Faculty Meeting
Oct 13, 2009—transcription
Kathryn Flynn, chair: I’d like to call the meeting to order.
The first order of business is to approve the minutes of the March 10, 2009 General Faculty Meeting. Dennis Devries, the secretary, distributed the link to these minutes with the agenda and they are also posted on the Senate Website. So at this time I’d like to ask if there are any additions or corrections to the minutes? Hearing none the minutes will stand approved as posted.
Now I’d like to invite Dr. Gogue forward.
Dr. Gogue, president: Thank you, Kathryn. I’m delighted to be with you today. I wanted to touch on 3 or 4 things and be happy to respond to questions. It’s obviously been a very tough budget year, last year and the year we go into. In the last 13 months Auburn’s lost about $96 Million in ongoing resources from the State of Alabama. It’s obviously a concern; it impacts all of us. My comment is I want to thank all of you for your effort your support and your good will with a very tough budget situation. We pledge to do everything we can as cuts have to occur, that basically the teaching mission of the institution would be the least impacted by those types of cuts and constraints. I just returned from meeting with the presidents of the Southeast Conference and as you listen to some of the stories within our region, as bad as it is I feel a whole lot better than I did a couple of days ago. So I’m not here to tell you that it’s great and it’s going to get better tomorrow and we’re all going to have a grand old time, but still I’m impressed with the conservative nature that Auburn has taken for many years that allows you to try to sort through very tough budget situations without as much personal pain as you see in some locations. I wanted to thank you for that.
Second thing, we have 4 new national dean searches that are underway, the provost will probably mention those a little bit later. But this is important, I encourage each of you in your various colleges if that’s one of your administrative individuals that you spend some time, identify people, encourage applications, because it is a national search and we need to move aggressively in that area.
Third thing I wanted to mention is this Fall we had the strongest academic class of freshmen that we’ve ever had in the history of Auburn. A little bit over 26 plus on their ACT, good strong group of kids somewhere around 19 thousand applications for those 3,800–3,900 freshmen spots that we have.
Also wanted to mention to you that last year we had about 35 elements in our Strategic Plan that we tried to address. That was about half of what was identified a couple of years ago, there’s about 60 critical elements that we as a campus need to focus on, that we reach some degree of consensus on. We have tackled 35 of those in the past year. We were fully able to complete about a third of those, so about 12 of the 35 completely finished, off the list. We then moved into that remaining list and added 12 or so more to the list. We made good progress on the other two-thirds of those, but we did not get those completed. There is one goal that when we closed out our Strategic Planning efforts that was not complete. And that was a commitment that we made to the faculty. As of October 1 of last year we wanted to see if in a 12-month period of time, so from October 1 to September 30, could we raise 80 endowed professorships? The purpose of those: to support financially faculty that are here, not for recruitment of new faculty, but to support those that are here now. The payout on those would be about $15,000 a year and our goal was 80 and Jeff tells me we have how many now? 98. So when we sort of drew the line we’re at the number 98. I’m awfully proud of department heads, faculty, deans, the development office that went out and particularly donors, it’s been a very tough year to have a goal of 80 endowed professorships and for us to actually exceed that goal. So I’m particularly proud of that. I’d be happy to respond to questions that you might have. [5:05]
Connor Bailey: Dr Gogue, thank you. My apologies to people who were at the Senate meeting on last Tuesday when I was planning to raise these questions. And they relate to budget matters and the athletic department, which has been very successful. Many of us are fans, supporters of athletics. The question I have is whether we’ve in fact as a university been subsidizing the athletic department. In the last 5 years the athletic department budget’s gone up by a total of 59%, this year alone while the rest of campus is struggling the athletic budget has increased by 15%. I raised this issue 8 years ago in the university Senate with another president at the time, and the question was whether the athletic department was paying their administrative costs that are borne by the university. There’s something know as the general administrative cost which at that time was 6.6%, it includes a part of your time, a part of Don Large’s time, a part of Leigh Armstrong’s time, the Risk Management office, etc. etc. There are real costs associated in these matters. And the numbers that was used at that time was 6.6% and at that time the athletic department was paying less than 1%. So there were readjustments made at that time, but more recently I’ve been in touch with people in Don Large’s office who were unfailingly helpful, Don, and I understand that we are currently, the athletic department is paying $1 Million to the university for general administrative costs on expenditures of nearly $50 Million, 48.6 last year. So that’s 2.1%, better than we were doing but it’s well under the current general administrative costs ratio of 7%. So I figure the difference is about $2.9 Million if we were going to charge that 7%, which is charged to me in all my grants. And so I’m either going to get a rebate or maybe something could…maybe you could tell us how the administration will be able to move forward to recapture the cost that we are as a general university paying for the administration of athletics department. Thank you. [7:29]
Dr. Gogue, president: Conner I appreciate it. Conner had sent his question in and told us he was going to ask that and I asked Don Large to be prepared to respond and give you some information. I want to make a couple of comments. About 450 division 1A Colleges and Universities in the country, about 12 of them operate within their own budget, they are actually able to break even. Most take eng money to actually subsidize their athletic program. many in fact support all of their Olympic sports instead of straight eng money, education and general funds. So in my judgment Auburn in terms of being able to break even on its athletic side is probably a very strong positive. The second point is that we now have data sets from the NCAA that will allow you to compare your institution against categories of institutions. You cannot compare it with another institution, but I can compare it with other SEC schools, big ten schools, or land-grant institutions, but there are a variety of ways that you can compare that data. Drew Clark actually did an analysis for us I guess about 5 or 6 months ago, and what we noticed was that things that Auburn was and outlier on is that it’s an outlier on the amount of money that it pays relative to its facilities and maintenance, it’s higher than the other schools in our conference. But I’d ask Don to come up and see if you can give some background, some data on specifically on the question that Conner told us he was going to ask.
