Administrative and Professional Assembly
Jan. 12, 2006
3:00 - 4:00 pm in 213 Foy Union
Approved as amended 02/09/06

The meeting was called to order at 3:05 PM by Chairperson Harriette Huggins. 

The Assembly roll was called by the Secretary. 
Assembly members who were in attendance:  Barnese Adair-Wallace, Drew Burgering, Pat Deery, Amy Douglas, Lisa Fleming, Maria Folmar, Harriette Huggins, Teresa Logiotatos, Missy Long, Ellen McManus, Melissa Morris, Julie Nolen, John Owen, Cathy Ramey, Melvin Smith, April Staton, Todd Storey, Tony Ventimiglia

Assembly members who were not in attendance:  Keith Camp, Amy Douglas, Kale Hill, Missy Long, Melissa Morris, John Owen, Kirsten Perkins, and Melvin Smith.

The minutes from the 12/01/05 A&P Assembly meeting were approved as amended.

Comments from the Chair
The purpose of today’s “called meeting” of the A&P Assembly is to outline the procedure that will be used for our upcoming elections.  The A&P Assembly Constitution in Article II, Section 3 B states:

“A&P Assembly Meeting Representation on the Assembly shall be proportional and distributed among the vice-presidential and presidential categories as determined by the Executive Committee prior to the annual elections.” 

The Executive Committee members have discussed how best to ensure proportional representation for upcoming elections. The general guidelines for the Executive Committee to use with regard to Nominations & Elections outlined in the Ad Hoc committee report (Appendix 1) Feb. 05 were applied.  Those guidelines are:

• Re-examine the population of A&P from last election
• Determine redistribution of representation
• Recommend elections in vacant places by A&P employees within the organizational unit
• Post a simple version of this breakdown on the A&P web site.

Because the Vice Presidential (VP) reporting lines on campus have changed through administrative reorganizations, A&P Places 1, 5, and 16 currently have representatives who cross over VP reporting lines.  Harriette provided a presentation illustrating the concept behind the Proportional Representation guidelines (Appendix 2) the Nominating Committee will be using in the upcoming elections, March 2006.   
In March 2006, the Office of Information Technology will be asked to update our e-mailing lists to reflect this re-organization of Places.
Comments/Questions:
Martha Taylor: What will happen if areas are administratively re-organized after our election? Administrative reorganization of Vice Presidential reporting lines can be expected to change on a fairly regular basis. As a result, representatives may change Places from one year to the next to maintain proportional representation but minimizing the disruption is a priority.  Each Executive Committee will address proportional representation prior to elections, using the Ad Hoc committee’s recommendations to guide them.  These guidelines will provide some consistency from year to year in effort to decrease the number of crossed VP reporting lines by Place and to keep the Assembly representation proportional.
Lisa Fleming: This is not a new issue.  The A&P Assembly has been trying to ensure consistently applied guidelines for determining proportionality for years. 
Drew Burgering: The definition of representation is purposefully vague in the A&P Constitution to give us the ability to make changes as needed to address administrative redistricting.  Members will be voting for their representative (by Place) and not for every candidate from their VP area.
Pat Deery:  Academic areas won’t change much. For the administrative areas, the system of determining representation by numbers provides better representation without tremendous changes when VP areas are reorganized.
Henry Cobb: Having a specific point of contact like representation by Place provides is very important to the membership.  Through it, we have had better representation and know more clearly who our representative is.  Change is inevitable and this minimizes the impact of those changes.
Drew Burgering:  Constitutional change is an option the Assembly may want to consider in the future, removing the stipulation that representation be guided by VP unit.
Tony Ventimiglia: It should be noted that the Constitution doesn’t talk about “units” but about “categories” as defined at the Executive Committee’s discretion.
Action Items
Call for nominations of officers for the 2006-07 term (Chair-elect, Secretary, Executive committee-at-large (3) members).  The election will take place on Feb. 9, 2006.  The membership will be notified of the slate by 01/17/2006.  Bios for each candidate will be posted on the A&P web site prior to the election.  Members should provide updated Bios to Cathy Ramey as soon as possible. 

Karen Rankin, Chair of the Nominations & Elections committee, asked that nominations for officers and for Assembly representatives be sent to her at rankikm@auburn.edu .  She reported

• The call for nominations for representatives to replace members rolling off the Assembly and filling unexpired terms will take place following the officer election – March 2006. 
• It is possible to re-elect existing officers. 
• Any A&P member can make a nomination or can nominate themselves for a position on the Assembly.  Officers can be nominated only from Assembly members.
• The A&P Constitution states “An Assembly member who misses more than one quarterly meeting per year will be removed from the Assembly and replaced in accordance with Article II Section 3e” .The Nominations & Elections committee asks the A&P Chair address attendance issues accordingly prior to the call for nominations.  Any seat that becomes vacant as a result can be filled during elections as well.
• Judith Sanders has been approved as the replacement on the Welfare Committee.

Public Forum
The floor was opened for discussion on any topic in accordance with procedures previously outlined for the Public Forum.  There were no issues raised.

The meeting was adjourned by the Chair at 3:55 pm.

Respectfully submitted,

Cathy Ramey
Secretary, A&P Assembly

FROM:Ad Hoc Committee on Nominations and Elections
February 4, 2005

Members of committee present were Karen Rankin, John Asmuth, Pat Deery, Maria Folmar, and Dianne Jay.

