Transcript Senate Meeting
January 14, 2014
Larry Crowley, chair: Come to order please. Welcome to the January meeting of the Auburn University Senate. I want to go over some rules of the Senate. My name is Larry Crowley the chair of the Senate. Other officers here, Bill Sauser is the immediate past chair, Judy Sheppard is the current secretary, and Gisela Buschle-Diller is the incoming secretary-elect. This is Laura Kloberg, she’s the one that makes everything work.
A short review of the rules of the Senate, senators or substitute senators please sign the roll in the back, we are not going to do it by clickers, Bill was good enough to count the roster and we have established a quorum. If you’d like to speak on an issue go to the microphone and when recognized state your name indicate if you are a senator and state what unit you represent. We keep a digital voice copy so that it makes it easier to transcribe if you’d do that for us.
So the rules require that senators or substitute senators be allowed to speak first, after all the comments by senators on an issue are made, guests are welcome to speak. A quorum has been established, we have 88 members and we have more than 45 in attendance so we have established a quorum.
The first order of business is the approval of the minutes of the minutes for the November 5, 2013 senate meeting last year. The have been posted online are there corrections to those that are posted? If there are no corrections the minutes stand approved.
I’d like to call on Dr. Gogue to come and make remarks from the Office of the President. [1:50]
Dr. Gogue, President: Thank you Larry. It’s good to be with you, I hope everybody had a good break. We are off to a good start for the spring term.
We have a Board of Trustees meeting in the early part of February, I don’t recall the exact date, but there are several items on that agenda that have gone through the various committees that I wanted to share with you so you are aware of them.
Number one there is an action item to initiate the planning and discussion for a new academic facility for the College of Business, a graduate business school. A graduate business building facility, the location is not determined, all the money would come from private sources, but that activity will be on the Board agenda to initiate that project.
Number two, there is a renaming of the Art Department from the Department of Art to the Department of Art and Art History.
There is a renaming of a baccalaureate degree in Radio, Television, and Film to Media Studies.
There is also three new graduate certificate programs coming out of the College Architecture, Design, and Construction.
On the Thursday prior to that Board Meeting, Don do you remember the date of the Board Meeting (Feb. 7)? So on February 6 there will be, out at the Research Park, the official groundbreaking of VICOM, the medical program that’s coming into the Auburn area.
Last month there’s been a lot of mention of athletics, and I don’t normally mention athletics but I want to mention it today if I can. Three things to me that really stood out; Number one, out of the 14 schools in the SEC Auburn has the most Rhodes finalists over the last 5 years. So we are awfully excited about those kids. Second thing that I’d mention, we got to see the academic data on the student athletes just before Christmas. We have about 585 student athletes and about 300 student athletes that have over a 3.0. That’s great, but there were only 5 that had less than a 2.0, so these are pretty impressive numbers and you the faculty deserve a lot of credit in that. Third thing that makes Don Large particularly happy is the applications based on the last month or so, we are up about 20% at Auburn. So I wanted to share that with you. [4:27]
We did get a report over the holidays, final fundraising for the last calendar year from Jane Parker, a little over 151 million dollars. Before we run out and spend the money Don will caution us that its cash, pledges, long term gifts, but still it’s the largest year that Auburn’s ever had in terms of the way they do accounting within the development field.
Last night the omnibus bill at the Federal level received both House and Senate support, it has not been officially voted on but received support, it’s about a 1600 page bill. Auburn has a number of items within that bill in which, you can’t do earmarks any more but you can affect the language within that bill. So Auburn has done a really good job of getting the language which makes it very favorable for Auburn on a competitive basis to be successful at some Federal Grants and dollars.
The final thing I’d mention is the Cooperative Extension Service over the last couple of months has spent a great deal of time in the Black Belt of Alabama. An awful lot of people and I’d say myself included really don’t understand the new Health Care Bill and what it means and the implications. They spent a lot of time working with people, step by step specific guidance to try to make sure people understand and can try to make the decisions that are most appropriate for them.
I’d be happy to respond to questions that you may have. (pause) Thank you Larry. [6:09]
Larry Crowley, chair: Next on the agenda was going to be Tim Boosinger, the Provost, his administrative assistant e-mailed me this morning and told me that he was sick and won’t be able to attend. I do have some remarks that I know he would like to share on some upcoming issues. [6:30]
One of those is that tomorrow he has scheduled a panel discussion about this new budget model. One of the things that came up on the last open forum was the question about how other colleges have encountered the challenges of incorporating a new budget model and there are 4 panelists, universities that have gone through what we are anticipating possibly going through. The Provost Open Forum will be in the Hotel and Conference Center in Ballroom B tomorrow at 3:30 p.m. So I wanted you to have the opportunity to put that on your calendar and come and be part of the discussion and bring questions with you.
