’s a good question Rich, in the areas that as we move forward you will definitely see greater, not scrutinizes is not the right word, but remember you’re building some things from bond issuances from 2004. So you’ve had money in hand to build things and so you have to spend that bond money in that manner. [37:01] You have a comprehensive campaign that was completed in which people gave gifts for buildings for 50 percent of buildings and so forth, so there’s some obligation to continue those types of projects. When you get into say residence halls, and that’s a good example, residence halls those are in essence bonded where the students who live in those actually make the payments and service the debt on those buildings. So those kinds of things really do not impact your budget numbers. The thing that impacts your budget numbers are decisions that are made internally in the University on where you will spend deferred maintenance money or if you will spend as much. Is that reasonably fair Don? [37:42]
So certainly going to look at it, certainly going to look at construction, I was amazed at the last Board meeting there were five or six new construction projects they all got approved, I remember that there were building though that was federal money that was building those buildings, I think fisheries got a new facility that will start out on North College, you’ve got a parking garage that has a lot of federal money in it that’s being built or being planned for, you’ve got phase two of Shelby that will start sometime this spring or fairly soon, that’s federal money and private money. So you really can’t go in and say let’s take off a few million out of this project and move it over to operational line, but it’s a good point and it was in my notes and I forgot to read that we clearly looking at construction projects of any type to make sure that we are not hurting the institution.
Richard Penaskovic: Thank you.
Dr. Gogue: Thank you guys, I appreciate everything that you do.
Bob Locy: The next item on our agenda will be Dr. David Carter who’s the President-elect of the AAUP. It’s the custom of Auburn University at the spring General Faculty meeting every year to present from the AAUP to present the academic Freedom Award and David is here to present that.
[39:31]
David Carter, Pres.-elect of the American Association of University Professors: Thank you, Bob, and thank you all for being here, thank you Dr. Gogue for those remarks. Again as our chair just said I’m David Carter from the department of history, I’m a faculty senator as well, university senator and president-elect of the AAUP. This time next year you’ll be hearing from James Goldstein who is our current president. Before I forget I want to thank the other members of the AAUP executive committee for all the work that they do in furtherance of our chapter. Those are Bonnie White, Charles Ike, Conner Bailey, David King, Dudley McGlenn, Fenny Dain, Herb Rotfeld, James Goldstein, whom I mentioned, Judy Sheppard, Larry Gerber, Robin Jaffe, and William Trimble, and I also want to thank a mysterious benefactor who each year provides us with a very lovely plaque and commemoration of this award. As Bob mentioned each year the chapter here of the American Association of University Professors presents this award, the Academic Freedom Award, to an individual who’s demonstrated high ethical standards and professionalism in her or his field of specialization and has also made significant contributions to advocating, protecting, and extending academic freedom at the University. And just to give you a feel for those with a shorter institutional memories some of our past recipients include; President William Muse, who was the first reward recipient, Charlotte Ward, Glenn Howze, Larry Gerber, Wayne Flint, Lee Davidson, and you’ll occasionally see non-professors and occasionally non-university members receiving the award; Barry Burkhart, Conner Bailey, James Bradley, Owen Brown, Judy Sheppard, Gary Mullen, Reneé Middleton, Christa Slaton, and last year posthumously, George Folkerts, for his work in preserving our beautiful Arboretum when that wonderful institution was threatened.
This year I want to say without much further ado that the recipient of the award I’m just going to say at the outset is Dr. Richard J. Penaskovic, whom you just heard at the microphone. And I want to spend just a moment or two to telling you a little bit about why it is that in the minds of the award committee this year professor Penaskovic is so richly deserving. Academic freedom is something that we talk about a lot, but I would refer you to the AAUPs Web site where it stresses the indispensible quality of academic freedom and how inextricably linked it is to the successful functioning of the University. And the AAUP both here at Auburn and nationally has been a watchdog for academic freedom. And at the risk of making a shameless plug for additional members, I would encourage all of you to consider becoming active in the local chapter of the AAUP which really has a storied tradition here of fighting for these principles of academic freedom in recent years.
Richard Penaskovic, what I thought I would do with your permission is just to read his vita single spaced seventeen pages to give you a fell, I could do that and it’s a really remarkable way to cover some of the professional achievements as a researcher and scholar, but also you really get a sense in reading over his vita of his commitment to teaching in the classroom and I want to spend just a moment today talking about some of his activities outside the realm of research and outside the classroom. Before I do that I do want to call special attention to something that to me is very important and that is professor Penaskovic’s role in attempting to bridge and create a dialogue between people of different faith traditions. For those of you who don’t know professor Penaskovic, he’s professor of religious studies in the department of philosophy and he’s now entering his second quarter century here at Auburn, so since 1984 he’s been really raising important issues again in the classroom, in his research, and beyond and I see a sort of consistent trend in his scholarship and his teaching and his service outside the classroom in creating dialogue and fostering dialogue often between players who may not always be equally committed to dialogue and to civility in that dialogue.
