September 21, 2010
Senate Meeting Transcription

Claire Crutchley, chair: I call this meeting to order

Good afternoon. I am Claire Crutchley, Chair of the University Senate. I welcome you to the September Senate meeting. Senate membership is 88 Senators. At this time there are…, Russ how many Senators? Please turn on your clickers and click on A so we can see if there is a quorum in attendance; a quorum requires 45 senators.  Even though 45 have not clicked on, the secretary informs me that there are 58 Senators in attendance so a quorum has been established.

I will go over a few 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 August meeting. Russ Muntifering, secretary of the Senate, 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.  I have just heard that today is Dr. Gogue’s birthday.

Dr. Gogue, president:  Thank you guys, I’ve got about 4 things I want to cover with you, and then be happy to respond to questions.

First is budgets, probably last week you saw in the newspaper that the state had prorated the educational trust budget by 2 %, is that right Don? That brought us to 9.5% for the year. To be honest I think Don and his crew had anticipated 10%, so it was set aside early so we’re okay on that. I do feel for those in K–12 programs because they already started the school year, just as we have. When you prorate the budget 2% in September at the very last, it’s like a 24% budget cut to various programs. So pretty substantial. We also saw last week that the state of Texas has called for a 10% reduction in personnel at their universities, we also saw LSU removing about 700 positions based on their current budget. We have no idea going in to the next fiscal year on October 1 what will be the state in Alabama. The numbers that, Sherrie Fullford, lobbyist type folks will share with you , the educational trust fund is down about 1.2 billion dollars. If you look at that number and you figure they are going to prorate, if I had to guess, it was about a 150 million short for 2%, so you are probably looking at 8% would be a guess. Maybe something happens great or they get BP money all of the sudden or whatever, that’s probably in the ballpark, that’s a guess, don’t take it out of here and say that’s what we are going to do but probably in that ballpark.

Second thing I wanted to mention, about a year ago I mentioned that the U.S. State department was looking for universities that particularly wanted to develop relationships in Africa. U.S. Universities linked and tied two schools in Africa, they’ve come out with 11 and their goal is about 50 universities, but they’ve come out with 11 of the schools, these are awards that will last for 30 years, so pretty substantial ongoing support. Tuskegee won one, University of Connecticut, Brown, Syracuse, Colorado State, University of Indiana, Michigan State, Ohio State, Virginia Tech, and North Dakota State. So I still want to encourage our folks to think about it, look at those solicitations, see if there’s anything that fits in areas that you have interest in. I think it’s a real opportunity for us.

Third thing I wanted to mention, there has been some discussion on campus with concern relative to benefits and changes related to the new health care bill that was approved in the last few months. I want to share with you what may happen, but when you leave here to remember that going into next year, there will be the open season in November, you can protect your money through Flex accounts, no changes at all in the way we operate in the next year. That correct Don?

Don Large, executive vice president: Almost.

Dr. Gogue, president: Well with the dependant part…come on up.

Don Large, executive vice president: On the Flex Plan in 2011 the $5,000 maximum that you can shelter is still there, but you will no longer be able to spend that on over-the-counter products. Where in the past you could buy asprin or Tylenol, it has to be prescription and other related. In 2012 that $5,000 will likely go down to $2,500, these are IRS guidelines.

Effective October 1, we had the early open enrollment, we are one of the few institutions in the country that did that, and the president insisted that we do it if we could so we’ve worked through that and effective October 1 a number of you that might have been affected will be able to have your dependants up to age 26 covered. The regular open enrollment for that and all other changes in your benefits occurs in November and you’ll have your chance to get on board at that point.

The only other change in the benefits area so far under the national change, that’s occurred is we will in 2011 be capturing the amount of employer paid health insurance cost that we contribute. Remember you contribute, it depends, 20, 30 , or 40% of your health care cost and Auburn University does 60, 70, or 80%. And that 60, 70, or 80% will begin to appear in a little box in your W2, and that’s supposedly right now for your information, so as a consumer you can make more informed decisions as we go forward in health care, but you do have to begin to wonder is there another motive there for that being captured. Again we are being told that’s what we have to do, it’s not us doing that. Other than that those are the benefits changes so far. Stay tuned, there will be more as the years go by.

Dr. Gogue, president: Thank you Don. Remember you added about 30 million people with the national bill to have health care coverage and so to pay for that, what Don is telling you is they are looking on your W2 and are going to decide whether or not you have to take that money and then pay for it where it’s taxable. And probably long term the same thing will be done with Flex plans. But I think the important thing is next year the only change then is the over-the-counter that you cannot use on your Flex plan.
The final thing I want to mention is that we will present the Board of Trustees on Friday a salary supplement based on merit for all employees, faculty and staff. The average of that will be 4% and it can vary between 0 and 6%. Don’t know if that will be approved, but it will be presented to the Board this Friday.
I’ll be happy to respond to questions. (pause) Thank you. [9:34]

Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you Dr. Gogue.
I now invite Dr. Mazey to come forward to give some remarks from the Provost’s office.