Don Large, executive vice president: Thank you. The specific question on it, indirect cost is different than most of the other areas of research. Athletics does pay all of their direct costs, they generate their own revenue, they pay their own salaries, they pay for their own buildings, they pay for their own electricity on it, their own insurance, everything about operating an enterprise or a business they pay for. So then the question becomes, well do they cover properly their indirect cost? — the kinds of things that Conner mentioned. And so 8 years ago or so we did say we really do need a quantifiable way of assessing and billing athletics for what we think is their overhead cost. Because as that time what we inherited years before was just a straight number dollar amount that we just couldn’t tell you how we got it. [10:17] So that’s how we did go with departmental administration that was in the indirect cost federal rates and it was about 6. Something and in its simplest form what that 6. —I don’t know Conner if it’s 6.4 or 6.7, whatever—if computes out and I’m going to round, at that point it wasn’t quite $3 million, but let’s just say it’s close to $3 million. So if we stop right there we give athletics a bill for $3 million and say that’s your overhead cost for the kinds of things that your getting the benefit of to give us the money. Athletics comes back and says well, you ask us to be self sufficient, you ask us to be a business, you ask us to deal with the market. The other side of that from athletics is “we should get some credit on that $3 million for the things that we do that we think impair or impact our market. First of all we give 50% discounted athletic tickets. That’s almost a million dollars of discount.” Don’t have to—I know everybody thinks that’s an employee benefit, it works out to be, but it’s really just something that athletics chooses to extend and have done so for a number of years so we take it as a benefit, but it’s athletics extending it, athletics’ discount, athletics’ lost revenue; so that’s about a million. And so we said well it’s hard to argue that one, so we’ll give you credit for that. And then the other piece of it is the other million if you will, because they end up giving up about a million in cash, is the lost market value of those tickets, because a lot of them are right in that scholarship area – done differently they could just say, all employees, faculty employees buy your tickets at market price and here they are. And they could sell those for what they think is about 2.5 million more than the face value and so they wanted credit for that which of course would wipe out the whole indirect cost. We couldn’t go that far but we did give them credit for a million of that. Now reasonable people could argue that that’s inappropriate, it’s too much, it’s too little, don’t know. That’s what we agreed on, that’s what we’ve been doing for a number of years. From a budget perspective and from our expectation of athletics to be self-sufficient as the president mentioned in their argument that these kinds of things do cost, they do have value, we could do it a different way. We could give you the 3 million if we could just sell all the tickets at market price. So we said that’s fine we’ll take that, so that’s where we are.
I’m going to give a budget presentation in a few minutes, while all this discussion is good on athletics and healthy, I’m going to tell you ultimately that the revenues they generate, whether the budget went up whether they added a 12th gain and the costs go up and the other kinds of things that are occurring there, it’s different revenue source. When revenues go up there’s pretty much matching expenses, they have to cover all the Olympic sports with it, there’s not a lot of bottom line. Can we squeeze more out of them, we might can, but what you are going to see in a little while is, that’s not remotely our challenge going ahead with the kind of budget dollars that we’re looking at. I’ll share that with you in a few minutes, and you can determine what’s our need for discussion. Questions?
Dr. Gogue, president: Are there other questions for me?
Tony Moss, biological sciences: I sent a message to you last week and then I immediately ran out of town. So I didn’t have much chance to see what happened but this is about the possibility for improving the safety situation on South College. I know that there was a response but I didn’t get a sense of what happened.
