Bob Locy: I believe the hour is upon us and I’d like to bang the gavel on the podium and call the meeting to order. I’d like to ask if there are any additions or corrections to the new minutes as were distributed on the web. Seeing and hearing none the minutes will stand approved as distributed. Our first item of business for today is remarks from the President’s Office, Dr. Gogue.

Dr. Gogue: Thank you. I have to tell you that in all the Universities that I’ve been at this is the first time I’ve had a faculty Senate, I don’t know if it’s congratulations or condolences, I’ve never seen a Senate meet in the summer time so I thought I’d let you know it’s very unusual but I appreciate you being here today. I want to give you an update on a couple positions. I’ve never been on a campus where the Senate was active in the summer. But we have extended an offer for Vice President for Research. The individual has accepted. We now go through the process of the compensation committee and Board of Trustees. And also, the individual is a full profit of another University so we have to go through the appropriate committees within the college within their department to see if this person would merit that at Auburn so we’re making progress on that. I know that the Provost Search Committee met yesterday. I have not been briefed. Stew’s here. He may want to brief the group on where they stand. The Provost as I understand it is close to naming a Graduate Dean. So those were the things I wanted to share with you. The Legislature ended its session without a budget and they went into special session for five days. They came out of that. Our original cut at the outset of the session was 14.3% at Auburn, at the end of the session it was about 12%. So a little progress, not a great deal of progress, but some progress during the session. Our comments, at least my comments from Auburn, will be somewhat in contrast to what you’re reading in the state from other institutions. I think you may have seen the University of Alabama is laying off 300 people, stopping construction projects, a number of other things. Our approach will be that we will take some of the budget cuts and replace those in priority order. The non-academic side of the University will take the biggest cuts. The academic sport side will receive the second highest cuts, and the least amount of cuts will be in the true academic side, the teaching and research side of the institution. Our comments have been that Auburn has been in operation for over 150 years, and we expect to be here another 150 years. We will slow down some of the new plans that we may have had. But we’re open for business and we expect to do well in spite of the changes in the budget that we’re facing for the current year. The recommendation for the Board of Trustees will be about 12% tuition increase. And when we look at our actual numbers, and I think Don will probably have shared those earlier, but the amount of the cut is about 29 Million dollars. But when you add to that some mandated costs it gets up to roughly 40 Million dollars, is that a ball park number? 12% tuition increase will raise about 20 Million dollars. So the other 20 Million we’re looking at in terms of deferred maintenance and a host of things. When I’ve been asked “Are you going to lay off people?” my comments have been that I don’t plan to micromanage. I believe we have people that are in very responsible positions throughout the University and we expect them to manage and so I don’t really anticipate that we see a lot of losses to people, certainly in large numbers. I’d be happy to respond to questions. Thank you, Bob.

Bob Locy: For my remarks, I’d like to update you on the Ombudsperson search. The search committee has met, has advertised the position and is now reviewing the applications with the intent of conducting an open forum on the top three candidates that emerge from their search later this month. The goal is to have an ombudsperson seated and functioning by the start of fall semester on August 15th. Just as a personal comment, I believe we had a slate of 5 applicants for the position and I think the committee is going to have a difficult task of sorting out the top three candidates. I believe all the candidates we have are excellent candidates and I believe it’s been as a first attempt at an Ombudsperson an outstanding search thus far. So I’m looking forward to good things emerging from that search. On May 31st and June 1st, I had the privilege of attending and representing the Auburn University Senate at the Coalition of Intercollegiate Athletics meeting held in Athens, Georgia. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Coalition of Intercollegiate Athletics, it’s an organization of Faculty Senates from Division 1-A athletic programs around the country. It’s an organization dedicated to improving academics in Intercollegiate Athletics and in the Intercollegiate Endeavor primarily by supporting reforms that are driven by the NCAA in conjunction with the Knight Commission that also has the charge of improving academics in intercollegiate athletics. The Coalition has published a number of white papers covering various topics including Framing the Future of Intercollegiate Athletics, that’s the title of one of them. And if you check the minutes after the meeting you will find a link to the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics website that will be posted with that. It will get you access to all of the information that you will need or want about the Coalition. You can also just Google COIA if you want it will quickly take you to the site if you forget how to find the minutes for the Senate. The published minutes of our recent meeting then will also be attached to the minutes of the Senate minutes for your perusal just to get the highlights of that meeting. There was a presentation by Dr. Brett Corwin who’s the Chancellor of the University of Maryland and he’s also one of the co-chairs of the Knight Commission to reform Intercollegiate Athletics. And his report regarded the progress that had been made involving something called the Academic Progress Program or the APP. His presentation was most confirmative and quite frankly he felt like there was a lot of progress being made but a lot more room for more progress to be made and wanted to emphasize that the Faculty Senates of the Division 1-A institutions around the country will play a critical role in the reform of academics in intercollegiate athletics as we move to the future. So there’s a bunch of folks including the second speaker we had who was Dr. Miles Brand the President of the NCAA speaking on both the APP and the progress reform of academic reform that the NCAA has been pressed with. In general the COIA is moving toward a faculty senate conducted survey, on each of the NCAA campuses resulting in the collection of information shall we say beneath the overall rankings as to how the process is working of reforming athletics. That is to say we are doing right what we need to do better, not just did we make a passing grade as far as the APR, the academic progress report, is concerned. The feeling of both the NCAA officials, the Knight Commission, and in general was that the Presidents of Universities working through the NCAA and the Knight Commission have pushed things about as far as they can. It’s going to fall to Faculty Senates around the country to carry on the reform and keep it moving in the right direction. That’s what the President of the NCAA was saying as I interpreted it. I would go on to say that there were significant and repeated discussions throughout the weekend that indicated that the academic problems of student athletes are reflective of deeper seeded problems in higher education as a whole and a lot of discussion about the fact that the COIA is virtually the only national organization of faculty senate leadership that’s looking at these problems at any level whether it’s related to intercollegiate athletics and otherwise. This discussion is noteworthy because faculty, I’m sorry, University Presidents have a mean half-life of about 3 years. And University Provosts have a mean half-life of about 2 years across the nation in the Division 1-A schools. I was shocked to learn that. I had not known that. And such short tenures for key administrative leadership means that the faculty senates are the people in the place where long term leadership of campuses reside. And I think that’s part of the motivation for the NCAA to consider getting us involved in that process. Each of us sitting here in our senate can likely play a role in this in the future. It was clear that this is the opinion of 54 high profile institutions around the country represented in the COIA. And we can see that the senate leaderships can provide a great deal of necessary and needed input to drive this and may wind up broadening ourselves into an organization to talk about problems in higher education more broadly at some time in the future. Are there any questions about my comments? Dr. Sneller, Dr. Gogue invited you to make any comments about the Provost search if you’d like to come do that.
