Transcript Senate Meeting
August 24, 2010

Claire Crutchley, chair: I call this meeting to order. Good afternoon. I am Claire Crutchley, the Chair of the University Senate. I welcome you to the August Senate meeting.

I know we have many new Senators so I will go over a few rules of the Senate. The first thing I want to ask everyone to do, and it looks like everyone is doing it, is sign in in the back if you are a senator or a substitute for a senator, and get a clicker so you can vote.

If you would like to speak about an issue, go to the microphone on either side; state your name, whether you are a Senator or not 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 are made guests are welcome to speak.

On Friday, I had a request to change the order of the two information items for today’s meeting from the original posted agenda. The agenda posted on Friday is the changed agenda, but my parliamentarian said that I needed to make a motion. If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted with flexibility. Are there any objections? Seeing none, we will follow the revised agenda that was posted on Friday.

The first item on the agenda is approval of the minutes from the June 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 approved as written. I now invite Dr. Gogue to come forward to present the president’s remarks.

Dr. Gogue, president: Thank you Claire. Hope all of you had a great summer, it’s good to see everybody back we appreciate you being here today. I have about 3 or 4 things I want to mention to you.

Number one on the list I want to thank faculty that were involved in move-in of new students. A number of faculty participated in that on a Saturday. So we say thank you for doing that. We got lots of nice comments about the smoothness in which students were actually able to get in and find things for it to be a good first experience for them.

Second thing that I want to mention is that this Thursday we’ll have a ceremony that will name about 50 of the endowed professorships in which individuals will actually be there, take their chair. I think you may recall that we had a goal to raise 80, we actually raised and received commitments for 96. The stock market is such that some of those funding is over multiple years and so we have not reached the funding in which we actually will present the recognition as a distinguished professor. That will be on Thursday, I’m excited about it.

The third thing that I would mention has to do with budgets. The state of Alabama, probably in the late spring was doing quite well, we had the oil spill that occurred and to be honest, we don’t know where those numbers are. I was shocked when I heard that Baldwin County, which was one of the more affected counties, that’s about a third of the state revenue in that one county. So there has not been discussion of additional proration in the current year. We do not know what may happen in the coming year. But still the economy was moving in the right direction, the oil spill slowed things down and we’ll see what occurs on that.

We have a number of new Deans that are here today. I think I see a couple of them here, Dean Wooten, stand up make sure everybody knows Dean Wooten. Good to have you here. Dean Batchelor, from the College of Ag, Bill Hardgrave, Dean of Business, good to have you here. Betty Lou Whitford, from the College of Education, good to have you here. Did I miss any new Deans? Gregg Newschwander, stand up and say hello to everybody. All these deans came to us with complete open national searches and we’re excited to have each of you here.

I wanted to thank the faculty for your participation in the Common Book. This is a new experiment and a lot of people have worked very hard to make this a reality for us, there’s been a lot of interest in the early days and certainly for the programs throughout the year so applaud the Provost and faculty for taking on something a little bit different at Auburn. So we’ll see how that works. I also would be remiss if I didn’t mention that this years freshman class, you may have read about it, pretty strong group of students, will be the highest ACT students that we’ve ever had at Auburn. Can’t remember if it’s 26.8 or 26 in the average ACT. Their average high school GPA was 3.8, so pretty good group of kids, 25 percent of those actually met the criteria to be admitted into the Honors College. I would be happy to respond to questions that you may have. I don’t see any, but thank you and look forward to having a great fall.

Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you Dr. Gogue.

I welcome all of you to the first meeting of the 2010-2011 Senate year. It is also my first meeting as Chair.  I would like to introduce the Senate officers. I’m the chair, most of you know Kathryn Flynn, who’s the Immediate past chair; she has been immensely helpful since I took over in July and I know will continue to be. Russ Muntifering is our Secretary who does all the minutes and a lot of organization. The Chair Elect is Ann Beth Presley and the Secretary Elect is Larry Crowley. All of the officers are excellent to work with, it’s a really great experience working with this group of faculty as it was last year when I was chair-elect, and all of us welcome any of your feedback about any issue; if you have a concern if you have an initiative you’d like to see, bring it to us and we can channel it to the correct committee to be considered. I’m also very happy to have our parliamentarian, Constance Hendricks. She’s the parliamentarian for the Senate this year. She has been a member of the National Association of Parliamentarians for over ten years; She has already been very helpful in preparing for this meeting and will be a great resource for us.  And last I want to mention Laura Kloberg who is the Senate’s and Ombudsperson’s administrative assistant, and she’s been great as we’ve been changing things many times before the meeting.

I also want to welcome all of our new senators. One third of our unit representatives are new Senators, we also have new deans on the Senate and new Steering committee members.  I would also like to welcome back our mid-term Senators.  All Senators, whether ex-officio or not, have a vote and should attend every Senate meeting. Make sure you have signed in and gotten a clicker if you are on that role. If you cannot attend, please send a substitute who will have your full voting rights.

Last year was a very busy year for the Senate, and this year also promises to have full agendas. We changed the calendar of the Senate so we did not have meetings in the middle of summer, but there has been a lot of work going on with Senate committees. The Rules committee, as chaired by Russ Muntifering has been working very hard staffing Senate and University committees. We will be voting on the nominees for Senate committees in a few minutes. The Steering committee has been reviewing Senate committee reports to prepare for the year, and has also been preparing for this meeting. Many other committees have continued work over the summer. The Faculty Research committee has been working on several things including a faculty incentive policy that will be presented as information at the September meeting. Core curriculum, curriculum, Graduate Council and the Writing committee have also been very hard at work. We hope to hear reports from some of those committees this fall.

I have a few announcements. One is Auburn University is holding its first Veterans Luncheon on September 1. All faculty, staff and student veterans are invited; there are 300 free tickets allocated to our veterans on campus. Pick up your tickets in the Student Center 3248. One thing you may not know, last spring, a Veteran’s Task Force was organized and subcommittees proposed many recommendations, some of which may come to the Senate this year.

Secondly, I believe all of you received the announcement that Dr. Bill Rickert is coming to campus this week. Dr. Rickert will be seeking input from all of us on Auburn’s Faculty Handbook. There will be forums for Senators to give input on Friday morning at 10 and 11 in the Library Auditorium. If you cannot make it Friday morning, there is an open forum for all faculty on Thursday at 11. This is an opportunity for you (and other faculty members) to give feedback on changes that can improve the handbook. Please participate in this important process. Dr. Rickert will make recommendations to the Senate leadership based on the feedback and his experience. The Senate leadership will send his recommendations to the appropriate Senate committees and committee recommendations will come to the Senate before any changes are made.  We will go through process on these.

My last announcement is about voting. The Senate will use clickers this year to facilitate the voting process. When you vote, please look at the clicker and make sure it has a light indicating it is on, as the clickers will turn off after a length of time. If the light is out, turn it on. Once you vote, your clicker should show a green light; this means your vote has been cast. If there is a red light, vote again

We’ll do a trial vote, A is yes, B is no. It appears that 74 people have voted. Does anybody have questions about the clicker? If you are not sure if you voted, vote again, your vote will not count twice. Only your last vote will be recorded. So we have a quorum.

Are there any questions or comments?

Tony Moss, biological sciences, senator: Point of clarification, who is allowed to vote under the voting circumstances?

Claire Crutchley, chair: Any senator or substitute senator is allowed to vote, including ex-officio. Are there any other questions or comments?

