Special Faculty Meeting
February 16, 2010

Kathryn Flynn, chair: I’d like to call the Special call Meeting to order. I appreciate all of you taking the time out of your busy lives to attend another meeting and I hope that this one will prove to be something that is useful to all of us. One of the things I want to do is to try and keep this fairly brief and put most of the time in the capturing comments from the proposed changes to policies. But one thing I want to do is make an announcement here, you will get an e-mail about this later today, but the nominations committee has reported to the executive committee of the Senate of the following slate of candidates for chair-elect and secretary-elect. I announced this at the Senate meeting but I am going to announce here as well and then everyone will receive an e-mail this evening. Roy Hartfield from aerospace engineering and Ann Beth Presley from consumer affairs are the two chair-elect candidates. Larry Crowley from civil engineering and Robin Jaffe from theatre are the two secretary-elect candidates. We will be having, you will see write-ups from each of the candidates in the AU Report, the little newspaper that comes out now once a week. We’ll have ballots and you’ll be voting the week before the spring meeting of the University Faculty and the results will be announced at the spring Faculty Meeting on March 9. I’d like to encourage all of you to vote and to encourage other people to vote. I was secretary under Dr. Richardson and now chair-elect and chair under Dr. Gogue and I can tell you that Dr. Gogue and Dr. Mazey are very heavily using the faculty leadership and so it would be really good to have your say in who represents you in this.

That’s basically all the comments that I had other than to say that one of the primary purposes of today’s meeting is to, there are two primary purposes one is to discuss the term start dates and the second is to capture comments from the proposed policy changes in the Faculty Handbook. And what I am hoping for today, I’ve got a PowerPoint that I will present that goes over what each of the changes are in a very broad general sense and then reports to you on the comments that people made on the online Web site that we established; how many people responded, those in favor, those opposed, and then if there were substantive comments made about specific parts of the Handbook, I’ll mention those as well. And then we will open up for you to add additional comments if you feel so moved.

So at this time I’d like to introduce Bob Locy, who is going to deal with the action item. [3:18]

Bob Locy, immediate past chair: Good afternoon. The main item of business is to consider a resolution to change the effective start date of Senate officers. The intent here is to make it so it will start on July 1 instead of immediately following the General Faculty Meeting. So the resolution before us,

Whereas, the current Faculty Constitution requires that election of new officers be announced at the Spring Meeting of the University Faculty with terms beginning at the end of the Spring meeting, and
Whereas, the current terms are not synchronized with the semester system, and
Whereas, new officers assume their duties during the middle of the semester, and
Whereas, assumption of these duties during the semester presents a hardship for incoming officers,
Therefore, be it resolved that Article 3, Section 2, Section 3, and Section 5 of the University Faculty Constitution be revised to change the date on which the term of newly elected officers becomes effective.


So I’ll put this resolution here for you to look at, and open the floor for discussion of the resolution.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Are there any comments? Questions? This is coming from the Executive Committee and so for that reason does not require a second, so I guess I’ll call for a vote at this time. All those in favor?

Group: Aye.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: All opposed? (pause) The motion passes.

Bob Locy, Immediate past chair: We also need to change the Faculty Handbook to read as follows. The Faculty Handbook change then would require that the effective date for taking office be changed to July 1 here and this is in section 2 of the Faculty Handbook. Article 3, section 2 of the Faculty Handbook and then a second place where the date needs to be changed is also in section 2 at the end, and then in section 3 the changes that are proposed are listed here (https://auburn.edu/administration/governance/senate/website/agendas/2009-2010/Feb10_agn_items/SpecFacMtg/Section2_track_changes.pdf) and they consist of mostly date changes and a small rewording change, and then in section 5 specifically the date change to effective for the officers to change on July 1, and that’s in section 5.

So these are date changes with respect to the Faculty Handbook that need to be made.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: We need a second for this, does anyone want to second this motion? Tony Moss seconds.

Mike Stern, senator economics: For the Faculty Handbook changes, does that require a vote of the Senate or just a faculty quorum

Kathryn Flynn, chair: This is in the Faculty Handbook, but these are actually changes to the Faculty Constitution.

Mike Stern, senator economics: So are these changes to the Faculty Handbook or the Faculty Constitution?

Kathryn Flynn, chair: The way it’s set up, the preamble of the Faculty Handbook is the Faculty Constitution, followed by the Senate Constitution. So what we’re adjusting here is the Faculty Constitution.

Mike Stern, senator economics: So this part’s also the Constitution like the last thing?

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Right.

Mike Stern, senator economics: Okay

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Does anybody have any questions or comments? If not then those in favor say aye?

Group: Aye.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: opposed? (Pause) The resolution passes. Thank you, Bob. [9:47]

That brings us to probably the larger part of the agenda and that is… What I’m going to do, recently we had the proposed policy changes for a number of items that are in the Faculty Handbook posted online on the Senate Web site and it gave people the opportunity to go in and look at proposed changes. Most of them had the existing policy located adjacent to the proposed policy and then you had a block where you could go in and make comments. So what I thought I would do prior to opening discussion is to go through each of these and give you some idea of the types of responses that we received. And if you’d like we can do these paragraph by paragraph so that if you have comments we’ll address them at that moment instead of coming back and trying to remember.

The first one I’m going to go through is Chapter 3, section 10, it’s the 4th paragraph and basically what you have here is [11:08] (this is out of order) the origination of the letter of discontinuation that currently  apparently comes from deans or department heads and the policy change would be that these would now come from the dean.

I should mention that the changes that we’re talking about here, the proposed policy changes were developed as a list through various meetings that have occurred on campus dealing with promotion and tenure or department head meetings with the Provost, faculty comments, all of these were brought in to Emmitt Winn’s office and then he assembled the proposed changes adjacent to the current existing policy. And in several of these what we’re actually doing is considering changing what’s written in the Handbook to reflect what’s actually happening. And I would say that if we don’t think what’s actually happening is correct we need to really address that as well. [12:10]

So on this first one we received 16 responses, 13 of which were in favor of having a letter of discontinuation originate from the dean. The one question was, “Why would we make this change? Wouldn’t deans already know about this?” and in fact one of the comments was that deans would like to be in the loop for this type of decision. Another answer to that, one person says “If a dean hires somebody the dean should send the discontinuation letter. If the Provost hires someone, the Provost should send the discontinuation letter,” as a comment. One negative comment on this was that, “This seems to be a more cumbersome or more complicated policy than that exists currently.” But in general for the people who took the time to go online and respond were overwhelmingly positive. [13:09]

Now I’d like to mention that what we’re doing here is capturing input. These will be voted on at the Senate. So if you have any comments or concerns about this particular item, now would be the time to bring that up. Go ahead and step up to the microphone.

Mike Stern, senator Economics: I am a little unclear of what the purpose of this change is. Is it technical or what’s the motivation for it because if a faculty member has requested non-continuation then why is there a controversy as to who actually sends them the letter?

