Draft Minutes for the February 12, 2008 Senate Meeting
3:00 p.m. Broun Hall Auditorium
Present: David Cicci, Robert Locy, Ann Beth Presley, Sue Barry, Richard Penaskovic, Don Large, Debbie Shaw, Royrickers Cook, Dan Bennett, Drew Clark, Fran Kochan, John Heilman, Bonnie MacEwan, Wendy Pechman, Gary Martin, Norbert Wilson, Sondra Parmer, Charlene LeBleu, Christopher McNulty, Paul Swamidass, Anthony Moss, Ronald Neuman, Rik Blumenthal, Larry Crowley, Brigitta Brunner, Laura Plexico, Alvin Sek See Lim, Carol Centrallo, John Saye, Dan Gropper, James Witte, Scott Hodel, James Goldstein, Claire Crutchley, Larry Teeter, Jim Saunders, Mark Fischman, David Carter, Chris Arnold, Robert Bulfin, Casey Cegielski, Edith Davidson, Andrew Wohrley, Steve Stuckwisch, Bart Prorok, Howard Goldstein, Constance Hendricks, Jim Wright, Daniel Parson, Salisa Westrick, Bernie Olin, James Shelley, Francis Robicheaux, Robert Voitle, Dan Svyantek, Carole Zugazaga, R.D. Montgomery
Absent with substitute: Adele Balmar (Lindsay Stevenson), Ronald Clark (Andrew McClelland), Charles Mitchell (Jacob Dane), Keith Cummins (WG Bergen), Barbara Kemppainan (T. Zhong ), Michel Raby (H. Mazaleri), Claire Zizza (Robin Fellers), Jon Segars (Col. Pickens), Tom Williams (Lt. Dave Duval)
Absent: Overton Jenda, Johnny Green, Stewart Schneller, Matt Jenkins, Marie Folmar, Robert Gross, John Hung, Jim Bradley, Winfred Foster, Timothy McDonald, Anoop Sattineni, Suhyun Suh, Robin Huettel, Allen Davis, Raymond Kessler, Thomas A. Smith, Changhoon Jung, Peggy Shippen, Randy Tillery, Gwen Thomas, Scott Phillips
Links to accompany this presentation:
Professional Improvement Leave
Call to Order:
David Cicci (Chair): I’d like to call the meeting to order. Before we begin the meeting, I’d like to you join me in a moment of silence in remembrance of our colleague, Professor David Kazzerman, who passed away unexpectedly on January 28. (Silence) Thank you. First order of business is approval of the minutes for the January 15, 2008 meeting and the May 1, 2007 meeting. The recording equipment failed at the May meeting and we do not have recording of the meeting. Are there any additions or corrections to either of those sets of minutes? Hearing none, all those in favor of approving those minutes respond by saying Aye. Opposed Nay. Minutes have been approved.
Comments from the President’s office, Dr. Gouge
Dr. Gouge (President): Thank you David. I wanted to share with you three things today. Number one, the Provost has announced his retirement for the end of the current calendar year. It is important for us to begin the process for a search. I do not we will bring any candidates during the summer months. I’m not sure that we would actually be able to actually have candidates by graduation of this semester. We will go ahead and form the committee. We will advertise. Hopefully, some members of the committee can go ahead and do some of the screening during the summer. The idea will be to actually bring the candidates to the campus probably in September. The goal would be, to hope that we will be successful in the search and that individual would begin January 1. Are there any questions on the Provost search? We’ve asked David for recommendations for membership.
Second thing I wanted to mention to you, and this is one that you can literally become very disappointed and very angry when I share this with you, the governor last week released his budget. The numbers for Auburn and AUM are about a 60 million dollar cut. So those are the actual numbers, real dollars that we would pull out of budgets. Early in the process, you’re going to hear lots of topics, lots of scare tactics, lots of whining and concerns. But I truly believe that, we have the potential at Auburn to move ahead. I realize there’s going to be cuts in some areas, but we probably have to look at tuition as key revenue. We have got to look at doing some things very differently. We have got a concern that, particularly at AUM, their enrollment has been flat for a decade. Is there anyway to stimulate their enrollment in someway that would in essence relieve some of that pressure? The actual academic side of the budget at Auburn, it’d be about a total of $40,297,000. At AUM, it comes in about 6 million dollars. Then the experiment station would come in at a shortfall of about 6.8 million. The Extension Service comes in at about 7.4 million. So that’s where you would come in at your 60. We are going to work through it. We’ll obviously manage this situation the best that we know how. We look forward to advice and council as we go forward, because it won’t be easy.
The third thing I wanted to mention is that I appreciate those of you that took time in the preliminary meetings developing a draft strategic direction, or strategic initiative. When they gave me the 60+ ideas, I was quite impressed. I saw a lot of what I considered great ideas. I saw some ideas that I really wanted to ask a lot of questions about. Some of the ideas seem reasonable and some of it seems a bit strange. But I want to encourage you to look over the next six weeks, to look at it, think about it. The Provost is available to talk. I’m available to talk. But in your departments and your units, have some discussion. We need to probably retain about half of those 62 points to try and retain. The other point on the plan that I would ask you is if something is left out, please add it. We’re open to ideas. I’ll give you some examples. We don’t have anything that talks about Auburn, in terms of brick and mortar internationally. We don’t actually have a degree granting institution in another country. Most of our colleagues in land grant Universities are doing that. So is that a good idea for Auburn? I don’t know. That’s the sort of thing to look for. There’s no direct link to Auburn to K-12 in the 62 points that are listed in that plan. So I use those as examples, things that have come up. They may be very good ideas, but I have asked you to please look at the plan draft and offer your comments. I’d be happy to respond to any questions on the plans or other questions you may have.
Rik Blumenthal (Chemistry and Biochemistry): On the strategic plan, on the internationally studies initiative part, there is a suggestion to put in a foreign language requirement of 6 hours. In Chemistry we’ve never had an objection to that. It used to be a requirement of the ACS. But, as our curriculum stands now, we have 6 hours of electives. We are maxed out to what the Provost allows us to have in hours so we can satisfy the core and the ACS requirement. We can’t convert our electives to foreign language nor can we add any hours according to the Provost’s limit on how many hours a major can have. So has there been any thought as to whether that would be included as part of the core hours, or would we be allowing majors to expand their total hours?
Dr. Gouge (President): I think revisiting of the entire core would probably have to occur before you actually begin to make the decision that you raise. It is important to know that there are some good large state universities in Indiana that as a student comes in, they in essence lay out 16 languages and the student has the opportunity to select one. When they get ready to graduate, it’s expected that there be a basic level of competency. Most students they load it on their Ipods at no cost and, they tell me, that they are able to take what you’d call level one state department type exams at about 5 weeks. I do not know if that’s accurate. I trust you to look at that and make a judgment.
Remarks by the Chair:
David Cicci (Chair): Thank you Dr. Gouge. Considering the length of today’s agenda, my comments will be brief. You should have now received summary reports of last semester’s teaching evaluation using the new IAS forms. Although there were some bumps along the way, the first time implementation went relatively smoothly. The teaching effectiveness committee is actively monitoring how the three year trial period using these forms is going. Please pass along any comments or suggestions you might have to the chair of that committee Carole Johnston. We now have a full slate of candidates for the election of Senate officers for next term. Those candidates are:
For Chair, Ron Clark in Accounting and Kathryn Flynn in Forestry & Wildlife Sciences.