Today we have two action items and two information items. Our first action item will be presented by Russ Muntifering, Secretary of the Senate. [15:18]

Russ Muntifering, Secretary of the Senate: [15:55] Before calling for or soliciting your approval of this slate of nominees for seating on Senate committees, I think I speak safely on behalf of the entire Rules committee in thanking each and everyone of you and your faculty who stepped up to the plate and made an excellent show of volunteerism this past year. Since we closed the Web based volunteer system Rules met 15 times this summer, usually once a week some times twice a week for as long as three hours and countless hours on the phone and in face-to-face solicitation with faculty to get these committees seated, and we got them all done, [16:36] so again, thank you. Because we no longer have a July meeting I think we need to think about seriously starting the process earlier in the spring semester than perhaps we have in the past. In the past the Senate leadership has presented you with the slate of nominees for seating on Senate committees typically at the July meeting and here we are in August and a lot of the committee chairs are quite anxious to get their schedules set for the fall semester and I think we’d all be well served if we started this process a little bit earlier and perhaps bring the slate of nominees to the June meeting. Having said that, this information was posted to the Web, the revised agenda is correct, it’s complete, we had a few misspellings and what have you that we were working on as late as last night. Where is Richard Penaskovic? I keep wanting to peg Richard into the Department of History for some reason, but little things like that that we’ve changed, but this is the final slate. If I could just start and have you take a look at these and go through them. Is that reasonable leave it up there for maybe 30 seconds or so? [18:10] I’ll put it on PowerPoint next year. These have been posted since last Thursday. Faculty Grievance Committee, through no fault of the College of Education, but through a fault in the Rules committee had a little bit of a faux pas with the seating of the College of Education delegate, so we are awaiting results of an election in Education and we will bring that back to you at the Senate meeting next month. (Graduate Council down through Steering committee) Part of the increased work load this year was the establishment of new committees like the University Writing Committee which required representation from each school and college, and the Library, the enhancement the representation on Promotion and Tenure which is a University Committee requiring more interviews than we normally would when we did not have representation from each college and school. We got it done and at this point I respectfully solicit your approval of the slate of nominees for seating on Senate committees.

Claire Crutchley, chair: First is there any discussion of the slate of volunteers?  Thank you Russ. Since this is a recommendation from the Rules committee, it does not require a second. Check to make sure your clickers are turned on. All those in favor press A, all opposed press B. The nominations carry.

The second action item is on voting procedures to adopt changes in the Faculty handbook.  I’m going to give you a brief introduction and then Russ is going to present this from the Steering committee.

This item is in response to frustration over some of last year’s votes on Faculty Handbook changes. The Senate’s current rules (on changes in the faculty handbook) require two thirds of the Senators to vote in order to make any changes in the Faculty Handbook. The Rules committee is proposing that changes in the Faculty Handbook require two thirds of the votes (cast). In the May meeting, one proposal received 56 yes votes, 4 no votes. This motion failed as it required 57 positive votes. In the June meeting a proposal failed with 55 yes, 7 against, it failed because it required 57 positive votes.  These votes had 88% and over 90% approval of the votes but failed due to lack of attendance of Senators or lack of voting, because they could have been here and not voted.

This Proposal that we’re about to present has gone through both the Rules and Steering committee unanimously and has been drafted in consultation with Constance Hendricks, our parliamentarian. It is proposed so that the true will of the Senate is carried through. The time you (the attending Senators) take consulting with your faculty and considering these motions carefully should not be wasted because other Senators failed to show up at the meeting. Senate agendas, we are not trying to slip anything in, Senate agendas and proposals will always be posted in advance of the meeting as required by the Senate Constitution.

This proposal is also being presented by Russ Muntifering from the Rules committee.

Russ Muntifering, Secretary of the Senate: [24:35] The resolution reads as follows:

WHEREAS, Article 5, Section 7 of the Senate constitution states “Amendments: These Articles may be amended by a two-thirds vote of the total membership of the Senate and approval of the Board of Trustees,” and;


WHEREAS, the Auburn University Senate follows the parliamentary rules in Robert’s Rules of Order, Revised, with Section 7 being one of the few exceptions, and;


WHEREAS, Robert’s Rules of Order requires changes in bylaws to be a two thirds vote of the votes cast. Now, therefore


BE IT RESOLVED that Article 5, Section 7 be amended to “Amendments: These Articles may be amended by a two-thirds vote of the votes cast, after a quorum is established, and approval by the Board of Trustees.”

A quorum is a simple majority that authorizes commencement of a meeting.

And because this is coming from Rules it does not require a second.

Claire Crutchley, chair: At this time I would like to open the floor for discussion of this resolution. Comments or questions?

Steve Brown, senator from Political Science: I guess my concern about this that a quorum, I checked on the Web site last night, the Senate is 88 members counting administrative, ex-officio, and voting members, so the quorum of that would be 45 and two-thirds of that would be 30. I guess my concern particularly how Claire put this forward, sometimes there’s a need to have things fail just barely. If this was to try to get the Senate to do things better or faster, I’m not sure this justifies change in this particular rule, only because historically and again in my particular field you have legislation and bills and resolutions by simple majority because those things can be changed. Constitutions you don’t want to change very often, you want them to be harder to change. For example 30 people now can change the composition of the Senate. 30 people can now vote to change the terms of the senators the terms and duties of officers, how to vote, what constitutes a quorum, 30 people here could do that. Things are spelled out in the articles of the Senate Constitution to make it difficult to change and I just want to ask the senators to consider carefully what 30 people, and not trying to cast dispersions on people or conspiracy theories or anything, but 30 people and that’s not many to be able to change how the Senate operates. So I would recommend that you all vote no on this.

Herb Rotfeld, senator, marketing department: With the chair’s permission I’d like to ask two brief questions before my comment on the resolution itself. One, what procedurally would be the disposition of this positive vote? What happens next? You have thought this through, yes?

Claire Crutchley, chair: I’m sorry I didn’t understand, what you mean is that it will then…

Herb Rotfeld, senator, marketing department: If this is passed then what?

Claire Crutchley, chair: Then it goes to the Board of Trustees

Herb Rotfeld, senator, marketing department: So you are asking for a vote in the Change of the Handbook?

Claire Crutchley, chair: That is correct.

Herb Rotfeld, senator, marketing department: For your concern for low turnout and low votes, why have you not brought any of your proposed changes to the Handbook to the University Faculty Meetings?

Russ Muntifering, senate secretary: The issue really came to the fore largely after the May meeting, when it became obvious, and I will speak just for myself, that we had upwards of high 60s low 70s here where 88-90 percent voted in support of amendments to the articles in the Senate Constitution that in my opinion clearly reflected the positive sense of the Senate and could not pass in the case of one or two by a single vote. [29:03] I agree with the assertion that they shouldn’t be easy to pass, and mathematically sure, you can do the math as easy as I can, but 30 people could, but experience teaches us that isn’t likely to happen.

Herb Rotfeld, senator, marketing department: Please, you are responding to someone before me. In my basic comment then, would be to speak against this form two parts; one, the problem you say of a few votes knocking it down would be because we had low turnout, we have 75 people here today versus 65 of the other day of the two things you brought at the start and the middle of the summer and I think that it’s necessary to understand something of background of the Handbook, which I don’t know if anyone tried to contact the original faculty that were involved in this, but whereas Robert’s Rules says that the people here are to read the rules of order and whereas few faculty actually read them, and whereas Robert’s Rules says a rule of the Constitution cannot be removed by simple vote; I think that I would read some things to you from the Constitution. Under the listing for the University Faculty for the Faculty Handbook of our procedural rules, it says “faculty meetings shall be conducted   in accordance with Robert’s Rules of Order revised with two exceptions” and the two exceptions that deal with this, “Motion of substance not directly related to an item on the agenda shall be placed on the agenda for the next meeting” and “a two-thirds majority vote shall be required to table a motion.”

A quorum for the university faculty meeting is members present.  And it says for the university faculty meeting “these articles may be amended by a two-thirds vote of the members present and approval of the board of trustees.”


