Transcript Senate Meeting
March 20, 2018
Delayed start to the meeting due to the projector malfunction. Meeting started about 15 minutes late.
Daniel Svyantek, Chair: Welcome to the March 20, 2018 meeting of the University Senate. This is our seventh meeting of the 2017-18 academic year. Please bear with me if my voice cracks or gives out. It is allergies affecting me today. It is not catching!
First, we need to establish a quorum. We have 86 Senators in the Senate and we need 44 for a quorum. I was going to ask you to use your clicker to show you are present, but the base isn’t working. [Some confusion with the clicker base—apparently it will work because the computer is working. Just need to start it. So, a lot of chatter about this.] Okay, try clicking.
Let the record show that we have 49 present so a quorum is established. I now call the meeting to order.
I would like to remind you of some basic procedures for the Senate meeting. First, if you are a senator or a substitute for a senator please be sure you sign in onto the sheet at the top of the room. Second, for senators and guests let me explain the Senate rules about speaking. If you’d like to speak about an issue or ask a question, please go to the microphone on either side aisle. When it is your turn, state your name and whether or not you are a senator and the unit you represent.
The rules of the Senate require that senators or substitute senators be allowed to speak first and then after they are done guests are welcome to speak.
The agenda today was set by the Senate Steering Committee and posted on the Web site in advance, it’s not up on the screen. The first order of business is to approve the minutes for the meeting of February 13, 2018. Those minutes have been posted on the Senate Web site. Are there any additions, changes, or corrections to the minutes?
Hearing none, do I have a motion to approve the minutes? Do I have a second? All in favor of approving the minutes please click on A.
Clicker records 49 approved the minutes.
Daniel Svyantek, Chair: Opposed? [no response] The minutes are approved. [4:09] Thank you.
The first item of business is some remarks from the Provost, Bill Hardgrave. Bill, the microphone, as it is, is yours.
Dr. Hardgrave, Auburn University Provost: Thanks Dan. I have a few quick items.
First, I’d like to remind you of the President’s Installation is scheduled for March 29 from 10 to 2. We would certainly love to see you all at the installation. Encourage your students to attend as well. For all of the students this will be a once in a lifetime opportunity to go see the President’s Installation. Please be forgiving for the students who do want to attend.
The second thing I’ll mention is yesterday we recognized the Building Science faculty and staff with the Program Assessment Excellence Award. Assessment is one of those things that we don’t talk a lot about, it seems like it happens in the background, but it certainly is one of those very important things that we need to do to really give us systematic guidance and insight into what’s happening with our programs and it gives us an opportunity to see where we could do better with our programs. So, I applaud this group. It does take faculty and staff commitment and are pleased to recognize them.
Three quick additional items here…I think everybody if you did not see it earlier today, there was an announcement about John Mason’s appointment as the next Chancellor at Penn State Harrisburg. Congratulations to John on that appointment. (applause) He has certainly been a great leader for us for nearly 10 years now and we will hate to see you go, but certainly wish you all the best in that role. You will be around here for several more months until August 1 and we will work through that transition over that time. So, thank you John for your service. [6:25]
Also, Marilyn Laufer from the Museum, will be retiring on June 1 and we will get an interim in place when she retires and will start a National search for her replacement. As you all know we are searching for…we are in the process of naming an interim dean for the Library and hope that will be done by the end of next week since Bonnie is leaving the end of next week. We should get that done pretty quickly. Then we’ll launch a National search for Bonnie’s replacement.
The last thing I will mention is I’d like to add my congratulations to Professor Billor and Professor Wilson on their University Senate elections that were announced at the previous meeting. As I indicated last time I really enjoyed working with our University Senate Executive team and looking forward to working with the new leadership as they come in, in July.
That was just some quick notes from me. Dan, thank you.
Dan Svyantek, Senate Chair: I now have brief remarks for the Senate.
First, I would to introduce the officers of the Senate and our administrative assistant. James Goldstein is the immediate past chair, Michael Baginski is the chair-elect, Donald Mulvaney is the secretary this year, and Beverly Marshall is the secretary-elect. James Witte is our Parliamentarian. However, James is traveling and away today. Don Mulvaney has offered to be our Parliamentarian today. Finally, our administrative assistant is Laura Kloberg, who is clearly working over here.