Another item that I wanted mention to you, Donald Mulvaney, at the back, along with his Teaching Effectiveness Committee has been instrumental in moving some of the monies that we are saving on moving from a paper based teacher evaluation to an online teacher evaluation. The Provost and Emmett have been instrumental in getting some money put into a prize for the Department level for teaching effectiveness. Don and his committee are going to have an Open Forum Information session tomorrow at 3:00 p.m. in the Student Center. Now as I understand, Don, you have also reported that to the AU Daily and they have that if you haven’t taken notes here. It’s room 2225 in the Student Center at 3:00 p.m.
Another thing I wanted to mention is the University Executive Committee, the Senate Executive Committee has tried to reach out across campus and engage the different Colleges in discussions after the model of the Ag Department. The Agriculture Department has a very active discussion on a monthly basis between their senators and the volunteers to university committees and senate committees. Dean Roberts, who I saw come in, he has agreed to host this on Friday during lunch we will meet for about an hour. I’d like to encourage any senators that are from the College of Engineering or encourage those volunteers on Senate and University committees, come to room 1301 Shelby Center over lunch, bring a lunch and we’ll have an engaging conversation with Dean Roberts over some of the concerns that you might have and we’ll share information. Hopefully we can establish a dialogue between members of the faculty that contribute their time and energies to the Senate and to committee work with the Dean’s staff as well.
The volunteer site is up. It’s time to volunteer again. The Web site is open, if you have extra time on your schedule or if you can make extra time on your schedule we need the help. The way that you access the Web page and volunteer your efforts for particular committees is go to the Senate Web Page that can be accessed through the administrative link on the home page, across the top there is an orange banner, the first one is for the volunteers, this is also where you vote if we have an election across campus. What will be displayed for you and tailored for you as you log in are the slots on committees that would be something that you would “fill the bill,” “fill the bill” is not the right word, some would need volunteers from engineering and therefore we have narrowed down the list to open up that opportunity for only engineering faculty. So you all work with us that’s the reason why you log in is so that we can tailor make a list of volunteer opportunities for you and I encourage you to do that. [10:50]
Another items that I’d like to mention is that during the February meeting we have 3 slots that will open in August for the Rules Committee so we will entertain nominations from the floor for these three open positions. It will be a 2-year position. The Rules Committee is active in filling the slots on the different various committees. They are the committee on committees. They work with rules when rules are in dispute we operate through the Senate. You need to be a Senator at the point of your election, but if you are rotating off of the Senate this year you are still fine, you are voted on and approved when you are a Senator and that’s what the rules stipulate.
Those are the 5 things that I wanted to mention. We have 3 information items. One is Gordon Stone has been asked to come and speak to us. He’s the director of the Higher Ed Partnership. He is not a lobbyist but he might look like a lobbyist on our behalf. He is also the mayor of a town and he is active in his church, I just happened by chance to wind up at a Thanksgiving party where we were both in attendance and I got to know him and asked him to come and speak to us about his initiatives on behalf of the universities.
Gordon Stone, director of the Higher Education Partnership: Good afternoon. [12:35] It is a pleasure for me to be here, and “War Eagle.” I represent 14 universities and I don’t get to say War Eagle at but one of them, “War Eagle.” I have two degrees one from Auburn, here at the College of Agriculture and I have one from AUM so I say that with all sincerity and all appreciation for what Auburn University means.
I want to just take a point of personal privilege and say to you a couple of other things that I want to brag on Auburn about. First of all I have had the privilege of serving as president of the football letterman’s club for 6 years and when you talk about the contributions of the faculty, I happen to have been on the strategic advisory committee a number of times to hear Dr. Gary Waters talk about the roll that he plays and you all play in the various departments on campus in helping our athletes to make sure that they are well rounded and prepared for what’s to come after they finish playing ball and can guarantee you that that day does come for all of us. So I want to congratulate the faculty on behalf of a former athlete here for what you do to help in that regard and congratulate you on those numbers that Dr. Gogue shared earlier.
Also I want to thank you for what you mean to our town in Pike Road, I am fortunate to be in my third term as mayor there and throughout that time we’ve had an ongoing relationship with our public universities. Some of that is because of the fact of working with the Higher Education Partnership I know the various players at the different universities, but also some of that is because of the great difference we can make for the citizens in that relationship. [14:08] And just tonight in Pike Road, Alabama will be our second of a beginning farmer series that we are hosting and our second consecutive speaker will be a product of Auburn University where Dr. Fields, from the Ag Econ Department, is going to talk about what it means to approach a career in agriculture. And if you know anything about the eastern end of Montgomery County or the Western end of Macon and Bullock Counties and Pike County where we are there is huge opportunity there for people, so again, thank you for the continued outreach beyond just the normal expectations that people have of what your university means and what it does.
