Transcript Senate Meeting
April 17, 2018
(Partial transcript, COACHe Survey and comments not yet transcribed.)


Daniel Svyantek, Chair: I really don’t know what to do, all of the audio visuals are working today, we don’t have any issues with that. [This is a joke, referring to the previous few meetings that all had trouble with the equipment.]

Welcome to the April 17, 2018 meeting of the University Senate. This is our eighth meeting of the 2017-18 academic year.

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. Be sure you have your clicker, because we have three action items today. Second, we need to establish a quorum. We have 86 Senators in the Senate and we need 44 for a quorum. Please press A on your clicker to show you are present.
Let the record show that we have 45 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 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 now up on the screen. The first order of business is to approve the minutes for the meeting of March 20, 2018.  Those minutes have been posted on the 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 say aye please.

Group: Aye.

Daniel Svyantek, Chair:
Opposed?  (No response)

The minutes are approved. Thank you.

The first item of business is some remarks from the President, Steven Leath.  Steve, the microphone is yours. [2:48]

Dr. Leath, Auburn University President: Good afternoon folks. I am going to be relatively brief, but if there are some questions, I am glad to answer them or try to answer them.

A couple of things that I want to address. First, we have a Board of Trustees meeting this week, the last one of the semester. I will give you an idea of a couple of items in front of the Board that are particularly relevant. One of the highlights will be in a workshop and there are no actual decisions in the workshop this is informational to get Board members up to speed, but we are going to look at the future of the Auburn Research Park, the role it should play, and how we move forward with that. In terms of economic development, job creation, I think you are familiar with that. I’d like the Park to also be a great tool for recruitment and retention of faculty with great opportunities for entrepreneurships, startups, these types of things. [3:40] It also should be a great source of internships close by for our students and we need definitely do a better job in that area. We are going to try to give the Board an idea of where we see the Park going and how it aligns with University priorities.

Much of the Board meeting itself on Friday is going to be focused on property and facilities. The Provost has a few informational items on graduate certificates, academic program changes. No actual Board votes on those. They also want an update on the initiative to hire 500 faculty by 2022. And a couple of things I want to tell them that I think should be clear to you folks too is, one this isn’t 500 net faculty, but never the less it’s going to obviously change the face of Auburn because that is 40 some percent of our current faculty numbers. So, we’ll end up with maybe a 10% increase in total faculty, but the turnover rate will be huge. There will be a tremendous burden on everybody from the Provost to the Deans to the faculty scheduling interviews. There’s a lot of details to work out around this in terms of startups, space–these things–working through the numbers and complexities on that right now. I have a few more comments on that in a moment, but there is some logic to leaving that right now.

That’s because I want to talk a little bit about the strategic plan. Dr. Beth Guertal and Bruce Tatarchuk, from Ag and Engineering respectively, are going to do a faculty led strategic plan. I’ve asked them to move with some urgency and some haste but to be through, make sure they get input from a broad range of faculty, administrators, staff as they figure out where we need to go. But as they are figuring out key strategic areas and priorities for the university, a lot of these things are not just about where the faculty should go in this big hiring initiative, that is a huge part of the plan, but also what are the other requirements to make our existing faculty and new faculty successful in terms of equipment, facilities, all these other things. And what we need operationally to recruit and make these people successful.

So, once we get that in input if we go back and revisit these 500 hires, where are they going to go and that’s one question people ask me. The rumor I’m hearing, which is always interesting when you are in my spot and you are hearing the rumors of what you’ve decided, but anyway, what I’ve decided apparently was to put all these people in Agriculture and STEM fields. And that’s not true.

There will be a lot of hires in Agriculture and STEM, but there is going to be no discipline that’s left untouched. We’ll slice this a number of ways from critical research needs to critical teaching needs and we’ll let this faculty led process help drive where these positions need to land. [6:38] So, that’s really how that’s going to shape up. I want to make sure everybody heard that. I will assure you we will look at all disciplines.

I also want to make a comment. As we increase our National visibility and reputation, it’s kind of neat when one of our own administrators goes on to lead a campus. I know it was mentioned last time that John Mason was appointed chancellor at Penn State Harrisburg, one of Penn State’s branch campuses. Pretty neat for an Auburn member to go lead a campus like that, it looks good for us, but it’s also kind of special that if you didn’t know it, John was actually a student at that branch campus, so to go back to your home so to speak is really neat. As far as Vice President for Research, made a decision to move that back to the Provost where Bill can fully integrate faculty responsibilities across academics, Extension engagement and research. I think it will be a better situation. So Bill will be initiating a National search relatively soon. Bill and I and John are working on an interim who would be able to fill in while we are doing that National search and when John leaves.
So with that I will stop. If there is time and there’s a question, I’ll answer it. You fooled me by being on the opposite side.

