Transcript of

Auburn University Senate Meeting

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 Bergen.  Any comments, corrections?  Hearing none, those in favor of approving the minutes of March 8th, signify by saying Aye.  Opposed, like sign.  The Ayes have it.  We also have the April minutes of the-we approved the April minutes at the last meeting.  We have the May minutes posted on the web and I’d like to entertain a motion to approve those minutes.  Jim Gravois moves, Rik Blumenthal seconds.  Are there any corrections to be made to the April or excuse me, the May minutes?  Hearing none, let me ask for a vote of approval.  Signify by saying Aye.  Opposed, like sign.  Thank you, the minutes are approved.

 

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 Auburn University system that I hope will be in place by the fall.  Obviously the Strategic Plan, some criteria for the Academic Program Review and so forth hopefully by November and hopefully some of the other major changes, particularly those that might pertain to Academics will be in April ’06.  I perhaps could have given you the specific date, but we just established the meeting dates for next year today and I just didn’t bring it with me, so sometime in April.

 

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 Auburn offered that was essential.  The first step was obviously to deal with the SACS issue, which took basically a year, which has been completed, with one other report to be given, but as far as I’m concerned is through.  Number two was to establish institutional control and to make sure that it was clearly understood that those within the university administration, that includes everyone here in this room and everywhere else, had the capacity and the will and the determination to administer this institution on a day-to-day basis.  So I wanted you to know that is the most difficult of the three steps and it is the one that will take more time.  I have, I’ll spare you the examples other than to say and for most of you already aware of this, that as I have met with a number of other presidents at the SEC Presidents’ Meeting last week and during other occasions, it becomes very clear to me that unless we resolve some of the problem issues that still exist, that these initiatives will address, then we have an environment that is very conducive to attracting and lead to the employment of and retaining for an extended period of time, a new president, that we could well move too quickly-I don’t mean that to unnecessarily to be delayed-but to move too quickly and then I believe it would then lead to someone that would run into some of these problem areas and would not be as successful as I would hope.  So what I’m going to do then in pushing these initiatives, and you can see by coming into April of ’06, we should have most of that on the table, is that I believe it will establish an atmosphere that’s critical.  I have over the years, and I’m sure some of you have, had people question, 'Why go to Alabama?' or 'Why work there?', and so I would say to you, that is just something we’ll have to deal with and I think it’s absolutely essential that the environment is such that I don’t believe it will be unnecessarily delayed although that’s why so much of it is being compacted into this next year.  So I believe those are the two reasons that justify the progressive moves.  I think that it will convey institutional control when we’re through and certainly I think it will be more attractive during the search for my replacement. 

 

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 Auburn University.  My point is we’ve never heard what the questions were or what the results were.  Considering that we’re now involved in Strategic Planning, I think it would be helpful if you released that information to us.

 

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 Auburn University has not fared well in the legislative process.  Therefore, we needed to bring together the University of Alabama as well as Auburn, because those are the two who can, I believe this past year demonstrated, and who could make something happen for higher education.  In that regard, the survey was university specific.  It was more addressed toward higher education.  As I said, like so many of my brilliant ideas that never get off the table, I really thought that economic development, I’m talking outside the university community now, the job creation would be two things that we could use with the legislature and could make a case for higher education.  In the first focus group, I was sitting in the other room watching it through the video and it became quite apparent to me in about 30 minutes that neither meant a thing to anybody in that room.  Research meant nothing to them; Higher Ed was not associated with economic development or job creation or anything, so my great ideas obviously went into a trash can right off the bat.  So what we’ve tried to do then is to then fashion our plan from what we learned there, and that is we obviously didn’t go in that direction.  So there was nothing there.  The only other thing I learned from it was that the people surveyed-now these were randomly selected people, some had college degrees, some were professional, some were single moms, some were retired federal employees, different types-is that they really did not distinguish among the institutions.  They saw no difference between Troy and the University of Alabama, nor Montevallo and Auburn.   So that was another issue that Alabama and I have considered and continue to consider as to how we can make some differentiation between those levels of higher education, as I’ve spoken before, we have four levels in Alabama and it’s very difficult when none trusts the other, so that’s really about what we found and we ended up abandoning what I thought was a great idea and it was university specific other than what I just described and both University of Alabama and Auburn paid for it, it was about $15,000 each to do it, so about $30,000.  So that’s about it.  Dr. Blumenthal?

