Transcript Senate Meeting
March 6, 2012

[0:43]
Ann Beth Presley, chair: I’d like to call the meeting to order. Good afternoon, I’m Ann Beth Presley, chair of the University Senate. Welcome to the March Senate meeting. I’d like everybody to get their clickers and click in to make sure that we have a quorum.

Please do it again. We have a quorum. A short review of the rules of the Senate, senators and substitutes for senators please sign in in the back and get a clicker so that you can vote. If you’d like to speak about an issue go to the microphone and state your name, indicate if you are a senator and state what 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.

The first item on the agenda is the approval of the minutes from the February meeting. Larry Crowley posted the minutes and sent a link to all senators. Are there any changes, additions, or deletions to these minutes? Hearing none the minutes will stand as approved.

I now invite Dr. Gogue to come forward to present the president’s remarks. [2:06]

Dr. Gogue, president: Thank you, I just have a couple of things today. Owen Parrish, where are you? This is our new head of our Student Government Association, he just took over today, it’s good to have you.

Second thing I wanted to share with you, seems like at every meeting we talk about Board of Trustees and the whole process, I’ll simply say that the nine names have been taken out of the box from the president protem of the senate, Dale Marsh, and they’ve now gone to the confirmation committee. so we’ll keep you posted on when the confirmation committee will begin to hold its hearings on each of the individuals but at some point they will have meetings in which they ask their questions.

Third thing I wanted to mention is every Monday Drew Clark gives an update on SACS and where we are. I guess I realize that a lot of you are working very hard on different elements of what’s necessary for us to meet the SACS reaffirmation visit that will be next year and I just want to thank you for that.

I had one other thing I wanted to mention to you. Ah, Provost search, anticipate…the committee has been reformed as I shared with you last time, the work is underway, and we hope to have candidates available on the campus in the later part of April. I’d be happy to respond to questions. [3:39]

Mike Stern, senator, economics: First I want to thank you for answering my question last time about salary compression and inversion.

Dr. Gogue, president: I don’t think I answered it very well.

Mike Stern, senator, economics: I’ll take anything I can get. I talked about it with some of my faculty that were suffering from it and showed them some of your remarks and whatnot and you used the term “we” a lot in your remarks. For instance in your transcript you said “we share the pain we know what you’re saying” and so forth, and it was unclear to me, because I use the term “we” a lot as well but sometimes I’m not clear about what context I’m referring to. so I did a little research on the recent salaries of the institution to see maybe what range of people we were talking about. And I did a statistical exercise, I took the current payroll from March and I took the payroll after the last small merit retirement adjustment we had in October, so I have matched up names and positions and whatnot and looked for salary changes and I noticed some. There were 3 in particular that I wanted to sort of bring up, I put them in rank order by they size of the salary change that I observed in the payroll. The third highest was Dr. Samuel Flynt, are you familiar with this individual?

Dr. Gogue, president: I’m not.

Mike Stern, senator, economics: He’s now dean of the School of Education at AUM, previously he was associate dean, so after October he was associate dean of education and in the March one he is now dean. And that raise was $29,510, okay. Seemed normal to me because associate dean to dean is a big change position so you’d see that raise roughly what you’d expect moving from associate dean to dean. The second largest was Dr. Judith Camencar, she is also at AUM, you may not be familiar with her. She was in mid-October after the last raise cycle was a professor of accounting and finance and she is now acting head that department, someone else had stepped down, and that salary increase was $29, 707, that was the second largest. That makes sense just annualization from 9 months to 12 months would normally pick that up. Then the number one that I found was an increase of $52,005 and that individual’s name is Daniel M. Gropper. I’m not sure if you are familiar with that individual, he is a member of the College of Business here on this campus. In the October file he was an associate dean and in the current file it also lists him as an associate dean of the College of Business; that one I had a difficult time explaining. The other ones of $29,000 were roughly the same, professor to head conversion or associate dean to dean is a big change in position, or if you like had a dean that became a provost, but if there is no change in rank of an individual inside of a college with a raise so far greater than anything else I could find at the university over the given period. I’m not sure how I can explain it without bringing in an issue of equity or merit. I just wasn’t sure if we say “we” whether it’s everyone or whether we have had procedures for some corrections in some cases at the institution.

Dr. Gogue, president: I’m going to have to have help. Donald, do you know? Is the Dean of Business here? Please share with us. Michael, I want to tell you that I’m glad you didn’t find my name in the top 3, I was worried.

