Draft Minutes Faculty Meeting, October 10, 2006

Minutes of the University Faculty Meeting
14 October, 2008
3:00 p.m.
Broun Auditorium
Draft
Sue Barry
Bob Locy called the meeting to order at 3:00 p.m.
The minutes of the March 11, 2008 University Faculty meeting were approved by a voice vote.
Remarks and Announcements:
Bob Locy (Faculty Chair)
Bob made the following announcements:

There is a new Senate office in Room 5 in the basement of the Quad Center with a soon to be hired administrative assistant manning the office during normal office hours. The complex includes a Senate conference room that will be available for Senate committee meetings as well.
We have established an office of the ombudsperson which is located within the same complex as the Senate office. The ombudsperson reports that he has seen between 20 and 30 individuals within his first month of operation. Roughly half of the visits were by faculty and the other half were by non-faculty employees. Their concerns have included compensation and benefits issues, supervisory relationships, peer colleague relationships, career progress and development concerns, financial complaints, health, safety, and physical environment issues, third party and administrative service issues, organized and strategic mission related concerns and organizational ethics values and standards. All nine of these areas fall within the jurisdiction of an ombudsperson. However, about 50% of the visits to his office have involved supervisory relationships. This is a bit more than normal for a newly established office, but he attributes this to the openness in establishing the office and not to a higher level of concerns at Auburn.
Another concern relates to faculty involvement in graduation. The policy for over a decade has been that at least one faculty member from each department would attend graduation and that person should not be involved in hooding a graduate. However, the current practice seems to be that the person doing the hooding may also be the faculty representative. The President is currently concerned with the mostly empty faculty section that when recognized sends the message that faculty is not interested in graduation. Therefore, the suggestion has been made that department chairs will be asked to attend if no other representative can be found. This suggestion was made jokingly, but it underscores our commitment to improving attendance at graduation.
The next concern relates to health and wellness initiatives. Therefore, Bob introduced Mr. Scott Peckman, Willis Company to inform the faculty concerning this initiative.

Scott Peckman announced Auburn University’s official wellness program. It’s called Healthy Tigers and anyone interested can go to Payroll and Benefit’s web site for more information. The goal for Auburn is to create an atmosphere of health and well being and to improve the quality of life of its employees as well as to control health care costs. Since Auburn employees are self insured it is important to maintain reasonable health care costs as well as to improve the quality of life of employees. Those wanting to participate should sign up on that web page. There will be biometric screenings taking place at 5 different places on campus, the AU Medical Clinic, the Vet School, AUM, the Facilities Division, as well as the new Student Center. Currently there are 602 participants or about 14 percent of the population. There will be a cash drawing at the end for all those who participated.

Finally, Bob reminded the faculty of the strategic plan that will bring us into a new era of change. With a brief introduction, he turned the program over to Dr. Gogue, President, Auburn University.

State of the University Address:
Dr. Jay Gogue (President, Auburn University)

