January 12, 2010
Senate Meeting Transcription
Kathryn Flynn, chair: I’d like to call the meeting to order. I’d like to remind everyone that when you stand up to make comments or ask questions to please go to one of the microphones on either side of the room and state your name and the unit that you represent and whether or not you are a senator. The rules of the Senate require that senators be allowed to speak first, so if you are a guest who is not a member of the senate you’re welcome to make comments or ask questions but you have to wait until senators have had a chance to do that first. The other thing I would like to do is ask, if you have more than one comment, you can ask a question or make a comment and we’ll respond to that with the appropriate person and then someone else has a chance and you basically have to go to the back of the line at that point, so that we give everyone a chance to make at least one comment or ask one question. If you do come back up to ask an additional question or make an additional comment, please re-identify yourself because we do produce a transcript of the meeting and it’s really helpful if we can identify people and associate them with their comments. The other thing I’d like to mention, as you might notice we have a very full agenda, we have a number of items that are of significant interest to senators so I am going to limit people’s comments to no more than 3 minutes. In the past I’ve said limit your comments, self-limit 3–5, but in this case I’m going to actually limit to 3 so that we hopefully give everyone a chance to make their comments and also to get through the entire agenda. [1:45]
The first item on today’s agenda is approval of the November Senate Meeting, as usual Dennis DeVries, who’s the secretary, has sent a link to all senators and the minutes are posted on the Senate Web site. So I’d like to ask at this time if any body would like to make any corrections, additions, or deletions to the minutes. Hearing none, the minutes will stand approved as posted. As usual the next item on our agenda are comments from Dr. Gogue.
Dr. Gogue, president: Thank you, I’m delighted to with you here today. I hope all of you had a great holiday break. We’re delighted to see all of you back. I want to go over 3 or 4 things with you and be happy to respond to questions you might have.
Back during the holidays I received a note from the Fulbright Scholar Program, and we had 4 individuals from Auburn University that received Fulbright’s this year, we had individuals from the History Department, Foreign Languages Department, Poultry Science, and Horticulture, and four different countries that they are involved with. We did some checking and typically we have about 2 that receive Fulbright’s on an annual basis, so it was a very good year for us.
The second thing I wanted to mention is that I think all of you saw during the month of December that Jordan Anderson was named as a Rhodes Scholar for Auburn University, and I just want to say thank you to all of you, I don’t know which ones may have worked with him, which ones may have had him in a class at some point, but he certainly represents us well, and one of 32 individuals from the United States that receive the Rhodes Scholar. So we are awfully proud of him and certainly of you.
Also wanted to mention that in the past, since last summer we have made a real effort to try to bring Council Generals, Director Generals, and Masters to campus. We’ve been able to bring those from Argentina, Australia, Costa Rica, Germany, Mexico, Peru, Japan, Korea, Albania, Lichtenstein. Bob McGuiness is here today, and Bob, I don’t know if you off the top of your head can remember the ones you are bringing this semester for us but at least share with us the ones you remember?
Bob McGuiness: Well we have Germany, Japan…(can’t hear well, no mic)
Dr. Gogue, President: You’re getting older Bob. Think about some of the countries and at least chat with Bob if you have interest, they nearly always have open sessions. Bob tries to arrange it such that they spend some time with graduate students and faculty from that particularly country, and then have sessions around part of their interest with different programs and different departments on campus. To me it’s one of the most inexpensive ways, since they don’t charge you anything to come, to invite those individuals and try to get them more aware with Auburn University. I did want to mention that the national meeting for all Land-Grant Universities was held in November, and I haven’t had a chance to share with you and I’ll just share a couple of items with you.
U.S. State Department made comments and presentation relative to the new administration. I think it’s important for us to keep in mind that on the international front, Africa is still the area of interest in the world. They will award 50 grants that will last 30 years each. 30-year grants for programs in Africa. They’ve ordered (awarded?) about 30 of those at this point. The kind of things they are looking for in awards are really what I would call extremely leveraged efforts. They are looking for a couple of American universities to link with an Asian university and a European university and then work with an African university, but language, training, and whole host…. It’s very similar to the grants that some of you are familiar with from the 1970s that were strengthening types of grants, so it’s sort of their next phase as they identify partners that will run for the next 20 or 30 years.
The U.S. Department of Education, there were two things, one I think you wouldn’t be surprised with, with one I was. They talk quite a bit about the STEM initiatives, (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) that was certainly an initiative in the Bush administration, it will be still a very key initiative within this administration, the Obama administration and likely to…I know that Mary Ellen just came back, involved with provost in our region. Lot of emphasis and a lot of interest, lot of expertise in our university in that area so I hope we’ll follow up and look at that. The other one that they talked a great deal about and some of you will know far more about this than I do. A strong emphasis in what they refer to as educational video games. [7:00] Apparently there is a belief that young people are able to play video games that have educational content and they actually learn quicker, better, faster, I don’t know. The way I learned; anyway there is some emphasis in that if that happens to be an area that you have interest in or have ability in or what ever talk to John Mason. Talk to some of us and we can put you in touch with the right people.
I want to conclude, budgets in the state of Alabama, probably don’t have to tell you very much, they certainly don’t appear good. The legislature has its opening session today and they will end sometime in April or May, I don’t remember the exact date. What they are seeing in the state general fund, remember the state general fund is that set of taxes that really supports everything at state government level except education. So state patrol, fish & game, all the other functions of the state. Some are reporting that number is down by 50%, so that spells tremendous issues in the state of Alabama in the areas of mental health, a whole host of areas that state government’s involved with. I can’t believe it’s really down 50%, but that’s what you’re seeing reported.
On the higher education, or the education trust fund, the current numbers and this would be October, November, and December. The education trust fund is down about 1.4%. you may have seen and I was all excitied, December the educational trust fund, the money that came in was up 13%, so December was a tremdous month. I think you will see on the educational side it will have a lot to do with January. To be down 1.4 it meant that October and November must have been 7% or so down for both of those months. If January is a positive month then it probably bodes well or at least better in the legislative session. I know those numbers are about the first week of February, somewhere in there they usually get the numbers out. I just want to share with you those points, I’d be happy to respond to questions you might have. [9:23]
Richard Penaskovic, dept. of philosophy, not a senator: From the outside, Haley Center looks like a great building, but those who work there think otherwise. There are a number of serious problems associated with it. I think mold has been growing on the 5th floor, that’s one thing. Second thing is there is recurring problem throughout the building of water infiltration. The skin of the building has been broken and the building is vulnerable now. I know when it rains out water comes into my office from the windows and I’ve been there like 8 years and several people have come to try to fix it, it can’t be fixed or it hasn’t been fixed until now. I think there is also asbestos in the building. Are there any short-term or long-term plans to doing anything about Haley Center? I know that it would be very expensive to build over again, but something has to be done about this Dr. Gogue.
Dr. Gogue, president: I’m glad Don’s here, Don do you want to come up here and help me? I’m going to talk but I’m going to let Don talk to me. I was presented as I recall, Dan King and his group–you correct me and add to it–presented 3 options to us in the fall on Haley Center. One option is about a $15-million dollar cost option that puts a new roof that deals with windows to some extent, it deals with your heating and cooling systems, about $15 million dollars. Get about 20 more years of life, effective life out of that building. So that is sort of the low cost option if you will. Another option is the complete renovation of that building, doing quadrant by quadrant, so a multi-year type renovation project. That was in the $50-million dollar range?
Don Large: No, that’s more in the $120–130-million dollar range.
