Transcript Auburn University Senate Meeting
March 4, 2008
3:00 pm
Present: David Cicci, Robert Locy, Ann Beth Presley, Richard Penaskovic, Stewart Schneller, Drew Clark, Fran Kochan, Bonnie MacEwan, Marie Folmar, Gary Martin, Ronald Clark, Winfred Foster, Norbert Wilson, Sondra Parmer, Charles Mitchell, Barbara Kemppainen, Christopher McNulty, Paul Swamidass, Timothy McDonald, Anoop Sattineni, Ronald Neuman, Rik Blumenthal, Larry Crowley, Brigitta Brunner, Laura Plexico, Alvin Sek See Lim, Suhyun Suh, John Saye, Dan Gropper, James Witte, James Goldstein, Claire Crutchley, Allen Davis, Michel Raby, Larry Teeter, Jim Saunders, Mark Fischman, David Carter, Raymond Kessler, Chris Arnold, Andrew Wohrley, Steve Stuckwisch, Bart Prorok, Constance Hendricks, Claire Zizza, Don-Terry Veal, Jim Wright, Daniel Parson, Salisa Westrick, Bernie Olin, James Shelley, Francis Robicheaux, Changhoon Jung, Robert Voitle, Dan Svyantek, Peggy Shippen, Tom Williams, Carole Zugazaga, Gwen Thomas
Absent with Substitute: Royrickers Cook (Ralph Foster), Adele Balmar (Lindsay Stenson), Anthony Moss (Sharon Roberts), Dan Gropper (Roger W. Garrison), Scotte Hodel (Bagnell?), Robin Huettel (Wayne Clark)
Absent without Substitute: Sue Barry, Don Large, Debbie Shaw, Dan Bennett, Overton Jenda, Johnny Green, John Heilman, Matt Jenkins, Robert Gross, John Hung, Jim Bradley, Charlene LeBleu, Carol Centrallo, Thomas A. Smith, Robert Bulfin, Casey Cegielski, Edith Davidson, Howard Goldstein, Randy Tillery, Jon Segars, R.D. Montgomery
David Cicci (Chair): I want to call the Senate Meeting to order. Thank you for coming. The first order of business is approval of the minutes for the February 12, 2008 meeting. They were sent out and posted. Are there any additions or corrections to those minutes? Seeing none, all in favor of approving those minutes respond by saying Aye. Opposed; Nay. Minutes approved. We shall begin with remarks from Dr. Gouge.
Dr. Gouge (President): Thank you David. I appreciate all of you being here today. I want to share with you three quick comments. One, at Montgomery the legislature will not take up budget issues until April. Their hope is that they will see some promise and some growth in the February and the March period, so we don’t expect really any discussions by them relative to budgets until later than, from what I understand, they would normally take up budget related questions. Second thing I wanted to share with you is, we have appointed the Provost Search Committee. And I had asked that the Provost work with the President of the Faculty Senate and that they provide a list of individuals that they wanted to serve on the committee. We accepted that list, and the letters for invitation for the committee went out actually today. So, the search committee has been formed. We will convene them; charge that committee and the goal or the hope would be that we would be able to begin initial work to get our advertisements out. There will be no interviews, certainly no campus involvement until next fall. So we want to make sure that folks that want to participate in that process are on campus so that’ll occur in the fall. And the goal would be for us to actually name and have a provost by January. So that would be, under the best conditions, that’s what our hope is. Third thing I wanted to mention to you is that last Saturday night, Auburn Alumni Association presented what they call Lifetime Achievement Awards. These are individuals that have done great and grand things throughout their life and there were graduates there from one person who was honored in the 1940’s, two in the 1950’s, and I think one in the early 1980’s. And the reason I bring it up is that in all of their comments, they all referred to the academic part of this University and how important it was. And looking at you, I realize you were not here in the 40’s and probably not in the 50’s but you’re colleagues were. And so I just thank you for what you do each day. I’d be happy to respond to questions. Thank you David.
David Cicci (Chair): Thank you Dr. Gouge. I’d like to remind everyone that the online voting for the next chair elect and secretary elect will begin on March 3rd and continue through March 10th. Statements from the candidates have appeared in the AU Report and are also available online. The winners will be announced at the General Faculty Meeting, next Tuesday March 11th. So, please take a few moments to vote in this important election. Also, the call for volunteers for all Senate and Faculty committees has gone out. Staffing these committees is the foundation of our shared governance system. Please consider volunteering for one or more of these important committees. In regard to the Provost Search Committee I want to thank all of you who expressed interest and agreed to be considered for nomination to that committee. Unfortunately, we could only select a few and those names were passed to Dr. Gouge and the letters have gone out as you’ve just heard. As I mentioned earlier, the Spring General Faculty Meeting is scheduled for next Tuesday at 3 o’clock. At that meeting, Dr. Gouge will present his State of the University address, the AUP academic freedom award will be announced and I will happily pass the gavel to Bob Locy to begin his term as Chair. Although I will provide more substantial comments at that time, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the members of the Senate for your strong leadership you’ve demonstrated during this past year. Your votes on significant issues have made a strong statement in support of the shared governance process at Auburn. And I very much appreciate the professionalism that you’ve demonstrated. We’ve accomplished a great deal this year, not the least of which was to refocus the Senate meetings on academic matters and ones that are of importance to the academic community. While we’ve disagreed on issues, all discussion and debates have been taken in a civil and respectful manner. I’ve been honored to serve this body and I’d like to sincerely thank you for that opportunity you’ve provided me as Chair.
The first order of business today is an action item approving the academic calendars that will be presented by Stan Reeves from the Calendars and Schedules Committee. Is Stan here? I didn’t see him walk in. He may be running late. In that case we’ll move to the second item, approval of the nominations for the Rules Committee which Ann Beth Presley will handle.