Dr. Mazey, provost: Thank you , and the Provost’s Office continues to work on the university’s strategic plan. You are all very important to that plan we have 25 revised objectives for this year and we’ll be sending those out so everyone’s familiar with those. As part of the strategic plan one of the major goals is to enhance our research mission and so our office is working in conjunction with the VP for Research and the Associate Provost for Research office. They’ve had an emphasis in the past on undergraduate research and had put funds into that. We have done some reallocations. In the Provost’s Office we’ve actually decreased by 4 the number of support staff we have so we’ve done some reallocations of those funds to now do an internal search for a director of undergraduate research here at Auburn University. This is particularly important as we look at the quality of the undergraduate students that we’ve been recruiting. So I see Bruce Smith back here shaking his head that this is a good idea, so I hope you all believe that to be the case. You will be hearing about that announcement.

Also part of the strategic plan was an emphasis on sustainability and in working with Don Large and a Faculty Advisory committee they suggested that what had just been one part time position be divided into two positions. One is a director of university sustainability operations, more on the facilities side in what we can do to improve what we are doing here at Auburn in terms of our operations in sustainability. So we will be doing an internal search for that individual. In addition to that we have some sustainability programs, we have a sustainability minor and we certainly want to increase the funding that is out there and we would like to attract to Auburn University for sustainability on the academic side, so we are going to do again another .6, the previous undergraduate research is a .6 appointment because we want the individuals to still be involved in the their department in terms of teaching and research or outreach, and so this director of academic sustainability programs will be advertized very soon too. [12:15] if it’s not already out there. In terms of the process I never quite know when it is actually put out there.

John Mason’s office has recently been finding a part-time person to coordinate the efforts in food safety, in terms of our research efforts and generate external funding. All of those, they may look like new positions, but they are really from reallocated dollars, so in the long-term we’re saving, because out of the 4 positions that we’ve decreased in our office we’ve been able to reallocate these funds to these positions and they don’t total more than 2 positions.

We continue with the Deans searches, we had 3 candidates here on campus within the last couple of weeks for the dean of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences and we are just waiting now for that search committee to conclude its deliberations and give its recommendations. And the search committee for the Dean of Architecture, Design, and Construction is working and they should have candidates on campus before the end of the semester. The Deans held a retreat today, we had 3 areas of emphasis; teacher collaborations amongst out faculty and the colleges with external universities, also we had a discussion on how we could increase our revenue, enhance revenues here at Auburn, and a third discussion was on greater efficiencies. Any questions about what is currently underway from the Provost’s Office perspective? Thank you and thank you for all your good work.

Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you Dr. Mazey.
My comments will be short this month.

At the August meeting, there were comments from the floor that need further exploration. These have been sent forward to the appropriate committees. Also based on feedback from the Student Government Association from the comments at the August meeting and a faculty forum, the SGA has requested the Academic Honesty proposal be delayed to the October or November meeting.

As Dr. Gogue mentioned, the Board of Trustees will be meeting this Friday, September 24.  The agenda is posted online, if you are interested in seeing what is on the agenda. Faculty sit on the board as non-voting members; Dr. Flynn, past chair, on the overall board and other faculty on specific committees. If you have comments on any of the agenda items, please inform Dr. Flynn, myself, or the members of those committees because this is our chance to give feedback.

Also the Fall faculty meeting will be held Oct 12 at 3PM in Broun Hall auditorium and will occur before the October Senate meeting. All faculty are encouraged to attend.

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 will have your full voting rights. Each Senator or substitute Senator should have signed in and picked up a clicker to vote.

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.  If you are not sure that you voted, please vote again. Only your last vote will be recorded. Don’t worry that you are voting more than once. Are there any questions or comments?

Today we have two action items and three information items. Our first action item will be presented by

Larry Crowley, Secretary Elect of the Senate, and he is representing the Steering committee. [16:41]

Larry Crowley, Secretary Elect: Paul said it was passed in June for the final exam policy given students the conditional right to take no more than two final exams on one given date, if they do provide proper notice. Two items were referred in that motion to be addressed by committee. To the steering committee was referred the priority system, who should move, the second item and that was referred to the calendar committee in terms of what would be proper notice. This is a combined committee report, Robin Jaffe is here I believe, and he is the chairman on the calendar committee. so this is the resolution that was passed by both committees.

"Resolved, That the student unable to get faculty members to voluntarily move an exam will present this to the Associate Dean of their major college and, after verification, that Associate Dean will contact the faculty member(s) scheduled for the middle exam period(s) to arrange for a rescheduled exam;
2. That the deadline for student requests to move finals under this policy is the Mid-Semester Day;
3. That for the Fall Semester 2010 only the deadline will be October 31st, 2010."
And for the committee I move that the motion be adopted as read.