My job with the Higher Education Partnership is very simple. In 1997 we started our organization to represent the 4-year public universities to create a grassroots voice that could combine the student populations, the faculty, the staff, and the alumni populations if they choose to engage in an advocacy roll on behalf of public universities. We are currently representing 150,000 students across Alabama, 150,000 plus students in the last 3 state-wide elections in which we had constitutional officers elected, over 50 percent of the votes cast in our state came from counties where our universities are located. Now there may be some obvious similarities there because we have universities obviously in Mobile County, we have public universities in Jefferson and in Madison County, but I would also offer for you to think about for our legislators we constantly remind them to think about the fact that in those counties those institutions are major contributors to the economy of those counties. I heard Dr. Witt who is the chairman of the council president, the chairman of the chancellor of the University of Alabama speak to the Legislative Budget Committee and he talked about the 12 billion dollar impact of our universities. And he talked about the importance of what our universities mean to our economy and our state, and he talked about how that number was calculated, and he reminded our legislators that we are not just simply educational institutions, although that is critical to everything we do, we are economic engines for the state of Alabama and we deserve and need to be funded in such a manner just like we do in any other economic development work in our state.
So that’s just an example of some of the things we do with the Higher Education Partnership. We try to make sure that that combined voice is in place so that the legislative officials, because we have 140 people making decisions about or 5.7 billion dollar budget and how that budget is going to be dispersed, and those 140 people truly represent all of Alabama. I’m a native of the Black Belt, I grew up in Wilcox County. Pine Apple, Alabama is my home so I understand when we say we elect a representative to represent those people. Well, I can tell you that many times when we send people to Montgomery that don’t have a lot of personal understanding of the depth of the work that’s being done on our campuses. So we have to be there to remind them. And I don’t just say we the Partnership, but we the combined voices. We are only as effective as our institutions empower us to be. I want to thank Dr. Gogue and the leadership here and the administration at Auburn, thank Shari Fulford, C.J. Hensey and the lobbying team that worked so hardly on Auburn’s behalf, I want to thank the SGA and the leaders there who get involved and support our student groups, our scholars groups, want to thank you all for your membership.
If you are not a member, back behind us on the wall under the projection screen there are some of these blue brochures that simply explain how you can join it is as inexpensive as anything on the planet. We just simply want you to be involved. We used to be able to do it by payroll deduction, but the state decided that that was not an ethical way to go about business, so we ask you to rejoin every year. It’s a little more complicated and easy to forget when we are only asking you for $12, or $60, or$120 depending on which level you want to join, but we encourage you to pick up a form and check us out. We need your voice, we need your name on our electronic distribution list so that when we have a crisis, we need everybody at the table we can call upon you.
The numbers are still early the budgets haven’t even been dropped yet, we don’t know exactly what it is going to mean this year. We know we will have a little bit more money, but how is a little bit more money dispersed over all the needs we have in public education going to ultimately impact our institutions, I don’t know. But I know I am very proud to be an Auburn Alum. I am very proud of the fact that Auburn University has done to continue to grow, to continue to progress, to continue to make a difference in the lives of students and the lives of the people of the state of Alabama. As we have gone through the largest economic recession or dip in my lifetime and probably most of your lifetimes as it relates to the Alabama Education Trust Fund. [18:55]
We have challenges in Alabama, we have difficult decisions as it relates to tough items. What do we do about corrections, what do we do about Medicaid? The two top most costly expenditures, over 60 percent of our general fund budget goes to those two items, 60 percent. So Medicaid, corrections, and education consume huge portions of our state’s resources that we gather from the people. Well how do we solve those issues in Medicaid? How do we solve those problems in corrections? I would challenge and do challenge any legislator that will listen that you solve them by building a solution oriented population. And we build a solution-oriented population by encouraging and engaging more Alabama citizens in a complete educational process. Not every citizen of the state of Alabama was designed to, was created with the gifts to go to college, but everyone that has those gifts ought to have the opportunity to be encouraged to go to college. And right now when you have twenty-two percent of your population that has a 4-year degree and the National average is 27 percent, we’re behind. When you are 43rd in the nation of the per capita income, we’re behind. When you have a continued crisis of it taking more and more of the median income to educate our citizens with a 4-year degree, it creates a huge debt load that we pass along to our citizens. I don’t say that to be critical of our institutions, we have no choice but to charge tuition because we have to deliver a quality product and that’s our job. But at the end of the day if the state would do more we wouldn’t have to charge more and that cycle could be reversed and we could solve some of those critical problems in corrections, critical problems in Medicaid, critical problems in the Black Belt where I’m from.
I love what I do. I am fortunate to have a chance to do this, I am fortunate to be able to work for places that have changed my life. I’ve said that to you before, if I come back next year I’ll say it to you again, because I will never fail to be appreciative of the experience I had here. I want to introduce Carly Creach, Carly is our outreach coordinator, she is available to come at any time. If your department, if your school, your college, any group you have would like to have the opportunity to join us as a group and participate through an affiliated form, please let us know. We encourage that for a minimal amount, $100 – $250 so you can join as a group and get electronically connected to all of our mailings. We don’t bombard you, we just keep you informed on the overall issues. Again, it’s my pleasure and privilege to be here. Thank you for listening, thank you for being supportive.