For Secretary, Dennis Devries in Fisheries and Allied Agricultures and Laurence Molt in Communications Disorders.
Statements from the candidates will appear in an upcoming issue of the AU Report and online voting will take place between March 2 and March 10. You will receive an email instructing you about that. The election results will be announced and new officers will take over at the General Faculty Meeting on March 11. Any questions for the Chair? If not we will move to our first action item. Charlene LeBleu will introduce from the Faculty Welfare Committee, The Professional Improvement Leave Policy that was discussed at the January meeting. This is an action item today for approval to be sent forward.
Action Items:
Professional Improvement Leave Policy presented by Charlene LeBleu, Chair, Faculty Welfare Committee
Charlene LeBleu: Good afternoon. I would like to especially thank Drew Clark of the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment for his input and Roy Hartfield for his expertise in drafting and editing. Our committee was charged with the following: Revise a policy to be based on accountability and awarded to faculty members who have strong performance evaluations. We were also asked to suggest guidelines and procedures on the application and process and to develop suggestions as to whether the faculty members can stay in town and/or come to campus while on leave rather than travel elsewhere.
What we have put together here is existing policy in the black and suggested changes in the red.
With these changes the recommendation of the Faculty Welfare Committee is that Auburn University will adopt the Professional Improvement Leave Policy change, the Provost office will provide funding for at least 4% of the tenured faculty members per year, and implementation will begin Fall of 2008.
David Cicci (Chair): This is a motion from a Senate committee and the Steering committee, so it does not need a second. I would like to open the floor for discussion for approval of this policy.
Rik Blumenthal (Chemistry and Biochemistry): I see that the Provost’s office will provide funding for at least 4% of the tenured faculty. In the main text of the actual wording, I didn’t see whether that actually says Provost Office or University. It says 4% of faculty salaries will be set aside and it does not specify where that’s coming from. I think it would be useful to state specifically where that 4% comes from. The other comment I have is that I think it’s important that there needs to be an element of weighting it by how long a person has been a tenured faculty member without having had professional improvement leave. In my department, there are some people that have taken the maximum amount. As soon as they come up eligible, they get it and we’re all carrying the load for that person since there is no Provost support for it at this point. I think that there should be something that includes the period of time/number of semesters accumulated since the last faculty improvement leave.
John Heilman (Provost): Just a couple comments. I think it’s important if there’s professional improvement leave for a faculty member who is taking it to try to find a place other than Auburn to conduct the work. That’s part of the experience, that’s part of the rational for the professional improvement leave. I think some of the issues that Rik Blumenthal just raised are operational issues and I would imagine they would be addressed in terms of implementation if there is a review committee, which I would expect there would be of faculty to evaluate the applications. It seems to me that one of the considerations for that committee, depending on their preferences in the matter, might be whether there’s opportunity to get off campus and experience another environment. Also, with respect to funding, I do know that Dr. Gouge just said that there’s a 60 million dollar shortfall so the question that that amount of money will become available is probably a fair question. I suggest we do what we can. At least on the outset, and we ramp up to where we would once again like to be.
David Cicci (Chair): Again, to remind you, this would be a recommendation to the administration from the Senate.
Larry Crowley (Civil Engineering): This may have been posted to the web, I don’t know. But one of the things I noticed, that I’m having a difficulty with, is are we voting on the slides, because there’s some wording difficulties with the slides. As you adopt the policy, perhaps there’d be some editing changes to the slides, when you put it into the text. So it would be helpful for me, that there would be a hard copy available so that we know kind of what we’re voting on.
David Cicci: I believe we’re not voting on the slides, but on the policy that I believe was sent out or posted online, which is a one page detailed policy with the old policy behind it. It was posted online. But it’s not the slides we’re voting on, but the policy that was submitted.
Howard Goldstein (Music): Like my colleague in Chemistry, I’m basically in agreement with the idea of merit. But from the perspective of the performance arts, there’s kind of a catch-22 involved with professional improvement leave. Most of us have to go off campus to achieve national or international recognition in our field because that would involve performing in a national or international arena and, yet by this language, if you have not yet achieved national or international distinction you will not be granted a professional improvement leave in a certain sense. So I just wanted to bring that up, you know, in some fields you cannot sit here and do it. You have to go out and do it. So, I just wanted to bring that up. Thank you.
Tony Moss (Biological Sciences): I concur with the previous senator’s remarks. Many of us in the Biological Sciences have to travel in order to get our work done. I can see a reasonable request for time to be able to work in the lab, maybe on collecting specimens, would be a reasonable thing to do and might allow for a little bit of travel here and there to expand one’s horizons. Also, I wondered why, and I was not here last time and I apologize for that, why the period of time to eligibility had been extended from 4 years to 6 years after tenure.
Charlene LeBleu (Chair, Faculty Welfare): I think that designates a seriousness of type of service to the University. It was tenure track before and now it is tenured six years.
Tony Moss (Biological Sciences): I don’t recall, but was there a specific minimum limit for the amount of time that one had to serve between sabbatical periods?
Charlene LeBleu (Chair, Faculty Welfare): No, there is none set.
Tony Moss (Biological Sciences): So initially 6, and after that?
Charlene LeBleu (Chair, Faculty Welfare): At least, another six years.
David Cicci (Chair): Any other comments? If not, we will move forward with voting on this policy that was submitted by the Faculty Welfare Committee. All those in favor of approving the policy for recommendation respond by saying Aye. Opposed Nay. Motion passes. Thank you. The next item is nomination of Rules Committee Membership, Ann Beth will handle.
Nominations for Rules Committee
Ann Beth Presley (Secretary): At this meeting we’re taking recommendations for service on the Rules Committee from the floor of the Senate. We’ll take recommendations and nominations at this meeting and, then in March, the Senate will vote. You will also have an opportunity to make a nomination at that time if you’re unable to do so today. With this committee, you have to be a sitting senator to be nominated for service; you don’t actually have to be a senator during your entire time on the committee. This is an extremely important committee. It’s basically the committee on committees. There is a great deal of work because you make recommendations for all the University and the Senate committees. I’d like to open the floor for recommendations now.
Richard Penaskovic (Immediate Past Chair): I’d like to nominate Tony Moss from Biological Sciences to serve on the Rules Committee.
Sue Barry (Secretary-Elect): I’d like to nominate Laura Plexico, Communications Disorders.
Andy Whorley (Library): I’d like to nominate Constance Hendricks from Nursing.
Ann Beth Presley (Secretary): Thanks Andy. Does anybody else have nominations at this time? At the next meeting I’ll have a very short bio for all the nominees available for everybody can take a look at that. I’d like to just mention one other thing at this time. The Institutional Biosafety Committee is in real need of committee members. So those of you who work with any bio-hazardous substances, including human, animal and plant pathogens, and might be willing to serve on this committee or have colleagues that might be willing to serve on this committee I would appreciate it if you would contact me; because we have a couple of slots that we really need to fill. Thank you.
David Cicci (Chair): Thanks Ann Beth. At this point I would like to welcome Mr. Gordan Stone from the Alabama Higher Education Partnership to speak about his organization.