 

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 Montgomery and Birmingham-I think that’s a stretch and I would certainly stand corrected.  We allowed the company that did the polling to do the selection and you are certainly correct.  Whatever, however we would describe that group-those four groups-the results came out that way and we felt under those circumstances, I wouldn’t say that is relating to the survey, we do not intend to do a survey this year because we’ve gathered some information, but the development of the agenda for the next legislative session to start next month.  So we’re in the process of trying to look at revenue estimates and then decide what Auburn and Alabama can best do.

 

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 Bergen, Animal Sciences: Dr. Richardson, the College of Agriculture, the faculty continues to be amazed at the lack of any direction in what’s going to happen in the Dean’s office.  Now we appreciate the fact that Richard Guthrie is appointed as Acting/Interim and many of us know Richard very well and I’m sure he’s doing an excellent job, but down the line, our college has suffered from a lack of, what I call malaise, like what we had during the Carter Administration.  The University of Georgia just hired a brand new dean for their College of Agriculture, Associate Director for the Experiment Station and Agriculture Dean of the University of Maryland.  This guy is going to come in and do all of these things-a really high profile movement.  We really need this in Agriculture as well.  Are we going to wait until you make structural changes or what is the plan for leadership of our unit?

 

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 Portland, OR.  There are a number of protections in place so that your anonymity-if you have something to report, a concern to report-will be protected.  Is Kevin Robinson here?  Kevin?  In fact, Kevin is the Executive Director of the internal Audit Office and if you have questions, he might be able to answer that.  While you’re thinking if you do or not, let me encourage you to go to the Internal Auditing website and look at the Ethics Point website link there.

 

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 Auburn spirit, which is something I take quite seriously and I think we all want.  As I said earlier, I think for the process to be done thoughtfully, it needs not only faculty engagement but also to be faculty driven.  I think the standing faculty Senate committee is an excellent forum to proceed in that regard.  We have met and indeed in fact, this committee, I believe, is hard at work and Art, I appreciate the leadership you’re providing very much.  Not to overdo this or to spend too much time on it, but I do think that proceeding through this committee is a positive example of shared governance.  I would note also that our peer institutions also have some system of academic program review in place, and they vary from place to place, but if we were not to proceed in this regard, we would be outliers.  I would note also that we also had a regular system of program review some 15 years ago.  I personally thought it was a very productive exercise, although I don’t know if any of the Political Scientists in the room who were here at that time, but in some ways, our department received some stern criticism which probably didn’t taste too good to us but I think was, had some truth to it.  In fact, I remember what it was; it was in fact the dilemma of the modern university.  We were trying to be all things to all people.  But that process was discontinued.  I do think there is a need to return to a process.  What options are there?  There is one that we do not want to, there is one path we do not want to go down and that is the path of an Ad Hoc process, an example of which we saw seven years ago in connection with the work of a commission.  That was a difficult process in many ways, I’m sure many of us remember that and some of us still have a few scars from that.  We don’t need to repeat that and moving forward with a process that we can define, that we can drive, I think, is a highly desirable alternative.  I’d note also that finally in the newspaper this morning, reference was made to this being kinder and gentler.  I do think it important to say that this will be a process, must be a process that has substance to it.  Without that, it won’t accomplish the objective we all want for it and I know, in the initial meetings with the Academic Program Review Committee we’ve talked about that.  I think there is a level of comfort with that, and I look forward to working, to Conner with you, senate leadership and this committee to make this a productive process and that’s pretty much what I have to say on that subject at this time.

 

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, College of Business: I’m Bill Sauser.  I’m Associate Dean of Business and Engineering Outreach and I’m delighted to be working with the university in the Strategic Planning Process.  Thank you for inviting me, Dr. Richardson, to do so.  Thanks for letting me come back and give you a brief report on what’s going on.  Thanks, Conner, for bringing up the PowerPoint.  I do want to point out before going any further how much considerable assistance we’ve received from the officers of the University Senate, from the AP Assembly, from the Staff Council, from the Student Government Association, from the Graduate Student Organization.  We’ve had a lot of people helping us make this happen.  All of understand that we’re trying to move rapidly through a difficult process and it takes a lot of people helping.  And so we’ve received that kind of help and I want to thank you.  Before I jump right in, let me ask if all of you who have participated in one or more of the four forums that we put on, if you would just raise your hand?  Thank you, thank you.  Each one of you has contributed in an important way to this process and also just want to let you know if you have not yet had an opportunity but you wish to, let any of your elected officers know or let me know.  We have lots of work yet to be done. 