Ann Beth Presley (Secretary): At the last Senate meeting we had nominations of Tony Moss from Biological Sciences, Constance Hendricks from Nursing, and Laura Plexico from Communication Disorders. Are there any other nominees at this time? I’ll take nominations from the floor. Alright, the process will be that I and Sue will hand out the Ballots and we’ll collect them and then after the discussion on Climate Commitment we’ll announce the vote. Thank you.
Gwynedd Thomas (Polymer and Fiber Engineering): Gwynedd Thomas, Polymer and Fiber Engineering. There seems to be some confusion. Which of these candidates are we voting for? All of them? How many positions are open?
David Cicci (Chair): We had three positions and there were three nominations. You can also write in candidates, I believe. But we are required to have a paper ballot for Rules Committee elections.
Once you’ve voted, go ahead and pass your ballots to either the right or left and we will collect them.
As Ann Beth said, we will count those and announce the winners a little later. I see Stan has arrived. Stan, why don’t you come on up and talk about the Academic Calendar that you are proposing?
Stan Reeves (Electrical and Computer Engineering): Okay, we actually have three different things that we’re proposing. I guess two of them are part of the same package, and they’re all related. One of them, is we would like to propose reducing the exam schedule from six days back down to five days. And then we have two calendars that we would like to propose to you. One is the Academic Calendar for 2009-2010 and the other is the summer 2009 calendar.
So first of all, the issue of the exam schedule reduction back to five days; this is the basic idea that we would like to propose. And we would like to propose this beginning this coming fall. No particular exam schedule has been published yet, other than just the days that are blocked out. And so this is just the strategy. It would be the same exam periods that we’re using this spring; 8:00-10:30, 12:00-2:30, 4:00-6:30, and then 7:00-9:30. There will be no classes that share any exam times in the 8:00 slot or the 12:00 slot. There would be a few cases in which different classes would share the same exam time slot for the 4:00-6:30 time slot. In fact there would be two days where that would occur, but what we’re doing is pairing two very unpopular times that the chances of there being any conflict are pretty slim. A 7:00 AM class and a late afternoon class at the same time; and that would happen on two different days. And then basically the same kind of strategy for the 7:00-9:30 slot that would be assigned to relatively unpopular class times anyway because we’re trying to have people do their exams during the day time anyway. But that would- the first two days would be special exam periods, and then after that they would be reserved for the special exam periods and then after that two of the three remaining classes are evenings would have two class times sharing one exam period. But again, they would at two very unpopular times like a 5:00 and a 7:00 evening class period; so it’s unlikely that people would have both of those at the same time. So that’s the gist of it. There should have been a handout on the back to give you an example, a specific example of how we would see that working out in fall of 2008. But the proposal is really just about this strategy, this overall picture, of doing five day exams rather than six day exams. Any questions?
David Cicci (Chair): We need to vote on all three issues, the first being this change to the final exam schedule. Since it came from a Senate Committee we do not need a second. Is there any discussion of the motion to approve a modified final exam schedule? No one? All those in favor of approving the exam schedule that’s been proposed, respond by saying Aye. Opposed; Nay. Seeing none, motion passes.
Stan Reeves (Computer and Electrical Engineering): So I take it you don’t like Saturday exams? Okay, this is our proposal for spring of 2009-2010. It’s actually a pretty simple calendar. It begins on a Monday and goes through essentially complete weeks except for Labor Day and it ends on a Monday to make up for that one Monday that’s missed. So as a result you end up with an even number of days for every day of the week; which works out very nicely. There’s a full week break for Thanksgiving. Classes end on the seventh, which is a Monday like I said. You have one reading day and in light of what we were hoping would be your approval of a five day exam period, we have a five day exam period built into this for fall of 2009. So it would go Wednesday through Friday and then Monday and Tuesday. And then Commencement would be on the Friday, the 18th of December. So that’s what Fall looks like. Spring looks essentially the same. It’s the exact same pattern. It starts on a Monday, ends on a Monday. There’s Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday on a Monday so that skips everything one day. But since you end on a Monday, you end with 15 class days on each of the days of the week. There was a typo, there was a typo on my typo, but I think I finally got that corrected on this overhead. The final exam period would be Wednesday to Friday and Monday to Tuesday. Two days time in between and then Commencement would be on Friday May 14th, so the hand out is wrong. It shouldn’t be Saturday. It should be Friday, Friday May 14th. So again it should be kind of exactly the same pattern that Fall follows, which makes it kind of easy to keep up with. So are there any questions about that?
David Cicci (Chair): Okay, again we do not need a second. All those in favor of approving this proposed Academic calendar respond by saying Aye. Opposed; Nay. Motion passes.
