Transcript from the Senate Meeting July 8, 2008

Bob Locy: I'd like to call the meeting to order. The first item of business is the approval of the minutes of the June 10th meeting. Are there any corrections or additions to those minutes as they are circulated on the web? Seeing none, those minutes will stand approved as distributed. Dr. Gouge is unable to be with us today. Dr. Heilman will speak for the President's office on his behalf.

Dr. Heilman: Thank you very much Bob and good afternoon. My comments at this point will be focused on the strategic planning process. Importantly I think the board of trustees approved the strategic plan at its recent meeting and this is an update on where that is and what we expect is going to happen on a going forward basis. And I'm just going to go through pretty much the presentation I made to the board, but then have some comments at the end about what our expectations are or what will have accomplished in the first year. So I'll just get started and ask for the first slide.
The strategic plan and is a system level plan and it's based on input from both campuses and from external constituents. I think both these points and were important to Dr. Gouge. Next slide please.  The plan is based on six strategic priorities as shown in a board resolution.  What I did not do was include a slide showing that specifically. The main point I'm going to go through those six priorities briefly.  There's no surprise there. The board approval of the strategic plan was specific to those six points not more detailed discussion that is available in material that is available on the University web site.  The six priorities and the associated action steps are available at the special features page of Auburn's web site if you go then click on special features you'll find strategic plan and there will be a good deal of information there which the board is seeing in relation to what six priorities are and specific actions that are intended to put those priorities or those goals into effect so that we can reach them. A couple of comments about process- Our preparatory work has been underway since the fall of 2006 and Dr. Gouge called for broad-based input on the strategic plan and ideas for it in the fall of 2007 a draft was presented by Dr. Gouge to the board in February of 2008. It consisted mainly of I think 62 fairly specific action steps that have been culled from the material received. Dr. Gouge again issued a call for input on the priorities that were identified in that, draft of the input that was received. The resulting product shared with the board was reviewed at the board workshop on April 24 2008 and then with some revision based on that workshop when it was presented to the board at its recent meeting. I'd like to talk for a moment about the six strategic priorities. The next slide please.
The first three of these relate to Auburn's three mission areas. As I said there are a lot of surprises. I don't believe in this. The first is to elevate undergraduate education and enrich the undergraduate experience that relates to Auburn’s instructional mission. Second and importantly, is build the foundation for a stronger and larger funded research enterprise, and in fact it is in this context graduate component of Auburn's instructional mission is addressed. The third mission related strategic priority is to expand the impact of the University's extension into outreach activities better to serve our communities and the state. The three remaining strategic priorities all relate to what I would call organizational capacity building. The fourth relates to human resources and our development of them, of us, and it is for us to redouble efforts to support development strengthen our people. That's both faculty and staff. And that distinction and that inclusiveness, specific focus on both faculty and staff was very important to Dr. Gouge and to the board. Fifth, committing to continuous improvement and strengthening our management approaches and increasing our efficiency. That is the issue of management processes and third very important is the issue of fund raising. Number six is, continuing to dramatically expand the endowment annual fund and gifts to the University to support academic excellence and increase scholarships. And since I'm talking about an endowment I'll just ask if Jeffrey Neal is here. He's just begun as the new vice president for development and he'd been at this meeting today I certainly would have wished to welcome him to this important body. If you have high-level strategic priorities, the question then is, OK very good but how do you translate them into action? And the six strategic priorities have served or serve as the basis for specific initiatives and actions that will lead to measurable results. And I think the idea of measurable results so that what results have been made are reportable back to the board and also to the University community is something that is very important. I want to give an example of an initiative and action steps related to a specific priority to indicate the flavor of what is involved. You can see sort of the full version of this on the website for each of the priorities there is a general discussion and also action steps. Strategic priority one which I mentioned a moment ago is to elevate undergraduate education and enrich the undergraduate experience. The first initiative under that heading is to increase selectivity and there are action steps associated with that, two specific ones in this gives you a sense of what we mean by measureable, we will be able to say a year from now whether or not that these things have been done.  mplement the requirement of an ACT writing exam. In fact I believe that is probably fairly straightforward, because that taking of that exam or the equivalent SAT exam is required of all freshmen starting in 2009.  And then second develop a new model for the honors college, and at the end of the year we will be able to say yes we have done that and had that discussion, and we know what it is or know we were unable to do that.  And the next slide deals with progress reporting and revision and the question here is how to make this a living document as several of us and some board members notably, Mr. Spina have observed, and I think Don Large you and I’ve had this discussion as well, one aspect of the commission work done in 1998 and 1999 was that it came forward with a series of recommendations which in fact I personally think have served the University very well. Including bringing salaries up to regional averages but in fact there was no provision in that for periodic update. That is not said critically at all it is simply an assessment of what is and is not there. And I think very important in Dr. Gouge’s mind has been a way to review and revise this document on an annual basis at least. The mechanism that is foreseen to do this is a strategy review council, chaired by the provost including representatives of several constituencies to review progress toward goals annually or more often.  And to discuss progress with stakeholders and to recommend changes. So there is, what would it be called?—Indecision theory of cybernetic mechanism for feedback and adjustment and improvement. 
The remaining slides relate to a discussion I did not get to with the board but what it does is to give you some examples of the sorts of things we would hope to accomplish by the end of year one in relation to the specific action steps that are set forward. What I have done is just to include, I think it is 11 of them, drawn from the first three strategic initiatives relating to instruction research and outreach.  This is simply to give you a sense of where thinking is now I believe it is evolving and Dr. Gouge certainly will be able to comment on this more when he has returned which he will next week.  But to give you a sense of will there be action and what to we hope to be able to report back on what have we done, first to relate to those two specific steps which I’ve already referred to one whose full implementation of the ACT writing exam for all entering freshman in 2009. Second an agreement on a new model for the honors college with implementation to begin in 2009. The next two points are writing center established and then also reflecting a theme of clear importance in this strategic plan establish a clear understanding of what international skills and abilities our students need and what means we might use to develop those skills and abilities. 
Next slide please. A commitment to determine optimal class sizes based on pedagogy meaning establish scholarship and research and the experience of our faculty and departments on what class sizes work best in which disciplines and at what levels to improve graduation rates.  I might mention that improve graduation rates is also something, which I believe is very important in Dr. Gouge’s thinking.  Next support students in the creation of a wellness and sustainability center.  The SGA has passed a resolution I do not know whether or not Lauren Hayes is here this afternoon, the SGA president.  The SGA passed incidentally, a resolution identifying several areas that it felt were priorities in the strategic planning process this is one of those areas and I think we have made an effort to be responsive to those wishes is on the part of the SGA.  Next slide.  Determine which departments and programs are targeted for graduate student growth and begin implementation of programs to attract high performing graduate students. I think there is good news in this, which is that there’s no bad news there is no downside, but there is good news in this in that it reflects a commitment on the administration’s part to move us toward the strategic goal established by the board 20 years ago, or 19 years ago of 5,000 graduate students. In terms of the process for determining where growth might occur I think an initial step in that regard, which we’ve discussed with George Flowers the newly appointed graduate Dean, is to review the capacity that our existing programs have. There will be some programs in which there’s capacity for additional students, and where we’ve got to aim at recruiting students into those programs so that we are making use of the resources that we got.  Additionally under the heading of research create 50 joint appointments to facilitate interdisciplinary research.  I talked with the Deans about this a little bit yesterday.  What this does not mean is that there will be 50 new positions, what this does mean, I believe, is that we are looking toward identifying faculty whose work is boundary expanding and to establish joint appointments for them to facilitate interdisciplinary research in the sense of understanding this is something which is very important to Auburn University. Again, a perspective, which I believe it is very important to Dr. Gouge. Another research related action step, develop an Auburn University presence in Huntsville for research growth. There’s a great deal of Federal research funding which goes through Huntsville we do not currently have a presence there. I was advised within the past few days that Georgia Tech has a permanent staff there of 50. So we will be getting into an arena that we want be active in. In terms of outreach, final slide, two first year goals again offered as examples of what we’re thinking about, these are suggestive of where we will be heading.  Develop an online master’s degree; again I would say this is reflective of Dr. Gouge's belief that online distance education is going to be an important growth area for this institution.  And then speaking specifically to the college of education, but not exclusively to it, identify ways in which Auburn University can make the most impact in local school districts, develop and implement initiatives with two districts beginning in the fall of 2009.  That is the presentation that I have in slides, my additional comment would be that over the next couple of weeks my expectation is that we will look to be particularly precise about who is identified as the lead person or office responsible for each of these areas of activity, so that, when this a conversation with you Bob Locy, interested faculty can get in touch and say I have an interest in this how can I play a role in this or I have this idea I would like to share with you. And I will be working very closely with the Deans and the senate leadership in this regard. And that is my report. I would be glad to entertain any questions.

