Transcript for Senate Meeting
February 18, 2020

Nedret Billor, chair: Thank you for coming out on this rainy day and welcome to the February 18th 2020 meeting of the University Senate this is our 6th meeting of the academic year and the first if you're a senator or a substitute for a senator please be sure you sign in on the Senate roll sheet at the back of the room and take a clicker second we need to establish a quorum we have 87 senators and we need 45 for a quorum. Please press a on your clicker to show you are present. Please keep pressing oh we need to have a quorum, yes there you go that's wonderful, okay keep pressing see, 48 okay that's good okay. Let the record show that we have 50 present, so a quorum is established.

I now call the meeting to order. I would like to start by reminding you of some basic procedures for the Senate meeting for senators and guests. If you would 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're a senator or a substitute, 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 website in advance. It's now up on the screen.

The first order of business is to approve the minutes for the meeting of the November 12, 2019 Senate meeting and since we did not have quorum last time, we were not able to approve the minutes. Those minutes had been posted on the website. Are there any additions, changes, or corrections on the minutes? Hearing none, the minutes are approved by unanimous consent. Thank you.

I would like to make a few announcements and brief remarks today. The first announcement is about nomination committee for the Senate officers. Nomination committee, whose charge was to recruit candidates for the two offices; the University Senate chair-elect and University Senate secretary-elect was formed at the 2019 General Faculty meeting. Dr. Fogle was the chair of the nomination committee. Today we'll officially name the candidates for the Senate officers chair-elect and secretary-elect. The faculty will vote electronically for chair-elect and secretary-elect between 8:00 a.m. Monday, March 23rd and 5:00 p.m. Monday, March 30. The winners will be announced at the General Faculty spring meeting scheduled for 3:30 p.m. on March 31st. Candidate statements and biographical information will be posted online.

A second announcement is about volunteering. Volunteering opens for 2020 and 2021 academic year in February and the Rules Committee will fill the vacancies with those that have volunteered by the end of April. Please select several different committees on which you would like to serve and also indicate the order of preference of those choices. Rules Committee will work to best fit the volunteers by their indication of preferences. We would like to encourage all of you to participate in shared governance by volunteering for Senate and University committees we have a URL for volunteers and we will be also sending e-mail regarding volunteering and we can provide all the information about the URL.

My third announcement is about a big problem parking issue. Bobby Woodard, chair of the parking working group, has been working for some time on parking issues on campus and the working group completed their work and provided a set of recommendations for parking. Bobby Woodard invited at the general faculty meeting on March 31st to talk about these proposed changes, however a MP and Staff Council will also have meetings on these matters. And A&P will have the meeting on March 2, at 3 p.m. OIT Building 103, and Staff Council is having meeting on February 28 at 2 p.m. Mell Classroom Building, room 2510. If you would like to attend one of those meetings please feel free to do so, but we will be having presentation on this at the General Faculty meeting on March 31. So, these are additional meetings before the General Faculty Meeting. We will also disseminate this information to all faculty and you will be getting all those details about dates and times and locations.

So, I'll continue my remarks. Since the quorum was not established on January 21 there should not be minutes after the Senate Meeting. We plan to put a header or watermark on the "not minutes" document, noting that the document is merely the acting Secretary's note regarding the quorum-less meeting and are not to be considered minutes as far as records of the Senate go.

I would like to conclude my remarks with providing some information for Adrienne Wilson, Senate secretary's health struggle. Dr. Adrienne Wilson, Senate Secretary, was hospitalized due to flu infection in mid-January. Since then, she has gone through many severe health complications caused by flu infection, however I am very happy to inform you that her health condition got stabilized a few days ago. I observed tremendous improvement in her health during my visit yesterday, in the hospital. She is a resilient fighter. We wish her speedy recovery and would like to see her among us as soon as possible. She is currently on medical leave and therefore, Dr. Greg Schmidt, secretary-elect will assume the duties of the senate secretary.

I would like to end my final remarks with a quote from Ghandi. "Strength does not come from winning, your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength." This code describes Dr. Wilson very well indeed.

That's the end of my remarks. Now I would like to introduce the officers of the Senate and our administrative assistant. Michael Baginski is the Immediate Past Chair, Don Mulaney is the chair-elect, and Adrienne Wilson, who's absent right now serves as secretary, Greg Schmidt is secretary-elect. James Witte, not here, is our parliamentarian. (He was supposed to be here.) Finally, our administrative assistant Laura Kloberg.