Stan Reeves (Computer and Electrical Engineering): I’ve been told by my predecessors that being Chair of the Calendar Committee was more exciting than this. Okay, now let’s look at summer. Summer’s a little more complicated than Fall and Spring, just because you’ve got mini-mesters and full term and then you also have an extended term in there. So this is what the summer semester would look like. Classes would begin on Thursday May 21st. There are actually two holidays, which makes it a little more challenging to get everything right and to even everything out. And so we’re not able to do that with this particular calendar for the summer. Hopefully it’s not as big a deal though because in the summer time there’s more likely to be five day classes anyway. So, we have to build in a day for no classes on one day, that is June 26th, that is a Friday, so that we don’t conflict with exam times for the mini semester term one. So that’s what that is about, to just keep from conflicting with the rooms and the people that are taking exams for the first mini term. And then classes end on August 3rd. We would have three days of exams for that full term and then Commencement would be on that next Monday. So, then the first mini semester looks like this. You start on the same day as the full term. You have one holiday, the Memorial Day holiday. Classes would end on Thursday June 25th, and I have a little asterisk here. And the purpose of this, is to do a little experiment which we think might provide us some flexibility in the future, another tool that the Calendar and Schedules Committee can use to try to even out the number of classes on each day of the week. So the idea is that, in this summer term, mini term, that is probably not going to affect a huge number of people, what we’d like to try is running that last day of classes which is a Thursday as though it were a Monday. So Thursday June 25th would meet on a Monday schedule. By doing it that way, we actually even out the entire schedule. So there are, in effect, five Mondays, five Tuesdays, five Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. If you don’t do it this way, you end up with four Mondays and six Thursdays in this mini term. So we’ve debated over whether this is too confusing, or whether this is something that would be a useful tool for us. Other schools do it, but still there is some issue of communicating this. We thought we would like to try this. It doesn’t really affect the schedule per say if we don’t do it that way, we can still just do four, five, five, six, five and still follow the same schedule. Then the mini semester one, there’s an extended version of mini semester one for six week classes. And there are very few classes that meet on this term. The last data that I got was that there was only one scheduled for this coming summer, that way. It’s actually something that we would like to explore trying to eliminate. If you have a vested interest in keeping this, I’d like to hear that later, maybe by email or online somehow. We’d like to know whether we really need to keep this or not. This is very difficult to work this in, with these other terms that are going on simultaneously all at the same time. So you have to start earlier, so we start on May 18th. And you have to end a little later. And the other strategy that we’re using to shoe horn this six week term in and do it before the mini term two starts is to have one day of Saturday classes. And of course, it would be up to the instructors to whether to use that or not, but it would be there on the schedule if they feel like that’s necessary. So this one we’re not able to even out exactly, but you get six days for every day but Monday and Friday which are five and seven. Then there is mini term two. That one begins on June 29th. We have an Independence Day holiday in the middle of that and then classes end on the third, which is the same day classes end for the full term. Final exam period is that whole term because we have that much flexibility for that. And then of course, the Commencement is on that Monday following that. And that one works out evenly. With five classes for each day of the week. So it’s a little more complicated that the others. Are there any questions about that?
David Cicci (Chair): Okay then. Again, does not need a second. Any discussion on this motion?
Rik Blumenthal (Chemistry and Biochemistry): Rik Blumenthal, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Senator. I’m just having a little trouble looking at the count here. I’m wondering if maybe there’s just a mistake down at the bottom. You’ve got the same number on the full summer semester. You’ve got the same number of Thursdays and Fridays written down, but we miss-We start on a Thursday, so that first week we get a Thursday and a Friday. We then lose one Friday for the final exams of mini-mester one and then we end on a Monday so we never make up that one missing Friday. So it seems to me there should be one less Friday than Thursdays. I don’t have a calendar in front of me to count which ones might be wrong or which one might be right. It seems like those two can’t be consistent.
Stan Reeves (Electrical and Computer Engineering): Right, so it looks like maybe there’s one more Monday and one less Friday than what we’re showing. Is that what you’re saying?
Rik Blumenthal (Chemistry and Biochemistry): It looks like there’s one less Friday than what you’re showing. I’m not sure if there’s one more Monday. I’m concerned with the numbers.
Stan Reeves (Electrical and Computer Engineering): That may be true. It looks like you may be right.
David Cicci (Chair: Any other comments? Okay, all those in favor of approving this proposed calendar, respond by saying Aye. Opposed; Nay. Motion passes. Thank you.
At the February meeting, as an information item we discussed the Climate Commitment Resolution. Claire Crutchley and Chris McNulty are here to present the resolution as an action item for this meeting. I’d like to invite you down to do that.
Claire Crutchley (Finance): Good afternoon. I’m Claire Crutchley from the Department of Finance. And Christopher McNulty and I are presenting this resolution as David said. There are hand outs in the back, and I don’t know if you received them. There’s one that’s a little sheet with three FAQ’s. And there’s another one that has the President’s Commitment to Climate Change. And both of these hand outs are really just to give you some information. The one with the American College and University President’s Climate Commitment goes over a little bit of what I’m going over, although probably a little better than what I will do it. So if you want to you can read that, or you can listen to what I’m saying. What we wanted to do is not take a lot of time, but just address some of the concerns that were brought up last time. We were reluctant to say what would happen. This is the President’s Climate Change Commitment. So we were reluctant to say how the President would go forward with this commitment. So we didn’t talk about Institutional structure or cost or anything because we’re not sure. So, hopefully President Gouge does not mind that we’re going to say how it might be done that will not cost a lot of money. But I’m not telling you that it will be done this way, because that’s not our-you know, it’s not up to us how it would be enforced. So that’s really all I’m going to talk about. So hopefully you understand that. We can’t do that. We’re not also, Christopher and I, are not going to address the whole climate change argument. If you want to there are people in the audience who are scientists who can address that. In fact, the Biology department has written a letter. I’m sorry, members of the Biology department have written a letter and signed it. Not every one of them, but quite a few. So if you want to debate climate change, that’s not up to Christopher or I. That’s not our field.
So first, I’m just going to go through what is the commitment. If Dr. Gouge signs this commitment, what are we saying we have to do. Well, the first thing within two months, we have to establish an Institutional structure. And I think this maybe caused some anxiety with some people. We already have an Institutional structure that could be used, again I’m not saying it will be used; and that’s the Sustainability Initiative. With the Director of Lindy Biggs, and Matt Williams is the Program Director. So we have that structure if we want to use it to go forward with this Climate Change Commitment. So we have this already. They are staff people. We don’t have to hire anybody. They are already there on campus.