Higher Education Partnership, Gordon Stone
Gordan Stone: Good afternoon. I graduated from Auburn and I’m proud to say that. Higher Education Partnership was formed in 1997, in a year very much like Dr. Gouge just described for this year with the budget crisis that we are currently undergoing. Except we have one difference, and that is that back then we had a governor who was running around the state and going to rotary club meetings telling everyone that higher education was the problem. At least we don’t have that right now and that’s a good thing. I’m really proud of our organization having achieved what it’s helped in this state over that decade plus. We are here today, to do two things. I would like to give you a snapshot about what our organization. Secondly, to encourage you to be involved in anyway you feel led to. We were formed really because, in this state as you know, there’s a tremendous political force that represents the K-12 teachers and community colleges. The Alabama Education Association is one of the most effective teachers’ organizations in this nation. Some would define it as a teachers’ union. NEA consistently recognizes them as one of the most powerful of their affiliates across the country. That entity does play a very strong role in implementing what happens in policy. We were formed because there was a need for the universities, collectively, in this state to be able to present the strength of our collective voice. Not to get into individual institutional issues, not to try to determine what is best for Auburn, or what is best for Troy or North Alabama University or any of the rest of the institutions as it comes to your specific concerns, but to be able to say to those in policy making positions that the universities collectively represent a portion or a part of public education that must be respected. As a result, I think we have been able to put a thumb print on certain activities that do continue to remind our legislative and our constitutional leaders of the importance of what we do at 4 year institutions.
I’ll give you an example that I think sums it up. When we first began this endeavor, we couldn’t really get much attention from the legislative leadership writing the budgets. This past summer we were fortunate enough to have our eighth student retreat where we bring in students from all the campuses to talk about what they can do and want to do in advocacy. It has been very successful. This year it involved various constituency groups within the campus communities. We had some representatives from the Alumni Association, some faculty, Dr. Kochan was there. We also invited some legislative leaders to speak. Senator Sanders who came down to greet our group and him never asked me what he should talk about, but he just talked one on one with students. The theme of his discussion points with the students was how important it was for them to be visible and present. That their presence and visibility was making a difference in reminding the people he worked with on the Senate finance committee that higher education does need to be considered. Students individually visiting the White House won’t make that much of a difference. But collectively, with the voice of all our constituents, which you represent here, and you’ll get direction I’m sure from Dr. Gouge’s office; Sherry Fulford does a great job for the University; and others that work in governmental affairs for Auburn.
As you hear from groups, such as ours, that work on the more global issues that affect all of higher education, as you choose to get involved, everything you do makes difference. Let me encourage you to take a moment when you get an email asking you to contact a legislator or take some action that you follow through with it. We do have a crisis in front of us as it relates to state funding because the economy has taken a downturn and because we’re so dependent on economically sensitive taxes. That means we have a shortfall on both budgets. How will that ultimately impact all of us? We know what the governor has recommended, but it’s early. I’m here to encourage you to be involved. If you’d like to be a part of our organization, we’d love to have you. It’s very inexpensive--a dollar a month. It’s payroll deduction. We would just like to have your voice as a part of our overall voice. If you would like to join our webpage is http://www.higheredpartners.org. It’s very simple. I’d like to encourage you to get involved with some of our activities. The most pressing activity that we have is on March 6- Higher Education Day. We go and stand in front of the state house and lead cheers and rally about 2000 of our students and leaders from our state that come to Montgomery to make it clear, to put that reminder in front of the legislature that we do represent lives, and that we do change lives. So it’s an important event for us, and if you’d like to be a part of that, we’d encourage you to come. If you have students who you work with, student groups and student organizations, we encourage you to find out more about that. We’d love to have them involved. It’s an 11 o’clock event on the state house steps. We do provide lunch for everybody there on the lawn of the capital. We’ll have the Governor, the Lt. Governor, Speaker of the House and the chairs of both finance committees. Our theme for this year is very simple “Education Funded Equitably Will Help This State Achieve Excellence.” We must have a Pre-K through PhD mentality. We will continue to remind them that you can’t separate members of the family. We, in the 4 year community, in public education represent a critical part of the success formula for this state. Thank you for giving me a few minutes to speak. Thank you to those of you that are members. For those of you who are not members, if you’d like more information, let us know. We’d be glad to come visit with you or with your department, school, or college. We’d love to see you on March 6. Your SGA is working closely with your Governmental Affairs office here to get some transportation down and back. So there’s the opportunity for those that want to go down and get back collectively. Thank you very much.
David Cicci (Chair): Are there any questions for Gordon? Seeing none, I thank you. Next information item is a discussion of the President’s Climate Change Initiative, presented by Claire Crutchley and Chris McNaulty, senators from Finance and Art.
President’s Climate Change Initiative
Claire Crutchley (Finance): Good afternoon. Christopher and I have are on the advisory board for the sustainability initiative which is run by Lindy Biggs. A group of students went to Dr. Gouge and asked him to sign this national document that has been signed by Presidents of Universities and Colleges across the country. Dr. Gouge wanted more feedback. He wanted feedback from faculty and staff, so he asked Lindy if she would get a Senator, and both of us are Senators, to present this to you at the Senate meeting. So, I’m going to let Christopher go through the details and I’ll present the resolution at the end.
Christopher McNaulty (Art): What I’d like to do is provide a brief overview of the climate commitment: its timeline, the benefits it may offer to Auburn, the actions taken by some other institutions already, and the commitment that Auburn has already begun to make that may apply to the commitment. The ACUPCC is a national effort modeled after the United States Mayor’s Protection agreement to make campuses more sustainable and address global warming and garnering institutional agreements to reduce and ultimately neutralize green house gas emissions on campus.
In overview, the ACUPCC requires the following institutional action:
* Within two months, institutional structures need to be created to guide the development and implementation of an action plan.
* Within one year, an inventory of green house gas emissions has to be completed by the institution.
* Within two years, an institutional action plan needs to be produced to achieve climate neutrality as soon as possible.
* In addition, sustainability must be integrated into the curriculum and the educational experience of the institution and the institution must make its greenhouse
gas inventory, its climate action plan, and its progress reports available.
While there are certainly costs to the commitment, signatures also receive many other possible benefits including:
Recruiting more and better students, attracting the next generation of leading faculty, securing important partnerships with and funding from private sector and governmental agencies, leading the scientific and technological race to find global warming solutions and contribute to the community and nationwide efforts. At a basic operational level, addressing sustainability and climate change can help Auburn operate more efficiently and generate cost savings as well as reducing long term operating costs and increasing capacity for better long range planning.
I would like to give you a few examples. Last summer, the University of Pennsylvania saved a million dollars by conserving energy during peak hours. The ten campuses in the University of California system have saved more than 5 million dollars annually by completing energy efficiency projects. At smaller institutions, like Mount Wachusett Community College in Massachusetts, from 2002-2007, they saved almost 2.5 million dollars in energy costs, largely by switching from electric heat to a plant that burned locally harvested woodchips. By taking leadership now, Auburn will also be ahead of the predicted regulatory curve regarding carbon emissions enabling it to anticipate state and regional energy mandates as well as gain a competitive advantage over institutions that choose to wait. This slide is already out of date as of this afternoon, 491 universities around the country have already signed on to this commitment. Just to point out a few of our neighbors in the southeast; University of Florida, Georgia Tech, Duke University, North Carolina State University, Clemson, all 8 institutions of the University of South Carolina, as well as the University of Tennessee in Knoxville have signed. Many of these institutions have already made substantial changes in how they operate. More than 70 institutions are buying renewable energy, 17 institutions nationwide are buying 100% of their energy from green sources such as wind, solar and small scale hydro-powered generators. More than 18 American colleges and universities have adopted LEED standards, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design building policies. Another 9 have approved policies that required green design for all new buildings. Just to give a couple examples of initiatives from within the southeastern part of the country; the University of Georgia has made coursework in environmental literacy a requirement for all its graduates. Clemson University has adopted a sustainable building policy which stipulates that all new facilities over 5000 gross square feet, as well as major capital renovations costing more than 50% of building replacement value, must seek to acquire LEED silver rating at a minimum. In a similar way, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s building guidelines specify meeting LEED’s silver building standard.