Dr. Gogue, president: the question has to do with South College, I think you may recall we had an individual from the library who was critically injured crossing the street there. That entire corridor there from the library all the way up to Funchess, it’s not really logical for people to come down to the lights to wait and to cross and so people jay walk. The comment that was suggested, is it possible for us to either do something in a median, is it possible for us to have identified crosswalks, is it possible to change the speed limit? I think we are searching for what’s possible. What I’ve asked is for Don Large, our facilities people, and the City that’s also engaged in that, for us to sit down with you involved and try to sort through what are some of the possibilities. We’ve been at schools, all of us, in which they have tunnels under the road, we’ve been to schools where they have catwalks that go over the road, those things tend to work if they are really positioned in exactly the right spot if you don’t you still have the jay walking. I’ve been on campuses that have similar situations in which there is an identifiable walkway and on both sides of the street they actually have these big tall orange flags, so literally when you walk across the street you grab one of those flags and you walk across and it actually works and you go to the other side and drop it in a little receptacle and they are moved back and forth, but it alerts the people and it’s visible enough that people will know it. I don’t know if on a state road whether or not you can put the car bumps or whatever they are called, those kind of things, but we’ve asked the meeting be held with the City and the University and the right people that know what is possible and what we can do, because it is a concern. You’ll be invited. Thank you. [16:58]
Bill Daniels, fisheries: One quick question. The new fringe rates came out and the policy evidently now is that even during the summertime if we are 9-month faculty we are required to put in this flat rate that is going to be charged to whatever grant we receive and the university keeps all of that partially to pay the fringes that occur in the summer which I think are 20% versus a new rate that’s 33–35%. Is that correct and do you think that is an incentive for faculty to go out an get summer salary to pay for fringes during the rest of the year?
Dr. Gogue, president: Mary Ellen are you going to address that?
Don Large, executive vice president: The new fringe rate has been negotiated, and I do not know the level of detail you just described, I’m sorry that I don’t, but Marcie Smith would know but she’s not here. We can maybe provide that at the next senate meeting, but the fringe rate overall is a good thing for Auburn University as a whole. It is a way to access more funds into the university. Most good universities have gone to this, so there will be impacts positive and negative, I don’t know the level that you describe if that’s accurate or not, but we can do a good job of getting you the information at this next Senate meeting.
Dr. Gogue, president: The only comment I would make, for all of you engaged in research, I think you probably know this, but your federal rates are not something that you decide as a university. Federal rates are established either by the office of Navel Research or HHS. And they come to your campus and go through you books and they look at what your expenses are. And they then determine what your indirect cost rate is or will be into the future. [19:24] Indirect cost rates, as a faculty member always worried about them, as a federal employee I didn’t pay much attention to them I would just tell you that the stronger your institution the higher your indirect cost rates are going to be. So would I like to be an MIT quality institution and have 68% indirect cost rates, you bet that would be good. But in reality it’s what they are spending anyway, so I’m not sure that it drives much but it’s a fair question, Don if you would get the data an information, let’s present it at the next Senate meeting. Thank you.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: thank you Dr. Gogue and Dr. Large. I’d like to make just a few short comments related to the work of the Senate and shared governance. Over the last few months we’ve had really successful working relationship with both Dr. Gogue and Dr. Mazey and several accomplishments have come out of that there will be additional ones over the next few months, but I’d just like to mention a few of them. One is the development of a streamlined procedure for approval for consulting. This process involves online submission of a request for approval. It’s now available on the Provost’s Web site under forms and you have online notification of approval. Such requests no longer require approval by the Provost, but will be filed in the Provost’s office. In addition Dr. Gogue has created an award for consulting, but to be eligible to receive that award you must have an approval for your consulting activities on file.
An additional accomplishment, somewhat painful if any of you were at the Senate meeting where it took place, was a revision of the Core Curriculum & Oversight Committee which is now know as the Core Curriculum and General Education Committee and this committee will be reviewing recommendations of the General Education taskforce and outlining implementation procedures for those recommendations. In addition the Senate has approved creation of a Lecturer/Senior Lecturer Position with formation of a taskforce by Dr. Mazey’s office that is charged with developing policies under which this new position will be operated. In addition the Senate has approved and Accelerated Bachelor’s/Master’s Degree Program contingent on approval by the Board of Trustees, this is in addition to approval of the concept of graduate certification programs which was approved under Dr. Locy’s leadership and there’s a current movement forward on development of actual certification programs.
The most recent change has been in approval in the change of the academic calendar adjusting the length of the semesters from 75 instructional days to 70–73 and we will be looking at change potentially for fall 2010 although it’s more likely for spring of 2011. The calendar will be brought forward to the Senate for approval in November or early next year.
The last thing I’d like to mention is that we currently have 4 dean searches underway as Dr. Gogue mentioned. Dr. Mazey asked a member of the Senate Leadership Committee to serve on each of those committees, so there is a member of the executive committee on each of those 4 search committees. At this time I’d like to invite Dr. Mazey forward to provide some information relevant to activities in the Provost’s Office. [23:38]
Dr. Mazey, provost: Thank you Dr. Flynn. I just want to review some of the issues that were discussed at the last Board of Trustees meeting and update you on those and then certainly discuss any issues with the dean’s searches and how I appointed the search committees, and then of course see if you have any questions.