Further on we have the Constitution Statement of the Senate where it says the same two exceptions and then later on it says “A quorum shall consist of a majority of the members of the Senate.” And “These Articles may be amended by a two-thirds vote of the total membership of the Senate…” why the difference? The difference is really quite simple. The items in the Faculty Handbook where this is placed contain a number of items dealing with faculty issues and concerns of particularly teaching, tenure, research. The university faculty consists of university faculty. The Senate has a much broader membership where voting members held with equal weight with representatives from departments are a significant part of the body. The difference is based upon that difference of the composition of the two groups. And there is that reason why the people who originally wrote the Handbook, knowing that this becomes more difficult for the Senate by simple votes to change it, by small votes as the person before my raised, it was desired that the Senate have greater difficulty or at least a requirement of more senators to be present, and by virtue of that it is hoped more faculty because, well, I’m sorry, the administrators and presidential appointees seem to have better attendance records than the faculty appointees, but with that in mind I would say, I don’t think this resolution is a good idea. [32:40]

Russ Muntifering, senate secretary: Thank you for those comments, I’ve been curious myself as to the basis for that distinction and the historical basis for making that distinction. I appreciate that and was unaware of that until now. Thank you.

Mike Stern, senator for Economics: I think both the previous were well spoken. It seems to me given the technology that we have that we can accomplish this without change the manner of which it votes. I don’t know why there isn’t anything that senators log in to cast their votes. One thing that always concerned me about voting in the Senate is that there is no record as to how senators have voted. So departments elect senators and what not and hope that they represent them but there’s, you can’t actually go anywhere to see how your senator has ever actually voted on anything. [33:35] I mean we’re using these clickers now to help things out if we just had a Senate Web site where when you were a Senator you had an account and you log in and you cast your vote. If somebody can’t be here for some day and has trouble getting a substitute he could still cast a vote. It seems to me we don’t have to have all votes cast in person, sometimes you do it in person for security stuff, but there’s no security as to who picks up a clicker or signs or anything else. It seems to me that we could get a record of votes and make it where people could vote off site if they need to so we don’t have to change the  voting rules or make so that 30 people could change something that would affect all 19 hundred faculty or something simply by using technology. My own students, I have an online quiz, they log in on blackboard and they do it and I can check to see if they did it and if I wanted to call a vote for my class on blackboard I could. I could set that up without any problem for my class. So it seems to me if we can do it for our students we ought to be able to do it for the Senate. If you are a senator you have an account and you vote. You guys put up the things that are there for a vote, if you can’t make it that day you can still cast your vote, and you have a time by which voting is closed. So the deadline for voting on this is 5:00 on whenever, it could be the end of the Senate meeting and if you can’t come then you vote.

I don’t know when the last time a senator was kicked out for not attending, because I thought there was a rule that if you didn’t attend for 3 times or didn’t send a substitute then you were kicked out. I mean when was the last person kicked out? I don’t know, but it just seems to me that some people are busy and can’t make it someday and they don’t necessarily want to send a substitute but still want to vote and cant’ make it a way for someone to vote in absence if they are a senator. I’d just use technology to solve the problem. That’s just my thought.

Claire Crutchley, chair: I just want to comment on that when we went to electronic voting, I remember the Senate talking about how important it was that Senators were here and were involved in the discussion before they vote. So we looked back at that because we definitely had that discussion, and we looked back on that and it seemed like the senators felt strongly that in order to vote you should be present at the meeting and hear the discussion.

Bob Locy, Biological Sciences: I’m not a senator so if there are other senators that wish to speak they really have the right to speak before I do, if there aren’t then I proceed with my comment. The first thing I’d like to say is that I think we are not enforcing our rule that Dr. Stern just pointed out concerning the issue of attendance or getting a substitute here. Were that rule enforced this constitutional change we’re proposing would be a moot point. So consequently I would urge us to enforce the rules that we already have on the books making this a moot point and therefore there’s no need to have this change. Then all of the suggestions that were make by the people who are proposing that this might be a dangerous thing and where a few people and an administrative contingent could seriously influence a vote of the Senate would become once again a relatively moot points because the rules as they were originally written would be enforced. I just wish to make that point that I think it’s better to turn this down and just enforce our rules. [37:17]

Russ Muntifering, senate secretary: Bob with regardless of the disposition of this resolution that will happen and that’s my intent and my new assignment as secretary of this body to do a better job of staying on top of that. If you miss twice in a row you will be notified that the third strike you’re out. And you have my pledge, that’s going to happen regardless of what happens here today because I share your concern about the rather lax enforcement of rules that are already on the books.

Charles Eick, curriculum and teaching, senator: In being on the Senate in the past year and trying to solicite my faculty for input on lots of things, not always hearing what I’d like to hear from them, this is not one of those items I heard from every single person in the faculty, a couple of things one is for something this big a change perhaps have it as an information item first so people have some time to think about what we’re talking about here before an actual time to come an talk briefly and then vote. And I think the other concern is as my other colleagues have shared, that if we were to change something like this, my folks tell me that the notion of quorum would be to defined to be much higher than a simple majority, they will not support that change and it was unanimous.

Claire Crutchley, chair: Are you making a motion?

Charles Eick, curriculum and teaching, senator: I am, I’m making a motion to table the vote on this.

Claire Crutchley, chair: Do you mean table or postpone?

Charles Eick, curriculum and teaching, senator: I’ll vote to postpone at this point.

Claire Crutchley, chair: Do you have a specific date?

Charles Eick, curriculum and teaching, senator: For the next meeting.

Claire Crutchley, chair: So you are proposing that we postpone the vote on this item until the September meeting?

Charles Eick, curriculum and teaching, senator: Yes, I think the faculty need more time to hear and talk more about this.

Claire Crutchley, chair: Okay there is a motion to postpone the vote, is there a second? I have a second. Is there any discussion on this proposal to postpone the vote. Okay we will then vote on, Oh, there is some discussion.

Mike Stern, economics, senator: Unless there’s a proposed change to it, I’ve talked to people who don’t like it period, so I’m ready to vote it down, so I’m not really in favor of postponement because their opinion of the existing language is not going to change. If there is a proposal to edit it then we want time to consider an edit, fine, but it’s relatively clear as written.

Claire Crutchley, chair: Any other discussion of the motion? Okay, make sure your clickers are on and the vote is whether to postpone the proposal. So if you vote A, then you are voting to postponing this proposal until September meeting if you vote B, that means no you want to vote on it today. So please vote. [40:38]

The vote is no so we will vote on the proposal today. Now we are going back to the motion on the floor is there’s any further discussion of this proposal. Check your clickers again, make sure they are on. Now you are voting yes on the proposal, this will require a two-thirds of the Senate membership to pass because it is a change in the Faculty Handbook. If you vote A, yes that means you are voting for the proposal to change the two-thirds and if you are voting B, no, you are voting against the proposal to change the definition of Two-thirds voting. The voting is done, the results are 28, the no’s are irrelevant the motion fails. [42:25]

That was the end of our action items. So you can turn off your clickers if you choose. We have two information items our first information item is a presentation on Initiatives coming from the Research Office, presented by John Mason. [43:00]

John Mason, VP Research: Good afternoon. I’ll confess I was the one that suggested and agenda change, hopefully justifiable. There is another faculty forum as you know we have been pursuing a food safety initiative. In the popular media there is certainly issues with food safety and there’s an internal search for someone to direct that initiative so we can keep growing our food safety and that meeting occurs at 4:00 p.m. today over at Comer and since I have some roll in that I thought I might try to run from here over to there. So I am going to compress, quickly as I can some of this information. Claire, thank you for the invitation. Claire had talked to me about maybe on some regular basis bringing to the Senate some of the status of activities that are going on, and that’s what I am going to try to do. There are three general pieces of information I would like to share with you. There’s been some minor adjustments and changes in our organization, so a quick overview of that. There’s information that we’d like to share regarding the amount of oil spill activity that the faculty and the entire university have been engaged in, and then certainly something that should be, very important, are the intramural grants that the faculty will be able to use these to seed ideas, equipment, instrumentation, and to build some interdisciplinary programs. All this information will certainly be available on the Senate Web site, and we are more than happy to have discussions with you. As a matter of fact another recommendation that I’ve heard at the leadership group of the Senate is to have some research forums where indeed we can get in some topical discussions of particular initiatives in a little more depth. So if you can bear with me I am going to try to provide some overview statements and certainly stand for questions if we have adequate time. I’ll leave that to the leadership to decide.