Dr. Sneller: Sure Bob, thank you. The Provost Search Committee, when we were given the charge by the President, he recommended that we use a search firm and we solicited proposals from search firms and received four proposals. The search committee then narrowed that to two for campus interviews. As a consequence of that, we selected Funk and Associates out of Dallas, Texas. Several reasons for that was that they had just come out of the University of Arizona Provost Search and had some other successful searches, Colorado I believe, TCU Provost searches. So we selected that group. They also felt that they could meet the January 1, 2009 deadline that the President had asked the committee to work towards. So we selected that group. Bill Funk, who is the President of that group was here yesterday and we finalized that ad and the position description and also a timeline. Now I’ll come back to the timeline in just a minute, ‘cause I know you’re interested in that, but just quickly. The advertisement is one that will appear in The Chronicle and a number of comparable outlets. It will appear in printed form and electronic form probably in the next two and a half to three weeks. The position description is much more detailed and that will be one that will appear on the website and I think also give more details about the University. The timeline, the timeline that we’re working towards at this point is that the search firm will be seeking applications and nominations and we will be soliciting nominations on campus as well, and they’ll be doing that probably over the next two months. So we’re looking at sometime around the middle of August, maybe slightly after that for us to have at least a collection of nominations and applications. The search committee will narrow that down and have onsite interviews probably sometime in early to mid September and candidates will then be invited to campus for on campus interviews probably three to five individuals in the month of October. That’s the timeline we feel like we can adhere to and I’d be happy to answer any questions at this time if you have those. Well I encourage you now, when we have a call for nominations, to respond to that call or applications. We’ll be announcing it. It will first be announced on AU daily and then be a web page to which you can go. Okay, thanks Bob.

Bob Locy: Thank You, Stew. The next item of business is our first action item on our agenda. That would be Sue Barry with the nominations for senate committees for 2008-2009.
Mary Sue Barry: As you all know if you’ve been reading your emails from me, the original list included the Academic Program Review Committee but I was informed that we had an error in that committee and so I decided to pull that one so that one is not on the revised list. This is only a partial list. We plan to come back to you next month with the rest of the Committees that we haven’t quite completed. So at this time I’d like to move that the Senate accept this partial list for Senate Committees.
Bob Locy: Okay, since this is coming through the Steering to the floor, it does not require a second. Is there any discussion? Hearing no discussion then, all in favor of approving this slate of nominees for the committees of 2008-2009 signify by saying aye. Opposed? Abstains? The motion therefore carries. Thank you.
Later on the information item agenda we’re going to have a report by Bob McGuiness who’s our Vice President for Development on the Auburn Faculty Staff Campaign and the success that we’ve had this year. Mr. McGuiness is pending his retirement and as such we’ve prepared the resolution that you see before you which says,
Whereas D. Robert McGuiness has served Auburn University as Auburn University’s Vice President for Development since 2002. And whereas during his tenure as Vice President of Development, Auburn Fundraising Campaigns have succeeded far beyond expectations. And whereas D. Robert McGuiness has played a key role in establishing a development organization to effectively serve the future needs of Auburn University and in doing so has earned a national reputation as an outstanding University Development Officer. And whereas D. Robert McGuiness has announced his retirement effective as of June 30, 2008 now therefore be it resolved that the University Senate and its constituent groups gratefully acknowledges the excellent service of D. Robert McGuiness to Auburn University and extends warm wishes to him on the event of his retirement from Auburn University and be it further resolved the University Senate commends the team assembled by D. Robert McGuiness for their part in exceeding all expectations. Any comments or discussions of the resolution? This also comes from Steering so it needs no second, by the way. Well I’d like to add one comment. I managed to serve on the Vice President for Development Search Committee to find a temp to replace Mr. McGuiness and I knew virtually nothing in January about Development Officers at Universities and kind of went through a period of shock when I learned about the process of replacing a development officer at a university and to learn about the rather rarified air that Development Officers that are really good at their jobs walk around in. They command a lot of respect of the administrative hierarchies of Universities when they do their jobs well. And one of the things that I learned in the process of serving on this committee is actually the excellent service that that resolution reflects that Mr. McGuiness has given us for the last six years. And so whether you all realize it or not we’ve been very fortunate to have one of the top people in this area in the country serving in our development office and we only hope that we can find a replacement for him that can do the outstanding job that he’s managed to do. And so it will be a fact that he will be greatly missed in his service to our institution. So I guess with no further comment, unless there are any, I’d like to call the question and ask that all in favor of passing the resolution please signify by saying aye. All those opposed. Motion carries. We appreciate you Bob. We appreciate everything you’ve done.
