Transcript Senate Meeting
November 17, 2015
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.
Okay just a few details before we get started. 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 you are a senator and the unit you represent. The rules of the Senate require that senators or substitute senators be allowed to speak first, after the senators have had a chance to speak guests are welcome to speak to the Senate.
The agenda for the meeting today was set by the Senate Steering Committee, it was sent around in advance and is now shown on the screen. So if we would now please come to order we would like to establish a quorum, there are 86 members of the Senate a voting quorum requires 44 senators. If you are present and a senator or substituting for a senator please press A on the clicker. Okay we do have a quorum.
Our first item of business is approval of the minutes from the October 20, 2015 Senate meeting. These minutes have been previously posted on the Senate Website, are there any additions or changes or deletions to these minutes? Do I hear a motion to approve the minutes? A second? All in favor please say aye. Opposed? (none) The motion carries. [2:40]
We have a pretty full agenda today but we are going to start with comments from President Gogue.
Dr. Gogue, President: Thank you all for being here today, I have 3 general areas I want to talk to you about. One is the Board of Trustees meeting is this Friday on campus. A number of projects; there are 5 or 6 final projects for final approval. The infrastructure project that deals with the Health Science Quarter is in its final review. We expect all of these items to be approved. Number 2 is the School of Nursing Building will reach final approval, Pharmacy Research Building will reach final approval, the Auburn University Memorial Area, that’s the area that you may have seen students work with that is in front of the President’s House in that low area between the Hill Dorms and the House. So that’s on the agenda.
Athletics has a project that deals with the build-out of the Volleyball Team within the Arena. Apparently they built the Arena with some space that was not built out. This is a project to go and build out locker rooms etc. and for the Women’s Volleyball Team. There are a number of architectural approvals that will occur at this meeting. Probably the one that is of most interest to this group would be the Research Park movement of the Poultry areas out north, move from college area at the Research Park, those 3 or 4 poultry areas out to an area on North College. [4:22]
Two new projects on the agenda for initiation, important ones, they are both labeled as Research Building I and Research Building II. One is a facility that would incorporate folks from Geosciences and some from COSAM and the other one is primarily a building that would support remaining faculty in Funchess. So those 2 are in the initiation phase.
On the academic side there’s a BS in applied biotechnology coming out of the College of Agriculture. There is a Bachelor’s of Computer Science, so a professional undergraduate degree, coming out of the College of Engineering. There is an online option for the School of Nursing for a baccalaureate degree. There will be an endowment update at that meeting and there will also be a revisiting of the Board of Trustees policies relative to the audit committee. The modification, I think we may have mentioned it before, is that they will combine and have both audit and compliance as a part of the same committee. So there is language to make that change.
Unrelated to the Board Meeting I wanted to mention that we got a question that I thought was a good one and Don and I and others have begun discussions on this. It was a question about the give back by Athletics to the Academic side of the institution. A very fair question and the idea was that historically Athletics had said the reduction in ticket prices was part of their give back. So the logic is that since that reduction has been reduced, and I don’t remember the percentage change, but it’s been reduced maybe there is some more give back. So we’ve got a meeting with Athletics to try to get the details on that.
Final thing I want to mention to you, this was Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday of this week is when all your land-grant universities and state universities get together. The got together in Indianapolis, the Provost represented our institution at that meeting, and Auburn won the Innovation and Economic Prosperity Award. It recognized the university for it’s community, social, and cultural development throughout the state. They particularly called emphasis to the Rural Studio, the Oyster Farming activities, the Shell Fish Laboratory, and the National Poultry Technology Center.
I’d be happy to respond to questions about APLU or the Board Meeting.
Bob Locy, senator, Biological Sciences: [b-6:52] Dr. Gogue, I’d just like to make the point that in this discussion of give back to the university from the Athletic program, that really there is a lot of inconvenience caused to the faculty and to the students on for example home football games. And while this isn’t strictly a financial discussion point, when some of us have to park in parking places that are abnormal and walk distances to get to our classes, when our students are late showing up and so on, there is a certain amount of inconvenience to the academics of the university, for example, even today when we have a home basketball game at 2 o’clock. Inconveniencing again with respect to particularly parking. When I have to trip over tents getting to and from the classroom that I teach in, I think that needs to enter in to the discussion about what the Athletic program owes the university particularly in light of the fact that they have enough money to purchase the largest jumbo-tron in the country.
Dr. Gogue, President: Fair enough, thank you. [8:12]
(problem with the wireless microphone)
Did you in the back hear Bob’s question at all? Bob’s comment was, as we have discussions with Athletics relative to cost, there is some inconvenience associated with Athletics, ie.: parking related issues today over apparently there’s Basketball game that’s undeway that affects parking as well as structures that are out in areas that you trip over trying to get in and out of your building to do your job. Those are fair comments. Michael? [b-8:49] [8:
Mike Stern, not a senator, Economics: First I want to thank you Mr. President for at the General Faculty Meeting answering my 2 questions about tickets and athletic raises, and you and Don arranging to have Tim Jackson come see me. It was very informative speaking to Tim. I know at the last Senate Meeting Tim Jackson spoke some about the ticket issue. But I wanted to ask you about the other question that I had a follow-up to which are raises in Athletics. Now my understanding from the General Faculty Meeting was from you and Don was that they work among the administrators the same way they do for everybody else.
Dr. Gogue, President: Correct.
Mike Stern, not a senator, Economics: And, not the coaches of course, and Tim Jackson also confirmed that to me. In particular part of the rules when you receive over an 8% raise, at least for us, people in Samford Hall have to approve it and so forth. Tim also told me it was the same for them, if they do that for somebody they have to create a memo, he didn’t know who, but someone in Samford Hall had to approve it. He presumed it was either you or someone you delegate to do it. I don’t know if it’s you or Don, one of the 2. I wanted to ask you about a particular raise from 2014 that in looking in the salary files between September and October 2014 caught my eye and just see if a memo was made for it that was approved by Samford Hall. When I look between the September 2014 and October 2014, previous cycle’s raises, I see a senior associate athletics director by the name of Gary Waters, who I believe is in charge of academics over there, I am showing nearly $24,000 raise for him that is 13%. So well above 8%. So I presume a memo was written to justify it and then approved by someone in Samford Hall?
