March 9, 2010
General Faculty Meeting Transcription

Kathryn Flynn, chair: I’d like to call the meeting to order. Welcome everybody to the spring General Faculty Meeting. We have two items to take care of before we move into the gist of the meeting. First is approval of the minutes from the October 13, 2009 General Faculty Meeting. So at this time I’d like to ask if anybody has any corrections or changes to those minutes? Hearing none the minutes stand approved as written. I forgot to mention that these are posted on the Senate Web site, a link has been distributed I think to all faculty so if you have any need to refer to them later, you can look there on the Senate Web site.

We had a Special Called Faculty Meeting on February 16,  of this year and so at this time I’m going to ask if there are any changes or additions to the minutes of February 16? Hearing none the minutes stand approved as written.

I’d like to remind everybody as we move into the body of the agenda that if you have any comments or questions that you’d like to make we have microphones on either side of the room and we’d appreciate it if you would address questions or comments at the microphones. We do record and provide a transcript of the meetings online. If you would provide you name and the unit that you represent that would be helpful to Laura Kloberg, who is our transcriptionist. At this time I’d like to invite Dr. Gogue forward to give the State of the University Address.

Dr. Gogue, president: I am delighted to be with you today. I want to talk to you about several things. First of all I want to talk to you a little bit about the budget, then I want talk to you a little bit about the value of the University Senate. I know we have people here who are not senators, but I’d like to talk to you a little bit about the importance of the Senate, I’d thirdly like to give you a few metrics that talk about the health of Auburn University, and then forthly, there was a handout when you came in that sort of gave the 30 plus items of the Strategic Plan, several of those I want to comment on.

Let me start and mention the budget. When we began our new fiscal year October 1 we were about $75 Million dollars short in ongoing money. Within the first day or two of the new fiscal year the governor added 9% proration to those current numbers, so that means that we’re at about $96 Million short if you will in ongoing revenue as we go into this year. Over the past two years the numbers are about $175 Million dollars in terms of losses. But we spent a lot of time following is the tax money that goes into the educational trust fund. So in October that number was roughly 6% down from the previous year, in November it was down about 6%, December it was up 13.1% so it showed a nice increase. January it’s down about 3%, February it’s down about 3%, Don Large views that as very bad news, I view that as very good news. It’s been going at 6% down now we’re just dropping at 3% down, so it’s getting better. The national numbers call for about a 3% growth nationally. When we look at it, Alabama is a state that typically will go into a recession slower than the nation, but it also comes out of it a bit slower than the nation and so we are following it carefully. I think probably all of you have seen in the last few days what’s going on in some of our surrounding states and some of the context within which the cuts are being made really throughout higher education nationwide. We’re seeing massive reduction in student numbers in certain states, some states are going through lots of furloughs and a total freeze on everything within the institution. Most recent numbers on the University of Georgia that we saw was that they were cut 1,500 people, 500 faculty and about 1,000 staff; Georgia Tech roughly 500 that they will cut as a part of their changes. Those are major numbers, they are substantial numbers and obviously get our attention. I would say to you that I appreciate greatly what Auburn faculty and staff are doing. Some of you are teaching more credit hours, some of you have more student credit hours within your classes. You’re doing everything that you know to do to try to get us through this particular recession.

As I’ve shared to you, it seems like in the fall and last spring, Auburn’s goal in this recession is that we know we have to participate, but we really don’t want to be leaders in this recession, and so at least at this point we’re still not leaders, we look at the numbers throughout, but Don does a great job, your budget people within you colleges do a great job, but really it comes back to you individually and doing a little bit more than perhaps than maybe you would be expected to do. But I want to say how much I appreciate what all of you do to try to make it work during a very tough budget situation. This is the greatest cuts in the history of Auburn University. It’s the greatest downturn that we’ve seen, certainly maybe since the great recession. Percentage wise cuts and actual dollar losses it’s by far the greatest. [6:09]

