Minutes of Senate Steering Committee
April 12, 2018, 3:32-4:07
Samford 206

Present:   Dan Svyantek (Chair), Donald Mulvaney (Secretary), James Goldstein (Immediate-Past Chair), Michael Baginski (Chair-Elect), Bill Hardgrave (Provost), Emmett Winn (Associate Provost), Lisa Kensler, and Jared Russell

Absent: Beverly Marshall (Secretary-Elect), Michael Tillson and Lucretia Tripp

The meeting was called to order by Chairman Svyantek at 3:32 pm and an agenda with attachments was provided. As a first item of business, the Steering minutes from March 8 were approved.

Chairman Svyantek presented an email from Karla McCormick, Faculty and salaries Welfare Committee, requesting an addition of a staff member in the area of Compensation or Talent Management group to be able to serve.  Since this requires a handbook modification, the memo was recommended to be sent to Ralph Kingston, Chair of the Faculty Handbook Committee.

Chairman Svyantek shared a proposed narrative change to the University Senate Constitution 2.1.2 Article 4 Section 1 regarding the inclusion of representation from the Libraries Data Management Librarian group to serve on the Faculty Research Committee. Steering supported the recommendation of the committee and will include as a pending action item for the April 17 meeting of the Senate.

Steering discussed additions to the Steering Committee (pending a decision by Rules) and recommended having Jared Russell continue another term on Steering.

Provost commented on rationale related to the decision to move University College to the College of Liberal Arts as well as clarified the stark distinctions between salary and compensation processes for A&P staff and faculty.  A brief discussion of concepts of salary inversion and compression ensued and resulted in Provost Hardgrave commenting on a keen interest in retention, recognition and reward. 

Chairman Svyantek shared highlights from his attendance of the Parking listening session and indicated several novel approaches to alleviating present and future parking needs are being explored.

The agenda for the Senate meeting for 4/17/2018 which includes remarks from President Leath, three Action Items of voting on a resolution from the Faculty Research Committee, voting on nominees for Rules
Committee membership, and voting on Rules Committee recommendations to various Senate committees.  A pending action item deals with the change to the constitution regarding adding a library faculty representative to the FRC. Also on the agenda was an information item of a report on the COACHe survey by Drew Clark, Director of Institutional Research. The Agenda was approved.

The meeting was adjourned at 4:07 PM.

Prepared by:  D. Mulvaney, Secretary, AU Senate