Dr. Gogue, president: $120-million dollar range. And I guess the final option is, you in essence continue to use Haley and begin to make the effort to pull selected elements and groups out and build smaller buildings where you never have another Haley Center on campus. Those were the 3 options that were given to us. And Don Large is the guy with the money and he’s going to tell us which option that we’re going to pursue.
Don Large: Well we have been working also with the Provost on this, looking at all university building challenges, because Haley certain you’ve capture accurately the number of concerns there but we have problems in other areas too. So we are trying to use the available funding that we have which is not enough for every need to go after the most challenging ones, the worst ones and try an look at options for the future. So, right now option 3 is looking a whole lot better than any of the other options to simply close Haley and rebuild it or renovate it is so expensive that it almost removes our capacity to deal with all the other problems that we have on campus. The thinking at this point is, no decisions have been made, is that $15–20-million dollar renovation of the HVAC, the roof, the windows, and some of those things that would correct for the most part, the most Rich of all the concerns that you had, and allow us to begin to transition out of that building and begin to prepare for replacement over a period of time. It might mean that the College of Education–now I’m making these numbers up, so don’t assume any decision has been made–moves out in the next 5–10 years, Liberal Arts might move in some direction as well as either buildings free up, or as funding occurs, or opportunities happen, but overall what we’re finding is you just can’t renovate Haley realistically with all the occupants there and there is no surge space that would capture all those people at any one point. So it’s a slow process. A lot of attention is being given we know the problems and I think you’ll see attention given and changes in the near future. Don’t know if that’s 6 months or if that’s a year, but it’s coming.
Richard Penaskovic: Thank you.
Dr. Gogue, president: Thank you Rich. Thank you.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: Thank you Dr. Gogue. We really appreciate your continued attendance and support of the Senate Meetings. [14:25] I have a few comments to make before we move onto the action items. First I’d like to someone on the spot, she didn’t know I was going to do this, but we have the new director for university writing, Margaret Marshall has joined us and she’s down here in the front. Just want to let you know that she is here and we’ll have her come and talk to the Senate once she has a little bit of time to unpack and settle in. Welcome Margaret.
The first thing I want to mention is something that Bob Locy brought to my attention. He attended an SEC Association of Faculty Leadership meeting back in the fall and recently received and e-mail from a graduate student, Amber Stegland Flaluka, and I probably have slaughtered her name. She’s a doctoral student in Higher Education and student affairs at the University of South Carolina. She’s completing her dissertation project and it’s entitled “Faculty Senate Knowledge and Perceptions of Intercollegiate Athletics: A conference Level Perspective.” She’s completed a pilot study and she’s now going to be sending surveys to each Southeastern Conference’s Institutional Faculty Senate, in our case University Senate, shortly after this meeting. The purpose is to acquire a close representation of the views of SEC faculty senators regarding intercollegiate athletics. She’s contacted our IRB and answered questions about the project. And so each of you will be receiving a survey via your university e-mail, which they got from the Senate Web site. The contact information allows them to deliver the survey directly to your office computer. She met and discussed this particular project with the Southeastern Conference Association of Faculty Leaders in October and had their endorsement, that includes our endorsement, of the survey and so I’ve got a couple of things to mention to you. Only current 2009–2010 academic year senators may complete the survey. It will take about 15 or 20 minutes to complete. One senator from each SEC institution, and I’m not sure how they’ll do this, but they will be selected to receive a Barnes & Noble gift certificate for participating and a summary of the final results will be made available to faculty senate chair people from each SEC institution and then that can be shared with the senates, and the results will also be sent to the SEC Association of Faculty Leaders to be made available on its Web site. So the Senate leadership is asking you, when you receive the survey, please take a few minutes to complete it. There’s a lot of interest in this regional board in terms of kind of getting a pulse on how people feel about intercollegiate athletics.
The second thing is really relevant to Rich’s question. The Provost is holding an open forum, in one of the series of open forums that she’s been holding, tomorrow at 3 p.m. in the Library Auditorium. The topic of this one will be “Facilities,” and Dan King who is Assistant VP for Facilities will be there along with Dr. Mazey. And I would like to say that this is a first step in a series of public meetings that are going to take place to increase the dialogue between facilities and the faculty and other members of the Auburn family so that we can share information back and forth in terms of how the university will develop over the next ten, twenty years. So I encourage you and any of your faculty who have any interest in this to attend. Typically these forums have been running from 3–5 p.m. and they are usually a very nice exchange back and forth of information.
The next thing I’d like to mention is that you’ll notice the last item on the agenda today, information item, deals with proposed changes to policies in the Faculty Handbook. The policies that are being discussed are important policies and today is a first step in getting the information out about proposals for change that have been provided by Deans, Department heads, faculty for policies related to a variety of things but most importantly for most of us, promotion and tenure. And so today what we are going to do is give an overview of those changes. What we’d like to do then is to begin collecting your thoughts, suggestions, criticisms of the proposals. Realistically we’re not going to have time to do a very good job at that at this meeting, so we have a couple of things in the works. One is that I’ve got the Senate leadership had asked the appropriate on campus to create a link on the Senate Web page where we will have each of the proposed changes with then a space for you to go in and comment. Make a critique, polite critique, suggestions, why it will work why it won’t work, whatever you want to say can be posted for each individual change that’s been proposed. [20:09] The link, it will be secure. You do not have to identify yourself if you don’t want to you are welcome to do that. The Senate leadership will have access. I’ll probably be the one to get a password and then it will all be in a data base, I’ll share it with the Senate leadership and the Provost’s Office will bring it back to the Senate, let people know without identifying people what has been commented on or suggested for these policy changes. The creation of the site was begun late last week or this morning, it will be up and running on January 18, that’s the target date and you’ll get an e-mail on the faculty mail list letting you know location and any other pertinent information. In addition to that there’ll be a number of other venues that we’ll look at for discussion of particularly P&T, because I think that’s the one that most people will be interested in prior to any Senate action voting.
The other thing that I’ll mention is that next month at the February Senate meeting, it’s time for nominations for Rules Committee members and those are taken from the floor of the Senate. To be nominated for Rules Committee you must be a sitting senator. Your term can be ending this fall, but you must be a senator right now to be nominated to serve on Rules and you then are elected by the Senate. So it is a two year term beginning in August, so if you have an interest in the Rules Committee or you know someone in the Senate that you think would be a good member, if you’ll let us know that so we can ascertain whether they are interested or you can nominate them from the floor in February. Just to give you a heads up. So having said all of that, we have a full plate. On the action items we are going to attempt a voice vote. We’ve come prepared with paper ballots so that if there is no clarity in terms of the outcome of the vote we will revert to paper ballots. [22:21] We are going to try for voice vote just in the sake of saving some time.
So with that the first action item is a proposal to change the meeting dates of the Senate. I’m going to invite Claire Crutchley, chair-elect up. I’ll mention that this is an amendment to the Senate Constitution and it will require a two-thirds vote of the entire number of senators. [22:48]
Claire Crutchley, chair-elect: Good afternoon. I’ve been informed by Russ that we have more than 58 senators in the room, but hopefully this won’t be too controversial. Russ and I were setting up the Senate meeting dates for next year and when we did we really didn’t want to meet in July, but we thought an August meeting made more sense. This is for two reasons, one is we try not to do anything too substantial in the summer months so June an July we were trying to come up with things for the Senate meeting that won’t make people worry about too much, so that’s two meetings that are kind of wasted and the other thing is that fall is really full with heavy agendas. We are trying to squish so much into our fall agenda because we only met September, October, and November. So what we propose is a change, and this is in the Senate Constitution–I was kind of surprised that dates are in the Senate Constitution but it is, so all we want to do is change the months so it says “August through June” except [September is what she said but she meant December]. So really all we are doing is changing a senate meeting. If the proposal passes we would not have a July meeting, but we will have an August meeting. So that’s the proposal.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: Does anyone have any questions or discussion on this proposal? Article is misspelled, we’ll fix that before we put it in the Handbook. We’ll do a friendly fix. Okay, since there are no questions or comments other than the spelling I’ll call for the vote.
