Transcript Senate Meeting
March 22, 2016
Larry Teeter chair: I am Larry Teeter, chair of the Senate. I’d like to welcome everyone to the Senate. Don’t forget to get a clicker when you are signing in in the back. If you are a senator or a substitute for a senator make sure you sign in in the back and pick up a clicker because we have 2 action items today.
If you’d like to speak about an issue or ask a question, please go to the microphone and wait to be recognized then state your name, whether or not you are a senator and the unit you represent so we can get that in the minutes.
The agenda today was set by the Senate Steering Committee and is now shown on the screen. The first order of business is to establish a quorum, so we need to have our clickers out. We have 86 members of the Senate and we have to have 44 senators present for a quorum. Okay we have a quorum.
First order of business today is to approve the minutes of the February 16 meeting. The minutes have been previously posted on the Senate Web site. Are there any additions or changes or deletions to these minutes? Do I have a motion to approve? So moved. All in favor please say aye.
Group: aye.
Larry Teeter, chair: opposed same sign. Okay the motion carries.
Before we get started with a fairly ambitious agenda today I’d first like to introduce our Senate officers. Dr. Laura Plexico is our secretary, Dr. Xing Ping Hu is our secretary-elect, Dr. James Goldstein is our chair-elect and will take office July 1, Dr. Patricia Duffy is our immediate past chair and serves as the faculty representative to the Board of Trustees, Dr Bob Locy is our parliamentarian and a previous chair of the Senate, and Laura Kloberg is our administrative assistant who gets all this stuff to work before the meeting.
As I mentioned we have a full agenda today, our first item on the agenda will be remarks from Dr. Boosinger, our Provost.
Dr. Boosinger, Provost: Thank you Larry. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you for just a few minutes about 4 or 5 items. The first one is I want to encourage you to start thinking about the Common Book Program. Our Common Book for this year is New York Times bestseller, “Just Mercy,” a story of justice and redemption by Brian Stevenson. Mr. Stevenson will be on campus on August 30. It seems like it is a long ways away, but it’s not really. He’ll give a public presentation in the Student Center Ballroom followed by a book signing opportunity and Q&A. All incoming freshmen will receive copies of the book during Camp War Eagle with the expectation that they will have read that book and be prepared to discuss that in their different classes. We are aware of over 40 classes currently planning to use the book and topics such as ethics, sociology, and law. We are encouraging more faculty to engage in that process. To that end we work with a publisher and made arrangements for all tenure track faculty at Auburn to receive a copy of the book. Those will be delivered to the department offices at the end of April. So whether or not you choose to use this in your classes, and we encourage that, but if you don’t I still encourage you to read this book. This is a compelling book on a topic that is very important in our times; the justice system and all of it’s complexities being discuss across different sectors of society and I think you will find it fascinating. For me it was one of those books that once I started reading it I couldn’t put it down.
Following the author’s visit, obviously there will be a month of complimentary programing around these topics. Faculty members that want assistance with developing program can get that assistance through the Biggio Center or by talking to committee members of the Common Book. The chair of the Common Book Committee is Dr. Bowman. I think Dr. Bowman is here in the back, so feel free to talk with her afterward if you have any questions. [5:01]
I thought you’d be interested on a few statistics about spring commencement. Commencement exercises will be on Saturday and Sunday, May 7 and May 8. Saturday sessions are at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., Sunday sessions are at 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. We have an interesting challenge at Auburn, compared to our SEC peers we have the highest participation rate in commencement of any of those colleges and schools. It’s truly impressive. The challenge becomes since we are going to award approximately 3,800 degrees at the end of the spring term is how to make that work in the arena which everybody loves the arena, it’s a great venue. As it stands right now we expect to have about 3,200 students participate in the commencement exercises, that runs us about 600–700 in the 4 different sessions to make that work. Some of them are a little bigger than that. If you haven’t been, I encourage you to go it’s very impressive. There are typically 6–8 thousand guests in the arena, so it is almost always a full house. This year the Graduation Committee has been working on a symbolic mace. A mace is a wooden structure made specifically for Auburn University from the Auburn Oaks, it symbolizes the authority that Auburn University has to award the degrees it awards. That will be part of the ceremony for the first time during commencement.
At the General Faculty Meeting I brought everybody up to date on the climate study on inclusion, equity, and diversity that we have been working on since just before the holidays. The committee has made significant progress and now have almost completed all of the listening sessions and the interviews. Between the 2 there’ve been about 70 different sessions. The last day for the survey was last Wednesday. We had over 2,500 participants in the survey, so we are exceeding our expectations on the level of participation. Overall, well over 3,000 individuals have participated in the process to date.
We are in the process of doing some benchmarking, members of the committee are going to visit peer institutions that are know to have outstanding programs in the area of diversity and inclusion and ought to have that done in the next week or two. The Committee has committed itself to have a final report drafted and ready to present to the President, I think on April 20. Definitely by the end of April and before graduation. That’s kind of where we are right now.
I would like to thank all of you for participating in different listening sessions. Many of you were interviewed individually, that was an option presented to you if you wanted to do that, so I am looking forward to a conclusion of a very constructive process.
We will conduct a national search for an Associate Provost for Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity. That’s going to commence shortly, the search committee is being appointed right now, should have that done by next week. We hope to post the position, we are working with a search firm to help post the position in April and time things so that we have candidate finalists on campus for interviews in the fall with the expectation that we can appoint such a provost to provide that important leadership in the area of diversity by early 2017. That’s probably as fast as we can make that kind of search happen.
Any questions or comments? Okay, thank you.
Larry Teeter, chair: Thank you Dr. Boosinger. We have 3 action items today. The first is a resolution brought forward by the Executive Committee. It will be presented by James Goldstein. [10:00]
James Goldstein. Chair-elect: Good afternoon. As most of you are aware there has been a national movement in state legislatures to change the laws for people with permits to carry concealed weapons and allow handguns on campuses. Texas has a law for example and it’s going to go into effect in August. There is legislation pending in states from Alaska to Georgia. Alabama has a Bill that’s been ? around once in the House on February 2 and it’s been referred to the Education Policy Committee so I’ve been in contact recently with chairs from other university and faculty Senates in Alabama and there’ve been discussions about the desirability of the Senate sponsoring resolutions to express opposition to such legislation.