Claire Crutchley, chair: Since this is a recommendation from the Steering committee and also Calendar committee, it does not require a second. At this time I open the floor for discussion.

Herb Rotfeld, department of marketing, senator: I would like a question of clarification on the policy, the deadline is the deadline to make a request to the associate dean or is that a deadline for when they have to notify a faculty member that they have the conflict?

Claire Crutchley, chair: Would someone from the Calendar committee like to address that?

Robin Jaffe, chair calendar committee: That’s to notify the faculty member.

Herb Rotfeld, department of marketing, senator: Can a faculty member had an earlier date in his or her syllabus?

Robin Jaffe, chair calendar committee: This is a deadline.

Herb Rotfeld, department of marketing, senator: But yes, of course you could.

Constance Relihan, Liberal Arts, not a senator but an associate dean: If the deadline is to contact the faculty members be mid–term, what is the deadline to contact the associate dean, who has to negotiate, or settle things?

Claire Crutchley, chair: Would someone from Calendar or Steering like to address that question?

Robin Jaffe, chair calendar committee: That was a question that was not asked of us. So I don’t know if we need to look at that again or add another part to this. Could we have a discussion of that?

Claire Crutchley, chair: Would someone like to propose an amendment to the policy? [21:11]

Robin Jaffe, chair calendar committee: If nobody else will, I will propose and amendment. That one week following the mid-semester date that the student needs to be in touch with the associate dean to have the situation resolved.

Claire Crutchley, chair: One week following …

Robin Jaffe: The mid-semester day, that would be 7 days or 5 working days.

Claire Crutchley, chair: One week following the mid-semester date. And must contact the associate dean.

Robin Jaffe: That is correct.
(bit of clarification of wording)

Claire Crutchley, chair: Is that a friendly amendment to…is that okay with the steering committee and the calendar committee? I need a second for this amendment. We’ve got a second. Now we will vote on whether we will amend this proposal. We are just voting on the amendment not on the proposal. What we are voting on you will not be able to see while we are voting on it because we have to go back to the computer.

Please vote A – yes, B – no, C –abstain, on this amendment. Lets end the voting: A=57, B=1, C=3. The amendment passes. So now we will vote on the amended policy, back to the document camera. Any discussion on the amended policy?

Herb Rotfeld, Marketing, senator: Just requesting that you clarify the language under item 2 and just say, “the deadline for student requests to the affected faculty members to move finals…” That is the intent with what you changed with the wording, but you do need to make that clear. “The deadline for student requests to the affected faculty members to move finals…” and I would propose to the chair that she can rule this as a friendly amendment since I’m not changing the intent or guide of the amendment, just making it clear what they intended to say.

Claire Crutchley, chair: Is there any objection to putting this in as a friendly amendment? Let me get you wording straight please.

Herb Rotfeld, Marketing, senator: “the deadline for student requests to the affected faculty members, the affected instructors, to the affected gerbles…

Claire Crutchley, chair: We’re going to go with faculty members since that’s what others have said. Is that correct? “the deadline for student requests to the affected faculty members to move finals under this policy is Mid-semester Day.” [25:56] Are there any objections to this friendly amendment? (pause) Any discussion of the whole proposal? (pause) Okay then let’s vote on the proposal. We are now voting on this proposal that is presented on the screen as amended. A is a vote of yes, B is a vote of no, and C is abstain, and we will now have to go back to the computer.

Okay, we will close the voting. A – 60, B – 2, C – 2.  The proposal passes, thank you.

The second action item is nominees for the Competitive Research committee. It will be presented by Russ Muntifering, Secretary of the Senate, representing the Rules committee. 

Russ Muntifering, Secretary of the Senate: This committee currently consists of the associate provost and vice president for research as a continuing member [27:50] the associate Vice President for Research as an ex-officio non-voting member and 13 faculty one from each academic college and school plus the Library. We did not bring this to you at the last meeting for the simple reason that going all the way back to March when we solicited volunteers we had a single volunteer come forward and that individual’s administrative unit was already represented. So we made subsequent solicitations via e-mail, face-to-face, by phone and would like to present to you today the names of 4 individuals, Henry Fadamiro (Entomology & Plant Pathology) representing the College of Agriculture, Cathleen Giustino (History) representing the College of Liberal Arts,Vishnu Suppiramaniam (Pharmacal Sciences) representing the Harrison School of Pharmacy, and Daowei Zhang (Forestry & Wildlife Sciences) [28:52]

Claire Crutchley, chair: Are there any comments or questions on this slate of nominees? We will bring to a vote. (need to switch back to the computer) Please vote, A – yes, B – no, C – abstention. Results: A – 62, B – 2, C – 3. The motion carries.