One of the things I would like to bring everyone’s attention, almost a year ago, very formally we had the opportunity to create an external research advisory board. They function truly as a board, they have committees, they represent industry, national research organizations, some alums and also helping us identify opportunities and there is also a committee called a development committee that would help us look for some discretionary funds that would help us have some flexibility that we want to do. So that’s a formal organization so that’s a new addition. The dotted lines indicate, as you might imagine, I’m in coordination with them but they are not the direct reports or direct influence in what we do, and certainly with all the other units and matters of the university, I have ongoing communications and coordination, both in Montgomery and in Washington, D.C. with our various representatives of the university and our delegation.

Most recently, as you might have read, we have retained and executive director for our Huntsville initiative. That was one of the strategic plan initiatives. Dr. Rodney Robertson had 25–30 years experience in the Huntsville area, he will be making the rounds on campus, I’ve asked Dr. Carl Pinkert, associate vice president for research, who handles most of our academic interactions with the Deans and Associate Deans to facilitate those discussions. Certainly the science based and technology based activities of Huntsville are a natural blend, but I have charged Rodney to make sure that we fully represent the knowledge and capabilities of Auburn University in the Huntsville area. So I think the opportunities of a very broad portfolio of some interactions over time will take place. Hopefully you will have an opportunity to meet and discuss with Rodney. And once again we can create the appropriate forums for that dialogue, whether it’s a small venue or a more open venue at the appropriate point in time.

These activities have not changed. Mr. Larry Filmer has been working with my office since Dr. Gogue has asked that that report to me. We are working across multiple initiatives. Larry’s work is primarily pragmatic in working with the faculty who are the expertise. When we go out after proposals there are so many business functions that have to be taken care of, the logistics, the coordination, and trying to provide adequate staff support, so Larry and his office has been providing that support and works on a lot of the external activities with me.

Just a quick one-slide of the metrics. In the last year the 08–09 we’re compiling the information for 09–10, right Martha? And as soon as we have all the numbers there the research bar, remember these are categorized by how individual faculty check off – is their externally sponsored work based outreach through research. The increase in the research bar I would say the contribution for that increase, there were several facility payments that came online for some of our buildings, they come in marked up as research investments, so they go into that research bump. I just wanted to let you to be clear that a good portion of that were facilities related. I will say this, all in all, it is moving in the right direction, if you look at the national literature on funded external activity, staying level is being discussed as success. I’m glad we are not level and are moving in the correct direction. [49:20]

I’ll show you some slides later on the oil spill activity, the NSF quick response, I think we have 4 or 5 faculty who responded quickly and promptly and our sponsored program office helped get those materials into NSF and we are successful on 5 awards from NSF on our quick response on our oil spill area based on faculty expertise. That is quite an impressive outcome.

I bring to your attention on September 8 as we have been doing since I arrived, we will have a faculty orientation for new faculty, however any faculty that wants to participate in any of those dialogues are welcome. So there’s a mini-workshop one of many in a series, but it will be at least one to get things started, and then also later in the afternoon the alphabet soup of all types of compliance committees and activities that faculty should become familiar with if they are not already from either a former institution, but many things that they will have to be aware of as they conduct their scholarly work. As a heads up that will be occurring September 8.

The second piece of information then is the internal intramural grants program, hopefully by the end of August we’ll have all the information available. Applications for these different categories in early October, hopefully have money flowing by January. What this has done through consultation with the Faculty Research Committee of the Senate and my office, we have come to a favorable agreement or understanding that we are going to consolidate those, replace some of them, but the primary goal will be an enhancement. The enhancement is first purely from a financial point of view, approximately $280,000 was the amount of support coming out of the OVPR to stimulate this kind of activity. I anticipate being able to pull together approximately one million dollars. We again through the efforts of the FRC, they have come up with a plan of required matching support because these are all strategic at the university level, hopefully strategic at the colleges and departments and should be strategic for faculty. Leveraging funds for the future. We will have a workshop that will get into some of the details and both Dr. Pinkert and Dr. Smith, and as you may know Dr. Bruce Smith chaired the Faculty Research Committee. Some of the attributes; the pool of funds that I have available is the combination of the dollars that on a formula basis are related to indirect cost recovery. To me indirect cost recovery in nothing more than paying back more than had so it’s not really the IDC we’re giving back to the faculty, it’s a method of calculating some dollars that Dr. Large can assign to my office. I would like to emphasize though, the way we came up with a balance of the funds there were some programs that I inherited, they have gone through attrition, we have carefully reviewed them with various faculty committees and some of those activities no longer exist. We’re able to pool those funds that had annual entitlements to them and we brought them together so now that the pool of funds are reinvested back into the faculty to stimulate seed activity, scholarly activities. Again we can get into detailed questions at some point in time, but most of that funding allows us ability over time now, so I think we have some continuity of that level of investment if all works out well. Obviously if there are some State cuts and other issues we’ll find ourselves in an awkward situation. Likewise it is dependant upon the ongoing externally sponsored research that when possible can recover the facilities and administrative costs, those dollars will continue if you’ll assist them and I would like to continue to invest them back into the faculty at large. [53:43] It’s a little bit of a circle of events that you can be writing out of the checkbook but there is nothing going into the checkbook, it will be difficult to continue these programs. It’s quite a simple model. Also there were some characteristics of the way previous internal grants were established. We have opened it up to the entire university enterprise, all the schools, all the colleges, all departments across a multitude of disciplines.

This is just a summary, I will not go into details, there’s at least two slides to every level as you might imagine when you get a committee together, but it does go across the breadth, the dollars in parenthesis are those that would be allocated out of the OVPR and then matched by the local unit or units also trying to stimulate some interdisciplinary activity when there’s opportunities for faculty to come together. I’ve also learned through, we had the Huron Report, had various faculty forums giving me feedback that there are laboratories and faculty that are successful in what they are doing, but they need some extra springboard to move them forward. So I think that category 3 could be helpful and likewise some of them would like to start some pre-proposals for large major proposals out of mission oriented agencies and NSF or NIH, so it may be necessary that some of the equipment needs to be bolstered in order to go after some of those more nationally competitive grants. My point is that there is a breadth of opportunities and we’ve been able to increase the financial opportunities for the faculty. I consider these seeds to grow other activity to keep our scholarly sponsored work on the growth pattern.

And then the final point, very quickly, there has been an assembly of numerous faculty over the last 30, 60, 90 days, different venues and different forums were people have come together, and what I wanted to share about some of these activities is that the university and my office has been directly involved in; we were fortunate I was able to have a conversation that was created by Mr. Brian Keeter and we had a telephone discussion with the Secretary of Navy to make sure that one understood our capabilities we listen to where he thinks the issues are at and where we might be focusing our attention. In doing that a oil spill blog was created for the university where faculty and our expertise can be shared and others can come to those sites and understand our capabilities and our facilities.