I am the author of this resolution, but got feedback from the Executive Committee and I provided a link for the actual draft of the Bill in case anybody wanted to review the details of what the legislation looked like. Voting for this would allow the University Senate to express its opposition to this or any similar bill being passed. Many of you probably share my concern of having handguns on campus. I personally would not feel safer, I would feel less safe in class if I thought that there might be some guns floating around. I’d be happy to take any questions that you might have.
Jung Won Hur, senator, EFLT: I just have one comment. Several faculty members in my department came to me this morning and shared great concern about this gun policy on campus. So on behalf of the EFLT department I would express one more time that we believe that to allow guns on campus will create hostile and unsafe learning and working environment as stated in this statement. So we strongly oppose the policy change statement (HB12).
James Goldstein. Chair-elect: Thank you very much.
Melody Russell, senator, Curriculum and Teaching: I wanted to echo what she just mentioned. I got a lot of e-mails today as well, very concerned and some expressing one more time for the faculty–I don’t know if this was expressed at the General Faculty meeting, maybe opening this up to the general faculty and giving an opportunity for all faculty to come and attend and express their concerns. I got lots of e-mails and feedback so I want to echo exactly what she is saying and wondering if this could possibly be tabled until we could have a general faculty meeting? That would be something that I think would be advantageous and make it a little more participatory process.
James Goldstein. Chair-elect: If I could just respond to that. We did consider the possibility of having a special called meeting. My colleagues in other Alabama University Senates expressed a sense of urgency, because we don’t know when this Bill is going to out of committee and back to the floor of the House. So we felt there was some urgency to try to get this passed as quickly as we could. We hope that might have some effect.
Patricia Duffy, immediate past chair: I just want to add on to what James Goldstein just said, that we don’t know when the legislature might decide to pass this, and a General special called Faculty Meeting would take at least a month, which would get us into late April, which gets us into everybody doing finals. So even though that might be the optimal way to do it, because of time sensitivity, this is the feasible way to do it.
Larry Teeter, chair: Is there a second to the motion to table? Hearing none I’d like to call for the vote of support for this resolution. It comes from a standing committee of the Senate so it doesn’t need a second. If everyone has their clickers, Press A for yes (to support the resolution), press B for no. A=56, B=7.
The resolution passes and we will find out how best to communicate this to the State Legislature.
Our second action item today is a vote on approval of the 2018–2019 calendar. Robin Jaffe, chair of the Calendar Committee will present the proposed calendar. [16:33]
Robin Jaffe, chair of the Calendar and Schedules Committee: Never say never, I guess. This is a presentation of the calendar from the Calendar and Schedules Committee proposal for the 2018–2019 Academic Calendar.
The proposal presented today had full consensus from all members of the committee. We had a long conversation about it and people all agreed to it. Here are the committee members, I’d like to thank them for their hard work. We had several other conversations over e-mail, they’ve been a hard working committee.
Selected guidelines considered for the calendar’s fall/spring semesters there are 72–73 days and this was approved by the Senate; the full summer is 48–49 days; 7–10 days between semesters, graduation preferred days: Saturday for the fall and summer, and graduation preferred days are Saturday and Sunday for spring; 5 days for finals in fall and spring semesters, 2 reading days at classes end for fall and spring, that leaves 1 reading day for each mini-term and the full term in the summers. Fall break will be 2 days unless 72 days are not available, then the fall break will be one day.
This is our proposal for the 2018–19 Academic Calendar. We start on the 20th of September…
Many Others: August
Robin Jaffe, chair of the Calendar and Schedules Committee: Are you sure? Everybody awake now?
On the 20th of August, then we have our Labor Day on September 3; fall break is the 11th and 12th of October; Thanksgiving break is the 19–23 in November; last day of classes is December 6; 2 reading days and then final days with graduation on December 15. Two weeks for the holiday, classes start on the 9th of January, the third Monday, January 21 is Martin Luther King’s birthday. We have our spring break in March the second week; going through to April there are 72 days in this semester; 2 reading days; finals running through April and May with graduation on the 4th and 5th of May.
Ten days for the registrar; classes in the summer for the full term and first mini-term starts on May 16. Everybody knows that we can’t start any earlier so, that’s why we start on the 16th when we can. Memorial Day is on May 27; we go through to June 19 one reading day and 2 finals days. Classes for second mini-term start June 24, Forth of July break on the 4th, with the classes ending on July 26, 2 reading days, 3 final days and commencement on August 3.
These are just the proposed calendars in words, which always gets everybody confused. We have 13 complete weeks in the fall term. Then we have 13 complete weeks in the spring term. Summer term starts, 7 complete weeks, 48 days in this semester; 24 days in the first mini-term and 24 days in the last. This is the proposal from the Calendar and Schedules Committee, are there any questions? [22:24] Thank you.
Larry Teeter, chair: Once again this comes from a standing Senate Committee and doesn’t require a second. I’d like to vote on this calendar. A for yea and B for no. A=60, B=2. Okay the yeas have it. Thank you very much Robin.
Our next action item is a little bit different than normal. We are going to be voting on Rules Committee members and because we need to vote for 3 and have 4 candidates we need to use paper ballots. We will be handing out paper ballots to all senators and substitutes for senators, so if you are just a visitor please don’t take a ballot. Dr. Laura Plexico will come up to outline the procedure.
Laura Plexico, secretary: On the paper ballot you will see that Melody Russell, Traci O’Brien, Robert Cochran, and Greg Schmidt are running for the Rules Committee. Please mark the 3 individuals that you are voting for on your paper ballot with an X on the line. So only mark 3 of the 4 candidates. Once you have marked candidates, fold the paper in half, pass it down and we will gather the paper ballots and do a hand tally. Are there any questions?
We will announce who the 3 nominees will be at the end of the meeting. [
Larry Teeter, chair: Okay, thank you very much. That was a lot smoother than I thought it might be.