Secondly, within one year, we need to begin an emissions inventory. Well, it turns out this has already been started. Matt Williams has started this. Auburn has an Energy Manager, Ken Martin. He’s already set up a website to track energy usage per building across campus. This is on the web, so we are already well on our way to do this. And at the President’s Climate Change Commitment website, there is free software that you can use to manage. So all this is being done or at least started, and can be done without a lot of extra cost, or even any extra cost as far as I know. People obviously would be doing different things than they’re doing now. But it’s not hiring new people.
Within two years, come up with a plan. Now this is what will be new, because we don’t have a plan. Come up with a plan as to how to address a change. And there are several things we’ll have to do. And this could be a place, and again I’m not saying it will be because it’s up to Dr. Gouge, but Faculty, Students, and Staff could all give input as to what could be done. And once we have our energy audit so we know what buildings are doing, we could come up with creative ideas to make a plan to reduce energy usage. So this could be a place, where if you’re interested, you could give input if Dr. Gouge says it’s okay. That’s up to him, again. But the plan does not say that within the next year, we’re not going to emit any carbon. It does not say that. The University of California systems, their goals go out to 2050. So we will plan, make a plan, for how we will reduce emissions. So this is not something we’re committing to. Oh, we’ve got to do it right now. We’ve got to spend millions of dollars right now. That’s not what the plan would be. I think this; we will create our own plan and our own deadlines.
Then what we need to do now, while we’re doing the plan, is implement at least two of seven tangible actions. And actually on this sheet it’s better than my graph. There’s that list under number two, if you have that list. And the stars are what we’re already doing. We’re already encouraging the use and access of public transportation. We’re also already participating in a waste minimization program. I think we’re looking at building our buildings to LEET’s specification or at least exploring that option. So we were already doing two of those things. So that’s our commitment. We have to do at least two. We’re already doing those two. And we can do more. Okay?
So, and then we have to make our reports publicly available and just keep track of it. And again, that could be done in the Sustainability Initiative office. So those are the requirements of the President’s Climate Change Commitment. It’s not a contract that we have to do anything by a certain date. Auburn comes up with its own plan as to how to address these issues. So given we’re already doing it, the question from me is well why even do it? Why go forward with it if we’re already doing it? What is it about doing this? I am a Finance Professor. So I always look at things from a values point of view. And I was surprised at the comments last month; maybe I shouldn’t have been, because every time I pick up a Business periodical it talks about businesses doing things to lower their energy usage. You can’t find, I couldn’t pick up a Wall Street Journal or a Business Weekly that did not talk about businesses doing this. I just assumed that everyone knew that that’s what people are doing. Why do businesses, why is Wal-Mart, Google, Pepsi Co., why are they so into Sustainability? Well, maybe they are out to save the world but my guess, my cynical guess, is that they’re out there because that’s going to save them money and add value to their company. So, why should we do it? Because that’s the right thing to do and it’s going to lower our costs. Right? And that’s where I come from. I do finance and anyway, that’s my perspective. And also, last week, and I wasn’t able to see the teleconference, and unfortunately we thought I was going to be able to see it because they were going to have it, but there was the teleconference from schools that are doing the President’s Climate Change Commitment, and according to the slides and kind of second hand information, one person was Ed Poppel, the Vice President of Business Affairs at University Florida. And he said that these energy goals, these reduction goals, were dovetailing with cost cutting and energy efficiency and life cycle costs. And he said, we’re taking the same money, but we’re spending it more wisely. So instead of spending money on energy that is going into the air and polluting the air we’re spending money on energy reducing modifications. So they’re not spending more money, they’re just spending their money more wisely according to Ed Poppel. Also, this was a quote from the conference:
“Ten Campuses at the University of California system saved more than five million dollars a year on energy efficiency.”
Okay, so these campuses are not doing it and spending a lot of money. They are doing it and saving a lot of money by planning for the future. It has been suggested, perhaps, that it would be fiscally irresponsible for Auburn to sign this commitment. I suggest it’s the exact opposite. It would be fiscally irresponsible for Auburn University not to address climate change now. Not to address the fact that energy prices are going up every year, not to plan for the future, when it’s going to cost more and more to keep our buildings going. Auburn University spent 16 million dollars on utilities in 2006. That’s only going to increase, unless we do something about it.
So, finally, even if we do, do something about it. We don’t have to sign this commitment to do something about it. Why sign? And that’s really the question that I think all of you should think about. Do we want the publicity? Do we want to be known as someone who cares about climate change? Do we want to be known as someone who’s making a commitment to reduce energy usage and help the environment? Does Auburn want to be known for that? And I think that’s up to you, the Princeton Review, one of our rating agencies, looks and sees whether the President’s Climate Change has been signed. So that’s one institution that looks at it. I don’t think if we signed, we can really consider ourselves a leader, because as of yesterday 498 other Universities have signed that Climate Change Commitment. So we probably can’t say we’re a leader in sustainability action. But it turns out, we would actually be the first on the list, whether that matters to you or not, because it’s listed by state. Birmingham Southern right now is top. If Auburn goes on, they’ll be at the top of the list. So if any faculty or student would get on and see who’s signed the Climate Change Commitment, Auburn would be right at the top. So the question, for you, if you want to endorse this, and Dr. Gouge can sign this agreement or not no matter what we do; but if you want us to do this, is do you want to attract faculty and students who think this is a good policy; who think that a commitment to climate change is a good thing to do. And that is what you have to decide before you decide whether you want to sign it or not.
Again, this is the resolution. Really, the main part is the last part. Therefore, and we almost wrote it as a one sentence resolution, but anyway.
“Therefore, be it resolved that Auburn University Senate endorses the adoption of the American College and University President’s Climate Commitment.”
So, do we as senators endorse the signing of the Climate Change Commitment? And I guess I’m supposed to, I move to introduce the resolution.
David Cicci (Chair): Is there a second on this motion?