Mike Stern, economics, not a senator: Do any senators have any questions? So, I am not a senator today, so I needed to ask because senators should speak first.

I have a question about these 500 non-net faculty that you wish to hire. My understanding in our adoption of a new budget model, which we just did and went through that long process, was that we would not be engaging in central planning to this degree in the distribution of resources. That resources would flow based on the revenue that you are generating as opposed to your cost. So, we actually don’t have positions anymore because that is an incremental cost concept. You receive your revenue, your costs are your problem, right? So, we would get the revenue statement from the central administration. So hiring and that type of stuff would be dictated by essentially the internal market place that we had set up. Is the new budget model being suspended in regards to this proposal?

Dr. Leath, Auburn University President: Actually, they are not as incongruous as you make it sound because if the revenue follows undergraduate enrollment, and one of the ways we slice faculty recruitment is related to classroom demand, those two actually should flow right in line. But I also think as an institution we have an obligation to meet State’s needs and we have asked the deans to survey there colleges back in September, we asked during the summer, of where they think they excel and where they really need faculty members in critical areas of research to round out groups and complement groups. So, I think it is perfectly reasonable for a faculty led initiative to look at all of these perspectives and give us their priorities. How they shape up in terms of revenue will be related. But not all of our revenue is driven through the resource model. We can have other resources allocated through other priorities.

I don’t know that the budget model says 100% of all money that comes to Auburn has to allocated in that model. There’s certainly a need for priorities to be set and if that’s not the case then we’ll discuss it and we’ll change it. [10:26]

Mike Stern, economics, not a senator: So you are going to change the budget model?

Dr. Leath, Auburn University President: Perhaps, not necessarily. We’ll see how it shakes out when we see the priorities. They may line up perfectly with where the resources are going. We are going to get the data before we make a conclusion, in other words.

Mike Stern, economics, not a senator: Well in my review the data previously went to that process [10:43] so things like engineering and agriculture already needed a heavy subsidy out of the Provost’s Office, they were substantially in the red. So that’s already known, right? So, when we went through the process and we have the paneled people for instance, we had a guy who was dean of engineering at Ohio University who went through the RCM process in the same form that we did and engineering was immediately put deep in the red. He said he had always had to go hand in hat to the Provost to complete his budget. There was no distinction when we ran the simulation of the numbers here. That’s generally the way it is. Liberal Arts and some of the Sciences in the Core Curriculum would be significantly in surplus and so forth, and that’s the way that it shook out. [11:22]

I thought we had agreed that we would lock that for 5 years and we would allow people to engage in entrepreneurial activities with respect to those fixed and agreed upon margins. And when Dr. Hardgrave gave his presentation to be Provost, he instilled the virtues of the new budget model and said he supported it and so forth. So, I thought we would be continuing with without changing the margins and incentives in the way it was structured in order for people to pursue those avenues.
Dr. Leath, Auburn University President: You are talking about things that have not occurred. You know, as a thoughtful person, I would like to get the input from the faculty, the staff, in this whole process, sit down with the Provost and think, is there a need to allocate resources differently in a major extent, a minor extent, or not at all based on the budget model. But, let’s get the information, let’s see what the faculty thinks important, what the faculty really want to drive here is priorities and if some tweaks or changes need to be made. We’ll make them if that’s the consensus of the university. But to speculate now what we might get in priorities from a process that is not even started seems like an exercise in futility.

Mike Stern, economics, not a senator: Except, we did that process. Informing the model that we have now.

Dr. Leath, Auburn University President: No, we have not done a strategic planning process to set university priorities in at least 5 or 6 years.

Mike Stern, economics, not a senator: We just went live a short time ago with the budget model. I was here in the Senate when we had the debate and we had votes on the implementation and different ways of weighing credit hours…

Dr. Leath, Auburn University President: I think that the dates on the strategic plan doesn’t look like it was planned in the last year or 2 to me. Am I wrong about that folks? It was planned years ago.