Kathryn Flynn, chair: In this particular case, this would not be where a faculty member has requested discontinuation. This would be if someone had a third year review, correct me if I wander off, but if someone had a third year review that warranted them being told that they were not going to be continued, then the dean would originate the letter as opposed to the department head.

Mike Stern, senator economics: Are we looking at 3.10 4th paragraph? If it’s 3.10 4th paragraph, what I have printed out, you don’t have anything there, but what I’ve printed out from the (Web) it says “ a faculty member who feels that he or she has not met the requirements can waive consideration by writing that you don’t want to be considered department head in such a case you can send a letter of non-continuation. So what does it matter if the faculty member is the one who is already requesting it? Maybe we’re looking at two different things?

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Let me pull mine out, I think maybe my papers are out of order. I’m sorry I apologize. Thank you for pointing that out Mike. I had the wrong slide on the paper here, I apologize my paper got out of order.

So this is Chapter 2.5, section b, 2nd paragraph. This is one, I think what I’ll do is go back and start over, and I apologize.

What we’re looking at here are changes to the Handbook to reflect current practices. Right now Deans appoint heads or chairs, excuse me, right now the Provost appoints and the President approves the appointment of heads or chairs. What this change would do would make it where Deans appoint heads or chairs. We received 23 responses, 17 in favor of the deans appointing heads or chairs, we had additional suggestions that included that the deans should follow the recommendations of the faculty, that we should require periodic review of heads and chairs, which I think we kind of do now since we reinstituted the administrator evaluation survey, and then establish terms and limit terms for heads or chairs. Those that were opposed said that we should leave the policy as is, or if we changed it, it retain the oversight of the Provost and that in one case faculty should have primacy of authority in the decision, which we don’t have right now which would be a change. So basically what this one does is shift the appointment of heads or chairs to the deans office out of the Provost’s hands. Does anybody have any comments or questions that they would like to ask at this time?

Mike Stern, senator economics: Now if this is the situation where we need to change something because of current practice, I want to know under what authority policy is currently being violated? Because if the Faculty Handbook’s policies are not enforced then what is the point of changing them, because the new ones won’t be enforced either? So if it is our position that because people are violating something, we need to change it so they are no longer violating it, then we essentially have no Handbook at all. So, I mean if there isn’t going to be any enforcement of policy, whether you agree with the policy or not if we have a policy and it’s not enforced and we allow people to violate it and due to complaints about violation rather than deal with the violation then we simply change the policy so there’s not longer a violation? Then you essentially have no policies at all.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: You make a valid point.

Mike Stern, senator economics: So I can’t see as the basis for making this change the fact that people do this. The question is “What should it be?” Justification is not as it says here, change language on selection of chairs to reflect current practice. That’s not a justification. The question is what should it be in the abstract and in the abstract even the way we write this, the way it’s revised, doesn’t provide very good clarity because it says the chair or head of a department should be selected either by department election or by appointment. So it doesn’t specify whether you appoint or whether you elect, who decides whether you appoint or whether you elect? It is still sort of completely superfluous as to what the correct procedure is. If you change it now you say well we’ll appoint and we’ll have the dean do it but it doesn’t establish the conditions under which you elect versus appoint. Who decides? It says you can do it either way, suppose the faculty elect ‘A’ and the dean comes in and says I want to appoint ‘B’, who decides whether the election or the appointment is the one that has occurred?

Kathryn Flynn, chair: What I will say is that according to the Handbook as it exists now and in the proposed change the joint statement on government of colleges and universities has this statement that the chair or head of the department should be selected either by departmental election or by appointment following consultation with members of the department and of related departments. I don’t know but I assume that the culture in each department is going to be different. Some are going to want to have an election, others are going to work in a slightly different way.

Mike Stern, senator economics: The department decides whether there will be an election or whether there will be an appointment?

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Or the dean, or the dean and the department together.

Mike Stern, senator economics: Or who?

Kathryn Flynn, chair: This is from…I can’t answer your question all I can tell you is that this policy comes from the joint statement on government of colleges and universities and that’s a direct quote from their policy on selection on chairs and department heads.

Mike Stern, senator economics: The only time that the issue, if the dean and the department for instance are in alignment then there’s no issue and nobody really cares whether there’s an election or appointment, it only comes when there is a disagreement. So the question is, what happens when there’s a disagreement? And it seems to me that if there is a serious disagreement between a department and a dean, it seems inevitable that the Provost’s Office or the President’s Office someway becomes involved, [21:10] which is probably why the existing wording in the current language is the way it is. I checked for something beck from ’94 and I saw it written there the exact same way, so it has been a very long-standing policy. I talked to a member in another department that once had somebody appointed against faculty will, back in the 90s, all the faculty received a letter from the president stating that he had appointed the following person chair due to some serious issues.

So if when there is conflict you want to change it to where the dean engages in an action without the involvement of Samford Hall against the will of the faculty, I think that’s profoundly unwise because a lot of very difficult matters that expose the university, and the central administration’s responsible, expose the university to liability are allocated to the department head or chair position from evaluation to T&P stuff to all kinds of stuff. If there’s going to be a serious issue about who that person is, it seems to me that Samford Hall should in some way be involved in the process because they’re the ones that will bear the responsibility for external liability so it seems to me that this is only for the situation where they conflict because if the department and the dean are in alignment then there’s no issue. Who cares whether they were elected or appointed because everybody agrees. It’s only an issue when there’s disagreement, when there’s disagreement there’s likely trouble and Samford Hall is involved anyway.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Right, thanks, I appreciate that. That’s the kind of comments that we need to point out, particular issues so that we can forward them. Rich?

Richard Penaskovic, department of philosophy, not a senator: The way I read Chapter 2.5 B, it looks like the department heads and chairs serve at the pleasure of the dean, just as the deans serve at the pleasure of the president. I would also enunciate the principle of “abusus nuntoward usum,” that abuse doesn’t mean disuse. [23:12] So it’s helpful I would say to have a policy so that if there is a crisis or an uproar, a controversy, that we should have something to go for even though maybe every item in the Handbook isn’t referred to and practiced and carried out every single time. Yeah, I think that’s what I want to say.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Thanks.

Gordon Sacks, school of pharmacy, department head of Pharmacy Practice: I guess I take issue with the last statement. I don’t want Samford Hall intervening and telling me at the bottom level who should be chair and who shouldn’t, and I think that’s kind of the issue that Provost Maxey is trying to address now, that all these decisions should be made at the local level and not at the university high level because I don’t think neither she nor anyone in Samford Hall really is going to understand the culture of the department and who should be appointed or not appointed. That should be a reflection as it’s stated by the department, and the final decision would be made by the dean. So I don’t think that it’s really becoming of us to start pushing all these decisions up to the top when they may not really be in tune with what’s going on at the local level.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Thank you. [24:41]
What I’d like to do so that we can get through each of these is if you have comments take turns on the comments but I do want to make sure that we get through all of them. These, like I say will be coming back for discussion at the Senate meeting. That’s where we’ll vote on any of these that are carried forward. I would encourage you if you do have additional comments to make sure that you get them to members of the executive committee through e-mail. I’ll see if I can reactivate the comment Web site, but if not then we’ll take e-mails.

