General Faculty Meeting
March 8, 2016, 3:30 p.m.
Broun Hall Auditorium
Minutes
Call to Order
A full transcript is available for this meeting.
Senate Chair Larry Teeter called the meeting to order at 3:30 PM. The minutes of the October 6, 2015 General Faculty Meeting were approved without modification.
Remarks and Announcements
Office of the President: Jay Gogue, President
Dr. Gogue discussed the graduation rate numbers and thanked the faculty for the increase in graduation rates Auburn has seen for a number of years. The graduation rate has moved from low 60s to mid-70’s. He also remarked on the number of post-graduate fellowships and scholarships Auburn students are winning. The numbers have significantly increased over the past few years. The Arbor society of America has recognized Auburn for its beautiful trees on campus. Commented on the Share-a-Bike program. If successful it will be looked at for expansion.
In the last month Auburn was listed in the Forbes list as the top university in the state of Alabama. Only three schools within the southeastern conference were the best within their state and we were one of them.
Legislature is in session and it is anticipated that there will continue to be stability in the 1-2% increase.
There are several searches for new positions: General Counsel position, Vice President for Business and Finance, Chief Information Officer, Dean of the College of Agriculture and Director of the Agriculture Experiment Station. Then Auburn University Montgomery, the Chancellor search is down to 2 individuals
The April 7 board meeting will include discussion of tuition and fees, the interdisciplinary science building, performing arts center.
Called attention to the diversity, inclusion and equity issues in American higher education. He asked that we renew our discussion of core values at Auburn and ensure that our campus fosters learning, safety and helpfulness and respect and support. Auburn has taken steps over the past couple of months. Dr. Gogue is now meeting with student groups to hear what they have to say about the university. Complaints include parking on campus, food and the residence halls. We’ve strengthened the Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs and more changes will occur in that area. The Provost has formed a steering committee to look at campus climate and that is the formal listening that is going on around the campus.
Finally he commented on shared governance, about half the faculty are involved in committees. All resolutions that have come to the University Senate have been approved by the Board of Trustees.
Questions: None
Office of the Provost: Timothy Boosinger, Provost
First commented on the strategic planning process. In three years they have achieved 75% of the goals they set out to accomplish. There is an implementation committee that will provide a report to the president within a few weeks. They will evaluate where goals are being achieved and where more effort is needed to hit the mark on remaining goals. He also remarked on the climate study. He stated that we have had 40 listening sessions and another 30–40 private interviews for people that wanted to be interviewed. They are going to continue to work on that for the next few weeks, but the goal is to have a report put together to present to the administration and the faculty before the end of the spring semester.
The student success collaborative from the educational advisory board, is a platform that helps advisors identify students that may not be on a path to success. It analyzes their performance as they move through the university curriculum and identifies indicators that maybe the advisor should meet with a student. When the process was started 3 years ago we had a student to academic advisor ratio in the 600s, now we have brought that down to 480. Best practice nationally is in the 300s.
The Student Government Association, leadership commissioned a task force to look at the mental health of our students and asked the question, are we providing the support that we need to provide for students at Auburn University that have mental health challenges. That task force worked for a number of weeks and has made a presentation to the President, Dr. Large, and the Provost asking administration to look at allocating resources to support the goals and objectives they are recommending.
He also made remarks on the Green Dot Program. It is a national program that helps raise everybody’s level of awareness about sexual assaults and how to prevent sexual assaults on our campuses. It encourages bystanders to become engaged and help prevent these things from happening. The university has set a goal of providing training for 6,000 faculty, students, and staff. To date we have done 2,000- 3,000.
Administration has looked at Enrollment Management and the number and percentage of students at Auburn University that are Pell Grant eligible. Enrollment Management has made some recommendations to enhance what we are already doing for Pell grant eligible students with need based scholarships by adding up to $5,000 of support. That process is complemented by scholarship programs like Plus, which is targeted for first generation kids.
There is continued work on 3 distance, or online degree programs. One is in the RN to BSN, another is Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, and a Bachelor’s in Computer Science.
The Biggio Center has announced the search for a faculty fellow for transformational leadership to focus on ways to strengthen our ability to help faculty be better teachers and to help heads and chairs be better administrators. There are 2 faculty finalists and there will be presentations on April 4thand 5th.
There have been a number of questions about spousal hires. The university does accommodate spousal hires currently on a case by case basis. There will be a memo explaining what is currently being done and what can be done to make the process more effective. Finally, he reminded faculty about the cluster hiring initiative. Positions are being advertised, faculty candidates are being invited to campus for interviews and some of those people will be on campus in the next few months.
Questions: None
University Senate: Larry Teeter, Senate Chair
Larry Teeter introduced the Senate Executive Committee and Administrative Assistant Laura Kloberg. He thanked Bob Locy the Parliamentarian for helping to put together the new slate of candidates for officers. He reminded everyone of the senate schedule and the opportunity to participate in shared governance by volunteering for a committee online. He also urged the faculty to consider accepting the invitation to volunteer when approached.
