Transcript of
June 7, 2005
Dr. Conner Bailey, Chair: We’ll get started in couple of minutes. Those of you when you came in who forgot to
sign in, please do so. And when you come
in, if you’re a senator, please check on the left hand side of your name
please. If you’re a substitute, go ahead
and print your name next to the name of the person for whom you’re
substituting.
Good
Afternoon, the appointed hour has arrived and so I’m going to call to order
this June meeting of the University Senate.
Thank you all for being here. The
room was left open widely because Camp War Eagle is in town, and so our numbers
seem maybe thinner than sometimes because maybe we’re more spread out. May I remind you please, senators, when you
come in to please check in at the table at the rear, just make a mark next to your
name at the left of your name if you’re a senator. If you are substituting for a senator, please
put your name to the right legibly-Patricia Duffy will appreciate-to the right
of the senator whom you are substituting for.
The minutes
for the March meeting are available on the website, were duly noted as being
available and were posted so I would like to request a motion to approve the
minutes of the March 8 meeting. Do I
hear a motion? Jim Gravois and Werner
Dr.
Richardson’s timing is perfect and so I would invite Dr. Richardson to come
address the Senate.
Dr. Ed Richardson, Interim
President: Well,
good afternoon. I really have little to
offer other than I certainly will respond to any questions you may have except
on two areas that I would like to address those. First, I’m sure you are aware you will hear
from Provost Heilman a little bit later and I’ve made a real mistake with John. He assumed that I was very serious that I wanted
him to be the Provost and to take over and he’s proceeded to make it clear to
me that he intends to do that. And so I
say that in a complimentary way and I’m very pleased with the aggressive role
that he’s taking and I’m optimistic that we’ll need that leadership as we go
forward, which is the second item on which I would like to speak.
This Board
meeting will be next week, and there are really a couple of small issues that I
would put on the table and the one I would like to elaborate on briefly and
then conclude my comments.
First, this
will be the second year that we will have submitted the Conflict of Interest
statements from the Board of Trustees.
Those will be supposedly in, we’re told, by the deadline. We have many out of state and in some cases,
out of country. We believe those will be
completed by the deadline, which is the board meeting. And those will be released as soon as
practical, again.
Number two,
this will also include, I believe, although I’m not in position to drive this
one, is that the first step in the evaluation of this president or interim
president, as well as the future ones, will start and the evaluation should be
presented to the board during next Friday’s meeting. I would and should add to this that because I
anticipate, or at the time have anticipated, some extensive discussion on a
number of issues, I asked the Board to schedule all of its committee meetings
on Thursday. So as Mr. McWhorter and I
just finished up this afternoon, it appears that there will be lunch offered to
those in attendance somewhere around 11:30 or 12. We think that the committee meetings will
start somewhere around 12:30 on Thursday the 16th and will conclude
somewhere around 5 o’clock, and so that schedule will be available, I’m sure by
this Friday or Monday, at the latest. So
I just wanted you to know that our normal format is to have most of the
committee meetings on the Friday morning of the meeting. In this case, all committee meetings will be
held on Thursday afternoon, and that’s to allow a little more discussion time
and also to allow the Board not to be completely worn out when we get to the
decision time, so hopefully then the Board meeting will start at 9 o’clock on
Friday morning and would conclude by lunch time, that’s what we would hope and
offer that as a schedule reminder.
During this time I will make a number of recommendations to the Board of
Trustees. Now recommendations is perhaps
not a little misleading in that there will be issues that I will place on the
table for consideration. Many will be
considered through Dr. Heilman’s leadership and through the established faculty
committees. There will be no
recommendations made during this report that will go into effect the next day
after the meeting or anytime soon. There
will be some organizational issues in regards to the
So, I
wanted you to know then that I will be placing on the table a number of
recommendations. Those recommendations
then will be forwarded to the appropriate committees as well as administrative
personnel to review and consider at some point during this next academic
year. I wanted to again repeat, there
are two primary reasons that I’m offering this type of agenda. I realize some will say ‘What in the world is
the Interim President doing all of this for?’
When I came, there were really three steps that
So with
that in mind, I’ll just stop…Conner, I don’t know if you want to go with Dr.
Heilman next or if you want to start with questions, either way. Ok, anyone have any…already…
Cindy Brunner, Pathobiology: Dr. Richardson, I believe it was
last summer, correct me if I’m wrong, that you discussed with us some surveys
that you were going to undertake and polling and you were hiring an outside
company to do that polling. Subsequent
to that, I think you held some focus groups; the purpose of all this was to
find out what others thought about
Dr. Richardson: Ok, I would, Dr. Brunner, and I
think that’s a valid point. I would
describe the intent of the poll, which was conducted, and also the focus
groups. Rather than go into the legislative
initiatives, which will be one of the recommendations which will be on the
table next week, it was quite clear to me and has been for a long time that
Dr. Rik Blumenthal,
Chemistry/Biochemistry:
I’m just wondering: SACS had recommended we begin the new presidential search
for the new president in July of this year.
You said you introducing some new initiatives to build a foundation for
this new president, which is also the justification for the strategic
planning. What’s your timescale? When do you think the Board is going to begin
to take action and begin to start the search for a new permanent president?
Dr. Richardson: The wording…that’s a good question. The wording from the SACS report include
three-of which that was one-and it indicated in the report that we submit by
the end of July-I believe that’s right; somewhere near the end of July; well, I
know it will be somewhere in July we’ve got to get it in for the visit in
September-was that we would describe the process, or the Board would, for the
selection. So I think you’ll see that
discussed next week and I think you’ll see the initial phases started fairly
soon. Now how quickly that will move, I
think you have to recognize that it will really be in the fall before anything
substantive starts but I don’t see any unnecessary delays in the process but
the wording itself was to describe a process and I believe that will be done in
some detail next week.
Herb Rotfeld, Marketing: Not a member of the Senate, editor
of a Social Science journal and in that capacity I’m bothered by-I’ll call it a
terminological inexactitude. The
research you refer to as a survey. You
said it's focus groups and you describe it as a random
sample. Focus groups by their nature
don’t have random samples. And they are
not represented. You have a frame bias, you
have sample selection bias, you have a number of other biases beyond what’s
there, and that just because they don’t bring certain awarenesses
up doesn’t mean that they’re speaking for everybody in the state.