Auburn has already made a number of commitments and would meet several of the items listed on the Climate Commitment, particularly in the areas of point 1C both 3 and 4, in areas of integrating sustainability into the curriculum. That’s happening both through the sustainability initiative as well as several other schools/colleges on campus, including architecture and engineering, and the Natural Resources and Development Institute. Research is happening in numerous areas of the campus. Currently, there are discussions regarding areas under point 2B, D, and G. There are discussions between the sustainability initiative and the purchasing area of the University to establish a green purchasing policy. Of course, public transportation has expanded dramatically over the last several years with Tiger Transit. Finally, Auburn is currently competing with its SEC rivals in the national recycle mania competition, which is one of several items on the commitment. With that, I’m going to turn things back over to Claire to talk about the resolution.
Claire Crutchley (Finance): The resolution just summarizes why we think Auburn University should do it. Whereas, the challenge to reverse global warming, reshape the 21st century, and whereas colleges and universities train leaders of the future; which I think is really key, we’re teaching our students. Whereas campuses that address the climate challenge will better serve their students and better meet their social mandate to help create a thriving, ethical and civil society. And where as the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Change is a joint pledge by university presidents to develop comprehensive plans for making their campuses climate neutral as well as to provide the critical education and research necessary for society to re-stabilize the world’s climate, and whereas, Auburn University, as a land grant university, is particularly well suited to address the challenges of climate change, and whereas Auburn University has begun the process of addressing the challenges of sustainability and climate change through administrative policies, faculty research, and the sustainability initiative, Therefore, be it resolved that Auburn University Senate endorses the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment. We are presenting this as an information item this month, and if we have good response we expect to present it as an action item next month. So does anyone have any questions?
Scott Hodel (Electrical & Computer Engineering): I sent out a questionnaire to my department to get their opinions on this. The responses I received back were as ambivalent as my own when I read it. As I read this, in the initiatives, I’m sorry but Number 1 on the Initiative, to develop a comprehensive plan to achieve climate neutrality as soon as possible. I don’t know what climate neutral means. If I think about it as being carbon neutral, that you don’t make any change to the environment, each of us as human beings cannot meet that goal. We need to be very decisive as to what the goals we’re setting here. I’m concerned about the resources that are going to be put on this. We mentioned the University of Georgia’s courses a moment ago. As Rik was saying, even the Foreign Language requirement…our curricula are packed. There is no flexibility for us to work on these kinds of things. If we start diverting resources in this fashion, it causes me some concern. There is no disagreement, in our department, that sustainability is a good thing to do. In fact, shortly after Lindy spoke last November, we did a great deal of reading. There are a lot of people doing research into this subject in Biology and the sciences and in Engineering. But I question, in my own mind, some of the fervor that I see here, particularly when we’re going to have to be diverting resources during a time when, as the President just announced, we’re going to be pretty short on cash to begin with.
Claire Crutchley (Finance): Are you talking about resources to make buildings more efficient, or what? I’m not sure I understand what resources you’re talking about.
Scott Hodel (Electrical and Computer Engineering): There are a number of items that we think about as far as curricular issues, doing things just where we’re going to save money, the more efficient light bulbs, that’s one thing. But where we’re going to have to start diverting our efforts… I’ll put it into the words of another one of my faculty members, “If at this time we put our energy into this, rather than lobbying the legislature, Auburn will become a carbon neutral university because we won’t be here.” I think he put it better than I could, a little more sarcastic, perhaps. I am not saying this is a bad idea nor I’m not saying sustainability is a bad idea. I’m just concerned with the details of implementation that we’re talking about when we talk about adopting this policy.
Claire Crutchley (Finance): I’m still not sure I understand, but okay. I will accept your comment.
Chris McNaulty (Art): I can sort of respond to the curricular issue. It doesn’t state that this needs to enter the curriculum in every single department. But it would be integrated into the curriculum where it’s appropriate. For example, a sustainability model is being established starting this fall, I believe, and that would be part of the commitment. As far as the climate neutral issues goes, and I don’t have the language right in front of me, but basically as the organization defines it, it’s the point at which campus carbon-dioxide emissions are offset by the use of renewable energy resources, or through offsets which could be other forms of carbon capture, like through the planting of trees and vegetation, or through the purchasing of those offsets if that helps at all.
Rik Blumenthal (Chemistry and Biochemistry): I want to make it clear that I speak for myself. I do not speak for any other members of my department. I agree with my colleague from Electrical Engineering, I completely support anything reasonable towards sustainability. I think new buildings should be designed to be more energy efficient. New buildings should be designed, where possible, to use solar power, other power sources that can be used from the building to make them more energy efficient. But the premise of this climate commitment is that the climate is being changed by humans. Personally, I’m a scientist. I’ve looked at the data. I disagree with that conclusion. I think that those that stand on my side have been shouted down by people screaming consensus. I never was part of a consensus. I was never polled. Nor was any group, that I can actually identify, polled of people with degrees and qualifications to determine whether this is a human caused problem. So I disagree with signing any agreement or any statement that indicates that it is human caused. I would like to point out, specifically, to two years ago when Katrina hit New Orleans and we heard that global climate change was going to cause larger and more powerful hurricanes. The consensus of scientists agreed. Well, how many powerful hurricanes have hit in the past two years? The answer is zero. Now, scientists actually studying the problem have said that wind shear, due to global warming, means that we won’t have powerful and frequent storms. This issue is far from settled.
This University shouldn’t jump off a cliff and join into some lemming march off of the edge in a financial way. My colleague asked about financial issues. There is a description in here of a comprehensive accounting of all carbon dioxide emissions, all sources of waste. Who is going to do this? Are we going to hire a whole new administrative division? This is Auburn; we’ll have a vice president of sustainability in three years. He’ll be making $300,000 or more. We will have an entire division of sustainability, to measure, just to measure these things and report them accurately. It is not easy to report them accurately. I think it would be a significant effort, a significant job. When responding to how we could become CO2 neutral, you said we could buy offsets and plant trees. We’re talking about trying to fund our classes and our budgets. We can’t be taking money and buying trees. That’s not an appropriate thing for this University to do at this juncture, or until this is sufficiently proven that this is human caused and this is not a natural oscillation. I don’t think it should be done at any point. I personally, not representing anybody else from my department because there certainly will be disagreement, I do not think this is necessarily human caused and I do not think that this University should be jumping off any cliff to make financial commitments, to spend large amounts of money to pursue this, when it’s not well documented, in my opinion.
Richard Penaskovic (Immediate Past Chair): I agree with some of the comments made by my esteemed colleague Rik Blumenthal. There are some things that can be done in terms of sustainability that don’t cost any money. There are other things that can be done that are terribly expensive and, at this particular point in time, probably prohibitive for Auburn University. I teach in the Humanities and I plan to offer a course in the religion and environment as part of this sustainability initiative. This won’t cost any more money, just puts a little more work on me to develop a course like this. I think Rik raises an important point about the finances connected with the sustainability initiative. But we do have to consider two kinds of finances; those things that are minimal cost and other things we can’t do because they are prohibitive in cost.
