Transcript Senate Meeting
September 11, 2018

Michael Baginski, Chair: Welcome to the September 11, 2018 meeting of the University Senate. This is our second meeting of the 2018–19 academic year.

If you are a senator or a substitute for a senator please be sure you sign in onto the sheet at the top of the room. Be sure you have your clicker, because we have two action items today. Second, we need to establish a quorum. We have 87 Senators in the Senate and we need 45 for a quorum. Please press A on your clicker to show you are present. Now, here’s the problem, if we don’t have a quorum we can’t do business, this has happened to us only one other time. [several tries while folks are still coming into the meeting.]
Let the record show that we have 45 present to start the meeting, so a quorum is established. I now call the meeting to order.

I would like to remind you of some basic procedures for the Senate meeting for senators and guests. Let me explain the Senate rules about speaking. The rules of the Senate require that senators or substitute senators be allowed to speak first and then after they are done guests are welcome to speak. If you’d like to speak about an issue or ask a question, please go to the microphone on either side aisle. When it is your turn, state your name and whether or not you are a senator and the unit you represent.

The agenda today was set by the Senate Steering Committee and posted on the Web site in advance, it’s now up on the screen. The first order of business is to approve the minutes for the meeting of August 28, 2018. Those minutes have been posted on the Senate Web site. Are there any additions, changes, or corrections to the minutes? Hearing none, do I have a motion to approve the minutes? Do I have a second? All in favor of approving the minutes say aye please.

Group: Aye.

Michael Baginski, Chair: Opposed?  (No response)

The minutes are approved. Thank you. [3:44]

Next, Provost, Bill Hardgrave would like to make a few remarks. Bill please come to the microphone.

Bill Hardgrave, Provost: Good afternoon everyone. I just have a couple of updates for you and some stats that you might find interesting as we start the semester.

Leading into the fall semester on our hiring for the folks who joined us we have 65 assistant professors, 6 associate professors, 6 full professors, 8 clinical professors, 6 research professors, 38 post docs, 14 visiting professors, 42 instructors and lecturers that joined us this year. Overall that is about 196 folks who joined us.

The President last week hosted a reception at his home to honor those who had received a promotion and or tenure. At that reception 87 faculty were honored. We had 49 faculty who received tenure, including 8 who received tenure on hire. We had 18 faculty who were promoted to senior lecturer, associate clinical professor, full clinical professor, and research professor. We had 35 promoted to associate professor and 20 promoted to full professor. So, I thought you might be interested in the folks we’re hiring and those that are getting promotion and tenure.

Board of Trustees meeting is on Friday of this week. From the academic affairs side we have one item for approval to take to the Board and 6 information items. The only item needing approval from the Board that we are taking this time is a proposed Master of Data Science and Engineering, That is a joint program between COSAM and Engineering that focuses on those who desire data centric careers in fields such as statistical methodology, computational science, data analysis, collaborative problem solving, and security issues that arise in data science. All other items are information items that do not require Board approval.

The last thing I’ll mention just very briefly is over the weekend I am sure you all heard about the incident, the shooting incident that occurred across the street from campus. It was originally reported as McDonald’s, but it was actually down the road a little bit from the McDonald’s. there was one university student that was injured in the shooting with non-life-threatening injuries. That was certainly something that reflects upon Auburn University although it wasn’t Auburn University it happened in Auburn, AL so it reflects upon us. Fortunately, the police were on hand and responded very quickly. Not much to report other than it did occur technically off campus.

The other one I want to report is very sad, we did have an Auburn student who was killed in a sky diving accident on Sunday in Tuskegee.

The other thing I want to bring your attention to; this is the start of the semester and I think we all have to be diligent in watching out for our students both as they put themselves in situations that could be harmful to them physically, but also the mental challenges that our students face. Especially this time of the year we already this semester, sadly, we’ve had 2 suicides of current students and we had 4 that we know of, attempted suicides over this weekend that were not successful. So, please let’s all be very diligent. Look for those tell-tale signs of mental stress from our students and if you see those, certainly let us know about it. Student Affairs has a great Web site which will direct you to the resources. We all have to be diligent in looking out for our students.
Any questions? Thank you, Mike.

Michael Baginski, Chair: Thank you Dr. Hardgrave.

Now I have a few brief remarks. Today is the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on our Nation. I would like to take a moment of silence to remember those who lost their lives that day.

Alright, now, I’d like to introduce the officers of the Senate and our administrative assistant. Dan Svyantek is the current past chair, Nedret Billor is the chair-elect, Beverly Marshall is the secretary, and Adrienne Wilson is the secretary-elect, and our administrative, who makes all this possible, is Laura Kloberg. Are there any questions before I continue?