First in terms of actions taken at the September 25 Board meeting, all of the actions in terms of the academic units actually came forward from the normal university curriculum procedure process here at Auburn University so we did have approved through that process and now by the Board of Trustees a formal option in Marriage and Family Therapy in the existing MS program in Human Development and Family Studies. And then we also had the degree nomenclature changes for the College of Education, and that’s changing a number of their programs then from EDDs to PhDs. Then we had, the Senate had at one point last year adopted graduate certificate programs. We already have then a number of units forward with new graduate certificate programs and we had approved then the graduate certificate and college university teaching, a graduate certificate in teaching English as a second language, or teaching English as a foreign language, and a graduate certificate in automotive manufacturing systems. And that was from the industrial and systems engineering group. [25:40]
Beyond those academic program approvals I was asked and gave the Board a short update on some of the innovative programs that we have taken here in our three missions and I’ll just mention a few of those. There are many innovative collaborative programs across the instituition, these were a few that I wanted to site. One is a Master’s of a Real Estate Development, and that is a 50/50 collaboration between the College of Architecture Design & Construction and the College of Business. And that is going to be provided through a hybrid blend of on campus residencies and through distance, and the first cohort will be in that program in the summer of 2010. It is one of only two degree programs such as this in the region the other one being at Clemson, the only one nationally to be offered in an executively blended format.
Then the Army Core of Engineers has come and asked our folks in the College of Architecture Design & Construction to create a Master’s of Construction for the Army Core of Engineers and we will be hopefully offering that program too in this hybrid blend format. That too is a collaboration between Architecture Design & Construction and the College of Business.
If you go on under research and scholarship we’ve had some major grants particularly from the Federal Government and now the Department of Energy in recent months we have this bio-energy grant, really awarded, it was only one of five in the United States, $4.9 Million. And it too is a collaborative grant between Bio-systems Engineering and the School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences. Another collaboration is in terms of the NIST grant of $14.4 Million in Federal Stimulus funding for the construction of the new facility and that will be for five multi-disciplinary research groups; from bio-fuels to food safety sensors and we were just meeting this morning with a core team which is really going to be developing here at Auburn in terms of food safety and we think that will be a major area for Federal funding in the future.
Finally in terms of outreach and public service part of our mission, a couple that I’ll mention, now these are again large collaborations. One was a $3 Million NSF grant to help Alabama students with disabilities earn degrees in stem disciplines and enter the workforce. And that will…it was one of only 9 in the country to be given, and it had 4 higher educational, I mean 7 higher educational partners in that grant and six school districts. And then finally team math is an effort between Tuskegee and Auburn University and over the years it has garnered $12 Million in external funding, and more recently $1.5 Million from the National Science Foundation to develop curriculum and do professional development with math teachers across the state. And it was also chosen as one of the 27, we were chosen at Auburn as one of 27 higher educational institutions in the country to participate in APLU, which is the old nostalgic program, to participate in a national stem discipline program because of or team math effort. So I think all of these really do show that we are very nationally competitive and we are leading the way in terms of collaboration across campus. So I want to commend all those involved and I know there are many other good examples out there.
Actually then, the 4 other items I was going mention, one was budget reduction but I know Dr. Large is going to be talking more about the budget. I really do thank him and President Gogue for actually insuring that the teaching mission is most important, and in this most recent 7.5% proration, in the academic units will take 1.5%, so I think we are very, very fortunate to have that support. In terms of…and we all will have to be looking for greater efficiencies over the next few years and ways to continue to preserve instruction, but at the same time find greater efficiencies within the system.
In terms of searches, both Dr. Gogue and Dr. Flynn have mentioned those. We have not only the 4 dean’s searches that are replacements, but also an assistant provost for international programs, which is very much tied to our implementing our strategic plan. In terms of the searches, the search committee chairs are all deans of other colleges, so I looked in terms of the most recent one that we created was business, and certainly Dean Bennett had then collaborating a great deal with the college of business so I think he was a fine individual to have chair that committee. I’ve also then tried to keep the search committees relatively small. I’ve been told that at one point we had an 18-member search committee here a few years ago and that was a little unwieldy to manage. All the search committees will be using a search firm to assist them with the process. I tried to make sure since the deans are the chief academic officer of that particular college, I wanted to make sure that all academic constituencies were represented on the search committee and then members of, the outside advisory board, their student representatives, both the graduate and the undergraduate students on all the committees, and then I certainly did look toward diversity. And so I think if you look at the composition of every one of the search committees they are diverse. [31:54]
And they will be working of course to, and we all want to be involved in that, creating an excellent pool of candidates for all these searches. And then as they call the candidates and do the preliminary interviewing, I’m sure we will have at least 3 or 4 candidates on campus in which there will be wide input from all constituencies before any final selection would be made, so it would be a minimum of two full days of interviewing all the final candidates. These are national searches, but certainly internal candidates can apply if they so choose. So we will make it as open and transparent as possible, but certainly as we start putting the pools together I’ve asked each of the search committee members to sign a confidentiality statement, because it’s very important until we get to the final candidates to keep all those materials confidential.
In terms of strategic planning goals I know that President Gogue has already mentioned those. If you’re interested in the new 35 for this coming year they’re in the back of the room as a handout. So please feel free to take those and pleas feel free to help all of us as we go through this year to work to implement those goals and maybe we can come up with a larger number that we complete by the end of the academic year.