I guess I might just ask and say that I’m reporting on this from the perspective of academic affairs, and there’s a lot of this that is not covered by academic affairs. Don Large, as executive vice president, if you have any additional comments I think they’d be welcome, just take this as an opportunity to speak to this if you wish to do so.  Great.  Thank you very much.

Bob Locy: This does come up at a rather ominous time. With respect to the senate chairs comments, I know that for some of you in the room this is the end of your third year of service as a senator, and that the new senators will be assuming their offices in the fall senate, in the first meeting in the fall.  Are there any of you whose terms are over that are here today. Would you please stand? I would like the senate to recognize our departing senators with a round of applause, we appreciate all of your excellent service that you have given us for three years and we look forward to your continuing relationship in faculty governance and wish you well as you return back to your faculty duties on a more fulltime basis now that the senate will not distract you from your real reason for being here.
The Ombudsperson search committee reports, in fact Ronald Clark is the chairperson of the Ombudsperson search committee, that there were six candidates which applied for the Ombudsperson position. The applicants included two retirees and four regular time faculty. They have looked over the candidates and are prepared to select a list of three that will participate in a forum on the 23rd of July at 3:00 PM in room 110 of the Lowder Business Building. We will be announcing very shortly those candidates which will be participating, at this time we are still finishing the last of the notifications and are not prepared to announce it. The goal than is to have the forum and complete the search and hopefully have an Ombudsperson in place by the beginning of class on the 15th of August. We believe we can still accomplish our goal in that regard. At the last senate meeting you may recall that there were two items of new business that were brought forward. One of those items concerned user IDs in OIT, and I believe Bliss Bailey is going to address that later on in this meeting so I will not make any comments on that. The other issue concerned the operator transferring phone calls when you call the University operator. This second issue has been brought forward to the administration. It appears that there are some privacy concerns with the current operator giving out (the policy of the operator giving out) phone numbers, and thus we are looking into whether or not the policy needs to be amended and whether we can come up with better directions that avoid the kinds of problems that were brought up that the last senate meeting.  The present time there is not a resolution of it, we are working on it. 
I would just like to make an additional comment on the strategic plan that you just saw. Now that it has been completed, I need to remind you that we will be expected to make an annual progress report on how we’re doing on the strategic plan, and even semiannual reports are expected to the board of trustees on how things are going. I take the view that the senate will play a critical role in moving the academic parts of the strategic plan forward. Although this is the last senate meeting between now and September, is nevertheless not the opportunity to take a vacation relative to the strategic plan. We need to engage, participate, and as Dr. Heilman said, identify those people responsible for various parts of the plan. We need to bring forward our best ideas.  You may recall that at the last senate meeting, Mr. McGuiness challenged us to come up with $25,000,000 ideas. I think now is the time to start bringing $25,000,000 ideas forward. I urge you to communicate over the next two months while we’re out of session as a senate, with the senate leadership. I urge you to communicate with the administration, I urge you to engage on the strategic plan. Are there any other comments, questions rather? Seeing none, let’s begin our action agenda item, and Sue Barry will present for you the nominees for senate committees that the rules committee currently has prepared.

Dr. Sue Barry:
First I would like to say, that we have some issues with the faculty grievance committee so therefore we’re not asking you to vote on that particular committee at this time. The committees we are voting on will be academic program review, graduate consult, retention, and steering committee. Therefore I would like to make a motion that we accept this list for those named committees.

Bob Locy:
There is one vote. This been brought forward by the steering committee does not require a second.  Is there any discussion for the assignments to the committees that sue mentioned? Seeing none, all in favor for the approval of the nominees as presented say aye. Opposed? The motion Carries. Our next presentation is an action item on the policy for withdrawals and resignations after midterm.  Dr. Sharon Gabor will be presenting that.

Sharon Gabor:
This is actually a somewhat interesting story as to how we got to this point. I know the font is small. I think it was sent as an attachment also. Earlier this year, and I want to say January or February, Dave Cicci came and said I think we may have this issue. When might want to talk about it.  What's the policy on this? And we pulled out the bulletin and then said ‘Well what is the policy?’  We started looking through it.  It was the question mark was “Do we have a policy that is defined for everybody to see and how is it being interpreted?”  And so I said ‘why don’t we take a crack at actually putting together policy that is clear and can be consistently applied?’  And that in fact faculty have the opportunity to know if a student is going to be either withdrawn or resigned from their class. And that was part of the question mark.  The faculty member said “well I didn't know the student was withdrawn from my class. How did that happen? What is the policy there?”  I think this is going back and forth. I worked with Bob, and Dave and the Associate Dean groups and I presented at least one time to the senate leadership as a whole.  I think this is draft number 12, to get to a point where people felt that we might have something that works that has some clarity and that could be consistently applied. And what we've done here is divide this into medical and non-medical withdrawals and resignations. At the top as you can see there are some definitions and some statements about what exists currently in the bulletin and what the information is. What we did is once we looked to see how frequently is this occurring we ran some numbers and said well I guess it is occurring perhaps more frequently than we knew was going on. There were students that were, for whatever reason being resigned or withdrawn from a class or a series of classes.  An example when somebody said ‘what’s an example of when a student might withdraw after semester from a course for a medical reason and not from all the courses?’  Well we've got an example of a student who broke his leg and could no longer attend labs, out doing field-work in swampy areas.  So that student had to be withdrawn from that particular class.  We've had students who have been diagnosed with severe issues, and the doctors came back and said the student probably never should have been in the course at all to begin with based on the documentation.  What we found is that because there hadn't been a policy really defining how this was to be looked at across colleges, that some colleges were looking and making decisions, but that not all colleges were doing this consistently.  So what we said is for medical withdrawals or resignations we want those to be centralized and funneled through the program for students with disabilities.  So that that office that consistently looks at medical documentation and makes determinations, would be the location to decide whether the student in fact has a legitimate medical reason for needing to resign or withdraw.  So in one college if they would take a note, and I'm making up examples here, if one college might take a note from Auburn urgent care saying the student was seen for sore throat therefore has to be resigned from all classes and another college you have to have three doctors visits and some sort of documentation saying this is a persistent problem. In fact we found variations somewhat like that had been occurring.  So the theory is ‘let’s make sure we have a consistent policy and let’s make sure that the faculty member has some voice or some statement and that.’  So that in fact with a medical withdrawal if the program for students with disabilities takes a look at it sees the medical documentation the faculty members are not going to see the documentation just like you wouldn't right now if there was in fact an accommodation necessary for that student.  But they would notify you, so if there was anything that you needed to share back with them like the student has never attended or this student seems to be doing well or if there were other issues that they didn't bring to light you would have that opportunity to provide that additional feedback. With these other withdrawals and resignations nonmedical and what it says here is that first of all we want to say they are not permitted., and the comment came up while then what's the next sentence, well we know that occasionally they occur. Within this past year we've had a death on campus, we had students who had issues related to they were roommates boyfriends, in the same sorority. There were situations that the students had to deal with so in some of those cases we did have extenuating circumstances.  In this case were asking again for the recommendations to go through either the associate provost for undergraduate studies for an undergraduate student or the dean of the graduate school for a graduate student. So you would get the information the associate dean who usually signs off on that would then send it to that person so that those individuals consistently look at this and make sure that all colleges are applying the guidelines similarly so the students aren't disadvantaged at one college or more advantaged in another college. Again at the bottom it indicates that the unit reviewing would contact the faculty member for any additional information and to determine the students' grades and notification of the decision. We have some, and this is been piloted to some degree and I know I've heard from some people, so the associate Deans are saying is this in effect, why is this going on. We've been trying some of this already for financial aid reasons and at what date the student is withdrawn. We do need to know last date of attendance as to whether students have to pay back some of the money and this sort of thing. On the second page, the top gives some information then it would go from the associate dean, the professor makes a recommendation and a goes to the associate provost, I've indicated that.  The third element then is this retroactive to an earlier time period withdrawal resignation. I think this is a part of a conversation we had.  Where's that?  When does that occur?  That's not defined very well but it does occasionally occur.  We've had students who've had again whether it's a severe health issue, students who've had cancer, and students who've had a parent problem whether it's a death or whatever else where there's been a recommendation for a retroactive withdrawal or resignation.  That again we want to make it consistently applied because occasionally students were encouraged to see if they could get their money back for the course if they just backdate that form you might be able to get some money back. And what we're saying is if there's not a good reason there would be no real reason we would backdate a form so that the student has that advantage to just get the money back. If there's a good reason sure they should. But if there's not, if it's only because they thought they'd like those extra dollars in their wallet for whatever reason that's not something we want to be in the habit of just offering. So this then indicates the process associated with retroactive withdrawals and resignations. In most cases there'd be a medical justification or explanation as we were discussing it recently. We'd also encourage that the medical documentation should indicate why the student didn't drop the course in a timely manner originally. We've seen doctor's notes that said the student was so impaired from depression from whatever psychological issue from whatever was going on that they were not able to at that time; that is why we're recommending the retroactive withdrawal or resignation.
It goes down the three bullets through from the bottom if the faculty member has left Auburn and occasionally we have that occur we're asking that a reasonable attempt be made to try to contact that individual otherwise the department chair would serve to respond on behalf of the faculty member. The other thing is second bullet from the bottom a retroactive withdrawal or resignation shouldn't be undertaken if more than two calendar years have passed since the course was taken without review and approval of the provost. While it seems that that is pretty common when we started looking into this we found that occasionally we will get requests for four and five years out so we thought it best put a timeline there and under extenuating circumstances that certainly could be considered but if we say two years in the sort of the outset we go with that if there's a reason four years later we need to consider we'll certainly have that opportunity.  Anything else?  You can see final decision and the responsibility for final decisions and then the bottom line there that what we would like to do is review this after a year and see if this is working for everybody. I know that when we started this even as a pilot the program for students with disabilities was just overwhelmed with the number of cases and the amount of paperwork that was coming through their office. They said I don't know if we can do this and I don't know if we can sustain it. They have actually worked it out and I think that most of the associate Deans would see they've put together a form indicating what sort of documentation they expect, what sort of a recommendation of what they're looking for. I think the point for all of you is we're looking for consistency across colleges and the opportunity for faculty input before it’s completed, before the withdrawal or resignation is completed.  Are there questions?

