General Faculty Meeting Minutes

March 6, 2018, 3:30 p.m.
238 Broun Hall

A full transcript is available for this meeting.

Senate and General Faculty Chair Daniel Svyantek, welcomed attendees and called the meeting to order promptly at 3:30 pm.  He called for a vote to approve the minutes from the October 3, 2017, Fall General Faculty Meeting. The minutes had been posted on the University Senate Web site and were approved without comment via majority voice vote.

Dr. Steven Leath, President of the university was called upon to make remarks to his second meeting of the General Faculty.

Legislative Arena.  He commented on his extensive interactions with legislative bodies in Montgomery and suggested the Education Budget that was passed is 216 million dollars larger than last year and indicative of favorable results for Auburn as all 4 of Auburn’s divisions having separate budget lines will potentially receive an increase. There was a new license tag bill passed which translates into added scholarship funds for Auburn. Other bills were mentioned as being on a watch list.

Installation and Strategic Planning. He excitedly commented on the upcoming Installation scheduled on March 29 to formally launch some of his big picture vision for the university.  He emphasized that a strategic planning process will be put into place and be faculty driven and led by senior faculty.

Research Initiative Launched.  As he was hired to accelerate research, a presidential initiative was launched to provide funds to enable intentional paring of faculty together in a different way for interdisciplinary research.  This is a way to examine pulling programs together and enable them to compete for large grants and drive research on campus. The call for proposals yielded 101 proposals which was far more than the 20–25 expected.  He noted that 55 of them were tier 1 proposals and he feels it signals there is a lot of enthusiasm for growing research along with a need for more resources.

Michael Stern, Economics inquired about the faculty to lead the strategic planning and how they were selected. Dr. Steven Leath, President indicated the input from deans and senate to identify the lead faculty.

Michael Stern then asked about attendance at the meeting. He noted where he had mentioned the turnout at the Faculty Meeting last fall. So, I was wondering what you think of this turnout of the university’s faculty and what that says about the institution? Dr. Leath, President: “I could say a lot of things. One, it’s surprisingly light to me, the other part is; if a lot of people are delighted with the way things are going so they are comfortable, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But the more people that are informed and engaged the happier I’ll be.”

Daniel Svyantek, Chair made some brief remarks which included:  introduction of the University Senate officers: James Goldstein is the past chair, Mike Baginski is the chair-elect, Donald Mulvaney is the Secretary. Bev Marshall is the secretary-elect, He claims James Witte is our Senate parliamentarian and our administrative assistant is Laura Kloberg.

He commented on some of the issues with voting and committee volunteering on the Senate Web site. But were since resolved. Other areas are being explored for improvement such as the way faculty are classified for voting and volunteering purposes. The Provost’s Office provided the Senate Executive Committee with a listing of the titles of faculty positions at Auburn University. He promised to come up with a better way to provide a clear classification of those eligible to vote and volunteer for the future.

He encouraged all to volunteer for committee service and to contact Mulvaney with problems volunteering.

He reminded all of the Critical Conversation series event scheduled on March 7 at 5 p.m. in the Student Center Ballroom. The event features Reshma Saujani an influential author, political activist, former U.S. Congressional candidate, and founder and CEO of the Girls Who Code organization. He noted she will be sharing a keynote discussion entitled “Women, Diversity, and STEM.”

He encouraged faculty to share their inputs by e-mail so we have a record of them.
Chair Svyantek then moved into the two Information Items.    

• The Administrative and Professional Assembly Chairman Lawrence Hamberlin, was to provide an update but he had to be out of town at the last minute due to family medical reasons.
•  The second information item was an overview and status report by Chris Heacox, the executive director of the Jay and Susie Gogue Performing Arts Center.  Chris clarified the activities to occur in the Performing Arts Center once completed. August of 2019 will serve as opening with a 4-day festival. The idea is that we want to be as inclusive of our community and campus as possible, so we will start with a performance for students, which we are co-presenting with Student Affairs. Friday night, will be for the community, Sunday will be our Gala, excuse me, Sunday will be for families here in the community. With building a facility like this there are a lot of intricacies. One of the benefits, I think, for me coming in here in July and seeing 2 facilities being built was that I saw that there were a number of different punch list items that have to happen, so we are going to have to open in August, do our festival, and then probably shut down for a few weeks to make sure some things are rectified and corrected before we move on with our series with usage from the Department of Music and other departments as well.  Their web site is up and running now. It is goguecenter.auburn.edu. We have live streams, information about positions that are open, fundraising and other items.

Michael Stern, Economics, had a question about the Directors background in which Executive Director Heacox responded.

The last information item wasthe announcement of the results of the Senate election by Mike Baginski, Senate Chair-Elect. The chair-elect is Nedret Billor (COSAM) and Adrienne Wilson (Theatre of CLA) is the secretary-elect.

Mike Stern, Economics inquired about the lack of a Glenn Howze Awardee for three years.  Chairman Daniel Svyantek clarified that the local Chapter of the AAUP academic freedom award is named for former Senate Chair, Glenn Howze. This award is given to a faculty member who has been outstanding working for academic freedom at Auburn University.

Additional verbal exchange about the endowment occurred between Robin Jaffe, Chair of the AAUP and Michael Stern.

After calling again for any additional business, the meeting was adjourned at 4:05 pm.