transcript_10_06

October 6, 2009
Senate Meeting Transcription

Kathryn Flynn, chair: I'd like to call this meeting to order.

Also, most of the Senators I think are down in the front, but when you stand up if you have comments or questions when you have those if you’ll go to one of the microphones on either side of the room and state your name and the unit that you’re representing whether you’re a senator or not. The rules of the senate require that senators be given first opportunity to speak and then once the senators have all spoken, then anyone in the audience is welcome to come up and comment. I would ask that if you get up more than once that you identify yourself each time, it may seem a little inconvenient or redundant, but we do transcripts and try to identify each speaker with the comments that they made and it’s not always easy for Laura to keep track of who is making which comments.

The first item on today’s agenda is approval of the minutes for September 1. Dennis DeVries, the secretary, sent a link to all senators and I think to all faculty, but particularly to senators and the minutes are posted on the senate Web site. So at this time I’d like to ask if there are any additions or changes to the minutes that were posted? (pause) Hearing none, the minutes will stand approved as posted.

The next item on the agenda is comments from Dr. Gogue. Dr. Gogue is out of town this week and didn’t realize that until we had already formed the agenda, but Dr. Mazey is going to come up, I’ll invite her up at this time and she’s going to make some comments for us.

Dr. Mazey, Provost: Thank you I just wanted to give you some updates. First of all if you did not receive it in the back of the room would be the 35 strategic planning goals for the 2009–2010 academic year. We had 35 goals last year; we completed about 12 of those, 20 some are ongoing from and carry over from last year. Many of them relate to the taskforce work, so we created the taskforces, they made recommendations and now we need to implement those implementations. And there are a few new goals. We did put names beside these goals so come April when we have to do a report on what we’ve achieved on the strategic planning goals, those individuals will take the lead in terms of submitting the summaries. There is a University Strategic Planning Council will do a report of the goals to them and talk about new goals for the following year. All of this of course deals with the University Strategic Plan which you were involved and created prior to my arrival and we continue to do even in these very difficult budget times what we can do to implement that plan. I hope if you have any questions about those please, if you’ve had a chance to read through them please ask me before the end of this report.

On other updates I wanted to let you know about, first of all we have four Deans searches underway. In the College of Agriculture, Dr. Schneller and Dr. Bannon are co-chairing that search and that search committee has already received its charge and they are working already. In the College of Education Dean Hinton is chairing the search and we had a open forum just last Thursday with the faculty, students, and others from the College of Education talking about the leadership traits and attributes that we want to see in the next Dean of Education. And we plan to do such open forums in all these searches. In terms of COSAM Dr. Gramberg is chairing that search. I will meet with that search committee and give them their charge next week. And in the College of Business, Dean Bennett is chairing that search and I just met with that search committee earlier today and gave them their charge. All of these searches will involve a search firm. We certainly want to recruit a national pool of candidates for the searches. And each search will have at least two full days of interviewing on campus with the finalists. So that’s probably going to be sometime in March/April before we see the final candidates. So I appreciate all those chairing searches and all those that are members of search committees. We also have a search underway for an Assistant Provost for International Programs. And again, all these are replacement searches and we hope to find someone for that position yet this year, and Dean Flowers is chairing that search committee.

Another item would be the Lecturer/Senior Lecturer Positions, we have appointed a taskforce to work on the specifics. You voted in favor of that in terms of concept at the last Senate Meeting and the taskforce consists of Dr. Winn, in our office, is chairing the taskforce; Michele Smith, who is actually chair of the senate committee on non-tenure track faculty and instructors and of course he is the chair of the department of Mathematics; Dr. Ryan, who is chair of the department of English is also on that taskforce; Dr. Bonny White from the College of Education is a member, Constance Hendricks, Dr. Hendricks from the School of Nursing, thank you for being on that committee, taskforce rather; then we have two instructors, Lisa Miller from Accounting and Cary Munoz from Foreign Languages is on that taskforce. [6:04]
I plan to continue to hold open forums. We had one last month, I’ll have another one this month, there’s more dialogue that we need in terms of these Lecturers/Senior Lecturers Positions, I would invite you to join me on October 21 in the Library Auditorium at 3:00 p.m. I will have another one of these open forums even on Wednesday, November 18 at 3:00 p.m. in the Library Auditorium. I’m sure there will be an announcement sent out about that further.

Then the final item I have is of course budget, and these have been difficult times for higher education across the country and certainly we’ve experienced that here in Alabama if you go back and you look, we had 11 percent proration just last year. We now have experienced another 7.5 percent proration on this budget that just came into existence 5 days ago. I think we all should say a major thank you to Dr. Large in terms of what he’s done with this budget here at Auburn University, because if you take that, it is virtually close to 100 Million dollars that’s been cut out of our base budget here. And through good management of the budget and our expenditures I think we’ve taken all of this very, very well. In terms of, you are probably saying, what does this mean to me, and what does this mean to our academic units? Well this latest proration of 7.5% means that the academic units will take a 1.5%, and again that’s because of what Dr. Large has been able to do and continuing to have these proration reserves and other reserves. So we just hope that the economy improve sooner rather than later and we don’t have to continue the budget reductions, but right now the future does not look all that bright. In fact we heard just at a meeting on Monday, that the fiscal year 2011 budget may be 3%–5% below this 7.5% proration we’re receiving in the 2010 budget. So we need to all do what we can to increase efficiency and hold our cost low. [8:33]

So any questions? I know Dr. Large is here so if you have additional budget questions, I will certainly ask him if he wants to answer.

Conner Bailey, Ag Econ & Rural Soc., I’m the substitute senator for today: A couple of weeks ago I sent Dr. Gogue an e-mail and I think Don is moving forward because he knows the question is possibly for him. I’m going to help but in a small way solve the budget problems, I hope.

While much of the campus has been struggling one important part has been quite successful, academically, athletically, and financially and that’s the Athletics Department. And the question I want to ask today is whether in fact we have been, you may get more after this, whether we on main campus have been subsidizing the athletic department? In the last 5 years that department has had a budget increase in expenditure of 59%, this year alone they are experiencing a 15% budget increase. That’s different than the rest of campus we just have heard. I raised this issue back in 2001 in March and at that time I asked whether the athletic department was paying their fair share of the administrative costs that are associated with their operations. We are all familiar with the idea of overhead and direct cost recovery for raising grants, there’s a portion of overhead that’s known as general administrative cost which covers some of the time of the University President, the Provost, you Don, Leigh Armstrong, Risk Management, etc. and there are costs associated with all of these items not to mention payroll, risk management, etc.