Dr. Gogue, President: Not aware of it. I don’t think we approved anybody over 8% since I’ve been here. First since in this cycle.
Mike Stern, not a senator, Economics: Well, that’s the raise that’s showing.
Dr. Don Large, Executive Vice President: Is this on? I did check on that in the last 3 or 4 weeks when I knew there was a concern there. And what he got was a raise of 8%, which was the maximum that could be done without a signature coming from above Jay Jacobs, so I too asked “I heard there was more, what happened?” The answer I got was he was the only senior associate in Athletics that did not have a car allowance, so that 5% extra was a car allowance that was allocated to him, but instead of it going in the normal car allowance category which would not have shown up in salary, would not have gone into the retirement system, you wouldn’t have paid your 7.5% and all, it was put into his salary and thus that is why you are seeing what appears to be a 13% increase in salary, because they combined the 2. So you say, why would they do that?, and the answer was, quite frankly he’s looking at retirement in the next year or less and they wanted to put it in the salary.
Mike Stern, not a senator, Economics: so we’re allowed to do that for our faculty?
Dr. Don Large, Executive Vice President: I don’t know that you are allowed to do that. If you have car allowances you could certainly make the decision of going one way or the other.
Dr. Gogue, President: That’s a fair question Michael and it’s not appropriate to have done it that way in my judgment.
Mike Stern, not a senator, Economics: Okay, well, alright, so that’s about 14 and let me address the raise cycle that we just went through. So 4 years ago, here in the Senate I did an exercise where I took the October and September salary files and used a text algorithm to text match names and look for salary differentials between the change of the budget cycle. Put them in rank order and spoke about the top 3. So we took the same code and reran it between this September and October, once again put them in rank order and looked at the top 3. And some things that were really interesting to me came out from that exercise.
So the 3rd largest dollar raise at the institution that we found when we did that exercise, the same code and everything. We wanted apples to apples comparison was yourself at a $40,112.00 raise in your base salary which looks to be 8%, does that sound right?
Dr. Gogue, President: As far as I know.
Mike Stern, not a senator, Economics: Which appeared to be larger than your raises from the 3 previous years combined, so I didn’t know if there was something special or restructuring of the contract
Dr. Gogue, President: No, I usually turn down raises, I didn’t turn it down this year.
Mike Stern, not a senator, Economics: Okay, so it’s nothing unusual, it is a raise, it’s not a restructuring of the contract because I read something in the paper that the Board and new terms.
Dr. Gogue, President: As far as I know it was 8% pay raise.
Mike Stern, not a senator, Economics: The second largest we found was for an Adam Spurlin, who’s salary change was $42,870.00. He was associate professor and associate director both before and after and I believe he’s the director of the Marching Band. Okay. Now my guess is that is due to a counter offer from another school
Dr. Gogue, President: I don’t know, what’s the story Provost? Or is the Dean here? Anyway, are we going to discuss…how many more do you have on your list Michael?
Mike Stern, not a senator, Economics: Just the top 3.
Dr. Gogue, President: Okay [15:35] we’ve got me taken care of, Spurlin?
Dr. Boosinger, Provost: [b-15;29] That’s market pressure.
Dr. Gogue, President: Okay, so that’s market pressure.
Mike Stern, not a senator, Economics: That’s just a counter offer, okay. And then the number one we found of which we round to thousands was the same as we found the number one last time. It’s about $52,900.00 was for Jay Jacobs, the athletics director. And it also appears to be 8% in dollar terms compared to 2011–12 files, also greater than the previous 3 years combined in dollar terms. So I was wondering about that raise as well.
Dr. Gogue, President: What about it?
Mike Stern, not a senator, Economics: Well, was that the raise you gave him?
Dr. Gogue, President: Yes.
Mike Stern, not a senator, Economics: You thought that was justified?
Dr. Gogue, President: I did, that’s the reason I gave him that raise. Like I say, I had the freedom to give him raises in previous years and did not give those that large, so I gave a normal one this year.
Mike Stern, not a senator, Economics: Okay, just personally observing athletics over the past year, and speaking to my colleagues and everyone I know, I haven’t seen any where near the satisfaction of it that we had seen in years past. I mean I remember great satisfaction from the 2013 season, a dream season going to the National Championship, Iron Bowl and stuff seemed to be a great time and the raises that I see following that are small. And certainly over the past year there’s been a great deal of trouble in relation to performance on the field of our primary revenue sport and so forth. There’s been turnover, coaches here and there and those kinds of things. When I look at performance, when we do raises this is merit only so the rules that are given us for faculty, I have to show a merit distribution, so I have to compare different people on the basis of merit in their evaluations and I don’t know what metrics would be used in Athletics or if you’re looking in particular at Jay Jacobs where you would see that his merit only pure raise this year is so much superior than the previous years.
Dr. Gogue, President: I appreciate your input. Other questions?
Larry Teeter, chair: We have a full agenda today. If you have items to bring to the Senate that are off the agenda so to speak, and as far off as this particular item was I think we can bring it up through the process of the Senate by going to a particular committee and have that committee look more in depth at it than we can at this hour and a half period that we have available to us.
Before we get started I’d like to introduce our Senate officers. Dr. Laura Plexico, our secretary; Xing Ping Hu, our secretary-elect; Dr. James Goldstein, chair-elect; Dr. Patricia Duffy, our immediate past chairand representative to the Board of Trustees; Dr. Bob Locy, a previous chair of the Senate and now serving as our parliamentarian. And as always I’d like to introduce Laura Kloberg, who helps us with our Senate meetings and all the different procedures that have to be followed and maintained between Senate meetings to keep our Senate running smoothly. [19:15]
We have 2 action items today, the first is a proposed policy on undergraduate certificates presented by Dr. Lisa Kensler, chair of the Academic Standards Committee. This motion will come from a Senate Committee and therefore will need no second.
Lisa Kensler, chair of the Academic Standards Committee: I think we will review the PowerPoint very quickly. I am just going to scan through it.
