April 6, 2010
Senate Meeting Transcription

Kathryn Flynn, chair: I’d like to call the meeting to order. I’d like to welcome everyone to the April meeting of the Auburn University Senate. As I always do, I am going to remind you to please remember to sign in at the roster at the back of the room if you are a senator. This is expecially important today because we have two actions, one of which is a change to the handbook, which will require a two-thirds majority vote so, we have to make sure that we actually have enough people here to do a vote. If you have comments or questions during the meeting please come to one of the tow microphones on either side of the room, we like you to state your name and your unit, whether you are a senator or not and then to go through your comments. The rules of the Senate require that senators be allowed to make comments prior to guests, so if there are senators in line behind you we would like you to defer to the senators. And we will move forward that way. As always the first item on our agenda is approval of the minutes for the March 2 Senate meeting, Dennis DeVries has posted these minutes online and sent a link to all the senators, the minutes are posted on the Senate Web site. So at this time I’d like to ask if anyone has any changes or corrections they’d like to make to the draft minutes. Hearing none the minutes will stand approved as written. At this point I’d like to ask Dr. Gogue to come forward and make some comments.

Dr. Gogue, president: Thank you, I’m delighted to be with you today. I want to first of all say in the last week we got word that we had two students that were up for Goldwater Fellowships, we had one that won a Goldwater, one that was honorable mention, we have two that are up finalists Truman Awards, we have a student that graduated about a year ago that just won the Rotary International Fellowship and will be going for two years to Cambridge. And we also within the student athlete world there is 4 awards, two for women and two for male students that are given for the 12 schools and Auburn won one of the male awards and one of the female awards, so we won 50% of the awards in the Southeast Conference. I share that with you because I appreciate the job you do with all students, but obviously if I had their names in front of me, many of you in this room would know them and so I appreciate what you are doing. That was part of the strategic plan as we focused on the Honors College and some of the efforts of the institution is to make sure more of our students begin to be recognized by some of these prestigious national fellowships/scholarships.

The second thing I wanted to mention, I was in Montgomery this morning, the budget bill has passed in the House it’s going into the Senate this afternoon. If the Senate were to pass what the House approved, Don, correct me, but it would be a flat budget. I realize that nobody’s excited about it but it’s at least not additional cuts that we thought sort of may well have been a part of the process. So a flat budget, we’ll see where that goes through the Senate and keep you apprised of that.

The other thing I wanted to mention to you is that the Board of Trustees Meeting two weeks ago the issue of restructuring tuition came up. You may have read about it, heard about it, seen something about it and I sort of wanted to share with you a little bit of the philosophy and what it means on campus. The data show that about 94% of students and their parents, when a student starts a university the expectation is that they will graduate in 4 years. And the reality is about 34% graduate in 4 years at Auburn. So we had had a tuition model structure in place for, don tells me, 40 plus years and it had sort of become out of date. One of the things we used to do is that when a kid took more than 15 hours we then charged them more money. If you do that you’re really penalizing the kid and making it almost impossible for them to get through within the 4 year time period. The impact of a student graduating in 4 years versus 6 years is about $90,000 to that student and that family. If you can save one year it’s about $45,000, so huge cost savings in these times if we can encourage students to take additional credits. When students get above 15 hours they don’t pay additional cost. And then there’s also some breaks for students that are down below 10 hours. Part-time working students in which their cost will actually be cheaper than it was a year ago. Then also summer leave for our out-of-state students, as I recall we have a registration fee that we have charged 3x for on the registration fee, so for a student taking one course at Auburn in the summer they had to pay $1,500–$1,700 in that range just to register then they paid for the course. We’ve changed that to where both in-state and out-of-state pay the same registration fee. So we hope that there’s a little bit of good that will encourage some additional credits, will encourage summer enrollments over time, will encourage some of our students to stay in the summer. I think most of you are aware that we have a little over 4,000 beds on campus, which means we have 20,000 students living in the community. Most of the apartment complexes, I’m sure there’re exceptions, but many of them require 12 month rental. So students often leave in the summer and loose probably $1,500 of rent cost in the summer that they don’t take advantage of. So we’re trying to over a period of years change the culture a little bit such that we have more folks that will take some summer classes and more that will take a little bit heavier load during the academic year and eventually save those families money, but also improve our metrics in terms of graduation rates within 6 years. [6:59] I wanted to at least share that with you. I’d be happy to respond to questions you may have. 9pause) Thank you.

Kathryn Flynn, chair:  Thank you Dr. Gogue. I’m going to make a couple of announcements and comments on things that are going on right now on campus and then we’ll move into the action items on the agenda. I’d like to remind you who are senators to make an effort to jot down some notes or bullet points and share with your faculty, so we can keep faculty apprised of what business the senate is doing. I have several topics to cover today, but the first one is I am going to invite Dr. Mazey forward to give an update on the dean searches that are ongoing. [8:01]

Dr. Mazey, provost: We have 6 searches that are either completed or ongoing. First of all we advertized for an Assistant Provost for International Programs and I’m pleased to announce that Dr. Andy Gillespie, who has been an Associate Dean of International Programs at Purdue, will be joining us the 15th of this month in that position. I think we’ll find him to have many new ideas about how we can further our international agenda.

Secondly. Pleased to announce the College of Business search has been completed and Bill Hardgrave, who is with the Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas, will be joining us August 1 as our new dean of the College of Business here at Auburn University. Third, and we worked with the search committees on both of these searches very closely and so pleased with all the work that they have done.

The third search is the College of Education dean search and we have a recommendation from that search committee and we are working on that recommendation right now, so hopefully in the next few weeks we’ll finalize that search. The search for the dean of Agriculture and the Executive Director of Agricultural Experiment Station we have the third candidate on campus today. In fact I will be doing the exit interview with that individual at 4:00 p.m. and the final forth candidate will be on campus next Monday and Tuesday. After that time the search committee will meet and then I think President Gogue and I will be meeting with the search committee after they have formalized their recommendations since that particular position does report to both of us.

Another search that’s still currently underway is the dean for the College of Science and Mathematics and the third candidate is on campus today and the forth candidate will be on campus Thursday and Friday. So I anticipate a recommendation from the search committee for that search probably in the next week or so.

And then a sixth search that we have underway in its preliminary stages is the search for the dean of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences. The search committee has been appointed and I think they are currently working on the description and we will probably be advertizing for that position in the next few weeks. Right now we anticipate that the candidates for that position will probably be on campus in late July maybe early August. We’ll just see how the search committee moves forward on that.