The second one that we have is Chapter 3.7 it’s the 3rd paragraph. The short version of this is that it deals with a faculty activity report, and basically it changes the language related to disputing your annual review. What was supposed to be the primary purpose of this was to require a copy be sent to the Provost of all annual reviews. I said activity report I apologize, faculty annual review.

We received 16 responses 13 in favor of the changes recommended in this policy, however a number of people pointed out that the language related to the signature, the requirement of the signature was unclear. And that the language related to the signature was actually more clear in the existing version than in the current version. So they asked that that be clarified, so that we know if even if you dispute it do you sign it and then attach your rebuttal? Or do you not sign it and attach your rebuttal with your signature there? So that was the primary thing there. Does anybody have any other concerns with this particular part of the policy change proposals?

The next one is the one I started off with and I apologize, it’s been a long day. This is chapter 3.10 4th paragraph. What this is supposed to do is change the wording so that the dean sends the letter to the faculty of non-continuation on the recommendation of the unit head. It’s basically taking the existing language, and your point is correct, a faculty member who feels that he or she has not met the requirements for tenure by the sixth year can waive consideration by stating in writing that he or she does not wish to be considered by the department. In such a case the dean will send the letter of non-continuation to the faculty member on recommendation of the department via the unit head. When I asked questions about this, we got 16 responses, 13 in favor, one of the issues is that the deans want to know when this is happening and that would be one reason to have the department head maybe draft a letter, send it up to the dean and then it come from the dean. Other people commented that it made sense to have the discontinuation letter come from the dean as the highest office in that particular unit. The negatives were that the process seems more complicated than the existing policy. [28:26]

Mike Stern, senator economics: It seems to me that since this is related to letters of tenure promotion type, where do letters if you do apply for tenure and promotion, where do those letters come from if your receive it or don’t receive it?

Kathryn Flynn, chair: They come from the President.

Mike Stern, senator economics: Okay, so if you choose not to go through the process why do the letters come from any different place than if you do go through the process?

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Well if you go through the P&T process, you’ve gone through your department, through your dean to the university P&T which is chaired by the Provost and they make a recommendation to the President. And so you’ve gone through a different track. If you at your home level decide that you are not interested or you don’t think you’re going to make it or for whatever reason you don’t want to go through the process, that’s more of a local level it’s not a university…

Mike Stern, senator economics: I mean all the tenure line positions, if you didn’t want to go up for it means your in one, now all of those originate out of the Provost’s Office, I think, because if one is vacated the Provost has to tell the dean whether they are getting it back or how their resources are being allocated. So it seems to me somebody requesting that essentially that I’m going to be vacating, requesting a letter of non-continuation, just for budgetary and other types of purposes the dean and the Provost’s Office are going to be notified in one way or another. [29:54] I don’t understand how the basis for this to make sure deans are notified if there’s a change in labor somebody’s not going to be there anymore, the deans of course would be notified because are they going to fill the position, are they going to reallocate the position, what are they going to do with it, so I don’t know how making the deans in this particular letter ensures that they be notified because it seems to me the Provost’s Office needs to be notified as well if somebody’s not going to be working here anymore because there is an open position coming.

So in terms of budget and positions it seems to me that that happens anyway because I thought fundamentally, for instance if we’re sending annual reports to the Provost’s Office, if we’re going to do that, like In the other one that nobody objects to, if they are collecting these things, they’re collecting personnel records they have to manage the budget, all the tenured positions essentially are being allocated out of the Provost’s Office if one of them is going to be vacated, why wouldn’t the letter come from the Provost’s Office rather than the deans office or the chair’s office?

Kathryn Flynn, chair: My opinion is that, again, this is, you’re still at that local level in decision making, that in the departmental discussion of you and your department head, a decision’ been made that you are not moving forward and personally I think that if it were me I would want the letter from the dean. I’m in a small school so I got my appointment letter from my dean, I don’t know about the larger schools, I assume that deans are involved in the hiring  approval process and the letters would come from the dean. And so it makes sense if the letter for hiring comes from the dean that the letter for discontinuation would come from the dean. I think that’s the primary logic here.

Mike Stern, senator economics: When I was hired all I did was interact with the head of the unit at the time. In terms of going back and forth with the contract that’s a personal factor to it

Kathryn Flynn, chair: I think rather than debate this, what we really want is you comments.

Mike Stern, senator economics: Why don’t we just have a consistent policy for where letters come from, whether they be 3rd year review stuff, continuation, non-continuation, isn’t there for these type of base personnel matters it seems to me there should be a standardized place that letters are issued from rather than having different places for different letters in terms of them all being emanated [32:11] why don’t they just standardize it so one office specializes in the issue

Kathryn Flynn, chair: What we’ll do is pass that suggestion on. Do you have a comment?

Mark Fischman, Kinesiology, senator: Once a faculty member submits in writing that he or she doesn’t wish to be considered any more, isn’t that effectively a letter of resignation? I don’t understand what we’re doing here, if a faculty member resigns then we’re saying, ‘no you can’t resign your fired.’

Kathryn Flynn, chair: That’s the current policy, all this does is change the origination of the letter. We’re not changing the fact that people get a letter. I think that it lines up with the issue of de facto tenure. You could say I’m not going to go up and maybe I don’t know, I think that’s what they are guarding against here.

Mark Fischman, Kinesiology, senator: But if I say I’m not going up and I put that in writing with my signature, haven’t I resigned?

Kathryn Flynn, chair: That’s a question that we’ll have to pass on, and remember that what we’re doing here is taking the existing policy, which is a letter of discontinuation, and we’re changing the origination point of that letter. So if you have a question about why we need the letter at all, I’ll have forward that and ask.

Mark Fischman, Kinesiology, senator: But isn’t there a difference in a letter of discontinuation from, let’s say someone who didn’t get a good third year review? And the department decides right then to discontinue the person versus someone who decides, “I don’t want to go up, so I’m resigning” ? Seems to me that they’re two different things.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: I would assume it’s an acknowledgement of that, it’s an official acknowledgement that this person has said that they don’t want to go up, and I as dean right now department head acknowledging that, but I’ll pass on that comment. We’ll have a transcript of this and we’ll pass all of these on to P&T Committee and others. [34:30]

The next one is section (chapter) 3.13 D and this one is dealing with an alternative vote process for emeritus status. This deals with, as people retire they notify that they are going to retire and they apply for emeritus status or they are notified that they have the potential for emeritus status. And what this does is if you’ve got someone who is in a department and they are now and administrator and want emeritus status, it allows there to be more than one avenue for that type of a recommendation. We received 17 responses, 12 in favor of the proposed change, 3 were strongly opposed, and one comment was that the vote should be advisory only, and that the President and Provost would have the final say on emeritus status, which I think is actually how it is now if I’m not mistaken. Does anyone want to comment on this particular policy?