Second, I have been asked to announce the following by the AU Library. AU Libraries, in collaboration with ITHAKA S+R (a survey company), will be fielding a faculty survey focused on the impact of digital technologies on research, teaching, and scholarly publishing. Your responses will provide valuable guidance for AU Libraries in setting priorities and developing strategies to support the teaching and research needs of faculty members. The data from the ITHAKA S+R survey will be meaningful only if we have broad participation. Faculty will be receiving an email from Dean Bonnie MacEwan with more information and a link to the survey. The scheduled rollout of the survey is tomorrow—Wed March 21.
Finally, I’d like to reiterate Bill’s comments, Dr. Steven Leath will be formally installed as Auburn University’s nineteenth president on Thursday, March 29 at 10 a.m. in Auburn Arena. The ceremony will include the conferring of the articles of office and Dr. Leath’s inaugural address. If you are unable to attend the installation in person, you may watch by livestream at www.auburn.edu/auburninspires.
Are there any questions?
We have two pending action items on the agenda today.
The first is a resolution from the Faculty Research Committee. This resolution is intended to support Dr. Leath’s call to increase the scholarly activity of Auburn University. Bob Ashurst is the Chair of the Faculty Research Committee and will present this resolution to the Senate. Mike Fogle will help in this presentation. [10:03]
Mike Fogle, Faculty Research Committee COSAM representative: Hi, I am the COSAM rep on the Faculty Research Committee I am also the Senator for Physics.
We want to talk about a proposed resolution for the establishment of a new scholarship incentive program.
A little bit of background: So, a strategic research and planning retreat was held by the ADRs back in April of 2016 and one of the items on this report was that there be a development of a scholarship incentive program. If you remember last year we took up a change to P&T in the Handbook and that also came out of this ADR Report and that recommendation also came before the FRC.
So, if you recall we had a previous SIT program (Scholarship Incentive Program). But this program was only a salary savings program. And there were some issues with this, it wasn’t very compatible with people who primarily got funded from NSF, for instance, which only allows you 2 months of salary. It only had about 40 faculty participate in the program, there were some issue with execution and implementation, how to do credit for multiple persons and co-I’s and PI’s, especially if they were interdisciplinary. There were some negative perceptions by faculty and even by some of the administration at the department and college levels and it really was not very well measured that it had any meaningful impact to the research enterprise. So that program was terminated.
In January of last year when we took up this action item we started to gather information. One of the first things we wanted to do was go out to the Research faculty and see what their perspectives were in terms of barriers or challenges to their research. What was inhibiting them from growing the research enterprise? Or even going after extramurally funded programs at all?
So, we conducted a survey. About 324 faculty members from diverse set of units all across campus responded and there were 4 primary barriers that we identified. [13:08] 1) which is not much of a shock is lack of time, 2) was lack of recognition and incentives, 3)lack of opportunities in different fields of study, and 4) university structural issues.
We took this finding, we had a lot of discussions within the FRC about what types of scholarship, what types of funding, what types of incentives might work. and it became very clear that it’s diverse. It’s hard to say that one thing works for scholarship incentive across the entire university. So, we draft this resolution. Since it may be a small font I will read it to you.
Whereas, the Associate Deans for Research, in a report stemming from a Strategic Planning Retreat (conducted April 26-27, 2016), recommended as an action item that a policy be undertaken to provide incentives directly to the scholarship generating faculty member without complicated criteria; and
Whereas, Dr. Steven Leath, Auburn University President, has expressed a goal of making Auburn University a recognized institution of world-class scholarship and research; and
Whereas, the Faculty Research Committee recommends that means of rewarding and recognizing scholarly activity done in all departments of the university be created; and
Whereas, the specific mechanisms for incentives of scholarship may be College/School or even Department specific; and
Whereas, the forms of scholarship that merit reward and recognition are widely varied; and
Whereas, some amount of unit level of administration oversight for any development of reward and recognition is needed; and
Whereas, responsibility to develop metric(s) by which the effectiveness of such a scholarship incentive program can be evaluated and modified at the unit level are needed;
Be it resolved, that the Provost’s office is hereby charged to work with the academic units to develop appropriate scholarship incentive program(s) that are inclusive to all meritorious forms of scholarship, not administratively over burdensome, and serve to promote the growth of the research enterprise at Auburn University.