And the last thing I’ll say to you is February 27 is Higher Education Day. Now Higher Education Day, if you have never been, let me just describe it in a simple form. [21:33] it’s like the BCS Pep Rally except it’s on the steps of the State House. Our job is to rock the State House one day a year to make sure that those elected officials don’t forget that Higher Education is made up of people. It is easy to get down there and decide what to do about money based on mathematical formulas and statistics but at the end of the day they need to remember that they are not voting on what they are doing simply on a calculation, they are voting on what they empower those people to do. And that’s what Higher Ed Day does, so if you’ve got a syllabus and you got a test on the 27th or the 28th or in that time frame maybe think about giving some encouragement to some of your students that they could make it up. But in all seriousness we want to encourage as many faculty as many students as we can to come down and be with us that morning because it is a very important day when we ring the bell for Higher Education in Montgomery, and that’s February 27. [22:32]
Again, thank you for all you do, thank you for giving me some time, and War Eagle.
Larry Crowley, chair: The next item on the agenda, we’re in the midst of a strategic plan, we are developing an implementing the strategic plan, it has 5 different parts and I had the privilege of going to these sounding committees across the state. I went to 4, some I went to I took the intestate up and turned right and went about 100 miles into an area and it didn’t ever seem to fail that there were people in there that want more of you, they want more faculty. And Chippewa Thomas is the Director of Faculty Engagement in the Outreach mission, that’s the forth item, forth plank in the strategic plan. She’s going to come and tell us how to do that and she brought books and I know that she can inform us and look forward to what she has to say to us. [23:43]
Chippewa Thomas, Director of Faculty Engagement: I’d first like to say Mr. Gordon Stone really has already set the stage for me to talk to you this afternoon. I am really excited to have the opportunity to bring some information, President Gogue certainly, Larry Crowley, chair, and officers of the Senate, and fellow senators. It’s my pleasure this afternoon to speak to you about outreach scholarship and faculty engagement. And I say that Mr. Stone has really set up this presentation to you today because he articulated exactly why it’s important that we are a land grant university and have faculty such as yourselves actually at this institution, in communities doing great work.
As it was stated, I am Chippewa Thomas, Director of Faculty Engagement, for those of you who don’t know me. I serve out of the Vice President’s Office for University Outreach and in addition to being a University Outreach Senator I am a counselor educator associate professor with tenure here at Auburn University in the College of Education. So I have two homes. They give me a very unique perspective in terms of faculty engagement and certainly how important it is. [25:08]
I wanted to share briefly with you and highlight some information today about two concepts that meaningfully go hand-in-hand at Auburn University. And it’s really important for us to look at this because not everybody really has a background of understanding from a university or institutional perspective what engagement actually looks like, what it means. So before I get started I want to ask, how many of you in your career or in any point in you administration work have ever actually done any outreach? If you would raise your hands, Wow, see, so I’m talking to friends, I love it. We need to encourage our other faculty who are out there and not at this meeting to be able to raise their hands as well. How many of you that had raised your hands have also been able to produce scholarship, or publications, or enhance your research agenda as a result of engaging in that outreach activity? Okay, comparably the same amount of hands. Okay, so essentially you have some idea of not just the importance, but even the interest.
Today I am really here to talk and just highlight some information about why it’s important. If we are to understand all of the different work functions of faculty work, particularly here at Auburn University, teaching, research, outreach, and service, but to understand engagement. We really have to go back to some scholarship. We know of course that outreach is a central part of our land-grant mission here at Auburn University and in addition it provides public accountability for investments made in higher education and it substantiates the relevancy of higher education to the rest of society. So when we talk about understanding outreach we should note that the original impetus for outreach scholarship is really the scholarship of engagement. This is especially related to through the faculty roles that we have up here and it’s especially important to a person by the name of Ernest Boyer. His work that really began in the early 1990s has expanded the definition of scholarship, beyond research imperatives into 4 categories of scholarship. This included discovery, integration, application, and teaching, but the fifth function or the fifth category is called engagement.[27:59] So as a result of his work, he really called for the harnessing of institutional resources to assess the issues and opportunities facing community.