And then finally Dr. Flynn has mentioned this, I have certainly enjoyed my first 8 months here at Auburn University because I think President Gogue has set the stage for shared governance. I’ve worked with him and others to continue that, but we have regular meetings with faculty governance and I think we all try to keep everyone aware of what’s going on. Any questions for me? [33:46] Yes, sir?
Bill Daniels, fisheries: You mentioned that your process of hiring associate provost for international programs…
Dr. Mazey, provost: Assistant Provost, just want to make sure you have that title correct.
Bill Daniels: How would this person interact with OIE? With the Office of International Education, can you just kind of explain the relationship…
Dr. Mazey, provost: The person will be director of the Office of International Education.
Bill Daniels: Okay, so it’s kind of an upgrade of that current office?
Dr. Mazey, provost: Yes. I think the current position is titled special assistant to the provost, and it was not done through a national search.
Bill Daniels: Okay, thanks. [34:37]
Dr. Mazey, provost: And by the way just in terms of shared governance, when I arrived I was made aware that all these types of positions really should be a search process and I totally agree with that. Yes sir?
Sanjeev Baskiyar: This question is not related to the current presentation, but because of the urgency I would request to ask this question. The faculty in my department, have asked about this to pose it to you. Earlier in the tenure promotion process each department the faculty would write individual letters. Apparently from your instruction this year the faculty are to write a combined letter, which would be the outcome of the meeting of the tenure promotion committee and the department. However in your e-mail dated 9/29 I think you mentioned that there are no changes to the P&T Process except for the change in deadline. Could you clarify whether they should be separate letters from faculty or one combined letter? Thank you.
Dr. Mazey, provost: Actually the faculty handbook as it currently exists says that there can be those individualized letters, so for this year we cannot change that. I think the confusion arises because I already had one half day retreat with the chairs and another 2 hour meeting with the chairs talking about how we work together to revise our current promotion and tenure process, and in those meetings I have suggested from what I’ve seen at previous institutions that a summary letter from the department and then if there’s a college committee is very beneficial, because instead of reading twenty or thirty individualized letters you have the vote and you have the summary of the majority opinion and the minority opinion, but we could not do that yet this year. What you could do if you so choose is if you want to I guess you could write a summary letter and then attach individual letters to that. And someone suggested that to me as an alternative, but for this year the individualized letters are certainly what’s in the Faculty Handbook and we are going to follow it. The other is part of what we’re doing in terms of revising the Promotion and Tenure process.
Sanjeev Baskiyar: Thank you.
Dr. Mazey, provost: Thank you. Any other questions?
Kathryn Flynn, chair: Thank you Dr. Mazey. At this time I’d like to invite Dr. flowers who is dean of the Graduate School to come forward and give an update on the proposal for Graduate Tuition Remission. [37:35]
Dr. George Flowers, dean of the Graduate School: Dr. Flynn had asked that I give an update to the university faculty on where we stand with regard to Tuition Remission. There have been a lot of discussions over the last several months about Graduate Tuition Remission and inclusion of tuition in Contracts and Grants, so this is an opportunity to let you know where things stand on that. Now I come at this as chair of subcommittee on graduate student issues from the University Research Council. And the committee as I said has been discussing for several months within the committee within the groups outside the committee, we have met with various faculty groups including groups from the University Senate including the University Senate itself. I spoke to the University Senate, and also various administrative groups so we’ve received a lot of feedback. We started off with an initial proposal. The proposal has been revised quite a few times trying to address the concerns that were presented by the various groups.
Where we stand… first of all motivation, why do we want to do this? [39:00] Right now we do not have a mechanism that will allow faculty in a consistent way look at capturing tuition for their graduate students from externally funded grants, so one of the objectives the major objective here is to have that sort of mechanism. Have a mechanism in place that will pass muster with Federal contracting, granting agencies, the legal, the accounting, all those sorts of issues; have a policy in place that will allow us to do that while simultaneously, while doing it in cases where it’s feasible and not a detriment to the project. So both of those are of concern, we need to have a mechanism in place and we need to have a mechanism in place that will not be a detriment to our research programs and to our graduate programs. My charge is to do what I can to enhance our graduate programs and we certainly do not want to do anything that would be a detriment to those graduate programs and we consider the tuition fellowship program to be a major asset. So we don’t want to do anything that’s a detriment but we do want to have a mechanism in place that will allow us to collect tuition as appropriate.
The recommendations; we have a proposal that has been recommended to the University Research Council (URC). As I said these recommendations have been developed after considerable feedback from the faculty including the University Senate and various administrative groups. Let me point out that the unanimous conclusion of the URC subcommittee on graduate student issues is that what we wanted was some sort of plan for a voluntary participation with incentives for faculty and programs to participate. Incentives for faculty to participate and benefits to programs, so that’s the objective here.