So, we have a crowded agenda today and the first item of business and is some remarks from President Jay Gogue. [9:44]

President Jay Gogue: This is the legislative season and so I thought of my report last week the Alabama Senate confirmed three trustees these were trustees that had served in the past they were eligible for a second term so it's a seven-year term for Mr. Jim Pratt Mr. B.T. Roberts Mr. Clark Sahlie. Also relative, the governor announced her draft budget and really a lot of work still to be done but at least within her budget she recommended seven plus percent for Auburn which is a very good number for us when you look at the states that have reported to this point there most of them under five percent so we feel good about that. They've also announced that there will be a bond bill. This will be the first bond bill supported by the state certainly since I've been in Auburn. Don't know the exact amount, we have a high probability of perhaps getting one project and I think the Provost has worked with a group to try to pull together the folks in Funchess, Math and Statistics, and Geology to try to look at a building that was sort of agriculture and STEM related so we're optimistic about that.

At the federal level for the 2020 year we were able to secure, this is through directed appropriation, so this is not through competitive grants but through directed appropriations 97.5 million. We go next week, we have 16 projects that are been developed from the campus to try to set for the 2021 budget. About two weeks ago we had Standard & Poor and Moody on campus, or electronically, to look at the final financial health of the University and they reaffirmed our bond rating which is probably one of the best indicators of what the health is.

I wanted to mention that I circulated a document that sort of shared comments from my departmental visits, and so I've asked the Provost and I've asked General Burgess to look at the various components and help us implement those changes. A couple of them that I would call your attention to is we did move the grants and contracts office to the Vice President for Research, that was one of the areas that was a great concern. The second that we heard were a number of comments that there's really no housing available for visiting scholars, visiting scientists that come in for more than a week and we've been able to secure some space starting in the fall. Fall of this this fall, so Bill you might comment on that further a minute.

Final thing I want to mention is there's been a lot of questions about the virus that we've all been reading about, the coronavirus, and we made a decision a couple of weeks ago I think you may have seen with the World Health Organization recommended no Travel, State Department recommended no travel, relative to China. And so we did get a note out on that but we've gotten a lot of questions and I've asked Dr. Fred Kam if you would come up and share your thoughts on the coronavirus.

I think all of you know Fred runs our health center here on campus and has briefed us several times on the coronavirus.

Dr. Fred Kam: Good afternoon, thank you so much for having me. Obviously, you’re all aware this is a very dynamic process. So dynamic that I prepared the brief and put in the numbers and updated them every day. This morning and just before I left their office, they changed again. So very dynamic. I want to let you know that the AU Medical Clinic is ready. As to when we will identify the first case and deal with additional cases when it happens. And I said when not if, because I think it's going to be a probable when. And in cooperation with East Alabama Medical Center, the Alabama Department of Public Health, and the CDC all of whom we've been in contact or discussions with going back the last few weeks.

So, our initial risk was really centered around travelers to and from Wuhan and the Wuhbye province of China but that quickly expanded because the virus itself became present in all 31 provinces, but at this point in time ninety eight point eight percent of all the confirmed cases are in China. So, that is the kind of the big focus around the world and as you can see if you keep up with the news, different countries are putting in different restrictions as each day goes by.

Right now, in the United States, we've got 29 confirmed cases. That number jumped in the last 48 hours because of the 14 people who were found positive that came off the cruise ship. Okay, but prior to that it was at 15 and it's in 28 other countries that we are aware of. The outbreak really started back in December. First real reported case was on December 1st, but there are many people who believe that it was actually present prior to that, just not identified. So, it couldn't have happened at a worse time of the year because it happened right around Chinese New Year where 400 million people move within China or outside of China during that period of time. So it was really the toughest time for this to happen.

At this point, as of one hour ago, there have been eighteen hundred and seventy five deaths (1875) related to the corona virus and 73,451 confirmed cases based on either testing or in the new criteria that they just released last week which is when you saw another big jump. 542 cases have been reported as of this afternoon as confirmed from the Diamond Princess cruise ship. Which that's important because it it's given us some idea of transmissibility. This you know, even with quarantines in place and stuff like that so it's that's being studied pretty extensively. [16:32]

To put a little bit of perspective into this; so, I told you 1,875 deaths for the corona virus seventy three thousand four hundred fifty-one cases so far, for this flu season alone, in the United States only. we've had just under 14 thousand deaths. And we've had just under 24 million cases that we believe. So, you know for us it's a big concern, but in perspective we would be more concerned as to how it would impact us just like the flu has been impacting us, and like you said, you know the secretary of your senate obviously having had complications related to that.