David Carter:
David Carter from the department of history. I know we don't necessarily like to go into particulars but I may have been one of these professors that you heard from. I got an e-mail after the conclusion of the term informing me that a student had withdrawn from a course and requested that I clarify that had been notified of that at an earlier stage. I'd never; I'd failed the student because the student had disappeared, and I sent an e-mail off to the registrar just inquiring and saying that I had not been aware that the student had withdrawn. And never received any reply from the registrar. So I know it's after the fact but can you clarify what were policies in the spring term. I assume this policy is intended to alleviate situations like that.

Sharon Gabor:
Previously faculty did not have to be notified. And so that's part of what we're trying to build into this process is the opportunity for notification and in fact if there is something that you want to add to the conversation, such as the student never attended, the student actually told me they didn't care what the prerequisites were or what ever it is that's part of what we're looking for is giving you that opportunity's to provide some feedback into it. In a medical withdrawal situation, it will be notification but probably not the opportunity to comment on it. And why we want you to be notified is say somewhere down the line that student comes back to you and you're that student’s adviser and you see why that student was withdrawn when I gave the student an F. You need to know obviously there was a medical situation that was the reason for it. We want to open the communication obviously.

Raymond Kessler:
Raymond Kessler from horticulture. I don't know of this falls under your preview or not I just wanted to bring it up is one thing is it immediately apparent on the banner system when someone has withdrawn from a class or resigned from school and number two is the correct procedure for withdrawing from school to simply just drop all classes to zero or do they need to go to Mary Martin and drop in person? Because sometimes I have students who simply disappear and I don't know the reason for it.

Sharon Gabor:
There is a form for resigning or withdrawing.

Raymond Kessler:
There is a form?

Sharon Gabor:
Yes.  And typically they would go and have somebody sign that.  Typically it's through the dean's office and that way they'll sign off for it.  If they dropped before midterm though they can do that on their own.  So that is why this only deals with after midterm.

Herb Rotfeld
Herb Rotfeld not a member of the senate, I just have a couple of things.  First of all you define it at the top end, retroactive dating.  There’s another word for that. Fraud.  Is this something that is condoned because you’re defining it?  Never really used the term later on in saying it should never be done.

Sharon Gabor
Well I think on page two we talked about retroactive to the earlier time period withdraws in resignations that is the retroactive dating of those forms.  As in writing that date down not taking them out.

Herb
That is condoning retro-active dating?

Sharon Gabor
There are cases where there are situations where based on a doctor or psychologist recommendation, we would in fact do that. And there’ve been plenty of examples and I’m sure many of you are familiar with cases where that is occurred. And because for example a student who the day after midterm discovers he or she has cancer and has to drop all classes and they have had it from the first date and the Dr. would be able to go back and say “they should not have been the class we need to do this” as doing the right thing that’s the occasion when we would do it. The point is we don’t want to do it we do not want to encourage advisers or dean’s office for faculty to encourage students if you just backdate this we can get you your money back.

Herb
I’m sorry, legal training, there you have a valid case for doing something at a later date. That is not a reason for saying we’re going to put a false date on the document. And you have a whole document on doing something retroactively, you should not be saying, condone putting a false date on the document. You could say this document here’s say this is the policy and we could go retroactively at this late date and say we could consider you out of the class.  But to date the document at an earlier time than what when you’re doing things, is false. You’re saying here, “here is our reason for going back and doing things after the fact”, that is fine these are valid reasons. There’s not a valid reason here for making a false document.

Sharon Gabor
Understood. I am not sure the way, and I do not know Don if you want to address the Bursars Office and student Financial Services. There something associated with the dating of a document as to what financial aid has to be paid back to the Federal Government and what tuition would be paid back to the students, so I understand what you are saying. I am also trying to revise the way we currently practice, which is this attempts to clean up the current practice but your point is well taken.

Herb
But you just described “OK we’re doing it for financial aid purposes” so we are committing fraud of the Federal Government.  It’s still a false document.  One other thing here that is not really clear. I have faced some people with valid reasons for retro-active withdraw, and then I see that they’re doing at the time, and I find out that they are withdrawing from just one class.  There’s nothing here that says that if you’re doing this we are not just going to withdraw you from one class that you are having trouble with, it’s going to be from everything.  And that’s another thing I faced I had someone with no valid reason for problems with the class and being out, and then I see the person that they are holding on to three classes or four classes and dropping one.  Post final exam.

Sharon Gabor
Well, because of the review process, and I think that might have been in an earlier, again dealing with version 12, that because of the review process in the consistency now of having some central people look at it the theory is that withdrawal is only for one class and there would be a reason associated with it and the resignation is for all classes if there’s medical documentation justifying someone being withdrawn from one class, and that would be the example I gave for example the student who can’t stand in the wetlands anymore. But otherwise it does not explicitly say otherwise, or else I’m not seeing it now.