Dr. Richardson: Agreed. But it occurred on the for, both to and
Dr. Bailey: Kathryn?
Kathryn Flynn, Secretary –elect: Dr. Richardson, I’d like to ask for
some clarification on the three you gave time dates. You said the AU system, program review and
academic issues. Is the AU system the
AU-AUM issue or is that the Ag reorganization?
Does the Ag reorganization fall under academic issues?
Dr. Richardson: That’s a separate one. That’s a separate issue. AU system deals with Auburn-Auburn-Montgomery
primarily.
Dr. Flynn: So does the Ag reorganization fall
under the academic issue or goal of April ’06?
Dr. Richardson: It has two parts. The first part deals with the organization
that is an institute of, if that’s the way we go, which would be in the
fall. Any programs/departments issues
would be decided by April of ’06.
Dr. Flynn: Thank you very much.
Dr. Richardson: Thank you.
Werner
Dr. Richardson: Well, as you know, that is
complicated by a due process and I don’t need two deans, so I’ve got to wait
until that clears out, to be frank, and I think John Jensen-John, do you want
to help in dealing with that? We do
have, I think, Dr. Guthrie on for what, John?
Yes sir, this John…we’ve got a lot of Johns around here….
Dr. Bailey: Please take the microphone so
people can hear you…Thank you.
Dr. Richardson: It’s a good question and I think
they can probably answer it better than I could.
Dr. John Heilman, Interim Provost: Thank you very much, Dr.
Richardson. Over the past several weeks,
I’ve met twice with department heads and some faculty representatives from the
College of Agriculture to talk about providing leadership for that unit and for
the Experiment Station and the initial step in doing that was to secure the
agreement for which I’m most grateful, of Richard Guthrie to act in those
capacities for a period of roughly two months.
It’s my expectation that either at the latter part of this week or
during the following week, I’ve asked Steve McFarland in the Provost’s office
to help coordinate this, that we’ll initiate a search for a term person to fill
those positions. That will be an
internal search and the model for that will be what was done with the term
provost position, also the term Dean of Education position, a search for which
is currently under way and I hope will be concluded by the end of this month.
Dr. Richardson: So then, you think the search will
be concluded by the end of June?
Dr. Heilman: Not in Agriculture, no. It would have to run into July, but that’s my
expectation.
Dr. Richardson: Does that answer your
question? Thank you.
Dr. Bailey: Thank you, John.
Dr. Heilman: Thank you.
Dr. Bailey: Are there any other questions for
Dr. Richardson?
Dr. Richardson: Thank you very much.
Dr. Bailey: All right, thank you very much, Dr.
Richardson. I’d like to make a few
announcements from the Chair before inviting Dr. Heilman to come forward.
The Senate
Executive Committee and the Rules Committee and the Steering Committee have
been very active in this last month, since last we met. The Rules Committee in particular have been
meeting many hours each week trying to staff University and Senate
Committees. We’re making progress; we’re
not there yet as Dr. Duffy keeps reminding us and is the Queen of Rules
Committee and is keeping us all on track.
We hope to bring forward to the Senate at our next meeting in July
recommendations to staff the Senate Committees, to get approval for as many as
we can, hopefully all of them, so that those committees, including such
important committees as the Academic Program Review Committee of the University
Senate can get started right away with the fall term.
Executive
Committee has been in contact with a number of partners within the University
Senate and beyond within the last month.
We have been in contact with John Tatum.
Is John here today? We’ve been in
contact also with the Graduate Student Council and our new president of the GSC
is Zach Bryant, who is over here.
Welcome, Zach. Glad to have you
with us. We’ve also met with Andy
Hornsby, the president of the Auburn Alumni Association. One of the things I made mention of when I
set out a statement of interest for this position as senate chair was to
maintain and strengthen the close working relationships on campus with our
alumni and with particular the close relations that have grown the last few
years with alumni and faculty, so I’m glad to report that we’re still both on
the same track with Andy Hornsby in position.
This Friday, the Executive Committee is going to spend a little quality
time with Dr. Richardson talking about matters of mutual interest, I’m sure and
perhaps of things relating to the Board of Trustees Meeting.
The
Steering Committee also has been meeting every week. This is sort of the Executive Committee, the
expanded version of the Executive Committee and acts for the Senate when the
Senate is not in session. The Steering
Committee has a website, go to the Senate website and track it down through
Senate Committees; if you got there you’ll find we’ve got a website with
minutes of our Steering Committee meetings.
We’re trying to be transparent.
Important and interesting things happen at the Steering Committee. We’re going to be, for example, I hope this
week, finalizing some details on the Ombudsperson position, some of you may
remember that-we’ve been talking about that for a while, and a couple of other
“golden oldies”: the Electronic Privacy Policy-I’m hoping to finalize details
on that this week and the other popular Intimate Relations Policy, which has
been a subject of discussion between Senate leadership, the A&P Assembly
and Staff Council and I think we have, we’re moving toward common ground and
understanding how’s the best way forward.
Steering Committee also discussed a new program some of you have seen in
AU Daily called Ethics Point. It’s an electronic through the web system
whereby whistleblowers on campus anonymously can report issues of financial
irregularities and related ethics matters and/or possible NC2A violations to a
firm based-called Ethics Point-based in
Executive
Committee has also been meeting very regularly with our Provost, John
Heilman. We’ve had very productive and
quite lengthy discussions with Dr. Heilman, who has also been attending all of
the Steering Committee meetings. The
Provost, by definition, is also a member of the Steering Committee. So the upshot is that Dr. Heilman has been
meeting with the Senate leadership-both the Executive Committee and Steering-on
a weekly basis and there’s been a lot of email exchange as well, so I think
it’s fair to say that the opportunities for interaction and the channels for
communication are very open and I’m very thankful for that, John. I think that’s a very good step and it
reflects, I think, what we have before us today at this particular juncture,
which is really a fantastic, a great opportunity for shared governance. It’s our responsibility as faculty to step
forward.