All those in favor say aye.
Group: Aye
Kathryn Flynn, chair: All opposed, nay. Motion passes. Thank you.
The next item on our agenda are proposed changes to the core curriculum. These changes are brought to us by the Core Curriculum and General Education Committee, which is a committee of the Senate. And I’m going to invite Linda Glaze up.
Linda Glaze, assoc. provost for undergraduate studies: Good afternoon. In November I presented the background on the proposed changes. And in December we held a forum and I’ve asked two faculty members on the committee to present a brief overview of the background and the proposals and the rational. First will be Pam Ulrich from the department of Consumer Affairs and the second will be Michelle Sidler from the department of English.
Pam Ulrich, department of Consumer Affairs: I’m going to very briefly tell you a little bit about what got us to this point. Our core curriculum is about 20 years old it was put into place inn the quarter system in 1991 as a result of thinking in the 1980s and it was only minimally changed ten years ago when we went to semesters. So it’s been about the same for about 20 years. In the years 2003–2008 the Core Curriculum Oversight Committee found it necessary to start working on the development of student learning incomes (outcomes) because of assessment requirements that had been put in place by SACS. By the Spring of 2008 we were ready to bring the student learning outcomes forward to the Senate and in the May meeting of that year a three-layered set of goals, student learning outcomes, and measures associated with the student learning outcomes was set forward and passed by the Senate, so that was 2008. In 2008–2009 two different things came about at the same point in time and these two efforts were separate. First our committee looked at, now that we have the student learning outcomes in place, we looked at what the current core is actually doing. So in that year we had interviews conducted with core program directors and we published results of those interviews in April 2009. At the same time because of the Strategic Planning process the General Education Taskforce was at work and they developed some recommendations. [27:33]
So very briefly what we found from those two separate efforts when we came to analyze them was that the Taskforce, and that would have been this fall, the taskforce recommended in general terms that students and programs have greater flexibility that more closely matched the State Articulation Agreement, the general education agreement across the state, so that we would be more parallel with the state requirements. We are more restrictive, have been more restrictive than the state requirements. We had found in our survey of core program directors that the current core requirements do not ensure that students through the core will have all the student learning outcomes met when it comes time for SACS to come for its next visit. We also found that many of the core courses were not being formally assessed, and that is a very definite requirement by SACS. [28:38]
So just before Michelle tells you very briefly about what we are recommending as a committee, let me go back and say what the General Education Taskforce recommended, because we are not recommending exactly the same thing as what they did. They recommended that to be more in line with the state requirement that we reduce the requirement for two sequences, areas I and II refer to humanities and social sciences areas, the two sequences would be the sequence in World Literature and the sequence in History; that these be reduced to one required sequence, the state requires that and one in the alternate area.
They also recommended that philosophy be an option in the Humanities area, but not be a requirement, which is what the state agreement says. And they also recommended that we no longer require two linked or sequential science lab courses, but that we…you have to have the two lab courses, but two different sciences… you could do it in two different sciences. So our recommendation as the Core Curriculum and General Education Committee was broadened this fall so that there is university wide representation. Our recommendation has to do with 1. And 2. But we are not recommending that we change our science requirement, we are recommending that that stays the same. That is not on the ballot. Michelle will tell you a little bit more about our recommendations. [30:15]
Michelle Sidler, English department: So we actually ended up splitting the first of the recommendations that the Taskforce gave, we kind of split it up into one and two in our recommendations here and that’s how we ended up again with three. The first recommendation suggests that we allow more options in the humanities and the fine arts in addition to philosophy. Right now all students are required to take one course in philosophy to satisfy that part of the humanities component and we’d like to see that opened up, again I want to reiterate this goes back to the Taskforce recommendation for more flexibility for programs for students. The second is to eliminate the organization of social sciences into groups 1 and 2, that again allows for more diversity and more options for students. And then the final recommendation is to replace the requirement to have both a sequence in history and a sequence in world literature. The state requirements require one or the other sequence, but not both, which is what we have established here, and then one course in the other area. So essentially instead of all four courses being mandated by the core, 3 of the 4 stay mandated, either 2 histories, one literature; or 2 literatures, one history. That opens up that fourth course to allow students to choose other options and allow us to think and be more creative at we address the student learning outcomes.
Rationale: So I’ve kind of got ahead of myself, I went over the rationale a little bit. The key here is we haven’t address the student learning outcomes as directly as we need to. One of the things we talked about at previous meetings is that a major component of SACS is establishing student learning outcomes and then showing how you meet those student learning outcomes. Right now our core and our student learning outcomes don’t match in all ways. We are already restricted by the State Agreement, which is the second component here. We are already restricted by the core requirements of the State Agreement, so we need to figure out where do we have some flexibility so we have space to address those other student learning outcomes. We have to stay within a certain amount of core hours, I think everybody would agree with that one, and then figure out how to assess all of this too. Which means that after we make recommendations for how to open up space in the core then we figure out how we can fill that space with courses, assessment, and curriculum that address our student learning outcomes.
The next phase is going to be requesting proposals where we will look at courses and see how they fit those student learning outcomes. The request for proposal will ask what is the overview of the course, what are the student learning outcomes, does it achieve, where does it fit in the core, and what is the plan for assessment, which is something that which a lot of disciplines haven’t articulated well and we’re all going to have to address in the very near future here with the visit from SACS.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: Okay. The way we’re going to do this, we’ve got 3 separate action items and so what I figured we’d do is move through each one individually. The first one is to allow more options in area II, humanities and fine arts in addition to philosophy. (I think we kind of out of sinc, I apologize, but this would be the… it is in the same order, so item number one…) So I’m going to ask if anyone has any comments, suggestions, questions, that they come forward on item one.
Guy Rorhbaugh, senator from philosophy: I actually think I’ll be addressing all 3 points collectively. And perhaps surprisingly I’m going to suggest that we vote against these today although I’m going to say in months I’m going to get up and say exactly the opposite, but I’ll suggest these actions are premature. For the record I think those sequences are good, I think we are ahead of our peers for having a philosophy class demanded of all of our students, but I’m not going to argue that one for anyone, I assume we all think our own disciplines are tremendous. So that’s not really the point I want to make.
You probably recall I asked in a sort of pointy way at a previous session why we want to make these changes. I want to thank the committee. I think the answer to that question got a lot clearer at the open forum. If I can boil it down for you I think in the end it seemed that there were really two rationales; one has to do with promoting the student learning outcomes, and the second has to do with flexibility. I guess I will try to address these in turn, quickly.
The committee is in the middle of accepting these proposals and I think the whole core is in some sense “up in the air” all classes, new ones, old ones are going to have to justify themselves and their role and I think the committee is waiting in some sense to see what set of tools is at their disposal to give off to students to secure the outcomes is better than we are now. I think we as a Senate we have endorsed these outcomes, we are behind this and I think this is a rationale that cannot be ignored. I also think given that this process is still in the midst of unwinding it seems premature to scrap what we’ve got until we have a clearer picture of what we are going to get. You don’t demo your kitchen before you see the plans for the new one, and there’s a good reason for that. I think it’s clear and in 4 months I may need to get back up here and say now we need the plan we need to do exactly these three things, I’m going to do it if I have to, but we haven’t seen that and we’re not ready to. It’s a good rationale for change but not yet. [37:08]
Second rationale that came out very clearly I think, is flexibility. Flexibility is a reason to change it now, not to wait, today. But I would also like to point out to you that (planning?) for flexibility is not something coming from this body. We have not voted or endorsed this idea. I find in conversations that it is an idea that we as a faculty are divided on. There are deep issues here that we have not even discussed and I would urge you to hesitate even if you think providing flexibility to students is important, that we are ready as a body at least to vote on that rationale for these changes. I think I’ve got to be out of time at this point, but like I said, I suggest we vote against this. I suggest the committee bring these suggestions back when it’s clear what the final plan is and I’ll vote for it then, I swear, but not today.