I want to mention the value of the Senate. This year there’ve been 18 resolutions, items that had passed the Senate that have gone to the Provost and have come to me for approval. We have approved 17 of the 18. When I came here, I made a comment, I don’t ever remember not approving a resolution that came through the Senate. The one that’s being held has been referred back to the Senate. It is the one that deals with Lecturers/Senior Lecturers. My sense at the meeting was that there was good discussion, but some felt that even though it was voted and approved by the Senate, some felt that we, Auburn, don’t want to put a second class label on certain types of individuals within this institution. I know that was not the intent by those who thought up and looked at the senior lecturer, but it’s important for us to spend some more time and think and hope that the Senate will look at it again. The AAUP folks came to us and said please think about it a little bit more, and we did. So of the 18, 17 have been approved and I encourage  faculty that may be here today that are not a part of the Senate to sometime during your Auburn career to participate and be involved in that form of shared governance. It’s one of the most important aspects of a major mature university, it has meaning, it has value and I know that colleagues sometimes say oh your doing that and that doesn’t mean anything or whatever, it means an awful lot to us. I want to thank those of you that are on the Senate, but also want to thank those of you who are here today that may not be a part of the Senate, but get your people involved. It is important.

Let me show you a few metrics about Auburn University. This is one peer group and Drew Clark provided the data for me. I ask and this to me is not the greatest peer group in the world, but in this part of the world this is what everybody asks me about; “How do we compare in the SEC?” I prefer the land grants without medical schools, is a more realistic peer group. When you think of the Southeast Conference this will include (there are 12 schools) 11 of them. We do not use any of the data for Vanderbilt and I would have to tell you that on the academic types of metrics that are looked at, Vanderbilt would probably score number one on most of them. [8:52] So they would do much higher than we perhaps do or any of the other schools, but as a private institution we take it out of our data set. I’m comparing against the 10 other if you will, public institutions.

So I picked about 20 metrics that are commonly used, how do we do relative to our peers in the Southeast Conference? The ones that we rank in the top third of the Conference; undergraduate reputation (I don’t recall the exact numbers but I think we’re 3 among all the schools in the Conference) is strong, the value that we added, and this relates in part to some of the studies Drew’s done also shows that there truly is a great deal of value added during the time that a student is at Auburn University. So reputation’s pretty good, value added, faulty salaries, number of faculty with terminal degrees is very high. That’s a great number. As a part of that Lecturer/Senior Lecturer discussion that was had, it’s important to remember that about 70% of our student credit hours are taught by tenured or tenure-track faculty. Which is a marvelous number. Our peers, about 30% of their student credit hours are taught by tenured or tenure-track individuals, so it’s a phenomenal number, it’s something we’re very proud of, we’ve got to figure out a way to market that better. We’ve got to make sure that when people come here there’s a high probability that it will be a faculty member in that classroom.

First year retention rates, we actually do well in the first year retention rates. Top third. Percent of Alumni giving I believe we rank number one in all of the schools in that particular area. So alumni have been very supportive. I will mention that I have an article that says the giving to universities is at it’s lowest point in 50 years. So there have been some dramatic shifts, dramatic changes. Now I would say your alumni and your development folks, Auburn was actually up 10% for the year that ended, so those are some phenomenal numbers in a time that is pretty tough out there.

The final one is the amount of aid that is given. Auburn ranks very high in the number of dollars we give a specific student, but the number of students that actually receive aid we will rank lower than most schools. So we give strong scholarships that have high dollar value, but we don’t give as many as other institutions. So those are the things that we tend to stand out in the top third of this Conference, what are some of the things that we are in the middle?

Middle third, class size, under 50 we rank pretty decent, we’re in the middle in that particular area. Top ten percent of high school students, our ACTs we’re often criticized were raising the ACTs beyond the level that anybody can get in, just keep in mind we’re still in the middle of the pack in terms of where they are today. [12:09] Six-year graduation rates there’s been a little progress, in fact I should point out in all of the factors in the last couple of years you’ve not gone backwards in any of the metrics and in many of them 4 or 5 of them you’ve moved from the bottom half to the mid half or from the mid half to the top half, so there’s been some movement in the right direction. Graduation rates are still the prime thing for Auburn to change it’s culture and change it’s appearance and even further improve it’s reputation. We’re in the 60 plus percent graduation rate. Schools that are of our ilk, that will get that reputation number where we have it, they will be in the upper 70s low 80% in their graduation rate number so that’s an area that we have to constantly work on.