What actually came out of this? This is an outline of what was recommended to the University Research Council and the first line is all proposals for externally funded contracts and grants should include tuition charges for the graduate students supported by the project, where possible based upon the circumstances and requirements of specific proposals and funding agencies. It does not say voluntary. This wording was what was recommended to us as something that will pass legal accounting muster as far as the Federal agencies are concerned. However, we have the second line which says, The PI should provide justifications for exceptions—so exceptions requests for exceptions to this come from the PI and there has been some concern expressed about well if you have got a request for an exception who provides the approval, well the approval would come from the department head or the chair and the associate dean for research in that given college. [41:48] The idea was to put it as close as possible to the investigator. So put any sort of management that had to be in place for providing exceptions as close as possible to the investigator. Our vision here is that the PI will provide, will make a request for an exception and the exception will be granted. As I said we put it as close as possible, our recommendation was to put that administrative aspect as close as possible to the PI.
Now as far as incentives are concerned, what we wanted to do was provided incentives for faculty to participate. And the incentives are basically a substantial amount, 70% goes back to the faculty, the PI, that is in charge of the grant. Now where can this money be used? Well it can be used to provide graduate program support. So if you do include tuition that money comes back, provides graduate program support in forms of being able to enhance the stipends for your current assistants, to be able to provide another assistant for a given project, provide travel research grant, travel and research support for the students and so forth. Ways to enhance their experience as graduate students.
Likewise for the department and the College and School, what we envision there are opportunities for some funding for the departments to be able to provide additional support for their graduate students in the form of fellowships also at the College level in the form of fellowships also in the form of travel support seminar series other ways that can make the graduate experience here at Auburn University more beneficial. And likewise at the graduate school similarly, we already have a substantial research and travel grant program. We have a number of programs that are aimed at benefiting students across campus and we’re looking for to use these funds to be able to enhance those programs. Colloquial series, seminar series, [43:50] research and travel grant program, and also our various fellowship programs. We are looking at this as an opportunity in cases where adding tuition support into grants is feasible.
So that’s our proposal. It’s currently being vetted by the various administrative units as to how we go about putting this in place. If we did put it in place, would it pass muster as far as the Federal agencies are concerned? We are in discussions with the Huron folks as to whether that will work, and once those decisions are made then we’ll come back and report where things stand. [44:34] and it is my intention that we will not implement anything until the faculty are fully aware of what’s going on, what is intended, and get feedback on the consequences.
So that’s my report, questions? [45:00]
Barbara Kemppainen, from anatomy physiology, and pharmacology: If in the grant you write in for GRA support, and you can’t find a graduate student to work with you on the project, and you just use that money then to pay a part time technician, or has that already been explained and I just missed it?
George Flowers: I would be assuming that if the granting agency would allow you to make that change then you could certainly do that.
Barbara Kemppainen: we’d have complete flexibility as far as you’re concerned then?
George Flowers: Yes, this is not a requirement, the whole idea of having a voluntary system is that it’s voluntary. The word voluntary does not appear in the proposal because as I’ve said we’ve been told legally, that’s not going to pass muster.
Bob Locy, immediate past senate chair: George, when this gets implemented and you get administrative approval to exempt that, does that mean that that’s going to be shown as cost share on the grant proposal budget?
George Flowers: That’s a good question and that’s one of the items that the contracts and grants people are looking at.
Bob Locy: I think that’s really critical as to exactly how that appears. It would be good to find an answer to that before we implement anything.
George Flowers: Certainly.
P.K. Raju, from Mechanical Engineering: When you are talking about tuition, are you talking about in-state tuition or out-of-state tuition for the students?
George Flowers: The discussion we’ve had has focused on in-state tuition. So really all of the discussion of the subcommittee has been focused really on what other institutions largely are doing, which is having mechanisms to charge in-state tuition. So that's what we’re talking about.
Bart Prorok, senator from Mechanical Engineering: George, these values, the allocation of the 70 and the 10 percents, is that something that’s going to be fixed or changeable by people at a later date? Can these rates be guaranteed or at a later date is a reallocation of these percentages possible?
George Flowers: This allocation is what the committee supported. There are specific reasons I’ve discussed with some of you why we chose 70% for a return to the faculty. The committee supported this allocation and if that is changed then it would be done without the approval of the committee, without the support of the committee I should say. Thank you. [48:20]
Kathryn Flynn: Thank you Dr. Flowers. We don’t have any action items on our agenda, but we do have an important information item, so at this time I’d like to invite Don Large, executive vice president, forward to provide some information on the budget update. This is information very similar to what was presented to the board.
Don Large, executive vice president: Thank you Kathryn. This is pretty much what we did present to the Board right before the end of September. Going for budget approval and ultimately, as you well know October 1 is the beginning of our fiscal year, and October 2 we already had a further reduction in state appropriations. So this has been updated for that.
Here is the first key part of the budget, if you look at the end of ’08, this is from our audited financials, we have a little over $800 Million budget, and about $500 Million of that is in compensation and benefits, about $300 Million in everything else. A couple of key things about that before we go further because it makes the magnitude of the state reductions even more significant; of that almost $800 Million in budget, a little over $100 Million are the auxiliaries that Connor asked about. Athletics is part of the auxiliaries, so is housing, dining, and everything else, so a little over $105 Million there, and about $160 some Million are restricted funds, contracts, grants, and other things that are important and critical part of our budget and what we do, but not part of your unrestricted funds of which you can realistically change your budget. So you’ve got $250 or so million $275 Million of that 800 that are other, that are not unrestricted for budget discussion. The other thing I guess I’d point out is, at the end of ’08 that was when the times were great, so our budgets, most of those are continuing costs, they’re not many of them that are one time costs, they are continuing costs set at a peak of an economy which we now know couldn’t be supported over the long period it appears.