[15:22]
So, with that we will take any questions that you guys might have.
Daniel Svyantek, Chair: Thank you very much for that presentation, Bob and Mike. As I noted earlier, this item will be voted on at the April 17 meeting of the Senate.
Mike Fogle, FRC COSAM representative: Oh, he has a question.
James Goldstein, IPC: It just occurred to me that the resolution doesn’t have any timeframe on it. I was wondering if it mught be helpful…
Mike Fogle, FRC COSAM representative: What do you mean? By timeframe to implement?
James Goldstein, IPC: If the charge were to develop the incentives, is it going to take 5 years to complete that development?
Mike Fogle, FRC COSAM representative: Of course, sooner is better than later, right? We want to give the Provost some latitude to work with the units.
James Goldstein, IPC: (something else not quite heard because the microphones are not working properly.)
Mike Fogle, FRC COSAM representative: I think it’s clear this is something we wanted to get in place as soon as the other one was terminated, but we wanted to do due diligence and to show explicitly that you can’t just have a one mechanism (this is it, and that’s it consideration). We think it’s important that it be bottom up in development. Certainly, there is an emphasis on getting this done in a timely fashion. It shouldn’t be something that drags out. We just didn’t want to explicitly say the time.
Daniel Svyantek, Chair: Thank you, Bob and Mike again. The actual date of the vote will be April 17 at the Senate.
Our second pending action item is a call for nominations for Rules Committee members. These items will be discussed today. Voting on them will be scheduled for the April 17 meeting of the University Senate. Don Mulvaney will present this call.
Before, I give the podium to Don I would like to note that typically this is done in February. We are a month late— I would like to apologize for this error. I promise you it may have been a dumb thing to do, but it was not malicious.
I did some archive work and found out that this is not the first time this has occurred and we are not the latest to do this either. In addition, I noticed while doing this that two of the individuals nominated for Rules when this occurred, two of the nominees went on to become Chairs of the University Senate. I can only hope that this year’s nominees to Rules are as interested in the Senate as those individuals were.
With that, I will let Don have the podium.
Don Mulvaney, Secretary: (Call for Rules Committee nominees) I will open it to the floor for nominations. This is a 2-year commitment to the Rules Committee. A bit of background; Rules Committee is involved in assigning or populating the various committees for the University and the Senate. So it serves a very important role.
I open the floor for nominations. [18:48]
Mike Baginski, chair-elect: Jitendra Tugnait from Electrical and Computer Engineering. I believe he is here.
James Goldstein, IPC: Tracy Witte from Psychology
Jung Won Hur, Senator, EFLT: Michelle Worosz from Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology
Don Mulvaney, Secretary: Are there other nominations? Is there a motion to close the nominations? So moved. Is there a second? All those in favor say aye.
Group: Aye
Don Mulvaney, Secretary: Opposed same sign. The motion carries. Thank you.
Daniel Svyantek, Chair: Each of the nominee’s biographical statements will be available on the Senate Web site as soon as we can get them up.
Finally, we also have an information item presented by Beverly Marshall. Beverly is Auburn’s Faculty Athletic Representative and represents Auburn University at the NCAA. She will be presenting a report from the Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics. [20:19]
Beverly Marshall, FAR on Intercollegiate Athletics: I am Beverly Marshall, I am in the Finance Department and I became the Faculty Athletics Representative effective January 1 of this year. So, this is my first report as the Faculty Athletics Representative.
We are going to talk today about the success of our student athletes here at Auburn University, so I want to give you some background on some of the measures that we use.
One is the Federal Graduation Rate. This is the only measure that we have for both student athletes at Auburn and all students at Auburn. It is a measure of all the students, the percentage of students that complete their degree within 6 years. So, if they were admitted in 2010, how many students were admitted in 2010 the percentage of those that actually complete their degree within 6 years, it does not adjust for transfers. So, all transfers out if they started here at Auburn in 2010 and transferred out, it is like an academic failure. That is the Federal Graduation rate.
The NCAA came out with a different measure, the Graduation Success Rate which is used by Division I schools to account for transfers in and out. So, it is an adjustment from what the Federal Graduation Rate (FGR) does. If a student transfers out of Auburn and is in good academic standing when they transfer out it does not go against the Graduation Success Rate (GSR). [22:02] But we do not have a Graduation Success Rate for the entire Auburn University population, so we have not comparability.