Pam Ulrich: I understand that you are saying that you’d like to see what our plan is before you vote to change the plan. What the committee perceives as that we have no point in having a plan if we don’t know there’s a reason to have a plan because we voted to make changes possible. It is not to say that we are going to make huge changes, we don’t know unless we have a reason and a rationale which is on the next slide that if this was approved we would go forth with RFPs for all current core courses that would ask for them to say what they are doing in terms of the student learning outcomes and how they are assessing it, or how they will develop an assessment plan because that must be done, and then to see what other courses might be proposed that would just as equally meet student learning outcomes and would meet some student learning outcomes that are not currently being met within the core or general education requirements. Oral communication is one specific student learning outcome that does not link clearly to any current core course. And that’s a problem when you come to the SACS visit. So we need to look at the student learning outcomes, so it’s…I sort of understand what you are saying, but the problem is we can’t ask for changes if there isn’t room for changes.
Charles Eick, senator from curriculum and teaching: I’ve served on this committee also, so I am speaking as a member of the committee that’s proposing some of these changes. I concur that you don’t want to try to make the changes and then be told you’re not allowed to make those changes, and then that time is wasted–cart before the horse there, but one of the things about flexibility I wanted to comment on. I know we’ve talked a lot about the flexibility student choice, I might add as a program person at the upper level, junior/senior level program as Pharmacy and Curriculum & Teaching as many others are, in terms of the students that we receive, we would like the flexibility in sometimes within the core in order to designate certain courses that would better support what we’re trying to do with our students in terms of our outcomes–right now as it stands as restrictive as the core is, it’s not a matter that students get to choose whatever they want, our angle is, we don’t get to choose what they need or what they are taking, whether that be more literature, more history, more philosophy. Personally I’d like to see a philosophy course on our required course sheets and that may be the case, but I would have that flexibility to make that choice.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: Does anyone have any more comments? And I’d like to mention that this is a motion, it comes from the committee so it will not require a second so we need to keep our comments relevant to item number one.
Chris Correia, senator from psychology: I have to admit I have pretty mixed feelings about this for a number of reasons. If I look at this just purely from my department, the feedback on the split for one and two is different than my own personal feeling, but I just have to reiterate that without really knowing what these courses are going to be replaced with it’s just really hard to know where to go with this. And so if we just look at what’s on the table here, students may or may not take a philosophy course, they may or may not take one fewer English or History course, they may or may not take courses from these two social science areas, and so I get the flexibility, but it also seems like we’re allowing the option to be less well rounded in course selection, less well rounded in overall educational experience, and again that might be okay if the new plan fills in those gaps and reassures this sort of well rounded notion that I think we a re all in support of, but I just don’t know if that’s the case without seeing what the new proposal is going to look like. So I know it’s nothing new it’s kind of offering support for I guess philosophy statement that it’s just not clear what a student’s going to look like after going through the core and whether they are going to be given exposure to these disciplines as they are now. [42:42]
Michelle Sidler: I think I can provide some information that would address both of the examples you gave. On the philosophy example, if it is not a requirement it is still an option or would presumably be an option all the same courses that are there now within the humanities area, and as Charles was suggesting, a program can require that the student make that choice. That goes against the idea of flexibility, but if a program in COSAM wants to require the ethics in health sciences or a program in liberal arts wants to require logic, they can do so. We are not saying they can’t do so. They do so now, they choose science sequences or the other. In terms of the social sciences and grouping, that’s actually number two, so I’ll stick to number one. I’ll come back to the ungrouping.
Steve Brown, senator from political science: Again, I have largely the same concerns that have already been expressed, but I was wondering what was the rationale behind your rejecting the option to separate the sciences, but not to do that with what the Taskforce had recommended with regard to the sciences but not here?
Michelle Sidler: One of the recommendations was a large component of what we are doing here is to address student learning outcomes. The science/literacy student learning outcomes, one of the bullet points on it is that students have a strong area of knowledge of science in one area. We had originally intended to go with the Taskforce recommendation to have to disrequire or unrequire the sequence, but when we looked and the student learning outcome says, knowledge in one area. And so we felt that the situation as it is right now, the requirement, fulfills that, so we kept it as it was, but that was sort of our first marrying up really of the student learning outcomes with what we’ve got. The changes here don’t necessarily fit into neat categories like that. Science is benefitting from the fact that we have a science/literacy student learning outcomes. Many of the requirements we have here, the fit several outcomes, several outcomes apply to them, and so the water is muddier I think in those cases. But also it is also much more a pejorative narrative metaphor that I’d like to use. What I’d like to say is there are a lot more opportunities to explore ways to fill the student learning outcomes in those cases, and that’s why we made that change.
Steve Brown: May I ask a follow up question? Are you saying then that the student learning outcomes then trumps the flexibility, that’s what’s guiding one and two? With the sciences the student learning outcomes are of greater importance than the flexibility that you decide earlier, is that correct?
Michele Sidler: I think in that case it had to because of the way it’s written, however I would say where there’s flexibility in the student learning outcomes we should take advantage of that. In this case there wasn’t a lot of flexibility in the student learning outcomes.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: One more comment.
Richard Penaskovic, not a senator: I agree with the committee that philosophy be an option in the humanities and not a requirement. You folks have a very large committee, 25 people, you certainly talked about this a great deal and you voted in favor of this option, so I would go in favor of that. But I have some other points to make.
Do we have any criteria for deciding that a particular course belongs in the core or not? Or a particular discipline belongs in the core? And I have one. To what degree does a particular discipline help us understand our world? Why, for example, don’t we require the study of volcanos? Volcanology in the core, because it only illuminates a very small part of our world. Someone asked what other courses could be substituted for philosophy, you could have a course in religious studies substitute for philosophy courses in the core. University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa does that for example they have a core requirement. Many universities do. Most of the schools in the Southeastern Conference have large departments of religious studies. Here in the Bible Belt, religion is just an option. So I agree with you folks.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: If there are no other comments, as I mentioned this is a motion brought to us from a Senate committee so it does not require a second. So at this time I’d like to call for a vote. All those in favor of adopting motion number one please say aye.
Group: Aye.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: All those opposed.
A few from the group: Aye.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: The motion carries. [48:00]
We are going to move on to item two. Which is to eliminate Auburn’s current organization of the Social Sciences into Group I and Group II. So I’d like to ask if anybody has any comments or suggestions or questions on item number two?
Steve Brown again from political science, senator: I just have to reiterate as I did before that I find it hard to believe that the study of American government or a political economy can become an option, that someone can leave Auburn and have taken no courses what so ever in anything dealing with citizenship or with government or with anything to go out to the big world. I just find that that’s optional, and even now it’s optional in those areas. The possibilities that (students) will take that are far fewer now. Under the circumstance I am just curious as to the rationale behind that?