Herb Rotfeld
It says it up and the definitions. But it does not really apply later on. And one other thing that is really small but I’ve seen it abused. When we had the new policy that went through recently for independent studies part of that policy stated that the signature must be a signature not a signature stamp, because the signature stamps were abused. Again in this exact application I have seen signature stamps abused and that directive should be in here as well that when you’re asking for signatures, that they be signatures.

Sharon Gabor
Ok.

Tom Williams, senator for the department of Naval Science.
Dr. Gabor is there a mechanism to prevent someone from medically withdrawing retroactively, and in the process expunging an F that was given because of academic dishonesty. I mean could someone get an F for academic dishonesty and then come back later and withdraw retro-actively for a medical reason not pertaining to why they were guilty of academic dishonesty. But then have that F expunged?

Sharon Gabor
I guess I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s occurred, but I don’t think so. I mean what we know is an F for academic dishonesty has the notation whenever that occurs, we would not allow that. Now I cannot tell you what a Doctor might write or say, to try to make that argument so that the program for students with disabilities might say, this was a bigger issue and you were not familiar with all the details of that situation. But at this point I am not familiar with that occurring or how that would occur. I know that there have been cases where students want to gap an F for academic dishonesty and they are not allowed to do that.

Tom Williams, Navy:
But there's no specific mechanism written into the policy that would say you can do that. That would depend on the review.

Sharon Gabor:
Right.

Norbert Wilson:
Norbert Wilson, senator from agricultural economics and rural sociology. I have a question concerning the expectations of faculty in terms of the if a student asks to be able to resign for non-medical reasons, what sort of documentation are we as faculty expected to present? In particular if a class does not necessarily take attendance there's no way that a faculty member would be able to say oh yes the students stopped attending class after this point. So are those expectations there? Are we supposed to be able to give documentation about everything about the student?  What is the expectation?

Sharon Gabor:
I don't know that we have defined expectations beyond what we have right now so your associate Dean would contact you and say, “when was the last time the student attended?” You could either say I think he was there X week, I don't think he was I haven't seen him in a while; I have no idea who that student is. I think that's the point, and I think at various times whenever a student resigns we know that there's a question about the last date attended in the event that the University winds up having to pay money back for financial aid. Otherwise it's not in the interest from the policy; we're not necessarily interested in it. We just want to make sure that we comply with Federal guidelines for the financial aid.

Bob Locy
If they're done with questions I will take it from here. I would just like to respond to your question about what you feel the faculty responsibility ought to be here. What the senate leadership thought was that we're not really that worried about the sort of common case when you get one of these.  We're worried about being able to identify the situations that fall out of the ordinary in terms of retro-active withdraws. If you're talking with the student and you know that there's a good reason they've been sick, there's a simple response, acknowledging that you're aware of this student's problem and you believe that this is an appropriate use of the policy is pretty much all that's required. At least that's my view of what we wound up approving. But when it's somebody you have never even seen before in class and he is trying to retroactively withdrawal that is something they ought to know before they approve it. That this was not anything broaching a normal way of doing business in class that ran amok for a legitimate reason. At least when I was reading the policy and helping prepare it, that was my take on what the faculty responsibilities were going to be just establish, we needed to be asked so that if we had information to provide we had the opportunity to provide it. This policy originated from steering as such it does not need a second. It has been discussed is there any further discussion of the policy? Seeing none then we'll prepared to vote. All those in favor of approving the retroactive withdrawal policy as circulated signify by saying aye. Opposed?  Hearing very few nays I believe the motion carries.  The policy is approved.
It doesn't seem really appropriate but I believe we are ready for our first information item which is Mr. Large talking about the budget advisory committee report. And now we cue the thunder, right?

Don Large
Thank you, Bob. What a great day for you as a senate body. You get to hear about strategic planning and budgeting all in one meeting. We presented to the trustees a couple weeks ago about a couple of things.  The first one, we had an agenda item for tuition a 12% increase request, and then we had budget guidelines which the board would then give us their blessing if you will, or the finance committee would, to go ahead and build a detailed budget to bring back to them this year it'll be August 29 to start a new budget. So I'll go through what we presented to the board and go quickly quickly and skip a number of things.  The key point to the board and to this body is this is the challenge that we're facing and are facing in trying to build next year's budget.  So from the University as a whole, which we categorize the budget into four budget divisions. You've got main campus, AUM, AES, and CES.  And when you look at it in total we're getting cut over $40,000,000 from the state. And by far the biggest dollar cut and the biggest percentage cut that we've ever experienced from the state so we start out with a real budget challenge for next year. If you add the fact that costs do not stay static. There are a number of costs that will go up next year and we have no choice but to pay them. You've got PHip, and more square footage, and a host of things that are listed here.  So almost a $60,000,000 challenge and how do you address those challenges?  You can't reasonably address them all with tuition increases. We pushed about as far as we could go to 12%. And we had the support of Lauren Hayes, the SGA President, who spoke favorably about this increase with the board asking that we do everything we can, not to reduce the quality of the academic experience and that is and has been our commitment.  So tuition as a whole would cover almost a third and then we have budget actions to deal with the rest.  So that was the setting.  We wanted them to understand both tuition and the budget guidelines were both guided by the summary of challenges.  So we moved to tuition and I can tell you for two weeks before the meeting 12% tuition was a challenge even with board members that could see the numbers and understand it. They just felt very strongly that that was an increase too big to pass along in a year.  So we spent a lot of time going around to each board member trying to present information and help them understand. And I think we were generally successful with that. We also reminded the board that two things guided decision-making in the tuition area. One is the financial challenges you just saw. The other's their own policy that says from the 21st century commissioner report that the provost mentioned earlier, in there is that statement, so that is a guide for the administration. So that becomes important when you look at our current status of our tuition relative to our peer group and right or wrong reconsider our peer group the SREB. So you see us ranking somewhere in the close to medium or mean actually, but were actually at about 94.5% regional mean for in-state.  And out-of-state interestingly even at three times the in-state rate we're still at about 90% or so of the regional means. So the point to the trustees is, we don't like the 12% anymore than you do, but you see the record cut in the state appropriations. And also for all the quality and the reputation and the ranking of Auburn, we're giving a lot of value for the money and we're certainly not pricing what we're giving out of line with our peers. If anything we're pricing less than. And there's a more graphic demonstration of our in- state rates. We actually did achieve board policy if you will in 2004 and 2005. And since then we have deviated from the regional changes. And a lot of that is because we did have some pretty good budget years from the state so we try to give a break, if you will, back the students in those years. That's one more thing we showed them if you look in state appropriations in dollars per student for tuition again were in the middle range. Does that make as average or does that make us in the middle of a very strong peer group? And I actually think that it is the latter because this is a very strong group to be associated with. I think we're doing well. I won't go through AUM.  A lot of discussion from the trustees, ultimately they did approve of the tuition increase, which becomes effective this fall. Now remember in the $60,000,000 challenge we then had to start breaking that down by division for the trustees and ultimately to get a good look at main campus challenges and then AUM and AES and CES.  So we start this way and remind them that yes we started this year the current year we're operating in with an $839,000,000 budget.  And so that sounds like a lot so you think well of $40,000,000 cut or the $60,000,000 challenge isn't as bad as I thought. But you have to start looking at what makes the budget. You have got $628,000,000 in total that's unrestricted. You have auxiliaries; those are the self-supporting operations. They generate their own revenue and pay for their own expenses. You have all of the restricted dollars that come in.  We have to be very careful to use those specifically for what we accepted them for. So in total you're at $628,000,000 that in theory would be the funds that you might be able to make strategic decisions on.  Now if you look at the budget for the four divisions it comes out this way. The main campus makes up about 76% of the total dollars. So we take the 638, and this is actually the process we would've gotten with the trustees but we didn't even quite get to that, they went ahead and accepted the guidelines at this point. Take 638, and say now main campus is unrestricted to $483,000,000, in those other two categories for which we have no strategic control over to help with the operating budget. So the unrestricted is there but you have to break the unrestricted down a little further to the $415,000,000, and the non base are, yes those are restricted by definition, but they're fees that go directly to the colleges, your various clinics around campus, soft revenue and a host of other things, so not much ability to influence change there. So your whole budget making opportunity for main campus is in the $415,000,000 and that's getting cut $26,000,000 from the state so thus your challenges look a little bit greater when you start breaking them down in that way. So we look at the $26,000,000 and then we looked at the other expenses that we're reasonably have to address. Most of them we have to. The others are so strongly strategic that you couldn't basically ignore them. So for main campus, division one if you will, you have $40,000,000 in needs and the 12% tuition does address about half of those needs or challenges. And the budget actions that we will take for 2009 are about the other half. If you look at, what are some of those needs? We did share of the board that we do feel strongly that we have to stay with the promotions. The years that it takes to work towards promotions over faculty and staff they need to be honored and they've agreed. You've got the state passing along costs that we have to address and rising utility costs which are familiar with, and new square footage, continued commitment of new dollars to scholarships, we have the commitment for FY 10 as well. More debt service, you had the student center in some of those coming online with debt. The provost area has areas of I know for programs were significant part of that. And our efforts for more security and so on, and we had that detailed for the board. So those are things we face in addition to the cut of $26,000,000 for main campus. Their actions that we basically agreed on is will have to reduce our allocations to deferred maintenance by four million dollars. A two percent give back from all the colleges, 2% doesn't sound bad as a percentage, but when you start converting that to the dollars of each of the colleges it is a challenge.  Can it be onetime funds vs. continuing funds? We've agreed that it can.  It gives the Deans and other areas a little more opportunity for planning for permanent cuts if we have to get to that point.  FY 10 is still very uncertain so staying flexible would be a good thing.  But we have said that you could use one time funding to help balance the budget.  And then there are a number of allocations that we've made in this current year that we will no longer be able to make.  So that is our budget plan and the rest of it, I won't go any further unless you wish, which took us through the other three divisions that is pretty much the same story.  Significant reductions for AUM, some tuition relief, budget actions AES and CES, budget actions to go their cuts, so, a tough year.  We've had good years recently and we were responsible, we did put back funds or made one-time allocations knowing it would probably be a lean year.  And we were reasonably anticipating a 5% cut or so. We could probably have taken a 5% cut and given salary increases.  We were positioned that well.  But no one expected 12% and 13% cuts that we got.  Interestingly the state is down about 5%, the trust fund, not 12%, but the difference in the way the allocations occurred among the K through 12 and higher education, we did get a disproportionate share of that.  So there you are.  There we were struggling to balance and do so and acting like we’ll be here more than a year.  So we're trying to avoid drastic actions, and not going to the freezing positions, or no travel, or those kind of things.  We think that's not a responsible way to react.  We need to simply deal with the budget give you the budget and let you do what you do best.  So that is where we're headed and it’s not the greatest budget year but we have put it together I think as well as we can.  I'll be happy to answer questions or respond to anything.