Mike Stern, economics, not a senator: Right, I understand, but if it’s not held…the whole thing with an RCM Budget Model, if you do not agree upon and fix the forward rates, then it loses any value. [13:19] The whole point is to expose people…

Dr. Leath, Auburn University President: No, I do not concur with that, right, I would say wrong.

Mike Stern, economics, not a senator: So, marginal incentives don’t matter?

Dr. Leath, Auburn University President: I would say what you said is that you cannot change the budget model in any responsible way basically, and I think that’s incorrect. I think to not ever reconsider your priorities or your budget model is foolish.

Mike Stern, economics, not a senator: I didn’t say to not ever, but it has barely gone online.

Dr. Leath, Auburn University President: You basically did say that.

Mike Stern, economics, not a senator: No, I didn’t say not ever.

Dr. Leath, Auburn University President: You didn’t use the word forever… [13:51]

Mike Stern, economics, not a senator: However, if there isn’t an agreed upon commitment at the time you make it for an agreed upon horizon. So, I thought we had agreed to fix it for 5 years.

Dr. Leath, Auburn University President: Well, you were probably mistaken. [14:03] I wasn’t president then and I think if we polled this group, Michael, and said you want this budget to never be tweaked for 5 years regardless of the faculty’s wishes, incentives of priorities, the group would probably say they don’t want that. We can have that vote if you want, but I think that’s probably where the faculty would be.

Mike Stern, economics, not a senator: Contracts, you know, when there are not enforcements of them is the reason third world economies for instance don’t advance. Because they cannot contract and enforce them. So, if an agreement is made, if all you have to do is hold a vote to break it anytime you want, there is of course no agreement, right? So, if I and you form a contract, if we can simply go to a third party who can un-vote the contract, then there isn’t a contract.

Dr. Leath, Auburn University President: We are not going to a third party, we are going to ourselves. If administration and faculty all want to do something together, I think that is reasonable.

Mike Stern, economics, not a senator: All, then we just put it up for a vote, right? What a majority vote.

Dr. Leath, Auburn University President: That would be reasonable. This is a democracy.

Mike Stern, economics, not a senator: Okay, I presume we voted on putting the University College into Liberal Arts?

Dr. Leath, Auburn University President: Some follow up to that? [15:15]

Mike Stern, economics, not a senator: I don’t know what we get to vote on and what we don’t, but I was in the Senate when we voted on various structures related to this plan and people have been making plans in relation to it. It was agreed upon when we went through the process that it was very important from the consultants we brought in, from the things we decided as they pointed out to us again and again the value of an RCM Model is to have forward commitment once you set the margin. So, when people engage in entrepreneurial activity they don’t [microphone died here] believe the moment the revenue starts coming in all the rates and things will be changed, so you never receive the value of your entrepreneurial activity.

Dr. Leath, Auburn University President: Well, I don’t remember you being in Montgomery with me getting a big increase from the State Legislature this year. [15:56–15:52 backup recorder] So I would say there’s a bunch of new resources that have not ever been allocated to this university. [15:58] And if the faculty and administration all think there is a useful purpose for them and a joint priority set for those resources I see no reason why the faculty and administration in full agreement for new resources can’t use them as we all see fit.

Mike Stern, economics, not a senator: Well yes, State appropriations and how they would be handled was an agreed upon element of the budget model. The State appropriations isn’t new.

Dr. Leath, Auburn University President: This money is.

Mike Stern, economics, not a senator: No, no. the concept of state appropriations is not new so we had an agreed upon way in which State appropriations would be distributed in specific formulas.

Dr. Leath, Auburn University President: I don’t remember me or the Provost agreeing on that. I think we are probably going in a circular argument here. I will work with the faculty and if the faculty want to drive something, I’ll be supportive.
Thanks Dan.

Daniel Svyantek, 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, and Beverly Marshall is the secretary-elect: James Witte is our Parliamentarian. Our administrative assistant is Laura Kloberg.

Second, I would like to offer Dr. Leath congratulations on his installation as the president of Auburn University. It was a very impressive ceremony right up to the end.

Third, while our Critical Conversations was canceled yesterday due to weather issues, I do want to thank everyone involved in putting those programs together. I have enjoyed them immensely. I believe these conversations are setting an example of the value of civil discourse which should be followed by other universities. I hope that these programs continue to help us understand each other and our interests in the future.