So the undergraduate certificate was proposed to our committee. Our committee felt it was worthy to come before the Senate and so we have brought it to you for your consideration. The certificate would appear on the university transcript; I’m not going to give the whole presentation I am going to just click through the slides unless you have a hard time seeing. If I see a hand then I will speak more about what’s on the slide. It’s optional, it’s not required. If you don’t as a program or department want to offer a Certificate there is no pressure to do so. If you do want to offer it you have to follow the university Curriculum Committee process for getting new programs approved. So it would be considered a new program to offer a Certificate.
These are the guidelines. I have heard some feedback this week about questions about whether or not a regularly admitted undergraduate student could be expanded to a non-degree seeking undergraduate student. I’ve heard some questions about that. I don’t have an answer, just telling you I’ve heard some questions. The regular process and that’s it. Is there discussion? Or questions? Comments?
Charles Israel, substitute for CLA senator: I have a couple of questions about this proposal and they come from initially a lack of familiarity with Certificates, so I went out and was trying to look, what does this look like in the actual market place with other certificates. And it turns out, it means a lot of different things at a lot of different places, so in some ways it gives us lots of opportunities, but it also suggests to me that it’s a challenge that it is not a recognized credential, and that those differences matter in different places. So I looked at this then saying, well what is it that would look in comparison to other things that we have at the university here and in particular it’s relationship to minors and majors. Which seems to be most places that have academic bulletins and spell out what it is.
Then I went through the exercise of reading through the actual pdf policy, not the slides, of this version and said instead of saying certificate in all these places, what if I just said minor and trying to figure how does it differ from a minor. The only place it seems to do that are 2, one it requires potentially fewer courses than a minor 12 courses as opposed to 15, and 2 that it could allow a unit but does not require a unit to allow courses to double count. So that I might take a course that satisfies a minor in business administration but also satisfies my new certificate program. That’s not necessarily out of keeping with what some of the other programs are, but what I do notice is that these other programs do specify whether to count these courses as double counting or not, or a maximum number of courses that can double count. And I guess I’m concerned first about double counting, that this isn’t specified, that it is left up to the individual proposer on that side.
But maybe for a few more questions, that’s under the general heading of is this different than and academic minor, but other general questions; are there any residency requirements for a student completing a certificate?
Lisa Kensler, chair of the Academic Standards Committee: I think if we go back, I think that that was in there at one point
Charles Israel, substitute for CLA senator: Not on the policy listing
Lisa Kensler, chair of the Academic Standards Committee: I don’t teach undergraduates, so what’s the residency requirement for undergraduates. How is that defined?
Charles Israel, substitute for CLA senator: It has a specification about courses to be in residency as a senior and also a minimum percentage of courses, 25% of the overall or 50% of the courses in that program.
Lisa Kensler, chair of the Academic Standards Committee: And that means on-campus? A non-distance related class?
Charles Israel, substitute for CLA senator: I’m asking for that to be clarified.
Lisa Kensler, chair of the Academic Standards Committee: I don’t think that we require…I think the discussion was that we were…[24:57] [b-24:47]
Larry Teeter, chair: (not at microphone) It’s not different than the undergraduate programs. I’m not sure if we have an undergraduate distance learning Program for 3 new programs emerging. I don’t think it would be very (?).
Charles Israel, substitute for CLA senator: So [b-25:02] by default it would follow the same residency requirements that existing undergraduate programs do.
Patricia Duffy, immediate past chair: Just want to clarify, usually with its residence is not that it’s distance or non-distance it’s Auburn offers it versus a transfer.
Lisa Kensler, chair of the Academic Standards Committee: Oh, Okay, in that case I don’t think we have transfer classes to contribute to the certificate. I don’t think it specifically says not to but in the conversations about it…
Charles Israel, substitute for CLA senator: It would bound…absent other specifications it would be bound by
Lisa Kensler, chair of the Academic Standards Committee: it would be Auburn courses, I think, is a logical thing unless, an advisor I suppose could request that but all the conversations that we’ve had have been focused on Auburn courses.
Charles Israel, substitute for CLA senator: Will this be tracked through the existing degree audit system as a minor or major would?
Lisa Kensler, chair of the Academic Standards Committee: Through Degreeworks, yes that’s my understanding. [26:16] Is Dr. Relihan here? It would be? Yes.
Charles Israel, substitute for CLA senator: Then I guess the only other question I leave is this question about double counting courses. And the potential challenge for allowing some courses to count double in some cases and not others, so the example I might say is if you have a minor that requires 5 courses in business administration and a minor that would have a series of options, but could give the option to ultimately for a student to take 4 courses in business administration as part of their certificate options; is there a concern that these 2 would pose a challenge that would have similar requirements between the 2 but now a new program would only requiring fewer courses than the existing one?
Lisa Kensler, chair of the Academic Standards Committee: UmHum, and they get the certificate instead of a minor?
Charles Israel, substitute for CLA senator: Correct.
Lisa Kensler, chair of the Academic Standards Committee: Well, I think that would be up to the Certificate designing unit to decide whether they want to have that certificate compete if that’s your concern, compete with a minor or not. So, certificates are not required. Each unit decides whether or not a certificate is appropriate and how many credits and what to call it and what courses count and so forth. So I assume an MBA…a business administration unit would not design a minor, or would not design a certificate that they felt was in conflict or competition with the minor.
Charles Israel, substitute for CLA senator: I would suspect that if it’s the business administration yes, but if it’s a minor that, a certificate rather that has a lot of options, that is they have a menu of courses, as many of the certificates that seem to be out there one of the other distinguishing features is they are explicitly interdisciplinary and specify that they can’t be within a major, but the possibility of it being overlapping in that way.
Lisa Kensler, chair of the Academic Standards Committee: Again, I would say it’s up to the designing unit. The unit that’s designing the certificate should decide whether they want it to be interdisciplinary and across units or whether they want to highlight a different aspect of their degree program.
Charles Israel, substitute for CLA senator: Okay,
Jennifer Mueller Phillips, substitute senator for Accountancy: Good afternoon, my name is Jennifer Mueller Phillips and I am substituting for Bob Cochran in the School of Accountancy and on January 1, I will become the chair of the School of Accountancy. [28:58] That’s happened in the last 2 weeks so yes a very exciting time in my office.