We’re going
to be talking today about two issues that reflect this opportunity. One is the Academic Program Review and the
other is the Strategic Planning Exercise.
Given our recent history, these are phrase that quicken the pulse but I
think that they are also very important for our university. We have a history that leads that pulse to
quicken when we talk about Academic Program Review and Strategic Planning. But I don’t think we have to be bound to that
history. We can’t forget the history,
but I think we can move beyond it and I think working with Dr. Heilman that we
have in place people who are willing and dedicated to that work. So I encourage you all to pay attention, be
involved, remain ever vigilant and critical as I know we all will be, but also to
take as a opportunity what we have at this juncture, to get engaged,
constructively engaged.
With regard
to the Academic Program Review, some of you may have seen the newspaper today
and I was quoted rather Polly Anna-ish, don’t quote me
please, Jack, on that-taking perspective that all is for the best and the best
of all possible worlds-Dr. Pangloss's dictum. We may not quite be there, but we’re moving
certainly in that direction. The provost
has made it very clear that we are undertaking a faculty-driven process. We are going to be using a Senate standing
committee to lead this process and I don’t what else we can ask of the
administration other than that. Art
Chappelka, are you here? Art is the
Chair of that committee. Art has met
with Dr. Heilman, Art and I met with Dr. Heilman and then Dr. Heilman met with
the Academic Program Review Committee.
It was a 5pm meeting in the middle of last week and we had a quorum. Most people, most members of the committee
were there. This gives me heart, a level
of engagement that I hope we can sustain in this coming year. And Dr. Heilman is going to talk to you a
little bit further about this topic of Academic Program Review. Before he does, though, let me mention, and
thank you, actually most of the senators were involved in the first phase of
the Strategic Plan that Bill Souser, John Heilman and John Jensen
organized. I was very impressed by the
serious intent in all of your eyes, for those of you who were at that, and that
was most of the senators; as you took part in this initial scoping
process. As you may know, the original,
the initial raw data is all up there on the web and I would encourage each of
you to do what I’m hoping to get done in the next day or so, which the company
that we hired to lead this process has already done, to take these 1200 or so
comments and distill them down into the most meaningful number-20,30,12,42-and
discover what you think comes out of all of these meetings, all of this raw
material. And Bill is going to talk to
us also about the Strategic Plan.
We also
have on the agenda two other reports.
Linda Glaze is going to talk about Core Curriculum matters and Jim
Groccia is going to present the preliminary draft of a report of an Ad Hoc
Committee that my predecessor, Willie Larkin, formed on mentoring Junior
Faculty. Before I invite Dr. Heilman
forward, let me ask if there are any questions from the floor. If you have any, please take a position at
the mike at the side. John, I see no
respite, so please if I may invite you forward.
Dr. John Heilman, Interim Provost: Conner, thank you very much. And before talking about Academic Program
Review, I’d like to just to note that I agree strongly with and appreciate what
Conner said about this being a moment of opportunity. It really is and for my part I’d like to say
that I’m very grateful for all the energy and effort that Conner and the other
members of the Senate leadership have put into, I think I’m quoted in this morning’s
paper as saying that ‘university and senate committees are a lost continent of
shared governance’, and in a way, I think that’s true. There is tremendous opportunity for it and I
know that it’s always been difficult because we all have busy schedules to
recruit folks to serve on committees and Conner, I know that you and the other
senate leadership have worked very hard to do that and I’m most grateful. Also, for the effort that you put into
recruiting members of the senate and others to attend the Strategic Planning
sessions, if the ideas don’t come from you, then what I hope will be a high
standard of legitimacy and authenticity that the process that Bill Sauser is leading, I think that stands to be weakened, so I
appreciate your participation very much.
With respect to Academic Program Review, Dr. Richardson has established
this as one of his six program initiatives.
It can mean a lot of things. At
root, what I think Dr. Richardson is asking for, I think what you’re asking
for, Dr. Richardson, is a set of criteria and a schedule for the periodic
review of academic programs and as Conner said, I felt it is very important to
work to engage the faculty in this process, for this process to be faculty
driven and to make use of a standing Senate committee to do that, which is the
Academic Program Review Committee, chaired by Art Chappelka. As Conner described, we’ve already spent a
pretty fair amount of time in meeting and some of you may have observed,
directly and indirectly, that my schedule is pretty crowded and it is and these
are some of the meetings that are filling it up but I think that they’re highly
worthwhile and I believe it’s a highly productive use of time. As Dr. Richardson mentioned a few moments
ago, I think there is some hope and expectation on his part that we’d have something
to talk to the Board about in terms of criteria and a schedule by the end of
this calendar year, which would mean the November Board Meeting. With respect to Academic Program Review, I’d
like simply to offer that there are good reasons to do this. Very importantly, if it’s done thoughtfully,
it can help us to improve the quality of our programming and I believe that is
something that is intrinsically part of the
Dr. Bailey: Does anybody have any questions for
Dr. Heilman?
Rik Blumenthal,
Chemistry/Biochemistry:
Just one quick question: You mentioned earlier, the last time you were talking
about this in front of the Senate that you didn’t think there was probably any
need for reviewing programs that already had their own regular accreditation
process. Is that sort of still an idea
or do you think every program should go through the….
Dr. Heilman: Rik, quite honestly I don’t recall
having said exactly that. If I did, I
may have said it and the record will reveal that I did. I think the way I would respond to that is I
understand completely that many of our programs and probably half of our
colleges go through a regular and very intense accreditation process. That’s true also of some programs that are
within colleges or within departments.
Whatever an academic program review process should be, it should not be
uselessly redundant or repetitive, of course, unproductive additional
work. I do think, and in fact I think
Dr. Richardson and I spoke about this, this morning or yesterday afternoon, the
kinds of questions that we would want an academic program review to address,
including at the level of colleges, may be questions that can be picked up
easily out of the work done in these national accreditation processes. In speaking in summary ways, perhaps, some of
the things that Board members and others out in the community would like to
know about our programs-how many students are we enrolling, how many are we
graduating, what are our objectives-I think that having a process that can extend
over all units of the university to ensure that there is a consistent set of
criteria or questions that we answer based on them will be useful. Should that be structured to as to maximize
the benefit or leverage that we get out of national accreditation processes,
absolutely. I hope that’s helpful. Thank you.