Chinese government, as you know, did put in some restrictions or abilities to try and quarantine, but Wuhan as a city, is a city of 11 million people. And to put that again into perspective, Atlanta is a city of about four hundred eighty-five thousand people (485,000). So, Wuhan, by the time the Chinese government made the decision to try and quarantine that city of eleven million, five million had already left for Chinese New Year. So, that's why it quickly spread across the country and so they've been dealing with that. Now as far as Auburn, back on January 9 I actually, and at that point in time it wasn't a big deal yet, but I had sent out e-mails to our Office of International Studies, Auburn Global, and others trying to identify anyone who may have come from Wuhan or being from the Hubei province. And so, we were able to identify those people relatively early enough, send them information, many of them had already been reading information coming out of China, and so, you know we had it pretty good. But, at that point we were sitting on a group that potentially was in an incubation period which has not yet been defined by the World Health Organization or the CDC. So, we needed to get past a certain date and the date for me was January 21st or 22nd because classes, we were very fortunate that classes started on January 8th, we needed a 14-day window. Fortunately, within that 14 days we did not identify, but we did have a few Chinese students come in with various ailments specifically respiratory, but after risk stratify them, we didn't feel that we're at any significant risk, okay. But that's been an ongoing process.

Now the week after classes started, we had a parade, for the next two weeks, we had a parade of well worried people, okay. A parade of them, which at that point in time, in the U.S. we didn't yet even have the test available and right now the only test that's available is through the CDC. So, any sample that we believe, and we have to meet all these criteria, and we would obtain the sample, it would be picked up by Alabama Public Health and sent to the CDC. And that's how that's being handled.

So, in my briefing to the president's cabinet, I said that you know what we need to be working on is how, you know, are we going to handle it, when that outbreak happens. You know my hope is, and wish is, that no such thing happens before me, because it would be a challenge because I think if we were to have outbreak on this campus we realistically may be looking at possibly closing the campus for anywhere from three to four weeks through a period of time, because we would have to, and that's pretty much what you see in other entities around the world doing, you know, it's how you’re gonna manage that process. So, how would we continue to instruct and have classes and finish the semester satisfactorily is something that that we would have to consider.

Now, what we did at the clinic was back in 2003-ish, we had to deal with SARS so we actually modified the SARS plan and again the hospital, EAMC, since that point have built negative pressure rooms etc., at the hospital, because in the event like you've seen anywhere; in China at this point, especially in Wuhan, you know once the outbreak started all the health facilities got overwhelmed in a very short period of time. And that that will probably happen when it hits certain parts of the country. So, what questions do you all have I'll stop there. (pause)  See you and done. Thank you all so much.

Nedret Billor, chair: President and Dr. Kam, thank you very much.

Now, our second item of business is some remarks from Provost, Bill Hardgrave. [22:00]

Bill Hardgrave, Provost: I get to follow the coronavirus.

So, I was asked to just provide a quick update on the Strategic Plan and I am going to cover just 3 bits of the Strategic Plan to put them out there, because you’ll see more about each of these 3 certainly in the coming months. So, this is not to take a deep dive, this is just to whet your appetite on a few of these areas. There is a lot more we can do from the strategic plan.

I am going to talk about our dual enrollment, COACHE survey, and our AU commitments.

Let’s start with Auburn First, which is our Dual Enrollment program. We started that as a soft launch late in the spring of last year. We got the first few out there just to kind of get our toe in the water to see any issues that we had, those issues we could really work on before we really went full-on.

And the idea here was that we were trying to reach some students that we wouldn't otherwise reach to provide a mechanism for some students to start taking Auburn classes before they got to Auburn. Our first set of goals was really just to get the faculty cohorts to get the classes get a few schools signed up and see how it was going. And I must say it really exceeded our expectations with how quickly we got classes online, how many faculty were engaged, how many departments got on online, how many schools, we were signed up very quickly and you can see here we have 18 and now we're getting more aggressive now that we've done some of these, and know what the plan is. So, you'll see this continued to grow all over the state. So far the success of the students has been phenomenal 3.97 of those who took classes last fall from the Auburn First program, we have, it is a reduced cost for those students, what we're doing now is $550 for a per course, and if they're on reduced lunches then there's a reduced cost, and if it's free lunches, then then we get it to them for free. So, we’re really trying to get the courses out and expose students that otherwise wouldn't be exposed to Auburn University. Again, so far so good.