Bill Hardgrave, dean of the College of Business, senator: The changes that you are referring to there with Dr. Gropper was a change in several things, one was a change of responsibilities in increasing the scope and the second thing was, if you look at his total salary package–I’m not sure where you got your earlier numbers and the latter numbers, but there was a change of a few thousand dollars but it was not a change of the $52,000. There are other things that probably don’t show up on the state line, I’m guessing. Again we can take this offline, I’m not sure where the $52,000 came from, but there was not a substantial raise for Dr. Gropper.

Mike Stern, senator, economics: The October 12 file was I believe it was a hard line, I know because we did budget in regards to transfer this position as well was $167,995 and in the March 5 file it and it is also true in the January 12 file is $220,000.

Bill Hardgrave, dean of the College of Business, senator: Right. So the first number that you gave did not include his total salary, which the second number you gave does include his total salary. So there were things in the first one such as a professorship, executive courses and that type of thing that was not showing up on the first number but is rolled into the second number. So his total package increased very little. [9:26]

Mike Stern, senator, economics: Are you referring to the Luck professorship?

Bill Hardgrave, dean of the College of Business, senator: Yes.

Mike Stern, senator, economics: That was awarded a long time ago.

Bill Hardgrave, dean of the College of Business, senator: Right, and I’m sure it doesn’t show up in the 167 and that’s most likely reported separately.

Mike Stern, senator, economics: Aren’t most of those professorships around $7,000?

Bill Hardgrave, dean of the College of Business, senator: I couldn’t tell you exactly what his is off the top of my head.

Mike Stern, senator, economics: Are you saying the difference is the Luck professorship?

Bill Hardgrave, dean of the College of Business, senator: No. Like I said there are other things, the executive education that he was doing that was not showing up in the base salary that was rolled into the new salary. Again I am happy to take this offline and we can go through the numbers.

Mike Stern, senator, economics: Was there a change in his title? New Duties?

Bill Hardgrave, dean of the College of Business, senator: Yes.

Mike Stern, senator, economics: Is that reflected on your Web site?

Bill Hardgrave, dean of the College of Business, senator: I don’t know whether it’s reflected on the Web site or not. The Web site is under revision right now, but it may or may not be. It should be with the new Web site that will be launched in a week or so.

Dr. Gogue, president: Let me just ask Bill, if you will, you and the provost get together and have some discussions, Michael if you will please sit down and visit with the provost.
Any other questions, that I can defer to someone else? (laughter) Thank you all. [10:57]

Ann Beth Presley, chair: Speaking of deferring, the president and the provost have a chance to go to Chile so we put this through the Rules Committee and in concurrence with the vote of the Rules Committee the General Faculty Meeting has been moved to April 10, from March 20 to April 10, so if you would please mark your calendars. At that General Faculty Meeting, Dr. Gogue will give the State of the University Address and also please vote for your senate officers, voting will open on April 5 at 8:00 a.m. and close on April 9 at 5:00 p.m., the results will be announced at that meeting.

As most of you know, this semester we are implementing the new administrator evaluation process approved by this body. Therefore in the coming weeks you will be receiving e-mail invitations from the chair of the senate administrative evaluation committee and from the Senate to participate in an anonymous online surveys for your department head and chair of your College, School, and Dean and Associate and Assistant Deans, also online surveys of upper administrators. We strongly appreciate your participation and your input is very important. The surveys are confidential and administrated by the office of institutional research and assessment under the chair of the senate administrator evaluation committee.

The first action item is the vote on the Rules committee members and Larry Crowley, secretary present this information. [12:41]

Larry Crowley, secretary: Good afternoon. We have a slate of 3 candidates for 3 open positions. When I call your name if you would stand, Steve Duke, from chemical engineering; Forest Smith, from pharmacy; and Bob Cochran, from accounting; their bios were posted online and I submit that slate of candidates.

Ann Beth Presley, chair: Again the Rules Committee is the committee on committees and we are filling 3 slots today. They staff all of the committees on campus it’s a heavy duty job and truly appreciate everyone who is willing to volunteer and serve.

The first vote is on Steve Duke. All of those in favor press A and opposed press B. A=60, B=2. The vote passes 60 to 2, thank you, Steve Duke is elected.

The next vote is on Forest Smith. All of those in favor press A and opposed press B. A=58, B=2. The vote passes 58 to 2, Forest Smith is elected.

The last vote is on Robert Cochran. All of those in favor press A and all opposed press B. A=60, B=5. The vote passes 60 to 5, Robert Cochran is elected. Congratulations, we have 3 new members on the Rules Committee and the term of these members will begin in August.