The letters nominating professor Penaskovic speak of his significant contributions, his courage in speaking very frankly to all participants in what have been some quite divisive debates in Auburn’s recent history. And I would also remind you briefly of his very major role both in the creation of our current Ombudsperson Office, and his stressing the importance of a University wide sabbatical policy, and at the risk of coming close to a conclusion with some incendiary remarks, I was reminded of his closing remarks when he occupied the position of faculty chair. In those closing remarks he said, “I find it disgraceful that a major research university has such a weak sabbatical program when we have a legislature that looks kindly on research efforts that benefit the state of Alabama.” But despite that strong language I think it’s to professor Penaskovic’s credit that along with raising that toxin of concern that he worked very hard to move Auburn toward the beginnings of what I very much hope, and I imagine most of you hope will become a more comprehensive university sabbatical program. So it is with great pleasure on behalf of the Auburn chapter of the American Association of University Professors that I present this award for academic freedom and I would ask Professor Penaskovic if he would kindly come up to receive it. (get it out of the shrink wrap.)
Richard Penaskovic: thank you for your kind words Dave, I am both honored and humbled by this award. Honored because of those past recipients who I esteem very highly such as Connor Bailey, Judy Sheppard, Gary Mullen, Larry Gerber, Barry Burkhart, etc. and others. Also I’m humbled because I know there are others on this faculty who are more deserving than I. I guess I came to see the importance of AAUP especially in 1990 when I was chair, and head of the Department of Religion at Auburn University and tenure was denied by President Martin to Charles Currin, who had 180 publications to his credit including 30 books. At that time the AAUP chapter rallied behind and we eventually saw to it that the administration was censored and put on the AAUP censored list. AAUP does its work quietly and unobtrusively and people don’t know about it. But they do their work very well and they help those even those who are not members of the AAUP. So I’m grateful especially to Gary Mullen who was chair of the University Senate at the time, because he was very courageous in bringing this issue of academic freedom into the newspapers and it was a tremendous help to me at that time. When I was getting phone calls from the New York Times, USA Today, Time magazine and I really appreciated the help I got. I also got help from Jordan Kurwin from the National office of AAUP at the time. So I especially encourage younger faculty, junior faculty to join AAUP because it does make a difference. [48:14] I know the cost isn’t cheep, but you can have the dues taken out on a monthly basis to help ease the pinch in terms of paying for dues, but it’s a wonderful organization and again I thank AAUP for giving me this honor. Thank you.
Bob Locy: Thank you David, congratulations Rich. The next item is my final remarks as chair.
I’d like to begin by thanking some folks. The first person I’d like to thank is my 86 year-old-mother, who lives here in Auburn, who probably needed me across this last year at times and I had to ask if she could hold off on her needs. So for her patience and understanding I really want to give her my thanks. I haven’t always been a person it was easy to give patience to, she more than anybody appreciates that and I really want to thank my mother. The second person I want to thank is actually here with us today, it’s my wife Marsha, she also has incredible patience for 39 and a half years she’s been the major force that’s made me a better person on a daily basis. I hope I occasionally return the favor to her, but I am ever grateful for her support and for her unwavering support and love and respect that’s allowed me to do what I’ve done for the past year for the University in this capacity. I’d like to thank the members of the executive committee, my secretary Sue Barry who is not able to be with us here today, Dennis Devries, the secretary-elect, and Kathryn Flynn who will take the gavel here in a minute and take over for me, they’ve been… (I’m going to get to Dave Cicci who’s also a member of the executive committee in a minute, but I want to give him some special thanks.) I want to thank the executive committee for the support that they have given me for the year, It’s impossible to be a chair without a supporting executive committee and it is truly a team effort where all of us pull together. Sometimes I’m not an easy person to pull in the same team with so I appreciate their indulgence for the past year and every thing they have done to make it as successful as it was.
You just heard from Rich, with Connor sitting in the room, we have a litany of past presidents who’ve had chair-ships, past chairs, excuse me, that have had chair-ships that were plagued with let’s just say problems that didn’t go real smoothly. I feel like the year has gone very smoothly and I want to thank Dave Cicci especially for presenting a model to me for how to be chair when there aren’t major crises that have to be dealt with on a daily basis as the chair. If it weren’t for Dave leadership last year when we had also a relatively smooth chair, I’m not sure I could have done a good job, you taught me a lot as an example in that regard. So I particularly want to thank Dave. I also did a pretty nasty thing to Dave, about the first meeting after I became chair, we amended the University Senate Constitution to make it such that the immediate past chair had to sit on the Steering Committee for the entire year. And I don’t think he was planning on doing that at the beginning of the year and he graciously accepted that chore and contributed all year long in that capacity as immediate past chair, so that’s another reason he deserves that special mentorship for carrying on for a full year past his responsibilities.