The other thing that we're doing here again with the attempt to reach more students, especially in the state of Alabama, is that if a student takes 12 hours and they have a 3.0 in those 12 hours we will admit them to Auburn University.

One of the things that that was a surprise for me, and perhaps not for my team who did all this, but it was for me, from this first group that that came through, and again small numbers, we were just trying to get started, but about half of these students were home school students. I certainly didn't anticipate that as a major group, and again it'll probably be a smaller percentage as we go on, but provides a great avenue for home school students, to start taking these courses and be prepared when they come to Auburn.

The second thing I want to mention, is the COACHE survey hopefully you have all seen the COACHE survey in your inbox it came out on February 10th assist encourage you to complete the COACHE survey. This is very important. It's a way for us to get information from you across the campus. A lot of good things came out of the last coach survey from our on-campus child care center that grew out of the needs that we saw that we're highlighted in the last survey to our dual career guidelines that we have now trying to get more aggressive with those things tenure promotion tenure process. So, lots of things that we look for there. Make sure if you haven't filled this thing out please do so, about 45 percent response rate last time. We'd love to see that much, much higher. It is a great way to give us feedback and we'll be coming back to you with the results of the COACHE survey.

The last thing that I'll talk about is something that you're going to start seeing more of, it's what we're calling the AU Commitments. Over the past about a year, year and a half, and through Jim Wayhenmeyer, going around visit with departments with us looking at new stories that came out looking at the research is going on campus, talking to Dean’s, we had a retreat of a good group of people across campus to gather ideas. The idea simply is this, we have to do a better job of organizing and marketing what we do on campus. And one way to do that is to put some headers or some parameters or some definitions, some categories around the things that we do. So, you can see what we call the five AU Commitments. Again, it's a way for us to organize and market externally what we are doing. And in what you will see then, in the coming months, is that we will build websites around each of these commitment areas, and this website will be used to hold, if you will, the inventory of all the things that we're doing in that area; the programs that we have, the research that we're doing, funds to research, all the scholarship in those various areas in addition to programmatic and outreach efforts. So, it really is a way for us to market what we are doing externally. So, you're gonna see more of this coming. We don't have the website built, but I just wanted to go ahead and put that out there right now. You're gonna start seeing more of those things in the coming months. [27:59]

So, with that I know we've got a full agenda. I just wanted to take a minute just to update you on a couple of items. Thank you.

Questions? [28:08]

Michael Stern, not a senator, Economics: Bill I was on the Provost website about a month ago I wanted to ask you about something. I found some guidelines that were published by your office on October 28, 2019 and they're titled Emeritus Guidelines and I wasn't aware of them, and I talked to a number other faculty who also were not aware of them. And so, I'm not sure why they were posted, and I don't want to speculate as to that, but when I reviewed it I found some of the content objectionable. And so I don't necessary want to debate that content, but if we want to change the policies or practices as it relates to emeritus which affects all the faculty of the institution, I think there should be some open discussion before we issue guidelines and so the faculty actually know that there our changes or clarifications to it. I have a number of things to say about this and so I would appreciate the opportunity to do so before we make any guidelines or changes or change the handbook and so forth. So, if the president would call a meeting and you would attend and invite AUUP leaders or Senate leaders, whoever might be interested, I can give a short presentation on my experience with emeritus at this institution which spans back a decade, is quite long. And most people are not aware of why the handbook currently reads the way it reads in regards to that practice and it actually all stems from a case in 2009, which actually predates you, so there are a lot of people that don't understand the reason the handbook reads the way it does and how it read before and how it has come to pass. And I can show all of this because I was involved in it okay? And so that everybody understands what the actual policy and practice of this institution was, and what it was intended by those who changed it at a particular point in time to read as it currently does, I would be happy to show people that so that we can have a healthy debate about any reforms or changes that we might want to make before we make them.

Bill Hardgrave, Provost: Okay, thank you.

Nedret Billor, Chair: Thank you Dr. Stern. Thank you, Dr. Hardgrave. Any more questions?