The second action item is the resolution on selection, duties, and terms of department head and chairs and this will be presented and handled by Bill Sauser, chair-elect. [16:04]

Bill Sauser, chair-elect: Good afternoon, this proposed resolution was brought to you last month by Dr. Claire Crutchley who is immediate past chair, on behalf of the executive committee. Here’s the resolution as it stands. I would be pleased to answer any quick questions. [16:35] Then what I’d like to do if I might, madam chair, is move this by reading it into the minutes and then speak in favor of it as is privilege of the mover, then lay it out there for faculty discussion and possible amendment and vote. Is that alright?

Ann Beth Presley, chair: Yes.

Bill Sauser, chair-elect: Thank you. Well there is the proposed resolution and if there are any quick questions I’d be glad to address them.

Steve Brown, senator, political science: Bill we just have one quick question from some of the members of the department relative to the chair of the department should not have tenure in office, I’m sorry should “serve for a stated term, but without prejudice to reelection.” We did not know if that meant, as in political science where we do have a term limit, does that mean you can have no term limits? Our bylaws state that the chair can serve again if someone serves and intervening term, but we weren’t sure if that would negate those bylaws relative to a term limit.

Bill Sauser, chair-elect: Let’s state for the minutes of the Senate that indeed it is not intended to override any departmental policy. So college, school, departmental policies on term limits would prevail. This simply states that if someone has served a term and is eligible to serve a second there would be no prejudice.

Steve Brown, senator, political science: Okay, thank you.

Bill Sauser, chair-elect: Thank you.

Wesley Lindsey, senator, pharmacy practice: So as I was reviewing the minutes of this as we were discussing this in our department, I just want to make sure that I am clear, I guess maybe a little background, it seems we have the two major administrative structures of a rotating chair and continuous appointment head, and am I reading this correctly then that essentially does away with what the current structure of a continuously appointed head? And we would essentially have one departmental level administrative structure with a rotating or reelected chair? Is this term limited?

Bill Sauser, chair-elect: The resolution as it is written does not do away with the two titles, head or chair, it does away with the concept that there is a continuing appointment without a limit.

Wesley Lindsey, senator, pharmacy practice: And what was the rationale, again I reviewed the minutes, I think that question was asked but I am not really clear on the rationale for why if we have these two structures why we are choosing to do away with one at this time?

Bill Sauser, chair-elect: I think it’s not so much the choice to do away with one because I will be presenting another resolution that we will be proposing for vote next month that actually lays out different procedures for the appointment of the two. But what we are seeking to do is see to it that the university is in compliance with AAUP policy with which we as Senate officers agree that there shall not be a continuing appointment of any departmental leader, rather there should be some set limit or term.

Wesley Lindsey, senator, pharmacy practice: And may I ask for folks who were hired or recruited under a department head agreement with the understanding that they would be provided a continuous appointment, then would this if we adopted this particular proposal would that then change? The terms under which that they understood to be brought here that they would no longer have a continuing appointment, that their position would be changed to a termed appointment?

Bill Sauser, chair-elect: That would be a decision made by the Provost and the Dean, but I don’t believe so. I believe the idea here is going forward. It’s not an effort to change the terms of anyone’s current appointment. So I think there would be some grandfathering decisions made by the Provost and the Dean. Thank you, are there other quick questions before I move this for action? [20:41]

David King, senator, geology and geography: It’s not really a question. I think it’s interesting that you would take literally the language from the AAUP statement and not develop some language specific not say to Auburn but just because it came from the AAUP statement on government doesn’t mean that it’s a perfect paragraph, for example the issue of interims is not discussed in this paragraph. It’s just my comment that I don’t know that we need to go to some statement from the AAUP and copy it and then that’s our policy. I think we need to think about also what the statement does say.

Bill Sauser, chair-elect: If that’s a question, then may I respond? Okay. The AAUP statement is already in the Faculty Handbook, but it is dotted out with ellipses and so forth and we wanted the entire statement to be in the Handbook not with ellipses. So that statement is clearer than what we currently have in the Handbook. I would certainly agree no statement is perfect and when I move to advocate for the motion I’ll certainly express my concerns as well.

With respect to interims, that will be addressed in another resolution that I’ll be presenting on behalf of the Steering Committee once this action is dealt with.