*applause*
Alright that concludes our action item agenda for today. The first item on the information agenda is Mr. McGuiness’s report on the faculty staff campaign.

Bob McGuiness: Thank you, Bob. This projection might be hard to see and so I brought a couple of notes so I could highlight some things on it. It’s particularly hard to see right now. There we go. As you may be aware, the Faculty Staff Campaign has been an organized Campaign for three years now. It started in 2006 and the year before the campaign started, we had 9% of the faculty and staff at Auburn University making a gift. The first year we increased that to 43%, then to 55, then this year the goal was 60% and we reached it. And let me define the “we”. The “we” is the faculty and staff at the University, not only because they made the pledges and gave the gifts, but because the organizational structure of the effort included 90 volunteers from faculty and staff headed up by Dwight Wolf, from the College of Vet Medicine, Lane Sauser from the College of Agriculture, and Virgil Stark from the College of Athletics. Those 90 individuals worked within their own units. They came up with their own ideas within the units to encourage fellow faculty and staff to participate and to see 60% results was tremendous. I asked, you know this campaign was about percentage and percentage participation. It was not about money. We did not focus on money, different from the overall University Campaign. But I did ask the question over the three years of the campaigns, how much money have we raised? 2.3 Million dollars plus another 1.3 Million in planned gifts that came out of the effort. That is very impressive. Without focusing on the dollars raised and only focusing on the percent of participation. It is one of the things that is most impactful as Development Officers speak to Alumni, Foundations, Corporations, Parents, and other friends of the University and seek gifts, major gifts for the University, when we can say that 60% of the family at Auburn participated. We get some real looks. We say “Alright, that sounds to me like they believe in what they’re doing. I think I should believe in what they’re doing as well and participate.” As you can see up there, there were five units that hit 100%- Development, School of Nursing, Alumni Affairs, The President’s Office, and the School of Communications and Marketing. But it’s very important for you to know also that a number of units also had a significant amount of improvement this year and I’d like to identify them. Human Resources more than doubled their participation from last year. Undergraduate Studies came very close to doubling. Research had a 30% increase over last year. And the following had 20% or more-Auxiliary Services, the College of Liberal Arts, the Institute of Natural Resources, and the College of Agriculture. So that’s quite a good campaign. I’d like to run those all the time. Let me put it in perspective. I suspect, we haven’t got the exact figures yet, but I suspect the closest SEC institution is less than half this percentage rating. And so that is a tremendous accolade for the faculty and staff here at the University. I’m going to take just one more minute. I was delighted on the resolution that it talked about the staff involved in future activities at the University. When I was tapped to lead a symphony orchestra some years back; and the tradition was that the first orchestra performance the person that was tapped to do that went before the orchestra and when I did that I described myself as the Organ Grinder’s Monkey. I make no music. The music makers, I pointed behind me, were the musicians. But here the music makers are here and in the Research Offices, and in the Research Laboratories, and in the classrooms. And we’ve had a very successful campaign and we’re already gearing up behind the scenes for the next campaign, which I think will be a significant campaign for the University. There are probably about 60 campaigns today underway to raise a billion dollars or more in higher education. And another 35 or 40 that haven’t completed. I think Auburn is positioning itself to be there. But let me put into perspective what that means in terms of gifts. Normally, a campaign requires, rule of thumb, one gift of 10%, that’s a 100 Million dollar gift; and two gifts of 5%, that’s two gifts of 50 Million; and another four to six gifts of 25 Million. And the fact is that through the research that we’ve done in this campaign, there are potential donors that have that capacity. Well what do we have to do to engage them in that process? I believe that there is no lack of 25 Million dollar donors. I think the problem is 25 Million dollar ideas. And ideas aren’t formed in the Development office. Actually they’re not formed in the President’s office or the Provost’s. They’re formed in the colleges and the schools and units in the academic part of the University. And so I would charge you, ask you, plead with you, over the next 18 months, to participate in a process of creating the big ideas. Only you can do that. No one gives to a development officer. They give to an idea that is proposed by faculty and deans and they get excited in the process. And I try to define, maybe what that big idea process might look like. It’s got to be involved and engaged in the strategic plan, which is being created even as we speak. I believe that they are almost always multidisciplinary. That doesn’t mean a single discipline can’t have great ideas. But I think that ideas that will impact potential donors of 25, 50, and 100 Million dollars are multidisciplinary. I think they must address an important local state, national or international concern or problem. I’ve listed five. You probably can list 25. And they must have philanthropic appeal. And so the development of those ideas, not at the beginning, but as they begin to evolve, then I would ask that we begin to involve potential donors who have the resources to fund that kind of idea but they want to be engaged in the process to develop the idea. Auburn has been a wonderful experience for me. I did not expect to be at an institution like Auburn when I completed my career. I was in Regional State Universities my entire career. I built programs. But to have come here to an institution of this caliber with this kind of faculty leadership and alumni base has been a real blessing for me. And I believe we’ve only just begun in my profession at Auburn University and so I thank you for allowing me to be a part of this University for the last six years. I thank you for the kind resolution. I very much appreciate that. I tell you that you’re the toughest audience that development people have to deal with and to have a resolution like that from you I deeply appreciate it. Thank you very much.