In 2001 we learned that the athletic department was paying roughly 1% instead of this 6.6% general administrative cost that everybody else, myself included, were paying in that year. And after that costs were recalibrated, but I’ve just learned in the last 6 months or so with interactions with people on your staff that athletics currently is paying 1 million dollars to help defray these general administrative costs on last year’s expenditures of 48.6 Million, so that works out to 2.1%. We’ve made some progress, way to go Don, but it seems to me that these payments have remained about the same, what I’ve been told, about 1 Million dollars per year and that we may need to be recalibrating. And in the mean time the general administrative costs have gone from 6.6% to 7%. So my calculations on the current fiscal year for the budget for athletics, 55.7 is they should be paying 3.9 Million and not one Million. So the additional 2.9 Million minus my 10% finders fee (laughter), which will go straight into my research budget, would be a step in the right direction. Either that or I’d like to know if I can get a rebate on the over-, under-rate cost that I’ve contributed, I’ve calculated that about $40,000. So Don, how can you help us?

Don Large, Executive Vice President: All right, let me, not sure where to start on that one for sure, but first of all Athletics as all of our auxiliaries, the housing, the dinning and all are expected to cover…generate their own revenue and cover their own cost. And so they do that. Now, are they paying their fair share beyond that and or contributing even beyond some measure of their fair share because they wish to? So I guess those are the key questions. I’m not sure if I can tell you that they are paying their fair share or not. I think everybody will see that differently, but let me address the specific cost reimbursement that you are talking about, Conner. And again I don’t expect that everybody will agree with how this is done but it has theory and it’s the way we’ve applied it. It was approved by the president at the time and that’s the way we did it. [13:06]

So you take the departmental administration of indirect cost, which at that point was 6.4%, 6.6% and it’s different. And the first question is: Why isn’t that 48%, well the 48% is an indirect cost applied to research and you are not paying all those direct costs, the general fund is so it’s getting reimbursed for everything and then we split it back out as you know. Auxiliaries, in this case athletics, pays for all their direct costs, they pay their salaries, they pay their buildings, they pay their insurance, they pay everything. So the only thing we can measure is was the departmental administration saying well it probably has some theory that 6% of their revenues or 7% or whatever should go toward some reimbursement back to the general fund. So we calculate that and we come up with, at that point I’m going to round, it wasn’t 3 million, but it was close to it, but for simplicity purposes I’m going to round. So let’s say we computed it at 6.6% of whatever the revenues were, 40 Million or whatever at the time, that’s 3 million dollars. So one would say all right therefore athletics you owe us $3 Million. The problem with that is that athletics comes back and says “Well wait a minute now, you’re telling us to be a self generating operation, let the market be the market and balance your books. Then we want credit for the things that we do. We provide more generous discounts to faculty and staff athletic tickets than any body in the Conference, we provide a 50% discount.” That’s not an employee benefit, that is a discount provided by athletics. And when you total that up that’s about $1 Million. So they say we want credit for that or we could charge 100% and give you back the million. So you know it had theory. So we say all right then, you owe us $2 million and we’ll give you credit for that. And then they say, but on those same tickets which are not in the end zone, some are some very nice tickets, I’m sure some are less nice, but they would argue that if you just let the market be the market, they can sell those as scholarship tickets, let us move all the faculty and staff tickets to the end zone and we’ll sell them at 50% and well take that discount and argument goes away, but if you let us sell those tickets at the market for scholarship we can get $2–2.5 Million more than face value. So for right or wrong, we at the time the president, myself and others, thought well I don’t know if I buy into that whole opportunity cost totally, but it has some merit as well. So we’ll give you instead of giving you 2.5 million dollars credit for that opportunity cost or that market value lost we’ll knock off a million. So that’s how you get down from the 3 rounded up to the 2 to the 1. Now I don’t expect everybody to agree here or disagree with it but it’s just the way we did it and it’s the way we continue to do it. Can you make an argument that that’s just not fair, they should pay, probably can, but your question was “How do we get from $3 million to $1 million?” and that’s how it was done, and that’s the theory and the rational behind it. So you can choose to agree or disagree but that’s how we do it.

Connor Bailey: Don, my question included the fact that in the last 5 years, 59% increase of budget for athletics. So no change?

Don Large, Executive Vice President: Yeah, it would have gone up some, the price of tickets have changed too. So the general theory in numbers don’t change dramatically.

Bob Locy, immediate past chair of the faculty senate: In follow up to what Connor said, I’m sorry but I don’t have the reference completely available, but there was a recent article in the Chronicle on Higher Education concerning the fact that the SEC (Southeastern Conference) has recently cut something to the tune of a 15 Billion dollar deal. Billion with a “B” [18:10] with ESPN and CBS to cover SEC sporting events for the next 15 years, and that much of the proceeds of that are being divvied up with the institutions involved as I’m sure rightly they should be, but at the same time there was a table in that article that showed at all SEC schools the spending on athletics and how much it had increased across the 4-year interval. And this was of the order of 2003–2007, I may be misquoting slightly I’m doing this from memory, then it showed the increase in academic spending at each of the SEC institutions across that same period of time. When you look at that table, Auburn is pretty pathetic. That is to say our rate of increase for academic spending was something of the order of 5% while athletic spending went up something of the order of 30%. It’s a different independent source producing the same statistics that Connor’s alluding to perhaps in a more recent year and I guess we can let you off the hook for this one because it dates back before our current administration to some extent, but I’d like to see a plan in place to address the fact that academic spending and athletic spending aren’t really keeping pace with each other at our institution.

Don Large, Executive Vice President: And I think this is the beginning of the discussion I don’t think it’s the end, I think the questions are reasonable. As I think you know, Bob, that the president has asked Jay Jacobs to come forward with some accounting of those new revenues and how he proposes they be shared with the general fund or academics and I don’t think that plan has been brought forward yet so there’s still discussions going on as to some reasonable sharing of those revenues. And there are different sources when we were moving up in our state appropriations dramatically in ’06, ’07, and ’08, we were moving up and athletics was leveling and now we’ve gone way down and they are moving up, but different sources and different approaches to budgeting I guess.