If there are no other questions then I would like to move on behalf of the executive committee of the University Senate the motion that appears here. Madam parliamentarian should I read it? She states that I should read the Be it resolved, the whereas’s stand as you read them.
Whereas; the selection, duties and tenure of department heads/chairs varies across Auburn University,
And Whereas; the Association of American University Professors (AAUP) published a statement on appointment, duties and tenure of department heads and chairs in the document “Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities,”
Be it resolved, that the AAUP statement on selection, duties and tenure of appointment of department heads/chairs shall be adopted as follows:
“The chair or head of a department, who serves as the chief representative of the department within an institution, should be selected either by departmental election or by appointment following consultation with members of the department and of related departments; appointments should normally be in conformity with department members’ judgment. The chair or department head should not have tenure in office; tenure as a faculty member is a matter of separate right. The chair or head should serve for a stated term but without prejudice to reelection or to reappointment by procedures that involve appropriate faculty consultation. Board, administration, and faculty should all bear in mind that the department chair or head has a special obligation to build a department strong in scholarship and teaching capacity.” [24:10]

Ann Beth Presley, chair: This motion is coming from a committee and does not require a second. Is there any further discussion?

Bill Sauser, chair-elect, professor of management: As the maker of the motion, I simply want to state that the purpose of this resolution is to state in it’s entirety the existing AAUP policy statement instead of ellipses and so forth that leave out such things as duties. We are trying to make it clear that there is no continuing or unlimited term for departmental leaders, rather we are leaving it to department, school, college policy to determine what that term is. We also have a resolution coming that would make it clear what the difference between chair and head is. We did not seek to address every issue in this particular resolution.

James Goldstein, senator, English: I do generally support the motion especially the idea of not having an unlimited continuing appointment, but in discussions I’ve had there are a number of people who’ve expressed the view that there should be some kind of term limit and we think that a ten-year maximum is a reasonable figure. So I’d like to make a motion. I move that the resolution include the following requirement, after the statement of AAUP principles:

"Regardless of the term of office, a department head or chair will not serve more than a maximum of ten years in that position."

Ann Beth Presley, chair: Is there discussion for this? Yes we have a second. Is there discussion on the floor for the motion?
[26:57] voices dropped out

James Goldstein, senator, English: Sorry about that, Yes this is a motion to amend the previous motion

Wesley Lindsey, senator, pharmacy practice: Is the current question/discussion for the amendment or for the entire motion?

Ann Beth Presley, chair: For the amendment.

Wesley Lindsey, senator, pharmacy practice: So what was the rational for ten-years as the maximum for the term? Is there some thought on that?

James Goldstein, senator, English: the rational was that we’re aware of currently in various units bylaws that there are variations in current terms, 3-years, 4-years, 5-years and we thought that especially in the spirit of the AAUP language it says that reappointment should be prejudice to people currently serving that we thought that if there was a unit that had a maximum of 5-year terms that one renewal would give the flexibility for that kind of unit and we were looking for a number that would be a round number that someone serving in that position, without it theoretically they could be in there for 20 years and many of us feel that at a certain point you loose touch with your faculty and you forget what it’s like to be a regular faculty member. So the number we came up with is 10 as a good balanced reasonable number. [29:10]

Mike Stern, senator, economics: The amendments fine but I would use the word continuous. If somebody served 8 years many years ago, someone else has been in there for a while and they want to reelect them to a 3-year term so that would be 11 I don’t see that as a problem. Most things are continuous, so no more than 10 continuous years in the position. If you did it a long time ago and other people have served and the department wants you to serve again at a later point, I’m not sure what that problem would be, so I would say two consecutive terms or 10 continuous years. Just a personal opinion.

Rusty Wright, senator, fisheries: I think that goes to that point as well. I am confused here by the language, when we say maximum years in that position do we mean maximum years per term and then that would fit with the language in the original. Otherwise are we talking about can they serve 10 years and then is there prejudice after 10 years for reelection? Or not are we talking about terms or total in the position?

James Goldstein, senator, English: My intention was that regardless of how many set terms there were, this would be the maximum number of years.

Ann Beth Presley, chair: So it stands as written?

James Goldstein, senator, English: Yes

Ann Beth Presley, chair: Okay, thank you.

Wi-Suk Kwon, senator, consumer affairs: Just wanted to convey that 4 of my department’s faculty members expressed their concern about this amendment to the previous motion in that while there should be prejudice against a current department head or chair who is doing a very good job and the faculty is in consensus that that person has to continue, just because he or she has served 10 years already.

Ann Beth Presley, chair: Thank you. [31:38]
We are ready to vote on this amendment, the revised amendment. Just the amendment. If you accept the amendment vote A, if you don’t accept the amendment vote B. A=14, B=52. The amendment is defeated 14 to 52.
So we go back to the original motion.