*applause*
Bob Locy: I think if we’re going to make the resolution meaningful we need to find a way to accommodate Mr. McGuiness with some 25 to 100 Million dollar ideas. The next item on the information agenda is an update on the Strategic Plan by Dr. Heilman, the provost.
John Heilman: Thank you very much. I want to see how long a line, if any, this is on. Is this long enough to move over there? Okay I’m going to take it over here. Thank you. Before I get started on an update to the Strategic Planning Process, I’d like to offer just a brief observation about two of the things that you’ve heard in the presentations so far today and that is references to the importance of faculty role in two matters that matter deeply to us, the faculty, but also to the University. One of those is, is Bob Locy’s reference to the growing importance of faculty senates in the governance of Intercollegiate Athletics and the second is Bob McGuiness’s strong request, strong urging that the faculty serve as resources for the 25, 50, and 100 Million dollar ideas for the next campaign. To me at the end of a 35 year career, which I’ve had the privilege to spend all of here at Auburn University, seeing these references to the importance of the faculty is tremendously important.
In preparations for this meeting, Bob Locy and the Senate leadership talked about the desirability for an update on the Strategic Planning Process and having been involved in that process I’m happy to provide an update. This is going to be a brief overview, pretty much of process. You have seen earlier listings or versions of content. And having talked with Dr. Gogue earlier today, you should have in short order the opportunity to see what the final editing has produced in terms of a plan that will be a plan but is very importantly in Strategic Planning will be open to input and review on an annual basis. So this is an update on Strategic Planning for the Auburn University System. The word system is intentionally put there because we are functioning as a system and AUM has gone through a planning process and we agreed to incorporate much of their work in the planning process that I’m describing now and that’s been done. The first slide is just a brief statement of fact and that is that a draft plan has been prepared that this presentation provides an overview. Next, in terms of structure and content, the draft plan consists of six chapters and I want to outline those for you and then give some detail on each chapter. Chapter one is an introduction, which is what this is all about. Chapter two describes briefly the process we’ve gone through over the last two plus years. Chapter three identifies six strategic priorities for the Auburn University System and sets forth initiatives for each priority so there is if you look at this draft plan an increasing attention to detail as you go through succeeding chapters. First you start with the Strategic Priorities there’s six, for each of those there are several initiatives that are intended to give effect to those priorities and then Chapter four concerns action steps to address each of the priorities and the accompanying initiatives. In other words, each priority has a series of initiatives, and each initiative translates into a series of action steps. There’s about sixty of those, sixty one, I’m not going to go through all of those, but I will give an example so you know what to expect. Chapter five is an implementation plan that has objectives, responsible parties, timeline, and budget associated with each of those sixty one action steps. And Chapter six is a brief statement on progress reports and annual revision. As I said about two minutes ago, this is a living document and is to be open to the revision, input, and refinement on an annual basis so it’s important to talk about how that’s going to be done. With respect to Chapter two, that strategic planning process, there’re just a couple of bullets to remind you of what we’ve been doing. Preparatory work has been underway on this since the fall of 2006 at least, Dr. Gogue called for input. A pretty broad based process in the fall of 2007 we got that and that input was organized into a draft which was presented to the Board of Trustees in February of 2008. Following that there was a call again from the administration for input on the priorities that were set forth in that draft. We took that back and have made further revision resulting in a present draft which should be available for review shortly. I’d like to talk now about the six priorities and their accompanying initiatives. Again, not to labor it, there are six overarching priorities and for each of them there are perhaps two to four initiatives intended to give effect to them. Priority one is elevating undergraduate education and enriching the undergraduate experience. Under that heading there are the following initiatives: One is to increase selectivity in the admissions process.  Two is to strengthen all aspects of learning and teaching. Three and this is continuing under elevating undergraduate education, is raise Auburn’s position in academic rankings. Four is implement new projects. And five is strengthen the academic organization, structure and management processes. The second of the six priorities is building the foundation for a stronger and larger funded research enterprise. Under this priority heading, initiatives include: build on existing strengths and natural competitive advantages, expand graduate disciplines and programs associated with extramural funding for research, and third strengthen research administration and management. Again I’m going through this fairly quickly, but it is intended to be an overview rather than a detailed review which would take a long presentation. The third of the six priorities is expanding the impact and of extension and outreach. Initiatives under this heading include redesign and redefine extension and outreach programs by leveraging new technologies for greater impact. I think certainly there distance technologies are going to play an important role. Additional initiatives under the extension and outreach include increasing Auburn’s involvement in developing communities and improving their schools K-16 and continuing to extend Auburn’s service to state government. The fourth of the six strategic priorities relates to people, faculty and staff. And it is developing our people. Initiatives under this heading include strengthen faculty and staff recruitment and support, enhance faculty and staff professional development, and reinforcing faculty and staff recognition and rewards. The fifth of the six priorities is committing to continuous improvement. This relates to how we manage and administer what we do and organize it. Initiatives under this heading include strengthening Auburn’s management approaches and processes, increasing the efficiency of the University’s operations. The sixth priority relates to Dr. McGuiness’s project that is building financial resources to support academic excellence and increase scholarships. Under this heading, two major initiatives: implement a new capital campaign to which Dr. McGuiness has just referred and to which he and I join hands in this urge your contributions to this of dramatic ideas, and second establish a new Auburn tradition of annual giving. Now that still is at a fairly high level and I think you might have a question. Okay, you say under each of these initiatives there are action steps, what might they look like? And so here, I’m giving an example. You may recall that strategic priority one has to do with elevating undergraduate education and enriching the undergraduate experience. And initiative one under that heading is increased selectivity. On the next slide you see some action steps, three that we think are associated with that. One, is to implement the requirement of an ACT writing exam. That in fact is something the Board is very interested in but will help us to fine tune our capacity to give good writing instruction to those that we admit. Two, increase the ACT mean score to 26.5, the timeline foreseen for that extends out over several years. Third form a task force to recommend a new model for the honors college. And you might say what does that have to do with recruitment? And I think an answer is that it is evident from everything we’ve seen that the honors college plays a very important role in attracting high caliber students to Auburn University. The final page in this brief report has to do with Chapter six of the strategic plan draft and it has to do with progress reporting and annual revision. The issue here is, we say this is going to be a living document. What steps do we take to make that the case? And in brief the response is to set up a strategy review council charged and chaired by the Provost to include members of the faculty, students, administrators, at both campuses, to review progress annually, seek input, report to the president and recommend changes. That in very brief is the strategic plan that we’ve worked on. As I said, I discussed it with Dr. Gogue, the draft Dr. Gogue, I believe should reach your office by late this afternoon or tomorrow morning. I look forward to discussing with you the next steps and making it available. I’ll be glad to entertain questions, and thank you. Dr. Penaskovic?