Richard Penaskovic, department of philosophy not a senator: I’m in favor of having an alternative vote process for emeritus status. I remember a case in one department several years ago where the department head didn’t like a particular individual and I think the whole department was sort of divided over it and at first they didn’t want to give him emeritus status, but then they did. So you could have a department that for some reason has something against a person even though they have a very strong research record and have excellent teaching, so I’m very much in favor of this alternative vote process because of past experiences.

Mike Stern, Economics, senator: I’m very much opposed to this process due to past experience as well. First of all this isn’t necessarily about alternative processes, we’re very specific, and this is for a case when a person’s work assignment is different, this isn’t saying that there’s an appeal. And like all things there should be an appeal just like T&P we have and appeal [37:02] process. If somebody has been hatcheted by a department then there can be an appeals process. This suggests for somebody who had duties outside of a department that something other than the department would be set up as an advisory vote. Okay this doesn’t say, if the department votes you down then we can set up this other consideration or appeals process. This says were going to substitute something else for the department’s vote, by the way I read it. It says you can either take the vote from the department or you can set up some appropriate group of peers on your own basically. So it sets up and alternative of departmental consideration, it does not set up and appeal to departmental consideration. It seems to me in all these things if it’s a departmental award and it’s initiated by a department head or a department, then in the first round it goes through the department, just like everything. If there needs to be an appeals process, grievance process or whatever, that would seem appropriate and consistent with our other processes. But I don’t know what it would be consistent with to have the deans set up ad hoc committees to make the initial recommendation or decision. You want to set up an appeals process fine, but it doesn’t…if it’s a departmental award and I believe emeritus is currently associated with a department, at least when I look on the Web for a list of emeritus faculty it puts the department next to them. If it’s a department award it seems to me that it has to be an advisory vote from the department.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Okay

Mike Stern, Economics, senator: At stage one if you wanted an appeal, fine.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Okay, does anybody else have any comments or recommendations?

The next proposed policy change clarifies the policy language and the Senate committee to be used in an appeal if someone is on a probationary appointment and they are not going to be continued, then there is an appeal process and this appeal process was put into the Handbook a number of years ago and at that particular time a committee was not identified other than it be a committee that consisted of faculty elected by other faculty. And so what this policy change does is to put this in the hands of the Faculty Dismissal Committee. So if you think this is the inappropriate committee or you think there is a better committee then what we need is to know what that avenue would be. Does anybody have any comments?

The next policy suggestion is in chapter 8 and this is changes to the wording that’s related to summer employment and this is a change that is, despite how we may feel about it, to reflect current practice. Basically what you’re looking at is a change such that, right now the policy says that nine-month faculty may be employed during the summer they may receive teaching appointments for the summer term depending on student enrollment and resources of the institution. The big change is available resources, and the last part; it deletes summer compensation is also paid on a semi-monthly basis. One other change is that it puts (a limit) at 33 and one third percent of academic salary is the maximum that a faculty member can receive for teaching in the summer, for working in the summer. [41:13] We received 12 responses on this, 11 were in favor of this change, one person commented that they are worried about the use of the word maximum, because using the word maximum implied that you could do less, and that might put them at a competitive disadvantage with faculty or with other universities. Does anybody have any particular issues with this or comments?

Mike Stern, Economics, senator: This isn’t necessarily criticism of the revision because the current language is not so good either, but if I understood like some of the things that I’ve heard Dr. Mazey say about how they want to change summer funding and things like that, I’m not sure that we should codify any more but it was previously there as well and I don’t like what was there either; we should write something on the summer revision that gives more flexibility because I think I understand that they want departments to write policies and I think this is a good thing and so forth because different units do different kinds of things in the summer. Some do research some do a lot of teaching and grants. I think it needs to be flexibility here, so I don’t think there needs to be any language in reference to salary during the summer in relation to salary during the academic year. I don’t really think there needs to be a relationship, the Provost’s Office due to budgeting conditions can always de facto impose rules that we’re not going to pay more than x, y, or z for one thing or another, the dean and do it the departments do it all the time. I really don’t think that it needs to be codified that there needs to be a max of something or a min of something or anything necessarily related to one’s academic year salary. The reason is summer funding is often at most universities very different than the nine-month funding. Okay. People are paid nine-month salaries often based on things very different than types of services they may be performing during the summer.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: So what you’re suggesting is removing the link to 33.3 % of their academic year salary?

Mike Stern, Economics, senator: Yeah, I would say something like all departments, colleges whatever need to have clear policies on it and who ever ultimately approves those policies whether it be the Provost Office, dean’s office or whatever. They may want to have certain types of caps on x,y,or z, but some people may be paid academic year salaries for services that are very different than the services that they are providing in the summer, so I don’t think that there necessarily need to be a link between the pay for those two. We have some people who are paid very high nine-month salaries based on doing certain types of research and in the summer all they may be doing for the university beside outside work is teaching a class or two. [44:09] The pay for teaching a class may not be related to anything related to the academic year salary. We’ve had a lot of debates internally because of the budget cuts, how to fit within the summer cap, and people start saying well pay needs to be based on 9-month salary, so even here in the Faculty Handbook it relates pay to the academic year salary, but it may not have any relation to the academic year salary.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Thank you

Jim Witte, senator EFLT: I’d also like to see that word “maximum” removed. In the summertime we may generate through distance education a large block of students which generates self sustaining funds which can easily go above that 33.3%. I think that’s an artificial cap that should not be imposed in the summer.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Thank you, we’ll pass that information on. The next topic deals with when, what we currently call the third year review is performed, and the proposal is that rather than say that the third year review take place no later than 32 months after initial appointment, normally before April 30 of the faculty member’s third year, that what we do is say we’re going to have a pre-tenure review. One other alternative was mid-tenure review, although I will say that everybody who commented on the terminology did not like mid-tenure, they want pre-tenure. So what it would do is that for people who are hired out of sync with the academic year would actually have the opportunity to have 3 full years for review. So the words would actually change to read “This shall take place no later than spring semester of the forth probationary year. On this particular one we got 24 responses, 19 in favor, 2 suggested alternative wording, 5 opposed the proposed change, and the reasons for the opposition dealt with seeing no problem with the existing policy. Although they said if it was changed, they would like to see more specific definitions for timing, to make sure that if this change was adopted it only applies to new hires, it’s not retroactively applied. One raised the issue of people who are hired in January, kind of out of sync again and was this in line with the practices of our peer institutions, that we should make sure that if we adopt  some type of change pre-tenure review that we are in line with what other universities do. But then someone else stated that the earlier the review the more useful to the individuals, so allowing what’s currently the third year review to be pushed later into that probationary period was actually a disadvantage to the candidate. So that kind of encapsulates the pros and cons that we’ve captured so far. Does anybody have any other comments that they’d like to make on this particular one? [47:38]

Tom Sanders, Library, not a senator: This is not so much a comment as a question. Is this tied to what I see as a push to coming up only once for tenure in the sixth year? Because I think the timing of the third year review was to give people time to prepare so they could come up in their fifth year, and if we are now talking about not coming up til your sixth year then this makes more sense than other ones.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: (I may call on you) My impression is that while there’s less enthusiasm for someone coming up in their forth year there is no real lack of enthusiasm for someone coming up in their fifth year and then going back up for sixth. Although if you have trouble then there is some warning signs I guess you would say.