Faculty here at Auburn University have really benefited from a successful definition of outreach and engagement. And it’s what faculty do every day as you all of course have indicated. And liken unto Boyer’s model, here at Auburn, faculty utilize those functions integratively to do some great work, particularly in the area of outreach. At Auburn University we have been very progressive with regard to identifying and defining, particularly adopting n outreach model, particularly indentifying criteria for the tenure and promotion process. These criteria serve as objectives for faculty to accomplish what they want in regards to outreach activity if they elect to have an outreach allocation of time in addition to research and service, and of course engage in the production of outreach scholarship. [29:21]
We have as part of the outreach Web site particularly identified on the faculty engagement page, that definition of outreach that’s articulated as part of the Faculty Handbook. We also list certainly particular excerpts, so if you want to refer to what Auburn University says in terms of criteria for faculty to conduct outreach these are the criteria that you should look for. Now Auburn University, if you didn’t know, really does aspire to be a national model for outreach and engagement activity. Our practice really is articulated in the form of our membership and member institutions, organizations like the Engagement Scholarship Consortium and the Council of the Outreach and Engagement Group that falls under the Association of Public Land-grant Universities. One of the reasons why faculty are so important to this whole process, is because if we did not have engaged faculty such as yourselves to do this work we would not have persons like Gordon Stone reporting on the impact, particularly economic, certainly the investment that’s made in people to be able to go to and pursue education and advance themselves through their careers, but it’s really the faculty that do the work. So it’s appropriate for of course and individual like Mr. Stone to congratulate faculty because we wouldn’t have what we have and increasingly doing the work that we do if we didn’t have engaged faculty. [31:00]
However, it’s important for us to define that. And it’s particularly of note because 80 percent of the outreach that’s done at Auburn University is done by faculty, and so those engaged scholars that participate in these activities as part of our 1200 plus faculty really have embraced the concept that outreach really is something that’s important not just to themselves but for the future of the advancement of this institution as well as our state and abroad. We also have noted here the importance of outreach and engaged faculty doing that work because it’s another way for faculty to advance their own research agendas. We know that faculty publish, okay and I ascribe to the notion of publish and flourish as opposed to publish and perish, but for even our junior faculty members who are interested in tying there teaching and having their research inform their teaching and outreach and community partnerships inform the work that they do whole-isticly, we know that there are in addition to their own disciplinary areas of publication that they are also ways of publishing and increasing your scholarship through credible interdisciplinary publications that are devoted to outreach and engagement activities. [32:35]
So certainly outreach scholarship is important but particularly to the faculty as a way to gain recognition for the work that you’ve done because we know that we have to document particularly those wonderful outcomes or outcome data that talk about the impact and the ways in which we’ve changed lives through the work that we’ve done, but it’s also important to know that the critical part of the university achieving, particularly our Strategic Priority #4, which is enhancing public service, that faculty have to do that scholarly work and produce that scholarly work in order to not only help the community but help the university advance as well. Our priority commitment C talks about increasing recognition for outreach and extension scholarship in Auburn’s tenure and promotion process increasing the academic culture. The way the faculty are able to do that is through outreach scholarship.
Also known as engaged-scholarship, outreach scholarship is defined as of course the dissemination for or written residue form, excuse me, application of expertise and partnership through outreach and engaged activities. In addition Auburn University has identified some very wonderful particular ways of looking at outreach and engagement. These were actually framed through our SACS reaffirmation process. The Committee developed 3 foci areas that really centralize our focus and what we know about outreach and where it’s really carried out, particularly through Life Long Learning, Expert Assistance, and Engagement. At Auburn University what that looks like is collaboration between institutions of Higher Education and their communities albeit local, regional, state, national, and global, for the mutual exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity. It includes formal, institutional partnership exchanges, open public service programs, resources, as well as curricular engagement for faculty, students, and community principles to deepen learning, enhance civic being and enrich scholarship via service learning, practica, and community based research and internships.
It’s really important for us to note that at Auburn University engagement takes place in many different forms. [35:27] The one that’s most paramount for faculty though however is certainly that scholarship piece. So it’s important for us to note from a faculty engagement standpoint, institutionally, it is our institution’s goal and thrust to be able to facilitate pathways to supply resources to help faculty actually use that function of applying their academic expertise to the direct benefit of community in support of the university and unit missions. That’s how these things occur.
My office is simply charged with doing that campus wide. Basically what that looks like is promoting through a number of initiatives, a number of groups and activities the outreach scholarly productivity of faculty, the documentation of that information, as well as conducting outcomes based assessments that we can measure where we are impacting those lives of individuals. My office is also responsible for advocating promotion of further alignment between university policy in practice with regard to recognition of faculty when they conduct outreach and then certainly develop or produce outreach scholarship.
I also spend a lot of my time assisting faculty with some of the challenges associated with the P&T process. In regards specifically how to best establish and substantiate that documentation and present it in a way that communicates to P&T committees, to senior faculty, to department heads, to deans that the outcome based information is valid enough for them to continue that outreach and engaged work. That’s on of the reasons why the scholarly piece is so important. Certainly these are a list of some of the activities that I’m involved in and one of the ones that I’d like to highlight for you today before I take my seat is the Outreach Scholarship Symposium.