David Carter (History): I don’t really have my thoughts organized, but I would like to speak strongly in favor of this resolution. I understand that some people may not share a consensus about global warming, and I am not a scientist by training, but to the extent that I’ve reviewed the data, I think there’s some strong compelling evidence. To me the question of human causation may not be the most central question at all. If we have a problem with global warming, and it does show an oscillation in global climate models, to me that’s cause for concern. Whether the projections may be alarmist or not; I don’t think awaiting scientific consensus is in our best interest at all. As far as resources, we choose to do things at Auburn University quite often that involve huge amount of resources, and some of us may not agree to the priorities, but to me, I don’t think it would be a terrible idea at all to have a vice president of sustainability in three years. I think that might, in fact, be a marvelous idea. It would reflect our institutional commitment to sustainability. I know we are occasionally leery of bloated administrative infrastructure but, again, I think this is a priority that would actually merit such an administrative structure. As far as whether this is a matter of religious fervor or whether we would become lemmings marching off a cliff for embracing such a resolution; if it makes me a lemming to join ranks with some of the institutions that are on that list I think in this case, I’m ready to be one with the lemmings. Those are some incredibly fine institutions that have clearly given this a lot of thought and they’re clearly some quite distinguished minds who participated in those debates at those institutions. So again, I strongly support this resolution.
Tony Moss (Biological Sciences): We talk about climate change routinely in our courses in biological sciences and I think there’s no question, but that it’s certainly happening. We don’t know the cause of it and we certainly, probably not within our lifetime, actually find out what the causes are. Rik’s right, the data are certainly curative, but I agree with David insofar as anything that we can do to attempt to get the message out to the public about improving our efficiency; anything we can do to improve the actual efficiency of this institution, Auburn or other local companies or universities nearby, there’s no harm in doing any of that. It will probably result in long term cost savings. So I am generally in support of this, and having not read it closely I can’t say whether every single detail is something we ought to follow, but we ought to try to get with the general idea of this being presented here. I generally support it.
Lindy Biggs (Sustainability Initiative): I think these comments are really important to address. The question of resources is always the number one concern when the PCC is brought up. My understanding is, from talking to a few other sustainability coordinators at other Universities, the way they’ve interpreted this is that we don’t have to break the bank to do this, that it is a commitment in principle in the first instance; but also a commitment in some action. But the action, there aren’t any climate change police that are going to be walking around from campus to campus cracking the whip if one piece of it isn’t address immediately. This is a long range plan. There are a couple of issues that they are asking people to do within one year and within two years. We’ve already done those, for the most part. We haven’t done a carbon inventory yet, and of course we can’t count every gram of carbon that we emit. But there are some pretty powerful tools that are available now that suggest to us that while it will take some time, it’s not going to be that difficult nor expensive I think.
The other question of resources that arose was about curriculum. One of the things that we’ve been doing for the last two years is to have a workshop on sustainability in the curriculum at the end of the spring semester. It will be offered again this year. This has proven to be a very valuable way of incorporating sustainability into the curriculum. Not creating new courses that say sustainability engineering or whatever, but Claire and Christopher are two alums of the first workshop. Both of them came to the workshop saying “I teach finance. I teach art. I am interested in sustainability but I can’t imagine a way to include this into my classes.” If you get the opportunity talk to both of them about the way that including sustainability into their classes has not only invigorated them and excited them about their teaching but also their students. We have faculty across the campus who have participated in these workshops--Biology, Engineering, AgEcon, Sociology, Anthropology, History and Chemistry. The English department now has incorporated sustainability into a lot of their comp 2 classes. No extra classes, no new classes, no additional resources. The purpose of the sustainability initiative is to think of ways that we can move sustainability into the way we think on campus without requiring a lot of new resources. It’s really just a way of thinking about how we work and do things, and economic sustainability is a part of this. It’s not just to throw a bunch of money at a problem.
The final point I’d like to make is that whether you believe in human caused climate change or not, addressing the PCC, addressing the issues that are a part of this makes good business sense. One of the great examples people in sustainability use is the DuPont Company. . Three years ago, they made a commitment to reduce their carbon footprint by 60%; I think it was, by 2010. By 2007, in two years, they had reduced their carbon footprint by more than 60% and in the process saved 3 million dollars. This is why universities are doing this around the country. Part of it is for the moral and ethical reasons, but it’s also good business sense. So it doesn’t really matter which side of that you embrace. It makes good sense for lots of reasons to endorse this. Thank you.
Bob Locy (Chair-Elect): I wholeheartedly endorse some of the comments that Dr. Blumenthal made. I think science done by consensus is not really science at all. It’s something else, probably mostly politics. But with science, you treasure your exceptions, and we don’t make things move scientifically when we work by consensus. On the other hand, I think that Lindy has some important points to make. I think that what must emerge from this is that if we don’t make a commitment to this, we at least make a commitment for the University to address what we can do in the area of sustainability and what we are willing to do. I think the issues that have been brought up suggest that if there are important commitments being made as a result of endorsing this presidents initiative that are going to cost the University something we need to see a more carefully done cost benefit analysis to see if those benefits we gain from being a part of this initiative justify the cost of going to put forward. Whether that’s a $300,000 vice president for sustainability at some point in time, or any other aspect of the program that we might want to go; I think it’s important that we develop and be thinking about a plan. I think the problem is an important plan whether it’s human caused or not. Certainly we are as a society, as people on the planet geared toward solving problems we don’t always cause. Whether it’s caused by us or not there do appear to be climate base problems that do appear to need to be addressed one way or another. I think that we need to develop a plan to be a part of addressing those whether it’s part of this initiative or not. But it shouldn’t die on the vine just because we can’t see a way to support this Presidents’ initiative.
Larry Crowley (Civil Engineering): It seems like we have two different issues on the table here. One, being whether or not we support sustainability and I think that should be a part of our strategic plan. The other is whether the President as a leader of this University should sign onto this agenda. There are obviously people that feel passionate about this. I’m a little concerned about the direction that the University takes could be made by somebody more passionate rather than scientific about their approach about it.
David Cicci (Chair): Thank you. Are there any other comments? Please feel free to forward your questions to Claire and Chris and the plan is to bring this back in March as an action item. So please provide your input between now and then. Well you may not know this but we’re planning an installation ceremony for our yet uninstalled new President. Bob is one of the co-chairs of the committee and is here to tell you about the plans for that ceremony and how they’re progressing.
President’s Installation Ceremony
Bob Locy (Chair-Elect): The committee wants to let you all know what’s being planned and to give you an opportunity to mark a space on your calendar. On April 24, which is a Thursday, we’re planning an installation ceremony for President Gouge. At his request it’s going to be a modest ceremony that’s going to focus on the Auburn family and it’s going to consist of some welcomes from the various constituents of the University. Our pledge to support Dr. Gouge in his presidency in everyway that we can and to work hard and to make our University move forward in the way that we all would like to see it move forward under his leadership. There will be a brief ceremony installing him, and then refreshments and a celebration to follow. We would like you mark the 24th of April and be ready to come wish Dr. Gouge well and show him our support and what we’re all about doing here. The theme for the ceremony is going to be “It beings at Auburn” and it now continues into the future. If this is going to work out the way we’re envisioning this working out, we’re going to need all of your support to show up and really get behind President Gouge. The idea forward of us showing support and moving the ceremony. 3:00 p.m. is roughly what we’ve been talking about. We fluctuate a little bit and we may have some additional information we’re talking about which may change it. We’re also reserved Friday morning as a likely rain day. We’re planning on doing this on Cater Lawn in front of Cater Hall on that Thursday afternoon, and it will be out doors. In the event of rain the plan would be that we would likely move it to Friday morning. Our rain day would have to be probably the following morning on Friday morning instead of Thursday if the weather is uncooperative. Any questions? Thank you.