Finally, on a lighter note. As I said the ceremony was very impressive ceremony right up to the end.
There is an old saying that practice makes perfect. Hopefully, you missed an example of how lack of practice played out at the President’s installation for some of us on the dais. I will just say that sometimes the instruction to just follow the person who was behind you is not the best advice!

Are there any questions?

Allen Seals, Academic Program Review Committee: Any Senators? I am Allen Seals from the Academic Program Review Committee. I have a quick question for the Provost. It involves this move of the University College to the College of Liberal Arts, so I am on the Academic Program Review Committee, which I know you interface with us several times and you didn’t interface with us this time for the move. You interfaced with us for the move of flight management of flight programs to the University College but then you didn’t interface with us with the move from University College to Liberal Arts. I hope that you would comment about that.

Bill Hardgrave, Provost: Certainly. In this case the University College is moving as a whole administratively from the Provost’s Office to the College of Liberal Arts. In this case, no new programs were added, no programs were eliminated, and no curriculum was changed. Now, that is very different from when it moved from Business to the University College because programs were eliminated and programs were added. And therefore, as it comes to the Provost’s Office and we look to the Academic Program Review for its guidance in these type of things, there were no material changes to the programs, so we administratively moved it. It does not require a Board of Trustees approval, does not require ACHES approval, does not require SACS approval, I did consult with the Senate Leadership before making that administrative move. But it truly is just an administrative move. Nothing changes about the programs, the programs remain intact.

Allen Seals, Academic Program Review Committee: Okay. I guess I am just confused about if it’s moving to the College of Liberal Arts, and I am specifically talking about the flight programs; when you move from Business to University College one of the reasons you sited and know because I voted on this was that the flight people were impaired because of the core requirements in Business. [20:52] But then from what I have read on the Web site about the move to CLA the flight programs are not going to be required to, particularly the main thing, the language requirement in CLA. So I guess I do not understand why are they moving to CLA if they are not going to have the same collective core requirements that all the other students have? [21:13]

Bill Hardgrave, Provost: So, it was my understanding as a BS program, those could be exempt from those core requirements at the College’s discretion. It is a BS program and will not change. If at some point in the future if they decide to change that then that would be the College’s right to do that. That was why we moved them out of the Business school to provide that flexibility, and that flexibility remains intact by moving them to CLA.

Allen Seals, Academic Program Review Committee: I think I understand.

Mike Stern, economics, not a senator: So, now I don’t understand. [21:52] So, I have gone through this process of transitioning programs a number of times. I was moved from the Business school and my Bachelor of Science Program pulled out of the Business school. It’s a BS, same place that Aviation came from, same issues with the College of Business core, I was told I could not open that curriculum in Liberal Arts without adding the Foreign Language requirement to it and was held hostage and made to do so, or they would not open or transfer the curriculum, okay? Back when I transitioned. Our business curriculum was shut then the ECON curriculum with no vote of any committee and no review of any committee. It was just done by the Provost’s decree.

We now have and APR Committee because of that. It was created after that. Item 4, and it specifically reviews the transfer of academic programs. [22:44] This (?) I was told by the Senate Leadership in order to transfer my unit, all programs intact, no modifications, no deletions, pure administrative and budget change that I had to write it up and submit it to the APR Committee; and did so. They took it and called a hearing on it before I tabled it. [23:03] So, when I was told that I needed to do that after a meeting between the Provost Office and the Senate Leadership. In my proposal there are absolutely no deletions to programs, no proposed changes to any programs, all programs associated would be an aggregate, purely a budgetary and administrative change. So, I’m not sure why I’m being told different things when I have to move my programs. When I had to move them into Liberal Arts, I was told I had to add foreign language requirements, at the time of the transfer or they would not open it otherwise. That’s what I was told, you can see it, there’s a paper trail of it. It was a pure transfer with no other change. The bachelor of science in economics that I transferred from Business at the time to Liberal Arts. [23:45]

So, I don’t understand the exemption from the core ?. I also don’t understand, because I was criticized in relations to naming, the Provost’s Office has guidelines on its Web site about what overarching principles it uses to use certain names, like college, school, department. It says a college is a complex administrative unit comprised of 3 or more departments and or schools with similar missions in academic disciplines. [24:15] So, under the new proposed construct this College of Liberal Arts cannot possibly be a college. I don’t know what the relationship between Art and History and Flight Programs and Interdisciplinary Studies and Exploratory Majors and all this stuff is. Okay? It appears to me and this is going back 10 years in the Provost’s Office that it is being used as a university’s dumping ground, okay, so if that’s the way it is going to be used…if somebody doesn’t want something, we don’t want it there for some reason, we are just going to dump it in, no matter what process we use, sometimes we use APR, sometimes we don’t, sometimes it’s by administrators, I don’t know, it is not a consistent pattern, but that’s where it gets dumped. [25:02] If that’s the case I don’t think it should be a college by the guidelines, we just call it the university’s dumping ground and be done with it if that’s the way it’s going to be treated.