One of the ways that we advocate as an office is to help showcase the outreach work and the scholarship of faculty here at Auburn University. Liken unto the Research Week that we have coming up this spring is the Outreach Scholarship Symposium. The objectives of the symposium are simply to showcase the outreach programs and initiatives undertaken by Auburn University faculty, graduate students and university partners to articulate the ways the programs and initiatives have been transformed into outreach or engaged scholarship as well as best practice guidelines for developing engaged scholarship and funding pathways to be able to help sustain this work.
We also want to make sure that we establish a collaborative or maintain a collaborative environment wherein faculty, graduate students, and community partners can optimize existing or realize new initiatives with consideration of integrating and evaluating and establishing research structures so that we can increase the potential generation for even more impact in the community.
We also want to make sure that the work that we do is attractive to funding agencies for future funding. So the Symposium all-in-all facilitates the development of successful promotion and tenure portfolios for faculty. This can be done certainly integratively as Boyer talks about through the function of integrating teaching, research, outreach, and service. So for those individuals who have an allocation of time of outreach, they can engage outreach activities and can be successful through the production of scholarship with regard to their outreach activity.
I want to strongly encourage each of you to put on you calendars to attend the Outreach Scholarship Symposium. That’s going to take place next month on the 10th and 11th right here in the Auburn University Student Center. Registration is open and we are still accepting proposals. So everyone who raised their hand, perhaps you have on ongoing outreach project that you are doing, or even have produced outreach scholarships that we could actually benefit from in terms of hearing at the Symposium; please go online and contribute via our Web site a submission for either a poster presentation or a symposia presentations for the symposium. We also want to let you know that registration for this event is open and free. Anyone can register to attend, but we do want to make sure that we have proper numbers for our seating, so we are going to cap the registration off at January 31.
In conclusion, we really strongly believe in faculty and certainly the success of faculty who do outreach work and produce outreach scholarships from it and believe certainly in Auburn and certainly with all the great work we are doing as faculty and as an institution it is important for us to note that we can continue and we can also improve the ways in which we are doing the work that we do. And actually recruit and garner the enthusiasm of other faculty members who maybe are not on the outreach bandwagon with regard to doing this work, to see value in it. As a matter of fact we have a number of outreach champions around campus. Those individuals who have been named award recipients for the faculty award of excellence in outreach as well as those individuals who have been recipients of the Competitive Outreach Scholarship Grants.
So I encourage you to visit our Web site. My contact information is there. We have information about the symposium, the call for proposals for the Competitive Outreach Scholarship Grants. When you see it this fall I encourage you to look at it and encourage your faculty if your department head or dean to actually apply. If you have questions, certainly for me, I can certainly respond to some now, but feel free to contact me by phone, e-mail. I don’t think I am on Facebook or Skpe through our office, but certainly University Outreach is looking at that as a way of communicating with our constituent’s groups.
Lastly I would like to say that I’d be glad to respond to any questions that you might have. [42:47] Thank you and War Eagle.
Larry Crowley, chair: Our third and last information item is Joan Hicken, who is the coordinator of our Recycle Program and she previewed her presentation on Thursday and definitely has increased the visibility of the blue bucket in my office and I am steadily filling it up with the things that she suggested I needed to throw away, so I turn it over to her. [43:40]
Joan Hicken, Deparment Coordinator for Waste Reduction and Recycling: Good afternoon everyone. I am so excited because I have a laser pointer. Thank you Dr. Crowley and thank you members of the University Senate for allowing me this opportunity to provide you with what I think is important information about the University’s Recycling Program. My name is Joan Hicken and I am a new coordinator with the Waste Reduction and Recycling Department. Let me take a moment to acknowledge my manager, Mr. Donny Addison, who has been with the university for about 8 years. We are responsible for all the solid waste collection and disposal at the university and of course that includes the recycling.
So anyway, we offer a variety of programs, but I have highlighted 4 here for purposes of this discussion. We have the Campus Building Recycling Program, which is what Dr. Crowley was referring to that you will see in your offices and around campus. We also so all the game day recycling which if you’ve attended a football game you might have noticed some of our recycling volunteers handing out bags and we collect the recyclables on game day. Those numbers have skyrocketed this season for some reason. We also do all of the resident’s hall recycling, so if you have a student who perhaps lives in a residence hall, they can be exposed to recycling there, and we also do the dining hall recycling. [45:20]
Again as I said those are just some of the programs that we do. But for purposes of this presentation I want to highlight the Campus Building Recycling Program, which I think affects everyone in here. So this is a simple flow chart of our material flow for recycling which starts with the campus community and that is you of course, faculty, but it also includes students, staff, and all our visitors. The custodians collect the recyclables from your offices, then our department collects it from outside the buildings and then finally it ends up at a recycling facility.