Pam Ulrich: If I could first go back to answer your previous question or comment that I couldn’t answer before. The reason for our suggesting that the areas be ungrouped was that when we looked at each of the groups, there were and this goes back to what the professor suggested from psychology, what we noticed was that within the groups courses were not necessarily meeting the same learning outcomes so we could not be assured that if a student chose one versus another core in that group they might or might not be getting a student learning outcome that we would be expecting. We would be looking to that group for that to be filled and that would, there was a case like that in your group which is economics which is actually the most selected course by students, largely because it is I think because it is required within so many programs. So to say that they are getting the same from micro-economics is either of your courses is not necessarily the case so that was the reason for the ungrouping. We have not taken away the idea that we might regroup them in a different way when we see what all comes forward. Dr. Penaskovic suggested there seem to be other potential options for meeting student learning outcomes. So we are not saying that they would never be regrouped and that it’s just a big menu of picking, we’re just saying this grouping doesn’t work with the student learning outcomes.
Steve Brown: Is it not somewhat what Guy had mentioned earlier though as to why tear apart the kitchen now? Why not ask these courses of instructors and departments to make sure they are meeting the student learning outcomes beforehand, to apply the assessment beforehand before we take it out? And if after that it still doesn’t meet learning outcomes the certainly divide them then. Why divide it now and have to go through the process of putting them back in some way?
Pam Ulrich: Well we sort of did that, we, there was an alignment study and I can pull up the chart for you, that showed that we were over representing certain student learning outcomes and under representing or loosing or missing all together other student learning outcomes. Actually what you are asking is a perfect example because we have a student learning outcome that is informed and engaged citizenship. One of the components is a knowledge of social, political, or economic cultural systems within and outside of the United States. Presumably that’s what the polysci courses are doing. Assume a student takes the economics course, we need to figure out if they are taking the economics course are they getting that other stuff somewhere else? And if they’re not, where do we fit it in? If we have this flexibility we can start laying out where do we have options to fill in places where students might be missing that. Right now potentially they are missing that.
Steve Brown: They are missing and informed citizen in an American government class? How to learn how to do that?
Pam Ulrich: When they take the economics option instead of polysci (political science).
Steve Brown: right, but again very different tracks and economics, political economy versus political science those are all different things I know you all have analyzed but the learning outcomes again I can understand where you are coming from but I’m having a hard time that you can become and informed citizen leave with that learning outcome never having taken a government class.
Pam Ulrich: I would say part of our request for proposals is to figure out if that’s the case.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: Okay if there are no other comments or questions, observations at this time I’d like to ask that all those in favor of adopting motion number two say aye.
Group: Aye.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: All those opposed, nay.
A few from the group: Aye, nay.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: The motion passes. [52:58]
So we move on to item number three. This is the item or the motion that replaces the requirement for sequences in both Literature and History with a requirement for a sequence in one and a single course and the other, for example a Literature sequence and one history, or a history sequence and one literature. So I open the floor for comments at this point.
Jennifer Brooks, from the history department, senator: As I handed out earlier with this handout we want to propose an amendment to eliminate item three from this proposal. I’ll just make a few brief comments. The actual amendment would read:” Eliminate item three of the proposed changes to the core curriculum.” And what this in effect would do, would be to retain the history sequence, so that students would be required to take history in sequence as they are now. We’ve spelled out sort of the rationale for this so I won’t go over everything. In terms of the context for this decision it was a unanimous vote in out department to propose this amendment. We spent a lot of time talking about this it seems odd to us that that in today’s society the main word we hear defining it is globalization and here we’re proposing to reduce that sort of awareness for an Auburn University graduate. On a more pragmatic and practical level this sequence is linked directly to our student learning outcomes including the one we just spoke about and informed and engaged citizenship as well as intercultural knowledge and diversity awareness. It’s also reflected in our strategic plan in the sense of increasing global awareness for the university and for our students. And I might point out not to be too opportunistic but also connects to our president’s own comments earlier about the many and diverse connections for the university, and that’s just a brief synopsis of our rationale.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: It looks like instead of an amendment what you’ve got is if motion 3 is voted down, you accomplish what you have in your amendment so probably we don’t need an amendment. We just need a vote. Is that suitable to you? I mean it’s an either or.
Jennifer Brooks: To me personally it’s suitable.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: Okay, it accomplishes the same thing basically. Does anybody else have any comments or questions on this motion?
Michael Melancon of the history department, not a senator (although I was at one time): I want to speak directly in support of Jenny’s motion. When I was a senator I spoke on some issues, I remember years later I went up for promotion and tenure, went online to look for citations and I found a quotation from when I was in the Senate, and I actually praised [55:58] against many other peoples, the accomplishments of our senior students because of the existing core curriculum. I’ll give you one example: When I teach early Russian history courses I use the lay of ego’s host earlier on students had no comparative framework what so ever, because of composition courses and world literature courses after the core was introduced I found the students had a wonderful comparative framework. I think that the two sequences that we’re in essence suggesting we compact in some way along with several other things like comparative religions would be superb, foreign languages are the very courses that accomplish, contribute to the broader strategic statements that we constantly hear about. So I strongly urge that we not do this. I understand some of the problems with state articulation and student learning outcomes and so forth, but those look like abstractions as do flexibility when we are dealing with solid accomplishments of the existing core. Thank you.
James Goldstein, senator from English: I am also the coordinator of the World Literature Program. I want to speak in favor of approving this proposal. One thing that hasn’t come out in the discussion, although it’s clear in the written justification, for not approving this is that if we vote against #3 here we are going to continue to require both history and literature sequences. When I accepted the job as coordinator of world literature three years ago I told the previous department head I wouldn’t do so if I were expected to support the status quo for the way the core is now. For years, despite some wavering from time to time, I’ve been a proponent of the idea that we require far too much of our students in the core and I think as a pedagogical notion, students who have choices and make choices are on balance more likely to have a better experience as well as the teachers and so on. I find the rationale, with all due respect for my colleagues in history, for wanting to reject this recommendation, we’ve heard the word globalism mentioned a couple of times; if there were one history sequence I think it would be a more cogent argument, but world history is not the only history sequence. It seems that the description and the justification that was presented, handed out today, talks about all kinds of things that are not equally—last year I was on the core oversight committee so I was looking at the alignment study–it’s hard to see how technology and civilization would be hitting all those positive aspects of study in comparison to the world history sequence. This is not to say anything against technology and civilization or human odyssey as current options in the history core, but I think both the institution and the students and in some cases the faculty would be better served by going along with this recommendation. Thank you. [59:44]
Jennifer Brooks, again from history: I guess I just want to point out again that this was a unanimous vote in our department and that is true even though I don’t think we all necessarily agreed on every element of the rationale, but I think we all did agree that both the tech. and civ. courses and also the world history courses do address many of those same outcomes. And I think to make assumptions about what the content is in those courses and whether they do or don’t address that is not really the best foundation to decide on this proposal.
Michelle Sidler: As the representative on the core committee from the English department, I solicited comments and feedback from my department, we didn’t have a formal vote, but I solicited comments and pretty overwhelmingly, there were a few detractors, but pretty overwhelmingly our feeling was this: If students have the choice they are going to choose the thing in which they are most engaged. And they are going to choose the subject that they feel fits their curriculum, what their needs are and also the one that helps them fulfill these student learning outcomes. So it creates an incentive to really revitalize our courses and think about them. Also we have to teach fewer sections, which means it feels less like a factory. We teach nearly 100 sections of world literature every semester and it’s a huge burden in our department. What that means is it is exhausting too. This gives us the opportunity to revitalize that core with a few fewer sections to help us with the load.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: Okay if there are no other comments or questions, at this time I’ll ask that we vote on motion #3. All those in favor of adopting the change recommended in motion #3 say aye.
Group: Aye.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: All those opposed, nay.
Group (several of them): Nay.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: The motion passes.