So, we have the Federal Graduation for all students and that gives you a background. Again, when you see the year 2010–2011 then this is the cohort year when students started and would have had 6 years to graduate in, so that is the last year that somebody entering in 2010 would have graduated within 6 years. The FGR here at Auburn, 75% of our students that entered in the 2010–2011 received their degree within 6 years (that’s all students here at Auburn). Among student athletes entering in 2010, 69% of those students completed their degree within 6 years (again not adjusting for transfers). When you adjust for transfers the GSR, 91% of our female athletes graduate within 6 years. When you adjust for transfers, 74% of our male student athletes graduate in 6 years. Overall 82% of those students (athletes) entering in 2010 graduated within 6 years adjusting for transfers.
The sports that perhaps have the lowest GSR here at Auburn are baseball, basketball, and football. You will notice that there is an improving trend in 2008–2009 students that entered in baseball only had a 51% GSR, whereas 2010–2011 entrees had a 69% GSR, so that is significant. Basketball has been fairly flat, and football has increased a little bit to around 70%. Those are our lowest 3 scores in GSR. Basketball again, has sort of a one and done, baseball, 3 and out kind of deal which does factor into to those sports particularly. If you take those out of the picture and look at men’s cross country and others we have fairly good GSRs.
So, it is always good to compare ourselves against the rest of the conference. The SEC GSR student athletes starting in 2010–2011, you will see Auburn on the far left at 82%. That would put us ranking 12 in the SEC. The National average is 87%. We have improved as the first slide shows, but we’re still…University of Alabama has a GSR of 90%, South Carolina 93%, LSU 90%, Tennessee 85%, I could go on. We are above Arkansas and Texas A&M. [25:29]
Again, giving you that measure. One of the problems with that is the 6 year graduation rates, so we have quite a bit of time, so how are we doing more recently? There’s another measure that we look at and Athletics the NCAA came out with something called the APR which is the Academic Progress Rate. It is a team-based metric, so it works well incentivizing coaches to make sure that their athletes are progressing academically. It accounts for retention and eligibility of each student athlete on a team. Did you understand that there is a point for eligibility and in order to get an eligibility point the student has to meet progress toward their degree as outlined by the NCAA. The NCAA basically takes a 5-year graduation rate and says you have to be this percentage along by the end of your first year, this percentage along by your second year, and you have to have made progress if you have a minimum GPA requirement which we do here at Auburn toward that minimum degree requirement as well to be eligible. So, that is an eligibility point. A retention point, if they are full-time enrolled at Auburn University in that semester.
So, you have your eligibility point, your retention point over your possible eligibility points and your retention points, times 1000. That is pretty hard to get so here is an example:
We have Peter, Greg, and Bobby. Those of you that might remember the Brady Bunch (laughter). In fall ’09 we have 3 students, 2 of them are academically eligible, but Bobby is not. In fall ’09 we have one eligibility point for Peter, and one for Greg, and none for Bobby. They stay fall ’09 so we get a retention point for Peter, Greg, and Bobby. In spring 2010, all 3 are eligible and get eligibility points for all of them, but in spring 2010 Peter leaves and we don’t get a retention point for Peter, but get retention points because Greg and Bobby stayed. Bascially this would result in 3 eligibility and retention points for Peter out of a 4 possible, 4 eligibility and retention points for Greg out of 4 possible, and 3 eligibility and retention points for Bobby our of 4 possible. As a team, hypothetically, that would give them an APR of 833. 930 is the magic number. Teams must earn a 4-year APR of 930 to be in championships. Basically, how they came up with a 930 is that equates to about a 50% graduation rate. So, that’s the minimum bar.
Statistically it should correlate to a GSR because of again the fact that for eligibility they have to be making progress toward graduation. While we don’t have numbers more recent at Auburn than the 2010–2011 cohort we can use APR to give us some idea.
Again, remember that our GSR for the 2010–2011 cohort is at 82% versus the national average of 87%. When we look at our national average APR our baseball is below the national average and men’s track is below the national average, but most of our other sports are above the national average in APR and all of those are well above the 930. You can see across that we had a significant increase in basketball. We were below the national average in 2014–15, we have also been very flat in baseball. Then the other sports, football is pretty stable, it has improved since 2012–13. Hopefully our Graduation Success Rate will show an improvement in the coming years.
