Auburn University Steering Committee
Minutes
Thursday, September 4th, 2014
206 Samford Hall

Present: Patricia Duffy (Chair), Larry Crowley (Immediate-Past Chair), Larry Teeter (Chair-Elect), Gisela Buschle-Diller (Secretary), Laura Plexico (Secretary-elect), Sara Wolf, Emily Myers, Keven Yost,  Bliss Bailey, Drew Clark, Constance Relihan, Tim Boosinger, Mike Kensler (Sustainability Office), Dr. Gilmore (ACE Fellow)

Absent: Mike Baginski
The minutes of the Steering Committee meeting from August 21, 2014, were approved without modification after clarification of a misunderstanding.

The agenda of the September 16 Senate meeting was discussed first. As of now, the President, the Provost and the Senate Chair will have remarks. The only action item will be the vote to confirm a new member of the Teaching Effectiveness Committee. The vacancy is due to a current member stepping down.

As Information Items, Drew Clark will first give an enrollment snapshot (number of students/level, number freshmen, etc.). The enrollment is up compared to last year, although exact numbers will not be known until Census.  The question was asked if there are data available to compare schools; these however are difficult to obtain.

The second Information Item, presented by Bliss Bailey, will deal with the mandatory Cyber Security Awareness Training which will eventually be required for every employee and possibly all students. The training is comprised of 23 more or less short modules (67 min total) with one question at the end of each module. The progress of each participant is tracked; it will be possible to watch the modules at different days. Deans/Heads/Chairs have been informed and already took the training; faculty will be notified next week. Bliss Bailey will accept questions.

The third Information Item will be presented by Mike Kensler of the Sustainability Office. Mike will give an overview of the newest developments in regard to planned campus-wide “Conversations” on steps of how to achieve a 100% sustainable campus at Auburn University in the future.

The next item of discussion was the agenda for the October 7th Senate meeting. As an Information Item, Nanette Chadwick will likely give an update on the Sustainability Minor.  There may be pending action items.

It was suggested to charge the Teaching Effectiveness Committee with looking into the process of evaluation and whether the instrument is a good tool for Auburn. It has been used for several years and an evaluation of the instrument would be timely.

It was discussed whether to have the presentation on the Intramural Grants Program (IGP) at the General Faculty meeting (Oct. 28) or the November 4th Senate meeting.  The October 28 date was preferred because of timeliness.

Patricia Duffy stated that Yasser Gowayed as the Chair of the Administrator Evaluation Committee is working with Emmett Winn and Drew Clark on developing a better synergy of this committee and the periodic Administration Evaluation process. She also reiterated the discussion on Academic Program Review and the formation of a sub-committee (Wi-suk Kwon, Emmett Winn, Constance Relihan and Drew Clark) to develop guidelines concerning what would go to this committee.

Sara Wolf reported on a very positive conversation she had with Jan Thornton of Tech Transfer and Bonnie Sanderson of the Library on copyright issues. The question is of how the process should be done – one approach could be the formation of an ad hoc committee in the sense of a small working group, not in the sense of one faculty of each college. It was suggested to bring this issue up at the next Executive Committee meeting with President Gogue and other members of the Leadership.

The discussion on possible exceptions to the international travel 2.25 GPA requirement was postponed because of time.

The meeting was adjourned at 5:10 PM.