So the School of Accountancy would like to express support for this policy. We have written a proposal for an undergraduate certificate in accountancy that we believe aligns very well with the rationale and motivations provided in the policy. The proposal we’ve designed has a goal of preparing students who have undergraduate degrees that are non-accounting, so they are second degree seeking students or they could be a campus student rather than an online student and they are seeking a degree in business outside of accounting, to take enough courses to be eligible to sit for the CPA exam and eventually become CPA licensed. We currently offer the online BS in Accountancy, however you are only eligible if your undergraduate degree is from an AACSB accredited institution. And AACSB is our international accrediting body for colleges of business and schools of accountancy. So we turn away more than half of our applicants because they do not have a sufficient degree to enroll in that program. So this certificate would allow those students to earn the course work and the hours to be eligible to sit for most state boards of accountancy. [30:32]
We are loosing these applicants to our competitors, our online competitors and just to name a few there are about 10, but UConn, LSU, UVA, and North Western are taking students who would like to come to Auburn, but unfortunately they are unable to earn a credential from Auburn. They could potentially still take courses but their employers may not be willing to reimburse tuition, for example, if they cannot produce a credential at the end of the coursework.
To date in 2015 we’ve had over 700 inquiries into our online programs in accounting and we expect to be somewhere near 1,000 by the close of 2015. This just basically expresses our support. I would make one other request on behalf of the School of Accountancy. Half of the states in our Union require 24 hours at least to be eligible and we noted that the policy specifies a range of 12–21 and we would like to see a maximum to the end of that range raised to 24 to accommodate that. Otherwise we’re very happy with the way the policy reads. [31:51]
Marilyn Cornish, senator, Special Ed. Rehab. & Counseling: I have a question on behalf of one of our faculty members. Given that incarcerated individuals now are eligible for Federal Pell Grants there may be increased interest in education, including at Auburn University and she was wondering what thought the committee or others at Auburn have given to how the certificate program might serve individuals who are incarcerated and interested in gaining some additional skills?
Lisa Kensler, chair of the Academic Standards Committee: Is it really bad if I say I haven’t thought about that?
Marilyn Cornish, senator, Special Ed. Rehab. & Counseling: It would be honest.
Lisa Kensler, chair of the Academic Standards Committee: What do you think about it?
Marilyn Cornish, senator, Special Ed. Rehab. & Counseling: Well, this is a question on behalf of her but it certainly would require some of the online components I would imagine, but could see this as something that even though a person may not be able to get an entire undergraduate degree, perhaps getting a certificate in a particular area may be of benefit to their future educational opportunities.
Lisa Kensler, chair of the Academic Standards Committee: Oh, so you are asking about expanding from the regularly admitted undergraduate to somebody who is a non-degree seeking and looking to come to Auburn via distance for just the certificate? I have gotten that question from a different context as well and Dr. Relihan?
Dr. Constance Relihan, Assoc. Provost for Undergraduate Studies: I’m over here.
Lisa Kensler, chair of the Academic Standards Committee: Can you speak to that?
Dr. Constance Relihan, Assoc. Provost for Undergraduate Studies: Yes. It’s a really good question. Auburn has put in an application to be one of the experimental sites that would be eligible to enroll students who are incarcerated using Pell Funds. We have not yet found out if we will be granted permission to be an experimental site. If we do that the students do need to be in a degree or credential seeking program. We have put together our initial proposal to them, called for an interdisciplinary degree to start with, but it could expand depending on whether or not we get permission to be a site, depending on how the program goes. If we’re granted permission, then the idea would be to start very small building on the successes of our current Alabama Prison Arts in Education Program.
Lisa Kensler, chair of the Academic Standards Committee: Thank you, I am glad you thought about it.
Marilyn Cornish, senator, Special Ed. Rehab. & Counseling: Thank you. So it sounds like right now they would have to be a degree seeking student they would not be able to enroll simply in a Certificate Program. Right?
Lisa Kensler, chair of the Academic Standards Committee: Correct.
Marilyn Cornish, senator, Special Ed. Rehab. & Counseling: Thank you.
David Carter, substitute senator for History: I’m new to the proposed policy but did just want to point out that the pdf indicates no more than 50% course credits required for Certificate that may be obtained through transfer credit in keeping with Auburn’s general policy. I guess the only concern I would raise there is if this is a 12-hour credential to have a credential coming out of Auburn University with only 6 hours of Auburn stamped content kind of concerns me. I would just raise that as a general concern.
Lisa Kensler, chair of the Academic Standards Committee: Okay, thank you.
Traci O’Brien, senator, Foreign Lang. & Literatures: I have a question about resource allocation. Is this Certificate Program then going to impact on how resources are allocated? Like is a unit comes up with a certificate, then drawing resources to that unit, perhaps away from the other units where the courses are being taken?
Lisa Kensler, chair of the Academic Standards Committee: That’s sort of a new budget model question, that I do not claim to be an expert on.
Tim Boosinger, Provost: Not in the current model.
Lisa Kensler, chair of the Academic Standards Committee: Not in the current model.
Traci O’Brien, senator, Foreign Lang. & Literatures: What about the new model? [36:00]
Tim Boosinger, Provost: In the new model it would be tied to student credit hour production.
Lisa Kensler, chair of the Academic Standards Committee: I think if I can ask the question slightly differently; let’s say my program offers an interdisciplinary certificate and we house the certificate but the courses might come from other programs. When the other programs shared those students they would get the funds for those credit hours. Correct? Or because they are part of the certificate all those funds come to the certificate housing unit?
Traci O’Brien, senator, Foreign Lang. & Literatures: That is very well put. [b-36:20]
Tim Boosinger, Provost: In the proposed model 70% of tuition revenue based on student credit hour production of (?) from the unit, excuse me those who (?) do the work and then 30% goes to the unit of record. So… [Could not hear clearly the entire answer do to not speaking at the microphone.]
Lisa Kensler, chair of the Academic Standards Committee: So in a double dipping situation if you have a certificate, an interdisciplinary certificate in one unit that has courses that are part of a minor in another unit, would they share 15% and 15%?