Emmett Winn, Assoc. Provost: That’s the first time that’s been mentioned.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Emmett said that that was never mentioned as a reason for this. My first start date was oddly enough April fool’s day and I missed that March 15 deadline by two weeks and so actually had to go up for tenure earlier than I would have if I had started work two weeks earlier.  So I think it addresses people who fall into that kind of no man’s land where you really end up doing your third year review when you’ve only been here 2.5 years.

Tom Sanders, Library: Certainly in the Library where we don’t hire people based on the semesters, we were more likely to get caught than anybody. My question was based on what I think I’ve been hearing certain members of administration in saying about they don’t see why people have to come up twice. And that it would be better to wait until your sixth year. And if that’s where administration thinks they’re moving then changing this makes sense, but to me if you don’t have the pre-tenure review until later, can you realistically given the publication system that we deal with make up the difference?

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Yes, that’s a good question. I have heard a discussion about coming up more than once, but I don’t see any evidence in these policy proposals that reflects that as official policy.

Mike Stern, senator, economics: I don’t care for this one way or another, but you notice the specificity in the current language? Since this deals with dismissal and hence potential legal action, there must be more specificity than this. You see the way the old one was written; no later than 32 months, April 30th, you know hard dates, you are supposed to give notice for dismissal, so they have to issue a letter by a certain date. One thing when you say probationary year, well we keep switching between calendar year, academic year, so on and so forth, so you notice in the old one how it says just no more than 32 months after initial appointment–whatever that date was–is that you know the hard date of initial appointment. You really want to be very specific or somebody could say well I wasn’t doing this because I thought that by probationary year you meant calendar year or academic year, exactly what do you mean? You want what ever the length is, 3, 4 however long you want to make it, you want to be very specific with hard dates, when it needs to be by so people know when they are going up for it otherwise they claim it actually was a surprise to me to go up now because I find or interpret it differently then you interpret as. I think that’s why the current language has got these hard dates and times that are verifiable dates.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: And realistically as a new faculty member comes in it probably would be a good idea for them to sit down with their department head at that point and say your pre-tenure review is going to be this date. And then you know. That may be something that we want to think about. [52:04]
I appreciate your patience. I think going through policy changes is not really all that exciting.

The next item 3.9, the first paragraph deals with tenure without promotion. This one actually stimulated a lot of response and it deals with… we had 22 responses, 13 were in favor of the change which basically states that tenure in fact is more exacting, current language in the current Handbook and adds the phrase, “therefore tenure is not possible if promotion to associate professor is not awarded.” That would be a change from the current policy. We got 22 responses, 13 in favor of this response, 4 opposed, 1 alternate suggestion, which dealt with “ why not separate tenure and promotion completely?” and a question about “since when is tenure more exacting,” but that wording has been in the Handbook forever as far as I am aware.

There were more questions on this particular issue and they dealt with things like: that this policy still doesn’t address the question of whether it’s possible to be promoted and not tenured. I think it does, but the person who responded felt like it didn’t. The other question is: “is the difference between tenure and promotion really a difference in kind when the document compares them with tenure being more exacting?” So there were a number of different observations. Where it got into something that we probably really do need to think hard about is if you have someone who is hired at the associate professor level, but they are not given tenure; we may need to add some wording in there for those special cases where people are hired with rank but without tenure, and given a certain amount of time to then reach tenure.  Does anybody have any comments or questions on that one? [54:51]

The next one is on collegiality and as you might expect this one generated a bit more interest and comments than some of the others. This basically establishes a larger definition of collegiality than currently exists in the Handbook. We received 22 responses related to this particular proposal, 14 agree with the suggested changes, 4 people disagreed with the change, and 4 offered comments but did not indicate support for one way or the other. One of the questions that someone had was in here, it talks about collegiality and that department members should keep in mind that the successful candidate for tenure would assume what may be an appointment of 30 years or more in the department, and one person pointed out that this might lead someone to expect, imply the expectation of 25 or 30 years. Someone else added some additional components of collegiality dealing with ethical conduct and teaching research service. So this was one that generated a lot of discussion. One of the suggestions was that rather than just basically lock step adopting this that we establish an ad hoc group that would explore the essence of collegiality, what other universities do, and come up with a more standard or a better definition. Another comment was in fact AAUP doesn’t recognize collegiality as needing to be part of the process and that we should eliminate it from consideration. So those are the comments so far that will be sent forward. So if you have any others besides those, please share them either here or through e-mail. [56:55]

Mike Stern, senator, economics: First of all, the preface to this, there’s a need for a clear definition of collegiality. Well this doesn’t improve the clarification of the definition at all. Okay, this make is more expansive, more vague, and more absurd. We’re going to extend it because constituents in all environments impacted by the university, as a public university theoretically we impact all environments. Therefore I suppose if I got into a fight with my neighbor who buys football tickets and goes to the games or whatever, he is a constituent of the university, also probably donates every other year, he is a constituent of the university–got into a fight with him about who’s trees were on the boarder of our property, whether it was mine or his and he thinks I’m an ass now ,and somebody writes that he didn’t interact kindly with this constituent of the university so I think he shouldn’t be employed here anymore.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: So what’s your suggestion?

Mike Stern, senator, economics: Well my suggestion is that you completely eliminate it as I’ve heard Dr. Mazey indicate to me. She also indicated at the time that the president favors the complete elimination it as does SACS as does AAUP. The way you clarify it is to eliminate it.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Okay. We’ll pass that comment on.

Mike Stern, senator, economics: The whole purpose of it was, well there’s certain intangible things that help you in your performance of your duties that we want to assess, well if you are not performing those intangibles then it would show up in your performance of your duty. Since you don’t assign duties to collegiality there’s no percentage weight of it in you annual review, what in the world are you assessing?

Kathryn Flynn, chair: So your recommendation is that we eliminate it?