Speaker Unknown: I second.
David Cicci (Chair): I’d like to open the floor for discussion, since we have a second, of the approval of the motion for this resolution.
Rik Blumenthal (Chemistry and Biochemistry): Rik Blumenthal, Senator, Chemistry and Biochemistry. There are several reasons that I proposed and wish to introduce the alternate resolution that you were all sent by email. Thank you, David, for doing that. And there are copies of that in the back.
The first of these is that the President’s Climate Change has language in it that technically, and again I don’t want to argue whether climate change is human controlled or not, I believe that right now scientifically it’s not been determined; I do not buy this argument of consensus; I believe that we don’t know; yes, it might be human driven; no, it might not be; I do not believe that the President should be signing a document that states that it is human driven. A document that states that we need to cut our-recognize the need to reduce global emission of green house gases by 80% by mid century at the latest in order to avert the worst impacts of global warming and to reestablish the more stable climate conditions that made human progress over the last ten thousand years possible.’ I think that’s an alarmist, extremist, and scientifically unfounded statement. Now I’d like to address the issue before the word gets bended around a lot, of consensus.
In the late 1800’s a brash young scientist named Ludwig Boltzmann introduced his idea that air was composed of molecules. And these molecules bounced around off of each other and off the walls of the container. And all the properties of air were due to molecules. Well the consensus of scientists at the time, led by a great scientist in his own right, said that air was a continuous fluid. Ludwig Boltzmann was not allowed to publish his research results because the consensus of scientists was that air is a continuous fluid and he was ‘off his rocker’. Well, it turns out Ludwig Boltzmann was right. The consensus of scientists at the time was wrong. I don’t think that science should ever be done by consensus. I don’t think a 55-45 vote of scientists should decide what is true. I think further experimentation and observation should decide what is true. So, before we get too far into that. I don’t want to argue the issue. I mean my opinion as a scientist, I have done modeling studies, I have published modeling studies, and I do not believe that the modeling studies of climate are complete enough and I can discuss the details with anybody, that they can make a confident statement as to what will happen nevertheless what is the driving force in that model. And now, it was mentioned that the video teleconference and there was a slide on it. At the video teleconference, I went to that teleconference, okay? There were ten of us at that meeting, at that teleconference; I see most of us around here. All people all relatively active in this, all faculty, so I recalled words used before that students were excited about this. There were no students at the video teleconference. I, however, could not attend the regular seminars Tuesday. Those were very interesting talks that you had and I appreciate them being on campus. I wish I could have gone, but I had a class that conflicted. Now, in the teleconference, the first thing that we were handed was our little sheet. And as you mentioned, institutional structure is the first thing we need to develop. I don’t support developing more than we have. I support what we have. I think that the Sustainability Initiative as structured is a good idea. And I support that. And important question that was raised, and it was at the end and it was one of the questions that was typed into the presenters was ‘Ultimately, how do you think you are going to be able to finance and make the number work out to get to zero carbon footprint?’ which is part of the commitment. One of them responded, very firmly, that ‘I have faith that science will develop answers that will allow us to achieve that goal.’ Well, I have no such faith, and I’m a scientist. Science will develop what’s possible. And it will in fact, develop a subset of what’s possible and what we think of that’s possible. So, right now, none of them could respond, and none of them did respond, that they actually had a plan that met the answer.
Now, there was an issue of, and there were no direct answers to that. There was an issue with carbon offsets. And this is where I feel we start to tread into treacherous ground when we talk about such a commitment. If we sign to a commitment, and the President signs and we say that 15 years from now we’re going to achieve this small a footprint, 30% of what we do now or something on that order; how are we going to do that? Well, University of Florida came up with an interesting proposal and an interesting way. They offset their Bowl Game last year, by setting aside ten thousand acres of forest land not to be touched for ten years. So ten years of those ten thousand acres calculated to them the carbon cost of the Bowl Game. Well, I think we intend to go to a Bowl Game every year. So if we do the similar thing that means at any one moment there’s one hundred thousand acres of forest land owned by Auburn which cannot be used by Auburn University Forestry Department if they decide how they want to use it, and if challenged in court might actually even be limited in whether the Trustees could sell it if we hit a financial exigency. And we needed to sell land to keep the University going. Now, worse, we don’t just have a Bowl Game we go to every year. Florida mentioned that. We actually have eight football games that bring eighty thousand people to this campus every year. So now we’re talking a million acres! I’m sure one of the Forestry Professors could tell me if that’s a lot of acres, but it sounds like a lot to me. A million acres set aside that we have committed to a purpose. If it became necessary for the University to use that for another purpose, lets say sell it, to keep the University going; any one person in my opinion, and Lee Armstrong could comment on this, any one person could go to a judge and say ‘They committed to this. I want an injunction prohibiting the Trustees from selling this land.’ All they need to do is find the right judge, and then Auburn University no longer controls its resources.