May I invite you all who are standing at the back to come forward, we have many empty seats, Jared, come on we have seats so next to the president that we have a lot of seats nobody wants to sit by him why not?

All right, so we have a one action item. I will invite Greg Schmidt to actually ask for the vote for replacements of committee members for Senate.

Greg Schmidt, secretary-elect: Thank you and good afternoon Senate. Over the course of an academic year various replacements are needed to fill vacancies on committees these vacancies may occur due to resignations, retirements, or numerous other reasons. On the screen or names of replacement members for vacancies on Senate committees and the ending dates of their terms this information was also posted to the Senate agenda the Senate replacements require the Senate to approve through a vote so I am calling for a vote now. Yes, we would like to approve these as a whole, if there are no objections. Press A to approve or B to reject. We have 52 to 2, it sounds like. 52 to 2, approving. Thank you.

Nedret Billor, Chair: We have two pending action items. So, the first one is for call for nominations for Rules Committee members. So, Greg will be conducting that.

Greg Schmidt, secretary-elect: We have three vacancies opening on the Rules Committee beginning with the next academic year. This pending action item is a call for nominations from the floor.

From the committee site, election of members to two-year terms shall be held by secret ballot at each March meeting of the Senate. Candidates who receive a majority vote shall be elected and their appointment shall become effective the following August.

I now open the floor to nominations, please step to the microphone to make your nominations.

Mike Baginski, current past chair: I'd like to nominate Brian Anderson from civil engineering.

Greg Schmidt, secretary-elect: Thank you.

Don Mulvaney Chair-Elect: I'd like to nominate Valentina Hartarska from Ag Econ Rural Sociology.

Greg Schmidt, secretary-elect: Thank you.

Jung Won Hur, steering committee member: I do like to nominate George Stachokas, from library [34:43]

Greg Schmidt, secretary-elect: Thank you, are there any other nominations? Thank you we will vote on these in March. [34:59]

Nedret Billor, Chair: Thank you Greg. We will move on to the pending action items, the second one. Mike Kensler, director of Office of Sustainability, will present on climate change.

Mike Kensler, Director of Office of Sustainability: I appreciate the chance to speak to you today. I actually have a very simple request and I'll tell you upfront what it is and then try and provide some context for it. I'd like the Senate to approve an action for Auburn University to sign the “we are still in” commitment, which says we're still in to do whatever we can do, what have we've committed to do to tackle this climate crisis that we face. And in doing that we'll not only solve a problem, but really create conditions for resilience and thriving for life on earth.

To do that I want to provide it just a little bit of context for that request. I really see three drivers for us asking that. The first one is, more and more people are seeing reports like this. This comes from Smithsonian magazine from last month showing what's happening; it includes statements like as of January the globe stands dangerously close to a precipice, and of course this is all based on scientific research or from nature. We've been thinking about climate change is this progressive thing that happens over time, but more and more scientists and economists are worried about tipping points that we don't expect and that we're not prepared to deal with becoming more and more likely. A third thing people are seeing is, this one really surprised me, that science research is showing that it's now detectable from a single day of weather across the globe. Because what climate scientists say is that weather is something you notice every day, climate takes 20 or 30 years to see the trends, but the difference between what's happening whether it's a wildfire or a rain event is measurably different because of the impact of climate change. And then you have people who are open-minded, but are unclear about this and for them I think climate change can be summarized really in 14 words. Scientists agree it's happening, it's bad, it's us, and the most important four words, we can fix it, but the PS would be; we've really got according to what the scientists say, about 10 years before these tipping points become very likely.

So, all that triggers, and I've heard this from people inside Auburn University and from people outside of Auburn University, what are we doing, what's our commitment? And it's not only happening at Auburn it's happening at colleges and universities around the country, it's happening at every level of government. I've heard from about meetings that Mayor Fuller in Opelika and Mayor Anders in Auburn have had with groups of citizens asking them this very question. Businesses are being asked this question, faith denominations are being asked this question, investors are asking their investment managers this question, and if you noticed in the last month Larry Fink, who's the CEO of Blackrock, the largest investment firm in the world, he sent a letter to CEOs and to his investors saying; “sustainability is a new frame for black walk and we are in the process of drawing down investments in fossil fuels because of this issue.”

Well, about 10 years ago Dr. Gogue signed the American College and University Presidents Climate commitment. He joined several other university presidents in making this commitment and he did that because the student body demonstrated overwhelming support that Auburn should make this commitment. As a result of that we created a climate action plan which commits us to carbon neutrality by 2050. And you can read in a nutshell what the commitment says, we're deeply concerned, we recognize the consensus and that colleges and universities must exercise leadership.