Dr. Bailey: Thank you. Are there any other questions for Dr.
Heilman? Everybody seems just as happy
as we are. Thanks.
Ok, may I
invite Dr. Bill Sauser forward to talk to us about
the Strategic Planning Process under way?
Dr. Bill Sauser,
Some of
what we have in the PowerPoint is information I’ve already discussed and I
don’t want to go over it in great detail.
Let’s see…I’m gonna push a button and see what happens…here we go! These are the purposes and I talked to you
about this last time so I won’t go over it in great detail. We’re trying to define the University’s
direction. Where is the university
going? We’re seeking to define the
university’s direction with a limited set of long-term goals. Why limited?
So that we’re not seeking to be all things to all people all the
time. Why priority? Because our resources don’t allow us to do
everything for everyone all the time, so we have to make some choices and some
decisions. Where is the university
going? That’s what our purpose is, to
make those recommendations for those decisions.
Can you see there four of the key purposes that I talked about last
time?
Parameters
that we started with, again, I’ve shown you this slide already-based on the
mission statement. That doesn’t mean we
can’t take a look at that mission statement and make suggestions. In fact, in all four of the forums we’ve had
suggestions on how to take a look at the mission statement, the vision, the
values of the university and so forth.
Very, very good feedback, I think.
Take into account the six initiatives, where they fit into the process,
not seeking to force the issues and initiatives into the process nor to ignore
them, but see where they fit in, focus on a five-year rolling plan arising and
involve a broad cross-section of the Auburn community. We mean students, alumni, and other
stakeholders as well. Certainly as
faculty, administrators, professionals and staff.
We’re seeking
to set out six to eight overarching goals.
It’s nothing magic about six to eight, it might be five or it might be
nine, but the idea is a limited number, a finite number that we can put our
hands around. In psychological research,
the magic number 7 plus or minus 2 comes to mind. What that means is in our short-term memory
or thinking process, we can usually manipulate between five and nine things at
once, once you get beyond that, you have to start writing them down and looking
at them individually.
We need to
translate our plan into action. Our
focus is to be finished by the fall of 2005, as Dr. Richardson wants to present
these overarching goals to the Trustees at the November meeting and of course,
we want to lead to immediate action following that.
This is the
timeline I presented to you when I met with you the last time; that in May
we’re going to put together a broad based strategy team. We had a 104 people participating in those
forums, so I think it was quite broad based.
We’re in the process now of whittling them down and I’ll show you how
that’s being done. In July we’ll
continue to receive feedback from all members of the
Here’s
progress to date: we presented this process to the Trustees on April 22nd and
to the Senate on May 3rd. We held three
broad based forums. On May 24th we had a
number of people participating. Hundreds
of questions, comments and ideas were received during those forums. We put together a Strategic Planning website. I want to thank Mike Clardy for this. Mike is not here. Mike worked up until the day he left the
country, and he is coming back! He
worked, he was scheduled to take a trip out of country and he worked until the
day he departed putting our website together.
He made it live the day that he left and as soon as he comes back, he’s
going to finish up some of the links.
But I do want you to see this is the URL. You can reach our webpage and all of the
information that we’ve collected to date there.
We’re also going to see that, I believe, in tomorrow’s AU Daily. Again, Mike managed to run it right before he
left town. You’re going to see it, I
believe, tomorrow, with the announcement of the results of the fourth forum
also included. So we have that
particular website up. The results of
the first three forums were posted to the website and were announced on May 27th. I ask you, please, to look at those, to kind
of work through them yourself. There’s a
lot of them. I’ve read every comment. I ask you to look at those and see what it is
your colleagues are thinking. You’ll be
impressed with what you read. There’s a
lot of good ideas and thoughts there and it’s very clear as you read through
them, there are certain things that keep emerging time after time.
We had a
fourth forum on June 2nd. Its
results, I believe, are going to be posted; I think they’ve already been posted
today, so you’ll be seeing those as well.
We put
together a 12-person Ad Hoc Steering group, and I’ll show you the membership of
that group in just a moment. These are
persons who’ve shown extraordinary interest in the process and so we’ve asked
them to be involved in putting it together and following it through. Group Solutions is the consulting firm that
we’re working with. They’ve helped us
considerably. They’ve already provided
one draft summary of the four forums.
That was provided to us yesterday and this Ad Hoc steering group is
reviewing them. Consultant language is
not always the same as academic language, so we’re working on the way the
questions and comments are worded so that all of us know what we’re talking
about. And we’re to send the comments
back by June 10th and then those will be posted as well for
everybody to see.
This is the
Ad Hoc Steering group and these people have worked pretty hard so I want to thank
them. Conner, Brett Boston is one of our
consultants, Drew Clark, Don Hatchel, Vern Herr is another of our consultants,
Harriette Huggins, Willie Larkin, Renee Middleton, Richard Penaskovic, myself,
John Veres from AUM and David Wilson.
We’re going to be adding several deans to this group because I think
it’s extremely important that the deans be involved in every aspect of this
process. And there will be others as
well. But this Ad Hoc group is reviewing
what was put together, working on the language and their own schemata and we’ll
see what comes from that.
Trustees
have been invited to provide input.
They’ve been invited to provide that input individually. They’re not going to be having a meeting or a
forum, but rather those who wish to give me a list of questions are invited to
do so and that letter went out. I have
several of them who’ve expressed an interest in providing questions. Those questions would be fed into the process
just as those that everyone else has made.
We’re going to hold a meeting the week of the 20th to further
edit these questions. The meeting will
include that Ad Hoc steering group that I just showed you plus other
representatives from all four forums.
And I did mention, we will have at least one dean who’s at each of the
forums involved in that process.
Plans for
July: We’re going to post the questions
on the web. We’re going to invite your
comments; send us in what you think, how do they need to be reworded, worked
on. This is the vetting process; Mike
Moriarty suggested this. Mike, thank you
very much. We’re going to have them out
for everybody to see. We’re going to
provide this finalized set of draft questions to Dr. Richardson. It’s his process and what he approves, which
I think will be forthcoming quickly, and then we’ll begin the second phase of
the process.