Werner Bergen
Werner Bergen, Senator from Animal Science. I've been at five major institutions in my career.  Some institutions have all these centers and non academic add-ons and others don't. Some people tell me the University of Alabama does not have those centers that we have that don't have a teaching mission. To what degree in your budget consideration do you look at these, you know like, how can you teach better support groups and all these things and budget formulations, and try to protect at all costs the 50 or 60 departments that we have?

Don Large
Our ability to make all those kinds of assessments are not at strong, at least in my area, not as strong. I wish they were; but basically the information of all the academic areas go through the provost and we try very hard to accommodate the request of the provost for new needs and any other kinds of actions academically that we can be helpful with. I don't know the basis- John; you may have a better answer for how you make those assessments.

John Heilman
Don, I don't know whether it will be a complete or even a partial answer but I do have a couple thoughts.  Number one it is my impression that over the years that Auburn in fact has been very thin on centers and institutes. I know for example that one of the comments or comparisons that Dr. Gouge has more than once offered is a comparison between our approach which is to have very few of those relatively and the approach at Georgia Tech for example, an exemplar to which he refers frequently, in which I think it is commonplace and faculty are encouraged to develop centers as a basis for their work. I would add that the centers and I think you may have refered to this already Don, but in fact all centers and institutes are created on the recommendation of a Dean or Deans, and their creation is supported by and approved by the provost and the president.  I would add further that while individual centers, an example, a counterexample, would be the Biggio Teaching Center, which exists to support faculty in terms of developing teaching capabilities, may not appear to have a direct or to make a direct contribution to the teaching mission.  In fact all centers make contributions to our least one of the University's mission areas as addressed in the University seal and the university strategic plan.  I guess the way that I would respond to the broader question, and it's a fair and good question, is really to pay a compliment, which is an easy thing to do, but in this case it's really warranted.  Don a couple moments ago very modestly said that over the years we have acted responsibly and in fact from my perspective in the provost office we're in a lot better position now than a lot of our peer institutions in dealing with budget cuts that are affecting most states across the country a number of them much more seriously than they are Auburn University., because in fact we've had very responsible and conservative financial management.  In fact the board raise the question almost a challenge about this in fact 'has the University been acting carefully?' And Don gave in my view a superb account, of the various steps, and very matter of fact , steps that have been taken over the last 10 years to strengthen our financial position. We're dealing now with cuts. It's tough, having been a dean who is responsible for cutting 5% of a college budget back in 1998 and 99. I know how painful those cuts can be, but believe me it can be a lot worse. And I personally would like to express my gratitude to Don and the budget office staff for managing our budgets very well.

Don Large
One final thought I'll leave you with.  One of the trustees was suggesting that we have to look hard at ways to cut and need to not think that we were fat and happy from the good years and all this.  And that was where John was reminding me that where we decided it might be a good time to remind the board 'wait a minute now. Let's take a one-minute history of what we have been doing the last 10 years. 1996, about this time of year, the FOB James administration, in the year of growth of the trust fund from which we would normally be getting new money should've been significant we got cut 7.5% and had to balance the budget in two months went to the retirement incentive for the first time had to cut out almost $20,000,000 in costs quickly and did the shotgun effect of taking any kind of vacancies we could get and not a real effective way of doing things but we did it.  A big cut it took us a long time to recover from. We go to the 21st century commission report in 99 were basically getting a little bit past the 96 situation and we start a process of reallocating 2% back to the general fund to reprioritize and address salaries, other priorities of the 21st century. We did that for five years so further challenges of the deans and cuts. We asked the deans to give back more in 05 from vacant salary positions. We are constantly looking to improve and to be as efficient as we can. I'm sure we missed some things as University I think we do well.  So that was a reminder to the trustees. We've been doing this and we have done it I think very well and effectively.  We just didn't feel comfortable with the inference that we weren't doing much to address efficiencies.  That's all we've been doing for the last 10 or more years. So that's the reference that John was making.  Hopefully it had some impact.

Gwynedd Thomas
Gwynedd Thomas, Polymer and Fiber Engineering.  Since the trustees feel that we should cut a few benefits. How much do we normally charge for all the people that parked their RVS and tailgate on our property?

Don Large
I don't know what the charge is. I hate to push that in an area and say that's not my area, but it is an athletic area in which they do charge I know for the coliseum parking. We do not charge anything for the parking at on what's called the hayfield or any of the other areas.

Gwynedd Thomas
Don't we own that property?

Don Large
Yes we do own that property. The hayfield?

Gwynedd Thomas
Well not just the hayfield, but all around the different buildings and so forth.

Don Large
Yes, but we do not at this point charge for parking on campus. Is that a suggestion that we consider that?

Gwynedd Thomas
It sure is.

Don Large
It has been talked about and it would be another major culture challenge. But it works out there as a possibility. Thank you.

Bob Locy
Thank you Don. Gwynedd I'd like to respond your question just a bit and maybe Dave Cicci can also back me up on this.  But one of the things that I was impressed with at this most recent board meeting was the fact that when Don said there was some consideration about cuts being offered by one of the members of the board of trustees it was one out of 14 members there are on the board.  The other 13 all spoke up and surprising people that wouldn't normally make these kinds of comments said that it was important that we maintain faculty salaries and services at a high level to keep the progress that we've made across recent years what it was. So I think the vote was 14 to 1 for cutting not 7 to 7 or 1 to 14 as it may have been times in the past. So there was a substantial change in my opinion and the board's reaction to both the faculty and what took place at the meeting.