Mike Stern, senator, economics: Oh yes. I just want it consistent with AAUP’s recommendation.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Thank you. The next proposed change deals with the term normally, and this is in the timetable for which people go up for tenure. And in this in the past the wording says that, “If a faculty member has had no prior service at another institution of higher learning, he or she normally should be considered for tenure during his or her fifth year of full-time service.” What the proposed change does is take that out and says, “A candidate must be considered for tenure during his or her sixth year if he or she has not been considered earlier and has not waived consideration. There’s no fixed requirement for years of service at a given rank before a faculty member can be promoted or tenured. And so therefore if a faculty member has had no prior service at another institution of higher learning he or she may be considered for tenure during his or her fifth year of full-time service.”

So basically what this does is remove the term normally. We received 13 responses, 9 were in favor of this change, one was opposed, and several people had suggestions or questions such as, supporting the idea that the sixth year is the mandatory date for tenure and this person thinks that it should be stated that the sixth year is normally the year that tenure is sought, kind of gets back to what Tom said. I don’t know what category, faculty, department head, what that individual was, they felt like that this admitted the possibility of early tenure in the fourth year and would like some language that would allow that to occur. Those are the types of suggestions that were made on this particular item. Does anybody have any comments on this one? [1:00:54]

Leanne Lamke, head of Human Development and Family Studies, not a senator: I would like to see that last sentence removed…it seems contradictory. It says “there’s no fixed requirement for years of service therefore you can go up in your fifth year.” That seems contradictory. If you take that out, you can go up whenever you want as long as you keep the first sentence and the second sentence and you don’t put that stipulation of the fifth year after you just said there is no fixed time.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Okay, thank you [1:01:30]

Gordon Sacks, department head Pharmacy Practice: We get into this argument every time about how to count years and I think it would be helpful if there would actually be some type of example or when the years start and when do they end because it’s totally confusing because I was trying to figure out just right now, I have a faculty member and the whole issue about not being able to go up in the forth year if their start date say was August 2006, would this still be considered their forth year in 2010 and they couldn’t go up if they weren’t stellar and would they have to wait or not so I think some more specificity on how the years are actually counted and where they start and where they begin.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Okay, thank you.

The next one proposes to remove counting partial years toward a candidate’s probationary period. We received 10 responses, 9 in favor, one was pretty strongly opposed and the reason for that opposition was that a potential issue of de facto tenure, that half a year is still a half a year here and if you go up in your sixth year it’s possible your going up and you are actually in your seventh year. You didn’t count that six months so that was the main opposition to this. The other suggestions we had were or comments were things like: what if the faculty member wants the half a year to count so we might need to introduce some language that would allow that, and there should also be an example written for if a faculty member starts in October. So a part of the year is a part of the year with the start of the period being the only controlling date, if that makes sense. I had to kind of sit and think about that. There were three substantive suggestions form faculty who participated in the survey. Does anybody here have any additional comments, thoughts?

This one is from chapter 3.10, 4th paragraph, and this one looks at clarifying language related to a faculty member who waives the right to consideration for tenure. This would be a case where a faculty member who feels that he or she has not met the requirements by the time they get to the sixth year and they can waive in writing consideration of tenure. What this does is elaborate on that and it introduces the word: “if they haven’t met the requirements by the sixth year they can forever waive consideration by stating in writing that he or she does not wish to be considered.” And then the department head, although several people pointed out it may actually if the other change is adopted it would be the dean, would then write a letter of non-continuation stating that they will not be continued past the seventh year. So the big change is reiterating that issue of the seventh year and introducing the word “forever.” And we got 10 responses, 5 basically support the change, we got numerous suggestions or comments. The biggest one being: “forever seems a little over the top,” a little showy. Does anybody have any comments or concerns on this one?

The next one deals with de facto tenure. And in this particular suggestion the AAUP has suggested a revision for section 3.10, de facto tenure and what it does is say that “a faculty member who provided more than 7 years of full-time service in faculty rank on a temporary or probationary appointment must be awarded tenure by the President, except in those cases described in the section on prior service of this Handbook in which a written agreement approved by the Provost at the time of the new appointment excludes some or all years of prior service at Auburn toward tenure eligibility.” That’s the change. We received 11 responses, 9 were in favor of this change, one was opposed, one asked for a more specific list of who would be eligible for this exception, that we need to be more specific about the categories that are covered there. Two people stated their categoric opposition to de facto tenure in the discussion of this. Does anybody have any questions, concerns, suggestions?

Steve Brown, political science, senator: I just had a quick question, I guess for clarification purposes the responses that came in asking, particularly that last one, a specific list of eligible employees, when we vote upon this in the Senate if that information is not forthcoming do we vote it down? Do we keep it as it is? How are any of these suggestions going to be implemented and then brought to us again for discussion prior to voting?

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Well one of the things that happened when all of these proposed changes were assembled was that we would make sure that faculty had plenty of opportunity to have access to the proposals, some give and take both through the Web site, through this meeting, possibly a forum. My recommendation is going to be that we take all of these proposed or all of these suggestions back to Emmett and the P&T Committee and other entities on campus that are involved with these aspects of the Handbook and we say, Okay, here is what was proposed and here’s the feedback from the faculty. Now take that and look at what fits and then we bring it back for a, hopefully not quite like this, but for a second iteration of people being able to say yeas or no.

Steve Brown, Political science, senator: Will that be as an information item or an action item at that point?

Kathryn Flynn, chair: I would assume given the number of these and the number of comments we’ve gotten on some that what may happen is that we end up with a split and we have some that seem to have no opposition that would be fairly soon brought forward as action items. But the ones where there are substantive comments and concerns would be brought forth as information items and then return as action items later. I don’t think we want to rush through changing if people really have concerns. [1:08:59]

Steve Brown, Political science, senator: Thank you.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: That’s my perspective. I think the other members of the Senate executive committee would agree.

This next item generated probably the most comments and it deals with the requirement for external, I’m sorry not this one but there’s another one that deals with letters. This one deals with requirements for external letters for promotion from assistant to associate professor. It spells out that you would need this for a promotion and or tenure votes, that the person writing the letter would be of equal or higher academic rate than the candidate and that all letters would be made available to the voting faculty, a summary of each evaluator’s credentials will be included with the letters in the dossier.  In the past if there were letters if they arrived in time the voting faculty got to see the letters. But this would stat that the letters would have to come in time for the vote and the faculty would have access. We received 12 responses, 9 in favor, 2 opposed, 1 comment was why would you allow evaluators at the same rank, particularly if they are assistant professors? And we will pass that comment on. Another substantive comment was that if this is going to be done you need guidelines on who selects reviewers. That it needs to be spelled out, how they are selected, who selects them, who has input and also that there be, apparently the unit the commenter is in they already do this and they would like to see more rigor in generation of the list of people used for the external letters. Does anybody have any comments?