We have 2 action items on the agenda, the first is a request to change the membership of the Faculty Research Committee in the Faculty Handbook. The motion was presented first and discussed by Ralph Kingston, chair of the Faculty Handbook (Review) Committee at the August 28 meeting. I am going to ask if there are any questions. Ralph, are you here? I am sorry, the Faculty Salaries and Welfare Committee, I apologize for that. If there were any questions, I believe they were addressed. Do you have any?

This is going to require, because this motion comes from a Senate standing committee it doesn’t require a second, but however this is a change, a Constitutional amendment, as such 58 senators, two-thirds of the Senate must vote for the amendment before it is approved. If you approve this motion, make sure your clicker is on and press A, if you don’t press B. A=60, B=1. The motion passes, let the record show that 60 approve and one doesn’t.

Next, Beverly Marshall will present the new members of Senate Committees. Beverly will ask for this vote.
[11:31]

Beverly Marshall, secretary: We still need somebody from the College of Veterinary Medicine for the Academic Program Review and somebody from the School of Nursing for Competitive Research Grant. So, I just want to make sure.

So, we have 4 for approval today, again these are filling some slots that maybe didn’t get filled earlier, but again for the most part what is happening is as the letters go out with appointments some of these are coming back as the faculty member has retired. Do I have a motion to approve these committee nominations? Moved. If everybody will vote by their clickers. A= 59, B=0. Okay it is unanimously approved. Thank you so much.

Michael Baginski, Chair: Next we have information items. Megan Good will present the first on SCORE. She is the director of academic assessment.

Megan Good, director of academic assessment: Hi everyone, I am Megan Good the director of academic assessment. I just wanted to take a few minutes to give you all a brief overview of the SCORE or the Student Core Outcomes and Readiness Evaluation. The SCORE is a new pre-graduation expectation for our graduating seniors. Specifically we are asking them to take a one hour test at Biggin Hall in Testing Services. The test that students take is aligned with one of our core curriculum student learning outcomes and the SCORE is a product of the Core Curriculum General Education Committee (CCGEC). Specifically the CCGEC has been working over the last three years to reevaluate our general education assessment approach. It took one year to reflect on the prior approach and did several focus groups with faculty and department heads and chairs and then decided to try to centralize assessment. We spent the last 2 years piloting different versions of the centralized assessment. The final product being the SCORE.

From a student experience, students enroll in a class called UNIV 4AA0 or University Graduation. This is a class that triggers to the Registrar’s Office that a student intends to graduate a particular semester. After the semester starts, students receive e-mail notification that they have a hold placed on their account, which is called the AT Hold, which originally stood for assessment test hold. The AT Hold does not affect anything with registration or financial or anything at all except for a student’s access to the diploma application.

For those of you who may be new the diploma application is something that the Registrar’s Office uses to document how students want their name presented on their diploma and also the address to which they should send the diploma after graduation and after the degree is conferred. So, failure to actually fill out the diploma application means that a student can still graduate, but they will not receive their diploma.

The way to remove the AT Hold is by taking the SCORE. That’s the one-hour assessment at Biggin Hall. Through our piloting process we did identify that student motivation to do well on this assessment is at its greatest during the beginning of the semester and also in a serious proctored environment, which is why all testing must occur at Biggin Hall in Testing Services.

Some of our students graduating are off campus, so there is a waiver that is eligible for students who are not here. Through these 2 means, 1) taking the SCORE at Testing Services or 2) getting a waiver, will remove the hold from a student’s account. After the AT Hold is removed they have access to the diploma application.

The SCORE was implemented for the first time this past summer. We had about 719 students enroll in UNIV 4AA0, they all received notification and about 75% of the students took the SCORE at Biggin Hall and about 25% were off campus and received a waiver. All-in-all we have about we had 712 of 719 students meet this new pre-graduation expectation. Which is 99% so we are very happy to see that students were complaint with this new request. We did have 7 non-compliant students, so 5 of those students were truly non-compliant in the sense that they were physically on campus this summer and chose not to take the SCORE. However, 2 of them actually were eligible for a waiver and through multiple messages from myself and colleagues and respective Colleges they just chose to not submit a waiver. An interesting note is that in total 18 students who graduated this summer did not fill out the diploma application. Not sure what those 11 students were, what was holding them back.

You might be wondering what data we were collecting with the SCORE this summer. If you were here at the Senate last October, you might recall that the Core Curriculum and General Education Committee proposed new student learning outcomes which were approved and are presented on the screen. We now have 9 student learning outcomes, they are lettered a– i and the essence or the content of the outcomes are largely the same, one of the major differences is this introduction. The introduction notes that the core outcomes are really focused on students that are graduating instead of whenever a student happens to take a core curriculum class.

