Transcript Senate Meeting
April 5, 2011
Claire Crutchley, chair: I call this meeting to order.
I call this meeting to order.
Good afternoon. I am Claire Crutchley, Chair of the University Senate. I welcome you to the April Senate meeting. Senate membership is 86 Senators. If you could grab a clicker at the back and click in if you are a senator or a substitute senator. A quorum requires 44 senators. A quorum has been established.
A short review of the rules of the Senate. Senators and substitutes for Senators, please sign in the back and get a clicker so you can vote. If you would like to speak about an issue, go to the microphone; state your name, whether you are a Senator and the unit you represent. The rules of the Senate require that Senators be allowed to speak first; after all comments by Senators on an issue, guests are welcome to speak.
The first item on the agenda is approval of the minutes from the March meeting. Russ Muntifering posted the minutes and sent a link to all Senators. Are there any additions, changes, or deletions to these minutes? …. Hearing none, the minutes will stand as approved as written.
I now invite Dr. Gogue to come forward to present the President’s remarks. [3:02]
Dr. Gogue, president: Delighted to be with you today, thank you for being here. I just have a couple of items.
Number one, we had a student win a Goldwater in the last couple of weeks. She is a student in Animal Science, Emily Brennan.
Number two, I wanted to share with you, that you may have seen in the newspaper over the weekend, the announcement that the governor has made the call to request nominations for the Board of Trustees. There are nine seats that are in question. I think 6 of those individuals could be reappointed, should that be the desire. The article in the OA News did a nice job of talking about it but forgot to tell you that the deadline is this Friday. I know the alumni association and every group we’ve contacted advisory board members and a whole host of people to be sure to encourage applications, but that process is underway. I’m told that the reason for the shortness of the timeframe is that the legislature that normally in this session would not get finished until late June, they anticipate they will be through in early May. So if the trustees were going to be addressed during this they would do it in a rather quick fashion.
The third thing is the Provost. Most of you know that Mary Ellen is going to be the president at Bowling Green. We are awfully proud of her. It does leave us with some changes that we have to make. We are going to do two things. We are going to form a small committee of about 6 people and we will advertise on campus and announce an internal search. We will ask for people that have interest to please submit a résumé, I’ve talked with the leadership of the Senate and there are two members of the executive committee, Ann Beth Presley and Larry Crowley will be on that small group to look at applications and make recommendations for the interim provost. We will start concurrently the real search open nationally in which there will be a larger committee of 9–12 people. The Senate’s representative on that committee will be Claire Crutchley. We are going to try to get both of those out this week. The goal would be to try to get the true search and screen committee together, get an advertisement out and work during the summer and hopefully bring candidates to campus in the fall (September).The goal if we’re successful would be that we might be able to get a new provost by January 1. If we don’t meet that window we are looking at next summer. We are making some progress on that.
The forth thing I wanted to mention is that the legislature is bringing back up the PACt issue that we discussed last year that we thought would probably be rectified, I think they put 4 or 5 hundred million dollars out of bond money into that program, it’s still not sufficient. I have a meeting tomorrow with the state treasurer and a group of people on which they are going again to talk about the PACT Program. So we will keep you posted on that.
State budget, some discussions about October 1 of this year for the new budget, Don large is still concerned, we haven’t gotten our money for January, February, or March from the state so still no additional proration being discussed for the educational trust fund to my knowledge. I’m happy to respond to questions that you may have. [7:29]
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you Dr. Gogue.
We have a full agenda again today. A few announcements.
All faculty should have received an e-mail encouraging you to fill out the Administrator Evaluation survey. This survey is based on administrators in your college and department and is overseen by the Senate Administrator Evaluation committee, it’s a lot of work for this committee and I really appreciate their efforts. You will receive another reminder to fill out the survey.
You also have probably received the announcement from the governor about nominations for the Auburn Board of Trustees. Nominations are due this Friday, April 8. Please nominate or encourage qualified people for the empty board seats. Be proactive.
You should have all received an e-mail from IMG that the current course management system, Blackboard, will be discontinued. An ad hoc committee has been reviewing replacements and has recommended two systems. I encourage you to remind faculty in your department to give input on these systems. You can either attend on campus presentations or watch the recorded presentations. Instructure Canvas is Apr 11 & 12 and Desire 2 Learn is April 19 & 20. Please give feedback to the committee. If you have questions you can ask Bliss Bailey.
As you know, Senate committees are bringing a lot of information to the Senate for votes. While we do not usually like to bring important items in the summer meetings, there will be important votes in the May meeting (during exam week), and there may be issues during the June meeting. Two of the information items in today’s agenda will come forward as well as a proposal on Student Evaluations from the Teaching Effectiveness committee. Please arrange for substitutes if you cannot attend the meetings. (There will not be a July meeting and the August meeting will be after classes start.)
Again, a few reminders about the Senate: All Senators, whether ex-officio or not, have a vote and should attend every Senate meeting. If you cannot attend, please send a substitute (who is not a sitting Senator); the substitute has full voting rights. Each Senator or substitute Senator should have already signed in and picked up a clicker to vote.
Are there any questions or comments for the chair?
David Reese, school of pharmacy: Where’s the sign up sheet?
Claire Crutchley, chair: It’s in the back where the clickers are.