Tim Boosinger, Provost: They would have to be negotiated. [b-36:57]
Traci O’Brien, senator, Foreign Lang. & Literatures: Okay, so my other questions is say if a unit proposes a certificate that seems to suspiciously, well…similar to your question, like a minor that exists in another program but say 3 less credit hours or whatever so it makes it significantly more attractive to students, does another existing unit have the ability to protest or…?
Lisa Kensler, chair of the Academic Standards Committee: Yes, through the UCC. Through the University Curriculum Committee process that duplication would be hashed out. [37:48]
Traci O’Brien, senator, Foreign Lang. & Literatures: Thank you.
Larry Teeter, chair: Are we ready to vote? More discussion?
Jennifer Mueller Phillips, substitute senator for Accountancy: So regarding the request for 24 hours on the upper end of the range, is that something that would have to be negotiated or modified at a later date? Or the policy as written ends with 21. [38:45]
Larry Teeter, chair: Could we have a friendly amendment? Someone has to propose the amendment.
Jennifer Mueller Phillips, substitute senator for Accountancy: I would like to propose an amendment of 12–24 hours.
Emmett Winn, Associate Provost: Second.
Larry Teeter, chair: Any discussion of that increase? It doesn’t seem to impact anyone. Any discussion?
Lisa Kensler, chair of the Academic Standards Committee: Any discussion about raising the credit hours? Now we’re voting on the (amendment) extending the credit hours from 21 to 24. A is yes, B is no.
A=53, B=3
Larry Teeter, chair: All right, the amendment passes. Now we are ready to vote on the policy itself. All in favor, A for yes. B for no. A=43, B=13. Okay, great, the policy passes. [40:21] Thank you very much Lisa.
Our next action item for today is brought forward by James Goldstein, from the Faculty Handbook Review Committee.
James Goldstein, chair of the Faculty Handbook Review Committee: Good afternoon. Just to remind everybody the motion is for both of these changes that are recorded in the different documents. The first change mostly is to clarify that department or unit heads are required to say in their letter whether or not they support promotion and/or tenure. I did get a, and it counts as their vote, I did get a question by e-mail after the last Senate meeting so I wanted to clarify that the department or unit heads vote, which is the letter, is not a vote in the same sense as the department’s is because the Handbook requires a tally of how the members of the department voted. So you don’t add the department head or unit heads letter affirming or denying the recommendation to that tally, so it’s a different kind of thing but the language that we looked at called it a vote. Before we shift, if there were any questions about this part of the motion while we have it up on the screen.
Okay, now we can look at the other one. The main thing that this deals with, or 2 things I would point out; adding a little bit more clarity about the possible reasons for discontinuing or non-continuing a probationary faculty member before they are eligible for them to come up for tenure. So it’s a little clearer about the possible reasons for doing that. The other main thing is further down in the document on the section on financial exigency to actually begin with a widely accepted definition of what financial exigency actually means. So we know whether we have it or not before the procedures kick in. So those are the 2 most important changes here. [43:30] I’d be happy to take any questions if there are any. (pause) Okay then, thank you.
Larry Teeter, chair: So these revisions come from a standing committee and don’t require a second. We are ready to vote I guess. All in favor of the revisions as stated press A on your clicker. Opposed B. A=55, B=1. Motion approved. Thank you very much.
We have 2 information items today. The first will be an update on campus Facilities construction brought forward by Dan King, Associate Vice President for Facilities Management. [44:50]
Dan King, Associate Vice President for Facilities Management: Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me to give you a quick update. What I thought I’d try to focus on are the capital projects over the next couple of years that we’re currently tracking to construct most are in some kind of approval or design construction phase. As you can see from this slide here there’s really a pretty extensive slate of academic projects to be constructed over the next 4 or 5 years. Not all of these have bee approved by the Board of Trustees, not all of these have been approved for funding yet. It’s a lot of money. As you can see, 400-million-dollars. It does represent, I think, a good news story and I think particularly to the University Senate here that the university is really trying to invest in its academic facilities and specifically the Provost over the last probably 2 to 3 years has really led an effort to try to increase the quantity and the quality of instructional space, particularly for students; to increase research space,; to have a very proactive development effort across many different projects here; and to resolve some long standing building problems. For instance, you will here about this as we go through this; the replacement of Parker and Allison, 2 really bad buildings, the replacement of Funchess and other really bad buildings. So quite a slate of potential projects. Again, not all of these have gone to the Board for final approval, not all of these have been funded, there is still some debate within the senior administration over how much debt should be taken on by the university. That may be factored into this, the Board of Trustees will certainly take that into account when they make their approval.
Another aspect about this is the university has taken a slightly broader or more diverse funding approach. They are going to use general funds of the university reserves for some of the dollar volume here. Gifts will play a major role and then Bond funding will also be used. So here to fore it’s been principally Bond-funding and roughly looking at the numbers I would guess it’s about 25% or 50% between university general funds, some gifts, and Bond borrowing to support these projects.
For the update what I thought I would do is just a quick summary: over 400-million and about 900 thousand square feet would be built as a result of these projects.
[48:07] I thought I would just try to give a very high level overview by taking a look at the map of the core of campus and show you year by year what project might be under construction. I will go through this relatively quick so that there can be questions at the end.
So in 2015 it’s already November 17, so this would imply after the football season, over Christmas break, 3 projects are going to start. The Mell Classroom Building, they just bid this afternoon; about a 33-million-dollar instructional classroom building on to the front of the Library. School of Nursing, Pharmaceutical Research Building and a project to bring utilities to what’s now being designated for the Master Plan as the Health Science sector of campus. This is South Donahue, that’s Lem Morrison, this is VCom down here, so it would be School of Nursing there and Pharmaceutical Research Building right here. Those 2 projects total about 45 million dollars. And those would start, the earthwork and the utilities would start probably over Christmas. Then in January and probably the actual School of Nursing building portions, March to April timeframe. So a couple of major academic facilities will begin in 2015 here.