The Core Curriculum and General Education Committee decided to assess 3 outcomes per semester as opposed to trying to assess every outcome every semester. Students are randomly assigned one of 3 tests based on the last digit of their ID when they arrive to Biggin Hall, which gives us a random representative sample for each of our outcomes. [18:55]

This past summer and currently this fall we are assessing 3 outcomes, so, A, B, and D; information literacy, critical thinking, and written communication. There’s a lot of text on this slide which I don’t intend for you to read, but I wanted it to be available on the presentation for download. This is just to show that for each outcome which is very broad there are a lot of detailed definitions that the committee has created that are associated with each of our outcomes. Also, each of the tests that we are currently giving are purchased through vendors, so ETS, Educational Testing Services and also Carrick Enterprises, but some of the upcoming tests were created by our Auburn faculty.

The SCORE presents several really awesome opportunities for Auburn. First, it’s going to allow Auburn to tell a story about student learning at the undergraduate level that we have been unable to tell in a reliable way to date. Second, and perhaps even more exciting is it’s going to allow us as a community to ask really interesting research questions about student learning here at Auburn. One example question might be; do students who start here at Auburn as opposed to students who transfer into Auburn have different information literacy skills when they graduate? This is an empirical question that we can actually explore and if we were to find that there were discrepancies we can create improvement initiatives to try to bridge any gaps identified.

Overall, I like to think about the SCORE as a resource for all of us to better understand learning here at Auburn.

Before I end I wanted to give you all a preview of a change that is coming up for this spring 2019 associated with that course UNIV 4AA0. Currently all graduating seniors receive a lot of communication about graduation often from the Registrar’s Office via e-mail, but now they are also receiving a lot of information from my office, which they are not as familiar with, about the SCORE. This can get very confusing as you might imagine, so for spring we are creating a Canvas course associated with UNIV 4AA0 to have all information about graduation, the ceremony, and expectations combined in one central location. So, I am looking a Skylar in the back, our Colleges and SGA have given us some feedback that this is a welcome change because students pay more attention their Canvas announcements than they do to their e-mails.

Students will get all of their notifications about the SCORE through Canvas, about graduation, the ceremony planning, and we will also introduce asking students to take a first destination survey during the last 2 weeks of the semester.

That concludes what I have to share with you about the SCORE and I am happy to answer any questions you might have.

Michael Baginski, Chair: Thank you Megan. Next Beverly Marshall will present the preliminary results of the Senate survey.

Beverly Marshall secretary: Okay, I heard from roughly 30 units, which I think was pretty good. It’s obvious that units wanted to be heard. I think the results indicate that Auburn faculty in the various units represented here are not disengaged. They have concerns and they are willing to voice them. We appreciate suggestions for improving the functioning of Auburn, the University Senate, and the Committees.

As some stragglers have come in and I still encourage those of you that may be representing units that have not submitted the survey to do so. I am finding that for the most part the comments have already appeared on earlier surveys, but again if you have not submitted the survey for your department there is still time to do so.

We appreciate both the positive and the negative feedback as we look to improve shared governance and the role of the University Senate and its committees. Our goal is to make the best use of your valuable time as a Senator and to make sure that you have the desired platform to represent your constituents.

The first question on the survey asked you to poll your unit and list concerns that you think we could address. I have taken those and summarized them, which by the way the list went from A to Z, into 5 key areas. There were concerns about governance, research issues, teaching issues, faculty salary and welfare concerns, and concerns about our students. So, we have plenty to go to work on as an Executive Committee. We look forward to sharing how we are addressing your concerns at a later meeting.

The second question on the survey was regarding the perception of the University Senate in your unit and how we might improve. Overall the perception was neutral to positive. There was a consistent pattern in the suggestions for improvement including; increase participation and feedback, reduce the number of meetings, provide a better understanding of the role of the Senate particularly for our new Senators, and make sure we close the loop by highlighting the successes and accomplishments of the Senate and the Committees.

The third question concerned perceived hinderances or other obstacles that prevent individuals from giving input or participation and how we can reduce those. So, I would put those responses into 3 categories: committees, time issues, and concerns for guarding voice. We will begin by addressing the work of committees to ensure that they are effective and useful.

The final question was how we could reduce redundancy, eliminate inefficiency, or streamline processes and procedures. The responses could also be lumped into 3 broad categories: those specific to the Senate, again, research issues, and those specific to administration. Most of the responses for that final question paralleled concerns in the previous questions.

I want to thank you again for collecting these responses and making sure that we are addressing the concerns of your constituents. We appreciate your important role as a Senator in carrying back information to those you represent, but also in bringing their voice to this forum. We look forward to working with you over the coming year to improve the perception of our University Senate and Committees. Thank you for your time. Any questions?

Michael Baginski, Chair: Thank you Beverly.
This might be an indoor record. This concludes our formal agenda for today. Is there any unfinished business? Hearing none, is there any new business? Hearing none, I now adjourn the Senate meeting. [26:22]