The first action item is a resolution on Administrator Reviews. This is coming from the Steering Committee and will be presented by Kathryn Flynn, member of the Steering committee and Immediate Past Chair. [11:33]
Kathryn Flynn, member of the Steering committee and IPC: as Claire mentioned this is looking at a resolution related to review of administrators. This was brought to the Senate as an information item last month. After the meeting and discussion and input from people we have 3 things that I want to mention to you. First, the resolution at the last paragraph emphasizes that this administrative review is in addition to the normal annual review, this would be like a global review done every 3–5 years. We also added a statement in here that would institutionalize the current practice that Dr. Mazey began for review of all deans every 3–5 years. That is a practice that she brought to us but was not anywhere in the Handbook, so we felt like this would be a good time to include that in this resolution. We also enlarged the language to include departmental administrators beyond heads and chairs, there are some departments that have program directors, for example and so people who have significant input into performance or raises or that type of thing would be expected to be put through this type of periodic review. With that if you have any questions or comments. [13:25]
The parliamentarian is pointing out to me that I need to make a motion to adopt this. This is coming from the steering committee so it does not require a second.
Claire Crutchley, chair: At this time I open the floor for comments.
David King, senator from geology and geography: I’m not sure what is meant there by annual review, that’s not registering with me. The point I brought up last time was if these go on a 3–5 year cycle then if a chair’s term is 3 years this would basically be one review maybe in a chair’s term so I feel like it should be more frequent than that. Faculty are reviewed every semester and every course and that’s not too difficult to do, and we’re reviewed every year for good reason we don’t want faculty to step out of line. The comment was made last time that it is too difficult to do it more frequently or something to that effect and if all these other evaluations can be done every year why can’t we have a chair/head program assistant chair evaluation every 2 or 3 years? I don’t know if there is a way to offer a friendly amendment at this point?
Claire Crutchley, chair: That was included. Heads and chairs are evaluated every year just like every faculty member is evaluated. This is a comprehensive review that gets a lot of information.
David King, senator from geology and geography: But not by the people that they work with. And I would argue that the chair is the key administrative person that most faculty deal with on a regular basis, so it would seem to me that that kind of input is important.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you.
David King, senator from geology and geography: I don’t know that this is a point to bring up, but I would like to change it to 2–3 years from 3–5 years. It at least falls within one cycle of a chair’s term.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Are you making a motion to change the language?
David King, senator from geology and geography: Yes, I’d like it to be 2–3 years.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Is there a second? Yes, we have a second. So now we will discuss if there are any comments on the amendment. (no comments)
Okay, so we are going to vote on the amendment, we are not yet voting on the proposal, we are voting on changing the language from every 3–5 years to 2–3 years. Pick up you clicker and make sure it’s on. Vote A for yes on the amendment and B for no for the amendment. [18:20] A=37, B=31 the motion passes with 54%. The resolution has been changed to every 2–3 years.
Now are there comments on the resolution?
Mike Stern, senator from economics: I have a few questions and comments. One first is logic. The provost is reviewing the deans, the deans reviewing the chairs, if there are sub administrators in the department that report to the chair why isn’t it the chair that is undertaking the review of them rather than the dean? So if we have system chairs and program directors that report to the chair wouldn’t it be the chair that oversee the evaluation rather than dean? The provost reviews the dean the provost isn’t doing the chairs, the dean is doing the chairs if there are lower level administrators than that why isn’t the chair charged. I’m just worried about this because in a large college like Liberal Arts lots of departments have lots of program directors. How many people are you going to mandate that the dean oversee the evaluation of, rather than having the, if they have to do the chairs in a large college that’s a significant number. You’d have to do several every year and then leave it to the departments then to do the sub departmental administrators, just for consistency. I don’t know how familiar the deans are with every single sub-administrator and departmental leader inside a unit. Because they interact with the chairs typically, the deans don’t interact necessarily with program directors or any of the sub departmental leadership.
Second, there is if I remember a little change in this from the information item. This refers to the review including feedback from all constituents. I’m not sure what is meant by all constituents with regard to public universities. This is including faculty but now extends to students, staff, and other administrators. What are the other administrators and students that this is referring to? How are they to be surveyed?
Claire Crutchley, chair: I believe we based it on what the dean review had been, so it would be other administrators in the college and students that are affected by the administrator.
Mike Stern, senator from economics: We had like 5,000 students take our classes last semester. We’re going to survey 5,000 students? This seems very unclear about who would, can be or should be surveyed. The current administrative survey, the one that just came out, I don’t know what part of this that is but we all just got it, you mentioned it earlier. The ones that were surveyed about the chair where the faculty of the unit and that was it, or what it appears to be. I don’t know if it did the staff as well. I don’t believe it did any side administrators somewhere else or students or anything like that. So I’m familiar with surveying the faculty unit with regards to the chair but I don’t know about any past procedure of doing outside side administrators to the department or students and what not.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Yes this is definitely new, thank you for your comments.
Mike Stern, senator from economics: I don’t know what that means. I would prefer this to review the chair based on the fact, normally speaking shared governance the faculty should be determining the departmental leadership. We don’t usually collect an advisory vote from students, staff or side administrators.
Claire Crutchley, chair: That’s correct, thank you.