Wesley Lindsey, senator, pharmacy practice: So again, when we were discussing this as a whole, this is not a question so I didn’t bring it up earlier, but there are some concerns from the School of Pharmacy as a whole and I realize that Bill said that there are allowances for current existing structures, grandfathering, etc. but that is not really laid out in this policy. So if this policy were to be adopted as written, this essentially blows up the School of Pharmacy’s administrative structure from continuous heads to a rotating chair type of situation or at least a term limited chair type of situation, and there are also some concerns from the smaller departments where what makes one eligible to serve as chair, does one need to be fully promoted? And in some smaller departments there could be some concerns that there may only be one possibly even two that are fully promoted. Then are associate professors eligible to serve as department chairs and they would be evaluating those who are further advanced in the process? We just have a lot of concerns with this and how it’s written and it would really be detrimental, we think, to the School of Pharmacy and possibly the other professional programs. I haven’t heard from Veterinary Medicine, Nursing, or any other programs that use the department head structure and how this would necessarily be implemented.

Ann Beth Presley, chair: Thank you.

David King, senator, geology and geography: I think one of the weaknesses here is that is was just copied from the AAUP statement which doesn’t mean it’s perfect. It says, “…appointments should normally be in conformity with department members judgment.” Can we really think of a situation where it shouldn’t be in conformity with the department members judgment? So it says “normally” so it’s the abnormal I think we have to worry about. I am not going to propose an amendment to pass or fail based on how it’s stated there, that’s the intention of the mover of this, but there are all these situations that come up that are abnormal sometimes and there’s a way around conformity with department members judgment in the wording of this proposal. If I could say one other thing that’s related to the previous amendment we wouldn’t be talking about possibly amending this with term limits if there weren’t department heads or chairs that have served too long in their position and they have become unpopular with their faculty and there wasn’t a good way to see them on their way.

Ann Beth Presley, chair: Thank you.

Ruth Crocker, senator, history: Well, if I were grading this language I’d put vague down the side because I think you could drive a bus through this thing, it’s very, very vague, as David King pointed out. Perhaps we could ask the committee to revisit this and improve on the AAUP statement.

Ann Beth Presley, chair: Do you want to send it back to committee?

Ruth Crocker, senator, history: I think that would be …do you want an amendment?

Ann Beth Presley, chair: A motion.

Ruth Crocker, senator, history: Yes I make a motion to send this back to committee and make it more…

Ann Beth Presley, chair: You have to have a second.

Ruth Crocker, senator, history: … make it more explicit, less vague. I mean for example with appropriate faculty consultation, what is appropriate? What’s inappropriate and who judges? So it is full of gaps and…

Ann Beth Presley, chair: It dies for lack of a second. (some commotion.) It’s already been ruled on, according to the parliamentarian. You can do it again.

Ruth Crocker, senator, history: I’d like to make a motion that this vague policy be sent back for a redraft. Or second draft that would be more exact and more useful as a guideline and improve on the AAUP statement.

Ann Beth Presley, chair: Alright, is there a second? Yes we have a second. It’s been moved to a second that we send it back to committee. All in favor press A, opposed press B. A=44, B=17. Okay, it goes back to committee. [38:14]

The next item on the agenda is an information item pending action which is the proposed resolution on Administrator Hiring Procedure, and this will be presented and handled by Bill Sauser, chair-elect.

Bill Sauser, chair-elect: Thank you, and I don’t write them I just read them. Here’s a resolution that is coming from the Steering Committee. This is a resolution that we intend to move for action next month. It could likely use some perfecting and I would invite those of you who wish to make suggestions to send those to Dr. Claire Crutchley who has been spearheading the preparation of this motion. Since it’s not being moved for action I don’t think I need to read it into the minutes, but I do want you to see it to realize that it will be posted on the Senate’s Web page for a month. Any suggestions you have can be sent to Dr. Crutchley and I also offer to answer any questions that you may have at this point.

Steve Brown, senator, political science: Bill again, just a couple of questions for clarification; three of them that my department members asked me to ask. The one is why, what has precipitated this sort of administrative hiring provision and the uniformity of such hiring decisions. And secondly particularly with hiring department chairs and heads in number 5 there where it says, “For departments hiring department chairs, either an external or an internal search will be conducted. In either an internal or external search, a search committee will be formed to review applications and make a recommendation to the dean.” We were wondering, is that similar to what you had in the previous motion? A regular department meeting together to tell you to go ahead and select their new department chair, would that be covered under that or is this when you have an internal candidate from somewhere on the university that’s going to come and be the faculty member in your department, maybe they are not from that department originally, but we didn’t know what internal acts refer to. And the third thing was, who forms the search committee for these chairs and things? So the why, and what exactly internal means, and how the search committee itself is composed relative to the department head hiring.