Faculty/student ratio in the middle, doctorates awarded, annual private giving, state appropriation, in the middle, total price and that’s both for resident students and non-residents, we’re in the middle. I think all of you know there is a Board policy that our tuition should not exceed the midpoint of these schools. The last time we looked the tuition for inside state students is about 95% of the midpoint roughly, out-of-state students 85–89%, in the upper 80s in terms of their rates.

What are the areas where we score in the bottom? We don’t have near as many classes smaller than 20 than our colleagues. Drew and a group has done some very nice research it’s supposed to be released later on, but I think as I recall, some of you guys help me if I miss state it, but we finally that there is a greater advantage to add students to that class, it’s probably 80 or 90 students, and to reduce the number when there are like 25 to get them under 20, not just for this metric but in terms of learning and pedagogy, so some work coming out in that. We don’t do as well and supposedly all this data is calculated in the same way, I’ve heard that some schools will do independent studies and they count every one of those as a separate class and that changes you dimension on those numbers. I don’t know if that’s accurate. Scientific and scholarly citations we rank in the lower third of the Southeast Conference. So in the research work that we do it is not cited as often as we’d like. Total research expenditures, but again in fairness we are moving up in those numbers. [14:56] Number of post-doctoral appointments, we rank low in that category, endowment assets we’re low, and draw rates as I mentioned to you before really just refers to if you offer admission to 100 students, how many accept that call and come to Auburn University. A good number for a state university like ours would be 45–48% of the kids that you offer admission to actually come. Our numbers are in the 30s. Part of that is based on scholarships, I’m sure, variety of different issues when you look at out of state tuition you have fairly high numbers that apply and suddenly they get an in-state offer that is considerably cheaper and probably has something to do with financial aspects.

I don’t know if you can read this? I can’t, but I’ve got it written down up here. I thought I might on the strategic plan, I wanted share with you just a couple of things that we’ve been able to do. You remember we had a large process, we spent about 6 months trying to decide on a number of items, some of them not particularly earth-shattering, but ideas, things that would make the institution better. I think we did a good job in having as involved a process as possible. We had 65. We knew we couldn’t tackle 65 things at the same time, so we narrowed that list to about 35 in the first year. We got about a dozen of them done. I just wanted to call your attention to a few that we got. Remember we had the ACT Writing requirement for all entering freshman, we worried about exceptions and I was pleased to see that only less than a percent actually did they waive that writing requirement for some reason. The general education review was completed and I particularly thank the Senate who was very much involved as well as a number of other faculty. I heard questions when it was discussed, I don’t ever go to the microphone, but the questions (some) were, “Why do we need to change?” and I want to make sure you understand, I’m not necessarily saying that you need to change, I’m only saying that you need to review it and you need to be comfortable with what you are doing is current and so, they’ve done a great job in terms of the review of general education.

Focus on international skills and abilities, moving forward in that area. Want to make sure each college had study abroad opportunities. My goal was for each department, but I was convinced by the Provost and others, that we should probably say each college first, but at some point each department. We wanted to make sure that we establish the Research Foundation, which allows great flexibility in the way we manage research projects. It allows you tremendous degrees of freedom compared to within the state system. We wanted to make sure that we begin to grow that number of prestigious faculty that are a part of either the national academy of sciences, the national academy of engineers are the other major international academies. We were able to hire two in the last year and so those were the first two ever hired at a university in the state of Alabama.