As we move to 2016 the campus starts getting busier from a construction standpoint. I am going to start in the upper right and then work clockwise around. There’s a cluster of projects up near the Gavin Research Building, which used to be called the Textile Building. The very top of the screen there is Magnolia, behind the Gavin Research Building is the Engineering shops and L-Building, those we believe will need to be demolished and College of Engineering has a gift for an Engineering Achievement Center. So those 3 projects probably will be sequenced, not necessarily consecutively, but in 2016 certainly the Gavin engineering renovation will start. Hopefully during that year demolition of the engineering shops and L-building would occur and will possibly start the Engineering Achievement Center.
We still have Mell Classroom Building underway in 2016. Cater Hall Phase II will begin in spring, it’s an interior renovation. We did the exterior renovation over the summer and this would now do the interior. Jordan Hare Stadium Phase I would replace a storm drain and a sewer and put 2 tower crane pads in the north end of the Stadium. About a 4.5-million-dollar project. There is a Band Rehearsal Facility kind of on the back side of Goodwin Hall; probably start this summer. The Leach Science Center addition is really related to Parker and Allison. The plan for Parker and Allison is to replace it with a project called the Academic Classroom and Laboratory Project, the largest academic project on this whole slate of projects that is planned over this 5-year period, that would go on the site of Parker and Allison so these have to be demolished. So the math faculty and the physics faculty need to be moved out of there and specifically for the physics faculty and addition would be built onto Leach Hall, which underneath Leach under kind of a mound nets there is where all the major physics laboratories are. So it would co-locate physics with their major laboratories. And math moves into a renovated section of Haley.
Keep moving around here, we already talked about School of Nursing, Pharmaceutical Research are underway at that point. Our plan would be to demolish the old CDV Residence hall over the summer and land bank it as parking for the near term. And we have a project graduate business education building this is subject to, it will be funded all by gifts, so this may happen in 2016 it could slide a little bit depending on what happens with fund raising. As you can see there is a lot going on on campus in 2016.
Then we move on to 2017 and these span the entire year so the project is active it’s circled. So again, starting up here, I would think by 2017 the Gavin Research renovation is completed. The demolition of the shops and L-building should be completed and probably the Engineering Achievement Center is well underway at that point. The Mell Classroom Building is completed, Cater Hall’s completed, Jordan Hare Stadium Phase II –there’s a proposed project to do some major improvements to the North End of the Staduim, an Athletics project. We think that the Academic Classroom and Lab Complex, currently it’s slated to start in 2017, we need to determine some more investigation on that to determine can this size of a project and a project of the size that this one might be, so close together, is that too much or do we need to maybe slide the Academic Classroom and Lab Complex out to 2018 at some point? [54:14] Not sure of the timing on it, but right now it’s currently 2017. So that’s a pretty big project with a lot of impact there.
This is a project that President Gogue had mentioned, a project to relocate Geosciences and the COSAM folks out of Funchess. So there are two projects here, the Interdisciplinary Science Building and the Agricultural Sciences Research Building that are intended to replace Funchess Hall, which in our view is probably one of the top 5 worst buildings on campus. So this would take Geosciences out of Petrie Hall, which is kind of in the wrong area there, it’s a good building but not well suited for them, and combine them with COSAM faculty and staff out of Funchess into this Interdisciplinary Science Building. The Agricultural Sciences Research Building would take the College of Agriculture staff out of Funchess relocate them and relocate some greenhouses out to this sector of campus, this is West Samford, this is South Donahue, this is the new Residence Hall that was built, this is Leach, this is Duncan, so it is along Duncan, this is the USDA property, so it would put the College of Agriculture a major college building both instructional and research a little bit out of the core of campus and frankly off of AG hill. Over in this location continuing to move down, the university was very fortunate to get a 37-million-dollar gift on the Performing Arts Center. The general thought where that will go is across from the museum into this area of campus. That will take quite a bit of development, a major facility there. We are working hard to figure out what that will be. This is Nursing and Pharmaceutical Research, by December 2017 they should be complete. Leach is complete, CDV demolition is complete, and Graduate Business Education if it started in 2016 it will probably still be underway or could start in 2017.
In 2018 things start to get complete. The Gavin Research building renovation is complete. Engineering Achievement Center will be complete, Mell, Cater those are complete. The Stadium is still underway to be completed by the start of the 2018 season. Academic Classroom and Lab Complex is still underway as is Interdisciplinary Science, Agricultural Science, College of Education might start about that timeframe. Performing Arts is still underway. Nursing, Pharmacy is done, CDV is done, Graduate Business Education will be done if it starts in 2016.
By 2019 most of that’s done. College of Education might be one of the ones that’s still out there. If there are other projects that would be executed in that timeframe they have yet to make themselves known. But unto itself there is an awful lot of construction in a 4- or 5-year timeframe, but the goal is to try to transform the academic facilities on campus and particularly with a bent to increasing the quality of the instructional spaces. So we are no longer reliant on the vast bulk of our classrooms which are in Haley Center and the limitations those spaces have on how you teach and how students learn. I’d be happy to take any questions you have. [57:54]
Hilary Wyss, senator, English: So you mentioned Haley Center which I was glad to hear you mention it, but I was a little surprised to see that it didn’t make it through 2019. I would just say that I’ve been here since 1998 when I got here… “don’t unpack because we’re taking down Haley Center,” you know. So I am just wondering when it’s actually going to make it onto one of these projected…
Dan King, Associate Vice President for Facilities Management If you were to ask us, the renovation of Haley or the replacement of Haley should really be the primary project that’s executed in 2020–2030. I think there was…due to the cost, and I think this is easily 100-million-dollar project, the thought and the priorties from the Provost they tried to align the project priorities with the university Strategic Plan and the major theme out of that was student success and so what fell out of that was let’s focus on these instructional classroom buildings. So that’s where the Mell Classroom Building came in, Academic Classroom and Lab Complex, School of Nursing, some of those kind of things, so they really sort of jumped to the front to take care of the students as opposed to replacing Haley.
Hilary Wyss, senator, English: But Haley is a classroom building and it’s generally acknowledged, I think, to be a very poor classroom environment.
Dan King, Associate Vice President for Facilities Management: It is. That’s why the creation of higher quality classroom space, through the Mell Classroom Building and through the Academic Classroom and Lab Complex, and several other buildings on the list there will have instructional space in there is how we reduce our reliance on Haley Center as a classroom building. You are constrained with what you can do with the Haley spaces.