Another opportunity that will be engaging our faculty across the four focus areas. These four focus areas are both commensurate with the Secretary of Navy and the monies that the BP Corporation will be investing in future long-term research activity. So there will be an opportunity for the faculty to engage in that conference, that information is available and we have a large number of faculty that have shown interest in participating.

Another thing that was done, we have assembled a quote “Recovery Plan,” it’s Auburn’s comments and visions on what needs to be done. That information has been shared with a multitude of federal agencies with the delegation, with the governor’s office, and BP. So we are trying to get Auburn at the tip of the spear to make sure that at least for the state of Alabama if not for the benefit of the entire Gulf that we have not only concerns, but we have some solutions and capabilities that we’d like to bring to bear on that issue. We should understand that that is a formal document that’s also available and we’ve been using it as our lead behind after our discussions.

There is an opportunity where 5 Million dollars has come to Alabama. It comes through a particular mechanism, there’s a formality to it, there are 4 thematic areas, there will be a meeting and a series of workshops, again that information has been shared with the colleges and Associated Deans for Research where faculty will have the opportunity to go to those workshops, participate in the discussions of the types of projects that will be funded.  And then the projects will be a peer reviewed activity and the agreement with BP we had no influence on this we were told what the proposals the manner in which they would be handled, they will be sent to the Hart Institute, they will conduct a peer review, there will be master agreements, and then successful faculty will receive those funds. My main message for that, the five million dollars is going to go to across a multitude of universities across thematic areas it’s going to take a lot of energy to assemble. There will be further opportunities, there’s 450 million dollars retained by BP for scholarly activity in the future. Information on that has not been released. As soon as we have the details on that, we’ll try to get that out to the faculty at large also.

I just want to make sure, the 5 million is the one thing that we’re sure of and it has it own constraints and body of knowledge with it. The other 450 Million has not, other than being talked about in the media has not been set forth for open proposal solicitation at this time.

Again in recognition of being responsive, I put out a note of my travels in Washington, there would be a rapid response grant out of NSF, they would review them quickly and fund them quickly, we have been beneficiaries of that rapid response with our expertise, faculty developing proposals and getting it to the National Science Foundation.

In addition to that some of the mission-oriented agencies have also had some funds allocated to this area they have not been of the same order of magnitude, but again we’ve also reached out beyond NSF to make sure we’re tracking other opportunities. So I know it’s been very specific to the oil spill activity, but we felt there was so much timeliness to that we’d at least share that component.

There will be another opportunity in November, there’s a little bit of uncertainty regarding this regional conference that NSF plans to have, and they plan to have it November 1 & 2 and we had requested nominations from Auburn faculty, we’ve received those, we’ve compiled those and sent them to the National Science Foundation and say these are our faculty capabilities could they be speakers, could they present papers, how could we participate? So our information is in the hopper we will now wait to see how it gets organized and funded. Sorry for the rapid fire there, hopefully it was a good quick overview. Have any comments or questions?

Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you John. Does anyone have any comments or questions?

John Mason, VPR: if there are, find me come and talk with me and we’ll help you out.

Tony Moss, biological sciences, senator: Could you please post your presentation on the Senate Web site or somewhere so we can all get to it?

John Mason, VPR: However that should happen, we’ll make it happen.

Larry Crowley, secretary-elect: Some of the information I received about BP money is that there will also be non-discloser and type of obligations from the University, has that been in place as well?

John Mason, VPR: Very good point, on the 5 million dollars, the vice presidents for research and the president were in dialogue with the consortium that that 5 million should be considered fundamental and basic, that means it should be publishable. The other 450 million dollars has all sorts of stories with it, it might be proprietary; the intent was with this national committee set up by the presidential administration in Washington, said it would be basic and fundamental, we’re hoping for that. I will tell you that BP is having discussions about research with particular universities. My initial discussion personally with them on the phone is that my goal would be to have it as basic and fundamental and open. If however it is intended to be proprietary, individual faculty with their departments and colleges in the university will have to understand the terms and conditions of that proprietary work. I’m willing to have flexibility we just all have to understand what part of the spectrum we are playing in. [1:02:57]

Bart Prorok, senator Mechanical Engineering: In my time here I’ve had a couple of instances where it was difficult to get funding sent here to Auburn because of the type of funding it was. For example some helicopter research from the Army couldn’t get it here because the type of funding it was and it was some exploratory research and the program time we had a short window to receive it but because we had to funnel it through an intermediary we couldn’t get it in time. Many of our sister institutions use a 501C to make this happen quickly, I wonder if the 501C we have in the research and technology foundation might be engaged in this in the future?

John Mason, VPR: Yes, my simple answer. Philosophically my guidance to the staff has been if it can come through the natural Auburn University sponsored programs activity, let’s do it that way. With a 501C3, the Auburn Research and Technology Foundation, that’s our option, we are trying to exercise that. Don Large is helping me get that stood up. With Rodney and our Huntsville connection that will be an essential element, so I think between the Huntsville initiative, our 501C3, and an operating agreement with the university, hopefully we can overcome those barriers. Thank you all very much. Call me if you need me.

Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you, John. The second information item is on proposed Academic Honesty procedures. This is brought by the students, specifically by Ashley Nichols, Vice President of the SGA. This proposal is being presented as an information item so that you can give feedback to Ashley. [1:04:53]

Ashley Nichols, Vice President of the SGA: Good afternoon everyone, I am Ashley Nichols and I am currently serving as Vice President of the Student Government Association. Today I will be presenting to you the changes that the Student Government has proposed to the current Academic Honesty procedure.

The SGA is currently seeking to encourage academic integrity among our fellow students in several ways in addition to these proposed changes that you will hear about today. We are also working on, just for your information, Academic Integrity Day that the Student Government will put on so that we can teach students about academic integrity, its importance, and hopefully if these changes are implemented, educate them about the new policy. We’re also working to reinstate the Oath of Honor and make it more of a living document for our fellow students and encourage them to identify with it more.

The SGA first identified the need to develop the proposed changes in response to feedback that we have received from faculty members. The current Academic Honesty procedure is complicated and time consuming for those involved and often acts as a deterrent to some instructors and they are kind of discouraged from reporting certain incidence of academic dishonesty. They often choose not to report incidence of academic dishonesty because of the procedures and the sanctions and they’ve indicated that they would like to have more control over the sanctions that are imposed for dishonesty that is committed by students in their classroom.

When cases of academic dishonesty are handled by faculty in the classroom instead of through the Academic Honesty Committee offenses are not reported and not recorded and students are able to violate the policies, sometimes multiple times without receiving the increased punishment that would have been applied if the early offenses had been recorded by the Provost’s Office.

The SGA has developed the proposed procedure in response to this feedback that we have heard from faculty regarding the current procedure and the proposed changes to date have received the support of Student Government, Senate, and executive officers. They have been brought to the Senate Steering Committee and approved, the University Ombudsperson, Dr. Jim Wohl, and the current chair of the Academic Honesty Committee. We bring this information to you today for your feedback and of course we would appreciate any comments or any questions that you have and would be happy to clarify anything.

I’ll now give a brief overview of the current Academic Honesty procedure and this currently consists of a reporting stage and a hearing stage. During the first stage, the reporting stage, faculty who detect a possible case of academic dishonesty in their classroom, notify the student and notify the Office of the Provost of the alleged offense. A hearing is arranged by the Office of the Provost with the members of the Academic Honesty Committee, the accused student, and the accusing professor according to the current code. Sometimes this can take one to two months to coordinate given the number of cases and the conflicting schedules of those involved, so sometimes setting up this hearing can cause the case to be pending for quite some time while the student and the instructor are waiting for action to be taken. The committee hears the case and reviews all the evidence that is given by the instructor and witnesses that are called and then a sanction is recommended by them, to the Office of the Provost. I would like to highlight that the Academic Honesty Committee not the faculty member is determining if the case is justified and any appropriate sanctions. The faculty member is able to make a suggestion, but it is ultimately the committee what type of sanction will be imposed. As I have said earlier we have heard from faculty that they would like more input and more control over determining the appropriate sanction.