So do I have any questions about the searches? I think the search committees have done a great job, our offices have worked closely with them and given everybody an opportunity to see these candidates in open forums and various meetings. One final thing I do want to mention is that we will continue the open forums that we started at the Provost Office, I think we have one scheduled for April 15 and if Margaret hasn’t sent out the announcement we’d like to focus on our enrollment management plan and some of the practices within that which certainly encompass what President Gogue just talked about in terms of our graduation rates and how we can continue to meet the demands with tuition restructuring. Thank you very much. [11:44]

Kathryn Flynn, chair: As you probably remember the Senate passed a resolution to establish a non-tenure track Lecturer/Senior Lecturer position back in the fall and called for a faculty committee to establish policies and procedures for the position. A committee was formed and a document was developed and presented to the Senate in the January meeting. At that meeting an amendment to the policy was proposed and the policy was approved containing that amendment. The amendment basically established de facto tenure and because the position description was non-tenure track but now had a de facto tenure the policy was rejected by the Provost. The Senate leadership spent some significant amount of time, the chair, the chair-elect, the past chair, and the secretary and secretary-elect spent some considerable time discussing the position and what to do because we have a position that’s been approved by the Senate with no guidelines for filling it. So we as a group decided to ask the non-tenure track instructors committee to look at the Lecturer/Senior Lecturer and to come back to us with some proposed guidelines for the position. We did this because we had a number of people contact us both instructors and tenured faculty and tenured track faculty asking us what the status was and when we were going to move forward. So we’ve asked the committee to look at that to come back to us and so you can expect to hear more about this in the next couple of months, updates and eventually a review of policy.

The second item that I have is related to a new procedure related to reenrollment of students who have withdrawn from Auburn for medical reasons. Currently, students who have received medical resignations can enroll in courses in subsequent terms without contacting anyone on campus including the Office of Students with Disabilities or anybody really. So the Program for Students with Disabilities worked with an ad hoc committee form academic affairs and has developed a medical clearance procedure for readmitting these students. The new procedure is based on observations, data collected over the past 5 semesters, and a review of best practices at other universities. Based on those observations and data beginning of summer 2010 students who resign for medical reasons will have a registration hold placed on them. The hold will be removed when they come back to the university only after the student has submitted medical documentation indicating that they are ready to come back to an academic environment. [15:10] Once re-admitted, the students will be referred to appropriate campus resources to promote their success and to provide support for them. The goal of this procedure is to promote the student’s well being and to improve the retention of at-risk students and reduce the number of students who come back and then for either psychological or physical issues find that they have to request an additional medical resignation because they’ve returned to school before they’re really ready. We felt like it was really something that faculty should be aware of, it does not require any type of approval, it’s not a policy it’s just a procedure related to medical resignations. The two people from the office of Students with Disabilities are here, we have Tracy Donald and Shanna Brodbeck who are in that office, if anyone has any questions they came in case that were to occur and would be happy to try and answer them for you. [16:25] Anybody have any
The next thing I’d like to give you an update on is back in early March we had a Special Called University Faculty Meeting and one primary purpose of that meeting was to allow faculty to comment on a number of proposed changes to the faculty handbook. Most of them related to the promotion and tenure process. We have gathered the comments from that meeting as well as comments that were made on an online comments site and in the next week or 10 days you should be receiving revised versions of those proposed changes with the goal of brining them to the Senate as action items at the May meeting. Which means the May meeting will be fairly busy. It will also mean that attendance is going to be really important because these will be changes to the faculty handbook.

Finally, Dr. Mazey mentioned that the Provost’s Forum and I believe there is already one scheduled for May as well. I thought I would go ahead and mention it because it occurs two days after the Senate meeting and so I would like you to have plenty of notice. It will take place May 6. All of these are taking place right now at 3:00 p.m. in room 1106 in the Library. The topic on May 6 will be “Research” and Dr. Mason and his staff are scheduled to attend. Does anybody have any questions or comments on any of this? If not, we’ll move into the action items on the agenda. The first item is approval of a writing program advisory committee and I’m going to invite Russ Muntifering forward. I’d like to mention that this morning we noticed that we had inadvertently posted an old version of the committee onto the Web site and so Dennis DeVries sent out the actual current updated version which Russ has. There’s not a huge change there, but I did want to make you aware of that fact. [18:49]

Russ Muntifering, secretary-elect: thank you Kathryn, and this is my first of what will be my many presentations to this body over the next year. For getting into the meat of the item I’d like to extend my personal appreciation to this body for entrusting me with this responsibility of secretary of your Senate, I pledge to you that you will not be disappointed.

This particular resolution deals with a committee that was presented in concept as an information item at the March 2 meeting by Sharon Roberts in biological sciences. If we could just go through this together.

This calls for the establishment of a new Senate Committee, the University Writing Committee that shall work with the office of University Writing to develop common principles and guidelines for incorporating intentional and significant writing experiences into every major. The committee will regularly review how programs provide writing instruction beyond the core curriculum and how they assess writing relevant to their discipline and forward their recommendations regarding any new courses or changes in curriculum to the University Curriculum Committee for final approval. In addition, the committee will analyze assessment data on writing, and make recommendations to departments, the Office of University Writing, and the University Senate as appropriate.

The membership calls for in terms of faculty representation, on faculty member from each college or school, as well as one representative from the faculty, the operative word being of the faculty of university libraries, one undergraduate student, one graduate student, and then in a continuing ex-officio non-voting capacity, the director of University Writing, the director of the Miller Writing Center, the director of first year composition, the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment, then finally a representative or designee from the University Curriculum Committee.

This resolution is coming to the Senate from the Rules committee and for that reason does not require a second. So at this point I believe we open the floor for discussion.

Steve Brown, from political science, senator: I just have a question that some of my colleagues have asked about this and that’s basically with regard to the guidelines. If they are going to be put together by the committee in addition to the University Curriculum Committee what input will faculty have, the resolution we will be voting on in a second talks about how it would be implemented on a department by department basis, but what input will faculty or departments have in how these guidelines are put together?

Russ Muntifering, secretary-elect: In anticipation of detailed questions as far as implementation and procedure I’d like to defer to Margaret Marshall, the new director of the Writing Initiative.

Margaret Marshall, director of the Office of University Writing: I can tell you that the committee has been working on the principles already using the structure of the Writing Taskforce Committee that had a representative from every college, we’ve continued that Taskforce committee which we expect many of those people will roll over into this new Senate Committee so that there is some continuity. So there is representation, those members of the Taskforce represent every college and school on campus currently and are the liaisons back to their college and departments. So that’s how we are including faculty voices now.

Steve Brown, from political science, senator: Could I also ask as a follow up to that? What is the origin of the guidelines? Are these common practices or are they things from peer institutions, where are we getting ideas for how the committee will be?

Margaret Marshall, director of the Office of University Writing: Again, as you know the Taskforce spent about 2 years investigating writing, including talking with colleagues at other universities, attending workshops and conferences, doing inventories and surveys of current practices here at Auburn, and so we are using all of that information to try to arrive at the principles. These are very broad, general principles because we want to keep true to the notion that individual departments and majors will come up with the specifics. So I can tell you that right now our working draft has four basic principles; that there’s more than one kind of writing that students are exposed to but that those kinds of writing are relevant to the discipline that the major is in. So it could be things that are necessary for students to be successful as undergraduates, or writing that is expected of students who are graduates of that major either in their profession or in further graduate study. So that’s number one that there’s more than one kind of writing that’s relevant to the discipline. Number two is that there’s opportunities for revision after feedback from the faculty member, that doesn’t necessarily mean that every single piece of writing gets revised, but that somewhere in the curriculum that the plan that the major comes up with there are opportunities for students to work on a piece of writing more than once to get feedback from faculty. The third one…help me guys…what’s the third one? I know that assessment of the plan not assessment of individual students was number four. Is anybody else here from the committee who could help me remember what the one is that I’m forgetting? They are very broad is my point. I think that the goal again is that individual programs would try to figure out what that means and how to make that relevant in their own program.