Hilary Wyss, senator, English: So though 2019 there is no plan to do any kind of renovation or any kind of work on Haley Center?
Dan King, Associate Vice President for Facilities Management: No building wide. I did mention that there would have to be some renovation to fit the math faculty into those spaces. We are going to have to take classrooms offline when some of the new classrooms are built particularly from the Mell Classroom Building to convert those so they are configured right for office spaces. But no, mostly just because it’s so big if you are going to start it it’s probably in the 100-million-dollar range and the priorities were on the other ones. We don’t think it’s a great building it’s a bad building too, but some of the others are more easily solved. [1:00:51] Any other questions, comments?
So there’s been some concern and rightfully so, let me mention some road and traffic impact as a result of the construction. The one that will occur most quickly would be with the construction of the Mell Classroom Building, Mell ST from here, which is Thach-Samford Hall right there, Ross Square-from Thach down to that road right there (Quad Drive) will be closed. So from a traffic standpoint there will be some congestion causes and impact caused by that closure. But the building comes on the front of the Library and that space is needed to do the construction around the perimeter of the building, so that road will be closed.
There’s been some discussion, should Mell ST be closed permanently? There has been no decision to do that. I guess the thought is let’s see what the impact is, how bad is it through the Mell Classroom construction and assess it at a later point, but that’s been mentioned before and turned into more of a pedestrian walkway not unlike what happened with Thach some years ago.
Another issue, we have a project, this intersection of West Samford and Mell in the afternoon about this timeframe is the worst on campus, so there is a project that may get executed over a couple of years to do some improvements sort of all along here. But specifically here the options would be to: 1.) do nothing and let it be a 4-way stop and the traffic backs way up on here around 4–5:30 in the afternoon; 2.) we could put a traffic light there, but given the short distance between here and the traffic light on South College, not sure we would gain much; so 3) there is some thought and we’d have to study this and look at it, could you put a traffic circle there and keep traffic flowing a little bit better? There is some concern: people around here are not used to traffic circles and all that, that’s true, hopefully this is a very learning community and we could learn how to manage that. But this intersection needs some solution and we don’t know the answer yet, but those are the options under consideration.
Another parking issue that’s been of significant concern is the loss of the Wright ST lot, we currently leased for a number of year 100 spots in a parking lot to the north of Magnolia off-campus along Wright ST. The company or person that owns that property is going to develop it. As you have noticed there is a lot of development north of Magnolia right now between Magnolia and Glenn and there will be more, so the owner of that wants to develop it. We have those spaces leased until June 2016, but at that point we are going to loose the spaces. We’ve been tracking on that for a while and the university has leased just recently 100 spots north of Magnolia behind Chick-Fil-A as replacement for the Wright ST parking. We’re continuing to monitor the real estate situation north of Magnolia and would love to enter into some kind of agreement that would increase our parking options particularly on the City side of Magnolia as opposed to on our property because there are limited options in the NE quadrant, not a lot of good space for that. So we are continuing to watch that and hopefully find a good solution over time.
Mike Stern, not a senator: I was thinking about and exchange I had with my colleague about Haley because when I too came here years ago I remember Haley was on a time-line to be gotten rid of. And you had shown it had fallen off because our focus shift to students and the delivery of classrooms, so we moved Haley off there. So I was thinking about some of the projects that occurred over the past couple of years. I am thinking of the re-bricking and re-windowing of the Lowder building, not sure they did anything for the delivery of the students. I’m thinking…
Dan King, Associate Vice President for Facilities Management: No, but it was needed to maintain the building and keep it water tight.
Mike Stern, not a senator: Right, and Haley has no such problems…
Dan King, Associate Vice President for Facilities Management: It does
Mike Stern, not a senator: Then I was thinking about the acquisition of Bruno’s and the remodeling of that, I was in there the other day and it’s very nice. I believe it is all office space. No student delivery there. I was thinking of the scoreboard that just went up that prevented me from getting in the parking garage efficiency because I had to go around. No delivery of student services there. And then I hear about plans to change the north end of the Stadium, 100-million-dollar renovation, I’ve even heard of drafting of plans for it. That doesn’t have anything to do with the delivery of educational services directly to the students. Observing this I am not sure I can accept the theory that Haley was moved off of that. I am more inclined to believe that Haley was moved off of it because of who uses Haley in terms of employees as opposed to what it is used for.
Dan King, Associate Vice President for Facilities Management: I appreciate your opinion, I don’t agree with it, but okay. [1:07:34]
Larry Teeter, chair: Okay, I apologize for skipping on the agenda. I didn’t notice Yasser come in earlier and I just kind of slid down on the agenda to Dan King, but Yasser is here and he’ll present his report from the Administrator Evaluations Committee.
Yasser Gowayed, chair of Administrator Evaluations: This is the work the that Administrator Evaluations Committee have been working on for the past year and this semester. This is the Committee charter that we shall oversee or conduct a periodic evaluation of university administrators involved in the university teaching, social extension programs, and provide a report of aggregate data to the Senate. These are the members for last year and this year who worked on the guidelines that will be presented today.
We were tasked by the Senate Leadership to work on this item which is part of the guidelines for the Provost to evaluate administrators. It’s an evaluation that happens every 3 to 5 years. And the guidelines are at that Web site. Number 7 of the guidelines point to a survey. That survey is done annually and helps in part that evaluation process.
So our proposed guidelines sort of took number 7 and expanded it more or less. In the first attempts we are trying to focus on Deans and Department Chairs and Heads and we have a survey that will be conducted annually and will be conducted by the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment. It will be conducted during the month of February to allow for its utilization in the annual review of different administrators. It will not be conducted during that year that the administrator is being evaluated, but all other years.