And here some of the things we're doing in research, in teaching, in operations, and in outreach Auburn is engaged. So, in fact, we are all in. We are committed to doing this. But what's next?

We're in the process of beginning to think about updating our climate action plan which is pretty far out of date, and there are two things that if we can bring them about will make a significant progress towards achieving our climate goals. Not quite ready to talk about them because they're in the formative stage, but I'll be happy to come back and talk about them what I have a little more tangible thrust to offer. But for right now, this simple request is that Auburn signed this We're Still in Declaration. and you can see there it's actually closer to 4,000 leaders from every sector of society, and the commitment says in part, we’re committed to taking forceful action to ensure that the United States remains a global leader in reducing carbon emissions in actually reversing global warming. That’s, in a nutshell, what the commitment says. And the biggest trigger, this is a screenshot of the home page of the we're still in commitment, you may recall that in 2017 President Trump declared his intention to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement making us literally the only country on Earth to do this. And there's an immediate reaction starting with the mayor of Pittsburgh within five minutes said no Mr. President we're still in. We are still committed that whether there's leadership from the top or not, across the United States including companies like Apple, by the way, Tim Cook has made it very clear that Apple is all-in and addressing this problem.

So, the impact of that decision from President Trump was large and broadly criticized including this quote from Stephen Hawking. It may have been the last interview he gave to the BBC before he died, but he said; “Trump's actions could push the earth over the brink.” Now regardless of how anybody feels about the President or politics, this is a fundamentally important policy issue. So where does the United States stand, where's Auburn University stand. Last week we have the privilege of having Dr. Katharine Hayhoe on campus. She's one of the world's leading climate scientists she's been a lead author of our National Climate Assessment, she's been a lead author in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, and she's also I think the very best climate science communicator. And we brought her to campus because of one of your colleagues Dr. Martine Medina, who's an associate professor in geosciences. He knows her, she has great respect for his work as a climate scientist. To win her, he invited her, she agreed to come. And while she was here, she reminded everybody that she gave this TED talk in 2018, the most important thing we can do to address climate change is talk about it. And while she was here, she said this; “our climate imperative is to use everything we have to advocate for solutions, starting with our voice.”

So that's the reason for this ask. I think it's pretty straight-forward and simple, but our ask is that the Senate support Dr. Gogue signing on behalf of Auburn University, that We Are Still in Commitment. Any questions? (pause) Thank you.

Nedret Billor, Chair: Thank you Mike. [The lights went out] We can continue in dark why not, all right there you go somebody was leaning on it? that’s okay, that's what I thought ha ha ha all right ha ha ha that's ok [44:00]

So, we have three information items today and the first information item is on nomination for Senate officers and Mike Fogle, who is the chair of the nomination committee, will present the candidates.

Mike Fogle, chair of nomination committee: Thank you. Good afternoon everyone. Since we're in the process of nominating if we have a full house (I wish the light was we're still out)

So, I was asked to serve as the chair of the nominating committee. This is the section of the Constitution that outlines this process. There were six members to the nominating committee. Our duty, according to this article, is to identify two nominees each for the offices of chair-elect and secretary-elect. The committee met on a number of occasions and did this. The names that are put forth by the committee I'm gonna read off because they're still in the process of getting BIOS, and headshots and things like that.

So, for the office of Chair-Elect the nominating committee gave the following two names Dr. Bob Norton from Poultry Science, Dr. Todd Steury from Forestry. For the office of secretary-elect the nominating committee provided the following two names Dr. Octavia Tripp, Education, Dr. Ralph Kingston of History. I will also add that if you continue to read this article of the Constitution that there is another means of nomination, by petitions. The requisite number of petitions was delivered to the secretary for the office of Chair-Elect for Dr. Herbert Jack Rotfeld from Business. So, as I read this, there will be three candidates for chair-elect and two candidates for secretary-elect. I'm not sure if that's a new history-making event in the history of this Senate or not.

Are there any questions?

Nedret Billor, Chair: Thank you Mike for great work and you guys worked really hard. Thank you.

If you don't have any questions, then we can move on to the second information item. Norman Godwin today will be talking about make-up policy. And there was a history about makeup policy last year about this time and there was a confusion about understanding the policy. So, we just thought it would be good to clarify and so Norman today will talk about that.

