Minutes of the Auburn University Senate Meeting
Tuesday, September, 16, 2014
238 Broun Hall Auditorium
3:30 P.M.
A complete transcript is available for this meeting.

Attendance
Officers:
Patricia Duffy, Chair; Larry Crowley , Immediate-Past Chair; Larry Teeter, Chair-Elect; Gisela Buschle-Diller; Secretary; Laura Plexico,  Secretary-Elect.

Administration:
Bill Hardgrave, Dean, College of Business; Betty Lou Whitford, Dean, College of Education; Lee Evans, Dean, School of Pharmacy; Nicholas Giordano, Dean COSAM, Chris Roberts, Dean, College of Engineering, Calvin Johnson, Dean, College of Vet Med; George Flowers, Dean, Graduate School.

Ex-Officio
Present:
Tim Boosinger, Provost; Bonnie MacEwan; Dean, Libraries; Leonard Towns, Graduate Student Council President ; Ashley Hamberlin, A&P Assembly Chair; Sara Wolf, Emily Myers, Keven Yost, Michael Baginski, 2nd, Steering Committee.

Absent, sending substitute:
Charles A. Israel for Joseph A. Aistrup, Dean, College of Liberal Arts.
Absent, not sending substitute:
Logan Powell, President, Student Government Association; Gregg Newschwander, Dean, School of Nursing; Michael Freeman, Staff Council Chair.

Senators, by Department:
Present: Andrew Sinclair, Aerospace Engineering; Valentina Hartaska, Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology; Dale Coleman, Animal Sciences; Dean Schwartz, Anatomy, Physiology and Pharmacology; Rebecca O’Neal-Dagg, Architecture; Barb Bondy, Art; Bob Locy, Biological Sciences; Mark Taylor, Building Sciences; Allan David, Chemical Engineering; Cliff Lange, Civil Engineering; Ed Youngblood, Communication and Journalism; Allison Plumb, Communication Disorders; Wi-Suk Kwon, Consumer Sciences; Jada Kohlmeier, Curriculum and Teaching; Michael Stern, Economics; Lisa Kensler, Educational Foundations and Leadership; Thomas Baginski, Electrical and Computer Engineering; Hilary Wyss, English; Jung Park, Finance; Rusty Wright, Fisheries and Allied Aquaculture; Traci O’Brien, Foreign Languages and Literature; Latif Kalin, Forestry and Wildlife Science; David King, Geology and Geography; Brent Fox, Health Outcomes Research and Policy; Tiffany Sippial, History; Amy Wright, Horticulture; Tom Smith, Human Development and Family Studies; Sean Gallagher, Industrial Engineering; John Quindry, Kinesiology; Gregg Schmidt, Library; Peter Stanwick, Management; Dmitry Glotov, Mathematics and Statistics; Daniel Mackowski, Mechanical Engineering; Matthew Hoch, Music; Constance Hendricks, Nursing; Kevin Huggins, Nutrition and Foods; Chippewa Thomas, Outreach; Vicky van Santen, Pathobiology; Muralikrishnan Dhanasekaran, Pharmacal Sciences; Wesley Lindsey, Pharmacy Practice; Michael Fogle, Physics; Murray Jardine, Political Science; Gwynedd Thomas, Polymer & Fiber Engineering; Tung-shi Huang, Poultry Science; Jill Meyer, Special Education, Rehab and Counseling; Scott Copeland, ROTC Army; Kristina Shuler, Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work; Adrienne Wilson, Theater; Annette Smith, Veterinary Clinical Sciences .

Absent, sending substitute:
Sanjeev Baskiyar for David Umphress, Computer Science and Software Engineering; Arata Hamawaki for Eric Marcus, Philosophy; Kat Stofer for Paul Michael Esposito, ROTC Navy.

Absent, not sending substitute:
Robert Cochran, Accountancy; Paul Brown, ACES; Beth Guertal, Agronomy and Soils; Cliff Defee, Aviation Management and Logistics; Mark Dougherty, Biosystems Engineering; Eduardus Duin, Chemistry; Leonardo De La Fuente, Entomology and Plant Pathobiology;  Jerrod Bradley Windham, Industrial Design;  James Carver, Marketing; Daniel Sventek, Psychology; Jeffrey Hemmes, ROTC Air Force.

Minutes
At 3:30 P.M. Chair Patricia Duffy called the meeting to order, reminded the Senators of the rules of speaking at Senate meetings and to speak into the microphones for better recording. She then established a quorum. There are currently 87 members of the Senate and a quorum requires therefore 45 members to be present. The minutes of the Senate meeting of August 26, 2014 were approved without modifications.

Remarks and Announcements
Office of the President, Jay Gogue, President:
The President first gave a brief overview over the past Board of Trustees meeting and stated that the budget beginning October 1 has been approved. He referred to the last Senate meeting where he had mentioned that it contained salary increases on both the permanent and the one time level. He further stated that one more item had been added to the agenda of the BOT meeting which was not discussed before and which is the acquisition of a piece of property at S-College/Donahue of about 8-10th of an acre. Stew Schneller and his group made the academic presentation on Ebola. The presentation was very well received.

Dr. Gogue mentioned that the announcement of the national search for the VP for Alumni Affairs will be going out very soon. Further, due to a number of interdisciplinary faculty groups, Auburn won a large multi-year CDC award of close to a million dollars in the area of obesity research.