I always caution, I don’t talk about it much, we were at the SEC Presidents meeting last week and it’s important to remember that Perdue University has more members in the national academy than all schools in the Southeast Conference. Wisconsin would have more than all schools in our conference, so beginning to look at the importance of very prestigious, very important identified individuals that have those credentials. The goal is not to just go out and hire those kinds of people. The goal is to begin to get a critical mass where our own people are nominated and selected. I don’t want to imply that it’s just done through a political process, but those that are members have to know and know well they are colleagues before they actually will nominate them and vote for them. To me that’s an important step for Auburn University.

The next one had to do with…, we tried to look at departments that had a tremendous number of student credit hours relative to their peers in that same discipline, nationally. We said, you know, we can’t get to all of them. There were about out of the 60 plus departments, there were about 13 or 14 departments that had at least a position ensured. So we tried to focus on a few of the departments that were the most severely disadvantaged by the numbers that we had. So we made a little progress on that.

The next area had to do with our extension offices and to try to create nodes, if you will, in those 67 counties, where individuals who may not speak English, but have the opportunity to come in and at least have some form of assistance in trying to learn English as a second language.

The next item had to do with, let’s try to make sure that we have peer evaluation of our teaching. In my mind student evaluations are worth a certain percent of the way you look at teaching, but peer evaluation of colleagues that come in and spend the time to do a nice critique of someone’s teaching are far more valuable in the tenure and promotion process. We try to use both. If you have a department that does not do peer evaluations and it goes into the tenure and promotion process, what you end looking at is only the student evaluations.  We’re trying to make sure that there is a peer review system to evaluate teaching. One of the things that when I first came in that I heard a lot about was this post-tenure review, a process in which all faculty had to be reviewed as I recall every 5 years. When you are at the 99% level of people performing well, that’s a lot of work for people to do and to review, so a resolution that came through the Senate asked us to look at a triggered post-tenure review and that was approved and in place. So I felt good about that.

A couple of other minor things. We had one to try to increase some small grants for faculty for international experiences. Felt it was important for faculty that may not have much international experience to get a little bit and the belief is that they will bring those experiences back to the classroom.

And the final was to begin to look at ways that through our staff on this university, how we could provide some training opportunities online that would be a bit more flexible and allow them to continue their education. As faculty and one of the requests that came to me from our staff leadership groups, at Auburn only 4% of our staff take advantage of the 5 hour free tuition deal benefit that is offered. Only 4%. I encourage you as faculty, because you have tremendous influence with a staff member to encourage them to look at it. Encourage them to sit down and tell them it’s important and to look at it. That’s a benefit that 96% of our people don’t do it and there may be mechanical reasons, there may be time issues. I realize there are a lot of issues with it, but 4% is not very good. It ought to be at least a double digit number within the next year. [23:22]

The handout, let me just mention a couple of things on that. Some of you may have picked this up when you came in, they’re at the back door. These are the strategic goals that we’re trying to work on in the current year. We’ve had for the last two weeks full reviews by the individuals, and you will see the name on each one of these. I have to tell you that I have been impressed, I thought that we would probably make an effort to say we’ve done something in that area, but some of our people have taken these general guidance points and really moved them beyond what I ever would have expected we would do. I’ll mention just a couple of them to you. The Honors College, you all suffer from having too much success in the Honors College. They’ve gone from a couple hundred new students a year to I think the number this year is 800. So rapidly growing program, as Auburn has ratcheted up requirements to get into the institution and as the average quality of the student goes up you get more and more students that want to participate in the Honors College. One of the things that is embarrassing to me is that at graduation we sit and hold our breath when the Provost asks those individuals that have graduated from the Honors College program to stand up, there’ll be 1,200 people out there and often times there is one that stands up. So our hope is that through this rethinking of the Honors College, we ought to have 5% of our kids, I don’t know, some number more than one at a graduation that actually make it through Honors. I realize that there are issues in it, but it’s one of the things that students think about Auburn and their parents, they view it as immensely important of being part of it. I would applaud the efforts that are being made in the Honors College, they still have a long way to go. The only way we can afford to do that is that we will actually take a fee to the Board that looks at Honors College students, if you are going to have small and very unique experiences it comes with a cost. I’d call your attention to that one.