I don’t understand why the University College is called a college because what it says the requirements are. I don’t understand how we can have a college that’s university wide in application inside a supposedly a more narrowly defined college. I was here when we were creating exploratory things. I heard from Constance, the reason why we need advisors that were independent from individual colleges and Interdisciplinary Studies requires you to have a curriculum chosen from different colleges (2 or more) by construction with it. I don’t understand…we had aviation and aerospace engineering is I believe where it started which kind of made sense, but it’s not there, we are not putting it back there. It was in business we had some management side of it because we had aviation management with it I was with it  for years interacted with them. Then it needs to be the University College. But my entire time here I have never heard anybody tell me that we ought to have flight programs in Liberal Arts. I don’t even understand the construction, I don’t understand why exploratory majors or interdisciplinary stuff would be in a specific college with no changes or stuff. All the justifications I remember in creating and naming the University College for having these things. We went ahead and went through, I don’t know what’s changed and I don’t understand why when I have to move programs or I have to move my department, I am required to do things that other people are not.

Daniel Svyantek, Chair: One thing Mike, you may want a copy of it. My wife found the letter moving aviation from aerospace to Business in her office.

Mike Stern, economics, not a senator:
What year was that?

Daniel Svyantek, Chair:
I forget, but it’s several deans ago. She found a copy underneath her desk when she moved it.

We have three action items on the agenda today.  [27:13]

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. This motion was brought to the Senate as a pending action item at the March 20, 2018 Senate meeting. Mike Fogle of the Faculty Research Committee is going to present this resolution to the Senate.

Mike Fogle, FRC member: I am going to assume that you guys can read. We read through it last time. Basically, the idea is that to ask the Provost’s Office to work with the academic units to develop a scholarship incentive program.

As you know we have had an incentive program in the past, it’s very limited, it only really has one mechanism. As our discussions throughout campus with surveys through the FRC it is obvious that units function so much differently that they need different mechanisms. The best thing we think is for the Provost to interact with the units themselves and let the units tell the Provost, “what works for us,” “what doesn’t work for us,” and to formulate scholarship incentive programs that are bottom up driven.

Any questions?

Daniel Svyantek, Chair: This motion comes from a standing committee of the Senate and there is no need for a second. If you approve this motion, press A on your clicker, if you do not approve, press B. A=44, B=4.

The vote is 44 to 4. The motion is approved.

The second and third action items both require voting by the Senate to approve nominees for Senate committees.

The first of these two action items is voting on the 3 candidates for the Senate Rules committee. These candidates were nominated at the March 20th meeting of the Senate.

The second is a vote on volunteers for Senate committee membership.

Both of these action items will be presented by Don Mulvaney, Senate Secretary and Chair of the Senate Rules Committee.

Donald Mulvaney, Senate Secretary: Thank you. As you can see we have 3 nominee candidates for the Rules Committee for those positions that are rotating off. Unless there is any objection we will proceed to the vote. Press A for approval and B for disapproval. A=50, B=0. [30:20] Congratulations to the new Rules members.

The next one is a lengthy document. It has been posted since last week. Before we get into it I just want to mention, behind the scenes the efforts of the Rules Committee. Those folks that are members of that I just want to applaud and thank you for meeting several times and e-mail exchanges to try to identify the requests of the volunteers first choices to committees that have the needs of the skills. It can get complicated because some committees need to have a representative from a specific college or school or discipline, so I applaud the Rules Committee for this great effort.

If you scoll down we will look at these. We still have some vacancies and those have been identified on the Web site so there is still opportunity and need for you to go back to your departments and encourage folks to volunteer for these continued vacancies.

With this list we want to get started and get these approved. We will come back in our next session with additional recommendations from Rules. This comes from a standing committee and needs no second, but we move that we accept these nominees at this time. If you vote yes, press A, if you vote no press B.
A=50, B=0. Thank you very much.