The first information item is also from the Rules Committee. It is a proposed change in the Competitive Research Grant Committee that we just voted on the new members for. It will be voted on at a later date. Russ Muntifering will also present this item.

Russ Munitefering, secretary: Let me give you a little bit of history, this is a statutory committee that had responsibility for what has been known as the Competitive Research Program, before that it was the Research Grant in Aid Program has been relatively inactive for the last several years yet we’ve continued to seat people one semester in arrears of the program not knowing whether we’re going to have a program that year. You recall from John Mason’s presentation at the last meeting that the Competitive Grants program, the Interdisciplinary Research Program, the bio grants program the faculty mentoring program were all being more or less subsumed under a single newly announced AU Intramural Grants Program. This committee, we proposed to the Office of the Vice President for Research, is a perfectly good statutory committee looking for work, having been inactive for several years and the OVPR was in agreement that they ought to be charged with review and ranking of proposals to the new AU Intramural Grants Program. It’s conceivable that we’re talking about going from 2 or 3 years of inactivity, a handful of people reading 3 page synopses of research proposals to many, many proposals exceeding 10–15 pages in length and rather than involving tens of thousands of dollars, Carl help me, we could be talking along cash match requirement of the colleges and schools, millions of dollars. We’re talking about potentially significantly more work and it begs the question, is it likely that we are going to need more bodies, more horsepower to undertake the heavy lifting of review and ranking these proposals? [32:24] So with that in mind the Senate Rules Committee is proposing at next month’s meeting starting with some discussion today of revising Article 4, Section 19 of the Senate Constitution which describes the composition and the charge of the Competitive Grants Committee:

The Competitive Research Grant Committee shall consist of the Associate Provost and Vice President for Research as chair, the Associate Vice Presidents (singular, that represents a change) for Research as a non-voting members (singular), and 13 at least one faculty members. from each academic school or college and the Library. shall be represented by at least one faculty member. (That Would take it beyond the current statutory 13 members that are currently seated on the committee. And then finally a modification in charge) The committee shall establish policy for the Grant-in-Aid programs and review and recommend proposals for funding of proposals submitted to the AU Intramural Grants Program.

Claire Crutchley, chair: Are there any comments or questions about this change in the committee?

Carl Pinkert, research office in Pathobiology, not a senator: I think this is great to expand the wording that’s here, but one point in particular NIH, NSF, USDA, and other related panels and agencies and review policies do not recommend funding and therefore I’d suggest changing the wording at the end to: “review and rate proposals” submitted to the Grants Program.

Claire Crutchley, chair: Review and Rate proposals? So that is a recommendation and it may come back to the committee. Do you have that, Russ?

Any other comments about that or any other questions about this proposal?

Bill Sauser, management, senator: I understand that at least one faculty member from each academic school or college, is there to be a maximum number or is there to be any determination as to which colleges or schools have more than one?

Claire Crutchley, chair: Would somebody from Rules like to respond to that question?

Russ Muntifering, secretary: Bill at the current time there is no discussion taking place about placing a maximum number of individuals on the committee. I believe what we need to do is see what this first year of the program teaches us in terms of the number of proposals and the amount of work that this committee will have to undertake. It will enable us to get a better handle on the range of disciplinary representation that may need to be bolstered in specific areas. You are always going to be working one volunteer in seating cycle in the arrears compared with the current year’s programs. Like Promotion and Tenure and a lot of other things, but we are just going to have to see what the program teaches us in that regard. I’m not sure if the Associate VP would have any comments in that regard?

Bill Sauser, management, senator: That makes perfect sense to me and I’m aware that all of the committees are done with Senate approval, so however many numbers and names are listed, those would come forward.

Claire Crutchley, chair: Any other comments about this information item?
The second information item will be presented by Constance Relihan, Associate Dean in Liberal Arts. [36:58]

Constance Relihan, Associate Dean of Liberal Arts: I will be very brief. I’m here on behalf of the Auburn Connects Program to let you know about a survey that will be coming to you and any of you colleagues that are teaching undergraduate courses this fall. It is a plea to ask you to complete the survey and encourage your colleagues who are instructors of record to fill it out as well. As you know Auburn Connects, a common reading program, is part of our efforts to improve retention and it’s important that we start even that this is the first year we start assessing the effectiveness of that. So what we’ve, we is code for Iryna Johnson in OIRA, has developed a very brief survey that we were hoping will get us information, not about you or your colleagues, but about students. Two questions, the first asks you are you using Three Cups of Tea? If you click no you are done. If you click yes what’s going to show up is a list of the courses that banner has you being instructor of record for, you click (this is a lie, I am not teaching these courses, but for example) on whatever you might be using it in and you are done.