I call your attention to number 7 on the list. I mentioned it earlier, the number 1 thing in terms of Auburn looking better to the whole outside world is graduation rates. There has been a lot of time spent, it’s not ready [26:02] for real discussion but looking at different ways to address tuition in the summer. We have some disincentives in our tuition, you get 15 hours and then you have to start paying again. So we are trying to look at different models that would encourage a student come to Auburn with a goal to graduate in 4 years. Now I understand that they may not graduate. The Federal definition that when I use in the 60s that’s a 6-year graduation rate.  And we were looking at the money the other day, for an out-of-state student that graduates in 6 years rather than 4 years their cost is over $60,000 more for those extra two years. For an in-state student it is $40,000 more for a 6-year plan versus the 4-year plan. People get all excited about $300 in tuition and we’re talking about real money in those numbers, plus you have to assume that in those other two years that if the job market was reasonable they’d have a job and the average college graduate is about $35,000 I don’t know what it was 2 years ago but it is today so you add another $70,000 to those numbers and it shows the power of graduating in 4 years if you possibly can.

We’re looking at everything we can, and we need your help. I applaud you guys for approving a number of these graduate certificate programs. I know that what I have in mind is probably different than the way you view those, but when I run into kids that are spring term and they say, “I could graduate this term, but the job market’s not very good and I’d really like to be back for another fall.” I say why don’t you go ahead and graduate and then why don’t you take one of those graduate certificate programs and then you have post graduate work. It’s better than to just stay in school and delay your graduation time.

Number 10 on the list I want to mention to you. We had a goal of 50 joint faculty-appointments, we’ll meet that number so that’s not the issue. It ought not to die with 50, for a school our size it should be about 300 for us to be in the midpoint. That’s how much joint appointments are a part of the academic culture nationwide. I shared with the Senate last week when I met with them that Auburn participates in the coach survey that’s done through Harvard of young new faculty, I forget what they call them, generation x or z. It’s the new younger ones that come to the university, the number one thing on their mind is they want to be involved in interdisciplinary, multi-disciplinary programs that work. I know that it goes a little bit against our culture because at least when I was around you focus on your discipline, you don’t waste your time in these other areas, your very concentrated in one area. But we are seeing a change and it doesn’t mean that all 1,200 faculty need to change, but we need to keep that as an emphasis in my mind.

Let’s see, number 14, in the research area, I think more than half the colleges now have certified people that are able to handle their research and sponsored program activities within their college, which I think is a nice improvement.

Number 21, the outreach mission. I was really impressed with the briefing on Monday morning in this area. These learning communities that you all have been setting up have doubled in number and you now will have spots for 1300 students this coming fall. I don’t know exactly what you all do in those things, but I have to tell you that kids like it, parents love it, and hopefully there is something good intellectually that comes out of it and it’s kind of exciting to see the array and the differences that have been set up. I was excited about that one.

Number 26 I’ll mention to you. We had a goal to create 80 new endowed professorships, your colleges, your units, development office, everybody worked really hard; they got 96 of them which is a phenomenal number in a pretty tough economic time. What you now face is that we got endowments underwater, so you put the money in and it’s worth less now than it was 6 months or 1.5 years ago when we started it, so it’s been bothering me because I’d really like to figure out a way to be able to have a program, identify, I don’t care if that’s done through the Provost and Deans, but the identification of those people that are deserving of those endowed professorships. And I envision, I want 96 chairs up there, I want your name called out, I want you to come sit up there, I want it to be a good event, but we don’t have enough money to do it. And the endowments didn’t work out, so I would share with you that Athletics came to me some time ago and said we want to do something on the academic side of the university. We would like to try to help in some way. And so Athletics has come forward and said that they will be able to help us for one year basis, we’re betting on the stock market after that so it’s not a long term commitment, but it would at least allow us to move forward with that program. So I’m awfully proud of Athletics for recognizing that this is really the core of this university and they’ve done a wonderful job, it’s not something I asked them to do. Not something that I said, Hey you need to do this, it was something they thought up when they heard us talk about the fact that we didn’t have the money to do this. Let me stop there and I’ll be happy to respond to questions.