We have 3 information items today. I thought they were all very interesting before we brought them to the Senate so I hope you share my enthusiasm for all these things that are going on one campus, but the first is being presented by Dean Bonnie MacEwan and will be about changes that are coming to the Library.
Dean Bonnie MacEwan, Library: Thank you for the time today. I’m pleased Larry asked me to do this, but I know that even though the President gave me his time I can’t tell you everything I wanted to tell you. We did leave a stack of brochures back there about all of the services I would love to tell you about today, so if you have a chance pick one up on the way out. That would be great or come visit us we’d love to tell you all about what we’re doing.
The most important thing I have to tell you is what our signs are saying, we’re still open. It may look like there’s a lot of stuff going on in our front yard, but we’re still open for all the things that we’ve been doing for more than a decade. We’re here to be a center of learning, a place for students to works with services to support their academic work and we’re still open to support you in your research and teaching and all of the ways we’ve supported you in the past.
But what you are probably curious about is what’s going on in our front yard. So I am going to show you some pictures, but I am going to focus on what is going on in the Library for the most part. As you know, I hope you know, there’s a major project in front of RBD to build classrooms. It’s called the Mell Classroom Building, it will include 107,000 sq. ft. of space; 26 active learning classrooms and 2 major lecture halls.
You can see from the areal view, this is actually my favorite picture of the whole project because you can see that although it looks like going on in front of the building, there’s a lot of library behind the building (construction). Don’t be shy about coming over and seeing that we’re still here and still doing all those things that we need to do to help you.
The building when it’s completed it’s going to be beautiful. That’s the view from Mell Street and the next one is as if you were coming over from Mary Martin. It’s going to be a beautiful brick building, but what’s interesting to us of course is what’s going to go on inside. You can see in the next couple of drawings from the architects, our porch is still there. Our entrance is still there, what’s in front of us is a really interesting and vital atrium that leads to the active learning classrooms and lecture halls. From our perspective one of the most exciting things about this is that this will be open the same hours that we are. So all those hours of the evening where students are almost fighting for seating in the Library we are going to have more room, we’re going to have additional space, exciting spaces for them to work in and we are pretty excited about that.
This right here is going to be a new circulation desk. You will come into Mell Commons here, you will be in the Library from a certain perspective and there will be a circulation desk right here where you can check out a book, get on a computer, get preliminary library assistance; go up these stairs to classrooms, or go up this way into the library.
this shows you one of my favorite things. These are the steps up to RBD, but on either side these things that look like wooden steps are actually some very popular, that we’ve seen in other libraries, have been very popular seating space for students and will be a place for people to plug in their laptops, you know how students like to sit with their legs straight out or in a conversation group. It will be a place where students can group and in addition you can see there is all kinds of soft seating, there are little group study rooms in this area, all the kinds of spaces that our students like to see. Over here is some cantilevered group study areas that students can go in and work. During the day those will be used in conjunction with the active learning classrooms but at night they will be available for group study. Our most popular item beyond a doubt is, besides our books Dr. Large is our group study rooms. [32:51]
I am going to show you some of the floor plans here. From the second floor of Mell Commons here are the 2 large auditoriums, here is the atrium area. Those little black lines there are our columns. So that orients you to the way into the Library. In just a minute I want to get to this space here which is what I am most interested in, but first I am going to show you a few things about Mell to remind you or show you for the first time.
Up to the second floor and you have active learning classrooms along the side here and additional active learning classrooms here. Those little pink boxes are new group study rooms. So all of our very popular group study rooms are going to be rebuilt as a part of this project, if you’ve ever used one you know it’s time. Students are going to be really excited about this and we are too. Forth floor looks very similar. The only difference is this is our quiet floor so we worked with architects to make sure that this line between the classrooms and the rest of the library was a solid line so noise was not carrying back into our quiet study area. Again you have active learning classrooms along the side here.
We have for the last several months, under the leadership of Marcia Boosinger, been working with outside consultant, Dr. Nancy Foster, who is an anthropologist who specializes in helping libraries understand the student and faculty population and help us understand how to turn those into premier library services. She’s led some interesting efforts in libraries and we have completed a design process with her and are now working with Facilities and an architect to turn her suggestions into library spaces. So this is the area on the second floor when you first come into RBD. One of the things we are going to do, it may be our most popular thing is we are going to move the coffee shop and expand it into a larger café area over here in this corner. We are going to move our main service area, our reference desk and some of our other service will move up in here about where you are used to seeing Caribu Coffee. We are going to include some of the technology that the students are asking for. We are working on something that our consultant told us is strongly indicated at Auburn, maybe more strongly indicated about our students is that they want to work alone, but together. So we are trying to figure out what that means and how that translates to library services. We think if you think of somebody working at a table alone in a Starbucks, that that is sort of the little bit of activity around you but you are alone working. We are looking at some furniture and ideas that will bring that in.
We are getting constant crusher for more quiet study areas, so we are going to incorporate an actual room in this area that will be a quiet study area for students. As you can see a good bit of technology a collaborative work area for students and our hope is that we find the right services so when students come out of active learning classrooms in Mell that they can come into this area and continue doing the work, having the conversations, continue the energy that generated in the classrooms. They can also use this area to prepare.
So the way we came up with all of these ideas was with lots of interviews and discussions so I want to thank anybody in this room who attended one of the sessions with our consultant and our librarians to give input into this.
A big question is how is all this happening? There is another piece to this project and that is something we’re calling OLAF–Offsite Library Archiving Facility. [37:58] Many of you may know that the Library’s been asking for offsite storage area for quite a while. If any of you are in the History Department you’ll remember I came and talked with you a while ago about the fact that so much information is becoming electronic and how are we going to keep that safe for future generations. At that time I told you we’re working on something and that we were close to having a good idea of what to do about it. We’re now at the point where the Research Libraries in the country have proposed something we call the “Scholars trust.” And all of us are promising to hang onto a certain amount of our paper resources and store them in a secure offsite Library facility, so should anything happen to the electronic versions of those materials, or should a scholar ever need to look at the paper, they are readily available in the Research Library community to share with all of you.