I’d like to also thank Herb Rotfeld, the parliamentarian of the Senate who was a great assistance in running Senate meetings. I guess I can sum up by saying you know you must be doing something right when within one weeks period of time I get an e-mail from someone criticizing me severely for the hard and stringent way I enforce rules of order in running the Senate and saying we shouldn’t be so dogmatic about how we do it it’s discouraging people from talking at the Senate meetings and it’s not very good, and then a day or so later I get another e-mail thanking me for the rather casual manner in which I run the Senate and that it’s not… and that’s greatly appreciated so when you get two opposing viewpoints within a very short period of time I figure that I must be hitting about the middle where I belong.
I’d like to thank the members of our Steering Committee. The Steering Committee has been a valuable asset all along. At times we haven’t always been able to meet as a Steering Committee the way I would like but by the end of the year we were quite effective and we’ve sort of have a Steering Committee that’s contributing handily to the business of the Senate leadership. I’d also like to thank the University Senate Rules Committee for the contributions they’ve made across the year. At the same time that I’m thanking the Rules Committee, I need to do a little commercial, because you will find available for you to log into and volunteer for, Senate committee assignments for the coming year. We need you all to volunteer, because I would have no Senate Committee chairs to thank next, and I would have no Senate Committee to thank for their activity across the year if you all don’t volunteer. There’s nothing more important you can do to be involved in the faculty self governance of the University than to participate in this committee work.
I know in some corners of campus, let’s say, it’s unpopular to volunteer for committees, but it’s only through that service that we maintain our voice in the governance of the University. And I believe that we have an administration that has worked with us effectively across the last year and is interested in hearing our input, not just willing to listen as a token but is really sincerely interested in what input we can bring because they understand the importance of our role. I have to tell you as chair though that I’m not sure the faculty always understands that role as well as I’d like to see you understand it. And I hope that you will consider volunteering for committees and getting involved.
[55:23] The last person I’d like to thank in addition to all of the Senators who’ve participated all year long, is actually Dr. Gogue himself. When I ran for the chair of the Senate, it wasn’t clear who the President was going to be when I became chair. We went through a wishful year as chair-elect and ultimately learned of Dr. Gogue’s emergence as the candidate for President of the University and I have to say that he certainly came with great credentials, but Dr. Gogue is not a man with just great credentials, he’s a genuinely good person I’ve learned across my year in working with him and he knows how faculty think, he understands what our concerns are, he listens, and he responds. Now as the President of the University he has to listen to all of the constituent groups of the University and we don’t always get our way, but he does listen and he does want to know and I think one of the reasons why we have a little controversy this year is the nature of the relationship between the president of the university and the faculty that we’ve worked on establishing for the past 18 months. I can’t possibly give him higher marks as a President. During my year as chair I’ve had the opportunity to travel and participate in SEC faculty Senate chair’s meetings and in other meetings nationally around the country for Senate chairs to go to; I’ve heard of no tales of the president of any university, I’ve interacted with no presidents of other universities that I would prefer to be working for than for Dr. Gogue. We have a gem that gives us an opportunity and I’m going to talk more about that opportunity here in Dr. Gogue. [57:34] At the same time our year of opportunity has focused on getting a strategic plan in place and you’ve heard of our progress on that and our intended progress in the future. Part of the reason it’s important that you all get involved in committee work, volunteer and participate is because that’s how we advance the Strategic Plan from the faculty point of view. That’s how we make our input for that Strategic Plan. They set the directions that they want to go in, now it’s up to us to help them work out the details in a way that benefits the faculty and ultimately benefits our students in terms of the education that we can provide to them.
We’ve now completed at least from the faculty point of view I think the last important administrative appointment with the arrival of Dr. Mazey, only a few short weeks ago. I regret that she didn’t get here sooner so that I had more time to interact with her. The interactions thus far with the Senate leadership have gone very nicely and we are looking forward to a continuing long relationship with you that’s every bit as profitable as the relationship I believe we have with Dr. Gogue.