Barbara Kemppainen
Barbara Kemppainen from anatomy and physiology and pharmacology.  Just in response to one of the comments about charging for parking spaces. It might decrease the contributions to our campaigns if we gave them a bad taste in their mouth about parking. It's just a minor point.

Bob Locy
Thank you. All right our next item on our agenda is a report of the academic progress… academic program review committee. And Dr. Heilman will be making the presentation. 

Dr. Heilman
(beginning missing from tape)…Viewed on a regular basis if you go to slide one please, and in fact this is reviving a practice that we had at the University I believe some 25 years ago. Which I, when I was a member of the political science faculty, felt that was a very good practice to begin.  Even though as a faculty member I did not particularly care for the recommendations of the visiting committee of political science. 25 years later I feel that perhaps they had a great deal of merit.  This is an update on that process. We reviewed four programs in a pilot period between 2006 and 2007.  Six programs in 2007 2008 and intend to review six more in this coming academic year.  In overview 8 of the 10 programs reviewed today are in good or excellent shape and we are taking actions to further strengthen them. We’re also taking actions to improve the other two programs. And I will be providing some examples later on so if you’ve got a question. You can say well what does that mean? The strength and programs or improve them then I have some examples for that.  In terms of the process I’d like to talk about that a little bit. The program review process involves a departmental self study in the fall semester, a site visit by a team of reviewers in the spring semester a dean's plan based on the report of the visiting team that addresses program improvement, restructuring, merger or discontinuation.  We don’t have a lot of recommendations in that latter regard but should they come forward in fact recommendations concerning restructuring, merger, or discontinuation would be presented to the academic program review committee of this body for their assessment should they wish to offer it.  And following that the provost would make a recommendation to the president of the board of trustees. There is a difference in how we handle the review process. The difference between how we perceive with its natural accreditation is involved or if it is not involved.  If it is not involved in the site team consists of two members who are senior faculty within the discipline from peer Universities and two members who are senior faculty from related disciplines within Auburn University. I know going back now a long time to my experience in political science. Most of our programs were not nationally accredited, and so that's the kind of review we had several years ago.  Next slide please. If a national accreditation team is involved in is joined by two members of the Auburn faculty from related disciplines.  I would like to talk now a little bit about results. And it is important remember that the results include the Dean's recommendations which I am now in the process of receiving from the current year’s review. And that takes some time to review and implement them so we do have results from the four programs that were reviewed during the pilot year 2006 to 2007. Those are animal science, architecture, and the architecture is in Italics meaning is subject of national accreditation ditto for nursing, and then sociology and anthropology, criminology and social work and social work also subject to national accreditation.  Some examples of the things that come about as a result of the academic program review in relation to these disciplines, architectures in the process of planning master’s degree to be considered as a future offering.  Space has been identified for expansion of nursing schools classrooms office and lab facilities. They faced some significant issues in recent years.  Next slide.  Through the reprioritization of resources new faculty lines have been allocated to animal sciences. That is a college of agriculture decision. And in sociology and anthropology and social work, there’s been a restructuring of curriculum, elimination of criminology major and the faculty have developed a strategic plan. And final slide by way of additional information those programs subject to national accreditation review all receive very favorable reviews from their accrediting agencies.  An additional comment this is not in the slide presentation but in some ways at least I’ve made a point of asking the Deans of apartment administrators who have bought this is a worthwhile if activity because it takes a lot of work. Those of you that have been involved in it know that. The sense I've gotten is that this is really valuable especially in those that are not nationally accredited. And that I think the process of self examination is regarded, I guess going back to my own experience pretty much the way I felt about it back in the late 1980s is that it is a worthwhile process to go through. And so that is my update of academic program review I would be placed respond any questions.

Bob Locy
Seeing no questions, the next item on our agenda is the 2008 2009 PTR policy. And this is in the progress of formation and is being presented as an information item.  We will probably be seeing this again for further discussion in the fall.

John Heilman
Well thank you very much. And the idea in this is that I think that the senate leadership and I certainly and Dr. Gouge support transition from what I might call a universal post tenure review policy to one that is triggered. The idea being, and I'm going to go through that in this presentation, but I think it’s a process that would get us in line with many of our peers and mix complete sense.  The proposed policy, which I think has been distributed; I’m not going to go through specific provisions of it. I want to try to provide background on it. I've got a copy and can go into specifics if you'd like to get into that. I would like to provide an overview of what we have done over the past couple of years and then what we propose for going forward.  I would start by reiterating something which is something we’ve talked about in this body over the past couple of years the PTR is not a dismissal policy.  Its goal is to support faculty development.  And faculty who have been eligible to this point for post tenure review under the current policy are those who have not been reviewed for promotion and tenure within the past six years.  Next slide.  Currently 1/6 these eligible faculty are reviewed each year. That total body is about 720 or so faculty members. What you find when you divide that by six I believe it’s about 120.  What you find is that there are folks who are on administrative appointment and I’ll be talking about that and just a moment who're planning to retire and so as a practical matter, as I will be saying in a moment, I think this past year we reviewed I think actually 71 faculty members.  The basis for review it is a curriculum vitee and a letter by the faculty member describing accomplishments and agenda plus a letter from the department head.  Only the provost incidentally sees the annual reviews and that’s because the handbook specifies that basically there’s a very limited access to that annual review for faculty members.  The review was conducted by University committee appointed by consultation by senate leadership. This committee reviews all the dossiers and votes on whether a faculty member's performance has been satisfactory.  I would like to talk a minute about the pattern of results in reviewing this year’s experience. It is not dissimilar from last year’s.  Out of 71 faculty members reviewed this year eight were judged exceptional and six were recommended for a development plan.  One of those six faculty members already had a development plan in place approved by the department head and dean; two of the remaining five appealed the recommendation, which they had as their rights within the policy.  Dr. Gouge reviewed both of those appeals in support of the University committee's recommendations.  The work plans submitted by the six faculty will be reviewed next year.  Next slide.  That is what we have been doing and in the proposed new approach we will no longer review large numbers of tenured faculty each year to examine their productivity across the years in detail.  Instead we will rely on the annual review process. That is, each year each faculty member goes through a review process with the department head or chair or dean if there is no department head or chair.  And we will look to the annual review process to serve as a trigger for post tenure review.  Only those tenured faculty who have received two unsatisfactory annual reviews within a six year period will undergo post tenure review.  Next slide please.  There are now minimum standards which each department’s annual faculty and review procedure must meet.  One of those standards is that if a department head concludes a faculty member is not performing satisfactory in one or more mission areas or no, no, not the mission areas, very important is the area of assigned workload.  That needs to be put in writing so that it is clear that bad judgment has been made.  The first unsatisfactory review puts the faculty member on warning. The second unsatisfactory review over the next five years will trigger a post tenure review.  In terms of what would be the starting point for what would be the first valid year for these two years out of six those would be via the annual reviews conducted this past spring for academic year 2007 2008 and they would be year one for purposes of implementing this policy.  Thus any faculty members who received an unsatisfactory review for 2007 should understand a second such a review in the next five years will trigger a post tenure review.  Reviews for years prior to 2007 will not be considered under this new policy.  Slide please.  Tenured faculty are exempt from post tenure review while holding full time administrative assignment, but are subject to post tenure review when their administrative assignments end. The criteria remain flexible to accommodate differences in faculty assignments that sounds kind of abstract what it gets down to is that a tremendously important Point I might say a tremendously important point in the preparation and promotion of tenure dossiers.  It is essential to review faculty on their assigned workload. And I will digress just a moment to say that even though Bob as you’ve noted I have a personal commitment and will leave after this presentation and, one of the things we noticed and saw this year and the promotion of the University tenure process, at times it appears that faculty assignments have evolved. I understand that completely. It happened to me in my 19 years as a fulltime faculty member. But the change in assignment is not documented and so the record that comes to the promotion and tenure committee involves the evaluation on one set of assignments but in fact which you see is a faculty member has been doing an enormous amount of work in other areas and so that creates an issue that can be resolved I think by careful tracking of what the faculty members actual work load assignment is.  Next slide please.  The new procedure still calls for review by departmental faculty as well as by University committee faculty appointed by the rules committee or nominated, I beg your pardon, nominated by the rules committee appointed by the president and chaired by the provost. The materials to be reviewed remain pretty much the same. There’s an appeals procedure in the new policy similar to that in the tenure and promotion policy. Faculty whose performances found to be unsatisfactory during post tenure review will be asked to prepare and undertake a development plan. Next slide please. This plan is to contain goals which can recently complete within 12 months. Publishing five articles within 12 months would be a reasonable goal just for an example. But submitting a proposal to present article or to submit a manuscript to a journal for review would be an example of something that would be reasonable.  Successful completion of the development plan will end the process for that faculty member and restart the clock for post tenure review purposes. Failure to complete the plan will lead to sanctions including withholding of merit based salary increases, loss of privileges, and possible reassignment duties. And each year the provost office will post an implementation calendar with deadlines for each step in the process.  So that is my update. I encourage you to take a look at the revised draft plan. Bob I think it would be fair to say that this would be developed with a lot of consultation with the senate leadership. And in my view of in approving this you’ll be approving a transition to a triggered process. Which as I said I think is consistent to what a lot of our first rate peer institutions are doing and is also something that I believe can serve the faculty well.