You’ve seen
this-this is Step 2, what we’re going to seek to do in August-is hold more
forums. That’s where others of you will
have the opportunity to be involved.
More web surveys. We’re going to
be focusing on answering the questions.
September we’re going to try to draft the plan and put it together and
have it in front of people. We’ll be
seeking more feedback in October, and in November we’ll have in the President’s
hands our recommended goals for him then to, in turn, present to the Board of
Trustees. We’re very much on target to
meet our November deadline because of the great help that I’m getting from
everyone who I’ve asked. I really
appreciate that.
That’s
pretty much where we stand. In the
spring, this is what I showed you last time as well. In the spring, once we have those goals, we
can use them as benchmarks for putting together implementation plans, operating
plans, and so forth. In June the
President will report on progress toward each goal and also recommend the plans
and the budget to the Trustees. I think
that’s enough presentation. I’d be glad
to deal with any questions, if there are any.
Dr. Bailey: Does anybody have any questions for
Dr. Sauser?
Patricia Duffy, Senate Secretary: If there are faculty members or
others who are unable to attend the sessions that have taken place but who
would like to provide input in terms of framing the questions, how can they do
that?
Dr. Sauser: They are welcome to certainly send
the questions to me and I will put them into the process. Also we’re going to be moving toward the
answers, so when we post these questions, that’s the time anyone is invited to
give feedback, but even now, if now you have questions you would like to submit
into the process and suggestions, please email them to me. My email address as well as John Heilman’s
and John Jensen’s appears on the website, with a nice little direct link. Feel free to mail any of them to me and I
will put them into the process for you.
Thank you.
Dr. Bailey: Any other questions? While John is moving to the microphone, let
me also note that there is a link to the Strategic Planning website at the
Senate website. John…
Dr. Heilman: Thank you very much, Conner. John Heilman, not a member of the
Senate. Bill, this is a follow-up on an
email I sent you yesterday. I simply
point to a question to perhaps think about so this may be more of a statement
than a question. I’ll make it very
brief. I met yesterday with the deans
and we talked about the strategic planning process in very much the terms that
you’ve described. One of the
observations that was made was, as you’ll recall, as you work through the early
phases of designing the strategic planning process, there were components that
spoke to the future environment which Auburn will seek to flourish, in which we
will succeed, more or less, we hope more, in terms of achieving the goals that
the strategic planning process sets forward and in which, and it is that future
context, that presumably will frame and give vitality to the goals that we
establish. Sometimes there are
references to strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats in the environment. It’s half a question and half a statement; I
think it might be good if we could find a way to integrate into the thinking
that has already been done about what we see locally as the questions that we
want to have answered; what the character of the environment is going to be
five to ten years from now and that may help sharpen and frame how we ask the
questions and how we come up with the answers.
Dr. Sauser: Let me comment on that, if I
might. Originally, when we were mulling
over the particular process to use, we had considered half a dozen focus
groups, not of the type we just heard described, but rather more like the
forums we were talking about. Looking at
the aspects of the environment, because the purpose of strategic planning is to
position the organization to thrive in the environment of the future. That means we need to know what that
environment is. So we have proposed
demographic and political and economical, technological and several other
aspects of the environment. The process
that we are working under did not give us enough time to do that step as well,
but the good news is that broadening the input from folks on the faculty and
throughout the campus, I think we’re able to touch on a lot of those
issues. But even more importantly,
recall that this is the beginning of a process.
We talked about a rolling five year plan and certainly one
recommendation that I would make is that every year we consider at least one of
these aspects of the environment to determine, another was the natural and
built environment, for example, to take a look at that and see what impact
that’s going to have on the university so that we can roll that into the
plan. All suggestions are welcome and
John is certainly correct in that we need to focus on the future.
Dr. Bailey: Dr. Richardson…
Dr. Richardson: Thank you. Bill, one of the concerns that I have with
the process and I wanted you to address it for the faculty, this is my view,
the strategic plan becomes a policy of all policies for a Board of Trustees to
adopt. One of my initial concerns was
that we would come up with something that looked good to us that the Board
rejected, which I think would be a real setback. And I believe you’re taking steps to be sure
we keep the two in close discussion so that we can avoid that potential problem
and I thought it would be good to describe that.
Dr. Sauser: That is true. That’s one of the reasons why the trustees
are invited to participate in the process.
We don’t want to exclude them because they are going to be making
decisions about it. I have seen the results,
the preliminary results of what we call the “boil-down” of all the issues and
I’ll tell you, there’s some great strategic things that are going to be in
there. I would be very surprised if we
started getting questions from the trustees that were a variance of what we’re
already seeing from the rest of the university community. What I’m trying to keep them very much
informed of through the President and through personal contact so that they’ll
know what’s going on, so that they’ll feel like they’re a part of what’s going
on because the plan comes to them for decision making.
Dr. Bailey: Thank you. Any other questions for Dr.
Sauser?
Sadik
Tuzun, Entomology/Plant Pathology:
Now I understand the way that you are trying to do this, developing a set of
questions and trying to answer them as best as we can do. But I wonder by just looking at the questions
and trying to answer them, we will be losing time because we will need
proposals to present to the Board with recommendations. I wonder if we should be seeking proposals at
the same time, by maybe looking at the initial questions when you get it,
seeking proposals from faculty and administrators; how we can make a better
Dr. Sauser: That’s a great suggestion and of
course, you were one of the participants in the forum and I thank you. We had lots of answers come forward to the
questions as they were being asked. It’s
very difficult to pose a question and not seek to present an idea, so certainly
you are correct. Throughout the process,
ideas are being solicited and as we put together answers to the questions,
we’re not gonna throw out or drop the information we’ve already received. We’ve already received lots of very good
proposals of what we should be doing to focus ourselves strategically and all
of that information is going to be folded into the process. It’s not going to be lost and I do invite
you, if you do have proposals and ideas, after you read through these
discussions, feel free to send them to me and include them in the process. Thanks for mentioning that.