Richard Penaskovic: Richard Penaskovic, Department of Philosophy. I’m not a Senator. But John, in light of the priority of elevating undergraduate education and enriching the undergraduate experience, I’d like us to think about this idea: to be competitive in the 21st century our students need strong writing and communication skills. I see a need for a writing house where students can go and get help with their writing. It would also include a faculty lounge where faculty can hang out and share their ideas on improving the writing and communication skills of our students. If we could spend 92 Million on a basketball arena, why not 20 to 25 Million on a writing house?

John Heilman: Rich thank you very much. Just a comment, one of the questions that I think maybe on your minds is, well this is all very interesting, but how are you going to put it into effect? How will you bring these things about? Because some of these projects are going to take some time and require pretty broad based input. One of the mechanisms that we foresee to do this, and this mechanism is adverted to in several of the sixty one points is to create a task force to address the issue at hand and prepare recommendations. As you’re aware Rich, a task force with respect to writing already has been formed and has been doing a great deal of work. I believe it expects to have its recommendations ready by the early fall, and I believe the substance, the ideas, how do we make this happen, are the sorts of things that will come through on the reports of that task force. Thank you. Claire?

Claire Crutchley: Claire Crutchley, Senator from Finance. Several of us in my department, although not that many because I only got to see this, this morning are concerned that the only research priority seems to be funded research and many of us believe that unfunded research is also important and should be a priority that builds Auburn University’s reputation.

John Heilman: I don’t think there will be any disagreement with that at all. The way in which that second priority relates is building the foundations for a stronger funded research enterprise and that’s why that formulation is there. In a more clear version, just to give you a sense of the thinking that we’ve tried to go through in this, there was a much more blunt statement, which was expand graduate and research disciplines. And I looked at that, and I said, well wait a minute that’s going to raise an inevitable question. Do you mean segregating research disciplines from non-research disciplines? No that’s not the intent at all. I expect that another question may be raised, perhaps by Professor Q having to do with where is graduate education in all of this? Because that matters a lot, and we know that, and the answer is that also is referred to under the second general priority which is building research. But your point I think would be agreed to strongly by everybody involved. Professor Q.
David Carter: David Carter from the Department of History. My question was where does graduate education belong in all this, so thank you very much for addressing that for me.
John Heilman: Thank you for the privilege of addressing the Senate.
Bob Locy: Our last information item for the agenda today is a discussion of the State Articulation and General Studies Committee Report. I don’t know how many of you in the room know much about the Articulation and General Studies Agreement that Auburn University as a state institution is required  if you will to follow but I asked Linda if she wouldn’t give us an update on kind of Articulation and General Studies and what it’s all about because it has a great deal to do with the nature of the people that are sitting in all of our classrooms and so I think this is a carryon of a discussion that may have started in last month’s senate meeting where we talked about the Auburn Seamless Admissions program and the discussion there about the nature of the people we’re trying to educate. So I thought we needed a little information to bring us up to speed on just exactly who is sitting in our classrooms and what we actually really know about them and next month I hope that we will get a report in more quantitative terms on this so we’re going to take a look at some of these issues across the next several months in a little more detail with less introduction, or more introduction than she really needed, here’s Linda Glaze.