What do I oppose? Do I oppose making our buildings more efficient? Absolutely not. Do I oppose new buildings having solar cells on the top to have additional power or get some of their power directly from the sun? Absolutely not. If I, right now, I’m re-roofing my house. If I had the money to buy the solar cells, I would run solar in my house. But I don’t have the money to lay out. I just don’t have that kind of cash. So, I support that. I support all the cost efficiency things that have been brought up. What I do not support is signing an official, legal, University name to a commitment which is open-ended. We do not know how we would achieve it. To achieve it, we have to rely on faith and I will leave faith to my friend Rich. He’s the professor who can address the faith issues. I’m a scientist; I want facts and a plan that will work and know now to the end. So for that reason, I have introduced an alternate proposal, an alternate motion. It’s a substitute motion. And in this substitute motion, I recognize that climate change, the University recognizes that climate change can affect the quality of life both inside and outside the State of Alabama, that Auburn University is particularly well suited to address these issues, that Auburn University is already in the process of addressing these issues, but then I state that Auburn University, as a land grant University, has a fiduciary responsibility to the State of Alabama to spend its resources wisely and to the ends to which they were intended. Last meeting, there was discussion of buying carbon offsets. My picture that immediately popped into my head was the face or the body of a State Legislator in the State of Alabama when he was told money he gave to Auburn University was used to buy carbon offsets from some company and his head popping off. I think that would be outrageous to use funds that way. And then, finally, I state that Auburn University Senate endorses the adoption of the goals of the American Colleges and Universities President’s Climate Commitment. So we would, with this amendment, be saying that we want to achieve these goals; but then, a statement, where they are consistent with a responsible administration of a Land Grant University. And then, finally, the motion concludes by saying that the President should decline signatory endorsement of the commitment. The declination of signatory commitment is because I believe the way the legal system is in this country anything we sign to we could get held to. And if we don’t know how we’re going to get there, I think it’s a very bad businessman who signs something that might be a binding commitment, and you say it’s not binding, but all you need is one judge to make it binding once you’ve signed, and I believe that would be bad business and bad administration of a University to sign something like that. So I wanted to make this motion, to substitute for the one that was made previously.
David Cicci (Chair): Okay, the way I understand Robert’s rules, I need to ask for a second on the substitute motion.
Speaker Unknown: Second
David Cicci (Chair): Okay, having received that. The floor will be open for discussion of the substitute motion, the substitute resolution rather than the first original.
Richard Penaskovic (Immediate Past Chair): Richard Penaskovic, Immediate Past Chair. I’m glad my friend Rik has faith in me; but I think I have a different perspective and he may have a little less faith in me. Of course there will always be some uncertainty in understanding a complex system like the world’s climate. However, if the scientific community is divided in this issue, I’d like to take a conservative approach and say that the downside and effects of global warming are so devastating to the Planet Earth that we should do all in our power to burn less fossil fuels in hopes of reducing global warming. I make just a brief comment. I leave it to others who are more scientifically astute than I am. I’m out of my element in this, but this is what I really feel.
David Cicci (Chair): Okay, this is the alternate, substitute resolution.
Larry Crowley (Civil Engineering): Larry Crowley, Senator from Civil Engineering. It seems like we have two different issues on the table. One is whether we support sustainability and all those things. And I do, Claire. I think that’s a great idea. I’m fully behind it. I think as an owner agency we need to do everything in our power to conserve energy. But we have this other thing which is signing on to some one else’s program. I’m a little concerned about Auburn University endorsing all the things and how our name would be used as one of 400 or 500 signatures that would support the validity of this research. And I think it’s more appropriate for individual researchers to make stands on these rather than a University. So I support the alternative.
David Carter (History): David Carter, Senator from the Department of History. I’d just like to speak very briefly in opposition to the resolution. I do thank my colleague Rik for attending the Webcast. I had to leave that webcast early, but I was able to review the PowerPoint slides from it. As I understand it, this climate commitment in no way imposes a straight jacket on Auburn. I feel like it’s hard to believe that 498 other institutions would have signed onto this. Clearly, they like us have given this a great amount of thought. And for those of you who haven’t been able to review the website for the Climate Commitment, this is not a listing of institutions like Berkley or Reed College or whatever sort of image we might have of campuses that would sign on to this. This is Georgia Tech, Cornell if memory serves, Clemson, The University of Tennessee Knoxville, eight campuses of the University of North Carolina system, Birmingham Southern, again a number of community colleges. I think we would be positioning ourselves rather well in the ranks of a host of institutions. But again, I don’t see in the climate commitment any sort of fiscal straight jacket or otherwise. There’s a tremendous amount of flexibility in the implementation.
As to the issue of science by consensus, I think Dr. Blumenthal makes some excellent points in that regard. I would say, however, that often groups of people do make leaps that may be seen as leaps of faith. And as a historian I would points to moments in our past when our leaders and every day citizens suggested things that were dismissed as impossibilities or things that seemed like, perhaps we shouldn’t try that because we don’t know how it might turn out or what the consequences would be. And I would point to things like the moon shot. I would point to things like moments during war time when it seemed that situations were particularly adverse to success. And I don’t think simply because we don’t know what the future holds that that’s a valid reason not to attempt to plan for what might be some worse case scenarios. And there I would second what Rich Penaskovic said. To me, this is a sort of insurance policy. We always hope that things won’t turn out for the worst. But it never hurts to think about some ugly scenarios. And I think in this case, Auburn would simply be getting credit for something it’s already begun. And I commend those in the Sustainability Initiative and beyond who are working on these things. So as much as I’m entirely in sympathy with every element of this alternative resolution, I emphatically think that Auburn ought to become a signatory so that we do receive some credit for all the things we’re doing. And again I would at least suggest that the worst case scenarios about the fiscal implications of this for Auburn are not quite as ominous as my colleague would suggest. The carbon offset acreage do sound like some wildly implausible scenarios. I doubt we have a million acres of forest land that we’re willing to offset tailgating emissions from. But I would suggest probably some alternative scenarios that might allow us to reduce our emissions. And I would suggest that in the end, a lot of this is just about common sense and sustainability. And to me, would be a good thing for Auburn to lend its name to this initiative. Thanks.