Auburn’s freshman class of 2008 is the strongest Auburn has ever had based on high school GPAs, ACT, and SAT scores. The ACT average is currently at 25.9, up over a point. It is important to bring a higher quality of student every year.
If you go back to 1935 in Alabama and look at ten year cycles up to the present, you will find either seven or eight years of good economic times and two or three years of bad times. Seven or eight years ago the State created a rainy day fund to ameliorate some of these problems with the state budgets. Currently this fund contains $420,000,000 or more. The amendment on the November ballot is a constitutional amendment to release this money during bad years and to place more funds into the account during good years. Institutional presidents as well as K-12 administrators are all supportive of this amendment. Dr. Gogue then encouraged the faculty to read and consider the amendment and to decide whether they want to support it or not. Then we will see what happens on Election Day.
One goal for the year was to bring a member of the national academy of sciences or engineering to campus. We have convinced Oliver Kingsley to join us and to help us recruit other members of the academy. This should help us to have more deserving members of our current faculty receive this recognition.
Two national searches have been concluded in the past year, one for the Advancement position that brought Jeff McNeil to our campus, and one for the Vice President for Research, that resulted in the hiring of John Mason.. Currently, there is a national search underway for a Provost, and Stew Schneller is the chair of that committee. In the next week or ten days there will be airport interviews from the first pool of candidates and from this group the list will be narrowed to about three to five candidates who will come to campus in November. Hopefully, recommendations from the committee will be available prior to Thanksgiving.
One challenge for the coming year will be the budget. We don’t know what the future will hold, and therefore, we must be cautious in our comments. The good news for us at Auburn is that we are pretty much aware of our budget allocations from October 1st until September 30th, 2009. If there were to be proration in the state it would not affect academic departments. That is probably good news. Of the fifty states forty-seven took budget cuts this year, and while that’s not a good situation it does mean that we are in the majority of the states. The only states he has seen that did not take budget cuts were Wyoming, New Mexico, and Texas, but all the others received budget reductions of some percentage. We are not likely to freeze positions or freeze travel at this time.. Our reason for not doing that is that there is tremendous variability within this campus. We have departments in which the average faculty member brings in more than $400,000 a year in grant and contract money. We have colleges that nearly average $300,000 a year in external grant and contract money and to put in place travel freezes and personnel freezes really creates a lot of issues on campus; so the administration doesn’t anticipate doing that. We should compliment Don Large and the conservative nature of this institution. Therefore, the institution should fare well regardless of the way this future trend works out.
One area of concern regarding the strategic plan is our graduation rates. We have made some comparisons, and our graduation rates are actually lower today than they were a decade ago. Graduation rates refer to the six-year federally registered graduation rates for students. Currently somewhere around 62 or 63 percent of our students graduate in six years, and in order to be in a comfortable range with the higher quality students coming in, we need to be closer to 72-74 percent. Dr. Gogue is not advocating that the faculty make sure every student should pass, but he wants us to be aware of the expectations of those who evaluate us as the quality of our student body increases.
An exciting area for us will be how we can create new revenue streams. It’s one of the elements within the strategic plan. We have five budget sources that run a university. State money provides about a third of our income; tuition is about a third; and income from philanthropy, grants and contracts, and auxiliaries provides the other third of the money that runs the institution. A number of universities have begun to develop different revenue streams as a part of their auxiliary operations. For example, the Harvard School of Business publishes the Harvard Business Review that is reported to be a 50 million dollar a year profit line to that one particular college of business. Johns Hopkins, for many years has focused on real estate development as a part of their auxiliary operations. It often exceeds what that institution receives in gifts on an annual basis. The University of Georgia has gone into the acquisition of television stations as revenue streams that mirror and match with their academic programs. There are many different ways to increase revenue streams; so we’re beginning to have that discussion.
Finally, Dr. Gogue mentioned that a number of resolutions have come from the Senate and that all have received full administrative support. Therefore, he encouraged all faculty to be involved, to serve their time and to be engaged because his administration will certainly listen and support the important ideas that begin at the grassroots level of the university.

Questions and Remarks

Connor Bailey (Ag Econ & Rural Sociology) asked about the Economics Department that was recently pulled out of the College of Business and that now is reporting directly to the Provost’s Office. He wanted to know the reason why that was done and what future plans were for that department.

Dr. Gogue asked the Provost to respond to Connor’s question.