Mike Stern, senator from economics: Other than that that’s all I had.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you. [22:56]
Bruce Smith, chair of the Faculty Reserch Committee, not a senator: To answer some of Mike’s questions from my perspective, having just done this at the Vet School, first of all the Provost doesn’t sit on the committee that actually evaluated our dean. The Provost directs that evaluation by appointing a committee that does this. So this is not a tremendous amount of work for the administrator involved that one would expect at a departmental level. Perhaps the department chair would appoint a committee of people in the department to oversee this review. The department chair has responsibility, the dean has responsibility, the provost has responsibility at each level for conducting these. Secondly with respect to the constituencies involved, at least at the College of Veterinary Medicine in the review of our dean that not only included student representation (we don’t have 5,00 students in a course but we do have 400 students present at any given time and plenty of graduates) it included alumni, it included practicing veterinarians who refer cases to our hospital, it included the alumni advisory committee, and it included peers of the dean on national governing boards in addition to the faculty, staff, and A&P people within the college. So it is a relatively comprehensive endeavor, and our vote to change it to every 2–3 years makes that quite a bit of work to actually do this comprehensive in depth review, but that’s been changed. The point is that this is not the yearly administrative review that asks “how am I doing?” this is asking how am I doing in a much more global sense.
Clair Crutchley, chair: Thank you.
Guy Rohrbaugh, senator from philosophy: I want to record my impression that this is obviously imposing a lot of overhead across the university. I’m not sure I’ve seen anything much about what’s wrong with our current procedures. From where I sit it seems like we do a fair amount of evaluating of one another, obviously we could do more. For the amount of work involved I guess it wasn’t crystal clear to me that the results were going to be worth the effort, they might well, but obviously more assessment is not always better. I’m not sure about the trade off, I’m not sure I’m going to vote for it.
James Goldstein, senator for English: I’m sympathetic to the last concern and I think what may be a problem here is that the dean reviews have been the model for these other categories of administrator. And I think the further down you go on the food chain the less of a cost benefit there would be to have such a wide dragnet. It is totally appropriate for a dean to get to external stakeholders and alumni and so on, but I’m not sure that an assistant department chair of program coordinator needs to have that level of comprehensive review if it’s going to be modeled on the dean, the devil is in the details so that if who’s ever in charge of setting up the “comprehensive review” make sure that it’s only as comprehensive as it needs to be for that level of administrator. Then that might be something that I can support, but the model that was just described for the veterinary dean, I think that would be overkill for some of the lower people on the food chain.
Claire Cruthchley, chair: The Senate Administrator Evaluation Committee will develop the tool and they will assess it. That is in the resolution. We are not saying that there is an assessment, thank you.
Let’s call for a vote on the amended resolution, it’s now every 2–3 years. If you agree with the proposal press A, if you are against press B. A=35, B=32 The proposal passes with 52%.
The second action item is revision to the Promotion and Tenure Process. This is coming from the Ad Hoc Promotion and Tenure Committee and will be presented by Ann Beth Presley, Chair Elect and member of the committee. [28:20]
Ann Beth Presley, Chair Elect and member of the Ad Hoc Promotion and Tenure Committee: This was presented as an information item at the last Senate meeting and it is now presented as an action item at this meeting. We made some changes in this item to better suit the feedback we got from the Senate. We still felt it was a good idea for the letters from the department to be open if the candidate wanted to see them. It is not a requirement for the candidate to look at the letters, they are there if the candidate wants to look at them. The outside letters will still be closed letters.
The dean and the department head cannot vote at the departmental level. And then if the departmental person is on the P&T Committee then they have to make a choice if they want to vote at the department level or vote at the university P&T level.
There is an appeals committee where there will be a non-voting member from the current P&T Committee (selected by the P&T Committee) and then the other members will be outside members selected by the Rules Committee, which are former members of the P&T Committee who will then look at the appeals process.
This is the proposal and I move to adopt it. [30:26].
Claire Cruthchley, chair: The resolution has been proposed, it does not require a second. At this time do we have any discussion or comments?
Sue Barry, curriculum and teaching, substituting for Charles Eick: We’d like to commend the committee for the clarifications and the changes that you’ve made we think that it’s improved the proposal, however our department continues to have concerns regarding a candidate’s access to the individual faculty letters. We feel that making faculty letters open to candidates for tenure and promotion violates the spirit of anonymity in the departmental voting process, therefore we have decided to present this proposal or to make a motion for this proposal to the amendment. I’m not going to read it all but you can see what we’ve changed. Instead of just excluding outside letters in number 6 we’re adding individual faculty letters as well. And then in part a. where it says can review inside letters, we have stuck that and added departmental summary letter and departmental head and chair letter, instead of that leaving the individual faculty members letters out.
I make a motion that we amend this change to the proposal.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Do we have a second?, …yes. Are there any questions or comment specifically on this amendment to the proposal? [32:36]
Mike Stern, economics, senator: I’d like to comment on the amendment. Writings of professors of this university in pursuant to their duties are public writings of this state and therefore they are open to review by basically anybody in the state. I don’t like having things in our Faculty Handbook that don’t obey state law. That’s just my comment.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you. Any other comments or questions on the amendment?
James Goldstein, senator from English: I didn’t get a lot of responses when I polled my department somewhat at the last minute about this. One senior colleague agreed that it was troubling to have the internal letters reviewable. One pre-tenure colleague thought that the proposal as it originally was was good. I myself have been leaning toward not opening up the internal letters. I commented during the open forum that if it passed in the un-amended form leaving the internal letters reviewable that I would never again write an internal letter, and I’ve written one for every case since I got tenure in 1995 and I would be done with that if that were to occur. So I do support the amendment.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you. Any other comments on the amendment?