Our goal is to work back from this information to look at the students who are enrolled in these courses to sort that information to get the first semester freshmen who are enrolled in these courses and then to begin to track whether these students are retained at a higher than average rate. You can tell Iryna Johnson has helped me greatly, Shakespeare we don’t use stats quite so much, but this is our intention. So I would appreciate your help in doing this, I’m happy to answer questions about it. I’d also like to encourage you to come out to our events as they are happening. We had Mary Lightfine earlier this week, next week we’ve got a lecture by Doug Coutts, best in Human Sciences, one of the author’s of the book is coming later, check our Web site. If there are any questions about this survey I’d be happy to answer them.

I just wanted to come so you could see how brief and simple it was so when you got the e-mail you weren’t spooked by it. So, thank you.

Claire Crutchley, chair:  Are there any questions or comments for Dr. Relihan? Thank you. The last item on the agenda is an information item on a proposed scholarly incentive plan. Again this is information and it will   presented by Bruce Smith, chair of the Faculty Research Committee. This item is being presented for information this month.  [40:28]

Bruce Smith, chair of the Faculty Research committee: Thank you I hope you don’t mind that I am keeping you from that wonderful sounding rainstorm outside, but thank goodness we’ve got one. What I want to talk to you today about is something that the Faculty Research Committee has been working on for the past several months. A little bit of background: some of you have been here long enough to remember that there was a faculty research incentive plan and it was put forward a number of years ago, I believe it passed at the Senate level and then kind of died a quiet death somewhere between here and Samford Hall and the Board of Trustees. Over the past year the Faculty Research Committee has been hearing from a lot of faculty looking for potential incentives in the research arena. Those faculty have also been talking to the Provost, to the Vice President for Research, and to the Senate leadership. About 3 or 4 months ago those groups contacted me and the committee and asked, thinking this was a good venue for us to talk about incentives in research and ways we can develop and incentive plan. Perhaps revisit what had been done. Our committee started looking at this and looked at a number of different policies from different institutions, discussed it over the last few months and what I am presenting to you today is a result of those discussions. This is our draft of the incentive plan. We’d like to get your feedback on this, hopefully this does not come as a surprise to anyone. Members of the committee have been talking amongst their colleges and schools so we have gotten a tremendous amount of input from the faculty, but we certainly welcome any more input that you would like to offer. [42:09]

One of the most important things I’d like to point out is this is not the AU Research Incentive Policy, but the AU Scholarship Incentive policy, we want it mirror John Mason’s comments about scholarship being broader than classical research. So this policy really applies to any extramural funded programs that cover faculty salaries.

Hopefully you’ve all seen the link, I will go through it quickly, I don’t want to read it word for word to everyone here. There’s a preamble and really basically the concept here is we are talking about extramurally funded salary support. So that’s really the source when we talk about that of salary savings, that is a source of dollars that might be used in a formal way to provide an incentive for faculty members.

Fundamentally the point of this policy is to provide a direct incentive to faculty who receive extramural support that includes salary. That’s the fundamental underpinning of this policy. We recognized that there are plenty of methods of extramural support that do not include salary, this is not an attempt to tell people that you cannot apply for those sources of support. This is meant to encourage you, when possible, to apply for sources of support that do include salary funding because that does free up state or university dollars to do other things. And hopefully if we all get excited about this and apply for lots of grants and get them then we free up more money than we are spending in this program and we also bring in things like indirect cost which will also help the university out. Plus of course we add the university’s reputation in terms of its scholarly output.

We talk about guiding principles I’m going to run through these very briefly. Essentially the first principle is that when appropriate and where possible faculty are encouraged to put their salaries on grants so that frees up state dollars. Number 2 is probably the most important and you’ll probably recognize a key change in what happens here. When eligible funds are released by salary that comes in on a grant whether that be a grant for teaching, research, outreach, or service, any kind of extramural funding, we want to not limit this to classical research grants, that money can be used to create an incentive pool. That incentive pool, item 3, can be used for a variety of things including travel, equipment, faculty salary supplements, graduate student support and other activities to enhance the academic mission.

By and large the big change here is two fold. One, we are formalizing the concept that some of the salary support ought to come back to the faculty member who has generated it. While many of you already say, “That happens already in my department or college.” In many departments or colleges across this university we have found that that does not happen and it certainly not a formal arrangement, in many cases it depends on whether a faculty member knew to negotiate that as part of their offer with their department chair back when they were hired. But there is not a formalized system by which it’s recognized that some of these funds come back to the faculty.

In addition the big change is obviously this idea of faculty salary supplements. That you could in fact use some of this money to put money in your own pocket if you are the person who is writing the grant getting this funding and freeing up some salary. That’s a big change from current policy.