I’ll give a brief overview of the proposed procedure that the SGA has developed. The SGA Code of Laws language will remain largely unchanged. The reporting and hearing stages of the process will remain and the changes only describe the insertion of a new step between the reporting stage and the hearing stage.

Incidence of possible academic dishonesty will now be reported electronically to the Provost’s Office, hopefully streamlining and simplifying the reporting process for faculty members. And just to be clear the hearing process will remain the same as it always has.

We will now look at each of the three stages that compose the new procedure in a little bit more detail. Instructors will be able to fill out a form online at the Web site of the Office of the Provost in order to report the incident. The electronic form will include fields and information prompting the instructor to include information about the case, information about the student, witnesses that could be called at the hearing if a hearing is necessary, and all material evidence that they have at the time. The form will be submitted to the Office of the Provost who will then refer it to the Academic Honesty Committee member who will be serving as a facilitator for this particular case.

The next 3 slides you will see are what the faculty member who’s reporting a possible case of academic dishonesty will see when they come to the Provost’s Web site to report the incident. This first page is an outline of reporting and what they can expect, then at the bottom there’s a link, which will take them to the actual reporting form. The next 2 screen captures are both the top and the bottom of that form. Up here you will see the fields the faculty member will need to fill in and it will also ask them to submit all hard copy evidence including a copy of the course syllabus and any additional information that the Faculty member has given to students about academic dishonesty and how they can avoid committing an act of academic dishonesty. Sometimes those materials really help when trying to determine the outcome of the case. The bottom of the form they will see a description of the Academic Honesty procedure and they will be asked to agree to comply with all stages of the procedure before they submit the form.

The second stage of the proposed process is a facilitated meeting between the instructor, the student and a member of the Academic Honesty Committee who will be serving as a facilitator for the particular case. When the form is submitted the student will be notified by the facilitator, that they have been accused of academic dishonesty within 15 working days of detection of the alleged violation and their rights as the accused party. The Office of the Provost will have a period of 5 days to begin scheduling this meeting between the accused student, the accusing instructor, and the facilitator. Ideally at this meeting the instructor and the student will agree upon whether the student is guilty or not and then upon an appropriate sanction. The sanction must be approved by the Provost’s Office before it is put to action. Just to clarify that a little bit. There are basically two steps that take place within this facilitated meeting; first the facilitator will help the instructor and the student come to an agreement upon whether or not the student is guilty, if the student has admitted that they have committed this act of dishonesty and the instructor wants to maintain the complaint the two agree to that and sign off that the student is guilty, then they enter into a discussion on what the appropriate sanction would be.

If the student and the instructor are not in agreement that an act of dishonesty occurred or if they are not able to come to an agreement as to what the appropriate sanction would be then that information is recorded by the facilitator and then it would be referred to the Academic Honesty Committee for a decision. If the student doesn’t agree to the appointment with the instructor and the facilitator then the case will be referred to the Academic Honesty Committee as well. In both of these instances the student will maintain their right to attend the hearing if they do request that right in a timely manner. If the instructor refuses to meet with the facilitator and the student then the complaint will be withdrawn. They would have been notified before submitting the complaint on the report form that they need to comply with each step of the process, so if the instructor does not attend the meeting or indicated their unwillingness to attend the meeting then the complaint must be withdrawn.

As I mentioned earlier the hearing stage of the process will remain the same as is currently written in the Code. Ideally the case will be solved at stage 2, the facilitated meeting between the instructor and the student, but if the case in not solved it will proceed to the Academic Honesty Committee. There are 3 ways that the case would proceed to this third stage. One, if they cannot agree upon the guilt of the student or the appropriate sanction, two if the student has been accused and found guilty of academic dishonesty before whether in a facilitated meeting or by the Committee, the case will go automatically before the Academic Honesty Committee. Often times the punishment on a second offense is suspension and we feel that should come from the Academic Honesty Committee. If the student does not agree to meet with the professor and the facilitator their case will go before the committee, and they forego that right to meet at stage 2 the facilitated meeting. Just to reiterate the student maintains his or her right to attend the hearing of the Committee, upon timely written request assuming they show up at the meeting in all cases.

Also finally just to be clear if the student has committed academic dishonesty before and found guilty their case goes automatically before the Committee. By committing dishonesty twice they have forgone their right to come to an agreement with the facilitator and the instructor.

There are several outcomes we hope to see if these changes are implemented. We hope that the changes will streamline the reporting process and make it less complicated for faculty members and therefore encourage them to report cases of academic dishonesty that they find in their classroom instead of handling in-house so to speak. The facilitated discussion will give the faculty member the ability to the specific punishment that they believe is appropriate for the case that happened in their classroom. Making sure that all cases are reported and recorded by the Office of the Provost will ensure that offenders are recognized and they are punished accordingly for committing acts of dishonesty multiple times. At this time I would be happy to hear any of your comments, take any of your questions, or clarify any of the proposed changes. [1:16:50]

Jerry Davis, senator Industrial Engineering: The only comment I would have is that sometimes we have outreach students, particularly graduate students, and this seems that this is a campus based technology, so we should think if we have a student in Seattle, how would we facilitate that?

Ashley Nichols: Of course that would be a concern if the student is off campus and trying to facilitate a meeting with them. To be honest I don’t have a lot of knowledge on how a case is handled if a student is off campus and unable to come back for a hearing in the current procedure and possibly if Dr. Muntifering as the former chair (of Academic Honesty) elaborate a little bit on how or how that’s been done in the past if a student cannot come to the hearing. It seems that in that case, if the student is not going to make arrangements to come back for the facilitated meeting, that would be a case in which they would have foregone their right to meet with the instructor and the case would have to go to the Committee.

Guy Rorhbaugh, senator from Philosophy: I want to express the sentiment of the people I’ve talked to in my department that at least at first blush it seems like this is maybe not such a great idea. And it looks like it might have some of the opposite effects of those that are intended that seem like good goals. First of all it seems quite straight forwardly to increase the burden on individual faculty who wish to pursue cases of academic honesty. Most concretely, there’s an extra stage, there’s time there’s effort, there’s a whole second meeting. Second, and perhaps more importantly I would describe the proposed procedure as one that, any thing that sort of increases pressure on individual faculty to, as it were, settle out-of-court, mediate, and if anything I think more faculty might so to speak do it in-house to avoid the extra double-long procedure, one in which for the second time you are confronted with the student who in many cases is not contrite, does not understand why what they’ve done wrong is if fact wrong. These are often difficult, not always pleasant meetings, I’m sure they can be facilitated to go as smoothly as possible, but it just makes it look like the climb is a lot longer and a lot higher. I regard it as a virtue of the current system that it operates in, so to say, complete independence. Every dealing I’ve had with the Academic Honesty Committee has been marvelously competent and professional and I feel incredibly confident to refer cases and have them adjudicated fairly without what is often a personal relation between a faculty member and a student. Students are often angry and angry with the faculty member in particular for, why are you giving me a hard time, why are you doing this to me? If I could do that just the once instead of twice I’d pick the once. So I would have to say in general it does not strike me as a proposal I’d want to see go through.