Larry Teeter, senator, Forestry and Wildlife Science and member of the ad hoc committee: Also a member of previous P&T committees and P&T Appeals committees and I think by deleting the review of the inside letters we pretty much do away with the majority of the purpose of this proposal that we want to make the process more transparent for everyone involved. I think that in the review of letters where there were individual letters that were pointedly out of line with the majority opinion, if you will, of the department, they received very little credit in the discussion and really diverted attention for the P&T Committee as a whole from the issue of trying to decide what the department wants. You can take these comments if they are individual or personal feelings about a particular candidate and write them in a way so that your personality or your person is not identified in the departmental summary letter, or write a minority position from the department, but the individual inside letters I personally think are a little ridiculous, they are counter productive and I think we can do a lot better process wise by making everything transparent.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you. Other comments on the amendment?
Bruce Smith, chair of the Faculty Research Committee, Vet School, not a senator: I think this amendment goes exactly the wrong way. As I mentioned when we had this as an information item, legal opinion in the United States is that you have a right to see all elements of your dossier, and that includes all of the letters therein. So I agree with Mike if we’re busy writing things into our Handbook we should probably make them agree with United States legal opinion and Alabama legal opinion. And as a consequence I think that you should vote no for this amendment. Auburn needs to recognize that aspects of your dossier all of your aspects of your dossier are legally available to you, and we should not force faculty to have to sue the university to seek due process in the promotion and tenure process. And that would be to see any letters that were written about them, because they need to be able to see those letters in the due process part.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you. Other comments on the amendment? [36:43]
Mark Fischman, kinesiology not a senator: There might be a very simple way to get around the legal issues that have been brought up and that is give the individual candidate the option to state in writing on the first page of the dossier, “I waive my right to view internal letters.” Let the candidate decide.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you.
Steve Brown, political science, senator: I was going to make a comment on this initially, but I’m still not sure why the individual letters cannot be anonymous. I think the transparency that we are trying to get to speaks to why they said these things about me, but when the identity is there then we start getting into the who. I think it’s important that they know why they were denied tenure or why someone voted for them, to have the positive or the negative they ought to have access to those but why can we not simply say individual letters would be anonymous? And have them have access to the department summary letter, the department head/chair letter, and the individual letters but have that anonymity be protected. We do not make all of our dossiers public and it’s not public knowledge external letters as we mentioned before and there are several other aspects that we will see relative to searches for deans and provosts, whatever else, those are not always made completely public. So I can understand external letters not being made available to that candidate, but the internal ones why not just grant those anonymity?
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you. Any other comments on the amendment?
We will now call for a vote. This vote will be on whether you want to amend the proposal as stated by Dr Barry. A is for yes for the amendment and B is for no you are against the amendment. A=18, B=45. The amendment fails (70%).
Now we will return to discussion of the original proposal.
Steve Brown, political science, senator: We had some pretty strong feelings about this particular aspect, other parts were not all that controversial in my department, but again want to reiteriate that we want to commend the committee for what it said relative to transparency and we do think it is very important that candidates who are going up for tenure be able to find out what exactly it is. Why they may have failed and I guess the thing they were concerned about is if I’m going up for tenure and I have a letter that’s written about me, at some point I hope it will be helpful. It may help me at that time to realize what it is that I could have done more when I go to another institution and I go ahead and go up for tenure then, but it needs to be helpful. [40:27] But the minute the name of that letter writer is known, the what of that letter shifts to who, and I think it’s important for us, my set of colleagues, to think about the worst case scenario. Worst case scenarios would include somebody who sees this person who maybe they didn’t get along with and sees that negative comment and then, whether true or not, might remember an instance where they mentioned their race or mentioned their religion or mentioned their gender and all of the sudden the whole shift of that letter from what it said is who that person was what he did and why this is so unfair. Again allegations of some kind of discrimination, some kind of harassment worst case scenario is going to involve that faculty member, whether those things are true or not. It will involve the department chair, it will involve the dean, it will involve the university and I think we need to be very careful about what are we trying to do here. It is the transparency of the content of the letter but if identity is made known we should go ahead and divert that. I encourage my colleagues to vote this down and have the committee do this again and bring it back before us so we can protect the transparency aspect and not have these other parts be part of it.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you. Other comments on the resolution?
Mike Stern, economics, senator: I’m kind of in a quandary about whether to try to amend this or try to vote it down and then rehash it, but let me just summarize the problems that have not been fixed in this. One is of course item 3. Attempting to bring collegiality into all areas of assessment, when it should be eliminated in its entirety. I don’t know if this is the place to address the de facto tenure in item 5., I’m not sure what AAUP position is on that. I thought we solved that with the lectureship, but apparently not. Also departmental members choosing at what level that they vote in item 8. People should participate at the lowest level because I thought this was to push most of it down to the departmental level, which departmental guidelines and anything else. I thought it was to evolve at that level in which case you’d want to push people down to that local level in terms of where they are voting. And I just view 9. in its entirety as a disaster. Another committee, I don’t know what type of jurisprudence this is built off of but having some prior judge present for the discussions does not normally occur during appellate proceedings, at least in the United States, having them selected by someone who actually chairs and votes on the regular P&T committee is not sort of appropriate. If you really want an appellate committee it should just be some standing committee that’s chosen ex-anti before the fact the just sits there for the whole year. This sounds like it is done after the fact because you are choosing members to represent colleges based on the appealing candidates, that means it’s chosen after decisions are rendered by an individual who was overseeing the original process. That’s not how normally judges are independently chosen in the United States in appellate proceedings. I also don’t see the university committee when it makes a positive recommendation, writing a letter, only if there is a negative one, and since there is an appeal I thought we were going to have all committees writing letters to justify the recommendations whether they be positive or negative. If the university committee doesn’t want to do the work of writing a letter in the case of positive recommendations, but the issue of denial isn’t the only issue, it’s also the issue of the receipt as well. Just have a record of why some people receive and why others aren’t, so if other people have to submit letters I’d like to see in all cases both directions. I’d like to see the university committee do it as well if we need a university committee. I don’t think we do but, that is what I see in this and I don’t know whether it’s purposeful to try to amend it or redo it. I’m willing to provide amendments…
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you.