So with those opportunities in place we still never the less as a faculty Senate manage to accomplish, establishing a new Senate Office in room number 5 in the Quad Center and we’ve hired a permanent staff position that is working half time for the ombudsperson and half time for the Senate. Hopefully this will lessen the burden on particularly the secretary of the Senate and allow us to do a better job of getting things done now that we have that staff position established and we have an office out of which to work. We’ve managed to hire an ombudsperson, Dr. Wohl is with us here today, he informed me in our last discussion that he’s a very busy person and that we have a great deal of activity associated with our ombudsperson. When an ombudsperson does his job well I’ve learned you don’t really know that he’s doing his job. And so I think that situation suggests to me that we have a good person doing our ombudsperson work and we are making progress on that front and although Dr. Penaskovic was certainly a key player in ultimately formulating the ombudsperson, the hire took place this past year and we initiated that position. At the same time, once again, one of Rich’s pet projects was sabbatical leaves and we were able to have our first sabbatical leave program during the course of this year, professional improvement leave program I need to call it, again in response to the effort that the Senate leadership made in working with former Provost Heilman. As Dr. Gogue said, we moved to a triggered post tenure review system, so we believe that in the spirit of improving faculty relationships we have at least those four goals we can point to that we’ve accomplished during the year.
We’ve had a number of academic policy changes as well. We endorsed the President’s Climate Change Initiative, we established student-learning objectives for the…, through the Curriculum Oversight Committee, we established a new retro-active Withdrawal Policy, we had Graduate Certificates approved to be offered, we established a new Faculty Research Committee, we established an Interdisciplinary Degree Program, we modified and updated our Consulting Policy, our Conflict of Interest Policy, established an Enrollment Cap Policy, and just last month approved a Ten-week Withdrawal Policy form the Senate, so we’ve accomplished a number of things academically and I think we’ve set the stage to make a lot more progress as the Presidential Task Force reports come in and issues relative to the Strategic Plan are now surfacing for our subsequent consideration.
In light of all of the opportunities that are before us, that have been established by our new Provost, our President, by our Strategic Plan, we struggle with an economy that isn’t very friendly to the resources that we need to expand the University in a number of ways. At the same time I would argue that there has never been a time in our history when the state of education in the country needs our service to the academic enterprise more than it’s needed right now. And I’d like to ask you all to turn your attention for a moment away from what we don’t have and to look at what we do have, and to join with me in focusing our attention on identifying the ways we can move the University forward. It’s only from our hard work that we wind up producing the next generation of students of which we can all be so proud.
It’s been my pleasure to serve as your chair for this year and I want to thank you all for your support and ask you to support equally well Kathryn next year as she serves as the chair. I’m looking forward to doing that. I’m looking forward to continuing the two years of success that we as a faculty have had in trying to advance the cause of the University in establishing a rapport with the administration that allows us to succeed in doing that. Thank you.
The next item on the agenda is to introduce you to Kathryn and turn over the ever-present gavel.
Kathryn Flynn, incoming chair: Thank you Bob. Thank you very much (I’m wondering if this works at home I may need to use it there too.) First off I would like to announce the winners of the election and I have just a couple of short comments.
We had four candidates, two for chair-elect and two for secretary-elect. The candidates for chair-elect were Claire Crutchley and Larry Molt, and it’s my pleasure to announce that Claire Crutchley is the new chair-elect for the Senate this year. I might also mention that Claire’s a current member of the Steering Committee so we will also be coming out to people looking for a replacement on the Steering Committee, so get ready for some phone calls. For the secretary-elect Russ Muntifering and David Shannon were our two candidates, and it’s my pleasure to announce that Russ Muntifering has been elected as the Secretary-elect. I’d like to thank both Larry Molt and David Shannon for their willingness to run, to put themselves out there. It’s quite a big decision to make, it’s a large commitment, it’s two years for the secretary-elect and a three-year commitment for the chair-elect, and it can be quite a bit of work, so I really appreciate people’s willingness to put their names forward and be considered by their coworkers.
I’d also like to wrap up by thanking both Bob Locy and Sue Barry for the work that they did this year and for the mentoring they’ve done for both Dennis DeVries the incoming secretary and myself. I think that if you had to come into this without having any training or mentoring the list that Bob read would be much shorter. So it’s been very useful and Bob will continue in his role as mentor the Steering and executive committee and I believe also in Rules, so he still has quite a busy year ahead of him.
I’d like to announce that Bill Sauser has agreed to serve as parliamentarian for the next year and just to let you know how much I look forward to working with everyone this year I would like if you have issues that you believe that Senate should address, if you’ll let me know we will bring it to the attention of the Steering Committee. I’d like to be responsive to the needs of the faculty as well as the staff and the A&P Assembly, so please let us know if there are things that you think we need to be looking at and we will do our best to be responsive to you. And with that I’d like to call to see if there is any unfinished business? Hearing none, does anybody have any new business? If not then I call the meeting adjourned. [1:07:57]