Mike Stern, senator, economics: Just a quick comment. In the generation of the outside letters it seems to me, I know they wanted as part of P&T reform as well to have each department write sort of clear guidelines for P&T documents. It seems to me it should be mandated that these external reviewers be sent copies of this. Because what happens is you end up getting a review from somebody at let’s say at a much higher standing university [1:11:29] for in the field than Auburn may be who writes a letter in context of what they may do there rather than what’s the situation at your institution. Like at Harvard nobody gets tenure so anybody you ask well would you give them tenure at Harvard, no of course not, but then again we have? Nobel Laureates that are denied tenure at Harvard. So if we are going to have the situation where all departments have to have a T&P document, I don’t know if they have forms and stuff now that they do for external letters but if you are going to put in something about their credentials  and stuff like that the people from external letters when the write their letters need to be  provided something related to what the standards of this particular unit are because if a department writes standards and those are not upheld in some way and outside people cannot comment on them because they’ve never seen them, it seems to me that the value of the letters would be diminished in comparison to some departmental written policies.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Okay, thank you.

Alan Davis, fisheries, not a senator: In the list down toward the bottom of letters that are not acceptable, ongoing research partners was excluded in the second one. So you have conflict of interest should be avoided so that might be reintroduced.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Okay, good point.

The next one is chapter 3.11.E second full paragraph. This is related to who should vote and how many time people get to vote on P&T dossiers, candidates. The proposed revision would take the head or chair vote away and it would allow faculty who are in a unit but also serving on the, say you have a college or a school P&T Committee so they are at the department level and the college level, or the department level and the university level, they would actually receive two votes.

We received 17 responses, one in favor of this proposed change. And they were in favor of two votes for faculty if they are at the department and a higher level P&T Committee, otherwise this was universally disliked and practically everyone that voted no on this commented that heads and chairs are members of the department, they are tenured faculty and they deserve a vote. And most of the people who commented said that no one even faculty serving on upper level P&T Committees should have more than one vote and in fact one person said if they were on an appellate court they would be required to recuse themselves. Does anybody have any comments, input, suggestions?

The next one is a policy change that would exclude in quotes “immediate family members” from discussion and voting. We got 12 responses, 7 people approve of this, one disapproves. The other people were simply making comments and they relate it to things like define immediate family, is a spouse immediate family? What about relationships among faculty members without benefit of marriage? So you may have a relationship in the room and everyone knows it but they are not married, so does that person get to vote but the spouse doesn’t. Also in some departments there are non-tenure track research or clinical faculty who do have voting privileges for promotion not for tenure. Would they be able to vote for their supervisors, they see that as a conflict. Does anybody have any input on that? Suggestions or questions?

This is the one that generated the most discussion and this deals with the change in policy that would require what is called a ‘consensus report’ it would allow as the current policy change is written, it would require a consensus report from the unit doing the voting but it would also allow individual letters. [1:16:04] We got 11 responses and I finally gave up on trying to put these into categories because the responses were all over the place. The comments were very lengthy and what I plan to do is encapsulate these comments, I promised people anonymity and people have their names attached (to the comment), so I plan to put these together without identification provide them to the faculty for thought process. I believe that this one in particular is going to require a lot more discussion. There was no common ground here. Does anybody have any comments they’d like to make at this point?

Richard Penaskovic, department of philosophy not a senator: I’m not sure we need a consensus report. I served on the tenure and promotion committee at another institution and chaired on one in my own college of Liberal Arts, some departments are split right down the middle, you have 11 faculty for, 9 against, so how are you going to write a consensus report?

Kathryn Flynn, chair: I’ve talked to a couple of people about this and I’m wondering if consensus is the right word, I believe what might be more…, and that may be where we’re bogging down here in terms of where we fall, that it’s not a consensus report it’s a summary report of the discussion. You capture the positives and the negatives and where the consensus comes in is that people have agreed that this document captures the variety of the discussion. I think, obviously based on the comments that we’ve gotten, if that’s the intent it’s certainly not reflected in the language and or if it is we’re missing it. So I think obviously this one is going to require some more discussion, but that’s my impression based on conversations between various people. I think consensus might not be the right word.

Mike Stern, senator, economics: Why do we need letters at all? You voted, that’s your vote, all right? Now either the vote is binding or it isn’t, you pass a department lab or you haven’t. These letters are an attempt to influence other people who have no idea whether statements in the letter are either true or false because there is no fact check at a higher level, nothing else. What are the purposes of the letter other than to try to get somebody to do something either against or in support of what the department did? I can see the reason for external letters because they provide an outside view for the University but he department reports the outcome, the vote, whatever, Like when you do an emeritus vote I don’t think there is the writing of any letters that go up the dossier etc. I mean you voted you provided you recommendation. If the department has as we are supposed to have now, I know our department was required to and others were as well to write a policy. The only thing that should be occurring at a higher level anyway is to check to see whether policy was enforced or not. And the letters from the outside if they are sent a copy of the policy could address whether that person then met these and make sure they are sticking to the policies, but once you’ve written a policy say a department has a policy and the policy is approved, enforced and sent at the time of you employment then either the policy has been followed or it hasn’t. Because I don’t understand what the purpose is for these internal letters are.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Does anybody want to comment? I can tell you that in discussions where I’ve been present where a suggestion that there not be the avenue for internal letters was not well received in general, and I assume that’s why these individual letters are still there.

Bob Locy, immediate past chair: I think it’s a gross misrepresentation of the facts of most tenure and promotion cases to assume that they are all clearly one way or the other for at least the ones that are the most controversial where the university and higher level committees may need more information than just the vote. To make a sound decision reflects that there be some characterization of the process of deliberation that they went through. Such letters as the consensus of the remarks both pro and con for a candidate can provide that to a higher-level committee. As such I think if you’ve ever served on the university tenure and promotion committee you would feel that such input is essential for being able to do you job.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: I don’t want to cut down on discourse but it’s getting late and I do want to run through the rest of these. So I’m going to try to move fairly quickly and encourage you to contact us with other comments as you have them.

The next one is chapter 3.11.E the last paragraph. What this does is create a closed dossier. Basically that means that you would not have any group voting on a dossier that wasn’t exactly like the group before it. So it there are letters written by individuals they must be seen by the department level, at the college level, at the P&T committee level. We had 8 responses, 3 in favor, 5 opposed. There was a lot of concern over retaliation at the department level if letters were written that disagreed with various standpoints and there was also a concern about the failure to forward letters and it’s based on past experience. So those are the main concerns for this particular topic and in general it was not looked upon favorably. So if you have suggestions or comments on that one, please forward them to us.

The next one (3.11.H,4th paragraph) deals with the timing and the process for promotion of what I call ABD (All But Dissertation) hires people who are hired their start date comes along and they are not quire finished with their dissertation. What happens is they are now brought in at the instructor level. When that happens, they are hired as an assistant professor, but they are appointed at the instructor level because they still don’t have the terminal degree. Once they finish the degree they’ve got to go through a promotion that requires the recommendation of the department head, the concurrence of the dean and Provost, and approval of the President effective at the beginning of the semester following completion.