David Cicci (Chair): Thanks Bob. At this time, Dr. Heilman will introduce a discussion regarding the new proposed centers in the College of Business.
Establishment of Centers in the College of Business
John Heilman (Provost): Thank you very much David. Over the past several months now, at varying points I’ve been in discussion with Paul Bobrowski, Dean of the College of Business or, actually, he’s been in discussion with me about proposals for two centers to be placed within departments in the college. I have talked to Dr. Gouge about that and he encouraged discussion with the faculty Senate. We had an initial meeting yesterday in which folks from the College of Business, Dean Bobrowski and some faculty members, briefed the Senate leadership and this is a continuation of that discussion. Paul, I’d invite you to come forward and talk about what you propose to do.
Paul Bobrowski (Dean, College of Business): Thank you John and thank you very much to the Senate leadership for our meeting yesterday and the continuation today. I hope to do is give you a little bit of our background in the college in the terms of how this fits into our strategy and then talk briefly about each of the two centers that we have proposed and, then, finally summarize with a few concluding comments.
About 2 ½ years ago, we came together as a college to put together a strategic plan. Our strategic plan has 6 strategic goals. I think it’s very important for us to acknowledge that 2 of the goals are very appropriate for discussion that we’re going to have today. The first one is that as a college we seek to achieve recognition through our scholarly efforts and research and secondly one of our strategic goals is to create greater financial self sufficiency in order to pursue our vision. Actually there were only 5 strategic goals and the faculty decided that the 6th strategic goal “achieve recognition through scholarly efforts” was important enough to add. Then, they added the initiatives and we probably have about 4-6 initiatives under each of those goals. The one I’d like to point out here is that as a goal underneath that goal ‘achieving recognition through scholarly efforts and research’ is the idea of establishing centers that have a research focus.
The first subject I would like to talk and what are being proposed, is a Center for Ethical Organizational Cultures. First, a little bit of background. For many years now, business schools have been teaching ethics. Obviously over the last few years there has been an increasing emphasis on business ethics. Our effort primarily has been in the department of management where our eminent scholar Achilles Arminachus, who is the prominent scholar in ethics, has been leading a program. Our program has been primarily focused on students. We have brought in distinguished speakers, Mr. Jeffrey Wighgant, who is the person that was featured in the film The Insider that blew the whistle on the smoking industry. Mr. Roger Bogelet, another speaker who was the Norton Firewall Engineer who was responsible for alerting people to the O ring problem. Others have come from business as well as academics to talk about ethics. So, what has happened is that we have become pretty good at doing that. Achilles tells us that there has been a recent survey by the ethics resource center that did a telephone survey of about 1700 people. The conclusions were not good. They reported about 50% of those people had seen and observed misconduct and only about 40% of those people had actually gone on to report this misconduct to anyone. Achilles and his group of people that he works with obviously feel that culture and organization is the key to improving overall ethical behavior. So, our quest here for this center is to take what we’ve been doing and teaching our students and now to marry it with the idea of research. This came about because of Mr. Jimmy Purcell of Sylacauga came to Achilles and wanted to make another gift, the gift of more funds to further the effort that Achilles had been undertaking in ethics. What Achilles said is that he would love to begin a process by which he would examine organizations and ultimately be able to assess organizational culture and whether it strengthens or whether it distracts people from being ethical. For this, Achilles has a proposed large number of qualitative and quantitative methodologies that ultimately will lead to what he hopes to be an ethical organization culture survey. This survey would be used by public and private firms to give them a sense of where they lay on the spectrum of ethical culture. This research activity will be mainly for faculty and PhD students, not only in the management department. Achilles tells us that it will be looked at as possibly including people from accounting as well as maybe across to other departments in the college of liberal arts. The fact is we look at this as seed money over the next five years that ultimately will lead us to create a center that has corporate affiliations. We know that Alabama Power has a very strong ethics program. In fact they have an Ethics Officers. Ultimately, what we would like to see is that Achilles, and this center, become seen and known for their ethical research that allows them to go in and help companies establish and maintain and nurture ethical environments for businesses in the public as well as some places in the private sector. Now, that’s the first one.
The second center, and let me refer back once again to our strategic goals, and I want to add in one more thing here in terms of our strategic goals because for this center, the Center for International Finance and Global Competitiveness, the other goal that I think is very important for us to focus on is the fact that one of our goals is talking about how we prepare our students for leadership in a global economy. That means that if we’re going to prepare our students, we also have to have faculty that are globally aware and have the ability to bring that into, not only the classroom, but also their research. For those of you that are not familiar, the College of Business has 6 departments. One of those departments is the Department of Finance. The Department of Finance has our largest undergraduate degree majors. It also includes the international business major, which turns out to be the 5th largest of our 13 majors within the College of Business. The international activity in the Finance department is quite extensive. We have received a BIE grant. BIE is Business in International Education, which is a federal grant from the department of education. This was a cross disciplinary activity between a faculty member in the Department of Finance and a member of the College of Liberal Arts that is in Political Science. This is the first one that Auburn has ever received. We, also, have opportunities to take our students abroad. We have two internship programs. The London program has been going on for 2 years. They work at companies such as Barclay’s, Lloyd’s or other financial institutions to absorb that kind of international context. Then, we have a plan to do the same thing in China. Faculty members accompany, and obviously provide overall structure to the internships as well as the other activities involved in being overseas. Lastly, and certainly not least, our other eminent scholar in Finance, James Bart, is an expert in financial institutions not only in the US but he’s also called upon in various places throughout the world to talk on behalf the State Department and on behalf of other government organizations about financial institutions. This particular center will be located in the Department of Finance. There is a potential for us securing a grant somewhere maybe about 5 million dollars. This would be from an outside organization, the Koch Foundation, we have addressed as part of the grant process. We have no idea how far we will go but we will not lack for trying. In this particular center, amongst other things, we will support what we call the Economic Freedom Initiative. We have hired Bob Lawson, the co-author of the Economic Freedom World Index. This is an annual publication that measures economic freedom throughout over 140 different countries. It is published and widely cited, not only academically but also in business journals but has also been annually featured in one of the issues of the Economist. The ranking of these countries is based on 40 dimensions driven by data. Data all the way from things such as the time that it takes to get a business loan to the ability to secure property and the rule of law. This is a very comprehensive way in which research is being done on terms of global competitiveness. We would like this center to have an extensive ability to influence research, teaching and outreach as part of its focus. That means that we would have faculty would benefit through travel abroad. Having a center would allow us to have an opportunity to further increase the stipends, to give more stipends to graduate students. We see that visiting scholars might be attracted to a particular issue or particular set of issues in Finance or Global Competitiveness and therefore it’d become a way in which to create more interest in not only research but international focus that I think is prominent in not only our strategic plan, but a lot of the President’s strategic initiatives. We see that future. We know that business law, entrepreneurship, political science, and other disciplines will be able to take part in this. We see that this is something that will cut across not only the departments within the college, but we see it reaching across the boundaries and going out not only within the University but even beyond that. We see this as being able to leverage the long term. CIBER is the center for international business education and research. This is another DOE grant. There are 33 of these. We see this particular initiative that we are creating here as a way in which to get collaboration between us, the college of liberal arts, potentially other colleges to go after one of these CIBER grants . We think that that will not only increase the visibility of, hopefully the college, but obviously will do a lot to essentially give the University a much more prominent international aspect to what they do. The last thing is, is that we are always looking for affiliates. We think that having this kind of center will naturally draw businesses and corporations to doing things with us in the form of conferences, presentations, things that will not only benefit faculty but ultimately benefit our students.