Sanjeev Baskiyar, computer sciences software engineering, senator: I just want to know what is the intent of item number 3 in this proposal?
Claire Crutchley, chair: 3 is based on a recommendation from the AAUP that collegiality be taken out as a separate category and instead included. Does an AAUP member want to comment on that?
Sanjeev Baskiyar, computer sciences software engineering, senator: What is going to be the impact in clear aspects of having the impact of collegiality become a more increased or a lesser impact as a result of removing it and then putting it in separate categories?
Bill Trimble, history, not a senator: I sat on the ad hoc committee providing some AAUP input. AAUP is very much concerned that a separate measureable category of collegiality not be included in tenure and promotion. Primarily collegiality applies to tenure more than promotion, but they are very sensitive about that and this reflects that. The idea is that throughout this process we have to consider collegiality at all levels and integrated with it, but you cannot measure it separately. So that was the idea in terms of this wording.
I might also say something about the de facto tenure provisions. AAUP is not happy with excluding lectureships, senior lectureship positions from de facto tenure provisions. As far as AAUP is concerned, anybody that is employed full time as a faculty member regardless of what that job description is, after 7 years would be eligible for de facto tenure. But the committee decided in this case to exclude those and to include only those people who are on tenure track. I hope that answers that.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you.
I’d like to call for a vote.
Mike Stern, economics, senator: Claire, I’d like to make some motions if we are going to vote. May I make some motions?
Claire Crutchley, chair: Yes, go ahead.
Mike Stern, economics, senator: Thank you. I’d like to enter a motion on item number 3, I want the first word to say eliminate and then a period after tenure, and eliminate the rest of it. So it will say: “eliminate collegiality form a separate area of consideration for tenure.” Nothing else than that.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Is that a motion?
Mike Stern, economics, senator: Yes
Claire Crutchley, chair: Let’s take a vote on this motion, we will make a change to eliminate collegiality. A would be yes for this amendment and B would be no for the amendment. A=26, B=38. The motion fails (59%).
Now let’s call for a vote on the non-amended proposal. There have not been any amendments that have passed on this proposal. Press A to vote yes and B to vote no on this proposal as it stands. A=37, B=24. The motion carries with 58%.
The next two items are being presented as information items prior to being brought for a vote we assume at the May meeting.
First is a proposal to change the promotion procedures of Clinical and Research faculty. This is being presented by Bob Smith, chair of the Non-tenure track committee. [50:00]
Bob Smith, chair of the Non-tenure track committee: Our committee was charged with the task of taking a look at the fact that individuals are specifically in an assistant clinical professor in the clinical track series shall be appointed with a year contract that may be renewed annually but not to exceed 6 years, or for a lesser period of time the period of funding from the anticipated income. This is one year shorter than the amount of time for individuals on a tenure track.
We discussed this and in our research we discovered that at least several other colleges of pharmacy that there was no fixed time requirement for promotion to associate clinical professor. Since these individuals are never eligible for tenure in their type of appointments it seems that at a time requirement for promotion is not necessary. Their appointments are only for one year at a time and these faculty members are reviewed annually by their departments. [51:14]
At least in the health sciences and in audiology and in social work and clinical psychology and veterinary medicine and other practice related professions, these professions all have clinical or experiential teaching faculty that are hired primarily to do that. In our department and in pharmacy practice these individuals spend 70–80% of their time in clinical practice and in experiential education. They come to us directly out of residencies where they are trained primarily in taking care of patients and providing experiential education. They also work in these responsibilities for 12 months and the demand of that 12 months expectation makes it very difficult often for these people to have active scholarship programs. Therefore it is our committee’s recommendation that the length of time allowed for promotion to associate clinical or research professor be extended from 6 years to an indefinite period. This policy will be similar to the policy for individuals hired into the lecturer/senior lecturer series.
Number 2, promotion to associate clinical or research professor or to clinical or research professor will be specific for each department and criteria must be approved by the Provost’s Office. Promotion decisions will be determined by the specific department, department head and the dean of the respective college or school. All other criteria for clinician and research series faculty will remain as defined in the Auburn University Guidelines for Establishing and Filling Position in the Research and Clinician Title Series.
So our committee is recommending that this be considered for a month and presented at the May Faculty Senate meeting.
Claire Crutchley, chair: At this time I open the floor for comments. Then this will come back as is for the May meeting. Thank you.