Bill Sauser, chair-elect: Okay, first question was why. The answer to that is that some years ago this body proposed a resolution on interims and appointing individuals, search committees, appointments, interims. At that time we wrote a very tight resolution it was passed by this body, it was not adopted by the president who was in office at that time, so it is not in effect. We do not have at present any policy on interims and appointments. Dr. Gogue has operated in good faith under the old policy that did exist, which I think was a good faith measure, but we are all aware that there is no such policy. We felt that a policy was needed. We did not feel that as tight a policy as was considered before was needed because times have changed. When that earlier policy was written we had a condition where we had a number of people appointed in interim positions and they would hold those positions for a year, two years, perhaps three years before a search would begin. Which would certainly give the impression that the internal candidate was favored and would drive off external candidates. So we as a steering committee believe that a policy is needed that’s why we brought this one forward.
Let’s see now you will have to remind me of your second question.

Steve Brown, senator, political science: With that interim thing I can certainly understand that with interims but it appears that this would relate to any hiring decision. Again if you have a new chair, if your chair’s term has expired, would that be covered by this policy? So that was the why but what does internal search vs. external search and then the search committee…would you clarify again?

Bill Sauser, chair-elect: Yes, I remembered your second question now and you’ve asked a 4th now. The second question had to do with whether this would apply going forward, and I think the answer to that is yes it applies to appointments from here forward.
The third question…

Steve Brown, senator, political science: To appointments or elections? If these are dean appointed positions…

Bill Sauser, chair-elect: I haven’t answered that question yet. Let me try to deal with the 1, 2, 3, 4. So I dealt with one. Number 2 is would it be in effect from now forward. The intention is yes it would. The third question was who would appoint the search committee? The search committee would be appointed by the appointing officer, in other words the individual to whom the position reports. There are certainly statements in the resolution as to what that search committee should be composed of.
Now, your forth question? I’m sorry for interrupting.

Steve Brown, senator, political science: Not at all, and I apologize for interrupting you with all this. You started in answering my first question referring to interim searches and we all remember Auburn’s nickname back then was Interim U, but this seems to refer to not just to appointments or interim positions, but anytime a, and I’m not only referring to the hiring of a department chairs and heads because those are the concerns of my faculty, but anytime a department chair is going to change over because of term limits, because of anything else, will they now follow these procedures, there must be a search committee it will be appointed, that search committee appointed by who the dean? And is it for any type of changeover in your unit chair or head? [44:50]

Bill Sauser, chair-elect: Yes that is the intention, going forward whether it’s an interim appointment or a continuing administrative appointment, not continuing tenured appointment. But the point would be that yes this lays out procedures by which such searched must be conducted. And yes the idea is that any time you are seeking to appoint a new department head that requires an external search. Any time you are seeking to appoint a new department chair that could be either external, if there is funding for a position or and internal search. And the search committee would be appointed by, in this case of department head by the dean and it should be composed of individuals affected by the position. It also as you note would affect hiring permanent positions above the level of department chair or head thus we’re talking about appointments of deans, vice presidents. We are certainly not going to bind the Board of Trustees on their appointment authority and would not intend to, but the point here being is we are trying to give some guidance as to what searches must be held and the length of time under which an interim may serve before he or she must resign to be considered.

I do want to point out, you haven’t asked this question but I do want to point out that the policy states that if an individual has served for interim for more than 12 months prior to the search, the individual should resign before seeking the permanent position. What we’re getting at there that was under the first grouping number 4, what we’re getting at there is if an individual has served as an interim for more than a year before the search begins, understand when the search begins, that’s what were getting at, we’re not saying that someone who has served for a few months when the search begins needs to resign. Just if the search begins more than 12 months following the appointment. That wasn’t a question you asked.

Steve Brown, senator, political science: Thank you. [47:12]

Bill Sauser, chair-elect: Sure, thanks, and that was a good suggestion. As I said if you have specific language changes that you’d like to recommend feel free to send them to Dr. Claire Crutchley so that she can address them in this document.

Rusty Wright, senator, fisheries: In line 4 there it talks quite a bit about how department heads would be searched for that a national search would be conducted, but there is no language in there about how internal candidates might be treated or encouraged or not encouraged to apply. Internal candidate can have that same chilling effect on a national search.