Bob Locy, immediate past chair: I would also say in consultation with the other senate chairs of SEC schools, while your statement may be completely accurate that we have the lowest football ticket prices of any of the SEC institutions. Practically everyone discounts their tickets to some extent, if they give faculty tickets at all, some institutions in the SEC do not give football tickets to their faculty or staff at all unless you buy them at full price.

Don Large, Executive Vice President: The biggest discount.

Right but that’s where athletics discounts the face value 50% which I think, I’m not sure, but I think the highest discount other than that is 20% in the Conference, so their argument is that they should get credit for that discount. It’s a fore-gone revenue to them so we ought to at least give them value for that. [21:35] I don’t have a good argument against that.

Bob Locy, immediate past chair: Okay, thank you.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Thank you Dr. Mazey and Dr. Large. I’m going to keep my comments brief today because I think we have some interesting things on the agenda. I’d like to mention that this marks the half-way point for my term as chair and Dennis DeVries term as secretary. [22:11] The executive committee is charged by the (Faculty) Handbook to constitute an add hoc nominations committee responsible for selecting a slate of officers for elections scheduled next March. We are in the process of identifying people for potential membership on that committee, and I invite you or if someone you know are interested in possibly serving, if you would let myself or one of the other members of the executive committee know that. Putting a name forward will not guarantee that you’ll be on the committee, but there are five of us who worked together and will select names and we typically do a selection of names for committees by majority vote. So if you are interested let me know. Also once the committee is constituted and charged with its work if you are contacted by members of the committee asking if you might be interested to consider running for office, I encourage you to take that request seriously and if you are interested but a little nervous about what it encompasses then I’d encourage you to contact myself or Bob Locy or Connor or any of the other, or the secretary and past-secretary to find out exactly what it involves, so that you can make an informed decision. The service to the University as a senator or on Senate committees or in a leadership capacity is important and useful work and I would have to say that our current administration has show that it is strongly committed to the concept of shared governance and we are regularly being asked for input on a wide variety of issues. I expect that will continue in the future. Things like implementation plans for taskforce recommendations, there is a member of the Senate Leadership on each of the current Dean’s search committees. A number of other things that happen; we meet with the president once a month for about an hour and talk about a wide variety of topics, we meet with Dr. Mazey and usually Emmett Winn is also present, either once a week through Executive or Steering Committee, so there’s quite a bit of interaction that’s taking place between the Senate leadership and the upper administration.

The other thing that I’d like to do is to remind you that next Tuesday we have a General Faculty Meeting. It’s scheduled for 3:00 p.m. in this room and it will be a meeting that has a number of things that I think are of general interest. We’ll be sending out some reminders to the faculty at large, but I’d encourage you to ask your faculty to make an effort to attend this meeting. We will have a report from the Provost Office, we’ll have an update on a number of things and probably one that’s most prominent is that Dr. Large will give an update on the budget, similar to the information he presented to the Board of Trustees a week or so ago. [25:39]

With that I’d like to invite Claire Crutchley our chair-elect to come forward, she’s going to start with our first action item on the agenda which is the calendar adjustment. [25:55]

Claire Crutchley, chair-elect: there should be handouts with the Resolution that you should have gotten. I’m going to present it on Powerpoint, but last month I presented and information item where I just talked about how we need to shorten the calendar to try to squeeze it into a 365-day year and give enough time between semesters. I’m doing this as a representative of the Steering Committee and we decided in Steering there was a lot of discussion about what Resolution I should present exactly how many days in the academic calendar are currently. The Senate passed Resolutions saying we must have 75 class days per semester and 50 in the summer. So the Calendar Committee works with that proposal and creates the calendar. The Resolution that I’m going to propose, we decided to go with a range of 70–73 class days and the reason we decided on a range…well I’ll talk about some of the issues and then I’ll tell you that.

After I presented this last time, I asked for comments and I hope that you asked faculty to give me comments. I was surprised at how few comments I got, because I was expecting a lot more, but I did get several comments. And the comments ranged from…and I was actually at the Provost’s forum and someone asked about the calendar and I said give me any comments. Several people said to me, “just make it shorter,” I had that mostly informally, “It’s too long.” There were comments on how we do need more time between semesters. Our semesters are really too close together. The most common request people asked me to present was 70 class days and that was a combination of two different reasons, some people said well “A fifteen week semester means 14 weeks of classes and one week of exams, that’s what it’s supposed to be and other people really wanted consistency, they wanted the same number of Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays; or others say MWF, and T, TH and the only way you can do that is to have a semester that’s divisible by 5. So I got a lot of people saying 70. We decided to go with a range.

Other things: lab classes. I surveyed and the Calendar Committee has all of the surveys I got this summer, all of the colleges about lab classes and some of those departments, I think biology they want a full week of labs because they set up on Monday and they do labs the rest of the week, so they really want full weeks of class instead of cut up weeks. I had absolutely nobody tell me to eliminate the holidays to create more time. No one said that, I did have one person say (faculty in my department) “Do not eliminate holidays to create more time.” Most people didn’t comment on that, but I gave that as an option. No one asked to give up their holidays.

This is a comment I got so I am putting it up under comments that the Georgia law changed. It was a state law in Georgia that you have I think it was 150 days during the regular year of class days so two semesters of 75 or if you are on quarters, three 50 class days, and Georgia law changed and they now have 750 minutes of class. What that translates to is, in Georgia – we have often copied their calendar with 15 weeks – now the legislature is saying it’s okay to count exams as class time. 750 minutes of class or equivalent is what they say. And they are going to be proposing, both Georgia and Georgia State, translates to 14 weeks of class and one week of exams. So that will be presented it has not yet, but it will be presented in the Senate. I’m not saying we should do it because Georgia’s doing it; I’m just informing you of it. [30:26]
Time to grade/final exams, these are other comments I received. All of us recognize that we need to do our graduating seniors in time to get those exams graded, but I had a question about, “Could we have extra time to grade exams if we had more time between semesters for non-graduating seniors?” And this was investigated and the Registrar’s Office says, yes you might have a day or two more if you had extra time between semesters, so that would be an advantage. And then I also had the suggestion to shorten the summer to, some people said 7.5 weeks and some people said 8 weeks. I also had other comments that said don’t shorten our summers. So I proposed to not shortening the summer, because I had opposite comments on that. That is one way to get more time is to shorten the summer, but certain people didn’t want it and I did not propose that.