We’ll identify the full-time employees that have or should have direct interaction with the administrator and as usual they will be sent a notification by e-mail with a password on a Web site and a deadline to fill the survey. The survey will have a section on comments. The comment section took a long discussion because of the limit issue, how can we maintain that and if it’s good to have comments or not…I think the final conclusion that we came to is that we may have a comment with a lot of warning about please watch for what you say, it will be used verbatim. [1:10:55]
The information coming, the sole value will be provided for the chair of Evaluation Committee, the chair of the University Senate, as well as the Provost. The Provost will be tasked with submitting this information for the Chairs to the Deans. The survey will look something like this. This is a very short sort of display of the survey. It will have 5 levels of evaluation with 5 as excellent, 1 is very poor, and (?-could not understand what was said) cannot judge and the cannot judge part is where you don’t have a direct information about that specific task. It will have 4 sections and under each one of these sections there are between 4 and 5 questions, so a total of a maximum of about 20 questions or so. It should take between 2 and 5 minutes for any faculty member to fill. So it will be fast, easy to do, and hopefully by implementing this annually we will gain trust from the faculty and the full-time employees to always contribute to it. So the number of full-time employees that will contribute to it and fill that survey will be a high percent. But we have to do it annually, systematically to achieve that level of confidence and success. [1:12:24]
Here is the warning that we put which says do not include personal events that may reduce the level of anonymity that would be included as the header of the part where the employee will input his or her direct comments of the administrator.
Before February 2016 we hope to implement the first survey, so in a couple of months. Before that we need to utilize the campus resources to optimize the survey. So we have the different elements of the survey and we have questions under them, we would like to consult with faculty who’s job it is to write surveys and to understand them to help us optimize the survey so that we have a better tool. The best tool we can get at this time. Of course we will communicate at this time with the Institutional Research and Assessment Office and work with them.
That is our presentation and I’ll be open to questions if we have any.
David Carter, substitute senator, History: Would the comments be disaggregated from the scaled responses? I now I have colleagues that are much more intelligent than be that swear they can see a student evaluation and instantly tell based on the comments, which student left that response. I wonder if the comments would be aggregated and provided separately or if that would be individually linked to survey responses on the scale?
Yasser Gowayed, chair of Administrator Evaluations: I am under that impression, but we did not go into that technicality yet. But I would be more prone to separating them and having them as a different entry. Thank you.
Larry Teeter, chair: Thank you Yasser. Our final information item will be about the new campus mobile device encryption policy. Bliss Bailey, our interim CIO.
Bliss Bailey, interim CIO: Alright, 5 minutes, no slides. I’ve been before you in the past and you’ve seen the drawings of the barbarians at the gates and the cartoons proclaiming we have met the enemy and he is us and we are all working hard to keep our information secured, and you are a part of that effort as well. You participated in our cyber security awareness training program and many of you have worked with you local IT service providers to register and secure your research related systems. Our network firewalls are more securely figured than they have ever been to help prevent problems and we’ve deployed new intrusion detection systems to inform us if a hack has happened or is underway. We are tracking down stray sensitive data that has found it’s way to desktops and laptops and we are building systems to store that data.
We are also working with partners and contractors to improve our practices. We’ve brought in an outside consultant to scan and test the systems on our network to help us find and remediate vulnerabilities. This will become an annual cycle of tests; remediate; and then re-test.
We’ve partnered with Sura (?) to help create a template for information technology the incidence response planning and have integrated components of that template into the university’s incidence response plan. And information security and audit staff from Auburn have helped to create a regional security round table. This started as a regular meeting of security professionals from institutions of higher ed within the state of Alabama and has grown to include institutions from neighboring states as well.
And we have a cyber insurance provider that works with us to refine and and improve our security posture. The contract for our cyber insurance was recently rebid and we interacted with a number of insurance providers during that process. We heard several recurring themes during our interviews that went along with the renewal process and one of those themes was encryption. Particularly the encryption of mobile devices.
Now if you follow the news at all it’s hard to miss the fact that data breaches are occurring all the time. Cyber insurance carriers are taking a bath and are becoming much more selective in the way they write their policies. So we were not surprised when our coverage came with a set of performance expectations that we would need to meet. The strongest and most immediate expectation was that we would develop and implement a policy for the inscription of mobile devices. Our contract’s start date was October 1, and I worked quickly and borrowed liberally from the policies of other universities to create a draft encryption policy. I vetted this policy with the co-chairs of our encryption working group that represent both the central and distributed IT communities and this is how we got to the policy that exists today.
We’ve implemented the first set of protective measures by requiring cell phones and tablets that connect to our e-mail system to be encrypted and protected with a lock code. The encryption working group continues to iron out the guidelines and best practices for the encryption of laptops and USB attached storage devices. Some of your colleges and schools have been more aggressive and have already begun working that problem. Others are waiting on a final version of the guidelines.
While it’s true that we are under pressure from our insurer to implement this sort of policy, it’s not something we would have done if it didn’t make sense. Mobile device encryption is a basic part of any comprehensive security strategy. The encryption of mobile devices is important because those devices are so easily lost or stolen. Devices with e-mail configured on them provide a direct pipeline into an official means of communication for the university. Anyone who has access to your e-mail account has access to any correspondence or data that you have sent or received, they have a tool they can reset your passwords and access other personal accounts, and most importantly with your e-mail account they have the ability to speak with your voice. To misrepresent themselves as you the individual and as a representative of your department, your college, and your university; we felt this was something that needed to be protected.
I’m afraid this continued emphasis on cyber security isn’t going away, because the threats aren’t going away. That’s why we are in the process of hiring someone who is dedicated specifically to this task. We are searching for a university information security officer. Someone who will be tasked with developing, communicating, and implementing a comprehensive cyber security strategy for the university. Our ISO will need to have a solid knowledge of cyber security and practice but most importantly they will need to be a communicator, an educator, and a bit of diplomat. I expect them to do a lot of visiting around campus learning the culture and the organization, figuring out how to build a security strategy that keeps university information and infrastructure safe without getting in the way of our core mission. I am looking forward to have someone on board that can give this topic the attention it requires. Someone who understands we need to protect ourselves but also understands that our security strategy can only be counted as successful if it doesn’t get in the way of teaching and the research and the outreach that are central to our mission.
Are there any questions?
Larry Teeter, chair: Thank you Bliss. That concludes our agenda for today.
Is there any new or unfinished business? Hearing none, meeting adjourned. [1:20:35]