One of the key issues is where this policy is regulated. The committee felt very strongly that this money originates at the departmental level and is regulated at the departmental level. Typically it is the department head who is responsible for deciding where those dollars go. So the departments in this policy are responsible for determining how to distribute those funds to members within that department.
Some business keeping kinds of things. Obviously there are faculty members with joint appointments, you need to have agreement between the different units, there needs to be some negotiation between those units as to how that works with those individual faculty members.

This does not affect base salary. This is much like Dr. Gogue mentioned with the supplement that’s being proposed to the Board, this is a supplement to salary and it would be a one time or for the period of the grant kind of supplement and not a change in base salary. It is I believe, taxable income and would come through all the normal channels, but it does not affect base salary.

Importantly because many of our faculty are 9-month appointments and you will see there’s a percentage that comes later on, this policy does not affect summer salary for 9-month appointees in that it does not restrict the amount of summer salary that a 9-month appointment can get. The policy will state 20% and obviously 9-month appointees are looking for 33%, and so this is not going to affect that at all.

The particular incentive to be received by the faculty is to be negotiated with the department head or chair on a one-to-one basis. So for example and individual might well decide not to take a salary supplement, but rather put that money to a graduate student or to some other defined use in their research environment so that they can benefit in their academic setting from that money as opposed to their bank account benefiting. That is left to decide between the faculty member and their department head or chair.

The Provost and Vice President for Research must approve each department’s or unit’s plans for distributing funds, that’s to provide some sort of oversight at the university level to make sure that we have some agreement. That’s not to say that everyone’s program needs to be identical, it’s not the case at all and one of the reasons we say this is that there are very different needs between different types of scholarship and how this program might be applied. There are very different perceptions amongst different colleges about the requirements that might be needed to participate in this. Rather than trying to state those in a general policy and make a one size fits all, we’ve left that up to the departments and colleges to deal with, but to have some oversight of it through the Provost’s and Vice President for Research’s offices.

With specific reference to the actual process, faculty members should apply for the appropriate percentage. Most of you who’ve applied for extramural funding know that if you don’t put your salary on that grant, you need to create a cost/share account and deal with that fact that you are not paying salary off of grant. And this is simply, you know what percent effort you are putting in on this grant and you need to put that into the request. [49:44] A lot of discussion about what sources are appropriate for this, and basically any faculty funded Auburn sources that’s division 1, or division 3, or gift accounts, or endowments, any funds that are determined to be appropriate, typically grant funds are not appropriate for this. But other funds that are budgeted funds are appropriate, and again that’s a discussion that can be held at both the departmental and the college level with input from the OVPR and the Provost as to what is and what is not an appropriate salary to participate in this program. The faculty supplement will be limited to 20% of the annualized base salary. That’s to make it a fair deal between 9-month and 12-month faculty members. The faculty member and the department chair will have to write a written contract that states exactly what the agreement is and that incentive will be made once a year at the end of the fiscal year, so that you will get a bonus payment at the end of September based on what you brought in that year in terms of salary savings and your contracted agreement with your department head. Each contract must be approved by the Dean and the appropriate Vice President. That’s it, I’m open for comments, questions, suggestions.

Claire Crutchley, chair:  I open the floor to discussion.

Sanjeev Baskiyar, senator Computer Science: This is a question about the 20% that you have put in there. What really happens, I guess this is ultimately kind of a buyout type of situation, or buying out the state or contributing to the state portion of your percentage appointment. So suppose your salary is X and 20% goes toward the pool for you, does that include benefits because when you get back the salary out of the 20% will you benefits be again deducted or not?

Bruce Smith, chair of the Faculty Research committee: Okay the bottom line is, your salary is being paid for by the grant. Money that’s being freed up by that salary savings is no longer salary money, it is salary savings, it’s separate and can be used for almost anything. Because it does not affect your base salary it should not affect your benefits, it is a supplement and it would work the same way as the proposed supplement that’s being discussed coming up.

Sanjeev Baskiyar, senator Computer Science: Okay, can I clarify it further? I think what I was trying to say is suppose the salary supplement due to the faculty is $100. When the $100 is paid to the faculty will the benefits be extracted then again. That’s the normal procedure, the benefits are taken out of the $100.

Bruce Smith, chair of the Faculty Research committee: My understanding is that benefits come from base salary, taxes will be taken out of the $100 because it’s taxable income.

Sanjeev Baskiyar, senator Computer Science: When the (bull?) hits [53:13] there is no way, is my understanding, that the benefits is extracted once that salary supplement is received. That’s what I was told, I may be wrong.

Bruce Smith, chair of the Faculty Research committee: I think we have to get Marcie Smith to comment on the details of how that would work through the computer system. This is not a salary, it is not a monthly-payment, it would be a one-time payment by the University. [53:40] I think it would be handled the way internal consulting is handled as well, Income but not salary.

Sanjeev Baskiyar, senator Computer Science: Thanks.