I appreciate everybody’s comments and patience on this. Thank you.
The next item on our list of action items is the proposal for guidelines for the Lecturer/Senior Lecturer positions and I am going to call Emmitt Winn up to present information on this. [1:02:20]
Emmitt Winn, associate provost: Hi, we’re back, you’ll remember that we had the information part of our presentation in November and so now we’re back in January as an action item. [1:03:17]
So, proposed Lecturer Title Series, the document. Just as a reminder this all grew out of a Senate Resolution way back in September where the Senate voted in part to establish the faculty title of Lecturer/Senior Lecturer and appoint a faculty committee, chaired by the associate provost, to establish the procedures to hire, evaluate, and terminate faculty members in these positions.
Sort of the committee driving principles were to create a position similar to the clinical and research title series which we’ve had at Auburn since 1999, provide flexibility with the understanding, we sort of went through this understanding that colleges and departments will have different needs, some won’t need this at all, others will need it more. [1:04:24] And then third to create a position to allow full-time instructional faculty to remain more than 5 years as full-time without being forced into part-time status, which is the current situation for instructors.
What we have produced and what hopefully you have seen is a consensus document from the committee. Consensus document created not only sort of among the members of the committee, but also through a lot of feedback that we received, just for those of you who are keeping a score card, we had 3 open forums on this topic, we receive written feedback from individual faculty and from senators and we also received a comprehensive review of our original document, which we presented as an information item in November, from the AAUP with many excellent suggestions from them. The last little thing I want to say about the document is the final document if it is approved in what ever form is a recommendation to the Provost.
I’m not going to go through all 12 pages, but I will mention that there are sort of key points that the committee think are important, the first is that the document endorses through the AAUP guidelines for total instructional percentages at a university, secondly that establishing such a position requires a proposal that must be approved by the tenured faculty in the department as well as other folks. And finally that it provides a way to promote lecturers/senior lectures.
To finish up, letting you know who served on this committee, several of them are here today and they’ve all done an excellent job and it’s been my pleasure to chair this committee and work with these fine folks. (the list of members is posted on the screen–Emmitt Winn, Bonnie White, Constance Hendricks, Michel Smith, Jim Ryan, Elizabeth Miller, and Kerri Munoz). [1:06:52]
Kathryn Flynn, chair: Okay. So at this point I’ll open the floor for comments, questions, suggestions.
James Goldstein, senator English: I move that the following amendment be adopted, and I’ve supplied the text if you would so kindly project that.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: One thing I have to do. This one is different than the last action item because this is an ad hoc committee that was appointed by the provost, so this is a motion brought forward by this committee, it is not a Senate committee so it does require a second. So at this time I would like to ask if anyone would like to second the motion to adopt this proposal?
Charles Eick, curriculum and teaching, senator: I’ll second.
(adjusting the content on the screen) [1:08:17]
James Goldstein, senator English: I’ll read. Only the italics are the amendment the rest is just to show you where the three insertions would go. I’ll read aloud since it is not legible in sequence what I’m moving to be inserted into the language, but they are logically related, the one insertion that I’m trying to persuade the Senate to accept would be that Lecturers or Senior Lecturers who have completed 7 years of service could only be removed, dismissed, discontinued for just cause or financial exigency. So I’ll read the three parts.
The first item would insert in, this is all under the document roman numeral 5 (V section a) Terms and continuation of appointment. So the first insertion comes in the second paragraph. “Renewal is contingent upon satisfactory performance of assigned duties and available funding except that lecturers who’ve completed seven years satisfactory service may be discontinued only for just cause or in case of financial exigency.”
The second block is the same section third paragraph, inserting after the first sentence “Renewal is contingent upon satisfactory performance of assigned duties and available funding except that senior lecturers who’ve completed seven years satisfactory service may be discontinued only for just cause or in case of financial exigency.”
And then the third block again the same section, no this is now 5 (V section b) Non-continuation of Appointment, first paragraph this inserts two bits, Non-continuation, insert: of a lecturer/senior lecturer has completed less than seven years of continuous full-time service, and that sentence would carry on as it is; may occur at the completion of the fixed term appointment for unsatisfactory performance, enrollment and/or curricular changes that eliminate the need for the position, lack of funding, financial exigency, or just cause according to due process. That’s for people with less than seven years. And then insert new sentence; non-continuation of a lecturer/senior lecturer who has completed seven years of continuous full-time service may occur for financial exigency or for just cause according to due process as explained.
So that’s what I’m proposing. We did briefly give the rationale for that. I’ve mentioned in this forum on many occasions that there are certain aspects to the proposal that would risk having Auburn again being placed under sanction by AAUP. I would like to thank the committee and especially its chair, Dr. Winn, for their great willingness to listen to suggestions and to be flexible and to incorporate many, many of our suggestions and I believe that the document that we are currently voting on is much, much stronger than it was. This is the line in the sand though, and again you don’t have to take my word for it. I check with Washington, if we don’t amend the document in this way we don’t solve the problem of risking sanction, because it’s well and good for us to put in our own local document that these people are going to be expected to waive defacto tenure, but we don’t unilaterally get to decide for the profession as a whole and those who subscribe to the AAUP principles whether we can through defacto tenure out the window. So even if we don’t call these people tenured, as far a s AAUP is concerned, if they’ve completed 7 years they are tenured, defacto, as a matter of fact. And if we try to get rid of someone on lesser grounds those that are tenured faculty could be got rid of, then we risk censure. So I would urge that my colleagues in the Senate to amend the text to include this. This will protect us from the possible risk of censure. If we don’t we might have to go down the path that Auburn has been on before where we were censured for getting rid of non-tenured track faculty who had completed more than 7 years of service. Thank you.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: So we have a motion on the table and it does require a second before we can discuss it. Does anybody second this motion?
Emily Myers, senator sociology: Second.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: Emily Myers, sociology. Thank you.
The floor’s now open for discussion on the amendment. Does anybody have any comments, questions?
Mark Prorok, senator from mechanical engineering: Could you zoom it a little bit so we could see the text better and also if we plan to continue to have this room serve as the Senate chamber can we find some funds to update the screen and the projector?
Kathryn Flynn, chair: I wish. Engineering would be so happy with us. What I’ll do is…, I don’t know if that helps a lot…no. We will move through if any one has any comments on the individual (parts), but we’ll start there.
Werner Bergen, senator from animal science: One of the hallmarks of being a faculty member at an academic institution is scholarship. I was a department head when we were in this position, I think. In our department somebody was at that 7-year rule and it was quite a problem but that individual had done absolutely no scholarship. If that person would have been appointed under the rule of tenure it would… I would have written a letter of discontinuation. I’m not for this one way or the other, but if we feel that real faculty, don’t get annoyed at me, tenure-track faculty, scholarship is important, then I don’t see how that’s in here at all because I don’t think instructors have to do scholarship, but I could be wrong on that. So that’s just my comment.
Bob Locy, immediate past chair: I’d like to ask a couple of questions first. Emmitt, as I understand this proposal is it advisory to the provost and the administration? It is their final say on what this proposal becomes, but we’re acting on advising the provost, is that correct?
Emmitt Winn, assoc. provost: That’s the way I understand it, yes.
Bob Locy, immediate past chair: So the comment that I’d like to make is that it seems to me that in the process of weighing what to do about this at the administrative level, if this amendment passes we’re confronted with a dilemma that we already have non-tenure track faculty positions in the clinical area and in the research area that wouldn’t have these kinds of defacto tenure guarantees in the policies that create them. And so my question would be, does this not expose us to other kinds of legal liabilities with respect to the fact that a certain percentage of the non-tenure track faculty or the faculty we are calling non-tenure-track or temporary faculty have certain privileges that other classes of faculty don’t, based on what their job description is. It seems to me that this creates a real dilemma if we don’t have all three groups in the same way. We haven’t been on AAUP sanction for what we have done in the clinical and research areas, why would doing the same thing with the teaching areas get us there? I just ask the Senate to consider that.