Russ Muntifering, secretary-elect: Any further discussion on the resolution? Hearing none let’s call for the vote and the magic number is 58 because this will represent a change to the Senate Constitution by virtue of establishing a new committee. we need a two-thirds majority vote so Claire, maybe Dennis want to take a trip up the aisle and count? Let’s do this by a hand vote if, okay fair enough, voice vote. All in favor of the resolution say aye.

Group: Aye

Russ Muntifering, secretary-elect: All against? Okay, motion passes. [27:24]

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Thank you Russ. At this time I’d like to call Linda Glaze, associate provost for undergraduate studies forward. She’s going to present a resolution for writing in the curriculum.

Linda Glaze, associate provost for undergraduate studies: Rather than hasseling with the document camera we just put the resolution on PowerPoint so those in the back row can see in case you didn’t bring your paper. I’m here as the chair of the University Curriculum Committee and in February Margaret Marshall met with the committee and discussed what the committee was planning on and as a result the committee approved the resolution and in case you don’t have your papers in terms of…, the university Curriculum Committee recommends that the Senate endorse a Writing in the Disciplines requirement so that significant writing instruction beyond the core curriculum is included in every major. Though a university wide requirement, and specific ways that the requirement will be designed by each program to meet the needs of their discipline following general principles developed by a faculty committee on writing, which you have just established. The plans for implementation will be reviewed and approved by this writing committee in concert with the university Curriculum Committee to ensure consistency to the principles. And that’s what the resolution is. Are there any questions? Margaret’s here to answer.

Steve Brown, from political science, senator: Let me just say, personally, I think this is a great idea. I think it’s a very good idea, the constitutional law class I teach at Auburn, I’ve had kids from across the campus that have enrolled in those and never written longer than a 3 page paper, in some cases a one page memo in others, and I require 1­2–15 page paper. So it astounds me every semester when kids come up and don’t know how to do this. However I do have some colleagues that have expressed some concerns primarily dealing with if this requirement is put into place, what it does to them, where the resources of the time to devote to grading and improvising these other things we talked about and also about non-tenured faculty, how with everything they are asked to do, do they now devote additional time away from research and whatnot to revise and correct help their students writing.

Linda Glaze, associate provost for undergraduate studies: Well, that is in my response, but Margaret can also answer from the perspective of both the writing taskforce, that is the reason for the flexibility in the requirement, but each department will design its own requirement, they know best what is appropriate for their discipline. I know in my own discipline, the question my department will ask is will it be appropriate to write in the foreign language, because we do not require students to write in English. We require them to write in Spanish, and French, and German. In terms of how the resources will work that’s really part of what the department should be thinking about as they plan their requirements, but Margaret can answer from the perspective of the committee. [31:18]

Margaret Marshall, director of the Office of University Writing: Actually that’s a really good answer, we’re not imagining that every course includes writing or that every faculty member will teach writing, especially not every semester, so as departments work on the plan they might designate specific courses that regularly rotate or logical places in the curriculum that a writing assignment fits. So we are not using the model that the course has to be a writing intensive course or include a certain number of pages or represent a certain percentage of the grade, instead the goal here is to weave writing, as it’s appropriate, throughout the curriculum.

So for some departments, large lecture courses are not a good place to have a writing assignment precisely because they can’t really respond to it and use writing appropriately. In other departments those large lecture courses will use writing that’s more writing to learn rather than learning to write. And so there might be writing assignments that are informal and don’t require revision because some place else in the curriculum students are getting exposure to the more formal kinds of writing and having the opportunities to revise. So it really is meant to be something that departments sit down and figure out and strategize how best to do it. In terms of resourses, one of the things that my office will do is to provide additional support to faculty who want to craft better assignments, who want to learn strategies for dealing with the paper load, how to respond effectively, how to prompt revision, how to match up the kind of writing assignment that you are giving with the learning objectives that you have. And we’ve also made the commitment to expand the Writing Center beginning in the fall. All undergraduates from any course will be able to use the writing center for additional support. And I see that Sharon wants to also answer because she’s the co-chair and was one of the chairs of the Taskforce, so you’ll have a different answer.

Sharon Roberts, biological sciences: No actually I’ll second your answer for now because I wanted to come down and speak as a faculty member who’s been involved with this all along. As a faculty member from a discipline in which writing assignments are not traditional and the idea of how do I do this well is something that always makes my knees shake a little bit, and it’s something your questions came up at the very beginning when the Taskforce was formed, they have been questions that have remained. So one of the things that this committee in the various forms it has taken in the last 3 years have always come back to is the need for faculty development because most of us do when you talk about writing, instantly sort of see 10 page papers and for many courses that’s not going to work. So I was really pleased in all of my conversations and interactions with Dr. Marshall that we have talked about faculty development and that that will be a part of it. So in addition to the other things she said I just wanted to second the fact that this committee filled with faculty has always brought those questions up and has always said that there needs to be faculty development.

Steve Brown, from political science, senator: Just to follow-up to any of the 3 and that would be obviously the flexibility the departments will have does not include zero, there’s a requirement so they will have to some. Will the committee that we just voted on and the assessments and what-not, will there be a quantity at some point? That will say you have to have a third of your courses that have writing in them or something like that, how will we know when enough is enough I guess?

Margaret Marshall, director of the Office of University Writing: That’s not the plan at this point. [35:07] We’re asking for, and I think that’s what’s interesting and exciting about the work that the Taskforce has done, Auburn is really creating a new model here. Lots of other institutions require a certain number of writing intensive courses and they have stringent definitions, more or less, of what counts as a writing intensive experience. In some cases faculty aren’t allowed to teach a writing intensive course unless they’ve gone through specific kinds of training. That’s not what we’re doing here. Instead what we’re trying to do is to start and then build in ways that make sense to individual departments. And it may be that in your department you’re going to start with what you are already doing and build on that and make it get better. Your assessment plan will leave you, we hope, in determining whether you want to do more or whether you want to do different.

Steve Brown, from political science, senator: I see less is not an option there, but more, that’s good. Again, I personally think it’s a wonderful idea. My graduate and undergraduate institution required a tremendous amount of writing and I think the students are better for it [36:15], but there are concerns on the part of faculty, a large part – how will I ever do this with everything else – so I appreciate the flexibility that you’ve mentioned. Thank you.

Annette Kluck substituting for senator specical education, rehabilitation, counseling/school psychology: My questions actually pertains to the Writing Center, I think it’s great that we have one I’m excited to hear that it’s being expanded for all the undergraduates. We have a large number of graduate students in our department, is there a particular reason that they are not being included in access to the Writing Center?