In conclusion, let me first reinforce the face that we think that centers as one of the initiatives in our strategic plan is necessary to help us advance towards our vision. I think that a center provides focus that is consistent with our strategy. It will reinforce a research culture which will allow people to pursue a variety of research activities. It provides funds for us to not only help faculty but also to help our students and begin to have them become more a part of our research as well as how the research then floats into the classroom in terms of teaching. In the longer term, and very important to us, is that this is a leveraging device. Both centers are there for pursing other sources of funding, both public and private funding. Lastly, I think that these kinds of efforts whether they be in the College of Business or elsewhere is an opportunity for us to diminish some of the silo thinking that says that things must be maintained. We look actively and encourage other participants from other departments to join with us. With that, I conclude. Thank you.
David Cicci (Chair): Are there any questions or comments for Paul or John?
James Goldstein (English): I’ve heard that there’ve been some concerns among the faculty in the College of Business that not all of the appropriate faculty members were involved in the planning of this and I’m just wondering if there have been any firm commitments made on this so far. I’ve also heard concerns that the funding that you’ve applied to from the Koch Foundation for some reason raised concerns to academic freedom, whether they would put restrictions on the kind of research that their funds would permit. We’ve all read, over the last few years, of many cases where corporate funding tried to have strings attached, particularly with public universities for the kind of academic research that they support has raised questions about academic freedom. I’m wondering if there’s any risk as far as you’re concerned as to whether there could be questions about academic freedom on the kinds of projects. I mean, imagine that Hugo Chavez wanted to donate some money but that it would only be allow to support the research to find out what benefits to the poor people of the world having state control and ownership over the utilities and petrol chemicals and such. I think that we would all agree that that wouldn’t be appropriate if there are going to be strings attached to the kind of research. Could you respond to that?
Paul Bobrowski (Dean, College of Business): Thank you. I hope you’re not comparing a Hugo Chavez to either of the funding sources that we’re suggesting here. We always have concerns about that. I think that one of the things that we’ve done in our due diligence is that we have looked at other universities both public and private that have engaged with the Koch Foundation, which is obviously an umbrella organization. It includes many charitable organizations, which includes BB&T. So we think that we have, and we will have, enough protections in order to ensure that it’s without strings. Therefore, it is not any kind of strategy that guarantees a certain outcome based on funding source. Could you give me back your first question? I think that there was a first one and a second one. I answered the second one because it was more current.
James Goldstein (English): Yes, more on the question of the process that was used whether there were plans being made that weren’t clear to the appropriate faculty what was being planned until a fairly late stage.
Paul Bobrowski (Dean, College of Business): Well, I can say that each of the particular departments, where these centers will be, each of the people that were part of those departments was involved. Claire who represents the Finance department and I don’t see Casey Segalski who represents the Management department, but I think that both of them would agree that there was a very open and collaborative method by which these particular things within their departments were discussed. Claire?
Claire Crutchley (Finance): We went through a national search. We saw the presentation of the center. I’m not sure what other faculty input you’re asking about, but we were given a lot of information in our department.
Dan Gropper (Economics): I wanted to tell everybody, if I can, a story that I tell my economics students that’s from the old communist Soviet Union. A communist party official is walking in the country side meeting with some of the poor farmers, asking them how their doing. He stops and talks to one who says he’s quite unhappy and things are quite unfair. He says “Why, what’s up?” He replies “Well, Anatoly up the road has 3 cows. I only have 2 cows.” Communist leader says “What do you want me to do?” The farmer says “Well of course, I want you to kill one of Anatoly’s cows.” The thing is here, what we’ve got, is we’ve got an opportunity to do some things to move the college ahead, to bring in money, to support graduate students, build programs, and move forward. Not everybody is in favor of that. Unfortunately, although I’m disappointed at that, I’m not terribly surprised. Looking at it from a planning perspective, this center supports the President’s plan that’s recently been put out. There’s an international focus. There’s support for graduate students. There’s research funding for faculty. There are opportunities to bring in additional outside visiting faculty that might come in and enrich the experience of our current faculty and our current students. It’s consistent with the college’s strategic plan. This provides a mechanism to increase funding and I believe I just heard Dr. Gouge say we’re looking at a funding shortfall. At a time where we have a chance to bring in potentially millions of dollars, it’s sort of incredible to me that somebody would say “Well let’s slow that up. Let’s not do this. Let’s cast aspersions and so on.” This center provides an opportunity, both these centers do, for faculty to work together across Finance, Economics, Management, and even across campus. Just before this meeting, after we’ve been alerted to some of these concerns that have been raised, an email was sent by the Senior leadership in the Economics department, the majority of the full professors, and the department chair to the President and the Provost, supporting these centers. We believe in moving the college ahead, bringing in funding, supporting the students, and bringing in positive influence and positive change to Auburn.
We heard some concern about the Economic Freedom Index and the Koch Foundation. Well I’ll tell you the Economic Freedom Index has been supported by more Nobel laureates than anybody we have in our current college. Milton Freedman was behind some of the efforts to get this thing started. Gary Becker has also written positively about it, and so has Douglas North. I’ll challenge you, if we can bring in faculty whose work is recognized and supported by Nobel laureates across the rest of the campus too, more power to us. That’s exactly what we should be doing. Unfortunately, we have a few faculties who are going to complain and destroy this effort. They’re going to try to. They’re out to get the Provost, and they’re out to get the Dean. I’ve seen the emails. I’ve seen the schemes for the last few years. Unfortunately, I’ve seen this happen over and over in the last 19 years I’ve been here. Enough is enough. In this particular case, the cause of freedom, economic, personal, and academic, is too important to let those opponents derail this effort. Thank you.
Larry Gerber (History, non-Senator): I think there is concern, I don’t know much about the situation in the College of Business, and these centers. I’m not opposed to the creation of these centers. But I think that my colleague, James Goldstein, raised a much broader one question. It wasn’t just about these two particular centers. This is an issue that’s being raised across the board in higher education and it’s not that the Koch Foundation should not be able to sponsor some research. It’s not that any particular point of view is inappropriate to be expressed in the University. I think most of you know, I am very much involved in the AAUP. We are fully supportive of the notion of academic freedom that would allow for all points of view to be expressed. The issue that’s been raised across the United States, and I know most recently in the University of Illinois where there was a controversy about the establishment of, they called them academy as opposed to center, but I think it was a similar kind of institution. The issue had to do with, not that there should not be external funding, but to make sure that external funding that if it came with some sort of memorandum of understanding, that there would be reviews that the terms of any establishment of a center with outside funding be consistent with the principles of academic freedom and there would be faculty involvement in the review of such a document. I think that that is the issue that was raised. I don’t think, I know from James Goldstein, who is the standing president of the AAUP, who has no vested interest in the College of Business whatsoever, and I have no vested interest one way or the other, there are broader issues that don’t have to do with trying to hold back the College of Business. I do think that we have procedures for how a building gets named, how a department can get named. I’m not quite sure what our procedures for the creation of centers and accepting substantial outside funding. I don’t know what those are. They may exist, but I’m not aware of them.