Richard Penaskovic, from the philosophy department, not a senator: I guess I’m a bit surprised that we’re in the one third area in regard to endowments, especially since about 2 or 3 years ago we had this major fund drive and brought in a record amount of money, something like over 600 Million Dollars, so is the problem that we were so low to begin with in terms of endowments, or is it that the endowment money, because of investments in the stock market has not brought in the dividends that it should? Or was it a combination of both these things that puts us in the bottom one third? [33:01]

Dr. Gogue, president: That’s a good question. Number one, the 608 million dollars that was brought in through Development, a great portion of that was brought in to be expended immediately, building and program support types of things so it did not go into endowment. Only about a third of the money that was brought in had any kind of endowment approach to it. You’ll notice one of the goals is to plan for the next comprehensive campaign. The goal that we’re asking is that 50% of that money be brought in and placed in endowment to actually grow and build your endowment. [33:38]

Second part, our numbers were low didn’t do that but it still a relatively small percent of the money raised that actually went to endowments. There has actually been losses in the stock market, Auburn’s losses were about 19% as I recall. We now brag on our lowness of our losses, we were 19%, University of Florida was the best and their loss was what? 16%, the average in the conference was about 28 or 29 % and some as high as 38% in losses, so we felt good we were loosing less than the rest, but we still lost, so that’s part of it. And then I think to answer you question, some schools have had a tradition of growing their endowment for much longer than Auburn has had, and so the built a bigger base so that’s part of the reason. The reason I particularly don’t like this peer group is that you’ve got a number of these schools that have medical schools within their institution, and medical schools will typically attract greater endowment incomes than do land grant universities without.

Richard Penaskovic, philosophy, not a senator: The other question I have, about 10 years ago when Dr. Muse was here they had what he called a Peeks of Excellence Program and there were like maybe 6 departments throughout the university that would name Peeks of Excellence Programs and more money was put into them. Is that still going on today or whatever happened to that, I don’t hear anything about it anymore? [35:24]

Dr. Gogue, president: When I came I had heard of the program, in fact most faculty referred to it as the Valleys of Despair, once you decide to make collective decisions and concentrate money in just a few areas, you think about 6 areas, then you’ve got the vast majority of your people that are left out of that. Our approach is to try to support those programs that are very successful in external money, but also to try to support those programs that are particularly strong in non-money related scholarship types of initiatives, so I would say that they probably got a jump start and probably if you went and looked at those departments they probably are more successful today in external money than they used to be, but it is not a focus, we don’t come in and say, Okay so this is our 6 areas so any flexible money we have is going to be allocated in these 6 areas.

Richard Penaskovic: Thank you Dr. Gogue.

Dr. Gogue, president: Thank you. Are there other questions? Let me just close again by telling you, Thank you for what you are doing. It is a very tough environment out there. I have to say I feel good about where we are, Don tells me, don’t feel too good, but I do feel good about where we are in light of the finances and circumstances that I read about and experience with colleagues around the country. Thank you. [36:45]

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Thank you Dr. Gogue.  The next item on our agenda is presentation of the Academic Freedom Award. I am calling James Goldstein, president of the AAUP forward to make that presentation.

James Goldstein, president of the AAUP: Hello, I’m glad to be able to present our 18th annual Academic Freedom Award. This year the award is going to David Cicci. He was nominated by Bill Trimble of the History Department. Dave is not able to be here today, so today the award is going to be accepted by his wife Christine Cicci. I would like to quote briefly from Bill’s nomination letter. “In 2007 when Dave was chair of the Senate we faced potentially serious governance and academic freedom issues as a consequence of a proposed faculty dismissal policy that was offered by the administration. With patience and persistence, Dave worked diligently, both publically and behind the scenes, to ensure that the original proposal be scrapped and in it’s place a policy that ensured compliance with AAUP standards. Dave also tackled head-on the highly charged issue of post-tenure review working closely with the local AAUP Chapter leadership, he succeeded in gaining the policy we now have where PTR is explicitly separated from the dismissal and where it is implemented through a triggered mechanism and a deliberative process designed to enhance a professors performance and not exact punishment. Dave’s hard work, dedication to the profession, and commitment to the AAUPs Principles of Academic Freedom, shared governance, and due process, make him the ideal recipient of the AAUPs 2010 Academic Freedom Award.” [39:05]