Dr. Heilman responded that there had been concerns and disagreements that were brought to the attention of the Office of the Provost over a year ago. At that time his office had made suggestions concerning the use of the grievance process that was not used to a significant extent. Some of the faculty had talked to Dr. Gogue and had retained outside council. Then since the issues were not resolved at the college level, the Provost’s Office tried to develop an approach for creating a cooling off period to determine the department’s future direction and location in the University. The issue of location within the University for this department has been an issue for a long time, going back to when Dr. Heilman was Dean of Liberal Arts. The current agreement has received the support of the Dean, Paul Brobrowski,, It does not involve removing the department from the college but does involve placing the department in a receivership with an acting department chair who’s reporting line is directly to the Provost. Dr. Heilman sees this as a temporary arrangement to provide a cooling off period with the expectation that the department as a whole can revisit the options that it may have within the College or more broadly within the University. Meanwhile faculty members will have an opportunity to consider all options.
Norbert Wilson (Agricultural Economics & Rural Sociology) stated that his department is directly affected by the actions that occurred in the Department of Economics and that other units on campus are also affected. Because their classes are also part of the core curriculum, this uncertainty leaves those in connected units sort of concerned. Therefore he wanted to know how other units might be engaged in the discussions concerning the future of the Economics Department.

Dr Heilman (Provost) responded that all questions concerning this matter should be directed to the Provost’s Office and they would respond to all fair questions. The department in question considered moves to two different colleges, but those colleges decided not to be involved at this time. However, the discussion could be reopened down the road. The Provost’ Office did consider the consequences of their actions. However, since communication is a two-way street, he hoped that those with an interest in this matter would contact them.

Bob Locy (Chair) asked for further questions, and hearing none he continued with the second part of the presentation terms of the State of the University. This second part will involve key administrators in charge of specific academic areas who will summarize what is going on in their respective areas in terms of implementing the strategic plan. The first presenter will be Dr. John Heilman, Provost.

State of the University – Strategic Planning:
Dr. Heilman emphasized the importance of faculty participation. There are over 1200 faculty here at Auburn University, and he thanked those who elected to attend this meeting today. He hoped that the numbers of attendees to Faculty Meetings would swell in the future.
Since the strategic plan consists of 35 one-year goals, he had decided to discuss them by mission areas. Dr. John Mason (VP for Research) will talk about his ideas concerning the research mission of the University, and since research is closely linked to graduate studies, he will be followed by Dr. George Flowers (Dean of the Graduate School). Following George, Dr. Linda Glaze (Associate Provost for Undergraduate Studies) will talk about the instructional mission of the University. The third leg of the land grant stool is Outreach, and Dr. Roy Cook (Office of University Outreach) will present our outreach plans followed by Dr.Gains Smith from Extension. Dr. Sharon Gabor (Senior Associate Provost) will give the concluding remarks. All presenters will call for questions at the end of their presentations.
The Research Mission:
John Mason (VP for Research) expressed three priorities:

Developing a discovery mindset. Sometimes the word research is equated to contract research, but he challenged the faculty to think of research as scholarly discovery whereby faculty bring new knowledge to the undergraduate program, the graduate program, and the community at large. This is what he has tried to implement in his own professional career.
Building the necessary staff infrastructure for the research enterprise.
Finding out what is going on in the various colleges and schools in order to better represent all units at the national, state and local levels.

With respect to his third priority listed above, he hopes to establish three venues for better communication:

A permanent Senate Research Committee to be a conduit to funnel information up to the University Research Council and to interact directly with the Office of the VP for Research concerning faculty and staff research issues.
An agenda-setting University Task Force with a limited timeline to develop a report on the implementation of the research aspects of the strategic plan. Representatives on this committee will be from colleges and from administrative units with both business and legal interests as well as from technology transfer.
A University Research Council whose members will be associate deans with responsibilities for research within their colleges. They will meet on a monthly basis to exchange information, to get feedback on problems, to have presentations on the research activities occurring in the various colleges and schools and to increase interdisciplinary activities. This will be a formal body to work on administrative matters and to listen to faculty needs.