Larry Crowley, a member of the steering committee: I would be opposed to that amendment from the perspective of it puts the well performing lecturer in jeopardy the sixth year, because one of the intents of this is to have some flexibility. So you have a crisis point at six years that you wouldn’t have under the original proposal as to whether you are going to be defacto tenured and being bound by that position. Which is a problem, so I would be opposed to that amendment. [1:18:09]
Larry Gerber, professor emeritus of history, not a senator: I appreciate the chance to speak. I am also on the national executive committee of the AAUP. I would urge senators to support this amendment. I think the question is not so much directly whether we would be in danger of being in the situation in the future where we would be placed on the censure list by the AAUP. I think the key question is why length of service leads to a difference in protections that don’t exist for people with fewer than 7 years? The whole concept of whether it’s tenure or some form of job security, which isn’t necessarily called tenure is it is a protection of academic freedom. And I think it’s indisputable that people who have the job security that this amendment would provide have greater protections of their academic freedom than they would otherwise. That is the principle reason for supporting this. The question raised about well we do have clinical and research faculty on a different title and if we’ve been put on censure or we had a problem, well we’ve had no one, and I am quite confident in saying this, we’ve had no one who has been in one of those title series who has had more than 7 years of service and then been discontinued and registered a complaint. AAUP will not act upon the principle, they will act upon somebody registering a complaint. [1:19:53] And the fact that I don’t know, perhaps the provost or somebody else knows, whether anyone in the other title has had more than 7 years of full-time service and then been discontinued–I’m not sure if we keep track of such things or not but I sure nobody has complained to AAUP in that situation. I actually would favor extending the same kind of protection to the people in the other series. But I come back to the reason for providing extra protection, the 7 years is a length of time that has been arrived at over a fairly long period, goes back to 1940 when it was ratified nationally, but the purpose of it is to give added protection for academic freedom. I take the committee’s work, it was definitely done in good faith. There are many things in this proposal, which I think will improve the conditions for people in these non-tenure-track positions. So I applaud the committee for doing that, but I think on this point that we still ought to protect the notion that additional protections are deserving of people who’ve had long-term status. [1:21:02]
Kathryn Flynn, chair: Thank you everybody. If there are no other comments what we will do right now is vote on… one more, you almost missed it.
Guy Rohrbaugh, senator from philosophy: I’ll just speak briefly in favor, I think that’s exactly right, the issue is not whether we will be censured or not but what’s the right thing to do? I guess I’m reluctant to see Auburn so to speak at the forefront of what might be a movement to erode the system. Clearly people have done it and there are models we can follow, but I think early an option is not the place we want to be, and I think this amendment dials us back a little bit to somewhere closer to where we want to be even if it means that we won’t use it as much or in a more restricted way. I think this is the right thing to do.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: Okay, so at this time what I’d like to do is call for a vote on whether or not to adopt the proposed amendment to the policy that’s been brought to us by the ad hoc committee. All those in favor of adopting the proposed amendment, please say aye.
Group: Aye (several).
Kathryn Flynn, chair: All those opposed
Group: Aye (a few).
Kathryn Flynn, chair: who wants to make a call for me? Let’s do a vote. All those in favor of adopting this motion please stand up and we will count you if you are a senator. [1:22:48]
Okay, we had 35 in favor of adopting the amendment. Now all those opposed please stand up. We had 22 opposed to adopting the amendment so the amendment has become part of the policy that we will now discuss if there are discussions or we will move straight to a vote. So if anyone has any comments or suggestions on the proposed policy, this would be the time.
Richard Penaskovic, department of philosophy, not a senator: I have a serious reservation about the two sentences at the end of the introduction to the document under discussion. Where it says, Auburn endorses the AAUP guidelines stating that no more than 15% of the total instruction within an institution and no more than 25% of the total instruction within any department should be provided by faculty with non-tenure-track appointments.
My problem is this, in the School of Pharmacy over 50% of the faculty are non-tenure-track appointment and in one particular department, the clinical department, 75% of the faculty are non-tenure-track appointment. This has been a persistent problem, I brought it up myself as chair to the previous provost and I don’t see anything being done about this. I’d feel more hopeful about the situation if there was something to be…, if we saw a decrease in the number hires in the non-tenure-track faculty in the School of Pharmacy. This is for me a serious matter.
James Goldstein, senator from English: I share Dr. Penaskovic’s concern about Pharmacy, there are a lot of concerns with that situation, but I would point out that I believe it would be for the first time that for that as well as everywhere else on campus it would require the provost to certify in writing that she or he is aware of the exception and authorizing it for one more year on an annual basis. So in some ways that might draw more attention to ongoing problems than currently is the case.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: Does anybody else have any comments or questions?
Norbert Wilson, ag econ and rural sociology, senator: I have a question of clarification on page 5 concerning student evaluations there’s a requirement, include a minimum of one class per semester for each of the three preceding years; and my concern is what happens if a person misses a semester? Are they no longer eligible to, I guess, move up. How does that hold, it seems that the language is such that you are restricted if you miss a semester, and for those departments does that include summer semesters, and for some departments that don’t teach in the summer what does that mean for the lecturer? Thank you.
Emmitt Winn, associate provost: Thank you Norbert, I can say that it certainly wasn’t the intention of the committee to be restrictive in that sense. We were kind of going for hopefully that instruction would be very important to the promotion process for these people and therefore we were hoping for at least one per semester. You know we got a lot of feedback and many people said, “why not require all of them?” and in some ways now that you mention it that requiring all, as not focusing on one, would actually be helpful in that situation, right, because it would be not distinguished. I certainly can’t speak for the Provost but what I could say is I think that the committee would be very open to making a suggestion to the Provost that that be clarified.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: okay, if nobody else has any questions, comments, or observations then what I’m going to do is ask that we vote now on the policy that’s been brought forward and seconded, with the amendment that has been added. All those in favor of adopting this policy say aye.
Group: Aye.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: All opposed, nay.
Group: Nay.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: Sounds like the Ayes have it. Sot the motion, policy is adopted and will be forwarded to the Provost’ Office.
That brings us to the completion of a rather lengthy action item list. We do have one information item, actually it’s got 3 parts, but it deals specifically with the changes to, proposed changes to policies in the Faculty Handbook. As I mentioned this is strictly for information, if we have time we can take a few comments, but this is primarily to get everybody aware of the proposals that are out there. As I mention there will be a Web site open for comment, we’ll have a forum, and possibly another couple of venues for people to provide input. So for the sake of time we are probably going to primarily let Emmitt deliver and then we will see what time it is after that.
Emmitt Winn, assoc. provost: Hi, in my never-ending desire to be the most popular person at Senate, I am back with some suggested policy changes. Again, I’m a teacher so I like to repeat things, As Kathryn said this is only the beginning of a process that we expect will go forward in a great deal of detail as Kathryn pointed out. They are setting up a Web site so that people can log on and make very specific detailed comments about these and also we’re looking at a future meeting, which will be devoted to this where everyone can come and talk. The two things I would really like to focus on is that these are suggested policy changes, just suggested, and secondly they were presented to the Provost Office, I am really just the scribe in this entire process. [1:31:31]
We received suggestions from a wide variety of stakeholders. We received them from individual faculty members, we received them from AAUP representatives, we received them from department heads and chairs, it goes on and on and on. So these were suggested to us and I was assigned the duty of receiving them and then trying to something with them that would be kind of an example of what new wording could look like if indeed these things were accepted and so the suggested wording that you’ll see in the documents which sometimes is often lengthy, is just possible changes. If I understand everything correctly, I’m going to look down here at Bill, if any of these were approved and sent forward, the ultimate wording would actually be done by the Faculty Handbook Review Committee, and that is a Senate committee. So anything that is written here is just possible changes and is my attempt to make it clear what people had considered. I’m not going to go through all the wording on these changes because you have the documents and that wording change will be available on the Web site also. So what I am just going to do is touch on sort of what the essence of the changes, that were suggested to us are.