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Thank you James and congratulations to David and Christine. It’s time now for remarks from the chair. I’d like to make one quick announcement before hand, a number of people contacted both the Provost’s Office, the President’s Office, and the Senate asking about make-up days for the recent winter weather cancellation, and you all should have received an e-mail today that listed 4 options, I’m not going to read them all, but there are 4 options available to faculty for making up the lost instructional time. If you have any questions about that or for some reason did not receive the e-mail if you’ll contact, if you have questions about the policy guidelines contact Emmett Winn’s Office. And if for some reason you did not get the e-mail and would like a copy of it, we’ll get it posted to the Senate Web site (see link directly above in this paragraph), but also you can contact me and I can forward it to you.

I’m gong to make some very brief comments. As most of you know the faculty recently approved a change in the terms of the Senate officers. So even though my term has been extended until June 30, this is the final chance that I’ll have to make remarks to a regularly schedule university faculty meeting and I’m hoping this is the last university faculty meeting, not that we don’t have to call a special one. It’s been a privilege to represent the faculty over the last year and I’d have to say that I am proud of many of the things that we as a group of faculty leaders and also the faculty in general have been able to accomplish. I want to particularly thank Dennis DeVries, Claire Crutchley, Russ Muntifering, and Bob Locy for the literally hours and hours of time they’ve put in on faculty business over the last 12 months. [41:20] I don’t think that I could have asked for a better group of people to work with. The support and the effort that they put into the work that we’ve done over the last year has resulted in a sense of comradderie and cooperation that’s really beyond anything I could have hoped for and I think that we have some results that have come out of that. [41:40]

I’d also like to thank the Steering Committee, several of the members of which are here. The Steering Committee is made up of all the officers, the Provost, and David Shannon, Bill Hames, Larry Crowley, and Jim Wright. The Steering Committee was very instrumental in bringing items of what I think were broad general interest to the Senate for discussion and potentially, usually resolution. The members of the Rules Committee can’t be ignored, that’s probably one of the most work-loaded committees, beyond P&T and Curriculum that I’m aware of, and the members of that committee have worked diligently to staff both Senate and University Committees and to make recommendations for changes to existing committees. We’ve got a large number of committees on campus, possibly according to some people, too many. We have both Senate and University Committees and the Rules Committee is involved in staffing all of those. We directly staff with Senate approval the Senate committees and make recommendations to Dr. Gogue’s office on the University Committees. I think it’s not always obvious to people how much work is actually done by the people who are willing to serve on University and Senate Committees. And I would have to say that in a lot of cases, many things that we take for granted at the university would not happen without the work of these people on the committees. So having been allowed to see the impact that many of these committees have and the dedication that the faculty members on those committees apply to the work, I’m not sure a simple thanks is enough, but that’s all I have to offer. So I want to thank all of those people.

I’d also like to thank Bill Sauser, who served as Parlimentarian over the last year, and I think will hopefully finish out through June. I can’t end this without talking about the relationship that Dr. Gogue and Dr. Mazey have developed with faculty leadership and faculty in general. They’ve both exhibited extremely strong support for shared governance. They fundamentally like and understand faculty and they routinely seek input from the officers and members from a variety of committees on campus. The officers along with Dr. Mazey and Don Large meet monthly with Dr. Gogue and we have far ranging discussions. It’s a time to bring issues, ideas, get feedback from him and it’s been a very rewarding experience. The environment of mutual respect that exists between the administration and the faculty as exhibited by the working relationship that has evolved over the last couple of years has allowed for some really candid discussions about a wide variety of topics. Just as an example, both Dr. Mazey and Dr. Winn participate in weekly discussions, virtually weekly with either the Executive or Steering Committees. Dr. Glaze, Dr. Mason, a variety of other people will have participated as needed. If you haven’t observed it firsthand, I’d like to assure you that the opinions of faculty are being sought out and taken into consideration as decisions are made. The goal, as I see it, has always been over the last year to develop policies or identify outcomes that ultimately facilitate the 3 missions of the university. It may sound a little Pollyannaish, but I believe that the spirit of cooperation and respect that has developed has made us a stronger university and has created a much more positive climate on campus for all faculty and administrators and staff.