So we are so excited to have this facility in a place that allows us to participate in that national effort. So as a consequence many of the materials that will be going out to the offsite library facility that is located out near the airport will be those materials that you use most often in electronic format. But we need to hang on to and keep safe for future generations in case anything happens to the electronic and also from time to time the scholar needs to look at the paper. They will be available, they’ll be safe, they’ll be available for you to request in a variety of ways. Our library courier will go out there and deliver them either to the Library or to your offices just as we always have.
I have a bunch of pictures of what it looks like right now, in case you want to see what a construction site looks like. It’s a simple building full of shelves. It won’t be open, but these will be materials that we’re keeping, we’re archiving for the future of the Research Libraries. And for all of you there will still be plenty of book left in RBD, probably about 3 million. We have not counted them yet. You may have noticed that in order to facilitate this project we’re moving every book in RBD, so if you think you knew where your favorite book was it probably moved, but I know that Marcia Boosinger and her team of subject librarians would be more than happy to help you find where we moved it to. We are reviewing everything that goes offsite, if we make a mistake we are going to count on you to tell us so that we can arrange to bring that material back and swap it for something that more appropriately belongs out there.
So that’s what I have to tell you. Larry is that what you wanted me to share. I’d be glad to stay for questions if there’s time.
Vicky VanSanten, senator, Pathobiology: When you are talking to this archiving are you talking about primarily books or journals?
Dean Bonnie MacEwan, Library It’s going to be a mix of materials. I think it will be most heavily journals because that’s what is most heavily available in electronic format
Vicky VanSanten, senator, Pathobiology: A lot of journals, we no longer get the paper copy
Dean Bonnie MacEwan, Library: That’s correct and a lot of journals aren’t produced in paper copy.
Vicky VanSanten, senator, Pathobiology: And it doesn’t make sense to duplicate that paper copy for economic reasons so there’s not going to be a change in that.
Dean Bonnie MacEwan, Library: No. There is…and in fact what’s happened in the journal world is that many of the journals that were originally available in both paper and electronic, they are really mostly only available in electronic.
Vicky VanSanten, senator, Pathobiology: So if something happens…there’s 2 sides to this. We don’t want to pay the extra money to get the paper copies, yet if something happens to the electronic version we don’t have backup paper copies of those.
Dean Bonnie MacEwan, Library: We actually participate in a number of projects, my favorite is LOCKSS, Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe, and if something happens we have multiple copies of the electronic information about the journal. I’d be glad to go on and on about how this works electronically, and about 5 Libraries in the country have agreed to subscribe to the paper and put it in a facility like this.
Vicky VanSanten, senator, Pathobiology: Thank you.
Dean Bonnie MacEwan, Library: Yep, don’t ask a Librarian a question. (laughter). Any other questions, comments?
Larry Teeter, chair: For our next presentation associated with this new Mell Classroom Building is what’s going to happen to Mell Street itself. Dr. Boosinger will give a couple of comments about that and then Ben Burmester will give us the presentation from his perspective.
Dr. Tim Boosinger, Provost: I want to take this opportunity to remind everyone. We’ve had an open forum on this topic and actually it was very well attended, so I appreciate those of you that came to that, but I think it’s important enough to the life of the campus if front of Mell and all the way down to Samford Avenue that we are going to be presenting these concepts and ideas in multiple settings. It’s an extension of Campus Planning, the Mell Classroom Building and trying to visualize what’s the best path forward for that space. Ben’s going to walk through those plans and show you some of the different options. I am here to encourage you to participate, ask questions either formally or afterwards, and we will have at least one additional open forum, not sure when, probably in the fall to get more input on this.
Dan King, Associate VP Facilities: I am going to give a little lead in for Ben here. [44:48] Thank you for letting us come talk to you today. What we would like to do is get some feedback from the Senate on the future of Mell Street and what should happen after the construction project is finished. There’s been a trend at Auburn since about the early 2000s of increased pedestrianization of campus where the core of campus becomes more pedestrian friendly, we get cars out of the core of campus. It started with Thach Avenue becoming Thach Concourse in 2002–2003, followed with Roosevelt Drive which became the Roosevelt Concourse, that was the mid-2000s I think, a little before my time; Haley Concourse about 4 or 5 years ago. So most of you I am sure you’re aware Mell Street is closed due to the construction of the Mell Classroom Building so the question is what should we do after the building is complete? Should we open it back up just like it was before the construction started or should we used this opportunity to close Mell Street and make it into more of a pedestrian mall, if you will, a pedestrian concourse? There’s been no decision on this yet, this is just an idea and we are seeking input, that’s why were here today is to seek input. Ben’s going to show you what some potential options are. There’s obviously some pros to it, once that classroom building is built, the Library was heavily utilized by students, we build a classroom building in front of it it will be even more heavily utilized. So it will be a lot of student and in general pedestrian traffic across to Mell to go into that set of facilities there. The cons are: well it just blocks another road or takes away another road and there are a limited number of north-south routes on campus quite honestly.
So there’s some pros and cons, I don’t’ know what the right answer is. Facilities is not here to dictate an answer, we are here to gather a bunch of campus input, try to assess it, present some options to the leadership who will eventually present some recommendation to the Board, but a key part of that is to go around campus and talk to different groups and get some input. I’d like to introduce one our engineers in Campus Planning, Benjamin Burmester, who is going to give you a very condensed version of the presentation from the open forum. [47:25]
Benjamin Burmester, Campus Planner: Thanks, that’s a great introduction and also a great segue from talking specifically about the Mell Classroom Building.
Mell Classroom Building is going to be a significant increase in students entering the Library which is already heavily used, like Dan said, it’s almost 70,000 sq. ft. added to it. The big picture is that it’s over 1,400 seats for students so at class change time you can visualize all those students coming in and exiting in that 5-minute window, that’s what’s really driving us to make sure that we study this correctly. What’s the right answer, what’s really pushing this project?
We started the project and brought on a consultant team, we think it’s a pretty strong team given all the perspectives and disciplines involved. It’s lead by a landscape architect firm, Holcombe Norton Partners, Inc.; a strong transportation component, Skipper Consulting with traffic analysis; Alta Planning, who’s a national bike and ped expert; and civil engineers, electrical engineers, and architects.