Norman Godwin, Assoc. Provost for Academic Effectiveness: Nedret did come in the fall and asked if we might clarify associated with the timing of a make-up exam arrangements given the excused absence. I know you can't read the policy there (referring to the small text on the screen) but I believe the policy was made available in another PDF form. We've basically made three adjustments to the policy; one provided a clarification that we really want students to come and talk to their faculty as soon as possible, but no later than one week from the end of their excused absence period. And then, reduce the number of weeks allowed, under normal circumstances, for makeups exam to be completed from two weeks to one. This makes the most extended time for makeup exam from three weeks to two weeks. And so it does make it a little bit easier for us to move on and get our students through their tests. In addition to that while we were making changes or updates we did add military orders to the list of expected excused absences. This was a recommendation by the associate Dean's for Academic Affairs as they see this commonly. Those are the three updates that we made.

Given that this is a change in timing of a policy associated with students, we will make this effective after the end of this semester. For summer and going forward, we'll make a notification to the faculty and students of this change. Thank you.

Nedret Billor, chair: Thank you.

So, we have the third information item the Auburn University's new international agreements policy and Andy Gillespie, assistant provost for international programs will be talking about that.

Andy Gillespie, assistant provost for international programs: Thank You Nedret.  Good afternoon everybody. I'd like to talk quickly about a new international agreements policy we are coming to the end of crafting this. We're in a period where we can make changes and so we wanted to bring it before this group and get feedback from you and any other groups where we're presenting this. We're quickly coming to a point where we will begin to look at new agreements again and create the partnerships that we need overseas for all of our missions.

The changes that we are creating are really based on making sure that we get the best mileage out of all the agreements and contracts that we generate on an international basis. Agreements as we move forward will be submitted centrally and the generation of these will be done through the offices of our Dean's and our vice presidents. And that is essentially to make sure that you know our leadership is informed and aware of what's happening among their faculty, among their staff, as they create connections around the world. In addition, then, as we review these agreements initially through the Provost's Office we'll make sure that there's security screening on the front and as we start to negotiate with potential partners around the world. We've done this in the past, historically, where this has occurred after agreements have been crafted, and now we're trying to do this kind of review at the front end. Okay so there aren’t any issues.

Lastly, in terms of changes, we're going to try and take all of these agreements that have submitted and coordinated centrally and archive them and make sure that they're transparent make sure they're open to all of you and all of campus, so that anyone can tell what's happening not only with their activities but who's doing what where, so that we might be able to build upon these activities and create some synergy.

The actual process in addition to the policy is evolving, but it entails really looking at these kinds of agreements from our traditional MOUs exchange agreements, contracts that we might have, adding to those the intellectual property, the HR, the Overseas Employment, statements of work, NDA’s, all of these kinds of activities. And again, focusing these centrally so that we have this common database from which to work and running them through this compliance and approval phase where we are trying to check for different requirements that each of our offices may have centrally, before we then sign these agreements, route them to the various processes and offices, through which they must go to get to final conclusion, and then adoption and implementation. It’s a process that’s, as I say, is evolving, we are automating it, trying to do a better job of tracking these, and then sharing them back with the rest of campus.

So, some significant changes in terms of process, but a better process overall. My e-mail is listed there in case you have individual questions, but I'd be happy to take some questions from the floor if desired. [53:21]

Nedret Billor, Chair: Andy has been working on a lot of new initiatives and international program, so hopefully we'll look forward to seeing the final report.

Our final information item Antonio Duran and Karley Riffe and the assistant professors in the higher education program and members of critical studies working group and Austin Blanton, student leader; and they will be presenting on lgbtq+ initiatives at Auburn.

Antonio Duran: Hello everyone, how's it going? Good to hear. As mentioned my name is Antonio Duran and I am a faculty member in the administration of Higher Education Program and I’m here, joined by Austin Blanton, who will also be speaking about some initiatives that we're working on at the University and things that you can be expecting. Austin will provide a little bit more context about this, but we're presenting to the various councils at the University based on the request of President Gogue after a meeting that we had last semester.

So, I'll turn it over to Austin to give us some context on the initiatives. [54:38]

Austin Blanton: In November 2018 the critical studies working group proposed a name and pronoun initiative for the banner system. Follow up, in June 2019 the provost and vice president of inclusion and diversity agreed to assemble a university-wide working group, in November 2019 student representatives began to meet with Student Affairs in response to some problematic statements made at the time. And then in December of 2019 a university-wide working group made recommendations about pronoun initiative.