I asked Robyn Jaffe, who is here, to give us a proposed calendar, excuse me, I asked him to give us a sample calendar based on a shorter number of class days. And this is I think a 72 class day schedule that he came up with, I am not proposing this, this is not being voted on today it is just a sample. So hopefully you understand that. One way we could do 72 class days in 2010 is to start the calendar on Wednesday, August 18, the green is the first day of class, yellow is just regular class and he gave me every month but I skipped and then December, it would be pretty much exactly the same calendar we are in right now, it would end Friday the third and reading days are in blue just over the weekend, exams in red, graduation in brown on the 13th. And then you have all these days that are in pink (looks more lavender in here) that student’s could go talk to their advisors that it would be time for the registrar’s office to check prerequisites and things like that, so it gives plenty of time. So that is a sample calendar, does not mean that’s the calendar being proposed. So if people had feedback for the Calendar Committee, no matter what we propose, whether this is rejected or not, definitely give it to the Calendar Committee.

And here is the Resolution which hopefully you all have, but I just put it here so it would be easier to see. [33:16]

Calendar Adjustment Resolution

WHEREAS, Auburn University’s current academic calendar is restricted to be exactly seventy-five class days (well actually I’m not sure if it’s exactly 75 or a minimum of 75),
and;

WHEREAS, the seventy-five day academic calendar does not always allow two days between final exams and
graduation, and seven days between graduation and the beginning of the next semester; and;

WHEREAS, this short time between semesters limits the ability of faculty to conduct research, prepare for the
next semester, and lead students on international travel; Now, therefore

BE IT RESOLVED, that the Calendar Committee be directed to construct a calendar for Fall and Spring
Semesters of between seventy and seventy-three class days and between forty-eight and forty-nine class days in
the summer term.

And let me just make one comment about why we chose a range. We had some people who really wanted 70 class days so everything would be equal. Some of us thought that might be too much to ask you to take a week off of your semester so we compromised. Also unless you’ve constructed one of these calendars, which I have, you don’t know how hard it is to fit it in, because it depends, you can’t start before August 16 and Thanksgiving, they are hard to construct because not every year is the same. So we decided to offer a range and therefore the Calendar Committee can work within that range to give us the best calendar that they can given whatever input faculty want to give to the Calendar Committee. That is my resolution. So I can ask for any comments or questions?

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Okay, this Resolution comes from the Steering Committee so it does not require a second. So at this point I’d like to ask if anyone has any comments or questions.

Anthony Moss, biological sciences, senator: So Claire I understand correctly that since you are going from 75 to 70 this would mean then under the constraints of this system, I’m sure this is the feedback you got from me from Scott who is the director of the labs there, this will knock out a week of labs is that correct?

Claire Crutchley, chair-elect: If it’s 70 it will knock out a week of class. That’s correct. If it’s 73, because we have that Monday holiday I don’t know how many weeks you count as full weeks, so it just depends.

Anthony Moss: The problem is with the density of the classes, laboratory classes, they are just maxed out, they run from 9 to 9 Tuesday through Friday, set-up periods are Monday and at the end of the day on Friday. So that’s why I think this will result in, if that’s the case, it will knock out a lab for the introductory biology classes.

Claire Crutchley, chair-elect: I did not get any feedback from any lab class asking for more than 14 weeks, so what I got said 14 was the minimum.

Anthony Moss: That’s right, typically we start after a week of lecture has preceded, but it would be, it’s possible it may not have that much impact. It all depends on how it’s implemented.

Claire Crutchley, chair-elect: the minimum I was told, actually biology I think they said they only needed 13 full weeks, but I could be wrong…

Anthony Moss: In the 1000 program we typically run, if I understand correctly and I think this is true because I’m in Honors right now one of the 1000 level classes, we minimally run 13, but right now in the current semester we are able to do more than that just because of the way the days lay out. And in my particular class I am more flexible because everything meets on one day, but in the larger sense of all the classes, yeah, I think they could run 14 weeks of lab, this particular semester they could do it. And I would say that’s unusual, I guess broken up.

Claire Crutchley, chair-elect: Well, what I was told when I surveyed and I really read a lot of surveys, that 14 weeks was the maximum they asked for the semester.

Anthony Moss: Thank you.

Steve Stuckwisch, from the department of mathematics and statistics, senator: I polled our department and basically it was 6 to 1 against shortening the semester. [38:00] We in mathematics do a lot of service courses for other departments, we keep getting feedback from the departments that we are not teaching them enough math, you shorten it by a week is 8%, we can’t possibly get in all the material that we feel our students need and let that go at a pace that they can keep up. Another thing another faculty said is that he thought this sounded bad for the faculty. We are essentially voting whether we agree with it or not, I think the public and the state legislature thinks that our primary duty is teaching. So what are we doing? We’re voting ourselves a 2.5 week from breaking, break in the year, and I think it doesn’t look good to the senate and the people of the state of Alabama for us to vote this way. And so for these reasons, I don’t support the Resolution.

Tony Moss, biological sciences, senator: [39:00] I have to say that although I gave you that list of responses, by far and away the most vociferous responses personally and also in the context in the writing that I got back were very strongly against shortening the semesters. Although there were faculty who were perfectly willing to go along with it but those faculty who were doing that were typically the ones who were not dealing with large-scale classes. So People who were working with the large volume of teaching that we have to do for both service classes and also for our majors and associated classes, those people I’d say all said “we can’t afford to cut content.” Although the vote looked very kind of balanced in the material that I sent you I would say in terms of the voice that spoke about the number of students who would be affected I’d say it was very strongly in favor of not shortening, but that’s the way it turned out.