Dr. Bailey: Thank you. Are there any other questions? Ok, before inviting Linda forward to make a
presentation, let me mention that this Ad Hoc Steering Committee-a person that
I’ll leave nameless made a very interesting point. It says: “When we take this 1200 or so points
and distill them down to a very much smaller set, we’re going to lose certain
emotional content and that this emotional content is, in fact, very important.” It’s very clear that the faculty, Staff Advisory
Council, A&P, everybody who took part in this process, it was very intense,
really got involved in this process, a lot of emotional content in those 1200
or so comments and questions, and that’s not going to be lost. The Steering Committee is aware of that and
thanks to that person who made that point, who shall remain anonymous until
they disclose that themselves-ah, wasn’t me-and I wish I had come up with that
idea because it’s a great idea, and it’s important that you understand this
because we’re going to be distilling things down and they’re going to be a
little antiseptic in the fact that when you distill things down
inevitably. But that emotional content
is going to be communicated to senior administration so that the folks that are
directing this in an administrative manner at this institution understand the
level of commitment that we who work here have to this university. I think that’s a very important point.
Dr. Sauser: A very important point.
Dr. Bailey: So, Bill, thank you very much. Linda, may I invite you forward please to talk
about the Core Curriculum Committee?
Dr. Linda Glaze, Chair of Core
Curriculum Oversight Committee:
Good afternoon. I’m Linda Glaze and I
chair the Core Curriculum Oversight Committee.
Last fall and in January I attended many Senate meetings and Board
meetings and I would hear Dr. Richardson talk about part of the Academic Review
process should be a review of the core curriculum and I realized that I didn’t
think he realized that there was a Core Curriculum Oversight Committee and I
also didn’t think that the Senate realized that the Core Curriculum Oversight
Committee was a very active and functioning committee, so I contacted Willie
Larkin and Conner Bailey and asked them to be placed on the agenda so that I
could at least share with you the activities of the Core Curriculum Oversight
Committee, because it is a very, what I would call a very dedicated
enthusiastic group of faculty and the reason I say that is we meet Friday
mornings at 8 o’clock.
Today I’d
like to share with you the outcomes and the status of what our work is on the
assessment and review of the core curriculum.
And first of all, I’d like to in one sentence summarize that prior to
1999, the Core Curriculum Oversight Committee did conduct some evaluations and
reviews of components of the core, but they focused on a review of textbooks,
sample syllabi, grade distributions, student comments, but did not focus on
student learning outcomes. In between or
during the academic years 1999-2004, we shifted the emphasis of our study of
the core curriculum onto student learning outcomes and principally we did that
because we were aware of what was the content of the SACS’ criteria. In fact, I had attended my first annual
meeting of SACS in December of 1998 and after going to a couple of workshops,
especially on General Education and hearing what was happening at peer
institutions, I came back to Auburn and I realized we were in deep trouble
because we had not even begun to think about the assessment of general
education. I want to point out what the
criteria are that we focused on during our assessment activities during that
five year period and these are the crucial “must statements” of those of you
that worked on the self-study:
First of all the institution must
develop guidelines and procedures to evaluate educational effectiveness,
including the quality of student learning and of research and service. This evaluation must encompass educational
goals at all academic levels.
That was
interpreted not only to talk about degree programs evaluation, but also general
education was perceived as a program, even though it is part of a degree
program. The other key statement and
criteria was that:
An institution must demonstrate that
its graduates of degree programs are competent in reading, writing, oral
communication, fundamental mathematical skills and the basic use of computers.
In other
words, we needed to document with data why Auburn University stated that our
graduates were competent in these areas and because many of those skills are
included in the core curriculum, it was the role of the Core Curriculum
Oversight Committee to present documentation, and in fact, we did this, and
that has been the focus of our work over the last five years.
In the fall
of 2004, we were no longer having to worry about the SACS’ criteria as a
motivation for our evaluation and assessment of the core curriculum and even
though we must continue to consider what SACS says in terms of general
education evaluation, the pressure is off in the sense that we have nine years,
and not two or three, to produce three or four years of data. And so we decided to step back and look at
what did the committee want it to be its agenda. And so, in the fall we started looking at the
Science component of the Core Curriculum.
And then, by the end of, uh, whoops!
Too many buttons! I’m too fast. I’m used to using the laptop; this is my
first day with one of these fancy equipment.
But anyway, what happened is at the end of fall semester, the Provost
met with the Core Curriculum Oversight Committee and gave us a charge of doing
what he called an ‘AVEX-style evaluation of the core curriculum’, which meant
that we were supposed to come up with a constituency group. Well, one of the constituency groups we
thought was the faculty of
And then we
were at a standstill in the sense that is that our charge and so, after
discussing that, we decided we would bold and we would say ‘Yes that is our
charge. We’re the best committee to do
that. We will make a recommendation to
the Senate, but we will start and that will be the focus of our
discussion.’ We went from there, we went
to what I would call the development of the conceptual model of an
undergraduate education and to do that, we looked at statements about general
education at other institutions who had gone forward and established goals for
undergraduate education. We looked and
went back, and as we worked through and discussed the issues, I was reminded of
the work of the Directions Committee, on which I had served on several, and
John Heilman is smiling-but I spent a lot of time serving on the Instructional
Directions Committee and then we started something new. So I did find in my files the goals that had
been established by that committee. I
found the email and so I forwarded that to the committee and we used that. We also went and talked about what the
previous work of other core curriculum oversight committees had done on the
area of student learning outcomes, and we came up with what we call the conceptual
model of an undergraduate education. And
this is not, and this is it. I didn’t
want to give it in a written report because when you have a picture in terms, I
wanted to be able to explain it to you.
First of all, I think it’s very interesting when we started what we
considered our conceptual model, we started with five goals and we discussed
those five goals. We also started with
five goals in a line and it became very clear, we didn’t want to say one was
more important than another, so that’s why we came up with the idea of a circle
and these are not my drawings, this is the work of Mary Goodman, who’s a
faculty member on the committee and she put together the thoughts of the
committee. We started, as I said, we
started from five goals. We changed and
came up with six goals then we added a seventh goal. We changed the wording in almost all of what
I call the little bubbles except for one and that was we were all in agreement
of the wording “effective communication”.