Building the necessary staff infrastructure for the research enterprise will be a lengthy process:

John has purchased a portion of Dr. Ralph Zee’s time from the College of Engineering to bridge activities currently in progress with future activities until a search can be initiated for an Associate Vice President for Research whose main role will be to work directly with the faculty to cross college lines and go after things like NSF and FTC initiatives, and other activities coming out of NIH, DOD, and DOE. Partnering and call sharing are essential to create collaborative proposals for interdisciplinary activities. Therefore, the associate VP will be working with the colleges, research deans, and faculty to go after not only multi-disciplinary grants, but truly interdisciplinary initiatives. These activities might include research with educational and outreach components. So the thrust will not only be in contract research, but also in multiple avenues with a variety of activities.
Dr. Mason has also asked Dr. John Weete to play a role in assisting the VP for Technology Transfer and Commercialization. With the advent of the Research Foundation and the activities at the Research Park, he needed a bridge from the campus to the Park, to the Research Foundation, and to the establishment of a 501C3 in order to conduct some of the research related activities not easily accommodated within the University contracting mechanisms, such as hiring people, security interests, and working closely with industry. These are not often easy to do in a campus academic environment. Eventually, he may have to justify an Assistant Vice President for Technology Transfer and Commercialization, but that will require finding the necessary finances to support that position.
Martha Taylor will continue as the Assistant Vice President for Sponsored Programs, Dr Mason is currently working with her to continue the training aspects so that we will have knowledgeable people doing research administration at a more localized level. His previous experience was with a highly decentralized research administration operating in a small, centralized environment. Auburn has a rather centralized operation; so he will be looking for some balance between what can be done at a local level versus central administration. However, meeting compliance will be the guiding principle; we’ll have to follow procedures, both state and federal. His usual test is whether the procedures are reasonable and prudent. He believes in good dialogue, but it begins with adequate training of the personnel. Then, he can talk about how to release some of the authority to a more localized level.

Developing a discovery mindset requires new and innovative ideas.

His philosophy is to work at the crossroads of the disciplines. It is not in lieu of disciplinary activity by single PIs doing excellent in-depth scholarly work, but he believes that Auburn has an opportunity to emerge on the national scene by looking at the crossroads of disciplinary work. He has served on many committees in the NSF, evaluating proposals, and therefore, he has a good feel for some of the key attributes of what will make a successful proposal.
There may be educational programs with funding from foundations and some outreach initiatives within the state. For example, there are alums in the Huntsville area anxious to have an AU sign hung up in some of their buildings.

Graduate Studies:
George Flowers (Dean, Graduate School) identified points in the strategic plan that relate specifically to the Graduate School.
Our first priority is to increase the graduate student population to 5,000. However, we don’t want growth at the expense of quality graduate students who can move our research enterprise forward. We have grown consistently over the last eight years and that growth has been in a linear fashion over the last three years. We are currently at 3,519 students, and in order to reach 5000 we will need to accelerate our growth rate somewhat. Therefore, we are working with department heads, GPOs, associate deans, and departmental people affiliated with graduate programs to find potentials for growth. Our plans are to:

Conduct an assessment to identify appropriate areas for growth.
Increase our recruiting of both domestic and international students.
Make our admissions process more efficient by restructuring in terms of staff and in terms of processing and policies.
Seek more resources for graduate students in order to be more competitive in admitting quality graduate students. This will require developing better financial packages.
Provide housing opportunities for graduate students since we have no on-campus housing at this time.
Expand our research and travel grant programs and scholarly activities for graduate students.
Improve health insurance.
Expand distance education offerings.
Increase the international graduate student population.
Identify opportunities for collaboration at the graduate level between Auburn main campus and AUM.

Questions and Remarks

Rik Blumenthal (Chemistry and Biochemistry reminded George that the previous week the Senate unanimously approved a new program for certificates in the Graduate School, and he wondered how those students would be counted in terms of additional graduate students. Also, he wanted to know how George saw growth within the PhD and Master’s programs. Would they be looking for greater growth in one area or another?