Bob Locy
Are there any questions for Dr. Heilman? 

Bart Prorok
Bart Prorok, Senator from Mechanical Engineering. One of the nicer points for the previous policy was you are able to identify the top performers that may not have been recognized and it seems with the new policy we will not have a system to find the top performers.

John Heilman
I believe we’re just been addressed by recipient of the Courageous Researchers Award. You are?  It is a significant award.  And I’m saying that with real appreciation and respect for Dr. Prorok you’re asking a very good question. Your question has been the subject of debate between both me and the current and previous president. Actually it is from the perspective of the post tenure review committee which talked about this specifically post tenure review is a, I’ll put it this way, if you’re looking to identify faculty who may need to revisit their scholarly agenda you look at what kind of evidence and you ask one set of questions.  If you look at the question of whom are our top performing faculty even though conceptually those issues may be more fit in a practical sense you’re asking a different question.  And you’re looking at different kinds of evidence.  I think there’s strong interest on the part of Dr. Gouge as there was on the part of Dr. Richardson also on the part of the trustees in recognizing outstanding faculty. Why not this? My answer is we’ve got a whole raft of recognition programs in place both internal to the University and external as in the case of your own accomplishments and recognition that are really well designed to recognize and reward high performance. And I think that going back again to the experience of the committee this year I think we’d be able to do our job most effectively looking at the specific question of one end of the distribution.  That’s a very good question and has been on the mind of this and previous president preceding president and the board of trustees. Thank you.

Claire Crutchley department of…

Bob Locy
Bart I would just like to say that if you look at other Universities PTR policies and we look to quite a few when we were trying a redesigned for this year.  As the provost just said you often find that those two processes are separate and shall we say the meritorious selection of faculty members vs. the underperforming faculty. That is a relatively common model.  Now Claire. Thank you.

Claire Crutchley
Claire Crutchley department of finance
I would just like to say I fully support this initiative and should have been done a year earlier so I did not to go through PTR. My question was on just a clarification. Right now it’s that once you go up for promotion or tenure you wait six years and then your reviewed every six years or something like that. Now with these unsatisfactory reports could they even be pretenure and say that year after you got tenure hopefully that would not happen and would that be counted in five years?

John Heilman
Theoretically it’s conceivable as a practical matter. I think it’s I think it’s a good question as I said it’s theoretically conceivable that seems to me very unlikely that a faculty member who received an unsatisfactory review would then in short order be successfully supported by the department and or department head and/or dean and the University committee for tenure or promotion. But it could happen but I think it’s very unlikely. I think it would be fair to say I will offer a comment about the work of University promotion and tenure committee that committee is it in my view a very good committee. It takes is work very seriously. And I probably sort of preached on this before and they I think have been successful in reaching good judgments about what represents the level of quality that is appropriate for promotion to tenure at Auburn University

Claire Crutchley
Well I think you misinterpreted what I was saying. I could see in a college worker grants are important somebody may be getting an unsatisfactory review early in their career and then getting a big grant and then getting tenure. And they may have gotten an unsatisfactory review before they were tenured, say three years before they were tenured, would that count in that five years?  That was what I was really saying.

John Heilman
All as I think the proposed policy is written now it would count and I think that this policy as all others is subject implementation and I referred earlier to cybernetic processes were you get feedback and fix up what you’ve been doing and this as all policies I think that would be subject to that too

Francis Robishcheaux
Francis Robicheaux physics
I have a simple question. Who is or at what level is the decision that the annual review is unsatisfactory? Is that to say the department head level that dean level or higher?

John Heilman
That decision is basically made by the department head the Deans do not see those or are precluded by the handbook policy from seeing those reviews.
Thank you very much it’s been a privilege to address the senate. 

Bob Locy
The next item on the agenda for today is the enrollment management report by Sharon Gabor.

Sharon Gabor
I’m presenting this today on behalf of Wayne Alderman who is out of town. So Wayne Alderman as you probably know is the dean of enrollment services. When Bob discussed with him the possibility of making a presentation we decided Bob was really interested in some numbers for freshman and transfers and so are going to provide those. But we thought we would also then give you the information about what is this thing the enrollment management council.  And in 2006 as you may recall Noel Levitz Consulting Group came to campus and suggested we ought to be looking at and thinking through how we’re doing enrollment management. So this group came and said look we need enrollment services. We need probably a dean of enrollment services. And if we’re thinking about this we want more high ability students and they said let’s put together a council of various groups. And I will show you in a minute representatives on this who provide some input on this enrollment related strategies and tactics. And I pointed out here that the major focus of the group is on annual strategic enrollment and enrollment related fiscal planning.  Each year we contact for example the Deans and say we want to set some goals and what might be your freshman enrollment goals for the next year.  We’re doing that this week in fact for 2009 enrollment.  It’s interesting a year ago we did that if you remember we’ve had just over 4000 freshmen last year.  We would have had if we took all the Deans enrollment goals, because you know the Deans want to see some other colleges grow some want to see them shrink.  We probably would have had over 5000 freshmen had we taken all these goals so there is a little bit of bartering say no let’s scale this back a little bit and let’s think about how to make this work with all the other colleges.  So that’s one thing that this group looks and works with.  And I will show you that group.  Another thing that we’ve done is look at scholarship, at the cost of attendance policies and actually because enrollment services deals with admissions and university scholarships and recruitment, they said look we could stretch our dollars our University dollars a little bit further if we try to set some guidelines and say I look at the college is getting X dollars and the University has agreed to give X dollars we shouldn’t probably be giving more than it costs to attend. So the students are reaping a surplus value and actually collecting that. So we’ve set some guidelines associated with that. Scholarships both departmental school and University combined should not exceed what is identified as is University’s cost of attendance. That is beyond tuition recognize so we have a figure and it’s out there on the Student Financial Services website. There’s a cost of tuition plus room and board plus incidentals so there’s a fixed amount that’s recognized as cost of attendance.  So these various members get together and discuss these issues and another thing which we are discussed is we brought in some of the financial people and brought in various mixes of the instate and out of state and in terms of how many students do we actually have to have in terms of tuition to make the budget and that sort of thing so we tried to run some of those numbers.  Now in terms of freshman class numbers and this is information provided again from enrollment services part of what Bob was interested in what is our expected fall class looks like.  At this point Wayne Alderman has suggested that we’re looking at just over 3900 students. As you can see that would be about almost 300 students less than last year which in many colleges will be a welcome relief.  We’re also looking at a higher average ACT score and again in the strategic plan that you looked at one of our goals would be to continue to increase the average ACT score.  The question then was about transfer student numbers and again I asked Wayne to send me this information so he sent me two year’s worth of information.  Again slightly up from last fall and this is another thing that the enrollment management council looks at. For example we take transfer students both fall and spring. Last year when our freshmen members were so high we did not take I think we took very few in the spring. I want to say like two handfuls but it was very limited because we were dealing with such a large freshman class.  There was also a question about students of color because we know the diversity is important to the institution. Again in the strategic plan increasing our students of color faculty of color. What is indicated is projected students of color for 08 is down, but he also noted that the expectation or the understanding is that the students are better prepared with on average higher ACT scores assuming then a higher retention rate so that the hope is that we will hold onto the students and they will successfully graduate from Auburn University.  And I think I know that Dr. Alderman is also working with Dr. Jenda to continue to increase the number of students of color, within recruitment and retention.  He had also provided this information and in terms of the University scholarships and presidential scholarships and the board of trustees has spent a lot of time investing into higher ability students they tracked them now according to this ability bands and what are the ACT scores.  And what he had provided here is some comparative data from 07 to 08 showing that we have fewer students at a 21 or below and we are increasing number of students at a 28 or above and also you can see between 24 and 27. So again we are continuing to work and to recruit higher ability students and trying to minimize the number of students with 21 or below ACT. The last slide that I have, I’d asked Jim Hansen the director of Honors College to give us some information about the total population in Honors College and I think he put together this slide. Which says a lot in a small space here but what it points out is the expectation that in fall of 08 we will have effectively double the enrollment in Honors College from what we had two years ago. So you can see where he’s expected 1400 students in Honors College. And that is again up from last year’s 1030. So that is in the strategic plan and if you take a look at it the expectation is to be rethinking what our honors college looks like at what should be functioning and even potentially thinking about the role of the director of Honors College. Should it be something else? Should be a Dean’s position? Should we be doing something a little bit differently?  But this you can see the growth in honors college has been dramatic. That is my report on enrollment management on behalf of Wayne and I know that somebody I had some emails with some specific questions if you have specific questions I certainly can try to answer them or direct them to Wayne Alderman. If there are specific detailed questions or you can e-mail Wayne or I and we will get the answers for you.