David King, senator, geology and geography: I want to say it’s much appreciated all the effort that’s going into developing these guidelines because it’s something that’s certainly been needed. What concerns me is, I know everything we do here in the senate is advisiory and can be overruled at any level, but…a lot of these statements are should be, may be, there is not a lot of definitive verbs in there. I need James Goldstein to keep me straight on the English terms here. So, in other words, there’s always those abnormal situations where it says should be and we didn’t do it that way because well there were these circumstances. So I think a lot of this language could be sharpened. Obviously this wasn’t written by a lawyer, but I thinks some of this language could be sharpened so that we can cut down on the number of exceptions. If we intend this to be a really firm set of guidelines I would just ask those that plan to review this before it’s voted on to take a look at the verbs there.

Bill Sauser, chair-elect: Thank you and James I would invite your recommendations for language. Again send those to Dr. Crutchley. We certainly would like this to be perfected to the extent that it can be.

Guy Rohrbaugh, senator, philosophy: It sounds as if we’re mandating national searches for associate dean positions and that struck me as not obviously a wise mandate. I find it kind of unimaginable that a dean would be forced to consider people from outside. It sounds expensive too for something typically we’re not going to fill that way. [50:05] I would look at that one again.

Bill Sauser, chair-elect: That’s a good point, Guy, and I would invite you to send that comment also to Dr. Crutchley. You make a very good point.

Mike Stern, senator, economics: Roll that down to the very bottom. I’m looking at that third item there, the very last one. It says, “Deviation from the above guidelines by the appropriate authority shall be made with notification of and input from the affected faculty and/or search committee. When appropriate, Senate leadership should also be informed of such deviations.” So is that an escape clause that as long as you inform people you, you are going to violate all the rules, you are free to do so?

Bill Sauser, chair-elect: Is that a question? I’d be glad to respond to that. It is certainly not intended to be an open invitation to violate any policies or procedures, we certainly do count on the good will of our President, our Provost, our Deans to follow these policies. There are times when deviations are necessary in the opinion of the appointing authority and we want to be informed of those, if such a deviation is believed to be necessary. We would like to know about it we would also like the faculty members being affected to know about it and to understand why. [51:36]

Mike Stern, senator, economics: Okay, same question. I’m familiar with the selection of department chairs where the faculty get together as a group they discuss stuff, they elect someone, they inform the dean who they elected; is that allowed under this policy?

Bill Sauser, chair-elect: I think the dean may charge the committee in any way that the dean so wishes.

Mike Stern, senator, economics: Well that’s not a search committee.

Ann Beth Presley, chair: This is the last comment on the question. We need to move on to the rest of the meeting. And send your comments to the chair, Claire Crutchley on this one.
Now we move on to Bliss who is going to talk to us about e-textbooks and digital courses. [52:36]

Bliss Bailey, director of OIT: I figure what better venue for there to be for me to use technology that I’ve never used before than here, right. I’m going to use a presentation system called Prezi, it’s an online system. As I was finishing this presentation earlier, the system went down and I thought, that was great that was revenge that was perfect me. For every faculty member who’s experienced an outage with classroom technology or the internet connectivity, I was there, I was right with you.

I wanted to talk about electronic materials and talk a little bit about why that’s relevant in discussion because these are some of the things you may see on the desks in your classroom. There are still a lot of people carrying a conventional laptop, they are pretty common out there, some people have downsized so they like netbooks, they are pretty handy too. I tried to borrow a mac air, nobody would let me borrow it, there’s one, everybody loves them so much no one would let me borrow one because they are so nice. This is a windows tablet PC, I like being able to write on it I guess that’s kind of a throwback and a reflection of my age, but I like that. These are really popular, I like mine use it on a daily basis, it’s an iPad, there are a bunch of other vendors out there with them. This is a Kindle fire, it’s also pretty nice for reading it runs a Web browser too. This is a regular Kindle, this is a nook, another tablet device and actually the guy that works for me that owns this, hacked it and put android on it so it really is not a nook it’s some Franken-tablet. This is an android phone and pretty handy for video and text and e-mail and all that stuff, this is your typical iPod touch, I’ve dropped this one and broken the glass on it but it works pretty well. This is my son’s iPod, he’s perfectly happy, you may think this is not a good presentation device, he’s perfectly happy watching the Lord of the Rings on this device. It also has a video camera on it and this is the old version, the new version of this is about the size of a book of matches, he doesn’t know what a book a matches is he has never seen one of those, but he knows what this is. So this is why we need to talk about electronic course materials. [55:44]

The thing to know about Prezi is that it really easy to make people sea sick with it, I’ve tried not to do that. You’ll see people who are new Prezi users, they have lots of zoom ins and zoom outs and twists and turns and you can’t sit through a presentation, so I’ve tried to avoid that.