The next item is also for information. It is a proposal on changes in the Faculty Handbook. It will be presented by Bill Sauser, chair of the Faculty Handbook revision committee. [53:45]
Bill Sauser, chair of the Faculty Handbook Review committee: I’m Bill Sauser, I’m a senator from the management department and chair of the Faculty Handbook Review committee and we are bringing this report to you as an informational report.
Here is the committee charge which you can read for yourself and I do want to comment that this year there have been numerous suggestions solicited, received, and reviewed, so we’ve been a very active committee this year and over the past several years because this is definitely a multi-year effort. We also have listed the committee membership, Sue Barry, and I think Sue was here today, Charles Eick, Robin Jaffe, Robin is here, Bill Kelly, myself, Emmett Winn, Emmett is here, Rusty Wright, don’t see him today, but this has been a very active group of people. We’ve met numerous times and we’ve had a lot of individual work to do. We’ve talked to a lot of people, a lot of administrators as well as faculty members, so it’s been a very busy committee on your behalf and I want to thank each of them for their hard work.
There have been several reviews of the Handbook done over the past couple of years and I want to point out that Dr. Gogue called for a general review of policies throughout the university as part of his strategic plan. Lee Armstrong led a very fine effort to find them all, figure out what they are, what needs to be updated, who enforces them. Faculty leadership has taken very seriously the charge to take a look at the Handbook, Dr. Mazey has been very supportive and helped us along the way. She allowed us for example to bring Dr. Bill Rickert to campus and many of us in this room met with Dr. Rickert while he was here. His recent review of the Handbook, he was here on campus for several days and spent a long time reading it and taking recommendations from the committee and other persons. His recent review found a lot of problems with the current version. That did not surprise any of us who are on the Handbook Review committee because we also had seen a number of problems. [56:55]
In fact we conducted an independent review of Dr. Rickert’s and we found the same problems that he did. We didn’t agree on every point and of course what we are bringing to you is our recommendation not necessarily his, but we found that probably in 99% of times we were in agreement as to what needed to be done. So we are bringing forward some recommendations. Also we found a lot of support from faculty and administrative leaders providing support for the idea of revising the Faculty Handbook.
Why does it need to be revised? First, if you read through it, how many of you have sat down and read through the entire Faculty Handbook like I have and the other members of the committee, several of us have, you will find it’s a very confusing mish-mash. What we have in the current Faculty Handbook; there is policy in there and that’s very important that it be there, there is also a lot of general information. Much of that general information is well out of date since it was placed in the Handbook many years ago. Also there are policies that refer to all categories of employment at Auburn University not necessarily only faculty. Those policies are very important we need to follow them but many of us question whether they need to be in the Faculty Handbook, they are certainly policies of the university. So it is very confusing to read through.
Much of the general information certainly is better found on various Web sites of the university where the information is kept up to date. Also one of the reasons that it is all in there is because Faculty Handbook committees in the past have found it very discouraging to try to bring every policy change or new office or new program to the faculty senate for a vote when that would probably be counter productive. Another problem is that we have some policies that affect faculty, that aren’t in the Handbook and they need to be there. These are policies that are in effect that affect faculty members but we don’t find them in the Handbook. So our goal, the goal of our committee, is to transform this Faculty Handbook into a clearly written, organized, accurate, comprehensive, and easily accessible booklet that contains academic policies and procedures. A manual that is useful for both faculty and administrators. That’s the goal. It’s a multi-year effort because that’s a very difficult task.
To bring all of this forward for one set of action by the Senate, we would probably be meeting for 4 or 5 days in a convention and I don’t think any of us plan to do that. So what we are doing, we are bringing to you a 3 phased approach. This is what the committee has chosen to do, tackle the entire mission but do so in 3 phases. The first phase, which is what we are bringing to you today the results of our first phase, the first phase is to remove from the existing Faculty Handbook all the general information, much of which is as I said is out of date and leaving in it only policies. Policies that relate uniquely to the faculty.
In phase 2 which we will begin as soon as phase 1 is accomplished. In phase 2 there are a lot of missing policies and our plan is to bring those into the Faculty Handbook. Right now for example, post-tenure review is not in the Handbook, the clinical and research series are not in the Handbook, Lecturer/Senior Lecturer, these are all important policies that need to be in the Handbook. So phase 2 is to add the missing policies.
Then phase 3, which we would of course tackle immediately following phase 2, is to focus on the clarity of the language, the consistency, and the content of the policies themselves. For example the material that was just acted upon by the Senate with respect to tenure and promotion. We did not touch the tenure and promotion in phase 1, but in phase 3 that certainly would be a major part of the work and it will begin very soon. So 3 phases.
Our ambitious timetable appears next. We are trying to complete phase 1 by the end of spring semester, that’s why we are bringing this information to you now. Phase 2 we hope to complete by the end of fall semester, actually we hope to have it done sooner than that, but we are not going to bring it forward for action during the summer, because we want to be certain that all of our senators are on campus and able to consider it. Phase 3 then, of course we are going to begin that very soon and it’s to be completed during 2012 if the committee can sustain its energy. So those are the 3 phases of what we are trying to do.