Michel Smith, chair of the department of mathematics and statistics: I wanted to add to my colleague’s comments. [40:21] When we switched from quarters to semesters, four calculus classes got reduced to three calculus classes. We lost a considerable amount of time and we have packed those courses to the gils. If you consider one of our main service clients, those are the engineering students. The engineering students typically take 3 calculus classes, a differential equation class, a linear algebra class. Those are the ones who are prepared for mathematics, those who are not probably take a pre-calculus algebra and a pre-calculus trig class, that’s anywhere from 5–7 classes. When you add that up you are talking about a huge chunk of time that is going to be taken away from their mathematical preparation. If the calendar were cut of course we would deal with it, but it may be on the order of a sink or swim type of attitude where we throw the topics at the students at an even faster pace than we are doing now. The department is trying to expand some programs that help the retention of students and help them exceed in the department this is going to make it even more difficult for us. I liken it to the building a high story building and then trying to figure out which corner is the one that you want to skip on and so you kind of have to decide which way you want the building to lean when the hurricane comes through and that’s going to be the direction it crashes. I certainly would enjoy the extra days off, though it would probably give me more time to do my research. And I think that’s the way most of the people in my department do view it. So I very strongly ask you to oppose the Resolution, thank you.

Herb Rotfeld, marketing department, not a senator: I’m a little bothered on just tossing it onto the regular academic calendar for reasons like that and tossing out the option of just going to what most semester schools do and have a 7.5 week or 7 week summer term. And you said that there were several people that said keep the summer at 10 weeks. On the calendar committee I’ve asked specifically in terms of what is the usage of people having full 10 week long summer classes? And as far as I know, it is minimal and very small a lot of people I guess like the 10 weeks for running a shorter class and getting their money and being able to escape faster after 5 weeks instead of 7, but that’s not a purpose for having a 10 week long summer term. And if you reduce the summer to a “what is semester normal half term” as opposed to a collection of differentially scheduled triple-speed 5 week terms, you’d have your two weeks, without altering the regular semesters at all. And I am not in a position to request an amendment to your Resolution because I am not a senator, but someone can.

Claire Crutchley, chair-elect: Can I respond to two points? The person who told me, at least one and I think it was two who told me they needed 10 weeks for the semester was and associate dean, I don’t think they were saying they needed 10 weeks so they could teach 5 weeks and get out of town. I think it had to do with the departmental coverage on that. So that was not coming from an individual faculty. And the other thing is if you are looking at other universities as I presented last time, really Georgia was the only one out there with a 15 week exactly schedule except for the University of Alabama also has 75 class days. So we are not in the norm with our 75 class day semester. Now Georgia will be switching also. I’m not saying that’s why we just need more days in the calendar.

Guy Rohrbaugh, senator from Philosophy: My polling was not scientific but for what it’s worth, everyone in my department uniformly reacted the same way which was even if there weren’t a problem with the calendar the semester is crazy long in comparison to other universities around the country, or god forbid in other countries, we’re at the farthest end of an extreme and I would almost vote for an amendment for 65. And its quality and quantity are different issues and you can shorten one without the other.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: Does anyone else have any comments/questions? If not this is a Resolution from the Steering Committee so it does not require a second. We are going to do a ballot vote on this to try and avoid the messy hand counting that we tried last time. So Dennis is going to distribute the ballots, don’t take a ballot if you are not a senator because you are not allowed to vote. So only senators are allowed to vote. [46:10] We are going to vote for the change in the calendar or against. And the paper that you get will have Calendar Adjustment Resolution, yes or no. If you vote yes you’re approving the change, if you vote no you’re voting against the change. [46:38] [49:10]

We are going to go ahead and count them so I can give you a number but the Resolution was overwhelmingly approved. So the calendar has been shortened to 70–73 days. We’ll get with the Calendar Committee and they will be bringing forward, I’m sure this made Robin Jaffe’s day because now he has to reconstruct calendars, but Robin and the Calendar Committee will be asked to bring forward shortened calendars for Senate approval.
I’m going to move forward on the agenda, but before the end of the meeting I’ll report the actual vote. At this time I’d like to invite Dr. George Flowers, dean of the graduate school, forward to present background information and a Resolution on Accelerated Bachelor’s/Master’s Degree Program. [50:04]

Dr. George Flowers, dean of the graduate school: Thank you Kathryn. What I’m going to be talking about is an Accelerated Bachelor’s/Master’s Degree Program, this program was put together in cooperation between the Honors College and the Graduate School and this is a joint effort. The overall goals what we say here is to attract outstanding students to Auburn University I would probably attract more outstanding students, expand our Honors offerings, just in general provide an incentive for additional outstanding students to come to Auburn, encourage students to enroll and complete the Honor’s Program. All of those of you who have been in graduation recently have seen how low those numbers are and this is one tool we’re looking at to try to encourage the completion of the Honor’s program and also to encourage students to begin their graduate education at Auburn University.

As far as the Strategic Plan is concerned with regards to the Honor’s College, there’re several points. This provides value to students, it provides additional challenges to students, this provides an opportunity for example for students to be able to come in and take graduate level courses, additional challenge, additional stretching of their capabilities, and makes effective use of the time an talents of our Honor’s students. With regard to the Graduate School, we want to attract outstanding students to graduate studies at Auburn and we overall want to increase the number of our graduate students, so one particular pool, one opportunity area is to attract more of the outstanding students that are coming into the Honor’s program, try to attract those to pursue graduate studies while they are here at Auburn.

The benefits for the students, well they can earn two degrees in less time and for less cost, they can count from 9–12 hours toward both degrees and these would be graduate course hours, and potentially enhance their employment prospects. So a student has two degrees rather then one and certainly that is attractive to employers.

Now one question that had come up the last time we talked about this was how the course credit would count. We’ve got an example here in terms of course credit guidelines. The students that participate in this program can count from 9–12 hours toward both degrees. And this would be 9 hours for a 30 credit Master’s Degree and 12 for a 36 or more credit Master’s Degree. And the way this is envisioned, really there are two possibilities. First of the 5000/6000 level or piggy-back courses the undergraduate students now would typically take 5000 level section and if they went into graduate, the graduate students would of course take the 6000 level section. What’s envisioned here is that the undergraduate student would take the 6000 level section. The 6000 level section is supposed to include the material of the 5000 level section, plus something that makes it a graduate level course, so they would get credit for the 5000 level section toward their undergraduate degree, get credit for the 6000 level section toward their graduate degree. And then for 7000 level courses the envision was that they would be used as elective credit for the undergraduate degree, either technical electives or free electives and it depends very much on the undergraduate program that the student is in. and then they could also be used as credit for the Master’s Degree. Another point here is that a significant number of these students are going to come in with AP credit, the Honor’s students and also the advanced students that perhaps aren’t in the Honor’s Program or for what ever reason didn’t consider the Honor’s Program, they are going to come in with considerable advanced credit so that’s another part of this accelerated effort.