For women’s sports, it is a wonderful story, our women athletes are doing very well national average. We had 4 teams that had perfect APRs, that means all the students were eligible over that 4-year period, all of them were retained in cross-country, golf, gymnastics, and tennis. Quite a success story among our women athletes and you can see a lot of those came in the 990s. Again, 1000 is the highest APR you can have.
In terms of student athlete’s GPAs, the average team GPA is taking all of the teams average GPA. In fall of ’17 it was 3.15 so it has been pretty stable. The average cumulative GPA is 3.2 in fall 2017. The individual student average GPA is 3.05 (that’s among all student athletes), their cumulative GPA is 3.13. The total number of students with a 3.0 GPA is 58%, 281 student athletes had a 3.0 or above. The top team in fall 2017 was volleyball with a 3.62 GPA. The top cumulative GPA was a tie, volleyball, again, and men’s tennis with a 3.56.
Some our leaders in GPA categories since 2015, soccer, men’s tennis, men’s cross-country, women’s cross-country, women’s tennis, women’s volleyball.
When we look at student enrollment across colleges and schools. This is a breakdown of where they were in 2015, which is the last time we had a report to the Sentate. Here’s where they are in student enrollment in 2017. We have 28% of our student athletes in business, 19% in Liberal Arts, 16% in Education, 10% in Science and Math, 8% in University College, 9% in Engineering.
I’d like to end on a high note. There are many scholarships available across the SEC and NCAA in postgraduate scholarships. It is one of the wonderful jobs of the FAR to actually provide endorsement for these student athletes. Some of our winners you can see here. Most recently, Wesley Curles, cross-country, received a scholarship for fall from NCAA, these are post-graduate scholarships. This allows these student athletes to go on an pursue dreams to go to medical school, where Wesley is planning to go.
We also had Kasey Cooper, who was Rhodes Scholar finalist. She was NCAA top ten award and she also received NCAA post graduate scholarship as well as Joe Patching in 2017.
Are there questions, comments?
Mike Stern, Economics: Okay Beverly, welcome to the FAR position. Do you mind if I ask you a difficult question?
Beverly Marshall, FAR on Intercollegiate Athletics: Yes, sure. [35:20]
Mike Stern, Economics: I’m trying to be fair because I used to ask Mary difficult questions. Could you go back to your slides where you show GSR and APR?
Beverly Marshall, FAR on Intercollegiate Athletics: I don’t think that they are on the same slide.
Mike Stern, Economics: This is the one. I noticed you broke the statistics out by male and female
Beverly Marshall, FAR on Intercollegiate Athletics: Correct
Mike Stern, Economics: But you didn’t do so by race. Is there a reason for that?
Beverly Marshall, FAR on Intercollegiate Athletics: I don’t think we keep it by race. It’s not maintained at the NCAA by race as far as I know. I have not seen any information on that. [36:05]
Mike Stern, Economics: Previously, Mary showed us some information about the graduation rate in African American football versus the Caucasian football players. I know Mary had shown in one of her presentations those statistics.
Beverly Marshall, FAR on Intercollegiate Athletics: Okay, I don’t have that.
Mike Stern, Economics: If you could go to your next to the last slide…This is analogous to information that Mary Boudreaux had in her February 2014 presented as evidence or lack of, distribution I suppose [36:52] of course aggregated across all races in gender. Now all this information is specifically available on race and gender, so I am wondering why we have aggregated all student athletes together in this distribution?
Beverly Marshall, FAR on Intercollegiate Athletics: As opposed to by team?
Mike Stern, Economics: No, by race and gender. [37:20] So, on OIRA when we report majors, I go to the Web site I can look up my program and any other program, I can look up colleges and they report by gender and ethnicity distribution across all majors in all colleges at the institution.
As I pointed out in spring 2014 when Mary put up this same type of graph, that is was highly unrepresentative of the issues that it was supposedly meant to address. That is clustering and distribution by majors is principally an issue associated with males in revenue sports.