Phase 1 actions are what I want to talk about right now, and only Phase 1. What we are trying to do in Phase 1 is remove from the Handbook all of this outdated information, general information that can be found in a much more up-to-date and better written form on the current AU Web site, and also policies that apply to all categories of AU employment, faculty, administrative, staff, and administrative and professional not just specifically to faculty. Those policies certainly are university policies and we have to follow them all but we are trying to be consistent such that the Faculty Handbook includes only policies that apply uniquely to faculty. And of course we are going to retain the policies that are in there that do apply directly to faculty. So in summary, no policy change in this proposed phase of the project, all we are bringing to you is the elimination of information, we are not adding things. There is only one substantive piece of language that we are proposing changing with respect to Phase 1 and that’s the opening note. We can display that now, I’m not going to read it to you but take a look and you will see we are changing the nature of the Faculty Handbook. So please read that now. [1:04:07]
A couple of comments: the current Faculty Handbook states that is it not a contract but it does not state that additions, deletions, modifications, must be approved by the Board of Trustees following recommendations by the Senate. Of course that is policy of the university, but we wanted to clarify that changes in this particular policy document need to originate in the Senate and then move to the Board of Trustees or their designee. Also we are pointing out that there are a lot of policies in the university that apply to us but the policy manual will include only those that are uniquely focused on the faculty.
So Phase 1 results, what have we done? We are bringing to you a couple of documents and they were attached to the agenda for this meeting. They are going to remain on display for your review over the next month. One is a summary of Handbook changes. Now all we’ve done there is we’ve shown all the material we propose to delete or remove, all the material we want to retain and in a few cases repositioning of materials, and in 3 cases a rewriting. This is where the wording just had to be changed, like in the note that I just saw that’s the most substantive of it.
The second document that we attached to the agenda is the entire Phase 1 Handbook, so this is what’s left after all of the changes that we are recommending. Now that’s just Phase 1, we’ve got Phase 2 & 3 to come. There are going to be other changes that we are recommending, but just at this point bringing Phase 1 before you.
Here’s the request coming to you from your Faculty Handbook Review Committee: we ask that you review the two documents carefully that we’ve attached, discuss them with your faculty and please contact any member of the Faculty Handbook Review committee, that’s why I listed them by name. Contact any of us by e-mail, personal conversation if you have questions or suggestions. I’ve already received some good questions and some helpful suggestions. So please contact us if there are any and then be prepared next month for two motions that we are going to bring before you, to adopt the Phase 1 Handbook as a transitional document. Transitional from what we have now to what we hope to have.
Here are the anticipated motions so you will know what’s coming before you next month. One is to establish the Faculty Handbook as the official policy and procedures manual of the Auburn faculty. Right now there is no clause like that in the faculty handbook so we want to make sure everyone understands this is our official policies and procedures and then second, to accept that document that I call Phase 1 Handbook as a transitional version until we move into Phase 2.
So that’s my report. I wanted to let you know what we are going to bring before you for action next month.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you Bill and thank you to the Faculty Handbook Review Committee they have been doing a lot of work. At this time I open the floor for comments. [1:08:02]
Mike Stern, senator from economics: Thank you guys for all this work. I had a question about an earlier slide you had, about the preamble…Opening Note that’s it. I don’t recall what it currently is or says. You say a collection of policies and procedures that govern action uniquely pertaining to the faculty. Now I know in the existing Handbook there’s statements that appear to direct certain type of administrative activities as well, is this not to bind administrators or are they considered when you say faculty that it will include all administrators as well. We have administrators who are not members of the faculty.
Bill Sauser: Well absolutely the idea here is that these are policies referring to faculty business, faculty actions and if they are adopted by the Board of Trustees certainly they would bind administrators as well as faculty members.
Mike Stern, senator from economics: So by faculty that’s inclusive of administrators.
Also, I’ve always wondered this; what is the means of enforcement of the Faculty Handbook?
Bill Sauser: You asked me that question before, I recall, and I told you at the time there is no statement about official policy so the enforcement comes from the Faculty Senate itself, particularly the Rules Committee which determines how the rules of the Senate are interpreted and enforced. Generally if a Board of Trustees adopts a policy then the Board of Trustees will see to it through the administrative structure that they follow.
Mike Stern, senator from economics: So if a high ranking administrator of the university violates the Faculty Handbook the Rules Committee does what?
Bill Sauser: At this point the Rules Committee doesn’t do anything with respect to the administrator except bring it up certainly through channels to the President.
Mike Stern, senator from economics: I don’t know if the Faculty Handbook addresses means of enforcement or dispute of whether things have been followed or not but it always seems to me that we had a lot of policies in the existing Handbook that I have seen routinely violated and no enforcement and so forth. I just wondered in this round of revision are we going to do anything to address the enforcement issue or the envision of the enforcement issue to see or strengthen that all the work you do in writing all these policies and procedures are actually followed rather than people just do what ever is convenient and irrespective of whether contravenes the Faculty Handbook. In fact last Senate Cycle there was a proposal to put up to change a portion of the Faculty Handbook and the justification given by the presenter was that people had been violating this. So we are going to change the Faculty Handbook to people in compliance with it. So if the president [chair] of the Faculty Senate is aware that the provision of the handbook is being violated, has been being violated and is ongoing and the solution to that is to alter the Handbook to make it so people are not violating it anymore, it seems to me there is absolutely zero, at least in the past, enforcement of the Faculty Handbook.
Bill Sauser: I believe the example you are referring to had to do with one of these policies that relates not only to faculty but to all categories of employment throughout the university. I believe it had to do with the leave policy if I can recall correctly. And that’s the kind of thing we are taking out of the Faculty Handbook. [1:12:16] I can also assure you that I’ve not been in Faculty leadership before, I appreciate being elected, but I certainly have seen our Faculty leadership very clearly bring to the attention of the administration violations of policy. Claire did you want to speak to that?