Benefits for Auburn University, well it gives us another tool for recruiting outstanding student to Auburn. It gives us an opportunity to enroll our most exceptional Auburn University students in Graduate School. It also fosters interaction to an undergraduate in graduate education and that’s really a critical point. One trend in recent years has been toward undergraduate research and trying to get the undergraduates involved more in the research activity, and that really should be the benefit of students of being on a research university there ought to be that opportunity for them to really experience the research and research involvement. So this is meant to do that and encourage the undergraduate research. [55:01] This is an inclusive and voluntary program. It’s inclusive from the perspective that it is open to all students. There were some comments initially, some of the initial discussion we focused on honors students the program as we envision it has evolved is that it would include both honor’s students and non-honor’s students, students can transfer into this program or participate in this program whether they are in the Honor’s College or not. And as far as the individual degree programs are concerned either the undergraduate or the graduate degree programs, they may choose whether or not to participate in it. And there are of course some programs for which this would be perfectly appropriate and for some just based upon the academic requirements of a given degree it wouldn’t be appropriate so what we envision is that the individual degree programs will make their own decisions as to whether or not they wish to participate.

A number of peer institutions with similar programs: Clemson, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, North Carolina State, Rutgers, Texas A&M, Virginia Tech, programs that are peer institutions that some of them are ranked very similar to us, some are ranked substantially higher in the number of the programs, all of these have some form of Accelerated Bachelor’s/Master’s Program.

After having gone through this I propose a resolution and present a resolution to the senate basically in support of the Accelerated Bachelor’s/Master’s Program:

RESOLUTION
Proposed Accelerated Bachelor’s / Master’s Degree Program

WHEREAS the proposed program offers Honors students and other outstanding Auburn students the opportunity to earn both the bachelor’s and master’s degree in less time and at less cost than usual; and

WHEREAS the proposed program will enhance the marketability of students in fields in which the master’s degree is fast becoming a requirement; and

WHEREAS the proposed program encourages exceptional students to apply not only to the
Honors College but also to Auburn’s graduate programs,

BE IT RESOLVED by the Auburn University Senate that the proposed Accelerated Bachelor’s
/ Master’s Degree Program be approved, and forwarded as an action item to the Board of
Trustees. That’s my presentation I would be happy to field questions.

Tony Moss, Biological Science, senator: Just very briefly, there was just very little comment on this from the faculty in my department. I think that fundamentally they were supportive, but there was one very incisive and very good point that was made and the point was this: therefore the way that this program is designed it is functioning to increase the number of Master’s students that this university and the person made a very good point that our population of graduate students is largely Master’s students already and that’s not really where we need growth. He felt that this might take resources away from developing our PhD programs across the university. I don’t remember the details of his comment, but that was the upshot. And I could see insofar as teaching assistantship availabilities, they’ve been significantly reduced this year relative to last year and that once again very strongly stresses our laboratory programs in Biological Sciences and I’m sure it does in a lot of other departments that have similar kinds of programs and so I definitely see his point although I was inclined to be very supportive of this myself, I’m kind of sitting on the fence at this point now because of this I agree I would like to see our PhD programs develop out more thoroughly and actually we’re doing a pretty good job in biological sciences increasing the number of PhD students that we have, but we are now at a point this year in our department where by, and I’m sure you are aware of this, we are really very badly stretched as far as our TAs go. We really strongly depend on those people to teach our classes. If enrollment in the university is going to continue to go up as it looks like it will, then we’ve got a problem if we’re not recruiting even stronger students than we already have. I realize that these students will turn over faster, but then again it also means that we don’t have as developed a group of graduate students in our program and certainly will also be true if we are giving up resources to Master’s as opposed to PhD. So that is the comment that was made. I thought it was a very thoughtful comment and I wanted to make sure that that got forward to you.

George Flowers: Okay, a couple of responses. As far as assistantships are concerned that’s and individual departmental decision and so as you mentioned your department has done a terrific job in terms of developing it’s doctoral program. You’ve got a substantial, I don’t remember the number but it is a very large doctoral program is focused very heavily on that. There is no requirement that an individual department participate certainly there’s no requirement that financial aid be given to these students in fact what we’re envisioning is to some extent and some programs this would actually relieve some of the financial aid requirements because you would have the students that would be moving through the Master’s part of the program in a much more efficient way. They would be coming in and taking course work while they’re still undergraduates and those undergraduate students would be recipients of typically recipients of various undergraduate scholarships and so from that perspective it’s in a sense putting money into the graduate program relieving some of the pressure on resources that would otherwise support students. [1:01:18] A likewise, these students are going to be excellent candidates for going into your doctorial programs, of going into any of the doctorial programs. What this really does is it gives us a leg up in terms of these students being able to experience undergraduate research as well as being able to interact with faculty and see what graduate school is really all about. And so in that sense at least there is the potential that we will be able to attract some really outstanding students into our doctorial programs here that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to capture that would perhaps go somewhere else. [1:02] Your point is well taken, but I think that overall it’s going to have a very solid benefit on our doctorial programs.

Tony Moss: Thanks. Yeah we have about 36 faculty in our department better than half of our graduate population of more than 120 are PhD, that’s pretty good.

George Flowers: You all have done a tremendous job.

Dale Coleman, substitute senator for Animal Sciences: My question is really more mechanical, does that mean that these students would have two matriculation records open up at one time so if they were taking seventeen hours for their undergrad and they needed the 4 more hours of the piggy-back course those would be added to a shadow graduate level matriculation, or how mechanically do we add them to these classes to get everything on paper?

George Flowers: I’m not sure if I understand the question because right now undergraduates can take graduate courses. And what we’re really talking about is just simply allowing them to count them, at least 9–12 hours, count them for both degrees. In terms of when they apply our proposal was that they would have to apply to participate in this program by the time they had reached, I believe, 96 hours, so toward sometime in their junior year.

Dale Coleman: I misinterpreted one of the bullets up there, so if they are an undergraduate and they enroll in a 5000 level of a piggy-back course, then I thought the bullet said that also at the same time enrolled in the 6000 level section?

George Flowers: No, they would enroll in the 6000 level section, but they would get credit for both.

Dale Coleman: So how does that show up on the transcripts? 21 hours for what they are taking?
George Flowers: It would show up as credit for both courses. I guess you’re correct in that we would have to somehow enroll them in both or show credit for both, in some fashion.