Linda Glaze: Good afternoon. I hope you can hear me. Bob asked me to give you an overview of Articulation and General Studies because whenever we start discussing the core curriculum in the curriculum oversight committee I always preface that with informing the faculty about the articulation agreements. So that’s what I intend to do here. First of all, in 1994 the Alabama State Legislature approved what has become known as the Articulation Law and what that legislative act did is it created two bodies. One was the Statewide Alabama Articulation and General Studies Committee that is always referred to as the AGSC and its role is to implement the policies and procedures. The other is, it identified an organization called STARS. And everyone always asks me what STARS means so I have it written out here-Statewide Transfer Articulation Reporting System. STARS is housed at Troy University and it is the mechanism that transfers the information across the state but also the mechanism that the students use to solicit transfer guides. The AGSC committee, this is the policy making committee that carries out the legislation has the following composition. And I think it’s very important that you understand who is making these decisions. There are three two year representatives. There are two representatives from the regional universities and those include North Alabama, Troy University, University of West Alabama, Jacksonville State, and University of Montevallo. Auburn University has one representative and I am that representative. I started out as the alternate and I am now the representative and I’ve been in this capacity for ten years and I’ve also chaired the committee twice. There’s also one representative from the University of Alabama system, South Alabama, Alabama State, and Alabama A&M. Each University has one voting rep and has then equal number of alternates. I think it’s very important that you understand that for the implementation of the General Studies Agreement and the Articulation Agreement, the law states it’s a 4/5 vote. So you need to look at the distribution of votes and you’ll understand. Any policy issues is a majority vote, but changing the policy itself requires 8 votes. In terms of what was the charge of the AGSC in 1994, there were four provisions. The first was to develop a statewide general studies curriculum by September 1, 1998, and that’s actually when I came to the office. The second was by September 1, 1999 to develop the articulation agreement and I’ll explain what that is in the next slide. And finally the other two was the committee was to look at uniform course numbering and course description titles for the entire state. We’ve taken that issue on several times but with everyone going through semester transitions and mergers that has always been out there. But we as a committee felt that our efforts needed to be expended in other directions. And finally the charge of the committee is to resolve any issues that result from the agreement. As a result of the meetings that started in 1994 and then developed there the general studies program that was developed for the state is as follows. You’ll hear people talk about areas 1-5. So those of us that speak articulation jargon always know what that means, but the rest of the world does. But basically areas 1-4 are general education. In other words, as you can see area 1 is written communication. Area 2 is humanities and fine arts, it’s important to understand that of those 12 hours all students in the state of Alabama must take one course in Fine Arts. That’s part of the course outline that was created. In the Humanities, students must take one literature course, and then I’ll explain something else when I get down to History. In area 3, the natural sciences and math, that requires 2 lab sciences and 1 course in math. The level for math, and this was a major change for Auburn University because prior to the Articulation General Studies Agreement those of you who have been at Auburn as long as I have realize that our math was math 160 which was a four hour course a kind of unique course to Auburn that we no longer offer. The level of math for this required statewide is one of two options, and that is a 3 hour course and that is either finite math or pre-calculus algebra. Those are considered the baseline for core math in Alabama State. And then in area 4, being from Liberal Arts I always consider History to be humanities but it’s lumped in with the social sciences. Students take 12 hours. They must take 1 history course and then they have to take 2 in the area of social and behavioral sciences. What that leaves open is that all students in Alabama are required to take one sequence. That can be either in area 2 which is literature, or area 4 which is history. Here at Auburn we have opted that our students take two sequences. Then the rest of the hours are what’s called area 5 and that’s pre-professional and pre-major courses. And that makes up that students can then transfer a total of hours from a community college to a 4 year institution in the state. And the reason for the 60-64 is that generally degrees range from 120 to 128 hours and so a student from a community college may transfer half the hours to a 4 year institution. This agreement, this general studies outline effects all public institutions in the state and this shows you the break down. Within the 2 year system, and I counted them, they change because some of them merge, the last count is 26 junior technical colleges and Athens State is listed with the 2 year schools because although it offers a bachelor’s it’s only the junior and senior year. They do not offer freshman and sophomore courses. And then all the institutions, and that’s the number that there are. In terms of whether a course meets standards for general education, the AGSC came up with guidelines for general education courses, and you have them here so I’m not going to read them all to you. But the basic principle is that a general education course has to be at the freshman or sophomore level, in other words it has to be transferable from a two year to a four year school. Courses need to be broad in scope and are not to be considered to be for major specific. Several courses that have been presented previously to the state through the approval system, and I’ll explain that in a minute, have been denied general education designation because they are targeting a particular discipline. They’re for majors only. And then the other guidelines are more generic in nature. But those are the two main issues. Okay, templates. I wanted to define a term because again we have our own jargon in Articulation speak and we talk about templates. And templates are the outline of requirements for a degree program. And I’m breaking it down, it’s the outline of requirements from areas 1-4 and area 5. In terms of what those guidelines are for a by a major, those have to be agreed upon by all four year institutions in the state. In other words, everyone that offers a degree in Biology must come up with and agree upon what’s going to be in areas 1-4 if they want to designate anything besides open option. And the other thing is what’s called area 5 is that half the hours in area 5 have to be common among all four year institutions that offer the degree, which then allows the four year institutions to take the remaining hours and design those basically given the unique nature of the degree program. That’s the terminology. In terms of the organizational structure that happens in terms of review there are what’s called the AGSC committees on discipline committees, general studies academic committees, and if you’ll look at their website they’ll talk about GSAC. And a GSAC, the general studies academic committee, is made up of a representative from each of the four year institutions that offers a degree. So if we offer a degree, we have a representative on each of those committees plus an equal number of representatives from the two year system. As far as what the roles and responsibilities are of these general academic committees, one is the committees review the specific discipline guidelines for example many times we’ll ask Biology to look at the guidelines for science in terms of what constitutes a lab. To be a lab, the course must be 2 hours is equal to 1 hour of credit, for example. The other is that the disciplinary committees will recommend approval of new courses throughout the state to be included in the general education program and what that entails is that if they’re approved then any of the institutions within the state will accept those courses that the faculty throughout the state have reviewed the courses and that is to guarantee the transfer of