So we basically recycle in your offices three types of materials, or we have three categories. That would be mixed paper, containers, and cardboard. As Dr. Crowley was saying, hopefully you’ll find out there is a lot more material that can be recycled that you were even aware of. You may have seen your blue buckets or bins, if not then you may contact us and we will deliver you one. Typically in an office you will have a small trashcan and you will have a recycling container for mixed paper. Don’t throw other things in there. You can throw in your mixed paper. As you can see on the decal it enumerates all the item you can throw in there, that would be mostly your copy paper, computer paper, any kind of paper that is going to be in an office environment. Newspaper, sticky notes, envelopes (windows are okay), staples are okay, a paper clip or two is okay. If you ever have questions you may always call us, e-mail us, no problem.
A couple of the things I wanted to state that we don’t take that are common that you might think that we do are no paper cups, no paper plates, no tissues or paper toweling. Yes those are typically paper items, but they are not recycled in our recycling program. Again, all this information can be found on your recycling bin.
As I said we also take containers. When we say containers we are talking about your plastic containers, your aluminum cans and your steel cans. Now plastics, we take the 1’s and 2’s. Is everyone familiar with the one and 2 plastics? So typically on a container there will be a little recycling symbol and a number in there if it has a 1 or 2 on it it’s good to go. You can put it in one of our plastic, aluminum and steel recycling bins. If you see a different number in there we do not currently accept those items. The ones and the two make up about 85% of you typical plastics so, you should be good to go. Water bottles sports bottles, soda bottles, juice bottles, milk and water jugs, those would all be ones and twos plastics, detergent containers as well, but probably nobody is doing laundry in your office environment. We encourage you to do your laundry.
So caps and labels are okay, much like windows in envelopes are okay. We do ask that the items are empty and you might want to give a food container a light rinse before you put it in the bin.
These are some of the common area bins that you will see. This is what we call our trio, you might see a duo, you might see a single, you might see the rare quadruple, but typically this is what we have. This is for your containers, this is for your paper, and this is for your trash. Anything that goes into this container is going to end up in our landfills. These are some of our cabinet bins that you might see in high traffic areas like the Lowder Building or Haley Center.
Our third category as I mentioned was cardboard and there’s a couple of different ways that you can handle the cardboard. If you have a box or two in your office typically the size of a copy paper box or smaller, you empty it you break it down and leave it by a recycling bin for custodial collection. If for some reason you get a large shipment of something in cardboard, we are going to ask that the department recycle it and break it down and take it to one of our cardboard dumpsters. We have about 75 of these located across campus, typically at the outside of your building.
As I stated in our flow chart we partner with many different departments on campus, so we do all the education and promotion for recycling and the custodial folks service it. They will collect it from your offices and all of these common areas. As you can see there is a happy custodian collecting the recycling. And they take it to the outsides of the building. I am sure you have all seen these beautiful waste stations located across campus.
I did want to take a moment here and talk about the collection of recycling from inside your offices. We provide training and materials to all the personnel. As you know people come and go, there is turnover, etc. So if you ever do see someone collecting recycling and you don’t think that it’s going actually into the recycling stream feel free to give us a call. Sometimes it’s a matter of perception and sometimes it’s a matter of reality and we certainly want to know so we can retrain those folks and get them back on board. But if we don’t know about it we cannot take the steps to correct it. So we do ask that you guys are our eyes and ears and assist us in monitoring the recycling program. For the majority of time everything is going to go fine, but sometimes there is misinformation out there.
As is said, the custodial staff takes it to these sites, and you may also take your material there from on campus if you wish, but the custodial staff will transport it for us. Then we service it from there. We either collect it and haul it ourselves or arrange to have it hauled to a recycling facility. [51:51]
If you think about it you have a piece of paper in your office and then it goes on this journey. It goes on a far journey if you think about it. I have here a typical recycling facility. This is actually our recyclables from the university; you can see that it does all add up. I say recycling facility, but it’s really facilities because we take our material to a variety of places. We aim to go as local as possible, but in some cases we have to expand our sphere depending on our markets. So this is your plastic, aluminum, and steel cans from your lunches, and over here is our paper. This is all plastic, and then this is all fiber from our office-paper recycling program. [52:36]
We do have a lot of online resources. I heard at the beginning that you guys are doing a paperless evaluation system, which is excellent, that’s waste reduction in it’s highest form. We also try not to do too much paper stuff, so online you can get the campus building recycling guide or this little one sheet with nice picture on how you can recycle. It just sort of reviews everything that I’ve been talking about. I can always send them to you as well.
Just one or two other things; I wanted to talk about toner and ink cartridge recycling. So we partner with our Campus Mail Services and if you have a used toner or ink cartridge, you can throw it back in the box, mark it for recycling and put it in campus mail. There is a limit of 3 per day, do not exceed that limit. If you are a high-volume generator, 15 or more per week, we can possibly arrange for you to have a cart at your site and then it would be serviced there, but most folks fall under this umbrella and Campus Mail Services has been generous enough to partner with us. They collect it and bring it to our office and those items are recycled.