Margaret Marshall, director of the Office of University Writing: My goal is eventually, the University Writing Center ought to be open to the entire university community, graduate students, staff, faculty, undergraduates. We’re making a strategic decision at this point that most of our staff is currently undergraduate students, we want to build up the expertise of the undergraduate students to deal with more assignments that they aren’t familiar with and then we’ll expand from there. We also need to work in concert with the existing English Language Center run through the International Programs which works with non-native speakers of English, especially international students using some of their expertise to be able to work effectively with non-native speakers of English. We don’t currently have that kind of expertise on our staff but we need to develop it. So it’s not so much that we are not going to be open, but we need to be sure that we can do it well. We’re also undertaking a search for a new director who will also be an assistant to the whole initiative and my hope is that we will bring in somebody with the kinds of experience to help us grow the staff and grow our services.

Annette Kluck: Great, Thanks. [38:04]

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Does anybody else have any questions or comments? If not, the resolution has been brought forward from the Curriculum Committee so it does not require a second. It is not a change in the Handbook so all it requires is a simple majority. So all those in favor of the resolution on Writing in the Curriculum say aye.

Group: Aye.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: All opposed nay. The motion carries, thank you. T

That completes the action portion of our agenda, we will move now to information items. The first item on the agenda is some information on the 2010 Healthy Tiger’s Initiative. Kimberly Braxton Lloyd, assistant dean for Pharmacy, Health Services, and AU Pharmacy Offices is going to make this presentation.

Kimberly Braxton Lloyd, assistant dean for Pharmacy, Health Services, and AU Pharmacy Offices: thank you very much Kathryn, I am very pleased to be here today. I think everybody is going to be excited about hearing the expansion of the 2010 Healthy Tigers Initiative. As you remember the last time we did a Healthy Tigers Initiative on campus was in the fall of 2008 and we’ve been working to try to assess how to get more of our employee population engaged in health and wellness and what type of incentives to provide for employees to participate. The 2010 plan has been approved and will be implemented starting in May.

Basically, what is the Healthy Tigers Initiative? Well it’s an expanded employee benefit that is going to be offered to any employee who obtains their health insurance from Auburn University. So if you are a subscriber of Auburn University’ self insured health care plan that is paid by our health insurance fund and you have group number 37655, then you would be eligible to participate in this benefit. We do look at it as being an expansion of the health care benefit that we already offer to our employee population. So it’s an opportunity for any employee who participates in the health and wellness initiative to earn a discount on their health insurance premiums of $25 per month, or up to $300 per year. This increases the employees take home pay and is a direct benefit for the employee.

So why is Auburn offering this employee benefit? We’re self-insured which means that the way we pay for our health insurance among our employee population is that the bills are paid by us, by the people sitting in this room. The employee pays 40% and the employer, your unit, pays 60% of the health care premiums, it is deposited into an insurance fund and the monies that are collected in that fund and the interest that is earned on that fund is what’s used to pay our health insurance cost. We contract with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama and they. And they administer our claims for us but they are just a third party administrator, they are not paying the bills or we are not contracting with them to provide our health care and pharmacy coverage services, so we are self-ensured. [42:00] There have (been days?) that looked at self-insurance employer groups that have show that if you engage your employee population in health and wellness initiatives that it can decrease the overall cost of health care coverage for your employee population. As you know our health insurance costs keep going up year after year and we’re paying more and more for providing this insurance coverage for our employee population. So this is one intervention that can be a win-win for the university and for the employee if we provide a mechanism for employees to engage in health and wellness activities. One example is Safeway, which is a large grocery chain in California, and they initiated a health and wellness program and after 4 years of implementation they were able to stabilize the gradual increase in health insurance premiums that they experienced year after year among their employee population and their overall health and pharmacy cost. So that’s one example, also the city of Las Vegas, Nevada had initiated health and wellness initiative that have shown the same types of results. So that is our goal is to stabilize the increase in health care cost.

Also if we catch disease states and we manage disease states earlier it is better for the employees. They have better healthcare outcomes, it cost less to manage the disease state and overall it provides an opportunity for increased quality of life for the employee. If the employee is incentivized and motivated to engage in behavioral change then there are several benefits that they will see. [43:51]

One is increased interest in their health, now I recognize that there’s nothing that we as an employer or as colleagues can do to change the behavior of someone else. Behavioral change is very internal and self-motivated and you have to be ready to make the changes for your own health and wellness, however having the information, knowing the health risks that are present in your life and what your future health risks are can influence someone to take more of an interest in their health and wellness and engage in behavioral change. If this happens there’s a chance that it will increase the quality of life, decrease absenteeism, and increase productivity at work. So those are all positive things for the employee and for Auburn University.

In 2008 we initiated the Healthy Tigers Initiative, but only 16% of the employees on campus came out to take part of the health care screenings. So if you think about it the 16% that did come out to participate in the health care screenings are usually self-selected, they are very interested in their own health, they are interested in knowing their numbers, they often are already taking care of themselves, and they are not fearful of finding out they have a risk for a diseased state. They are okay with finding out they are not bullet proof and don’t need to see a doctor yet, so they really value getting that information. Whereas the other employees who are more reluctant to know information about their life and their health and are too busy to go to the doctor, are the ones who do not come to the health fairs.

There’s been a significant amount of research that’s been conducted in the United States to see what is the type of incentive that’s required in order to maximize the involvement of employees and get them engaged in health and wellness activities. What the research has shown is that you have to have a continuous incentive that’s significant and meaningful and it’s offered month after month and it’s not sporadic. So in the fall of 2008 we offered a random drawing for a financial prize and also mugs and other items for participation in the Health Fair, but that was a one-time offering and after the random drawing was conducted and the prizes were given to the employees the hits on the Healthy Tigers Web site decreased and we were not able to engage the employee population since then.

So this is the graph that’s got the attention of everyone on the Insurance and Benefits Committee and Auburn University Administration is that our health care costs at Auburn University continue to increase. This rise in health care cost is the reason our insurance premiums continue to increase year after year because we have higher bills and we have to collect more money because we’re self-insured in order to pay those bills. Similarly, our pharmacy expenditures have continued to increase over the last decade. We actually spend 26% of our budget that we spend on health care benefits for our employees and their dependants, is spent on pharmacy and claims, so medications that is used for the employees and their dependants. This is not in line with what you see when you compare to other business within the state of Alabama, other institutions that we are compared to usually it’s between 18 and 20%, so for some reason our population has increased utilization of pharmaceuticals.

So the goals of this initiative is to provide an incentive to our employees to help them engage to behavioral change, something that is continuous and meaningful to the employees that they will come out and it’s not a one time health fair, but it’s something that they can see month after month and they have to repeat every year in order to get the benefit. [48:28] And the goal is to identify and manage the employees risk factors and increase their awareness of health and wellness, and decrease the rate and the escalation of health care cost and pharmacy cost that we’re experiencing as a population.