Beverly Marshall, FAR on Intercollegiate Athletics: I do have information as to sports by colleges, so that would give you the gender, but I do not have the ethnicity of those majors. [38:23]
Mike Stern, Economics: I know I could challenge her in 2014–2015 when she came to show a better distribution, including by program (?-not understood) aggregated by colleges. So let me show the problem, if you would, could I use the overhead to put up the slides?
Beverly Marshall, FAR on Intercollegiate Athletics: Sure. [38:43]
Mike Stern, Economics: This is a slide that Mary Boudreaux showed to this body in the spring of 2014, which is the same information not in a pie chart, that showed distribution by colleges. [to see the data Mike references, overhead link here] You’ll see the 2 biggest courses in Business and Liberal Arts at that, although Liberal Arts time was much more massive back then at 32%. Well, shortly thereafter, John Urshall of the Baltimore Ravens, who could apparently calculate things that our own FAR couldn’t put a pie chart of what the distribution of the upper classmen football team was. And you’ll see a distribution of the football team for that period that looks nothing like the distribution that she put up.
I am telling you that such distributions where I purposely aggregate across males and females and no one is concerned about the distributions and majors of the female athletes. And it’s particularly the revenue sports, in particular football and basketball where this occurs. So not showing that distribution or tracking that distribution over time over aggregating it I would argue is done to deceit. In fact the FAR in spring 2014 specifically said we had no problem with clustering, based on the distribution where you’ve brought them all together by gender. Of course, you can also pick it up very quickly the trends of racial distributions as well because at places like Auburn the revenue sports are heavily African American male. [40:42]
So most studies on clustering typically find disproportionately affect African Americans, okay, which is also another reason why they don’t tend to come and present the racial statistics in regards to this item. [41:00]
Beverly Marshall, FAR on Intercollegiate Athletics: We do have all of the detail of all of the majors by team. So, we can certainly do that and have that for the next meeting if you want, but I don’t have it by ethnicity, I’m not sure and will have to find out how (?).
Mike Stern, Economics: Let me suggest…it’s very important, I know you are new to the FAR and looking to maintain the integrity of the education that our athletes are receiving and this January, Dr Pitori Jackson, who is a sports historian at Arizona State University did an op ed in The LA Times but I think is interesting revealing as she studied this specifically. I’ll just read you briefly the conclusion to hopefully illustrate the importance. She says: “This college sports system contributes the undervaluing of black lives in American society and in our institutions. The predominately white privilege of playing college sports while earning a quality degree comes to the expense of, is literally paid for by, the educationally unequal experiences of mostly black football and basketball players. Let’s call this system what it is, twenty-first century Jim Crow.” [42:34]
Again, people that study this, looking at things like gender and race I think are extremely important in regards to whether our student athletes are all receiving a quality education
Beverly Marshall, FAR on Intercollegiate Athletics: Okay.
Daniel Svyantek, Chair: Are there any other questions?
Beverly Marshall, FAR on Intercollegiate Athletics: So, what you would like to see, Michael, is that (the distribution) broken out by ethnicity?
Mike Stern, Economics: That doesn’t work. I would like to ensure that our FAR going forward, and I know you just started, I had issues with Mary on this, is ensuring that all of our student athletes are receiving quality education. So when we study this we have to look specifically at those who have traditionally been denied of the education and that it not the female athletes. So, there is no need to be aggregating them or anything like that, and as many people have pointed out in studies, African American athletes in the revenue sports are having serious problems. So when we look, and even this, it doesn’t show those that are graduating, what courses they’re taking, what programs, okay, so we know all about this at universities and it’s in all the scandals, so we are going to pretend that we care about the education of these athletes, let’s study specifically those that are disadvantaged historically in regard to this issue.
Beverly Marshall, FAR on Intercollegiate Athletics: Okay. Thank you.
Daniel Svyantek, Chair: Other questions? Thank you very much Beverly.
This concludes our formal agenda for today.
Is there any unfinished business? Hearing none, is there any new business?
Mike Baginski, Chair-elect: I just want to make sure that everyone is aware of the parking app that’s available. How many are interested in the parking app that will show you where the spaces are available? If you’re not, then you don’t come here [kidding, laughter]. People ask me about it, it’s WarEagleParking and it does work and is supposed to work at night, at least that’s what I’ve been told.
Daniel Svyantek, Chair: Thank you Mike. Is there any other new business? Hearing none, I now adjourn the meeting. [45:20]