those courses for those requirements for those students. Also, we have implemented a review of all the courses in the general education inventory. They have been there for about 10 years and nobody’s ever looked at them. So the committees are looking at them a third every year so that we’re constantly reviewing what the courses are. And finally the general studies discipline committees will review the templates for that particular area. There is another body which is called the pre-professional academic committees, and they’re the PACS. And here you have a list of which areas those are. That’s Business, Engineering, and so forth. The PACS are set up a little bit differently. They do not approve courses. In other words, no one is approving accounting courses. No one is approving dynamics courses out of engineering. But what this group is, is generally the deans representatives for each of these areas and what they’re looking at in the degree program in that template that I talked about and they’re deciding what needs to be designated in areas 1-4 and what are appropriate pre-professional courses, generally what we’re talking about in terms of what we would call prerequisites. Finally, there are some basic principles and then if we have time I’ll just go through one guide so you can see the link so you can see the website that students can go out to. But there are what’s called the transfer agreement and it’s a policy statement that includes 10 items. I’m not going to go through all 10, but as faculty I think there are 4 principles that you need to understand that these have been agreed upon and how this process works. First of all, when a student, I think this is very important that you understand that most students change their majors potentially 3-5 times, but if a student goes in as a freshman at a community college and acquires a guide, but by the time they come to Auburn they change their major, the original agreements are no longer in effect. In other words, there is a guarantee on the agreement if the student does not change the major in the agreement they have. That’s very logical. When the agreement first started out, I think especially I dealt with several people in Engineering, and there was a great concern is that students could take any math and everyone knows that for Engineering you start at Calculus and so how were they going to fit everything in. And that item, I’ve left the original numbering off of the transfer agreement. Number four is very important. And I think as this body starts discussing various issues related to transfer credit if a student has a guide, all that guide means is that we’re guaranteeing that we will accept that course work, 1, if the student is accepted to Auburn University and 2, if the student is accepted into the major. The guide is not a guarantee for admissions so be sure that you understand that. Sometimes students and sometimes faculty misunderstand that. But the guide is a guarantee of transfer of credit and is required approval of course work if the student follows all the conditions. The next item is number 6 and this is very important that you understand. It’s called the transfer of D grades. 10 years ago at Auburn University we only transferred grades of C or better. The law is very specific about the transfer, what you can calculate into a GPA. And what it states is, if we at Auburn wanted to use for example grades from AUM in the AU GPA calculation we would be obligated to use the grades from any school, any public school in the state. So basically we have to handle. The other issue is, if we accept a D grade for courses that we offer at Auburn then for transfers from the public institutions of Alabama we have to accept the credit for the D grade. Prior to 1998 as an academic institution we did not. Now we do. But there are exceptions and it can get a little complicated. For example, if you all note that within the state the discipline committee in composition has decided that a C is the lowest level of performance, so we do not transfer a D grade for written composition because we do not accept a D grade for successful completion of the course for composition. In my own department, of Foreign Languages and Literatures, we have a requirement that majors must earn a C in each of the major courses so therefore if we had a transfer student that brought in a second year language course we could require a transfer student to have a C because we require that of the students that start at Auburn so that’s how that D grade works. But we are obligated to take D’s in areas where if we take D grades from our own courses. And the final policy that I think is very important that individuals understand is in terms of on an agreement it’s the total number of hours. In other words, if our students can complete a degree in 120 hours then we must make arrangements who starts in that major, not changes into but starts out in, completes that major in 120 credit hours. We all know that students don’t complete a degree in four years. But that doesn’t mean the transfer student must complete in four years, but the total number of hours must be the same number. And if it is not that way, then the student has the right to repeal some of those additional hours that we may require. So that’s just kind of an overview. The last, is I thought it might be helpful to show you so you can see how it operates and see the website as a faculty member you may want to go out and look and see what is the agreement for your discipline? You may not know that it is out there. And we’ll see if I can get it to work. This takes you to, we’re at the website at Troy University, if you go in on the left side, you don’t have to go through all the specific logins. The right side is for students and you have to be a student so I’m going to go through on the left. Can you hear me in the back? Basically this gives you, if you want to look any of the policies or procedures, they’re all listed here. What I wanted to show you was an actual guide, which says get the guide. We’re obviously at Auburn, we could be anywhere in all these schools, but we’re going to go through Auburn. And we can pick any major this would be. Bob’s in Biology, so I’m going to take Biology. This is what a student would do but again it’s going to have the student’s name. What it shows, is it’s going to have the rules then instead of giving a template it tells exactly what courses a student takes. Written composition, what the choices are there aren’t any. In the humanities, what all the choices are for area 2, it shows what the choices are in natural sciences, and if you notice in Biology for obvious reasons the core science is Biology. In other words you can’t take just any science to become a Biologist. In other areas, like for Spanish, it doesn’t really matter what science a Spanish major takes, then all the approved science options are there. But if you notice here within the state, the choices start with pre-calculus algebra whereas if you look at our bulletin our majors start at calculus and you’ll see in a minute how that works out. Then you have the choices in the areas of History, Social Science and Behavioral Sciences. Then you have what’s called that half of hours that have been agreed upon. The Biology group has decided that the common is that all students studying Biology will take a year of Chemistry so that’s been designated. And then at the bottom here are all the options where Biology is given and it’s called the area five website. And that is our website that is maintained in the office of undergraduate studies if you look at the option here then what you have under Biology is what COSAM this is the advice that COSAM is giving to students that want to transfer from another school to Auburn. And as you notice here is where we put our Calculus requirement. So that kind of gives you an overview of how this works. And I think a lot of people on faculty don’t understand what this obligates us to. Advisors and college offices do but necessarily faculty don’t have an understanding of what this means. So I’d be glad to answer any questions, and again I’m the messenger. Yes, Rich.
Richard Penaskovic: Richard Penaskovic, Department of Philosophy. Not a Senator. Linda, does the transfer agreement cover AP courses, that is advanced placement courses from high schools and if so does each individual University decide what score counts or how does that work?
Linda Glaze: Yes, that, I don’t remember what number that is but it’s on that group of 10 agreements and what it basically says is that the receiving institution determines advanced placement. So we determine what level of performance that we take for advanced placement. So yes. Any other questions?