As Dr. Gogue mentioned the Senate has been especially busy over the last year, really two academic years for sure. The Senate serves as an advisory role to the administration so just because the Senate passes a resolution doesn’t mean that it has to be approved, but as he mentioned there’s only been one resolution and that deals with the guidelines for Lecturer/Senior Lecturer positions that was passed by the Senate but hasn’t been ultimately approved by the administration. [46:31] And the Senate leadership on its own has decided to revisit the concept, bring it to one or more standing Senate Committees for additional discussion and then with the goal of further discussion in the Senate in the near future.

Another area of success and this is one that started a number of years ago is with the ombudsman position. The work to develop the trial run for this position occurred over several years and included the work of Connor Bailey, Rich Penaskovic, and David Cicci, and the final Senate approval for the ombudsman position was obtained in January of’ ’08 and the administration agreed with this and a search was conducted on campus, and we hired Jim Wohl as ombudsman. The guidelines that the Senate had required a 2 year trial run. We’re nearing the end of that this fall because Jim started his job in the fall of 2008, so I’m happy to announce that the response to the position has been overwhelmingly positive. The Senate leadership will be announcing a search, which is required by the guidelines to continue the position. Dr. Gogue has asked that we try to accelerate the call for nominees or applicants so that we can have the actual public forums, the interview process occur before summer so more faculty can be involved.

So in summary I’d have to say that I think Auburn University is in many ways a very different place today than it was just a few years ago, and I think it’s because of the efforts expended by a lot of people. We still face many challenges, not the least of which is the economy and it’s impact on higher education, and that impact could extend for several more years, hopefully two at the most, but time will tell. However I think that even with the economic issues and the challenges that higher education faces, we here at Auburn move to the future with a greater openness, more cooperation and more collaboration than in my memory, and I think this puts us in a position that will enable us to meet those challenges by continued cooperation encouraging compromise where necessary or appropriate and allowing us to disagree with each other in a constructive rather than a destructive manner in the future, because we’re not always going to agree about everything. So with that I will end my comments and ask Claire Crutchley, chair-elect, to come forward and make the announcement of the new officers. And I will remind you that the new officers will take their positions effective July 1.

Claire Crutchley, chair-elect: I’d like to thank Kathryn and all of you for having Kathryn stay on through June so I actually don’t have to take over today, so I appreciate that. It’s really been a fun year, I started a year ago and it’s been fun working with everyone and working with the administration, I have really enjoyed it.

We had 4 great candidates running for chair-elect and secretary-elect and I do think this is a product of how much the Senate is doing. I think the Senate has been doing a lot and it’s easy to find people who are willing to participate because it has been really good. Our candidates for chair-elect were Roy Hartfield from aerospace engineering and Ann Beth Presley from Consumer Affairs, and the candidates for secretary-elect were Larry Crowley from Civil Engineering and Robin Jaffe from Theater. I want to thank all of you for running and all of these people have been very involved in shared governance at Auburn so I really appreciate all that they have done. The results are: for chair-elect Ann Beth Presley from Consumer Affairs and for secretary-elect Larry Crowley from Civil Engineering. I’d like to welcome you and thank all of you for running.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Thank you Ann Beth and all you who were willing to run for office and congratulations to those of you who were selected.

At this time I’d like to ask if anyone has any unfinished business, or any new business? And if not, the meeting is adjourned. And thank you all for taking the time to come. [57:50]