Now, what brings us here today? At the end of last semester student representatives as well as faculty met with President Gogue, Vice President Hardgrave, and other important administration in Auburn and we discussed the campus pride index which was one of our proposed solutions to addressing the campus atmosphere surrounding the lgbtq+ community.

Antonio Duran: To give additional context - so as mentioned by Austin, we had the university assemble this university-wide working group that was headed up by Dr. Taffy Clayton over in the office of inclusion and diversity. And what they recommended based on their then extensive research in terms of looking at aspirational institutions, as well as what is being done at other campuses at universities, they made these recommendations - in the spring of 2020 to initiate a pronoun education strategy. So, engage faculty, staff, people of A&P, and students about what it would it look like to enable this functionality in the banner web system. In addition to that, they recommended that in March 2020, which is coming up, that they engage in this piloting of the actual functionality required for people to indicate both their chosen names as well as their pronouns. In May 2020, we would have a full implementation according to the recommendations of the university-wide working group, with the launch of the initiative really happening in fall 2020, which would allow us time in order to educate and really craft language and marketing around what is this going to look like for people at all areas of the university. So, this is currently being implemented. it is happening and we wanted to give you all an awareness of this, in addition to allowing you all to provide any feedback that you may have. But in addition to the pronoun initiative, as Austin mentioned, there's also going to be this campus pride index initiative as well. That is going to be headed up by Dr. Taffy Clayton in the office of inclusion and diversity. In particular the campus pride index is this nationwide benchmarking assessment tool that is utilized at campuses at universities to gauge their acceptance and affirming environments for LGBTQ staff, students, and faculty.

So, the idea is that the CPI measures institutions based on eight main areas of how they are really being accepting and welcoming towards LGBTQ+ individuals. The eight areas are policy inclusion, support and institutional commitment, academic life, Student Life, housing, campus safety, counseling and health, and recruitment retention efforts. So, each campus is assessed alongside these eight areas and so the idea would be to actually create working groups at the University targeted to that to eight different areas. The concept is for these working groups to be comprised of the main bodies at the institution, including staff. undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and members of A&P. The concept would be for there to be a larger leadership group that basically orchestrates and organizes all of these working groups. And of course, for there to be members of these five councils and constituent groups on the eight different committees that way we're getting feedback and insight from all areas of the university.

So once again, this will be implemented with the direction and leadership of Dr. Taffy Clayton and we wanted to give you all an idea of what we see this looking like, but of course welcome any feedback in questions that you may have. Also to make you all aware, part of it is education strategies that we're having for workshops–specifically for faculty, but in the future we're looking in order to develop online trainings as well as trainings for staff and members of A&P at the institution to learn about gender identity and pronouns. So, in collaboration with the Biggio Center, the first one happened last week and there will also be three additional trainings happening and so we encourage you all that if you are interested to sign up via the Biggio Center website.

In order to facilitate feedback, the acquisition of feedback easily, we do have an Aubie link that you all can access. So, it's aub.ie/cpifeedback or you can simply scan the QR codes on your smartphone devices to provide any feedback, or ask any questions that you all may have.

We wanted to be sure the you all had a readily accessible way to do so. We are interested in hearing what you all think initially about the initiative and how you think it can be better orchestrated at the institution. This is our main way of collecting that feedback, knowing that we have a full agenda today, but of course will welcome any additional questions at this time. (pause) Thank you so much. [1:00:31]

Nedret Billor, Chair: This concludes our formal agenda for today. Is there any unfinished business?

Carlin Smith, student government: I just want to say I've appreciated you allowing the student voice in these conversations. For this past year I've had the honor of serving as a student voice and we appreciate you having us in there. As you know SGA elections were a couple weeks ago, so unfortunately, or fortunately, however you look at it, this is my last meeting. So, I would like to introduce to you the new points of contact for the year; the vice president-elect Hayes Kasson, and Ada Ruth Huntley  the president-elect. Congratulations to them. So, like I said, they'll be in here carrying on and we thank you for everything you do.

Nedret Billor, Chair: Thank you. Any more unfinished business? (pause) Hearing none, is there any new business? (pause) Hearing none, I now adjourn the meeting. [1:02:01]