So where we are in our project, we are trying to line this schedule up with the Mell Classroom Construction. You can see it started in December and it’s going on until August 2017. So our planning work will focus, we started with the open forum in late February, and we’ve now got some initial input from campus. I will share what we’ve heard so far with you all and we want to get some more input that we are going to be recording today and going to the other governance groups. Then we are going to develop some schemes and start sharing and then follow-up with this open forum right at the beginning of the semester with hopefully a good recommendation that we start design work and then take it to the Board.
So these are our existing conditions before construction. A big driver in our planning is the TigerTransit routes. Transit originally entered from Thach and traveled south down Mell Street and turned into the Roosevelt transit hub. That’s been changed with construction, of course. As you are all probably aware Mell Street has been closed in front of the Library and has pushed pedestrian traffic to the west side of Mell and transit’s rerouted from Samford to a new transit hub on Roosevelt, this is a temporary solution for us to facilitate construction and come up with the formal response when the Mell classrooms open.
So the first option is Mell classroom is built, we open Mell Street back up. Maybe there’s some crosswalk improvements, something similar to that, but the general concept of it’s back open for traffic. You can see the bottom left from our original open forum pretty heavily was that it was less desirable option from the general comments we got back from a pedestrian safety standpoint, doesn’t seem like the right decision and also and additional design work would help this feel more like the core of campus if there was beyond just opening the road back up to traffic. So the simplest of options beyond that that we presented was closing directly in front of the Mell Classroom. There’s a couple of access points we are trying to maintain with Mary Martin and the Library service, so those are 2 components that then next concepts we will be dealing with, how those will respond to. [51:34] But the general idea of there is some sort of closure along Mell in front of the classroom building was presented at the open forum, and the results shown on this slide are pretty heavily in favor of some sort of closure and how that works. We went through a few other options and those options we have on our Web site which you can go view, but there it gets into depth of how that closure would work, is there a separation between bikes and pedestrians, how does the site lay out furniture in front of the building, those kind of options.
Here are a couple of images. This is again, concourse, so it could be similar to that or it could be a little more plaza oriented in front of the classroom building with more furniture and trees and still allow fire access through that section of campus. So if there is a closure in Mell we have to have some concepts of how transit would react permanently. The 2 schemes we presented both involve intersection changes at Roosevelt and Mell. This shows a roundabout at that intersection instead of it tying into Mell. The pros of this would be that it allows transit to enter into their transit hub from either off Mell or off Roosevelt. Gives them some flexibility from all the different routes and when changes come down the road. One of the cons is the pedestrian movement aren’t as good off the Roosevelt concourse, you would have to make this or similar movement if you’re a pedestrian and want to go down Roosevelt.
A little simpler scheme is just a skew in Roosevelt so transit would come this way and enter into the hub off Roosevelt, so it’s better from a pedestrian standpoint getting this straight connection into the concourse and not having to go around for the roundabout, but it does lock in transit; all their access to be coming in off of Roosevelt for the long term. [53:50] You can see the statistics there on the bottom left, there wasn’t a humongous one more in favor of the other, so those are kind of our 2 options that we are exploring now.
We go to the next block, while we are doing this if front of the Mell Classrooms we can use this opportunity to look at the whole Mell Street corridor from Samford Ave. all the way to Ross Square. One of the big design proposal we want to look at is the Samford and Mell intersection, it is our worst level of service congestion wise on campus for a 4-way-stop intersection. Especially in the afternoons, a lot of you all experience the delays at that intersection. Again we wanted to throw out a couple of ideas we think would help with the congestion and hopefully improve it, possibly with a signalized intersection. Some of the positives on it from a pedestrian standpoint is that is will assign a phase to the pedestrian. So they will get a green Walkman that says it’s time to go the traffic is stopped. Everybody knows how a signal operates. The downside is that is pretty close to the intersection with College and Samford and could create a little more backed up from that intersection. And also if you are traveling down Samford from College and get a green light you could keep on rolling until you get to the Hill where we are wanting cars to slow down, this gets into the pedestrian area of campus. That’s a negative there. [55:37]
Similarly we’ve got a roundabout scheme also shown. It has a similar negative in that pedestrians would have to go around the intersection. It’s really positive in the sense that roundabouts can handle a lot of traffic. So from a traffic flow perspective there will be decreased delays. Negatives: a lot of people get confused in roundabouts and still aren’t certain which way to turn. Similarly the statistics we got, a little more in favor of a roundabout, but there was not an overwhelming slam dunk for either one.[56:26]
Like I said we are in the early stages, we are in the fact finding, we do have a Web site that we’re updating. We have the full open form presentation online there. My contact information is on the slides, so you can send me any information as we are working on these concepts. We will be taking notes today so feel free to ask any questions.
Laura Kloberg, Senate admin. support: I wanted to mention that I think you need to have fire access in front of the Mell Street Classroom Building and also because there are dormitories there and we just renovated Cater Hall and if we can’t get a fire truck there we (could possibly) loose all the money we’ve just spent.
Benjamin Burmester, Campus Planner: I absolutely agree, there will absolutely always be fire access. One of those pictures show the separation between all the benches and pedestrian area and then this wider space, so absolutely the fire truck access will have to be maintained.
Bob Locy, senator, Biological Sciences: One of the things that’s happened recently on Roosevelt just toward College Street from the place where the busses park is that a lane has been taken to accommodate bus parking and that’s really a huge distraction. So I hope whatever plan you develop, accommodates the bus traffic it has to get to where it has to get to and at the same time completely eliminates automobile traffic from the rest of us for that area or at least organizes it in such a way that there are not traffic hazards being created because literally coming and going almost watched 2 potential wrecks occur associated with busses being parked, where in my opinion, they have no business being parked.
Benjamin Burmester, Campus Planner: I agree with that as well. The long term solution is not those busses stopping in Roosevelt.
David Lucsko, senator, History: I am just wondering about the intersection of Roosevelt and College, will there be plans if busses go through that intersection as a regular thing, could you revisit that traffic light situation because there is no arrow and it backs up as it is. And if you have busses you have big problems on College Street.