Now this program is not unique it’s been implemented by the state employees insurance board or SEIB who insures, provides the health care and pharmacy coverage for all state employees who are not PEEHIP. So the state employee insurance board actually instituted health care screenings in 1993. And in 1993, since then they’ve been screening a majority of their employees but when I say majority, they’ve been very happy with 50% engagement from their employee population. This year they initiated the $25 per month discount on health care insurance premiums and they have 95% engagement by their employee population with this incentive. But what’s really noticeable about these numbers is that when you look at the member per month health care expenditures for the state employee insurance board for their covered lives, they are 10 to 15% lower than the government plans or private employer plans. So identifying and managing disease states early has paid off and it’s helped stabilized their increase in health care expenditures that they’ve seen.

So this is where we get to the 2010 Healthy Tigers Initiative. Basically the employee comes in for a health and wellness screening and this will start May 1. So when you go back and talk with your faculty members and you present this information in the faculty meetings, we will have the Web site live and we will have the enrollment forms and will be scheduling appointments beginning May 3, which is Monday. If the employee is found during these health screenings to have what I call a red flag, meaning a significant risk for a disease state such as diabetes or heart disease, then they will be referred to their physician for follow up. Now they are not conservative markers, a total cholesterol level greater than 250, so it’s not set at a total cholesterol level of 200, random blood glucose level greater than 200 which would indicate diabetes, and a high blood pressure greater than 160 over 100, and 140 over 90 is hypertension. So just to give you an idea, the red flags are truly red flags that need to be addressed for the employees best interest as well. The university will wave the co-pay for the initial doctor’s visit, so if they have a red flag we’ll give them a coupon that they can take to their physician and they can get a free consultation with a physician, $25 waived co-pay. Once they see the physician and they redeem that coupon and they follow up on the results, then they will receive the $25 per month decrease in their health insurance plan. The actual benefit will take effect January 1, 2011. So basically we will be screening employees from May until the end of open enrollment in November, and they have to finish that data collection by the end of November in order to get the benefit starting in 2011. [51:53]

It’s an optional benefit, employees do not have to participate in the health screenings if they do not want to, it’s optional, but they must participate if they want the $25 per month discount on their health insurance premiums. They get a free private consultation with a pharmacist. We will be conducting this similar to the H1N1 clinics that we provided throughout campus and at the pharmacy school and also the roving influenza clinics that we offer every year to our population. So we will be taking it out to the campus to make it as easy as possible for our employees to engage in this service. We’ll be having after hours clinics for our workers who have third shift, we’ll be going to the Vet School, AUM, and we’ll also be going off site to major cities throughout the state, between now and November to offer these screenings. If the readings are within range the $25 discount is implemented, but if it’s outside with a red flag the employee has to see a physician, they do not have to obtain a goal such as get their blood sugar less than 200 or cholesterol less than 250, or attain a normal blood pressure, but they do have to engage in change, engage with their physician and find a medical home.

Frequently asked questions that we’ve already received about the Healthy Tigers benefit is when will it begin? And we are going to start in May of 2010 and continue through November. And what if I forget and miss the deadline? Well to get the full benefit you have to complete the screenings by the end of open enrollment, but there will be a grace period much like there is for our flex spending accounts, and if you get the screening completed before the end of March you will be eligible for the discount. However keep in mind that you will not get a $25 discount per month for January, February, and March prior to completing the requirements of the program. So to get maximum benefit and to save the most money, it’s in the best interest of employees to get it done before the end of November.

How will it be offered? It will be offered through the Auburn Pharmaceutical Care Center, which is located on the second floor of the Walker Building in the Educational Clinic in the Pharmacy School. We’ll be opening up appointments for where employees can sign up online to reserve an appointment slot. We’ll also be taking the roving clinics out and seeing employees as close as possible to their place of employment, where you sit and work everyday, so in the actual buildings. And then we’ll also be offering the remote clinics as I mentioned earlier. Another thing, some employees might ask, well if I’ve just been to my doctor–I already take care of myself and I know what my cholesterol is, I just had it checked in February, do I have to get it screened on campus and repeat this? No, that we’d rather not. We don’t want to duplicate testing, if you’ve already had it performed somewhere else. We are going to have a form available that you can print and take to you physician and you can complete that form and return it to the auppc and we’ll enter the data and flag you as being eligible for the benefit, [55:26] and you will be eligible for the discount.

The final thing is for off campus faculty and off campus employees, there’re several options for these employees to engage in this program as well. For one if the employee comes to campus for any business they can come to the AUPPC and we’re going to have flexible hours for them to come and get their health screening performed. Also we’ll be doing roving clinics throughout the state to major cities such as Birmingham and Huntsville and Mobile, so we’ll be taking the “show on the road” as you would say and bringing it as close to the employees as possible. They can go to their physician and get the testing performed and return the results to us. And we’re also working on getting a network of pharmacies that are identified in a network to provide the service for our employees and the employees can go to those pharmacies and get services done as well. And it’s not just for Auburn University, SEIB is wanting to get a network of pharmacies as well to serve as their employee population.

How long will the discount be effective? It will be effective for one year. Once you are eligible you will have the discount for 2010 (I think she means 2011 with testing in 2010) as long as you get the screening and you follow up with your physician. You do not have to meet any goals in order to get the discount, but also you’ll have to repeat it next year in order to get it for 2011 (again testing in 2011 for discount in 2012). So it will be a perpetual ongoing benefit that’s available for our employees, but you will have to repeat the screenings and if you do not get your screenings repeated then you will not get the discount the following year.

Do I have to achieve certain clinical goals? I’ve already mentioned this several times, no you don’t you just have to establish a medical home and be aware of your risk factors and engage in your health and wellness. Pharmacists are also going to help facilitate finding a physician if employees do not have a physician in the area and they do not know how to engage the medical system. We are also offering opportunity for any employee that’s interested to get engaged with a health coach, that would be a pharmacy student would be assigned to help them with smoking cessation or check blood pressure, blood sugar, help with diet and exercise and other behavioral change that is necessary after the screening.

This is information about the different Web sites. And that’s all I have for today so I’ll take any questions.

Mark Fischman, senator from Kinesology: I currently like to swim as part of my exercise program and the university aquatics center charges me and everybody else except students $40 a quarter, so $160 a year to swim at the aquatics center. I don’t have any trouble paying for that, I’m a tenured full professor, I make a lot of money, but wouldn’t it be nice if the university in terms of trying to encourage people to participate in activities like that. If Dr. Gogue and Dr. Large would consider waiving that aquatics center fee for people, for staff also who maybe don’t have that kind of money to exercise.