Bart Prorok. Senator from Mechanical Engineering: This salary savings is it one hundred percent to the department or will some administration units be able to take some percentages out like the VPR offices and so on?

Bruce Smith, chair of the Faculty Research committee: Salary savings exists right now and right now it’s one hundred percent to the department or the college depending on who administers the salary. And there is some variability there depending on the type of salary so that some names, chairs for example are admitted administered at a college level, and so any savings on that goes back into a college level account not a departmental account. Typically salaries are budgeted at a departmental level and therefore any money that you bring in on a grant that pays your salary above what was budgeted and returns that budgeted money, that department head still has that budgeted money that year in the budget to deal with and that’s the salary savings that’s being discussed. So no, no one else has a finger in that pie, as far as I know. [54:59]

Sanjeev Baskiyar, senator Computer Science: So I guess what you are referring to about the 20% is the guidelines and each department will have a different understanding. What I was just wondering is, I guess when you contribute toward the state portion, how much do you have to contribute to get the 20%.

Bruce Smith, chair of the Faculty Research committee: That’s an excellent question that we spent a lot of time on with the committee. The question being of course if you bring in 20% of your salary do you get all that money? Or do you need to bring in 40% of your salary to get 20% of your salary as an incentive? That’s something that can be determined at the departmental and college level. It may depend on how much that money is currently used depending on the perception of the department as to how that ought to be handled. That was one of the mechanisms that the committee decided would be better addressed at the departmental level. There is certainly a very wide range of opinions on the committee as to how that should work and what those percentages would be, ranging anywhere from 95% to 100% of the salary savings being immediately available, to graded scales, to 50% of the salary savings being available for the incentive pool.

Claire Crutchley, chair: I recognized the senator from the other side.

Ellen Abell, senator from Human Development and Family Studies: My faculty were very interested in this, we have a system we like really well in our department. We just wanted to clarify your point 4 under your guiding principles was that as we’ve been talking about the department has the ability to negotiate with faculty how this is going to work. Could you talk about what it is that the Provost and the Vice President for Research must approve?

Bruce Smith, chair of the Faculty Research committee: You may as a faculty, one of the things I didn’t say is you may as a faculty opt out, and say “We don’t want to participate at all.” So we don’t have to sign contracts we don’t have a policy in our department. We are doing whatever we’re doing no without moving onto any other way of doing things, and that’s perfectly reasonable. I don’t think the Provost would have to approve of that, but if your department decides that they want to participate in the Incentive Plan, you need to generate a document that says how participation is regulated, that is for example, we’re going to say we don’t use salary savings for anything we’re going to give you back 100% of your salary savings, that’s what our department decides That’s great and you need to generate a document that says “our department has said this is our plan, this is the way in which this agreement will be conducted, 100% will go back to the investigator,” and send it on up through the chain and get the official stamp on it and start signing contracts.

Ellen Abell, senator from Human Development and Family Studies: So just to follow-up, that means that if we did participate in the Incentive, if we did put our plan forward can you imagine what circumstances might result to have it not be approved?

Bruce Smith, chair of the Faculty Research committee: Not really. I think partly there’s a need for us to just have a concept of what’s going on globally. There’s a lot of discussion and I’ll admit that I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea that departments are determining this because it could very well be that one department decides to participate and a department down the hallway decides not to and now we have a situation where two departments in one college are doing two different things and faculty feel picked on or discriminated or unable to participate. [59:18]

On the other hand if faculty aren’t allowed to participate and they want to then they have recourse through their department to push that issue and lobby their fellows and change their opinions. I think the concept that we have to reflect the committee’s feeling was the idea was to try to control excesses if you will or things that didn’t make sense, making sure that you weren’t committing 120% of salary savings, so that there was at least some oversight and control over what was going on.

One of the committees suggestions, that we have yet to pass on to the Provost, was that someone and we didn’t necessarily volunteer ought to perhaps if this becomes policy, generate a set of guidelines which gave ranges or suggestions or concepts to departments that would allow you to have a feeling for where we would be. I can tell you right now, certainly the amount of salary coming back, that suggestion from the committee would be anywhere from about 25 or 50% to a 100%. Obviously that depends on what that money is being used for now, too.

Ellen Abell: Thank you. [1:00:34]

Norbert Wilson, department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, senator: Could you be a little bit more clear on, I’m looking at part 3, AU sources that might be restricted, and what are those sources of funds that are ineligible for support under this split funded salaries?

Bruce Smith, chair of the Faculty Research committee: Any grant funding would be ineligible. It’s easier to find the ineligibles than the eligibles. Most and it’s a departmental and a college issue to define those sources  which are eligible. The clear one would be Division-1 funds, state money which you can substitute sponsored program money for that state money freed up budgeted state dollars to do something else, clearly eligible. Division-3 funds become a little more subject to other issues. We have talked to some degree about questions about endowment funding which is an ongoing stream of money that is committed to something, but again if you can free that money up that’s budgeted for that, that may be a departmental decision that endowment funding may be eligible. Certainly something I’d lobby for being paid mostly off endowments.