 

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 Auburn community and move into Phase II.  The first phase, a critical phase, as we all realize, was to determine the questions, because the questions we ask are certainly going to influence the answers we get and I think it’s very important that all of us be involved in asking those questions.  That’s what we’ve been focusing on all summer.  In the fall when the majority of our colleagues are back here on campus, we’ll be focusing on answering those questions.

 

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 Auburn.

 

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 Auburn University.  In the meantime, in that time period as you well know, we had a change in leadership in the Provost’s office and President Richardson, Dr. Richardson sent me a letter after I had requested some information on what did he mean when he talked about program review, because I did have a committee that was very active and I didn’t want them to waste their time and it would help if I knew what questions he wanted answered so that we could direct our efforts in that way and the two questions in his letter to me that he wanted answered was 1.) How often should the core be reviewed for content changes? and 2.) What criteria should be used to conduct such a review?  That sounds very familiar to you in terms of what an academic program review should include.  I think the first question we can answer after we know what the answer to the second question is: What criteria should be used to conduct such a review?  So basically what the committee did was to go back to our work, and now I’m where I’m supposed to be and kind of start with the student learning outcomes that we had developed during the process of getting ourselves ready for SACS’ visit.  And what we had learned in terms of general education assessment, and those of you who have already served on the committee and are no longer on the committee, realize that it is a very difficult task.  It’s difficult to create an assessment plan for your degree program, but it is also more difficult to do a general education assessment plan because there are so many variables.  What we discovered is to develop an assessment plan; it is important to refine the language of the learning outcomes and I, one of them basically to give you an example, and I left my folder over there, was basically that the, we were going to look at everything that was important to every discipline and as we talked about that, the committee after several years did not know what the original committee meant to say by that.  So the next step that we came to is that we decided to, that to refine the language of the learning outcomes, it’s important to determine the overarching goals of general education.  And that then took us away from our learning outcomes.  We talked about that at several meetings.  We started talk; the committee started talking about what’s the difference between the core curriculum and core values.  We’ve heard about the importance of core values, with diversity as a core value, and the difference between the big C and the little c, and then we came to the conclusion to determine the overarching goals of general education; it has become clear that it’s difficult to isolate the university core curriculum from the entire undergraduate experience. 

 

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 Biggio Center for Teaching and Learning, because I felt the committee could benefit from his expertise in helping us with the assessment.  So if you have any questions, as I said, at this point, it’s not a formal recommendation.  I did want to give the presentation as we look at academic program review.  I had not shared this with Dr. Heilman, but I thought I wanted to share this with you all first.  Thank you.

 

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 Auburn’s ability to retain all talented, young tenure-track faculty.  Once developed and approved by the administration, the initiative will be open to all junior faculty, with special emphasis on women, African-Americans, and other people of color.

 

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 University of Washington:

 

“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 new city and having very few friends who won’t also have a vote on one’s tenure.”

 

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 Auburn University and conducted a survey of department chairs.  And I just very quickly would like to summarize that latter survey.

 

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 Biggio Center has volunteered to provide a workshop or series of workshops for that purpose.  Along with that, the committee would also recommend that we focus on department chairs and offer some attention, provide some attention to support for department chairs to mentor their junior faculty.

 

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 Auburn University and the Biggio Center will develop such a program next year also.

 

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 College of Business a fairly good mentor program, for both the faculty member and the senior graduate student.  I guess my question is, you mentioned an award for a good mentorship program.  A lot of studies have shown lately that extrinsic rewards for knowledge-sharing, if you would, mentoring programs, really don’t pan out very well.  Have you looked at other ways to encourage mentorship, looking outside academia to other organizations and how they foster knowledge-sharing or mentorship or sponsorship?

 

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.