John Heilman: (Provost): I’ll speak to that first, Larry, thank you. You’re posing the questions I think at a very important level. Just very quickly, I think there are two components in what you addressed; at least, one is the importance of process. Throughout this process, it is my belief that procedures have been followed. It is true with respect to faculty recruitment. It is true, I believe, with respect to the matter in which the dean and the faculty of the departments have discussed creation of these centers. The creation of the center, by board policy, is one that involves preparation and proposal by the dean, discussion with the faculty. I believe that’s taken place, and then review with the president and discussing these centers with Dr. Gouge. He reinforced the importance of communication with the faculty senate. That’s taking place now. I think in terms of process, there’s been a significant effort to try to ensure that that is observed in the spirit of all those in terms of following those specific rules. With respect to academic freedom, I think that, I appreciate you having said, and I may be rewording this a little bit but I think it’s consistent with your intent, that academic freedom involves faculty being able to pursue issues that they think is important to pursue. I think the Dean’s already expressed, and I agree strongly, that there is always a question to be kept in mind when accepting outside funding whether we are accepting constraints on what faculty members do, what questions they ask, or what findings they come up with. I do not believe that that has been an issue with Koch funding for the universities that have accepted money from that foundation or its affiliated entities. But, I think, in an on-going basis, I think you said, the faculty needs to be involved in addressing that. I believe also, and I’ll ask Paul to speak to this, that is his intention going forward to take specific steps to ensure that that review occurs so that any questions can be surfaced and addressed. Thank you.
Paul Bobrowski (Dean, College of Business): Let me address the assurance that there’s proper oversight in terms of the agreements. Since both of these are agreements that ultimately will have funding, they will go through, I think, many sets of eyes both at the foundation as well as here at the University. We’ve already gone through one set with the Purcell money that we have gone through it several times that it does the things that ensure independence, obviously. It guards against things that we might be at risk of, and it also protects the donor as well so that the donor sees that his or her money is used in the way that it was intended. That’s very important if we are going to consistently have future donors and not get into issues like some other universities have, Princeton for one. I assure you that we will be very diligent in terms of understanding funding agreements to ensure that we are protected.
Rik Blumenthal (Chemistry and Biochemistry): Two thoughts come to mind. One, with regards to what limitations on what funding can be used for. My research money comes from the DOD. They put restrictions on what I can do with my research money. I get a grant to do a specific thing. They have no say; Academic freedom comes into the picture in that they have no say about what outcome my research has. My research can show what they would like to see shown, or my research can show that what they want to see is not happening. That’s got to be true for anyone. For corporations, federal, any funding, the funding does not come, very rarely, unrestricted that you can just use it for whatever you want in anyway you want. I don’t think academic freedom is at all an issue in using a donor’s money in the way that the donor wanted it used. It’s in having the freedom to be honest and present the truest and best representations of the research results.
The other issue that came to mind is why are we even hearing this at the Senate? I’ve not heard any discussion previously of a department trying to form a center. I was actually surprised to find out that we formed one in the Chemistry Department and that’s fine with me, the Center for Aconite Research. That’s wonderful. I’m glad for faculties that are involved. It’s not my business. It doesn’t affect me one way or another. To be honest, I don’t see that what the College of Business forming its own centers should effect faculty in Chemistry or any other discipline, accept those that may want to interact with that sector. Thank you.
John Heilman (Provost): Thank you Rik, for both of those points. Dave, my understanding, when I spoke with Dr. Gouge, he reinforced the importance of interaction with the Senate leadership. It is my belief that you received a request to have this discussed at the meeting, and that’s why we’re having this conversation.
David Carter (History): I think I just wanted to reiterate what Provost Heilman just said. I’m not saying I want to see every agenda encumbered by issues like this, but I do think it speaks well for a sort of new spirit of transparency that cross departmental dialogues and cross college dialogues are very good to have. It might help to have this sort of transparent dialogue so that email exchanges that may or may not contain misrepresentation of facts have the opportunity to be debated. I commend the spirit in which this was added to today’s agenda.
Richard Penaskovic (Immediate Past Chair): I have some questions about the Center for International Finance and Global Competitiveness. I feel quite comfortable for the Center for Ethical Organizational Cultures. But about this other center, I don’t really know why we’re discussing this today, like the previous speaker just said, especially when the co-director has already been hired to come to Auburn University. I wonder why faculty input, if desired, wasn’t solicited from the get-go so that the faculty had ownership of the center rather than in the eleventh hour when the center is already fairly complete. I think there was some discussion, but only with certain faculty. I believe some faculty in the College of Business only heard about it in the past month or so.
Paul Bobrowski (Dean, College of Business): The faculty that were most involved were the ones that were included in the discussion as they were the, in a lot of cases, the instigators for it. Once we had a group, that is the germ of something, we can then propagate it across the rest of the school. But we have to have, at least, a core group that is really going to believe in this and actually take it forward. That’s the way it was. Of course, both centers are probably, and I think even the Center for Ethical Organizational Cultures, even a tighter group than the one that we’re dealing with for the Center for International Finance and Global Competitiveness.
Richard Penaskovic (Immediate Past Chair): As I understand it, there are two co-directors of this center, one internally and one externally. They will report, I believe, to you as Dean of the College of Business. I’m wondering, should not the co-director who is internal be named after a national search rather than by administrative fiat?
Paul Bobrowski (Dean, College of Business): Let me clear up a misunderstanding about our center. We have centers that where the directors devote less than 20% of their time to the center activity. They have greater teaching responsibilities, greater research responsibilities as well as outreach responsibilities. These aren’t full time jobs; in terms of having the fact that they’re going to have people that are going to be waiting for them to do things. This is a very tight group and, therefore, the part that I am most likely going to evaluate is the administration of the center. The department chair, Don Jehara. Will do the evaluation of all of the other things that the center directors do as part of their full slate of activities in terms of research, teaching, and outreach. Let me add one other thing, because I think it’s very similar. You met with Achilles yesterday. That center has this much of Achilles time in terms of that particular activity of moving that center forward.
Richard Penaskovic (Immediate Past Chair): Also, at yesterday’s meeting, I believe Don Jehara said that the center will have an oversight board and that certain individuals will be on it. I wonder if this is not a conflict of interest since all three will be involved in the daily operation of it. Shouldn’t the oversight board consist of disinterested parties?
Paul Bobrowski (Dean, College of Business): I think that that’s a possibility. I think that’s an operational issue that as we write the full center memo of understanding we can address those particular issues. I don’t think it’s something that is insurmountable in terms of having someone on the outside. I think that Achilles probably had two or three people on the outside in his center. It’s a question of balance.
Richard Penaskovic (Immediate Past Chair): Okay, thank you Dr. Bobrowski.
David Cicci (Chair): Is there any other questions or comments? If not, thank you Paul. Thank, you John. It’s late. Is there any unfinished business? Seeing none, is there any new business? Seeing none, we are adjourned. Thank you.