Norbert Wilson, department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, senator: Can I follow up just for clarification? So Extension and Experiment Station supported faculty may be under other rules?

Bruce Smith, chair of the Faculty Research committee: That would depend on the decision made by the Extension and Experiment Station.

Norbert Wilson: Thank you.

Bob Locy, department of Biological Sciences, not a senator: Bruce I think this is a wonderful idea, it’s long overdue and it’s been needed at Auburn for a long time, but like many marvelous ideas it could be a gigantic can of worms. And you’ve alluded already to some of the problems, I think there are some other problems that we need to be careful before we bring this forward for a vote that we resolve. It seems to me that there is an accountability issue that kind of underlies all of this, where if we are taking money from the instructional mission of the university and recommitting it now to be spent on perhaps graduate research assistantships or funding for research programs in general that there is some potential, almost liability in terms of accountability, for spending the state’s money in the way they deemed it to be appropriate to be spent. One concern would be that in the long run that could lead the legislature to cut money from our instructional budget because we’re clearly reallocating some of it for other ways so we must not need it for instruction. I’d hate to see that message sent to anyone else, but in the final analysis I just wanted to point out to you that I think there are some things of this nature that really need to be carefully looked at and a carefully crafted policy I believe can address all of these and I hope that you folks will take the care and time to do that.

Bruce Smith, chair of the Faculty Research committee: I’d appreciate any specific suggestions that you have Bob. I kind of, I don’t want to dismiss your concern, but that money is already being spent for not instructional things. So I don’t see this as a change other than creating a specific approach that does two things, there are two things that this policy does, it does not change how money is being spent with one exception and that is it is possible now for some of that money to go into someone’s personal pocket as opposed to a laboratory pocket. You certainly can elect to do something else. The second thing it does is that it institutionalizes the concept that that money is not just free money for department head or dean but some of that money as a reward for being successful should be returned to the investigator. That that is a concept that is no longer kind of an amorphous gosh it happens in this college but it’s not going to happen in this college at all unless that college decides they don’t want to do it. Now you have to make a decision, do you want to do this or not? But it’s not something that’s just left out in the ether. But the money itself right now when someone gets a grant, that money is being reapportioned and used for other things. That’s not a change in the way in which we do business.

Bob Locy, department of Biological Sciences, not a senator: Okay, I’ll be happy to talk with you about my concerns, I think the entire Senate doesn’t need to be preoccupied with this after the fact, but thank you for listening.

Claire Crutchley, chair: Are there other comments or questions?

Sanjeev Baskiyar, computer science, senator: Again, Bruce, I think this is wonderful attempt at doing this thing. I would personally been happier if there is more guidance in terms of…I feel uncomfortable that there is a sense of negotiation that you have to go through. To some it may be comfortable and to some not very comfortable. I guess faculty are not really good at negotiating things, so maybe there if you can fine tune it a little more in terms of setting upper and lower limits. How exactly will the mechanics of this thing is going to work out. I guess from your perspective doing it like that means that to leave it to the department head or the department becomes less but meet at some other place on the other hand there should be some kind of constraints so that there is some understanding so it goes without saying kind of stuff.

Claire Crutchley, chair: thank you for your comments and with specific comments I would suggest that you send them to Dr. Smith and the Faculty Research committee so that they work, this is not up for a vote today, so if you want to send specific comments

Bruce Smith, chair of the Faculty Research committee: I’ll just make one last closing comment on that and really reinforce with you that we were trying very hard to avoid specifics for a number of reasons, again one size doesn’t fit all. So specifics become very difficult in a very broad and diverse university such as this. And second there is a more political consideration. This is a policy that now once we bring it back to the Senate for a vote goes up the chain through the President’s Office and the Board for a vote. From a personal standpoint anytime you include specifics in a Board policy you lock yourself into those specifics. What we want the Board to do is approve the concept. What we want to do is regulate the way in which we do this. So my personal viewpoint on this and I believe is shared by most of the members of the committee since we’ve discussed it, is we need to keep the specifics out of this policy for that reason and because it is much easier to deal with this on a college or a departmental level. I hear your concern about guidelines and I think one of the things we need to do is provide guidelines under which this program would be operated, but not as part of this Board vote-able policy that would be my plea to you. Let’s do it some other way in some other place so that if we change the percentage we don’t have to go back to the Board and ask them to vote on it again.

Thank you all and I’d love to hear from you, e-mail, phone, whatever. Any specific changes, concerns you have please feel free to get in touch with me.

Claire Crutchley, chair: Thank you Dr. Smith. That is the last item on the agenda.

Does anybody have any unfinished business? 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. [1:09:27]