Suggested change number 1. One is that, the first things deal with promotion and tenure in one way or another, it’s been suggest that the committee structure be changed so that each college and school will have at least one representative on the committee. It is not currently the case, required currently that every college and school have a representative committee member. If I do my math right and any of you who have looked at the wording of the structure, it’s quite complicated, if I’ve done the math right that would increase it from 14 to 15 members.
Suggested change number 2. Secondly, require that the third year review be performed after the completion of three full years of service. Currently for those of you who are really up on your Handbook, you’ll realize that it’s actually 32 months in which it is required. Some people think that having the extra time to give the people the entire 3 years would be beneficial to them and then you would want to change the name, perhaps, that was suggested from “third year review” to something like “mid-year review” or “pre-tenure review” or something like that. The actual full wording we suggested is “no later than the spring of the forth year,” but that could be worded in different ways. [1:34:35]
Secondly distinguish between tenure and promotion. And the idea of doing this is to clarify why a candidate may receive tenure but not promotion. Those of you who are really up on this stuff realize that the Handbook actually says that tenure is the more exacting of the processes. And therefore if tenure is the more exacting of the processes why can someone be tenured at Auburn and not promoted at Auburn? There seems to be some logical breakdown there that some people don’t quite get. If tenure is the more exacting as the Handbook says then if you got tenure shouldn’t you also be promoted?
Suggested change number 3 would be, provide a clear definition of collegiality. We found some good ones out there and sort of cobbled together one that some people think is clear.
Suggested change, number 4: Move language that suggests candidates normally are considered for tenure in their fifth year. There’s not a problem with people going up in the fifth year the new wording would not prohibit going up in the fifth year. Some people have a problem with this idea that’s it’s normal for people to go up in the fifth year. I’ve even had it suggested to me that there is no data that suggests that it’s normal [1:35:55] at Auburn, I don’t know.
Number 5: Remove the requirement to count partial years toward a candidate’s probationary period. For those of you who don’t know, some colleges and schools on campus it’s not uncommon for them to have people start mid-year, January, February, or March, as the Handbook is currently written, that counts again them as an entire year on their ticker clock. Some people think that’s unfair. And by the way we’ve done some benchmarking and that’s not that way at a lot of other schools.
Suggested change, number 6: Clarify that if the faculty member waives the right to consideration in the sixth year they do it forever, which would be for the seventh year. It’s only a two year kind of thing there for those of you who aren’t up on this, the Handbook says that you’ve got to go up in your sixth year, you’ve got to it’s required unless you’ve gone up before or you waive the right to go up at all. And if you waive the right to go up at all, the Handbook at least implies that you give it up altogether for the sixth and the seventh year so it’s been asked for a clarification that would say hey if you waive the right in your sixth year you are waiving it period and come back in your seventh year and say “oops, now I want to do it.” The reason that becomes a problem is that Auburn also allows two shots, and so if you wait until your seventh year to go up, you are not going to get your two chances. That’s the kind of logical problem there.
Suggested change, number 7: Adopt a revision to the defacto-tenure policy and this suggestion was provided to me by the local AAUP Chapter and I am very thankful to them for that. What it does is, what it addresses is, that it brings it in line with Faculty Handbook section on prior service.
Suggestion change, number 8: Add the requirement for external letters to the promotion from assistant to associate. Currently external letters were only required in the Faculty Handbook for promotion to full professor and so although it is the practice, a wide practice to have external letters for promotion from assistant to associate it is not required. Some folks would like to see that change in the Faculty Handbook.
Suggestion change, number 9: All faculty should be limited to a total of two votes with one at the lowest, usually the department level and one more at either the college or the university level. As things are currently written, that’s not the way it works, you could vote more than once if it was possible in your college and not vote at the department and then vote at the thing so it is asking for clarification on when you would vote if you have multiple votes. To have multiple votes as a faculty member you would be at the department level you would be on the college committee and/or the university level for promotion and tenure.
Suggestion change, number 10: Immediate family members must excuse themselves from discussion of their family members as well as the vote on their family members. Currently you are only prohibited from voting on you family member in your department. And some folks think we should also remove those people from the discussion session that takes place before the vote.
And just because we are equal opportunity we also have some suggestions that are unrelated to Promotion and Tenure.
Suggested change, number 1: Is, change the language on the selection of department heads and chairs to reflect Auburn’s current practice. I’ll let you read that so you can understand the subtle nuances involved in this change.
Suggested change, number 2: Would be to include a request of the copy of the faculty annual review would also be sent to the Provost. Currently that happens for everybody on campus, it is a requirement the suggestion would be to add it into the Faculty Handbook.
Suggested change, number 3: Change the wording so that a dean sends a faculty member a letter of non-continuation on the recommendation of the department via the unit head. The idea here is that it would probably be an awfully good idea for the dean to know that the department has voted to discontinue someone in their department. I’m sure most people do that.
Suggested change, number 4: allow for an alternative to department faculty vote for emeritus status for faculty who have been working outside of the departments for some period of time. For example if someone’s been in college administration and outside of a department for a long time. The idea here is that if they have been in college administration for a long time, they have not been involved in their department, they want to retire and they want to apply for emeritus status that is may indeed be a good idea to have some alternative type of vote for them. And then combined with that the Faculty Handbook actually includes the following language; “At the time it is notified that a faculty member’s intent to retire the office of Payroll and Benefits will provide notification of this policy to the faculty member and the faculty member’s faculty head or chair.” [1:42:22] I have been told by Payroll and Benefits that they do not do that and they never have. So let’s just take it out of the Handbook.
Suggested change, number 5: Clarify the Senate committee to be used in the following language. There is language that says, “an appeal may be made to an appellate body elected by the faculty.” That appellate body, I’ve been told from someone who knows and she’s here, that the original intent when that was written was to go back and fill in the blank on that appellate body, that has never occurred and the winner would be the Faculty Grievance Committee, NO the Faculty Dismissal Committee. So that’s that.
Suggested change, number 6: would be to change the wording to reflect the actual practice that we have and use at Auburn University. So again these is just the intro letting you know this stuff is out there and there’s going to be I hope ample and a lot of opportunity for people to have their feedback.
Kathryn Flynn, chair: Okay, it’s 4:44 p.m. and despite, I don’t in any way want to be seen as stifling discussion, but most of us have other lives after work or more work today and so what I’m going to do is invite you to wait for the notice on the faculty mail list, it should come next Monday, that’s when I’ve been told the Web site will be available. All of these will be posted with the title and then the actual wording, the current practice or the current wording with proposed change, and for each of those items you will have a blank space for you to make comments. I encourage you to do that. We will probably give you some set amount of time in which to make those comments. We will send out several reminders, not just senators, but faculty at large. And then we will have additional periods of face to face where we can talk about this and kind of gather the views of as many people as possible prior to any vote on any of these.
If you are okay with that we will not have discussion now, and I will ask if anyone has any unfinished business? Any new business? If not the meeting is adjourned, thank you for your patience. [1:43:56]