And the other program under this umbrella that I wanted to talk about is office cleanouts. Typically at the end of the semester or perhaps when someone is retiring they are going to be cleaning out their offices. If you phone in or do a work order online we will deliver up to 6 of these (large roll cart), these are 95 gallon containers for your office paper. Then you call us for service and you can keep those up to 30 days. There is no charge for this service at this time, so it is a no-cost service to the university community. Please do not clean out your office and dump it in the hallway and then give us a call, trying to avoid that at all costs, not that that ever happens.
We can also address things like scrap metal, we collect binders for reuse, electronics, hard cover books. We do not take hard cover books in our office paper recycling but if you have a load of hard cover books that you need to recycle we can collect those separately. So you can always call our office and ask, you can look online, you can phone in a work order or do a work order online. [55:25]
So, the question came up when we were doing our run through is how are we doing? And I looked into it and we’re not doing so bad. As you can see this is last fiscal year and just for these 3 materials, we recycle other materials on campus, but this is from the office program; orange is mixed paper, blue is cardboard, and green is our plastic containers/aluminum and steel cans. Last fiscal year we did 612 tons of recycled materials just from our office-recycling program. As you can see we are trending upwards, the previous year we had recycled about 137 tons less, so from fiscal year 2012 to 2013 we increased our output by 137 tons. A ton is 2,000 pounds, that’s a lot of pounds. All this material did not go to the landfill. If we had dumped it in the landfill it would have cost the university about $15,000. We also received some revenue from this material, about $40,000. I also want to mention that our department was the recipient of an Alabama Department of Environmental Management Grant this past year of about $85,000. So we look at all of that as added benefit.
This number represents the 612 tons, and that’s good 612 tons is a lot of weight, but that’s only about 13 percent of the material. So that means that 87 percent of these items did end up in the landfill. That’s part of the reason that I am here is to encourage you to use the program because the more material we can divert from the landfill, as I said, we can have added benefit to the university. [57:21]
If I add in all the material that the university recycled our diversion rate was about 27 percent. Again a good number but we would like to get that up to at least 35 percent and then in the future 50 percent and then 70 percent. So we would like to divert from the landfill at least half of the waste that we are currently landfilling.
So I want to thank you for recycling on behalf of our department. If you are participating, thank you, if you can participate more we would appreciate it. And if you are not currently participating because you were not aware of it or didn’t think it was important, I hope that I have showed you in some simple ways that it is truly important. It’s certainly important to me.
Here is our contact information. We are largely electronic but you can always call us. My name is on the presentation, you can look me up, If anyone has any questions I’d be happy to take them. Yes mam?
Emily Meyers, senator, Sociology/Anthropology/Social Work: I applaud your efforts at maintaining a clean environment and was wondering if you could divert some of the shredded materials to the Humane Society or if you already do that because they are in dire need of that. Although, after that stop I don’t think it’s going anywhere to be reused, not sure.
Joan Hicken, Deparment Coordinator for Waste Reduction and Recycling: This is great. We do divert material to the Humane Society, but in general if you have shredded paper in your office and you want it recycled you can just bag it in a clear bag, tie it and place it by a recycling container for collection. [59:21] If you have a larger amount, 5 bags or more, you can phone in a work order and it can be collected. We also have a quarterly shred event, which has a small cost to a department, but it is so much easier for us to just bring the truck in and do that. That’s typically promoted through the AU Daily and then as this lady was saying we do also collect and divert some of the shredding to the Humane Society. We have a trailer in our office, we fill it, and then they come to collect it, so we are diverting some of it to the Humane Society. Sometimes we have more than they can even handle but we certainly do partner with them. So if you are currently doing that, we will be happy to take your shredded paper and it will either be recycled or used as animal bedding. Yes sir.
Rusty Wright, senator, Fisheries: Could you highlight a little bit about the electronic recycling, do you all handle that? And is that through a work order or how do you handle that?
Joan Hicken, Deparment Coordinator for Waste Reduction and Recycling: Okay, we have another university partner called the Surplus Property Department, so basically any property that has been purchased with university funds (such as) a computer for instance would go through Bill Capps at Surplus Property Department. It is a simple form to fill out and then his group will come and collect it. The material is evaluated and if it is useable he can sell it or find other departments on campus to use. If it is not useable it does go through a recycling process, and we partner with him on that. So for the electronics waste, typically you would start with the Surplus Property Department. If you have some minor peripferals, CDs, DVDs, cables, that again is all included in any kind of that e-waste. You can always call us, we might just tell you, “Hey, yes it is Surplus Property, we might be able to handle ourselves.” I also know that when you have hard drives, those need to be wiped and there is a whole process for that as well.
Sometimes this seems like it’s a lot of trouble but we have tried to streamline it and make it as simple as possible. Does that answer your question sir? Thanks. Any other questions? Thank you.
Larry Crowley, chair: Is there any unfinished business? Is there any new business or announcements that need to be made? We’ll be adjourned [1:02:15]