Dale Coleman: If they are getting undergrad credit for the 5000 that should show up on their undergraduate transcript, and if they are getting 6000-credit level that should show up on the graduate transcript, I would think.

George Flowers: Yes, you’re correct.

Dale Coleman: Just curious about the mechanics of it thanks.

George Flowers: That’s a point I really hadn’t thought about. My vision was that since the 6000 level course encompassed all the material that was in the 5000 level course, the 6000 level would actually substitute for the 5000 level, but we can follow up on that.

Mike Stern, senator for Economics: Just one comment. I like the proposal generally but we have a master’s program undergraduate program. Most of the 7000 level graduate courses we offer aren’t similar to electives that our students take as undergraduates, they are very similar to the required courses that they take as undergraduates. In fact in the spring semester all of our graduate courses are not really substitutable for electives, they substitutable for the undergraduate versions of those, which are required for the undergraduate degree. So we could very much participate in this so long as the 7000 level graduate course would be counted as credit for a required course in their undergraduate degree rather than an elective. Because undergraduate electives are not similar to our graduate courses, but many of them are required undergraduate courses similar to our graduate courses, graduate courses are just taught at a higher level. So if this goes through are they only going to get elective for the 7000 or can we give them credit for a required course?

George Flowers: I think your point is well taken. The language there used for elective credit toward the undergraduate degree was based on my own experience not on this type of scenario that you are describing. I don’t see any problem with them being put toward required courses as well. George, Paul, do you want to comment on that?

Paul Harris: I would just say that when the department or program presents the accelerated program you would identify which courses would count toward the degree, so that would be your determination. [1:06:24]

Bob Locy, immediate past chair: I’d like some clarification on something you said just a minute ago, and then I have a comment to make after that. You said that undergraduates can take graduate level courses, to my knowledge that’s only by special permission of a dean or a department chair. If an undergraduate enrolls in a piggy-back course, they can’t enroll at the 6000 level without special permission to do that.

George Flowers: That’s absolutely true, but they can enroll with permission.

Bob Locy, immediate past chair: And so this would be a program that would dramatically, perhaps, expand the enrollment of undergraduates in graduate level courses. Although I can appreciate the fact that we want to encourage participation of students in our graduate programs, as you well know that’s one of the objectives of the graduate school to improve graduate enrollment, I’m just a little confused as to whether we really want to do that at the expense perhaps of the quality of our graduate programs if we now admit gross quantities of undergraduates to our graduate course work and what impact that’s going to have. Which brings me to my…please feel free to comment on that before I go to my second point but.

George Flowers: Let me ask for clarification, Paul we came up with numbers at one point, what sort of numbers are we looking at? [1:07:46]

Paul Harris, Honor’s College: [no mic] Drew Clark’s ? a number for us last, freshmen that completed one year at Auburn, 45 semester hours or above with a GPA 3.4 and above and we have ?for this program. Now again, not all departments are going to be able to accommodate that, some of these programs I’m sure of course Forestry, Agronomy & Soils won’t be able to do this because they’re not. My own department of Political Science…but let me get to the comment specifically, this is what began the discussion over a year ago between the Honor’s College and Graduate School. I wouldn’t envision a large rush of students coming in again but those students will eligible for this program,I’m only speaking of the students in the Honor’s college right now, these are the type of students you want in your graduate program. These are in any case [mic,provided] anyone can come over and read the honor’s theses. There is a great deal of rigor in all of those theses and so what we want to do is provide an opportunity for those students, our best students here at Auburn, many who come in with 20–30 AP credit hours at the end of their 3rd year, extensively they can graduate we want to keep them here for another year and then complete a graduate program. I wouldn’t envision a large crush of students coming into any graduate program. And of course as George has said it would be dependant upon the respective department whether or not they would want that in the first place.

George Flowers: So it’s the individual department’s call and if they are not in a position to take these extra students then they are not obligated to participate. The numbers we do not expect to be staggering.

Bob Locy, immediate past chair: Okay, then my next point that I’d like to make concerns the issue of, virtually all I’ve heard in my year as faculty Senate Chair hanging around Samford Hall is assessment, assessment, assessment getting ready for a SACS visit. And my question is, I’ve seen no plan for how we are going to assess whether this program has been successful/a failure and whether the quality of the students that we are putting out with Master’s degrees is in any way altered positively or negatively as a result of the program. So at lest if this passes I would like to have someone show us an assessment plan for what we are going to do to assess how this program works and whether is does what we set out to accomplish when we formulated the program, or not. [1:10:47]

George Flowers: That is absolutely correct. That of course will have to be done. There will have to be an assessment plan. My expectation is that this will have a very positive impact on the quality of our Master’s Program because we will be attracting some very good quality students. But you are absolutely right that will have to be done.

Yasser Gowayed, Polymer and Fiber Engineering, senator: I polled my faculty and asked them about the program and they had some responses I’d like to share with you. A few of these responses, students following this route may gain some time, but may otherwise be left out on many important aspects of a regular graduate program. This will not only impact the student, but may also cause a problem for the industry when student graduating with a regular MS to those with the combined BS/MS. Another comment said, this program will add many 5000/6000 level courses to the teaching load of the department. A third comment said, students graduating with a bachelor’s degree in engineering after 128 credit hours have a limited chance to take basic engineering in departmental classes, they need more of these basic classes before they take advanced classes. The last comment discussed the issue of if we alter our undergraduate curriculum how will this impact our accrediting agency, which is ABET. And we want to [1:12:22] make sure that that actually that very fragile set up under the 128 hours remain stable in order for us to continue being approved by ABET.

George Flowers: Okay, several points. [1:12:34] One as far as individual departments, individual programs, said this before, if your department and I’ve heard from Gisela as well on this if your department does not feel it to be appropriate then participation isn’t required. With regard to it adding additional students to the 5000/6000 level courses, if the student was going to take the 5000 already as an undergraduate then they are simply taking the 6000 version, so it is not really adding to that.

Yasser Gowayed: I think the comment was 5000/6000 level classes not students.