Finally, he introduced Dr. Melinda Gillmore who is an ACE Fellow at Auburn this semester. Dr. Gillmore is from Alabama A&M with a PhD from UC Davis in chemistry with focus on STEM.
Questions: none

Office of the Provost; Tim Boosinger, Provost:
Since the Mell Classroom Building has been approved by the BOT to go forward, the Provost gave an overview of the architectural plans. Construction should begin next summer and be completed probably by early 2017. The Mell Classroom Building will be connected to the Library. It will contain two large lecture halls for approx. 160 students each and several smaller classrooms. The smaller classrooms all are designed to suit the newer pedagogies. During construction the Library will still be accessible and open. He then described plans for the future Roosevelt Classroom Building and the Science & Math Success Center. For the construction of the later, Allison and Parker will have to be demolished which will considerably impact the campus. presentation

Questions:
Hilary Wyss (Senator English) asked what will happen to Haley.
The Provost replied that there are a number of different plans considering Haley and what to do with this building. However, it is unlikely that there will be significant changes in the next 5-10 years. Some space will need to be created for what is currently going on in Allison and Parker until the new buildings are completed. So some space might be made in Haley during the transition. Nothing can really be done to Haley until the 3 construction projects are completed. Only then we can actually start thinking about making changes.

Michael Stern (Senator Economics) asked where the people of Parker Hall will go. Space will be needed for them in other buildings.

The Provost replied that it will be necessary to find spaces for them on campus, but it is still in the planning stages. If Education could move into a new building that is planned it would open space in Haley. All these activities will need to be coordinated.

Michael Stern (Sen. Economics) then asked about other buildings mentioned earlier in the year, such as a new building for graduate education and business and whether funding has been secured yet.
The Provost said that work is done on raising funds.
Michael Stern (Sen. Economics) then asked about the status of the new building for Nursing.
The Provost replied that they are also looking for donors.

Traci O’Brien (Sen. For. Languages) asked about the impact on parking in regard to Mell.
The Provost promised that there will be no loss of parking. The Mell classrooms are to the most part for 1st and 2nd year students, mainly for core courses.

The Provost then continued with the second item he wanted to mention which was concerned with Cyber Security. He emphasized that it is extremely expensive to solve problems that result from security breaches and big companies as well as universities have to deal with this issue. It is very important everyone gets involved in training and understands how to better protect against these breaches. It will only take about one hour to watch the videos.  He referred to Bliss Bailey’s presentation later on.

University Senate Chair, Patricia Duffy:
In her remarks, Patricia Duffy briefly introduced the Senate officers and the Action and Information items on the agenda.

Action Item
Approval of additional nominee for Senate Committee; Presenter: Gisela Buschle-Diller, Senate Secretary.
Gisela Buschle-Diller first thanked the many volunteers that stepped forward to fill the vacant committee slots. Only the Teaching Effectiveness Committee is a Senate Committee and therefore needs a vote, the other committees are University Committees. The name of the nominee has been posted. The Senate voted to accept the candidate 51:0.

Pending Action Items
None

Information Items
Update on fall enrollment, Presenter: Drew Clark, Director of Institutional Research and Assessment
Drew Clark gave an overview on fall 2014 enrollment which is with 25,912 students the highest enrollment and up by 4% from last fall (20,629 undergraduate students; 5,283 graduate and professional students). The Harbert College of Business is up by 10%, Samuel Ginn College of Engineering by 7%, School of Nursing up by 13%, and College of Agriculture by 8%. However, enrollment in the College of Liberal Arts declined by 4%. The FTE enrollment is 23,436 (up 4.5%) from last Fall, but still below a 25,000 FTE level.

This fall’s freshmen class is the Auburn’s largest ever with 4,592 students (23% up compared to last fall which was the smallest freshmen class since 2004). The average ACT score is 27.0 on a scale of 36 and the average high school  GPA is 3.77. 62% of the students come from Alabama, 38% from out-of-state. It is not quite at the 60-40 goal but it has improved over last fall. There are 1,270 new transfer students (up 21%) and new graduate students (up 6.5%). Enrollment of new PharmD and DVM students is down by 3%.

In comparison to 2004 (10 years ago) the head count enrollment has increased by 13%, and graduate and professional enrollment by one-third. The College of Engineering has seen the most dramatic increase by nearly 60%, while the College of Liberal Arts has experienced the largest drop by about one-quarter. Ten years ago half of freshmen had an average ACT composite score of 24, today 80% do. Mean ACT in 2004 was 24.3, in 2014 it is 27.0.
Questions: none

Security Awareness Training, Presenter: Bliss Bailey, Interim Chief Information Officer
With his presentation, Bliss Bailey introduced the Security Awareness Program “Securing the Human” which relates to cyber security. The program was created by the organization SANS and can be found under AU Access, Employee Services tab and clicking on Securing the Human. There are 23 videos, each 2-5 minutes long, about 1 hour in total, and they do not need to be watched in one sitting. presentation
Questions: none

Update on Sustainability Initiative, Presenter: Mike Kensler, Director of Campus Sustainability Operations
The last Information Item was presented by Mike Kensler in regard to progress made towards the goal of increasing sustainability on campus. He encouraged everyone to engage in the conversation. He also pointed out that there is a Faculty Mixer for faculty interested/involved in sustainability on Sept. 16, 4-6 P.M. presentation  Faculty Mixer
Questions: none

New Business: Patricia Duffy, Senate Chair
None
Unfinished Business: Patricia Duffy, Senate Chair
None
Adjournment: Patricia Duffy, Senate Chair: the meeting was adjourned at 4:25 P.M.