Bob Locy: I have a question. There was something up there that just really bothers me, isn’t right. What would be the course of action to look into to get it corrected?
Linda Glaze: You mean as a faculty member or a student?
Bob Locy: You showed the Biology programs, so there are, we don’t offer a degree in Biology at Auburn University so that’s a little weird. It says that we do, and among the various degrees in the Biological Sciences one of them would require that you get 2 semesters of chemistry in the first two years so if you went to a junior college for two years and did not take chemistry it would automatically be six semesters before you could graduate with that degree in Biological Sciences. It seems to me that institutionalizes not making that requirement of not graduating on time.
Linda Glaze: The Chemistry is the common for all students in the state. The area 5 page let me go back. The Chemistry is right there.
Bob Locy: I don’t think we need to go into details and take their time. But what I’m interested in to whose attention do we bring problems?
Linda Glaze: If there are problems that are on what I call the Auburn University area 5 website, you would take that to your college dean’s office. I maintain, in other words, I can change anything that’s on our website. Anything that you don’t like that is on the Troy website, then that has to go through- if it relates to a discipline then that needs to go through the discipline committees. If it’s a question for example, I know the colleges of engineering in the state have been looking at their guide for a long time and making some adjustments. In particular we have gone through transitions from quarters to semesters, and now we’re looking at with the new ABET requirements. So anything that is on what I call the Troy website, which is the AGSC website, those changes need to go through the discipline committees on the Troy website you’ll have a list of who the Auburn University representative is for those committees. We look at those every year. But I would go through your dean’s office. Does that answer your question?
Bob Locy: Thank you. Any other questions? Alright that concludes our information agenda for today. Does anyone have any unfinished business to bring before the Senate? Is there any new business?
Gwynedd Thomas: Gwen Thomas, Polymer and Fiber Engineering, Senator. This is an item that sort of concerns a very large segment of our faculty and staff population and in fact students. It’s something that really didn’t occur to me until this past December and that was, I went through a name change during December. And that name change was recognized by Lee County Alabama with no problem. It was recognized by the State of Alabama who had no problem either and issued me a new driver’s license. It was recognized by the United States Government who had no problem issuing me a new social security card. But I came here to Auburn, and while they recognized it on the Banner System, when I went to OIT to ask could my user name be changed, they said no. Well I didn’t really understand that. I asked and the reason I got was, was that is just the way it is. We can’t change it. That resulted of course in a little frustration to me. But I was ready to accept it until I went back and I looked at some past histories that didn’t just involve me, it involved women in general on this campus. Let’s take for example a graduate student I had who happened to be married during the time she was studying under me. And this is of course a southern culture here and women are very proud of the fact that they’re married and usually women, especially in the south take the name of their husband. She wanted to take the name of her husband. She couldn’t. That’s just the way it is. It’s very significant I think that whenever she communicated with me in particular, she used her yahoo account which was in her new last name, her married name. Another example, also in my department, but a staff member, a secretary and an alumnus of Auburn who’s been married for a couple years had a baby over this passed semester and when you go to look up her name it’s still in her maiden name on her user name. So it appears to the general public that we have an unmarried mother working as a secretary in our department. In this culture that’s not a very good thing. Again you go back and ask them why is it that way? And the answer you get is, it’s just the way it is. Well a couple things occurred to me at that point, I guess the first thing is how very masculine. Your name is your name and it’s always your name but it’s not really. The other thing that occurred to me is that Bruce Hornsby has moved from Virginia and is now writing answers for the OIT here. I wanted to test the validity of this argument. So one of the things that I did, I was at a gathering at a friend’s house quite a number of months ago and her fiancé was there and he works at Fort Benning. He works in Information Technology for the Department of Defense. He’s a civilian employee, but he had a naval career before that and when I mentioned this policy here, I wish Captain Williams were here. He could confirm this, but you know when enlisted men say something in the Navy it tends to be salty, well I won’t quote you exactly what he said, but  basically what he said is that it can be done in seconds with the entire Department of Defense and all associated records can be made associated with that person, just the username changes. What that means is, we’ve got a user base total of 3 Million active duty people, and that doesn’t count the supporting civilians that are included in that user base and it can be done in seconds in that user base and no information is lost. We’re talking about rather critical information. Of course there’s critical information on this campus, but we don’t have the air craft carriers or nuclear weapons on this campus and I think that if they can do it with their kinds of critical information then we could probably do it on our campus as well. I’ll give you another example, and this one’s probably a lot more familiar to you. Apple Computer, I-Tunes alone has over 250 Million users in its base, it takes you approximately 20 seconds to change your user name. Your entire purchase history, your username on your apple logs, and your username across the entire apple service history database is associated with it and no information is lost whatsoever. In other words, if the US Military can do this with a user base two orders the magnitude of what we have, and apple computer can do this with a user database four orders of magnitude of what we have, why can’t we do it? So what I’m asking for, is perhaps for the next meeting an action item for discussion or resolution, could we perhaps consider a charge from the Senate for the University Computing Committee to obtain a full and complete explanation of why with the banner numbers we have in place, and the solid historical database already in place, can OIT not perform the same functions at Auburn University that many Military personnel without college educations can perform and why can user communities in the hundreds of millions have access to username functions when a major University cannot perform this same function for its user community? Lest we think this is a little trite, I want to consider one more example, and I know it has happened on this campus and it has probably happened a number of times. Consider the case of a woman who has come here and gotten a job in a condition where she was married and had her husband’s name. But she was beaten and basically tortured every day, and she did not want to keep that name because of the memories it brought back. Making her keep that name is basically torturing her all over again.
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