Kimberly Braxton-Llyod: I can tell you that the health and wellness committee has evaluated different initiatives that would be necessary on campus to change the culture of the campus and fostering and encourage the health and wellness environment. One thing that I did two weeks ago, was I was filling out my faculty/staff campaign card and giving back to the university and I looked at the list and I said, ‘What if I gave back to Healthy Tigers?’ And so I called the development office and I asked if I could make my donation for the Healthy Tigers Program and she said we don’t have a FOAP for that but there’s a process to go through to state it. I called Ron Herring and we had a FOAP created that is an account that is underneath Insurance and Benefits the insurance fund and it’s just for Healthy Tigers, but part of that we had to outline how the decisions would be made on how the monies would be spent. And so what I proposed is that we would have a committee much like the Breeden Grant or the Concessions Board that would review proposals form employees just like that that would say this is what I see as a barrier to health and wellness on campus and this is our suggestion, and we would use those monies to fund those activities, because one of the concerns is how are we going to sustain this and how can we perpetuate it and change the culture and bring it forward. I know Pete Grandjean in your department is very active, has a lot of initiatives going. [1:00:56] One of the things he’s proposed is Tiger Tracks and walking trails on campus, the use of pedometers and signs that tell you how far you’ve walked and maps that show you where to walk and which trails to use and things like that. A wonderful proposal. So we could review those types of proposals that could be submitted by staff members, or faculty member or anyone, and we could review them and make a decision on which ones are going to be funded this year. And we could use those monies to support it. Now I hear you that there are some barriers on the timings of exercise classes, on the fees for exercise classes, but the Health and Wellness Committee is trying to develop ideas that will help bring that change to campus. Those recommendation and those comments are going to be very helpful for the Health and Wellness Committee.

Mark Fishcman: Thank you I appreciate that.

James Goldstein, senator from English: I wasn’t clear whether if you get the screening and you don’t have red flags, you still get the benefit?

Kimberly Braxton-Llyod: Yes you do, immediately (beginning in January 2011). So if you don’t have a red flag the discount would be implemented immediately (beginning in January 2011), but if it’s abnormal you have to follow up with a physician.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Thank you Kimberly.

The next item on our agenda is a report on Facilities Planning. I’m going to invite Dan King who is assistant vice president for the facilities division to come forward and give his presentation. [1:02:49]

Dan King, assistant vice president for the facilities division: Hi, good afternoon, I’m Dan King, thank you for the invitation to come talk to you today. I’m going to talk to you about 3 topics, the first is communications with facilities and specifically what are we going to do within facilities to try to increase communication between us and the rest of campus; second topic and probably the main one is what we’re titling the Capital Projects Plan for 2010 to 2020, so we’ll spend some time talking about that-what it is, what it means, what it might hold for the future, what it’s all about; and then the third topic is the Master Plan, what is the plan for the Master Plan over the next couple of years. [1:03:38] Those are the three things I’m going to present today, when I’m done with that or at whatever point I’m happy to take whatever questions that you might have.

I’ve been here about a year and a half now, during the first year I (me) and my staff, we worked real hard to increase the level of communication between facilities and the university leadership. I define that in the first year as the VPs, Directors, the Provost, and the Deans and we did a lot of communication and I think anyone in that group would generally say, yeah, facilities kept us pretty well informed, they talked to us a lot. Tried to get a lot of input and so I thought we were doing pretty good and we were making some pretty good improvements relative to communication across campus. My background is in the Navy and in the Navy realm it is very chain of command oriented kind of thing. If you talk to the top of the organization, you have communicated to the entire organization. It has become clear to me since that time that that’s not exactly how a university works and particularly Auburn University. So it became clear that we need to, there are many constituencies on campus and yeah we got to the leadership, but we need to talk to other groups too to really get the message out. And I here to tell you we are committed to do that. Despite the popular opinion, we try not to operate in a vacuum, we actually do listen to others across campus and we are sensitive to the impact that we do have. So a couple of specifics, you can kind of see where the focus has been to date we will continue to work with those folks, work with the leadership and again get their input. I think that’s critical. One thing that we’re going to begin to do to move forward here is in an effort to increase communications to establish and reinvigorate some committees that have existed in the past or that I think would help facilitate communication across the campus.

So the first is we are going to establish what I’m calling a facilities advisory board, it’s a pretty broad based group from the academic world it would include Dr. Winn, a faculty representative from 4 different groups, we took the campus and divided the core of campus into 3 areas, north campus which is basically Thach and north; that would cover engineering, business, nursing, and pharmacy and we’ll get a rep from them; the core of campus, which will be the folks in Haley Center, the Library, and Human Sciences; the south of campus which would be architecture, forestry, COSAM, and AG, and the forth one is the Vet School because they are kind of off by themselves. So we’ll have a rep from each of those in that group and that really is to allow us a regular opportunity to kind of explain this is what’s coming down the pike from a facilities standpoint and get some feedback and some advise from a broad based group from many constituencies all the ones I can think of to give us some input on that kind of plan. We’re going to start that, we’re in the final throes of trying to lock down the membership of that.

There have been two standing committees for a while that have really been kind of dormant for at least a year, a year and a half, maybe two years or longer than that, I’m not exactly sure called Design Review Committee and Master Plan Committee. When I first got here I was told that these committees haven’t been meeting and we need to do something about that. It took me a while to figure out how everything works here and how they might really fit into the scheme of things and so I think the time is right now we can reinvigorate those. I think maybe the charter and the mission has to be tweaked a little bit, the membership has to be tweaked a little bit, but we’re going to start invigorating those committee to start using them and gain the benefit to what they can bring to the table as far as expertise and advise. So we’re going to do that and I’ve committed to Dr. Winn, Dr. Flynn and all the others on a regular basis just like today, we’ll come out whenever I’m asked and we’ll try to schedule it on a regular basis and just meet with the different groups across campus.

Nothing we do in facilities is a big secret, there is no hidden plan here. I’m happy to tell you, whatever we’re doing my problem is how do I reach all 25,000 students to 1,200 faculty members and 3,000 or 4,000 staff out there so that I don’t get the one phone call or the one e-mail from someone who says, “I didn’t know this was going on why didn’t you ask my opinion about it?” [1:09] And I get those, so that’s the challenge and we’ll try to do better at it, we’re committed to do that. It will be a work in progress for a long time I suspect. [1:09:12]

Okay this is probably the key thing that I think maybe Dr. Flynn wanted me to cover with you all. We’ve been working for months now and what we’re calling the Capital Project Plan, improvements plan for the university for the next decade. And the idea behind it is really very simple. We need a plan, Auburn University needs a plan that helps determine and figure out what are we trying to achieve from a facilities standpoint over the next decade. Without a plan we’re going to do things, we’re going to invest our limited dollars in some willy nilly less than optimal way and we’re not going to get the best result, and not all the inputs will have been heard and we’re not going to achieve probably what we could have achieved. So by trying to come up with this plan, we’re a pretty diverse group largely of university leadership although recently we’ve briefed it around a good bit and this is another opportunity to do that. Of all the wants and desires, all the different proposals for projects and initiatives out there, we took all those and tried to figure out, do we really want to achieve that and where would the achievement of that objective really rack and stack against the others. We can’t afford to do it all. We can probably afford to do what’s really important and what we really need to do. But what is that? What are those priorities? Dr. Gogue advised us early on, don’t come back with a list that prioritizes number 13 and 28 and number 66, we don’t need that kind of a plan so we stayed away from that and we grouped it in objectives we are trying to achieve.

So let me walk you through this if I could. I’ll talk about the different groups and what’s in there. The key to this plan is not identifying requirements, that’s easy there are a lot of them out there, the key to this plan is not engineering design or construction, we can get someone to do that, there’s a lot of folks who can do that. The key to this plan is money, how do we afford it? That’s really what it’s all about so we’re eventually going to talk to that and dollars drove this plan. This is a resource constrained plan, some could argue that it’s not resource constrained enough, others will argue it’s too resource constrained. So we are trying to achieve a balance of what do we think we could really afford over the next decade.