Ashley Nichols: We would hope that the process would actually would not be longer for the faculty if these changes are implemented. Sometimes it takes a really long time to get all of the necessary members of the committee together and the student and the accusing instructor together in a room for a hearing. Hopefully the reporting process will be easier it will be done online, all of the materials will be taken by the Provost online and a few quick steps by the faculty member hopefully to encourage them to report it instead of handling it in-house and then setting up a meeting between the instructor, the facilitator, and the student, that’s only 3 schedules you are working with. Hopefully it will be resolved sooner, and quicker.

Guy Rorhbaugh, senator from Philosophy: My recollection is that you didn’t actually have to go to and Academic Honesty hearing if you didn’t wish to, they were happy to conduct the entire affair without the faculty member present.

Ashley Nichols: That’s true.

Guy Rorhbaugh, senator from Philosophy: I’ve gone to mine, but that’s in fact entirely optional and seeing the work, I didn’t have to say anything.

Ashley Nichols: That’s very true, but we do know that some faculty member like to have input, they like to be able to call witnesses and in that case they would like to be at the hearing. If they’ve given a recommended sanction sometimes they would like to be here to have their input on what the sanction is that they would like to see come out of it. So in that case those particular faculty members will be there for every step of the case and hopefully it can be resolved sooner for them. And if they are wanting to apply a particular punishment that they see fit, of course the severity of academic dishonesty issues, there’s a broad scope, you’ve got cheating on a quiz as opposed to plagiarizing your thesis or final term paper; so they might want to apply a slightly different punishment and have a little bit of control over that, being that they have a relationship with the student and they know the nature of the work and then nature of the act of dishonesty. This is really to help those faculty members who would like to be there and have their input at every stage of the process.

Heather May, senator from Theatre: Actually I also share many of Guy’s concerns. I appreciate that the motivation of here is something which I would agree with, to make the faculty have more input and to make it easier on us, however I too when I read this that it seemed to dramatically increase potential faculty workload and in my first year here I spent 75 hours one summer in cases of academic honesty revolving around a bunch of group projects. It is my personal experience and I can only speak personally but that students when confronted by the faculty initially in the office I do get contrition, but then as it goes forward they talk to parents they talk to other people they come up with a lot of reasons they come up with good excuses and almost never, I’m going to say at least 75% of those cases that I dealt with, did they come to the committee and say I accept this as laid out. So to me to try yet another stage of talking to the student and working with them, honestly were this to be passed I would no longer submit cases to the Academic Honesty Committee, I would deal with it only on my own and I am about as committed to dealing with it and turning people in so we don’t have repeated offenses. So I would seriously reconsider this mechanism because it does seem to me to dramatically increase time commitments. I’m just skeptical that it would have the intended effect.

Tony Moss, biological sciences, senator: I concur with what I’ve heard here. You can turn the argument around on its head and say that when you place a student in the presence of a facilitator and faculty member they may feel that there is undue pressure being placed against them in that particular situation. Perhaps so, perhaps not, probably not, I agree. What I’m mostly concerned about is the potential for an inconsistent application of justice. I think the real value, and I understand the work that goes into the Academic Honesty Committee and the tremendous work by all the members that are on it, I’ve been on it myself it does take time, but I think the real value of going to the Academic Honesty Committee as quickly as possible is to maintain the consistent response to a particular kind of violation. And I do understand that there’s supposed to be training taking place so that the facilitators help the process move in a particular kind of direction, but I think there is an increased sense of the gravitos when you have people in a room all looking at the two, the faculty member and the student who are there, and are seriously considering each side of the issue. The smaller the sampling size of opinions in a situation like that, the more likely we are going to have inconsistency in the response. So that’s really where I am concerned. I’d be concerned whether the University would legally stand behind the players in such a scenario, because if it starts to vary then it’s going to be hard for the university council to stand up in a legal battle, which can occur in any circumstance, even with academic honesty and a student who is in violation. So I am really quite seriously concerned about that having seen some pretty nefarious actions over the years. Thanks. {1:26:39]

Claire Crutchley, chair: We talked about this in Steering where we had two former chairs of the Academic Honesty Committee and that’s why we decided the Academic Honesty Committee members should be the facilitators and that they would be trained and know what the normal sanctions are, and Jim Wohl, our university ombudsperson has agreed to also train these members so they could be facilitators.

Ashley Nichols: Also you mentioned the legality of this type of procedure and having the facilitated meeting. This procedure was modeled off of other universities, The University of Georgia and some others already do this exact thing. So it has been done by other universities and been very successful at other universities and they’ve been very happy with the outcome and their reporting numbers are higher than ours. Looking at the issue with possible variance and the types of sanctions, as I mentioned earlier they are often different, the severity of the cases of academic dishonesty and the nature of the assignments the students cheat on and plagiarize assignments on, the range is pretty broad, cheating on a quiz as opposed to a final paper.  And a faculty member doesn’t want to see a student fail a class because of cheating on a quiz they’d rather be there and talk to them about it and hopefully agree upon a particular sanction, but if the student does not agree to the punishment and they feel like the punishment that the instructor is trying to put on them is too harsh or is not in accordance with what they feel the Academic Honesty Committee would apply upon them then they can proceed to the committee and say I don’t agree to this, and hopefully be given a sanction they may feel is more appropriate. [1:28:43]

Someone: Other universities are carrying this…I’m sorry go ahead.

John Sophocles, economics, not a senator: and I have recently brought an academic honesty case to the Provost’s Office. My first comment and one who spent way too much time in the legal world, and I applaud the spirit of facilitator, of course the devil is in the details. One first problem I see is a facilitator is a member of the Committee, do they have to recuse themselves when the full committee meets? And I did not see that explicit and I think there should be serious consideration in that regard. And second, and I’ve actually talked with the Provost’s Office about this. In the case that I was a part of the last time, the student indeed wanted to withdraw. I think 15 working days is excessive. What happened was for this student in the interim the withdrawal date had passed. I think you expose yourself to incredible legal jeopardy if you take something to the Academic Honesty Committee, and this student wanted to withdraw and then you put a hold on it and say he cannot withdraw, then he’s found not guilty and he’s stuck in the class. I don’t know how to say that more clearly, but I know I’ve had a discussion with Emmett on it and I think I communicated that well. You do not want to be put in a position where you have a student who’s now been compelled to stay in a class that he wanted to drop and found not guilty. So the 15 days just exacerbates that problem. And really the Provost’s Office was very accommodating, as a matter of fact the only reason it carried as long, the last one that I did was because the Provost’s Office was by the students own admission more accommodating than needs be really. That’s my two.

Ashley Nichols: In answer to your first question, yes, the facilitator will recuse themselves from the hearing. Currently in the Code of Laws the contact with the student indicating that they have been accused does have to happen within 15 days of detection so that’s remaining the same. That’s unchanged from the current Code.

Tony Moss, biological sciences, senator: In cases where other universities have used this kind of approach is there data to suggest that there is time saving component? The claim being made by some of us that it looks like it would actually take more time, that’s my concern. Perhaps if you have those data, it might be something to look into to find out if it really does streamline the process or not. Faculty here are at a 2:1 disadvantage to their neighbors across the border, we have twice the number of students at this university per faculty member and where you have a system that has a little more slack built into it it’s easier for them perhaps to take on additional work load. It’s hard here, there’s a lot of work here.
 
Ashley Nichols: From the feedback we’ve received and from what we understand from other universities is that it has streamlined their process and they have been happy enough to keep it for as long as they have.

Chris Correia, senator from the department of Psychology: One of the things that you reviewed, if I remember this correctly is that if a faculty member does not attend the facilitated meeting then the case is withdrawn. I’m just wondering what the rational for that is and hearing that and hearing some of the concerns, would it be possible to consider kind of an option that if a faculty might want to attend. Seems like that’s feedback that you are getting that some faculty members would, but other faculty members might prefer maybe after initial discussion with the student to just refer it directly to the committee and not have to have that facilitated meeting. I’m wondering what the rational was for kind of mandatory attendance for the faculty at that facilitated meeting?