The other
issue that we wanted to communicate was that from our perspective, an
undergraduate education in terms of these goals, are not necessarily just the
role of the core curriculum, especially when you talk about the skills. In other words, through the core curriculum,
students may begin the foundation of effective communication through writing,
but over the years, faculty have frequently said, as we tried to come to the
way to access the core, that students need to be writing and more than English
Composition. They should be writing in
every course they take. And so that is
why we wanted to go from the conceptual, from the idea that it is not just the
responsibility of the core to add to the result of these goals of an
undergraduate education. We also wanted
to take into consideration that it is not just classroom experience and the one
that we thought was very important is on the issue of when we talk about the
core value for diversity and the language we used from the Strategic Diversity
Plan and we selected global perspectives and multicultural understanding. The committee did not feel that it was solely
the responsibility of the core; that there are other venues in addition where
those goals can be achieved. And so that
is why we’ve come up with what we call the goals of an undergraduate education
and this is the conceptual model. We
spent a lot of time on this, we did many-I have many, many examples-but the
reason I wanted to bring this to you today-I don’t want you to vote on it-but I
want it to be a source of discussion in conversation in your departments as you
start looking at your degree programs because the committee basically in going
back to the question that Dr. Richardson had asked: “What should be the
criteria?”, this is where we think we should go. First of all, we would like the endorsement
of the model by the university community.
This is the first step. I don’t
know how this will work into the academic program review, but it is important. I don’t want, and the faculty on the
committee doesn’t want to be spending lots of Friday mornings at 8 o’clock if
the university community is not behind us in saying ‘Yes, we think that
basically this is the concept of an undergraduate education.’
Then the
next step that the committee would take is once we have that endorsement, and
I’m looking toward the fall, that then the committee would map the current
components of the core curriculum to the goals that we’ve established and we
would look and see, are the components related to the goals that we say are the
outcomes of our undergraduate education.
The third
thing is how we would look at how we would go about an academic review of the
core curriculum. Then we thought we
should do is review the specific core courses in terms of the goals of an AU
undergraduate education. In other words,
courses that currently are part of the core-how do the departments see that
they provide; that they line up with these goals?
And
finally, what the committee would do is we would go back and refine the
specific learning outcomes in view of these goals and why we use that
conceptual model is because one of the other schools that we looked at, is we
thought under those, the overarching goals, then that is where we would put the
link to specific learning outcomes and that would be the focus of our
assessment plan. One thing, as I said, I
called this after SACS; I do want to point out, that as we start a dialogue on
the core curriculum, I wanted to point out what the new criteria, they are now
called the Principles for Accreditation for General Education and basically they
are the same in that we’re required to do assessment of general education. I assume it will not be under my watch but I
do want to leave the university in good shape so that the next person will not
have to do what we have worked so hard to do in the last few years, but
basically these are the two main criteria.
First of all, the institution requires each undergraduate degree
program, the successful completion of a general education component at the
collegiate level. That it is a
substantial component of each undergraduate degree, that it ensures breadth of
knowledge and it based on a coherent rationale.
The other part of that is that the courses do not narrowly focus on
those skills, techniques, procedures specific to a particular occupation or
profession. The last and other component
of that is that the institution, in other words, the difference is if you were
called especially as we were all going through the semester of transition, and
that degree programs were required to talk about oral competency and computer
skills as a SACS criteria. Those are not
specific SACS criteria anymore. What the
criteria states is that the institution identifies collegiate or college level competencies
within the general education core and provides evidence that students have
attained those competencies.
So in the
next round, in our work with the assessment, the first thing we have to
determine is, the first thing we need to determine, is what the goals are. That is the end of my report and I’m going to
give that so that Patricia can put that out on the web. I want to give you the names of the members
of the committee. I don’t know if we
need any volunteers. I don’t know that
we’ll be meeting at 8 on Friday, but that has been the only time that we’ve
been able to find that everybody was available.
I also included in the group Jim Groccia, who is the director of the
Dr. Bailey: Thank you, Linda. Does anybody have any questions for
Linda? While you’re thinking if you do,
let me note what I should have said first, which is I’m probably not as
grateful as Dr. Heilman is for Linda’s staying on, but I’ve come in the last
year to realize there are some unsung heroes that work in Samford Hall and
elsewhere as well, and Linda is one of them and she was really looking forward
to getting back into the faculty ranks this year and was prevailed upon, I have
no idea what Dr. Heilman pulled, but I’m sure it was rewarding in some fashion
or other, but anyway, but Linda, I don’t know how Dr. Heilman would manage the
next months without you agreeing to stay on, so thank you very much. Does anybody have any questions for Linda? (Applause)
The last
presentation, also on an academic subject, is by Jim Groccia. One of the most important things we do as
academicians in our departments is recruit faculty and some departments are
pretty good at mentoring junior faculty and others maybe not so much, as a
famous American would say. So Jim
Groccia is going to talk to us about an Ad Hoc Committee. This is not a matter for voting right now,
but I understand that Jim will be coming back to us at a future date with a
report and asking for our adoption.
Right now, this is an opportunity for input and guidance from the
senate. So please, Jim….
Dr. Jim Groccia: Good afternoon. I’ll try to be succinct but thorough. The Ad Hoc Committee on Junior Faculty
Mentoring was chartered by Willie Larkin in the last Senate
administration. Our charge was briefly,
I’ll just summarize this quickly:
The purpose of the Junior Faculty
Mentoring Program is to enhance
Committee
was comprised of these faculty members.