So what happens and why do you see that increase? You have from ’05 to ’08 you have compensation and benefits going up almost $100 Million in other expenses going up under $50 Million, but where that came from is if you track the yellow line which are state appropriations you see between ’05 and ’08 they go up almost $150 Million. So times are good we’re in record appropriations for 3 years and we’re doing what a good not-for-profit entity is supposed to do, and that’s you bring in the revenues and you allocate them out. We gave increases in salaries and benefits and programs and everything else. We did hold back some of those funds and allocated them one time, we didn’t allocated them all for continuing, but we thought we were being nicely conservative, but we had no idea what was coming.
And this is what’s happened, between ’08 and ’09, the ’09 year that we just completed, it’s hard to adjust your expenses very quickly without just going erratically at everything, so we tried to keep our budget reductions measured and systematic and as strategic as possible. So you see those leveling off and maybe slightly reducing in ’09 but a dramatic decrease in state appropriations. Here’s what happened. At the peak when times were good we had $337 Million of state appropriations that we thought were going to be coming in every year maybe going up some more; in ’09 they dropped to $261 Million, we passed a budget on that $261 Million just a few weeks ago and proration of 7.5% has already taken that to $241 Million. That’s $96 Million decrease in continuing revenues. Our continuing expenses haven’t dropped nearly that dramatically. So to give you dollars to that, depending on your particular interest or focus of our division budgets, you see that information (pointing to the chart) and ultimately the 7.5% proration.
So just a recap of what’s happened, we begin the ’09 year with a 12% budget reduction in state appropriations $43 Million. We held back enough not to cover that but to get close on a continuing basis from our one-time allocations an then we started the year a little out of balance between continuing expenses and continuing revenues, but not much. Then along comes another 11% proration of which we’ve absorbed since really, we did not ask the departments to change their budgets any, so we keep operating. So we get to the end of ’09 and we’ve lost $75 Million in continuing money, and now we start ’10 and we’ve lost another $19.5 Million. The provost and I and the president and others have discussed how we handle that, and we are going to handle two-thirds of that, if you will, with additional—as you get close to the depletion of the tuition reserves, savings, fringe benefit rates and other things will do for us, but we’re going to have to pass some of that along as a one time reduction to your budgets. But it’s about 1.5%, so we’ve done all we can to keep that minimal and it’s one-time at this point, but we don’t know how long those one-time give backs can occur if these funding cuts stay permanent.
So the bottom line is this; we’re continuing to operate not far from those ’08 expense numbers and our revenues are down here and over the next two years or three, or however long it takes we’ve got to bring those continuing expenses in line with continuing revenues. Or either continuing revenues have to jump way up and that doesn’t seem on the horizon. So we’ve got a process where we are cutting 15 Million dollars of permanent monies out of the main campus budget in FY10. We reasonably have to do that in FY11, and if those proration cuts stay permanent, we reasonably have to do that in FY12. There are not real good options here. We’ve got to reset our expenses in line with our revenue. We do not have enough one-time reserves to continue to operate up here (refers to chart) forever. We’ve got to bring this in line, but fortunately we’ve got enough to allow us to get in line, but we’ve got to keep moving that way. As you are presented with additional budget reductions in the next budget year which we will start focusing on pretty soon, pleas know it’s just a function of continuing expenses are here (chart), continuing revenues are here (chart).
Stimulus funding, the federal government appropriated to the state stimulus monies, they are supposedly making those in the form of appropriations, we’ve dealt with federal guidelines and restrictions, state guidelines and restrictions, and now even more extensive guidelines from the governor’s office. We think we’re getting close to having resolved all of those. That’s the kind of money that would come to us this year, it’s one-time money, and we might get it next year; helps relieve some of the pain, does not remotely address the continuing nature of the budget challenge.
Work with the provost on where those monies would go and we tried, as you will see, they’ve basically have gone in every direction we could to help the academic areas. We are actually spending more in FY10 on instruction than we did in FY09, so the president’s focus will continue on budget wise. The other challenge here is, there are so many regulations that you’ve got to find things that you can identify, track, show, maintains personnel, reduces tuition increases and be able to account for every dollar of it, you’ve got to report it quarterly, monthly, online, all these things are things people have worked out, so we’re ready to go if we can just get the money from the governor. Those are the rest of the kind of things we will do. It has to be spent in FY10, can’t bank it. AUM, AES, ACES get theirs as well. Their budget people and leaders have got those funds focused.