Benjamin Burmester, Campus Planner: Yes, great question. The city actually has a proposed project on College Street that addresses Roosevelt. In talking with our transit folks they aren’t comfortable using Roosevelt as their access to that hub unless there is a protective left turn. But the city’s project could line up pretty well and would provide a dedicated left turn lane and a left turn signal at that intersection.
Sara Wolf, senator, Steering: I know we are about to hear a presentation about parking that’s coming up but one thing I am curious about is what are the parking implications of that new classroom building in front of the Library, because the Library Deck is not incredibly large and mostly it meets needs for the Library right now but we are going to have increased transportation needs for faculty that are teaching in that building, bringing in materials in and out of that building as well as the ever present need, perceived or real depending on how you want to look at it, of students dropping their friends off for classes and things like that. So I am just [1:00:23] kind of curious how that’s being worked into the general plan.
Benjamin Burmester, Campus Planner: I’ll address it in order of the parking situation. Our project now is not addressing parking. It will be interesting to see more parking demand changes of the Mell Classroom Building, since no offices are added in that facility will faculty members choose to park at the same place that they’ve always been parking or is there going to be a shift into the Library Deck or close by. That’s something we’ll have to address master plan wise. I can’t remember the other.
Sara Wolf, senator, Steering: Student access.
Benjamin Burmester, Campus Planner: Oh, student drop-off. It never became more apparent to me specifically, until we did this closure in front of the Library. I spent a few days just watching all the traffic issues we had on Roosevelt trying to figure out if we could make them better and seeing almost half of the traffic being drop-offs was kind of an eye opener, for me. Our hope is our planning project addresses these in some sort, don’t have an answer right now. It’s a tough question and those roadways on campus have been limited to students for 2 decades, so opening them back up and dedicating them with a drop-off point is kind of tough pill to swallow, but maybe something we need to do and recognize that it’s a real need. [1:01:56] Thanks, everyone.
Larry Teeter, chair: Thanks a lot Ben. Our final presentation today is on faculty parking and the AU bikes program. Don Andrae.
Don Andrae, Manager, Parking Services: I guess you’d say we save the best for last, everybody loves parking, so I will try to see if I can help you. I do agree with some of the things you say about Mell Street. I don’t know if you noticed or not, we actually had a person standing there at Mell and Roosevelt when the project first started; stopping every vehicle to keep from coming in there. It got to the point where we couldn’t do it any longer because it was very dangerous between the students trying to run us over and the construction trucks would be backed up with the truck at the top of Quad Drive. Now what we do is take a picture of the license plate of the vehicles that come in. When it comes up a student they get and e-mail the next day saying they’ve got a ticket. We are trying to curtail it. I can tell you this, we wrote 4,300 tickets last month. I think most of them were Mell Street. One young lady had 14 tickets and still hasn’t figured it out.
We are trying to get them to be conscious of the fact that it’s not a place to go, they keep telling me that there are no sign saying it’s restricted, there’s no signs saying there’s construction. So I’m not sure what they are looking at because it’s pretty obvious there is construction there. [1:03:42] [2nd 1:04:07]
We currently park in As and Bs from 7 to 5 Monday through Friday and of course after that space is available to any vehicle without a permit for other days and times. And we all know it has been a problem with the faculty when they come after hours, after 5 o’clock, they come back to do research or come back to teach a night class, so what we had was a proposal by the Senate to the Traffic and Parking Committee as to what we could do. It actually came in and they wanted to change it from 24/7, well, unfortunately we don’t enforce it 24/7 so it didn’t make sense for us to do that. So what we are going to do is, instead of 7–6, we are going to do 7–10. We d have a second shift so we can check those spaces up until 10 or 11 p.m. We are going to make the spaces but we are going to look at where we can put them. We will put 10 spaces in the Lowder lot, 10 spaces behind Tichner, 10 spaces in the Library deck, 10 spaces in Comer lot, 10 spaces in Upchurch, and 10 spaces in the new Chemistry Building and Swingle Hall area. Now these will be indicated, they’ll say the same thing, A, B, most will probably be A zone and it will say enforcement 7–10 and we will start ticketing anybody that doesn’t have an A zone or B zone depending which area it is to park in that area. To me it is a good compromise from what we wanted because we just couldn’t do 24/7, we could put the sign up but not enforce it.
The other thing I wanted to talk about is we all know the north parking deck has been purchased and we are looking to do some things over there. What I want to show you is this is the current parking in that area over there. This is across from “Mama Goldbergs” which right now is PC3, this is B zones, and this is all RW. So the plan is what we are going to do and end up with is we plan to move all the RWs up to the north park deck. That actually gives us 300 more spaces. There’s 920 spaces in that deck and only 650 in here. So we will be able to put more Village students into that deck which gets them closer to their residence hall. We are then going to change what was the RW, we’re going to call it PC4. See if we can confuse students even more, we had one 1, 2, and 3, now we’ll have 4. We figured we’d call it 4 because we are still going to have the PC3 here and since it is a little bit farther away understand that’s where they are supposed to park. What you did notice in a previous slide is the fact that we did take one of the rows here of the PC3 and put Bs in there, then we took the entire area behind Public Safety and made that B zone.
This is the current spaces right now, we have 33 As and 204 Bs in that area, and 314 PC3s, 650 Village residents, and what we are going to end up with is still 33 As, but you see the big difference is that is going to 348 Bs. That area from 204 to 348 is another 144 spaces of B zone parking in that area by Lowder. If we see that there is still enough demand and we still can’t do that there is also another option that we can take another row of the PC3s or eventually even do away with the PC3, but right now that’s what we are going to try and of course, like I said, we are going to end up with 550 PC4s and 920 residents. It creates another 144 B zone spaces in addition we’ve leased 44 spaces in a lot behind Chick-fil-a and Dominos, the entrance is off of Genelda and we’re hoping it’s going to expand to 100 spaces in July. There is a house that they are going to take down and they will make the entrance off of that road instead of back by Genelda and maybe make a better place to park. We have lost places on Wright Street. Wasn’t it May 1 we were supposed to lose it? Anyway the 100 spaces on Wright Street are going away. We have lost 40, and then another 100. The other thing we are going to do to help in that sector of campus is we are going to look at the Cambridge. Since it’s really on campus what we’re going to do is take the 75 spaces in the front part of the Cambridge closest to College and change them to A zones and create some A zone spaces in there as well. That doesn’t alleviate a lot of the problem with the Library parking but it does help a little bit.