Daniel Svyantek, Chair: I would like to thank Don and the Rules Committee for their work on these two action items. Filling these committees is an important, and sometimes, unsung act!

We also have a pending action item. This is a request to change the membership of the Faculty Research Committee. Ralph Kingston, Chair of the Faculty Handbook Committee, will present this item. [32:30]

Ralph Kingston, Chair of the Faculty Handbook Committee: Last year the Senate Leadership received a request from Libraries to add the research data Librarian as a continuing ex-officio voting member of the Faculty Research Committee.

This a position that the chairs of the Institutional Biosafety Committee, The Institutional Review Board for the protection of human subjects in research, The Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee already sit on the committee in that capacity.

The research data Librarian is a new position or at least it was a new position starting last academic year. This is not my job, but I will explain a little bit about what that position is. Effectively the roll of the research data management Librarian is to develop and implement policies for research data management in the university. So, as most of you probably already know most Federal funding agencies now require data management plans to be included in grant proposals and many other institutions do as well.

What the research data management Librarian does is work closely with coordinating data management policies between the various units involved with research on campus including the associate deans of research the office of proposal services and faculty support, OIT, and therefore the person who is likely to hear about potential data compliance issues and to be in a position to offer solutions. So, that is the first reason that we recommend to include her on the Faculty Research Committee.

But as well as taking a lead in research data management policy, she is also working within the Library with subject specialists, with research faculty to manage the data generated by research. She offers training sessions, she does departmental data management seminars. I think probably some of you have seen her. So, a second justification is she can act as a conduit for faculty perspectives on data to the Research Committee.

In short, she’s being proposed for inclusion on the Faculty Research Committee by virtue of the fact that she’s embedded in the process of how Research gets done mechanistically on campus and across departments.

That was the charge given to us by the Senate Leadership. Over the course of actually looking at this it became evident to us that there was another person missing from this committee. We also noticed that the Libraries faculty do not have their own representation on the committee. So even though we were looking to add a librarian to the committee, the research data management librarian, the idea that representation of Libraries faculty specific research concerns had to be fed to a particular person in that world and it seemed problematic. It was treating Library faculty differently than faculty members in academic schools and colleges across the university. [35:47]

I see you all notice, but in order to be tenured and promoted library faculty have, like all of the rest of us who are not librarians, to demonstrate productivity and research and creative practice. The level of accomplishment is, as elsewhere, substantiated through internal and external peer review and recognition and so we in the Faculty Handbook Committee therefore proposes that the research related concerns should also be represented on the Faculty Research Committee in the same way as faculty in other academic schools and colleges.

So, as you can see, what the document proposes is one making the research data management librarian a continuing ex-officio member of the committee and adding separate representation for a Libraries faculty.

That’s then end of my presentation. Are there questions?

Mike Fogle, senator, Physics and member of FRC: So, you have the chair should be selected from amongst 12 faculty representatives. I think if you add this person it would be 13?

Ralph Kingston, Chair of the Faculty Handbook Committee: I will go and fix that. Yes.

Mike Fogle, senator, Physics and member of FRC: Unless, you don’t want that person to be chair.

Ralph Kingston, Chair of the Faculty Handbook Committee: Well…now that you say that…That was clearly an oversight. Thank you very much. We’ll fix that and have it as the proposal when we come back to you.

Daniel Svyantek, Chair: Thank you Ralph. This action will be a constitutional amendment. As such, when we vote on this item in May, 58 (2/3s of the Senate) of the Senators must vote for the amendment to approve this action item. Therefore, attendance at the May meeting will be important. Please try to make the meeting or make sure that your substitute comes.

The final item on the agenda is a presentation by Drew Clark. This presentation will be on the results of the COACHe survey.

Drew, the podium is yours. [37:51]

Drew Clark, Dir. Of Institutional Research and Assessment, COACHe report:


Missing the transcript here until a later time. Wanted to get the rest of the meeting posted before the next Senate meeting, May 15.


Mike Stern, not a senator:

Drew Clark, Dir. Of Institutional Research and Assessment:

[1:02:36] Annette Kluck, Assistant Provost for Women’s Initiatives:

Drew Clark, Dir. Of Institutional Research and Assessment:

James Goldstein, Immediate Past Chair:

Drew Clark, Dir. Of Institutional Research and Assessment:

Daniel Svyantek, Chair: This concludes our formal agenda for today.

Is there any unfinished business?  Hearing none, is there any new business?  Hearing none, I now adjourn the meeting.