Claire Crutchley, chair: I would just say, just like any law you cannot enforce it if you do not know about it, but anytime we see violations we try to bring it to where we see as the correct channel. Any other comments for Bill or the Faculty Handbook Review Committee? Thank you.
Bill Sauser: Thank you Michael.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Our last information item is an update on the Threat Assessment Team. It is being presented by Doug Hankes, Director of Student Counseling and Christopher O’Gwynn, Risk Management specialist.
Christopher O’Gwynn, Risk Management specialist: Thank you for giving us the opportunity to come speak with you today, we don’t usually get the opportunity to speak to such large crowds. We will try to make this more of a commercial for the Threat Assessment Team, for Student Counseling Services, make you a little more aware of some of the services we offer, and make you aware that we can do some larger and more extensive training for your departments. So please feel free to contact us if you would like to have more information.
Threat Assessment at the university it sounds like this ominous thing, threat assessment, but we probably are a little more touchy feely than you might think. Threat Assessment is not a new concept but within higher ed it really has become a hot button topic post Virginia Tech. we’re at the stage now where if you are a university or a college without a threat assessment team you are behind the curve. We have been up and running for about 2 years charged through Dr. Large’s Office to get this running and we’ve been fully functioning with the team for about 2 years.
Threat assessment the main thing you need to realize is that it’s not something that deals with matters in a reactive type situation. We are a proactive team. If you are imminently concerned for your safety or wellbeing you should probably contact the police. If the situation where we may be able to identify and assess a situation where there may be a student or a fellow employee that’s causing some concern, we can step in and through membership within the team offer some services or tips, or may be able to manage it through existing processes within the university.
Some of the things we’re particularly looking at: I’ll speak to the first 2 and let Doug speak to the last, but a situation where you may have some disruptive behavior in the classroom for example; student that’s speaking out of turn that’s interrupting, that’s arguing, sending you inappropriate e-mails, making inappropriate phone calls, just generally causing trouble and may be in violation of the classroom behavior policy primarily, but maybe a situation where student affairs may need to be involved, from a conduct process for example, is primarily where we see that. Threatening behavior obviously would be if a student threatens to harm someone, either you or another student. Someone bringing a knife or a gun or weapon to a class is obviously is something we’d want to know about. But anything where there is a direct or an implied threat is obviously the big-ticket item we’re looking for. Fortunately we don’t see much around here but that’s one of the big one’s we try to avoid. And the last one would be a situation where students exhibiting some concerning behavior, maybe some disturbed behavior and that’s where Doug’s office gets more involved with counseling services and I will let him speak on that.
Doug Hankes, Director of Student Counseling: Yes, I and one of my staffing members are happy to serve in a consulting role if you’ve got a student that you’re concerned about and you believe there is a mental health issue involved. Again we are trying to brief today. I am available or a staff member to come to any department, we have done this for a number of departments and I’m sure Chris, if you wanted more information about the Threat Assessment Team and training we’d be happy to do that together, but if it’s mental health related we’d be happy to come and meet with your faculty to talk about how do you handle distressed or disruptive students in the classroom.
Christopher O’Gwynn, Risk Management specialist: The Threat Assessment Team just for your information is basically made up of administrators from various departments from around campus, I chair the team and Doug participates, Dr. Winn is a very active member of the team, we also have representation from public safety, Melvin Owens and Chance Corbet are probably names that everybody knows, Tracy Donald in the Disabilities Office, Becky Bell in Residence Life, Linda Maxwell Evans who is in HR, Brandon Frye who is the student conduct officer, and Eric Smith who is the director of student health and wellness. The thing about the team is we are made up of the various administrators around campus that oversee policies and procedures within the university for managing situations where we may have a student or an employee or faculty member that’s a concern. So if a student is exhibiting disruptive behavior in your classroom I might not go charging in with a white hat and grab the student out of the class and talk to him, but Brandon Frye, who’s the conduct officer might make contact in a situation like that and bring the student in and talk with him about it. Not every situation involves separating the student from the university and we have policy systems in place to manage those situations for both employees and students.
The main thing we like to say we do we meet every other week and if we know about it then there are a lot of folks on campus that are going to know about it. Can in most situations manage very well. We do have some cards in the back with contact information for the team. I’ll leave some more on my way out. I am available 24 hours a day if you call the number here or e-mail that comes to me some situations we don’t get back to you right away. If it’s an imminent situation obviously and you are not getting an answer you should call the police. I do get to the phone almost every time, but if I am on the phone dealing with something else and you are really concerned about something, I tell people please call 911 at that point. And I can get back to you later on, but feel free to contact me at any time.
Claire Crutchley, chair: Are there any questions or comments for Dr. Hankes or Mr. O’Gwynn? We wanted to bring them in so you could tell faculty if you see potential problem with a student to make sure you bring it up to the right person. Does anyone have any questions? Thank you.
That is the last item on the agenda.
Does anybody have any unfinished business?
Bart Prorok, senator from mechanical engineering: There has been some rumors around campus that the Athletic Department will change the football ticket priority this time. I wonder if our meetings are not as taxing as this if we could have someone come in and clarify things for us?
Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you we will take it under advisement and will talk with the Steering Committee. Is there any New business?
If there is no other business, then the meeting is now adjourned. Be sure to return the clickers on your way out. Thank you.