The first project that we thought that we should put on the plan is to build a new core or central classroom building. The thought behind that is within Haley Center we have a lot of classrooms that are assigned to core classes the core curriculum needs to be in the center of campus, but the classrooms in Haley are fairly poor from a technology standpoint, comfort, the ability to be flexible in the way you teach. And so the thought is the first dollars that we should invest in any plan here is to take care of the students first, that’s a pretty good strategy for the business all of us are in at a university, let’s take care of the students first provide them a better building where many of those core classes can be taught in a more up to date, modern, state of the art academic facility. So that’s what the first one is.

The next priority is we kind of worked on this and I’ll take a quick aside to mention that we created what was called the Executive Facility Committee to kind of govern most of this and it was chaired by Dr. Large, and it had Dr. Mazey and Dr. Winn from the Provost staff, Dr. Mason to represent Research, the athletic director to represent athletics, Bob Ritenbaugh from Auxiliary Services, myself from Facilities, and Dr. Cary for Student Affairs to represent students, so it was a pretty broad based group. It became clear fairly quickly that the vast majority of projects, about 75%, were academic projects. So Dr. Mazey created a sub-committee with Dr. Mazey, Dr. Winn, Dr. Flynn, Dr. Crutchley, Dr. Mason, and Dr. Pinkert, Dean Gramberg was the one dean representative, and that group took the academic projects and tried to prioritize those.

So the next big group really is the focus would be at this university we need to replace the deteriorated academic buildings in the core of campus. You can kind of see a list there. These are the buildings that were built in the 50s and the 60s that were not built particularly well. There are some buildings obviously in other places that are 300 years old and they work great, architectural landmarks, Samford Hall is an old building it’s an architectural landmarks we should keep that forever, I can’t say the same is true for Funchess Hall, or Haley Center or whatever, pick any of the ones up there, so we took a look at what are the worst academic buildings in the core of campus, from an academic instruction standpoint and a facilities standpoint in terms of maintenance and the ability to sustain that building in the long run. We put those two together and we ended up with the list you see there. So the recommendation on these is that you would replace Haley Center, Funchess, Upchurch Hall, Parker and Allison, Spidel Hall. With the new arena, most of the tenants in Beard Eaves Memorial Coliseum will move out of the Coliseum with the exception of Kinesiology, so sooner or later to tear the Coliseum down we have to move Kinesiology and find a new space for them. Renovated space, new space, one or the other we’ve got to find a new space for kinesiology.

College of Agriculture got a 14–15 million dollar grant a couple of months ago, we have to match the funds and we’re going to build a center for advanced science and innovation and commerce, so that’s not really a replacement but we have it up there as a place holder because it has to get done in the next couple of years or we will loose the federal dollars. [1:16:16] So as you can see that’s a huge chunk of money to really take care of the buildings in the academic core of campus and really try to revitalize the academic core.

Just real quick, a couple of thoughts on Haley Center. Why are we saying replace versus renovate it? We looked at the cost, we looked at many options on all of these, we looked at the cost of replacing or renovating in Haley. It cost about 90 some million dollars to renovate Haley, it cost about 107–108 million dollars to replace Haley, so there’s a 26–7 million dollar difference, that’s a lot money. The problem with Haley as is, is that you’ll spend so 90 some million dollars on that facility and we’ll gut it to the bare concrete structure replace everything inside and you could make it pretty good inside, but you are going to be constrained to the geography and the structure as is, 4 quads and a tower. The consensus from the academic side was, that causes constraints and it’s not optimal for how you’d like to teach, how you like to use the facility, so when we put all that together the thought was, really you are better off investing a little more money, you could split the facility up a little, we wouldn’t build another humungous building, you’d build several buildings. The central classroom facility is an extraction of classrooms out of Haley to create just a classroom facility, so the thought is that it is a better investment of dollars if you look 50–60 years out, to replace Haley rather than renovate it. That’s why the recommendation was there. Not to mention we’d still have fire protection, life-safety issues with the tall tower and all that.

The next project, third on the list here, Student Wellness and Sustainability Center. Some may have heard it before referred to as the student rec center, we changed the name to reflect more emphasis on wellness and sustainability, particularly personal sustainability, so that really is a student oriented project. The students have had a referendum, they’ve said we really would like to have better recreational opportunities on campus. Student Act is pretty minimal, they’ve got some basketball courts, weight rooms, locker rooms, cardio rooms, exercise rooms are pretty minimal and fairly poor quite honestly. So the thought is that’s a huge enhancement to student life, and faculty and staff who would be able to use it as well. So that is third on the list. There’s been a student referendum on that and the students are pretty fired up on this one and this has progress fairly far to date, almost ready to go to the Board of Trustees for final approval.

The forth on the list, create the Health Science Campus is an idea that’s been kicking around for a while and it looks like there could be some federal funds to make this happen, so you put those two things together and that becomes a really interesting initiative that some think could really take Auburn to the next level from a research standpoint. [1:19:28]

So we’ve taken care of academic instruction, taken care of academic buildings, taken care of students, then next number 4 Health Science campus, really takes care of majorly in the research area, the goal of the strategic plan for Auburn University is let’s increase our research capacity, our ability to be a research university. So specifically on the Health Science campus, Dr. Mason and others, president Gogue are working congress to try to get a grant in the vicinity of 40 million dollars, we’d have to match with 10 for a 50 million dollar project to build a complex of research buildings either near the Research Park or somewhere near the Research Park, the site is not as critical but it’s probably where it will be so that there could be synergies between those new research buildings which would focus on health science related issues and some of the things that are in the Research Park that are currently underway such as the MRI facility or this CASIC facility which will be out there as well. You start to get enough out there you will get some critical mass and again some synergies going that we think could attract additional dollars out there. And an additional piece of that, if you are going to create a Health Science Center tied in with what’s at the Research Park, it might make a lot of sense for us to move the Pharmacy school and the Nursing School out of the core of campus, because they don’t have to be in the core of campus, they don’t have undergraduate students, I guess Nursing does, but largely once they are in Nursing they take their nursing stuff, they can be removed from the core of campus, be closer to all that Health Science stuff, even more synergies begin to be created and we reduce the density in the core of campus by getting two colleges out of there. [1:21:36] And they have room to expand and grow if we do that, so that’s a thought. Creating a Health Science Center, moving Pharmacy and Nursing out there, give them a little more room to grow and expand. We’d probably try to move some of the clinics out there, give the clinics a little bit of room for growth, give the clinics a little better opportunity for parking than what they currently have. So that’s what that one is all about, again the key to that is federal dollars.

The next one on the list there is a project that was taken to the Board of Trustees two board meetings ago and that is to replace the small animal teaching hospital at the Vet School, a critical facility for them. They want to increase undergraduate enrollment, this will allow them to do that and keep the Vet School up to date, vibrant, state of the art.