The thing that I want to talk about of course is, my dream when I got here and it’s actually coming to fruition is our bike share program. [2nd 1:08:40] War Eagle Bike Share we worked long and hard getting it to be what we want. It has puncture proof tires, all aluminum frame, has 3 gears, has a light in the front which you really can’t see, a light in the back so you can use it at night, has a GPS on it that this model does not show. So it doesn’t matter where the bike goes. When you sign up to become a member and check a bike out, I know who has the bike and I know where it’s going and where it’s been. It helps me figure out to see where the bikes are going. Now we have 10 hubs on campus. What it is, you check the bike out from one hub and all you have to do is return it to another hub, you don’t necessarily have to take it back to the same hub. We are investigating whether we have enough hubs, probably have to add more, but right now the way charges are, as a mater of fact I have a conference call with the company tomorrow and we’re going to get rid of some more of the charges: right now you are charged $5 if you lock it up outside the hub, which I don’t think is right. If you locked it up I’m happy. The fact that you didn’t return it to a hub means that I need to make a hub in that location or look and see what we need to do.
If you go to your app store you can download the app on your smart phone or go to it online. You agree, it does ask you for credit card information because right now there is 2 hours free usage, anything over 2 hours you are charged $5 per hour. Also if you lock it up outside of a hub it’s $5 and if you lock it up outside the system it’s $50. Now I’ve expanded the system. When we first started it was bound by Magnolia and College, we now have it all the way up to Opelika RD and Dean. Someone went to the Post Office the other day, which I thought was great, because they didn’t have to go out to the RO to get their car, they took a bike and went to the Post Office and locked it up at the Post Office and of course it was outside the area at that time and got a $50 charge. Which of course was immediately refunded. But still it taught us that we needed to make our area bigger.
There is an option on there that you can do, it’s a hold option, we are trying to get students and everybody trained to do. This is available to faculty, staff, students, even people that come on campus, doesn’t matter who you are. There is no charge to become a member, but what we are trying to do is educate them about the hold option. So if I do go to a place that’s not one of our hubs, I can lock it up and put the bike on hold, and it does not incur a charge at that time and you can hold it up to 30 minutes at one time. We’re still working on the fact that we know that we don’t have any hubs up around the engineering area in the north part and we are doing that too. [1:11:17]
This is our hub, we have one at the Student Center, one at Roosevelt Concourse, one at Terrell Dining and North Courtyard, Wellness Kitchen, Lowder by the Starbucks there, West Thach by Hemlock, Village Dining on Thach, Cambridge by College, South Quad Parking Deck, and the College of Veterinary Medicine by Greene Hall.
This one here was requested by the College of Veterinary Medicine and actually found that they are using them. We didn’t put 25 bikes out there right now we only have 3, but they are being used. Quick numbers right now we’re at 1,400 members. We started the program on February 19, 2016. We’ve got 1,400 members since then, we’ve had over 4,000 rides, a lot of compliments, a lot of people want more bikes, more hubs, so we are looking at that to decide where to put them. I did call my counterpart at Ohio State because she started her program back in the fall and we were in communication trying to decide which vendor to go with, she went with a different vendor, they only have 300 members since fall. We have 4 times the number of members, they do charge for membership, which is maybe why they don’t have as many members.
Any questions about the bike share or parking?
Question by someone not at a microphone. I believe that they asked if Don Andrae had riden a bike.
Don Andrae, Manager, Parking Services: I have. In fact spring break I took our entire staff and check out bikes to ride across campus to see how they work. I had people who are professional bikers say they really do like them. They do have a belt instead of a chain, they say it rides real good.
Sara Wolf, senator, Steering: A colleague over spring break took that person’s staff to try the bikes as well. What she reported was when they tried to do it all of the bikes at that particular hub except for one were in the under repair status. So how do we make sure that if there are 20 bikes at a hub that all 20 bikes can be used?
Don Andrae, Manager, Parking Services: The app on the phone will show you how many bikes are available and when you go to the app on the phone to see where to get a bike from it is going to show you how many bikes are available at that hub. We did have some problems, hate to say it, but we have a contract with the bike shop in town and they have to come out to fix problems with the bikes within 24 hours. They do come once a month and do maintenance on every one of the bikes to keep them operating. What he told me was; what it looks like is you not being a biker bought your son/daughter a nice bike for Christmas and you put it together. Of course, I left some parts out, helped me put them together and did the same thing. So he’s had to go around to every one of those bikes and put the pieces back on there that were missing during the break and got about every one of them done.
Sara Wolf, senator, Steering: So that was a temporary kind of a thing that was happening
Don Andrae, Manager, Parking Services: Yes, mam.
Sara Wolf, senator, Steering: Great, thanks.
Don Andrae, Manager, Parking Services: When you have 75 bikes broken you can’t fix them all in 5 minutes.
Tracy Witte, senator Psychology: I had a question about undergraduate parking on campus. I like that the RW spaces are moving to that parking garage, that’s great. But I also just wonder if there’s been any consideration why students who live on campus need to have their cars right there? I wonder how that would affect the drop offs is people couldn’t just hop in their car and drive their friend to class.
Don Andrae, Manager, Parking Services: We’ve looked at that and talked to them, but basically Housing said that that’s what the students want because of a safety factor. We don’t think it is because we have our Security Shuttle. If they are parking out in the West one lot out there, a Security Shuttle runs out there all the time, plus the fact that they can ride a bike out there too. We are trying to encourage them to do that and hopefully get them away from doing that (meaning drop-offs). Right now, we’ll see how this works with the RWs, moving them across the street to the Deck their first impression is going to be it’s not next to my door anymore. We’ll see how that goes.