What this policy recommends is that once the terminal degree is finished, if the person has continued, they would be promoted automatically to assistant professor but it will become effective at the beginning of the following academic year after the terminal degree is completed. We had 7 responses, 6 in favor, 1 opposed. One person felt like it was kind of unfair to make them wait to the start of the academic year, I’m assuming there are some budget issues there but think about that and let people know if you have concerns.

The final, almost final, chapter 3.14, 6th paragraph. What this does is allow the addition of new material to the dossier during the appeals process. We got 8 responses, 6 were in favor, 2 were opposed. This would allow say you went up and you were denied, you appeal, meanwhile you’ve gotten notice that two papers have been published; you’d be able to then come back and include that in you appeals material. One person suggested that this was good for due process, another one suggested rather than giving people 14 days to write your appeal that they be given 30. So those are some suggested changes.

Mark Fischman, kinesiology, senator: I guess I might have been one that was strongly opposed to this suggested change. If you are going to allow new material at the appeal process the department who voted on the candidate hasn’t seen it. And maybe the department vote would have been different if this new material was available. The other point I want to make is that if the candidate can submit new material in appeal, can I submit new material to counter the candidate’s material? So this…

Kathryn Flynn, chair: This is going to require more discussion.

Mike Stern, economics, senator: I would largely concur with that. If you take of a like to legal process and normally when you have an appeal you don’t introduce new facts, it is all on the existing fact set that did you follow policy or not. You don’t introduce new facts into an appeals process; that is not an appeals process it is like a new application. You allow reapplication the following year so if you have additional publications, whatever they are then reapply the following year if there is another year.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Okay. The last change related to P&T deals with the P&T Committee itself and what this basically does is enlarge the committee to include one representative from each college or school and nine of those people must be tenured and you would expect them to be at the full professor level. It says nine because you have clinical and research faculty who also have to be represented. It is possible to have someone who is not tenured but is a full clinical or full research professor. Actually I want to go back an check these numbers, I didn’t have time today but I think it may be off one. What this does is to allow each unit on campus to have representation. currently the way the P&T Committee works is that the Rules Committee interviews people, sends names to the President and the rule of thumb, it’s unwritten, is that the larger units always have representation, the smaller units kind of rotate. So in any one year you might have someone from Pharmacy and Nursing but not Forestry, or you’ll have someone from Forestry and Pharmacy but not from Nursing, so there’s a lack of representation. The concerns that were brought forward, 7 responses, 4 in favor, 2 opposed, we had one critique of comma rules, just to give you a little levity in this long meeting. But the concerns were that the difficulty of finding people who meet the criteria to serve on the committee and that the committee would be too large. So think about those things, I don’t want to color your view. I will say that the Rules Committee was approached about it and in fact I think we were the ones who suggested this change at some point, and are committed to take on us, and future Rules Committee members, to take on the extra work of finding the extra people. But that is one that is a substantive change.

Now if you will bear with me for just a few minutes I want to go over the Conflict of Interest (COI) and I first want to state publically that I thought that I had invited Martha Taylor to be here and possibly present this information and realized yesterday or early this morning that I had neglected to send that e-mail, but what we have is a first draft of the Conflict of Interest Policy. It was originated in the VPRs Office, it’s modeled after existing policies of different universities. It’s being driven by Federal Agency development of new requirements in terms of declaration of conflict of interest and the Faculty Welfare Committee, which is a Senate committee, has also been given this document to review and comment on. We though it would be useful, Martha asked we get this out to faculty and start getting some feedback. We had a few problems for whatever reason on the Web site for this particular entry. Myself and several other people were unable to access it to post comments, but we did receive 8 comments mostly suggestions that wasn’t a vote up or down. The biggest complaint was that we did not have a side-by-side comparison of existing policy and proposed policy. Part of the reason for that is the existing policy is intertwined with consulting and this policy is so different that it would be really hard to do side-by-side. [1:30:29]

What has ultimately come out of discussions with the VPRs office is we really have to have two separate policies, one related to consulting, one related to Conflict of Interest, they are not the same thing and they do need to be separate. The other thing is that the university does have to conform to Federal regulations and so this is an effort at getting out in line with the newer Federal regulations that are being developed. The most significant comment about this policy was that it was in quotes “over kill” and we’ll pass that on. It may in fact be that we are going to live with over kill because Federal agencies mandate that, but we’ll wait and see. We had a number of suggestions for ways to simplify or streamline the process that we will pass on, things like having if every year if you are going to have to fill out the form, that if you have nothing that’s changed you would be able to just date it. I don’t know if that will fly, but that’s one possibility. The other thing that Dr. Mason wanted me to point out is that if you’re in a situation where you’re reviewing a grant and you want to have no conflict then you aren’t going to have to do the form. So there are going to be some people that this is going to apply to and to others it’s not. That’s my understanding. This is a fairly complicated policy. What we are going to be doing in the future, inviting Martha to come and talk more specifically about it at the Senate and so as you look through this particularly if you’re a person who has had to deal with Conflict of Interest, if you’ll look through this and forward suggestions to the faculty leadership then we’ll put it all together and forward it on to the Vice President for Research Office.

That is the last thing I have, I want to thank everybody for your comments and for your patience. This is kind of boring, I know, but it’s also real important I think that we know something about what’s headed our way. So at this time if nobody has any old business or new business I’m going to call the meeting adjourned. One comment, yes.

Charles Eick, curriculum and teaching, senator: I just was wondering if we had an update on the Lecturer/Senior Lecturer policy and where we are with that at this time?

Kathryn Flynn, chair: We do not. We had a meeting yesterday with the Steering Committee and the Steering Committee is interested in revisiting the issue. The Provost has told us that after legal review that she cannot sign the policy that we passed at the November meeting. It in effect establishes de facto tenure for people who would be in the Lecturer/Senior Lecturer position. So the Steering Committee is going to be looking at this and charging at least a non-tenure track faculty committee with looking at policy and coming back to the Senate with some recommendations.

(Some other comments not on mic) Starting from scratch? There actually a couple of possibilities out there. There is a streamline version that could be looked at but at this point in time I’m probably going to…Claire and I will probably be asking them to look at both the original and an adaptation; the original without the amendment and a stripped down version. Tony?

Tony Moss, biological sciences, senator: Just a quick question then. So all of the details of what you’ve been discussing today, these will be summarized and made available on the Web site?

Kathryn Flynn, chair: The proposed changes are already on the Web site. If you go to the Senate Web site up on the yellow bar across the top, I think it’s the second thing over but it says “proposed policy changes.” You will not have access to the comments individuals have made, I’ll summarize those and get something out but I promised people that it would be completely anonymous and there are names there right now.

Again I really thank all of you for taking the time to do this. It really helps to have the feedback and if you did not feel comfortable saying anything today but you do have as you go home and think about it if you have concerns or comments please let us know so we can pass them on. And we will have continued discussion of this in Senate meetings so make sure if you are not a senator that you correspond with you senator if you have particular items that you are particularly interested in.

Thank you and the meeting is adjourned.
[1:35:50]