George Flowers: Okay I didn’t hear it that way, but as far as increase the number of courses I really don’t see any reason to increase the number. Why would there be an increase in 5000/6000 level courses? You offer what is appropriate to your curriculum. If you already have them in place, fine, if you feel that it’s appropriate to add a new course then that would be fine, but you certainly wouldn’t add new courses simply to take advantage of this. There is no reason to do that. As far as the, offering the students an appropriate experience both at graduate and undergraduate students, there are certainly some students for which this would not be appropriate. There are also some students who relish more challenge who would be in a position to really take advantage of this and it would serve to stretch them it would serve to really involve them in activities that they wouldn’t otherwise be involved with. I mentioned the undergraduate research. A relatively small number of our students now are involved in undergraduate research. This is a golden opportunity to provide an incentive, to provide a vehicle that will encourage involvement in undergraduate research. And I think that’s an outstanding plus for this, it’s not taking away from the experience for students for which this is an appropriate program, it’s substantially adding to it.

Chris Correia, senator from Psychology: Just a couple of concerns, in some cases piggy-backing on some of these comments that were made. We have 3 doctorial programs and we also have a Master’s program. So we have some experience in administering both of these, and we already have a sense in our programs that there is kind of implicit competition in a sense for resources. I could see where this could create incentives to add additional if not seats then entire courses at the 5000 level just having to do with my very basic understanding of the reimbursement rate for different courses. We’ve already had discussion in Psychology, kind of tongue and cheek, what we really need to do is create some high volume Master’s programs where you can pack in a lot of people and charge higher reimbursement rates than undergraduate programs, because it takes an awful lot of work to administer doctorial programs. And of course we don’t want to do that, but it does create that kind of dilemma where if departments are given opportunities to create these programs and there’s kind of an entrepreneurial spirit, at the same time we’re trying to administer high quality, but high demand doctorial programs; I could see where departments would be in a difficult position especially with the current trends in the university it’s getting harder and harder for us to fund graduate studies, and to rely on university support for TA lines and things like that. So even though this isn’t pitched as competition, I can see where within a program even though we have choice there’s still going to be those difficult decisions of what can we afford to do and I do fear at some level that it’s going to be the doctorial programs that are going to have fewer resources, because of this kind of… these opportunities perhaps for department to follow up on some of these Master’s training opportunities.

Another comment that I just heard from people in my department and this gets more at the doctorial level than the Master’s level so I’m not sure how this would apply in other programs, but when it comes time to recruiting high quality doctorial students we often very explicitly look at other campuses. I mean the idea is you’re an exceptional student here at Auburn, now go be exceptional somewhere else. And allow us to recruit exceptional students form other campuses and I’ve had very direct conversations with really good undergraduates who are getting near graduation and I’ve said to them, yeah, you could probably be competitive in one of our doctorial programs, but here is an opportunity to go off and learn from a whole other environment, and that’s part of what graduate training is meant to foster. And so I do wonder somewhat about trying to kind of keep students here, although the intentions sound really great, are we somehow limiting them by giving them these opportunities to stay here and finish when maybe they could learn a lot more? And we could learn a lot more by bringing in students so just a comment to throw out there.

George Flowers: Yeah, that’s very well taken. Probably the vast majority of the faculty here have gone to a variety of institutions to do their university level work. Certainly going to different institutions broadens many people, it’s appropriate for certain fields. In other fields it’s really six of one, half-dozen of the other. Perhaps the benefits really depend upon the field. In terms of competition for resources, your point is well taken. I’ll also say that, there’s a converse argument to the departments having the incentive to add, as was mentioned earlier, additional 5000/6000 level courses. The converse argument is that well if you’re growing that segment then you are bringing in more resources into your department which means that you are teaching these courses you are going to need teaching assistantship lines, or going to need to fund teaching assistantship lines to cover this expansion of the undergraduate and lower level graduate program. so if you are brining in more resources then in a sense it could in the right circumstances, complement your doctorial program. so it really depends upon the situation and as we tried to emphasize it’s a program by program decision as to whether this is appropriate to your given area. And Yasser had mentioned for example that in his department it was not perceived as being something they wanted to go forward with. There is at least one maybe two other of the engineering departments who’ve mentioned specifically they were very enthusiastic about this. So it very much depends upon your field and the area of study and it’s requirements. We think overall this is a good program for the university, this is a step forward, both in terms of our undergraduate offerings, our Honor’s College, as well as what we can do in certain circumstances with our graduate program. so I urge you to consider voting positively.

Connor Bailey, substitute Ag Econ/Rural Soc: When this idea was originally noted I believe it was limited to the Honor’s College and now I see that it’s expanded to include others. I read in the documentation that it was associated with the agenda that there Grad point average, but can you tell us why you expanded it past the Honor’s? If we are trying to do something to bolster the Honor’s College why don’t these other students in order to participate, get into the Honor’s College? Why are we opening it up more broadly beyond the Honor’s College?

George Flowers: That’s a very good point. The original vision was that this would serve as an incentive for honor’s students and I think it still does, very much so. There’s really no incentive for students who did not come into the Honor’ College as freshmen, but who can transfer in, and there’s really no incentive for them not to, so from that perspective if it will serve to bolster the Honor’s College to provide an incentive to students who might not otherwise transfer in. It was expanded to include non-honor’s students because there were a number of people who were involved in the curriculum process who were very concerned about this being an exclusive offering. Some of your colleagues in Agriculture for example commented that they were concerned that this would not affect outstanding students that were in their given programs who did not tend at the outset to be involved in the Honor’s College. From that perspective, and there were others not just the College of Agriculture, that’s the one that jumps to mind but there were others as well. This was expanded to try to be as inclusive as possible and just because a student for what ever reason doesn’t want to be in the Honor’s Program we still wanted it to be available for them. Any other Questions? Thank you very much for your time and have a good day.

Kathryn Flynn, chair: This Resolution program (proposal) was approved by the Graduate Council and the Curriculum Committee, I am going to assume that the resolution came from those committees, it does not require a second. And so at this time I’d like everyone in favor of the Resolution to say aye.

Group: Aye,

Kathryn Flynn, chair: All those opposed, nay. One nay. The Resolution passes. Thank you.
The hour’s getting late and Dr. Wohl has very graciously agreed to let us push his presentation on the Ombuds Report to our next meeting. And so what I’d like to do at this time is let you know the votes were counted. There were 43 people in favor of the calendar change, 15 opposed, and one abstention.

At this time I’d like to ask if anybody has any unfinished business for the senate? Any new business? If not the meeting is adjourned. Thank you very much.[1:23:37]