George Flowers replied that they would be putting more emphasis on trying to grow the Doctorial and the Master’s programs, our more traditional degree programs. Since growth of the graduate programs are a key part of growing our research enterprise, then PhD students, in particular, and our Master’s students, but to a lesser extent, are critical components of that enterprise. So those are the two major areas. The certificate students or the distance programs are a major part of our mission, but in terms of the focus areas he believes that the more traditional degree programs are the areas where there’s the most opportunity both for Auburn and for the enhancement of our other activities.

Andrew Wohrley (Library): described a conversation with an international student who wanted to know whom he could contact for on-campus housing. He had assumed there would be on-campus housing. Therefore, he had arrived without housing and for almost a week he had had no housing. Andy suggested that the Grad School might work with campus housing to help international students find a place to stay, specifically before housing becomes available.

George Flowers: Are you talking about in between semesters?

Andrew Wohrley: was referring to the period of time from the beginning of August, when leases expire to when the academic year begins. International students who aren’t quite familiar with the lease process may need temporary housing somewhere in the dorms that could bridge that week long period.

George Flowers: said they would definitely follow up on that because he knew that the Office of International Education was very interested in this situation as well.
Undergraduate Studies:
Linda Glaze (Associate Provost, Undergraduate Affairs) decided to speak about two of the ten goals in the Strategic Plan that apply to undergraduate education.

The Office of Undergraduate Affairs has worked with the Department of Mathematics in their course redesign for Math 1120, Pre-Calculus Algebra. They have worked with NCAT, the National Center for Academic Transformation. The mission of this center is the use of technology to improve learning and also to reduce cost. Many of our peer institutions, such as LSU, University of Mississippi, and Virginia Tech, have used this organization to revise their lower level math courses. Currently they are piloting Math 1120 whereby the students are working through their math problems in a computer lab environment with the help of graduate and undergraduate teaching assistants and tutors.
Learning communities are the second initiative that Linda’s office is working on. A learning community is a cohort of 20–25 students who are co-registered in three classes (core classes generally) so that they immediately develop a small group of students with whom there is commonality in terms of their academic interests. If they reside in the same residence hall we call them living-learning communities. One area where we will have learning communities will be the Village. The other two areas will be in the Quad area and also in the Hill Dorms. National data has shown that students who participate in learning communities, whether they are residential or non-residential, make a positive transition from high school to college life and that affects our retention rates. If we retain them the first year then hopefully they will graduate in six years or less. Data shows that the success of learning communities depends upon the involvement of faculty. Auburn began learning communities about ten years ago, at least the non-residential learning communities, with one pilot in the College of Liberal Arts. In the fall of 2009, we are going to have twenty-eight learning communities on campus, and that will involve some of our colleges. Some will be topical in terms, such as the Earth Smart Sustainability topic that Sharon Roberts and Gisela Buschle-Diller have been working on. The College of Human Science and the College of Agriculture are going to partner in developing a learning community next year dealing with the War on Hunger.

These two initiatives are important because their success will depend on the participation of the entire faculty.

Questions and Remarks
David Carter (Department of History) contributed information concerning his experience last year with living and learning communities. It was both a remarkable experience and a trying one. He thinks that a lot of the faculty would be very keen to be involved if there were more than a selfless incentive. He believes the attrition factor will be high given how it is currently structured. Perhaps, there are other departments and colleges that are giving release time and more lucrative arrangements. He warned that we have to give faculty some rewards in order that they not feel exploited.

Linda Glaze agreed with totally with David. Linda talked about her experience as a volunteer instructor in a residence living-learning community. From that experience she realized that her office needed to provide, not only those incentives but also other types of support. Therefore, they have hired a full-time person to provide that help for faculty. However, there is more to do.