Next, renovate student housing. We need to always keep our student housing up to date and fresh. The hill dorms need to be renovated. A decision needs to be made on the CDV dorms, do we keep them, do we tear them down, what do we do with those? Both those questions have been around for a while, but with the construction of the Village housing project we’re kind of victim of our own success as housing is. Now everyone wants to live in the Village and nobody really wants to live in the Hill or the Quad because those just aren’t as new and nice and so there’s probably a bit more pressure than ever to get back into the Hill dorms and get those renovated. So there’s some student housing that needs to be taken care of. Over the next decade we have to do that. We can’t tell the hill students, you’re going to wait until 2023  ‘til we are going to spruce up your rooms, that’s just not going to work.

Last, but not least, athletics is going to build a number of facilities, they fund their own facilities and they have a number of things in their athletics master plan that they want to construct and we felt that needs to be part of our overall plan. It’s not the same funding source. We have many sources for this and some show how much comes from the general fund, how much comes from the feds, the state, or gifts, or other; and athletics is other just like auxiliaries, housing, they pay for their own stuff through the revenues that they generate.

So you can see there are two columns, a cost of each initiative, the total, the general thought was, and I have a slide that can show it, we tried to estimate how much do we think we could afford? And where that line is drawn is probably and aggressively conservative, if you can mix those two words together, I thought on where we might be able to afford. So could argue we’re way too aggressive and crazy to think we’ll ever get that much, some may say you are just a little too conservative. I don’t know where the real answer is so we’re kind of aggressively conservative, and that’s where the line is. If the funny situation works way better than that we’ll dip lower.

You can see the next set of building is a bunch of renovations. Renovate Comer, Textiles, Mary Martin, Greene, Dudley, they all need to get renovated, but the thought was that we need to fix the older academic buildings first, the Funhesses the Spidles and the Allisons before we renovate those others. We can limp these along for 10 years, not sure we can do that in those others.  [1:25:20] Departments, specific research facilities, we can still do those we can still make those happen, but I think the way the funding will work out is the university is not going to be able to put general funds toward those. If a department or school was a specific research building they are probably going to have to raise the funds and do it themselves. That’s just kind of the reality, there’s just not enough money to do the other stuff and do those departmental specific things as well.

The catch all at the bottom is do whatever else pops up. If we get a gift from somebody, I think the example President Gogue uses is somebody comes in and says, “hey, I’ve got 40 million dollars, I want to build a new chemical engineering building.” Hey we’re going to build a new chemical engineering building. We’ll take the money happily and we’ll go do that. We’ll take any targets of opportunity that up.

Before I go to the Master Plan slide, which doesn’t have that much on it really, any questions on this?

Mark Fischman, kinesiology, senator: it’s not a question, but do you think you could post that where faculty could have access to it?

Dan King, assistant vice president for the facilities division: Absolutely. We have not taken this to the Board of Trustees yet, so they have not approved this, so this is all draft at the moment. It’s a non approved plan yet, but it’s a draft and you’re welcome to take a look. I guess it will be in the Senate minutes or whatever.

Yasser Gowayed, senator, polymer and fiber engineering: I was wondering, how did you separate the building from the top list to the bottom list? The reason, my department is in textile engineering building and was built in 1930 I think, we have really bad facilities we have serious problems with our labs, hoods, if you want I could give you a long list.

Dan King, assistant vice president for the facilities division: You just had a room catch on fire a few weeks ago.

Yasser Gowayed, senator, polymer and fiber engineering: Exactly. We were in danger of loosing a million five worth of equipment because of that simple fire. So…

Dan King, assistant vice president for the facilities division: I can tell you that textile is bad but it’s not as bad as the ones that are above. That’s our assessment of looking at all of the systems in the building and the condition and what would it take to fix textile. Now there’s other things going on in textile as well. College of Engineering has had Shelby Center I built, Shelby Center II built and it sort of remains to be seen, there’s going to be a migration of folks from places like textile, into the Shelby Center, so the occupancy of textile may change a bit in the future as well, but the real reason is all those buildings down here they all need work they are all old. These are architecturally significant buildings, we want to keep them we don’t want to tear them down, but we think we can limp those along better than we can Haley, Funchess, Upchurch, Spidle, Allison. I don’t disagree that it needs work, but it’s just not as bad in our view.

Any other questions?

This is just a sheet that tried to show and I don’t know that we need to get into it, where the money would come from to pay for this. It consists of two sets of tuition increases. The money from the tuition increases or fee increases allows us to have a cash flow stream that can pay off the debt service of bonds. The bonds would be used to borrow…, we borrow the bond money to do someone’s project. Then you can see some development campaign of funding, some federal funds, some state funds, maybe some other donations. Again what will happen under development campaign is it too conservative? is it unrealistically high? Not really sure if we talk to different people we get different answers. One purpose of this plan though should be, and I hope it will be, to align the capital development campaign and next one whatever part is for facilities that we all have a common message and we’re going after the priority facilities and not just everyone’s random thought out there. We’ll have a more successful campaign and we’ll achieve more if we have a more in sync and focused message.

We did some analysis and many different permutations and combinations of this. So you can see it totals about 563 and that’s roughly where the 600 came from, plus or minus, you’re getting close there.

Last not lest, the master plan. The last master plan update in 2007, before that in 2002. We need to update it again the longer you go between updates the less relevant it becomes, so we need to do that. Here are my goals for facilities in working to achieve an updated master plan. For FY10 here what I want us to do is figure out, what should the master plan be and have in it? It may be very similar to what it is today, it may be somewhat different than what it is today. I’m sure the core will be the same but we may add some stuff to it. So we need to find what should our master plan be, what should it look like, what things should it cover. The key thing in FY10 is to figure out the process to how we’re going to develop the master plan, plan for the plan. Some key tenants of all that it needs to be a very transparent process, a lot of communication needs to be involved. Again we hear people from across the campus say, “hey there wasn’t enough communication on the last master plan. Well there may or may not have been and it depends on who you talk to, but it’s clear on the next update there needs to be a lot of communication. Roughly stated about 60% of the master planning effort needs to be communication. Telling people, this is what’s going on and what we’re thinking about and getting some feedback and going through multiple iterations of that. So FY10 we figure out what it is. We’ve got a good starting point we have a pretty good master plan. We figure out what it is for the future and we figure out the plan to update it. FY11 we execute the plan, FY12 we publish. In the next year an a half we’re going to update the master plan incorporate many things if we can get this Capital Projects plan approved by the Board that would be a core element. That kind of thing is not in the current master plan. And there’s many other things that maybe could and should be in there so we would look at that.

So stay tuned. I think it would be fairly safe to say we’ll come back to this group and tell you what’s going on with the master planning process multiple times as we work through that. There will be a Master Planning Committee and we’ll have to come up with our outreach opportunities to facilitate the dialogue so people feel that they have a chance to say their piece. Okay that concludes my presentation. I’ll take any questions you have. Must be close to quitting time. Thanks for the opportunity I’m happy to come back at a subsequent date.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Thank you Dan. That completes the major portion of our agenda so at this time I’d like to ask if anybody has any unfinished business? Any new business? If not then we are adjourned and I appreciate your time.