Sharon Roberts (Biological Sciences, non-Senator-Substituting for Tony Moss): I’m Sharon Roberts. I’m substituting for our regular Senator from the Department of Biological Sciences. I have a letter from 24 of my faculty colleagues in the Department of Biological Sciences. And this letter was signed, as I said, by 24 of us and also 21 of our graduate students, post-docs and other employees of the department. And what I’d like to do is just read from the letter in support of Auburn becoming a signatory of the American Colleges and Universities President’s Climate Commitment rather than the alternate resolution that’s been proposed by my colleague in Chemistry. And what I’d like to, I’m not going to read the whole letter because I think given what’s been discussed, some of it is not really relevant today. But what I do think is relevant is that increasingly scientists, leaders in the American Association for Science and from the National Academies for Science have called upon scientists to take public leadership roles in raising awareness of the climate change. And our letter concludes that many of us whose research is already documenting the effect of climate change on the natural flora and fauna of Alabama have waited patiently for Auburn University to make a timely commitment to curbing climate change. Signing the President’s Climate Commitment, we hope, will simply be the first of many acts taken by Auburn University to raise awareness of the climate crisis and to build a model of appropriate response. And again, part of it, I think to us, is the appeal of taking a public stance; of joining with other institutions of higher education in providing leadership to our society, students of Auburn University, citizens of Alabama, and citizens of the United States.
Sorry, if anyone would like a copy of the full letter from my colleagues I have some extra copies.
Andy Wohrley (Library): Andy Wohrley, Senator from the Library. I was sitting here and listening to the speakers talk, and I realize that there were ten of us in the video conference and one threshold question that seems to have arisen at this meeting is the offset issue. How much is a carbon offset, and if you don’t set aside land yourself, who do you buy one from? I mean, does anyone know anything about that?
Matt Williams (Sustainability Initiative): My name is Matt Williams. I work with the Sustainability Initiative. In looking through the implementation guide for the Climate Commitment, they actually suggest that offsets are the absolute last resort. And at this point, I want to point out very quickly, that the commitment is only one year old and there are no Universities that currently have their full proposal out there because that’s within two years. That’s why there aren’t any plans out there that we’re looking at as models per say right now. As far as the carbon offsets, right now that’s still extremely volatile. Many Universities are doing the same thing and saying they want to do whatever they can before that even becomes into play. Right now, they can be purchased on the Chicago Climate Exchange. There are certain Universities that are looking at how to create offsets of their own. For example, weatherizing houses in the community and then claiming the carbon reduction offsets for their own. There’s lot of ideas out there for those things that actually don’t cost terribly much additional money. But the key point is that that is the absolute last resort within this plan.
Claire Crutchley (Finance): Claire Crutchley, Senator from Finance. I just want to say, Rik referred to the Climate Commitment as a plan. The Climate Commitment is a commitment to make a plan. So we are not signing onto a plan, we are committing that we will make a plan. So the carbon offset or whatever, we don’t have to do that. I just wanted to clarify that.
Bob Locy (Chair Elect): Bob Locy, Senate Chair Elect. I don’t think this is really a scientific debate. I think it’s a political debate. And whether or not there’s scientific evidence to support humanly caused global climate change I think is a separate issue to be debated probably likely in some other form on some other day. The fact that major institutions in the country support the idea that Global Climate change is caused by human activity only means that they’re making a political statement, not really a scientific statement. I agree with what Dr. Blumenthal said that scientific statements should be left to the scientists to determine and consensus is never a good thing in pursuing good science. That having been said, however, I’d like to point out something from my past that’s a political comment relative to this whole issue that deserves the consideration of the Senate I believe. In the 80’s, I lived in Salt Lake City. And those of you who are as old as I am, may recall that there was great flooding taking place in Salt Lake City for a couple years in the 80’s. In response to the flooding that was taking place the Utah State legislature in its infinite wisdom passed a legislation that the Great Salt Lake couldn’t rise above certain level, 25 feet above its steady level, whatever that was at the time as I recall. The Great Salt Lake never paid much attention to the Utah State Legislature and promptly went 25 or 30 feet above the highest level it said it could go to. And as a consequence of that, and because of the resolution they had signed on to controlling the level of the Great Salt Lake, they spent millions of dollars buying pumps to pump water over a mountain range so it could roll out into the salt flats and keep the level of the Great Salt Lake in place. The consequence was that the pumps never really did their jobs effectively and suddenly nature decided to reverse its course. It quit raining so much and the Great Salt Lake fell. But the pumps had almost no impact on it. Yet the Utah State Legislature expended millions of dollars to accomplish the goal of lowering the level of the Great Salt Lake. So, in absence of that, I think it’s an extremely good thing that human beings pursue whatever we can to do to sustain our planet and sustain ourselves through a period of global climate change, regardless of what’s causing it. However, I wonder whether we’re behaving like the Utah State Legislature by committing to something that’s essentially a political document that doesn’t necessarily weigh the consequences of what’s there. On the other hand, I think I’m probably going to abstain from the resolution because I can see both sides. I think there’s important human consensus behind this and I think it’s important that the Senate weigh in. I’d just like to point out that we could be pursuing a kind of a fool’s errand here too.
David Cicci (Chair): Are there any other comments? Okay, the motion being considered is the alternate resolution that Rik Blumenthal introduced. I’m going to call a question on this resolution. The way it works, as I understand it, is if the alternate resolution passes, the first resolution is defeated. If the alternate resolution is defeated, then we go back to the original resolution and reconsider that one. Okay, we’ll do a voice vote. All those in favor of the alternate resolution as presented? All those opposed. Any abstentions? The resolution fails. That brings us back to the original resolution, which has already been seconded. Is there any further discussion on the original resolution? Seeing none, I will call for the question on the original resolution. All those in favor of the original resolution respond by saying Aye. Opposed; Nay. Any abstentions? The ayes have it. The original resolution is passed. The matter is closed. Thank you.
We have one information item. Drew Clark from Institutional Research and Assessment will present and discuss the teaching effectiveness report.