Someonementioned that in a previous position where they had this system, they hired graduate students to be part of the living learning community. This speaker felt that using graduate students in this capacity might be very useful and might reduce the number of faculty needed.
Linda Glaze told the speaker that she would share the suggestion with those in charge of the program.
University Outreach:
Dr. Roy Cook (University Outreach) mentioned four ways in which the Outreach Office was implementing the Strategic Plan

New staffing is integral to implementing the strategic plan. In this endeavor, Outreach is currently searching for a director of faculty engagement and program development. This person will be responsible for connecting faculty expertise with opportunities ranging from business and industry to government and non-government agencies, specifically along the I-85 corridor. This new director will continue to advocate for faculty who are pursuing P&T under the Outreach criteria. In addition, Dr. Ralph Elliott, the former vice provost of continuing studies and professor of economics at Clemson University, will be working with the Outreach Office as a consultant. He will be working with the Outreach over the next ten months to look at how we’re advancing non-credit programs here at Auburn University.
Distance Learning falls under the jurisdiction of Outreach. A distance education task force has been convened by the Provost’s Office, and the Director of Distance Learning, Monica Detour, is playing an active role in that task force. She’s working with other task force members to look at ways of expanding our distance education offerings university wide. Some of the recommendations coming from this task force should position us to grow many of our for credit programs via distance education.
Service Learning is also an important goal under the strategic plan, and the Outreach Office is currently involved in the task force for student engagement. Outreach is specifically interested in servicing more governmental agencies. The office is currently working closely with the Auburn Montgomery Campus to develop a needs assessment to determine the kinds of technical assistance and training opportunities that would be beneficial to our state agencies. Outreach will use these results to drive the focus of the Center for Governmental Services.

The Extension System:
Gains Smith (Extension) talked about the four ways in which his office will contribute to the strategic plan.

Service Learning: Students not involved in learning communities will have an opportunity to do service learning through the Cooperative Extension Offices. They are currently gathering information from universities already involved in offering service learning opportunities and they hope to have similar possibilities available through the County Extension Offices across the State. One area involves the 4H Center which is currently emphasizing environmental education. Other areas with possibilities are agriculture, forestry, natural resources and marine sciences. Another important area is human nutrition where there are educational programs working in underserved communities and others working with food service establishments in the state. They will also be working with IT to record, monitor and track data from these activities.
Distance Education: They are developing a Master’s Degree Program completely online. There is a Master’s Degree in adult education with an emphasis in Extension Education that began this fall semester with 19 students.. This program originates in Duncan Hall and broadcasts to six different locations across the state. County extension offices may serve as potential delivery sights for future programs.
English as a Second Language: The idea is that Auburn University, Alabama A&M University, and Cooperative Extension needs to reach out to communities with needs in this area around the State. Extension would like to make this a part of their multicultural initiative because they already have the necessary equipment to do this on hand. Currently, they are putting pilot sites in at least nine of their county extension offices across the state and they are looking at best practices in other states in order to draw on those experiences. In addition, they are looking into the types of licenses required for offering English as a Second Language.
Collaboration with AUM: They are planning to deliver state wide training through the county extension offices for local judicial officials. This suggestion came from the supreme court justices.

Summary:
Sharon Gabor (Associate Provost) wrapped the presentation up with three main points.

A number of task forces have been developed in order to gather information and make recommendations that are associated with various elements of the strategic plan. These Ad Hoc Committees are posted on the Provost’s web page. These committees are the Strategy Review Council, the General Education Task Force, the Honors Task Force, the Graduation Rate Committee, the International Skills Task Force, the Distance Education Task Force, the Service Learning Committee, and the Writing Initiative Task Force. Those who have suggestions for these committees can go to the website and contact the chairs of these committees.
The Strategic Plan calls for these committees in chapter five which designates specific representation depending on the committee, such as a trustee representative, a dean representative, a faculty representative, a Senate representative, a student representative, or an alumni representative. There has been limited progress because the plan was just developed in June, but the Strategy Review Council has made few recommendations dealing with metrics, such as defining time periods.
Finally, the Provost’s Office wants faculty input. Therefore, faculty should feel free to anyone on any task concerning strategic plan elements. Because this is a living document, it will be updated every year.

Since there were no questions and no unfinished business the meeting was adjourned at 4:30 p.m.