Questions: None
Information Items
1) Status update on the Strategic Budgeting Initiative; Presenter, Amanda Malone, Special Assistant to the Provost for Budget Management
Gave an update on where we are in the strategic budgeting initiative. We are 3 years into the current Strategic Planning Process. Priority of that Strategic Plan actually deals directly with resource allocation methodologies on campus. This past fall a working group was established to start looking at the practices, the business processes around budget development and the software systems used for the flow of information. Started looking for what opportunities there are for improvement under a new resource allocation methodology. Conducted an in-depth training in the fall with both the business officers in colleges and schools as well as central administration offices. This spring there is movement into an education phase. There will be opportunities to meet with and have discussions with various constituent groups across campus. Annual budget meetings with each dean and business officer have been held. In those budget meetings the proposed strategic budget model and the impact that will have on each college was reviewed. They have been able to answer questions and are continuing to explore and test different areas within that proposed model. In those meetings with the deans, the next steps were discussed as we are moving into budget development season.
In April, there will be Board discussion around tuition. There will be some additional information after that meeting and discussion on the resource allocation model. In budget development season, the Board may entertain salary guidelines in its June meeting. Then the traditional September Board of Trustees meeting is when the Board will actually receive the proposed budget that will start on October 1.
Questions:
Michael Stern, Dept. Economics, Asked if the current budget model began to run in parallel October 1 and whether the colleges have received the results of the budget simulations. He expressed that there was a belief that would be quarter 1 numbers would be distributed. He inquired about why there is a delay and when those numbers will be distributed.
Amanda Malone, special assistant to the Provost for budget management said the parallel year did begin in October and the Deans have access to the historical numbers, actuals from FY 13–14 and then budget information for FY 14, 15, and 16 from previous budget years. But not for the year we are in right now. The delay is because they are trying to make sure the data is intact and it is going thru a vetting process. There is no definitive date for the release of the numbers.
2) Report on 3 new University standing committees to support the new budget model; Presenter, Drew Clark, Director, Office of Institutional Research
For the university budget it has historically been enacted through what’s called the University Budget Advisory Committee. The University Budget Advisory Committee continues to exist. In the past most of its deliberations have revolved around incremental changes to the base budget. However, the kind of budget model we’re adopting will require more than that so the committee will begin to function in a new way. It will have a couple of additional charges. First, the committee will look at the total budget picture, all revenues, all sources, and all expenditures, to facilitate a more widely shared understanding of the economic reality of the university. Second, the committee will provide advice and consultation over how dollars from the Mission Enhancement Fund might be invested. The purpose of that fund is to make sure we’ve got enough resources to take into account structural differences in cost of programs amongst the various schools and colleges. So each school or college will have an investment in the ongoing viability and success of each of the other schools and colleges. The second purpose of that fund is to create a pool of recurring dollars for investment and strategic initiatives under the ultimate control of the President upon recommendation from the Provost and Executive Vice President. The major function of the University Budget Advisory Committee going forward will be to provide consultation on exactly how those strategic investment dollars should be invested. The third function of this committee, will be to periodically evaluate how well the budget model itself is performing.
There are 2 features of the model that call for good consultation and advice around topics that we haven’t been consulting and advising on in the past. The first of the 2 is called the Central Unit Allocations Committee. Auburn spends a fair amount of money to simply run itself, provide administrative services, student support services, and institutional support. With the way that the budget model is designed the revenues that are needed to pay for those administrative services now flow through the schools and colleges and are funded by the schools and colleges using a series of allocations. Because those will actually show up on your school and college income statements you will see for the first time in specific detail what your college is contributing to the Library, to IT and so on. The purpose of this committee, is to give structure to a dialogue about administrative cost pools and to examine in some detail what the university is spending and how that benchmarks against good benchmark practices. This committee can advise on setting spending levels for central support units. It also raises conversations about levels of service from those units. This committee will also help coordinate the preparation of service level agreements.
The third committee, the Space Management and Repair and Renovations Committee, has a couple of functions implied by the model. The first would be to serve as a panel of advice and consultation around setting priorities for repair and renovation projects across campus. The other function is one that is called into existence by the model. Because schools and colleges will pay some of their allocations for central support on the basis of the square footage that is maintained for them by the Division of Facilities, this creates an incentive for schools and colleges to vacate square footage in order to hold down their share of the facilities budget. For the university to function appropriately we can’t have abandoned buildings on campus, so essentially a brokerage function will be created that allows a unit wishes to vacate space, as a seller, if there is a buyer.
Questions:
Michael Stern, Dept Economics, asked about brokerage exchange. Asked if colleges will be billed by square footage. He also inquired about the market place where the square footage price was derived from. Asked why an auction process is not going to be used as he does not see fairness in the use of square footage to determine the unit’s facility allocation costs.
Drew Clark, Director of Office of Institutional Research, stated that the intent is to get the costs fairly distributed amongst the units as facilities has to maintain all of the properties on campus.
Marcie Smith, VP for Business and Finance, clarified that only the operating costs are allocated, so the value of the real estate, the depreciation is not in the calculation. For instance, it’s utilities, elevator contracts, things that Facilities supports, custodial services and such.
3) Announcement of election results of 2015–2016 Senate officers; Presenter, James Goldstein, Chair-Elect
The next chair-elect will be Dan Svyantek and the next secretary-elect will be Donald Mulvaney.
Unfinished Business: Larry Teeter, Senate Chair: None
New Business and Announcements: Larry Teeter, Senate Chair: None
Adjournment: Larry Teeter, Senate Chair at 4:23