Minutes of the General Faculty Meeting
October 28, 2013
Broun Hall Auditorium
3:30 p.m.
19 minutes of this meeting are available in the incomplete transcript.
Call to Order by Patricia Duffy, Senate Chair, at 3:30 p.m.
The minutes of the General Faculty meeting on March 25, 2014, were approved without modification.
Remarks and Announcements
Office of the President, Jay Gogue, President
The President announced that Auburn University has two more Rhodes fellowship finalists besides Gates, Cambridge, Marshall and Truman fellowship finalists and complimented the Honor’s College and the faculty for a great job. He mentioned that the World Affairs Conference was very well received. The School of Kinesiology is moving forward with a partnership with the U.S. Olympic committee. Auburn’s facilities will most likely become training sites.
The SE Conference has selected 3 individuals for their year-long academic leadership development program: Dewayne Searcy (College of Business), Bret Smith (College of Architecture, Design, and Construction), and Ann Franco-Watkins (College of Liberal Arts)
.
There is a Board of Trustees meeting coming up, but there are no vital concerns for the Auburn campus on the agenda. The only critical issues on the agenda are academic quesstions that relate to AUM.
He ended with saying that there are some political robo calls out there which pretend to be coming from AU, but there are ID spoofing calls and AU has nothing to do with these.
University Senate: Patricia Duffy, Senate Chair
Patricia Duffy briefly described the Senate meeting cycle. There are ten Senate meetings, plus a Spring and a Fall General Faculty meeting. She emphasized that everyone can participate in the shared governance of the University by getting involved in committees and contribute on different levels. Senate committees can be found on the Senate website which lists membership and charge of each committee. She introduced the Senate leadership group, including Laura Kloberg, the administrative assistant to the Senate. A nomination committee has been formed to call for self- or other nominations as Chair-elect and Secretary –elect for the upcoming year, starting in August 2015. This year’ nominating committee consists of Anwar Ahmed (College of Engineering), Bob Cochran (College of Business), Bruce Gladden (College of Education), Bob Locy from COSAM, Ann Beth Presley (College of Human Sciences), and Hilary Wyss (College of Liberal Arts).
Information Items
1. Update on the Strategic Plan: Tim Boosinger, Provost
The Provost gave an update of the implementations made in Year One of the Five-year Strategic Plan. Details can be found in his presentation (Presentation (ppt)). First year retention has been greatly improved as have graduation rates. He mentioned that much progress could be made due to improved academic advising and career counseling strategies, midterm grade submission for core courses with early alert, and not to forget, Camp War Eagle. Degree Works is now in place. His hope is to bring the number of Pell grant recipients up from currently 13% to more than 20% over time. He mentioned that with the involvement of Shorelight Pathways the number of international students is expected to gradually increase from about 300 to over 1000 over 3 years. An agreement with Everspring is under development which will help to increase the number of on-line options for students that need to complete their degree after leaving Auburn for any reason. An effort was also made to develop a common mobile platform which is currently in trial stage in a Biology course for 100 students.
In regard to Faculty vitality/success, he mentioned spousal hires, child care and the formation of a commission that will be looking into careers of women at Auburn University, especially at mid-career point. Finally he mentioned the initiation of an initiative for cluster hires to be announced in November/December.
Questions: none
2. Counseling Services for Students: Doug Hankes, Director of Student Counseling Services
Doug Hankes gave an overview of most commonly needed services for students in distress on the Auburn campus in comparison to national data and pointed out that a number of services and assistance options are available to students. Details can be found in his presentation (Counseling Services Presentation (ppt))
Questions:
From the audience: Could the presentation be made available to Department Heads/Chairs?
Doug Hankes/Patricia Duffy: the presentation will be available at the Senate webpage under Minutes as well as in the Agenda and is publically available.
From the audience: What should faculty do if a student behaves strangely?
Doug Hankes: We are trying our best to deal with students’ bizarre behavior.
3. The Internal Grant Program: Art Chappelka, Chair of Faculty Research Committee and John Liu, Associate Vice President and Associate Provost, Research
Art Chappelka discussed the survey conducted on experiences with previous IGP grants. Recipients had voiced concern with the proposal evaluation and reporting process and in some cases, the level of funding at specific IGP levels (IGP Presentation (ppt)). John Liu presented the new and updated versions of this year’s call for IGP proposals (Dr. Liu's Presentation (ppt)). The deadline for submission is December 1, 2014.
Questions:
Laura Plexico, Secretary-elect: The amounts shown for all levels of IGP grants are before cost-share?
John Liu: Yes, they are before cost-share. For example, a $5k grant becomes a $10k grant. All funding is for 2 years.
From the audience: How many of the submitted proposals have been funded?
John Liu: Level I/II has been high; in 2010 even 100%. Level III has been 26% and IV 50% funded. Certainly the amount depends on the number of qualifying submissions.
Unfinished Business: Patricia Duffy, Senate Chair
None
New Business and Announcements: Patricia Duffy, Senate Chair
Chippewa Thomas reminded everyone to complete the Survey of Faculty Public Engagement and announced the availability of funding through the Competitive Outreach Scholarship Grants Program. The deadline for these proposals is November 10.
The meeting was adjourned at 4:35 p.m.