Outlook. The good news is, assuming we get the stimulus money, it does help the academic units offset that 1.5% give back on proration we just discussed. Doesn’t solve a lot of problems, but it helps. [59:54]
Our challenge is going ahead and this is the last slide. The big one is, we’ve got some major adjusting to do, some resetting of our expenses to get in line with our revenues. We along with the state, and the other challenge with the state is the Trust Fund is so tied to the economy most of it being sales, and personal income tax, and sales tax, that their revenues are way down and their PEEHIP expense and teacher retirement are being challenged too, and all those things are near and dear to us, so new growth from the state when they get it into the trust fund it may will have to go to feed teacher retirement and PEEHIP before it begins to find its way to K–12 and Higher Ed. So lots of budget challenges ahead, I would tell you that.
We’ve got our increases in buildings even when we’re given buildings we still have to maintain them and those kinds of things. We can certainly borrow more money we’ve got pretty good credit capacity, but of course you have to pledge tuition for that, you cannot pledge state appropriations, so you have to raise tuition so that brings on its own set of challenges. And of course we know we are in the second year of no salary improvement, you just have to know until we bring the balance there, it’s not looking good in that respect either. So we’ve got some challenges ahead. Again as the president and the provost mentioned we’re still committed to moving the university strategically, we’re actually making possibly more dramatic ground on our peers if you will during this down time in a lot of areas so we’re doing well there and the strategy is to rebalance but do it in a way that gives the deans and the vice president’s and department heads and everybody as much time as reasonably possible to target and develop strategies for reducing cost. Ultimately that’s what we’ve got to do. That’s where we are headed over the next two or three years it look like. Sorry it’s not more positive news, but it is what we’re experiencing and what we’re dealing with. Happy to answer questions or respond to comments. [1:02:57]
Connor Bailey, Ag Econ Rural Soc: Don, first thank you for the detail and getting this out in advance. I think that’s a real step forward in transparency, that’s something I want to say first. One of the problems that I think part of the campus is experiencing that’s different than other parts of campus. I work in the experiment station, 60% of my funding comes from division 3, a number of my colleagues are in division 4, the extension system, there are several hundred of us on campus it’s a fraction, but a pretty big fraction of campus. And so that 1.5% that you talk about which I think is great that’s all the instructional side is hitting main campus division 1, divisions 3 and 4 which do not participate in the tuition revenues are further taking that 7.5%; am I correct in that? Off of the “08 and the “09 and then we’re taking the 7.5%?
Don Large, executive vice president: Right.
Connor Bailey: so that is divisions 3 and 4 are really getting squeezed. I want to make sure we all recognize that because that affects faculty, hundreds of faculty across campus and I think there’s been some ongoing continuing discussion whether or not those of us who spend time, have a split appointment between divisions 1 and 3, in my case for example, and again there’s many of us, whether in fact the teaching that we do and graduate advising and classroom instructional in fact is subsidizing division 1 and I think these are problems that are not easily–I’m not suggesting that I have a solution or that you can come up with one–but I think that there are parts of campus that are getting squeezed a little bit more than others and we just need to be aware of that.
Don Large, executive vice president: Thanks. Other questions, comments? Thank you. [1:05:32]
Kathryn Flynn, chair: Thanks Dr. Large. As you can see we have plenty of challenges ahead of us. We do have jobs and that is something to be very thankful for and I think that the management that’s been done here on campus is pretty amazing when you get right down to it.
I’d like to encourage all faculty to bring any issues that you feel are relevant to the Senate leadership as they arise and we will work with you to address the issues that you have. At this point I ‘d like to ask if anyone has any unfinished business? Or any new business?
Barbara Kemppainen: I just wanted to briefly bring up an idea that I was asked by one of the faculty in our department to bring up if there was time. Initially this might sound like an idea that’s going to use more money instead of creating money, but creative things could be done, the Biggio Center is doing such a beautiful job with bringing new ideas to the faculty of how to improve our teaching and they were wondering if it would be possible to have a center, maybe modeled after the Biggio, but that would be focused on bringing new awareness of techniques. How techniques that are on campus could be used in other people’s research, I know sometimes we make big lists, everybody writes down what technique do you have in your lab but a 50 page list of those techniques isn’t that useful compared to if there was somebody giving a presentation about how this could be used and how this can be adapted to your laboratory, the kind of cost are in mind, there’s collaboration possible and I brought this idea in front of the other faculty in our department and one of the people faculty misunderstood what I was saying. They thought I was saying to teach faculty to do a better job on their research presentations, that’s not what this is about, it’s not about doing a better poster presentation. It’s more about designing research and techniques available and ideas. So I just want to throw that out and see if anybody had any thoughts about it, thank you.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: Anybody like to comment?
Werner Bergen, Animal Sciences: You might recollect that was one of the very ideas in the peaks of excellence of Cellular Molecular Biosciences (CMB)? Unfortunately the way that’s evolved over the years, the faculty of that group only met one time and so one can look at that, but there certainly most of know each other at the vet school certainly that department is fully part of that, but it is a very good idea.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: What I’ll do then is talk to the executive committee, there may be a way to do it at least initially in a less formal way than a center, and get some traction that way. Does anybody else have any new business? If not I call the meeting adjourned.