Ashley Nichols: The rational for that was that we wanted to offer the right to attend the meeting and if there are particular professor is not interested in attending then one students right to meet at stage 2 and admit their guilt and come to an agreement on the sanction and another student has not.

Chris Correia, senator from the department of Psychology: I understand that, but it seems like that is creating some of the concerns and so perhaps to give options on both ends that ultimately the default would be that this goes to the full committee (Academic Honesty Committee), but if a student and a faculty member are in agreement that they might reach some kind of compromise or some kind of outcome with facilitation, if they both want to do that great, if the student doesn’t want to attend that facilitated meeting it seems like they still have the right to go to the full board, but the faculty doesn’t seem to have that same privilege and that seems to be an inequity there.

Ashley Nichols: As you said you asked the rational, a student not being able to go to a hearing of the Academic Honesty Committee we do feel like that would create a legal situation of a student not being able to go to their university’s committee determining sanctions on academic honesty, but we wouldn’t want some student to attend that meeting without offering others. Potentially if both the student and the instructor have no interest in going to the meeting, then that is something we can look at.

Chris Correia, senator from the department of Psychology: I just offer it as a suggestion to give multiple routes that students and instructors could pursue.

Bob Locy, department of Biological Sciences, not a senator: I’d just like to give my thanks to the SGA for attempting to approach what is a really tough issue and I’d like to ask you whether the SGA has considered any kind of an honor program and some student involvement in putting peer pressure on people who are engaging in academic dishonesty to try and reduce the problem from that perspective, because I think quite frankly so long as we have an atmosphere of people who think it’s okay to cheat, and my 18 years at the university I think that is something that’s grown across those 18 years. I think unless the students are willing to do something to help us change that atmosphere and work with the faculty in trying to help us change that atmosphere. I not sure I have a good suggestion for what to do right now, but at least having an honor code and having some way to put some teeth into the idea that students have to swear some kind of an oath to not cheat and asking them to follow through would be a good step toward setting the right environment to reduce the pressure on any changes in the existing policy we choose to make.

Ashley Nichols: And that is something that the Student Government has realized over the last couple of years which is why we attempting to attack the issue of academic dishonesty from a number of angles. I mentioned earlier in the presentation a few things we are working on and I can elaborate on those and hopefully you’ll be glad to hear some of the things that we are working on. I mentioned Academic Integrity Day that will be later this fall and the Student Government will be working to…we will put on a speaking event in coordination with one of our freshmen programs groups where we have two administrators, one from the academic side of the university and one from a potentially athletics to draw students, to talk to the students about the importance of integrity in the classroom and standing by their work and realizing that the work that they are putting forth is their own and should be their own and to take pride in that.

We’ll also be working on putting together some information for students, really explaining what acts do constitute academic dishonesty, just so they are aware of what things they should be considering, explaining to students what is plagiarism, what are the details that constitute committing plagiarism or committing dishonesty because I know sometimes we may have learned about it in high school but may not have been taught what those details are in the last few years. So as student body leaders we are hoping to bring that information and those thoughts and concerns to the forefront of our students mind by distributing this information to them. Telling them, as student leaders, that this is something we really want them to take seriously and think about hard and we’ll do that through using our student government members, our cabinet, our senate, and our Tiger Tuesdays members to distribute this information to them saying from the SGA, we want you to know this and we want you to think about it. That will take place later this fall.

We’ve also been working with the Office of the Provost and the Office of Information Technology to help us in our goal of reinstating the “Oath of Honor.” Right now we have an oath of honor, we have an academic oath, it was written in 1994, but a lot of students are not aware of it. We are fully aware of the Creed, we identify with it, we are fully aware of the Athletic Auburn pride language and identify with it, but a lot of students do not know about our Oath of Honor. At other universities this is something that other students do identify with, they know it they know it by heart, they see it on all of their syllabi and all of their tests.

We worked with the Office of the Provost to administer information to all faculty members and departments saying the Student Government would like you to put the Oath on your syllabi and on your tests. You may have seen that notice come across your desk and I actually did see it on some of my finals at the end of spring saying that they had gotten word from the Provost’s Office to do this. We’re very glad to see that and we hope to see that increase so students will have that in mind before they take a test, that will be at the top of their page, this is the oath that you agreed to and this is what we want you to keep in mind as you perform work on this test.

We’re also working on having as I mentioned earlier working with Information Technology to have that Oath of Honor pop up on your AU Access page the first time that you log on to AU Access for the semester before proceeding along with their business and the Office of Information Technology and the Office of the Provost have both signed off on this request. We are working on having that up so as soon as students get on AU Access once a semester they see the Oath pop up and click “I reaffirm my commitment to this Oath,” so it’s in their mind and they realize how important this is and we will say that that reminder is from the Student Government. Those are just a few things.

Mike Stern, economics, senator: Just a quick question. Is there a way for a student to bring an academic honesty case on another student?

Ashley Nichols: There is and only an instructor or faculty member can report a case to the Office of the Provost. From what I understand, it doesn’t happen very often, maybe once a year or once in a couple of years in talking with the past and current chairs does a student accuse another student, but it has to come from the instructor. The student has to be able to provide hard material evidence to the instructor so that the instructor can bring the case on the student, but it has happened.

Mike Stern, economics, senator: Can we make a way for the students to directly file against other students. I remember a couple of other universities where a lot of academic honesty is student body driven. Students can prosecute the other students or what not, I mean in a lot of cases grades are relative, especially if the classes curve and often it’s the other students that are harmed more than the instructor per se by acts of cheating in some sense. It seems to me that if the students were able to directly bring a case in addition to the instructor, if they came aware of somebody doing something. If you want to increase reporting and student focus on academic integrity, if you make it able for students to bring a case against another student directly from things that they observe, perhaps outside of class. I know as an instructor if some student brings to me, I am hesitant to bring a case if I didn’t see something, sometimes there’s not real evidence but a couple of students that are witnesses, but I as an instructor hesitate to put my name by something that I didn’t directly see. Things happen outside of class or things they are aware of that they have evidence either through testimony or other reasons, you could make it possible for students to directly bring academic honesty charge against another student, I think the it would cause a notion among the student body that academic honesty is important. Perhaps would increase rather than an us versus them attitude that is, we can get away with it fine, it’s the faculty that’s in charge of making sure that we do whatever, when really the university exists for the students and its their education so forth, I do know some other universities allow students to bring cases against other students.

Ashley Nichols: As you said indirectly students are able to bring cases on other students. They can be sent in or brought in as witnesses and students do serve on the Academic Honesty Committee along with faculty members, but the instructor would basically have to have the same evidence if they were bringing a case upon a student that another student would have to so it’s essentially it’s the same evidence being brought against them. I think a lot of students don’t report simply because of the social implications, knowing that another student could talk about the fact that you accused them, there are issues with your reputation and I think simply the reason the social implications, I think that’s why students don’t report. I have talked to a number of students who have told their instructor about cases of academic dishonesty and I think if it can come from the instructor they are more comfortable telling the instructor rather than having it come directly from them because of the social implications.

Thank you all for your time and if you have any further comments or questions I would be happy to receive them.

Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you. This presentation, the students have been working on this for a long time and there has been a lot of cooperation and the students have done most of the work but there have been a lot of faculty and administrators who have work on this policy. So we’ve been talking about this for almost a year in Steering. You do not see all the work that students do so you would be quite impressed if you had been in the meetings that I’ve been in with the students.

That is the last item on the agenda. Does anybody have any unfinished business? New business? If not, we are adjourned. Be sure to return the clickers on your way out. Thank you. [1:43:54]