Werner Bergen
Werner Bergen senator of animal sciences
Okay like to make a general statement on the enrollment.  And I would like to it as a few points as we consider the enrollment management plan.  And I want to relate it to the college of agriculture.  For my personal experience I have a perception that many of the Auburn University academic community belief that the college of agriculture is a small not terribly developed college in the contemporary academic scene but one that is well funded.  Now we’re not going to even talk about that.  A few years ago the trend was to downsize Agriculture programs but now we see a major reversal of that with recent events in foods and others.  So I would also like to point out that the food gathering in agriculture is truly the first profession not some others you might have thought of, of humankind.  Not much need for cardiovascular care of the aged if one starved or died while young. Also AU was founded as an Ag. School and agriculture schools there are only 50. You can have a good college of biology anywhere but we only have so many colleges of agriculture. So what I’m getting at is as food prices have risen and will continue to raise it is time to reinvest in the academic agriculture and reload our depleted technology base for food production, harvesting, processing, and distribution. If you do not believe the last one is important, $5.00 diesel ships your cabbage from California to your local grocery store. So arguably the college of agriculture has the most engaged faculty in the education experience of our students.  From individual tenure track faculty advisers for all students, to hands on mentoring, and of course resident instructions as well. So finally to address emerging needs in the collective food procuring industry which I call agriculture there may be increasing pressure from highly motivated interested students in Alabama to enroll in agriculture here at AU. In animal sciences for example in the last five years we have grown from about 200 to 400 undergraduate students.  We should be able to adjust our enrollment policy to address this emerging national need. Bio fuels food all of these issues for academic agriculture and should endeavor to more importantly support resident instruction and the college of agriculture in the future from division one. Thank you.

Bob Locy
Any other questions or comments? The last report for today is going to be given by Bliss Bailey from the office of information technology. This relates to the new business that was brought up that the last meeting.

Bliss Bailey
Alright I’ll be brief. I would just like to take a couple of minutes to address some of the concerns that were brought up that the last senate meeting. I will take a moment to speak to that particular issue and then take a couple of minutes to talk about some more general concerns.  So regarding user names in the past our policy has been the user names were static and could not be changed.  While setting up new user accounts and deleting old accounts was by and large automated; changing a username is a very labor intensive process and requires about a dozen people to make Manual changes to about 20 different systems.  However we have always known that in extreme cases we would have to change user names.  And in fact we have changed user names overtime. But this led to a disconnect between our policy and our practices.  And that’s a very frustrating situation that Dr. Thomas got caught in.  So here’s what we’re doing.  We are updating our policy to be more flexible and to accommodate the need for username changes.  I am working with Dr. Heilman and Dr. Gabor to develop policy acknowledges the difficulty of that task but also takes into account the needs of the user community. We’re also reviewing our internal procedures to help as accurately and more efficiently carry out those future changes.  I also want touch on OIT’s interaction with the University community at large.  The office of information technology is comprised of about 110 people who work very hard to deliver effective and reliable Technology Services to the University.  We work closely with the IT staffs of all the colleges and schools and the administrative units as well.  But I realize that it could be difficult at times to an end user to speak with a voice that can be heard by a group of 110 folks.  So I want to tell you about some mechanisms both formal and informal that can help us to hear your voice.  The first mechanism is the academic computing committee. That’s a senate committee. I am an ex officio member of this committee and this committee is in a position to bring forward concerns of the senate and of the senate’s constituencies related to technology. And I’d be happy to meet with the academic computing committee as often as need be.  There’s also the educational technology advisory committee. That is a committee that was formed by the provost. It provides advice and counsel to the provost and the office of information technology regarding the direction of educational technology and its support at the University.  And there’s a less formal mechanism known as a distributed IT management council.  That is really technical staff on campus.  That group includes IT managers and directors from every college and school and most of the major administrative units on campus.  Several members of OIT staff also participate on that team and this group is very interactive.  You should feel free to send input to this group through your local IT provider.  I provided rosters of your distributed IT council memberships so you can find out who represents your college or school. And as I mentioned that’s a very interactive group. One of the advantages of that group is if there’s a concern that takes place in the colleges brought up at the college level it rises to discussion in that group them it’s an opportunity for other technical staff from other colleges to say oh yeah we’ve run into that too so we really get a good degree of input from across all the colleges and schools. I am in every one of those meetings. Other of my staff are also at those meetings. So it’s a great opportunity for you to get input to me. And of course you can come to me directly.  So if you feel like any of the standard processes are not getting things done then I invite you to contact me. You can come to my office. You can call me directly. You can e-mail me. And if you can’t get in touch with me because I am at a lot of different meetings then you can contact Michelle. She is the administrative assistant for our unit.  She has access to my calendar and she can make and appointment for you.  Are there any questions?

Gwynedd Thomas
Gwen Thomas, Polymer and Fiber Engineering. Since I started this process I just want to let you know I am not the wicked witch of the west, even though I’m dressed in black.  I want to thank you very very much for the efforts that you and your department made in making the name change for me and more than that for being sensitive to this issue.  I do think that there are people in the past two were too quick to say well it just can’t be done. So thank you for your responsiveness and you did a very good job.

Bliss bailey
Thank you.

Bob Locy
Thank you Bliss, Is there any other- Oh Ray you want to?

Raymond Kessler
Raymond Kessler from horticulture senator. I was kind of part of this I think in that I have a graduate student who during the course of her program got married and had a lot of difficulty getting a name change. She said she took her marriage license and her birth certificate and they basically said it couldn’t be done. I’m curious why it’s so much easier and it’s probably just because I’m completely ignorant. Why it’s a much easier to change a password than a username. And I think it is important that these individuals be allowed to follow social custom and be able to make those changes.

Bliss Bailey
I will answer your question off line about the password but I do agree it is important

Bob Locy
Any other questions?  Does the senate have any unfinished business?  Does the senate have any new business?  Hearing none we stand adjourned until September.