Spencer Durham, senator, Pharmacy Practice: I just wanted to say first thank you for the information. I’ve had a lot of my colleagues e-mailing me before I came today asking me to bring up different things about parking that you’ve actually answered a lot of those questions. But a couple of things I was just curious about; I know for the Pharmacy School we use primarily the Lowder and surrounding lots. Since we went from not having the hang tags any more we’ve noticed anecdotally a lot more parking problems. We have spaces outside of our building that patients are supposed to use who are coming into the clinic at the Pharmacy School and those have subsequently been being used by non-patients because the parking has gotten so terrible. So I think opening up a lot of those will help, but the second thing I wanted to ask is in addition to all that since we removed the hang tags we’ve also noticed major problems with students in the Lowder lot, picking up and dropping off their friends or what not that was touched on but it’s gotten to the point where we can’t when we are trying to park, faculty and staff can’t even navigate through the parking lot because of all the students dropping off and picking up their friends. So, do you have anyway to address that, or is there anything that can be done?
Don Andrae, Manager, Parking Services: Two things, one that the Traffic and Parking Committee discussed at the last meeting a resolution places in front of the Pharmacy, raising the fine on that. The problem we had of course was it was a $10 fine. Who’s not going to park there for $10? So now it’s been raised to $150 to tow.
Spencer Durham, senator, Pharmacy Practice: Okay.
Don Andrae, Manager, Parking Services: Hope that will curtail some of that. It has to go through a process and we are hoping that when it’s approved it and we’ll be able to.
As far as the license plate recognition, as I said we wrote 4,300 tickets last month, the most we’ve written since I’ve been here in the last 5 years is about 3,000. So we are able to write a lot more tickets, the problem we have is the students are trying us a lot more. I was telling somebody today, they think that by backing into a space that they are safe. They might as well put a red flag on their car because we get out and check that. We have some that back into the deck and back up as close as they can to the barrier wall, but we have a selfie with a mirror on there and read the license plate and some will back up to bushes on the Lowder lot we have pruning sheers. We are trying to stay on top of it, they come up with new ideas and think they’ve got us beat; we do go to those lots a lot and what we find is most of them are valid. We do find some violations but as many as I thought we would. The biggest problem we have is you have a husband and wife who work on campus, they both register a car and they carpool and then they let their son/daughter drive their other car; which technically is legal because they both registered. We have a lot of that going on. We are trying to see what we can do about that.
I think the $150 fine and some of these other things we are doing, as far as the drop off/ pick up at Lowder, the only solution for that is what we did over on Mell Street and that’s basically put someone right there at War Eagle Way and Donahue and stand and say if you don’t belong get out.
Spencer Durham, senator, Pharmacy Practice: Is that looking at being done?
Don Andrae, Manager, Parking Services: We’re looking at that, right now we don’t have the staff. When we first started we had 4 people on Mell Street as well as one in the Deck handing out guest permits, that’s 5, and we only have a staff of 9 during the day. We are looking at staffing up and doing that.
Spencer Durham, senator, Pharmacy Practice: Thank you so much.
Bob Locy, senator, Biological Sciences: I suspect I am talking to the wrong person when I am addressing this to you, but it’s the only chance I’ve got right now.
Please understand I certainly support the idea of increased bicycling on campus especially to the extent that it eliminates the problems with automobiles and parking and other things, but at the same time I’ve noticed several issues with, I am going to call them wheeled vehicles and and non-vehicles right now, that are moving across campus on pedestrian sidewalks and creating some real serious risky situations. As I’ve come out of Science Center C Classroom building and has someone whizzing by me on that walkway that goes from the Architecture School down to Parker Hall coming downhill on a bicycle at 15 mph, I suppose, very fast, through a huge amount of pedestrian traffic. And I’ve seen the same thing over on the Thach Concourse with skateboarders coming downhill from Foy toward Haley Center, right though the middle of a whole bunch of people going way too fast. I am concerned about the safety hazard that creates, I don’t know exactly how we would enforce it but I think we’ve got to look at some kind of concern for the pedestrian traffic which we’ve increased on campus in lieu of these other devices that can go much faster. I repeat, probably you are the wrong person, but I hope you take that to who ever the right person is.
Don Andrae, Manager, Parking Services: There’s always a lot, and Benjamin Burmester is the Chair of the Traffic and Parking Committee, there’s been a lot of discussion about doing dedicated bike lanes and to keep them where they need to go. Talked about doing a safety training class. Right now of course is if you see something like that, I can’t pull them over I can’t give them a ticket, so that’s what we are trying to figure out now if we can enforce that, we do have a lot of them doing that. I’ve seen a lot of them when they come down Mell Street they think that stop signs don’t apply to them, they just go right through the stop sign.
Got a lot of education to do. The other problem we have of course is the State of Alabama does not require a person to wear a helmet. We had one in our bike share program the other day that clip the curb with his pedal, fell off, put a nice gash in his head and hurt his hand pretty bad, then told his professor he couldn’t take the test because his hand was hurt, then blamed it on us because it didn’t say anything about wearing a helmet. So I immediately pointed out that inside the bike when you first get on there there is a little panel that tells you about all the safety rules; one of the first things there says: wear a helmet.
Yes, it’s an education we are trying to work on and the best way to get the education out. I do know that our Auburn Outdoors does classes on that so we are trying to work with them to get more students to come to that, as well they do bicycle repair classes. If you ever have a bike that needs to be fixed, they do that too.
Vicky Van Santeen, senator, Pathobiology: I just want to put in a word for separate bicycling and pedestrian facilities. I spent 3 months on sabbatical in the Netherlands; strict separation of pedestrian and bicycle traffic. You don’t walk down a bike path or you are going to get run over.
Don Andrae, Manager, Parking Services: You hate to say this but the Europeans are more adjusted to doing bicycles and more aware of the rules and the safety issues. We have a lot to learn but we do need to have some more bike lanes. Any other questions?
Larry Teeter, chair: Our last item of business, unless there is some continuing business from another meeting is the announcement of the vote.
Laura Plexico, secretary: The 3 next members of the Rules Committee are Melody Russell, Traci O’Brien, and Greg Schmidt. I’ll keep it short at that so we can all get out of here.
Larry Teeter, chair: Is there any new or unfinished business? Hearing none, the meeting is adjourned. [1:23:59] [2nd 1:24:04]