Drew Clark (Institutional Research and Assessment): Thank you. I have only about five slides for you. But I hope you will join me, since I’m the last one to come to the microphone this afternoon in congratulating David Cicci in his service. (Applause)
Last spring this body approved and recommended for the Provost the adoption for a three year trial period of a new system of collecting information from students about the quality of instruction as they perceive it. The system has now successfully been implemented and I’m here to give you some preliminary results. You’ll recall that the old instrument that’s on hold right now was an eight question questionnaire. It’s been replaced by what’s called the Instructional Assessment System from the University of Washington which exists in 13 separate forms. In fall semester, our first of using it, 2840 separate course sections were surveyed. Can you advance the slide? All 13 different forms were used. Some of these were adapted for large classes, some for small seminars, some for lab, some for quiz sections, and some for specialized learning environments. We received about 6700 usable questionnaires and the estimated response rate from all students enrolled was about two thirds. These are computed, not from official University records but from the enrollment column on the instructor cover sheet. This gives me an occasion to prompt you to be sure to fill that in. We had a number of sections where the response rate was infinitely large because the enrollment allegedly was zero. Because the suite of instruments is adapted to different environments and learning situations it’s important they share four common questions. And in fact most of the forms share a few others, but these four questions are on all of the forms and taken together they form something like an estimate of course effectiveness from the point of view of the students that were taking them. And these were the four questions:
And here is the scale that was used for those four questions and a number of others on the survey. It’s a six point scale ranging from excellent at the top to very poor at the bottom. I’ve heard informally from some faculty, including my spouse, that the global ratings that she received under the new format seemed a little lowish to her by comparison. It’s important to remember that this is a six point scale, even though the top value is 5 as it was under the old scale. But the lowest score someone could receive under the old system was a 1. So if your overall scores seem a little low, remember that we’ve changed instruments and you just have to recalibrate to the new instrument. I’m not sure this is visible, but I would array it for you just to give you a sense of interpreting the next slide. The columns in this slide show you the four common items. The course as a whole was, the course content was, the instructors contribution was, and the instructor’s effectiveness was. And these are hypothetically frequencies for a class and if you read down the columns you see how many students responded with each of those values for that question. If you read across, you get a summary for that level of evaluation for that class. I call your attention to the right hand most column, which is the combination or aggregate of these four questions combined. It’s simply the sums of the others that you’re looking at. And this aggregate is used in the IAS system, though in your own teaching you may prefer to attend to other data. But in the system this aggregate is used as sort of a global indicator of course effectiveness as students see it. And you’ll see that in this case, hypothetical case, the median score for this instructor for the four quality items combine was a five. That make sense? That’s very good. A question we didn’t know the answer to until we adopted this system is, is that actually what the facts are? Is that what we find when we ask students? One good feature of the IAS system is it does enable us to take de-identified institutional snapshots of how it’s going. I’m going to share some general results from fall with you. And this is my last slide.
Of the over 2800 sections surveyed in the fall, 1390 had a median course effectiveness score, that lower right hand number on the previous chart, of at least a 4.0 on this scale, or very good. Another 1400 or so had a large middle range of scores, between a 1 and a 4. And only 7 course section had a median rating of 1.0 or lower. The average of that global effectiveness for all 2840 sections evaluated in fall semester, now this is lumping together lower division, upper division, first professional, graduate, just everything, lab sections with lecture sections. The campus average for that was 3.9, which is roughly a very good rating from our students. So, Dr. Gouge, the answer to your question that I’ve been dreading you might ask me, I fantasize that Dr. Gouge might walk in and say “Well Dr. Clark, on the whole, how satisfied are Auburn students with the quality of instruction they’re receiving?” We haven’t been able to answer that question, but at least in fall semester a very accurate answer to that question, is that they think the quality of instruction they’ve received, course content, course effectiveness all combined, is approximately very good. The implementation of this has not been without some bumps, you may be aware of some bumps and needs in your area, a lot of people at the department level especially, clerical staff have done a lot to make sure that this got implemented. It is not without cost, we have held cost to departments for the forms at the same level that they were last year. And the Provost also as part of your recommendation has eaten the rest of the costs. So, I’ll be happy to field questions, but that’s about all that I know. Thank you, David.
James Goldstein (English): James Goldstein, Senator from English. I noticed that on the forms they don’t crunch the numbers for the standard deviation. Although I know most modern systems do that. Is that something that we do have available, or is that just outside the reach of this particular system?
Drew Clark (Institutional Research and Assessment): The system as recommended by the Teaching Effectiveness Committee includes some standard reports. Each instructor gets a report in detail on the frequencies for her or his section, and the Department Head gets a copy of the same report. The summary reports that we purchase with the system tend to emphasize median scores and don’t give a lot of scatter information around them. But the departmental summaries that will be generated once each year at the close of summer term will include some averages and standard deviation for some odd items. Furthermore, we receive a comprehensive database of responses at the item level for each section from which we can compute just about any descriptive statistics you’d like, given resource constraints. Now, it’s important you understand that my office works with de-identified data. It is one cross walk we have to be able to use in order to give department heads a term by term summary, which we have given them, for their use in conducting annual evaluations. But in terms of these analyses we’re working with section level data, de-identified by instructor. I hope that’s responsive James.
David Cicci (Chair): Any other questions? Thank you Drew. We have election results for the Rules Committee.
Ann Beth Presley (Secretary): Okay, by a majority, Constance Hendricks, Anthony Moss, and Laura Plexico have been voted onto the Rules Committee. They’re terms will start in August and Sue Barry will be contacting them at that time. Thank you.
David Cicci (Chair): Is there any unfinished business? Seeing none, is there any new business. Seeing none, please don’t forget to vote for Secretary-Elect and Chair-Elect. And the General Faculty meeting will be next Tuesday at 3:00 PM. We are adjourned. Thank you.