Purpose and Charge:
To develop guidelines for the Executive Committee and Nominations & Election committee for determining proportional representation on a consistent basis in future elections. (Article II, Section 3, Part B)

To develop the “general guidelines” for the N&E committee in the actual election process to include generating list of A&P employees, printing and distributing ballots, and receiving/counting ballots.  (Article II, Section 3, Part D)

The Committee proposes the following procedures to be read into the minutes:

Prior to Assembly elections, the Executive Committee would:

1. re-examine population of A&P from last election, 
2.  determine redistribution of representation,
3. recommend elections in vacant places by the A&P employees within the organizational unit,
4. post simple version of breakdown on web.

Reference: Addendum 1

Facilitation of elections would involve both the Executive Committee and the Nominations & Elections Committee.

1. Chair of N&E Committee solicits nominations from Assembly members for vacant seats as determined by the Executive Committee. All A&P employees receive notification of vacancies in all positions, but only A&P employees within the organizational units with the vacancies will receive and cast ballots for the vacancies in their units.
2. Nominations are sent to the N&E Committee chair.
3. The N&E Committee compiles nominations by division and is responsible for the assembly, distribution and receipt of ballots.
4. The N&E Committee counts ballots and reports to the Executive Committee the election results.

                       
Following guidelines would ensure that election procedures are uniformly and consistently applied and implemented.

ADDENDUM 1
Administrative and Professional Assembly

The A&P Constitution calls for 19 elected representatives. Representation on the Assembly shall be proportional and distributed among the organizational units according to the actual A&P population of that unit as determined by the Executive Committee prior to the annual elections. The Chair and Chair-elect are not counted in the representation proportion of elected representatives. 

The following table illustrates the 2003-04 representation on the Assembly by units and the recommended representation scheme determined by the Executive Committee for the election of 2004-05 representatives to the assembly.

Rationale for the recommended scheme:

1. The approach allows some flexibility for handling organizational changes;
2. Organizational changes are not likely for most of the elements of this scheme;
3. This borrows from the University Senate's scheme in that traditional parts of the University have their own representatives;
4. Those units that are combined have some reason behind their combination: (a) ACES and Outreach have some tradition of working together; (b) Education and Liberal Arts are close together in Hale Center; (c) Business and COSAM are part of the "traditional" elements of the University; (d) CADC, Nursing, and Pharmacy are smaller professional programs, Nursing and Pharmacy are located close together; (e) Forestry and Human Sciences are located close to each other; and (f) Ag and AAES are part of the same organization; (g) only the addition of Alumni to the Library and the Office of the Provost doesn't have any solid connection; and
5. If organizational changes occur after and election, then the representative scheme can be adjusted before the next election.
6. This scheme allows representatives to represent a fixed, known group, and provides some flexibility.

* In order to allow for transition, the Executive Committee is recommending that the three representatives currently serving Place 1 draw lots to determine who will represent Place 1. The other two will represent Place 15 with the elected rep from that area until current terms expire.

Administrative and Professional (A&P) Assembly
Proportional Representation

The A&P Assembly Constitution in Article II, Section 3 B states:

“Representation on the Assembly shall be proportional and distributed among the vice-presidential and presidential categories as determined by the Executive Committee prior to the annual elections.” 

Proportional representation is an important concept for governance within the A&P Assembly, and for most of us demonstrated by the US Congress and the State legislature. You all know districts get reapportioned on a regular basis based on population shifts. There are some states that lose representatives and others that gain representatives. A&P employees also experience population shifts. These shifts are not always those initiated by the employee’s desire to move to another department. More frequently, the shift comes from a reorganization of administrative units by the administration. Here are just a few examples.

1. There used to be a Vice-president for Facilities. That unit now falls under the President.
2. Planning and Analysis used to be under the President and now is Institutional Research and Assessment under the Provost.
3. There used to be one Vice-President for Alumni & Development; now there are two.
4. Academic Support & Enrollment Mmgt have been moved from Student Affairs to Provost.
5. Student Financial Aid has been moved from Student Affairs to Business and Finance.

In preparation for the last election of representatives to the A&P Assembly, the Executive Committee determined it was important for representation to be easily identifiable for an employee in a particular unit. The decision was made to create places representing particular units. At the time of that election there were 1255 A&P employees at the University distributed among vice-presidential categories noted in the table 1 and represented graphically in Figure 1:                                                                                    

For the Fall 2004 election of Representatives, the Executive committee determined a scheme with 18 places with units assigned according to the following table:

*Appointed in Oct 05 until election in March 06. (Term for place will end in 2008)
Based on the units each place represents when assigned to the appropriate Presidential and Vice-presidential categories the proportional distribution of representatives is illustrated by Fig. 2:

There are currently 1279 A&P employees at Auburn University distributed by vice-presidential and presidential categories as follows and illustrated graphically in Figure 3 below.

If every VP is required to have a representative there would be the following number on the Assembly:                       President             28
            Exec VP           16
            Provost             76
            Outreach           2
            Research          5
            Alumni              1
            Development       8        
                                  142
                                                                       
In preparation for the March 2006 election, the Executive Committee has examined the numbers again. It is the desire of the Executive Committee to keep the membership of the Assembly within the Constitutional limits (19 representatives + the Chair and Chair-elect). The Executive Committee has determined the following changes are necessary.

1. Institutional Research is moved from Place 1 to Place 13 with other units under the Provost.
2. Place 4 whose representative rolls off the assembly is eliminated and Student Affairs is moved to Place 8 with Alumni.
3. Provost Office and Library have been moved to Place 13 along with units of Academic Support and Enrollment Management (formerly under Student Affairs that have been moved under the Provost.

The results of these changes can be seen in the following table:

*John Owen was appointed to fill a place until the next election. (Term of place ends Mar 2008)

This scheme produces representation graphically represented in the following:

This chart is remarkably similar to Figure 3. If the goal is to have proportional representation I do believe this is pretty close!

The places served by representatives whose terms end in March 2006 will be open for election. Term of service for replacements will be until March 2009.