We met on a number of occasions in the spring semester. I would like to preface this report by just
reading to you the following statement by Professor Marjorie Olmsted from the
Department of Physics at the
“The myriad of new opportunities and
responsibilities that burst upon a brand new faculty member can be both
exhilarating and overwhelming. Almost
overnight, a new faculty member is faced with brand new courses to teach, a
laboratory empty of both equipment and students, implicit departmental taboos
and traditions, insufficient funding and demands for one’s time coming in from
all sides. On top of this, there is
considerable personal upheaval-finding a new home, adjusting to a
The above
problems have always faced new faculty; however the problems have been
magnified recently. In many departments,
it has been 5-10 years since the last tenure track hire in a given subfield and
the old expectations may not be appropriate for current hires. In the intervening years, funds have become
much more difficult to obtain and maintain and the technical sophistication and
capital time required to start a competitive research program from scratch have
increased dramatically. In addition,
pressure for improving teaching and research at universities is changing the
traditional balance. When a department
makes a new hire at the assistant professor level, it has invested one of its
most valuable resources, a tenure track faculty position. If the department does not nurture that new
professor, it greatly reduces the probability of a good return on that
investment. On the other hand, if the
department facilitates access to the knowledge and resources required to
develop a new faculty member’s career, the payoff is likely to be a valuable
colleague for many years. If a new
faculty member is successful, everyone benefits.
That
provides somewhat of a rationale for our deliberations. The committee, as I
said, met a number of times. We
distributed information to each other and read articles on mentoring, on
research on what new faculty across the country tells us they desire in terms
of support in mentoring. We reviewed
programs at other universities. We also
conducted a needs assessment survey of faculty.
We looked at faculty retention data at
We had
about a third of department chairs responded.
They said the mentoring programs that they’re currently aware of in
support focus mostly on research. They
were satisfied that new faculty were achieving tenure and promotion at a
justifiable rate. However, there was
strong support for a campus-wide faculty mentoring program. They stated that much more needed to be done
in terms of mentoring faculty on teaching and that interdepartmental
socialization and networking was an area that needed additional attention. So with that backdrop, we are ready to issue
some recommendations to the Senate. The
committee recommends continuation and expansion of a new faculty scholars
program that was piloted last year. We
had approximately 20 new faculty participate in this new program. It had four main components, a retreat and
some attention to course design principles, a year-long
colleague/interdepartmental mentoring program that was four or five junior
faculty meeting with senior faculty on a monthly basis to discuss issues that
they determined of importance to them.
There were a series of professional development seminars throughout the
year focusing on teaching, research, outreach and service and then a capstone
end of the year academic portfolio retreat that tried to tie up all this
information together that focused on helping faculty to identify what they did,
why they did it, how they did it and where they did it, to whom they did it and
what was the impact of that work again, in teaching, research, outreach and
service dimensions.
So the idea
is to expand that program, to make that available to more faculty. And the committee would like to make a budget
request that we would like to have some money to offer to faculty who
participate in that program, a small stipend for professional development
activities on the conclusion of the program.
Second
recommendation would be to provide some training for senior faculty on
mentoring. There’s enough research and
literature out there that indicates that there are some skills and abilities
that can be developed to be an effective mentor. We would like to provide that kind of
training to faculty, senior faculty who so desire it and the
And another
aspect of mentoring development would be to mentor our junior faculty on how to
mentor graduate students, which is an important part of the faculty member’s
responsibility here at
We would
like to recommend that some recognition, some award program, similar to what’s
currently available for teaching excellence and research excellence for
mentoring excellence. So we would like
to propose a recognition program for at least two faculty-senior faculty-who
are recognized on a yearly basis for exemplary mentoring service to junior
faculty.
And the
final recommendation is that we would like to continue this effort. We recommend that a standing committee be
established in the Senate to provide oversight and guidance to junior faculty
mentoring on a regular basis, to continue the research, to survey other
institutions as to what they’re doing, to do a periodic assessment of new
faculty needs when it comes to mentoring issues, to survey successful new
faculty, to bring the best practice and knowledge gained from them and share
that with others and also to include the Tenure and Promotion Committee more
integrally into the mentoring program.
So that is
in sum, the result of the semester long deliberations on junior faculty
mentoring. We would like to continue
this and we would hope for your support.
Dr. Bailey: Thank you, Jim. The report was
available as a link from the agenda from this month’s meeting, so you can take
this report back and we’ll probably put it up on our senate webpage as well so you
can share it with your faculty colleagues, please. Are there any comments for Jim,
questions? We do have one.
Rik Blumenthal,
Chemistry/Biochemistry:
Just one quick comment/question. When
after I was through with the tenure process, it was the first time I was asked
a question, I think it was by a former provost, who was my mentor. And I had to go back and ask my department
head. Now I will tell you my department
head would have said on your survey that we have an active mentoring
program. Somebody was supposed to be my
mentor apparently and I didn’t know it nor did he. But the report from the department head is
that supposedly we had a mentoring program.
I can also relate that we had a recent review of an upcoming tenured
faculty member and I asked the question before we started, ‘Who is this faculty
member’s mentor?’ and nobody in the room knew the answer. Um, and this is quite recent and our
department will tell you that we have a mentoring program, but in fact, I don’t
believe we do.
Dr. Bailey: Other comments or questions?
Commander Jeff Bohler,
Naval ROTC: I’m
substituting for Captain Tom Williams, who is a Senator and I’m also a PhD
student, so I’ve been interested in this from several different aspects. In the services, we have a fairly, Id’ like
to say robust, sponsor program for new people coming into the organization, and
we do as well in our unit for new lieutenants and instructors. When I first got here as a graduate student,
we also have in the
Dr. Groccia: No we haven’t. We’ve focused on higher education
primarily. I think that would be a very
good topic for the standing committee to explore in the future.
Dr. Bailey: Cindy?
Cindy Brunner, Pathobiology: Jim, just a quick question. What is your timeline on this report? You said you would like to have this approved
by the Senate.
Dr. Groccia: As soon as possible.
Cindy Brunner: Ok, by, uh, Conner, by next
meeting?
Dr. Groccia: It would be wonderful if this could
be discussed and deliberated and acted upon before the fall semester.
Cindy Brunner: Thank you.
Dr. Bailey: Ok, if there are no further
comments, let me ask if you please if you have comments that come to mind in
the hours and days and weeks ahead, please send them forward to Jim and we will
be dealing with this in the near future, if not the July then the September
meeting. I’ll ask that we probably not
meet in August. Is there any unfinished
business? I’m unaware of any. Is there any new business that anyone wishes
to bring before this body today? Hearing
none, I entertain a motion to adjourn.
Jim Groccia, ok, no discussion. I
declare this meeting adjourned. Thank
you very much.