The things that we are going to talk about today are electronic textbooks, coursepacks, interactive packages that folks are using on campus, and our learning management system (LMS) and how it ties in with all of this. I’m going to flash up quite a few headlines and the first paragraph of a number of articles. A vast majority of these articles come from The Chronicle. If you go to the online version of The Chronicle and you do a search for electronic textbooks or e-textbooks and you limit your search to one-year, you are going to find a lot of articles. It is a very rapidly changing technology and a rapidly changing marketplace. The problem is the industry can’t decide what it’s doing and what it should do. We have different demands, they have huge concerns over intellectual property and things keep changing all the time. New people come into the marketplace all the time, Apple had a big announcement not long ago so it’s a rapidly changing marketplace and difficult to make plans for the future.

It’s gotten so bad that now we have to bring in third party advisors to help the students decide what format of textbook that they should have. In our case one of the third-party advisors that we have working for us is the Auburn University Bookstore. Rusty are you in here? Rusty Weldon is here and he’s responsible for acquiring textbooks for the campus. Two or three years ago we thought electronic textbooks were just going to rule the world and rule it very quickly and they are coming on, but because of the problem with the technology and the publishing companies have not gotten it quite right yet, it’s kind of slow. What we’ve seen instead really is an incredible growth in rental of standard textbooks. I know when I was in school the standard model for textbooks was, I bought them and tried to find them used if I could get them and then at the end of the term if this was a textbook that I wasn’t going to keep then I took it back to the bookstore and I sold it back. Hopefully I got a little money for it and that helped me buy the next semester’s textbook, but rental has become really big and in talking with Rusty we learned that we stock about 2,500 different texts and of those about 800 of them are available for rent. So that’s becoming a big piece of the marketplace and that’s not electronic version that’s just renting of paper textbooks.

That is essentially how electronic textbooks work as well, for the most part you are getting that for a limited amount of time. All these changes in distribution and the technology itself is very disruptive for the industry. Nebraska Book is one of the oldest companies that is a wholesaler or distributer of textbooks so they have relationships with hundreds of bookstores around the nation, at least here we have a relationship with them through the University bookstore, J&M, they are in chapter 11, so it’s very disruptive technology. The textbook publishers are really watching the movie and music industries, piracy is a huge problem and their concerned about it as well. This is an older article from 2008, the publishers had real piracy concerns and this was just related to people actually scanning textbooks creating pdfs and putting those pdfs online. But the concerns hold over for electronic versions of the textbooks as well. That’s one of the reasons we have some issues the distribution methods, that’s why the technology is changing so much. We really can’t quite get comfortable with them. The Kindle has done a good job, Amazon is doing a good job with the Kindle mostly with text based books, but with a higher value textbooks the publishers really use some interesting technology try to guard that intellectual property.

The terms that you have and in this case, the terms of the agreement, and that relates to the technology as well is really significant. So for some of the systems that publishers use you actually don’t get to download the book itself, you are only accessing it online. So you have to have a network connection, you have to have some sort of sailor connection or wifi connection or be plugged in somewhere before you can get to the material. Others allow you to download it but to use a special client with a special reader that you have to download to your device. Those readers may or may not be available on the devices that you like to use, so that can be a problem. It’s very much in a state of flux some of the vendors will allow you to copy and paste text out of the textbooks, they have different capabilities for annotating, taking notes or highlighting the material in the electronic versions of the textbooks. So all of those usability features really make a difference in terms of whether the students are satisfied with those versions of the textbooks.

And the value is not there yet. If you think of book publishing a huge piece of what publisher brought to us was, there were layout and editing functions, but there was the incredible cost of printing and distribution. With an electronic textbook theoretically you get rid of a lot of the cost of printing and distribution, but the prices have not gone down as much as you would expect to see. So people are not satisfied with the business model just yet. [1:02:48]

What the publishers are trying to do is respond to that by building in more technology into the electronic textbooks. So instead of just a scan of a textbook or electronic version of the print, they are trying to build in more interactive capabilities so you have a volume there, you can zoom into the images, you have interactive graphs, you have videos that may be associated with it so that they are partnering with companies and partnering with authors to build interactivity into these electronic versions of the textbooks.

Now a quickly changing market, one piece of the market that is still out there is what many of you have been doing for a long time, and that’s putting together your own course packs. That still happens and that can still take place in the electronic world. So as we iron out the wrinkles associated with the technology and people become more comfortable with the different methods of distribution and viewing the material, you are not going to loose the ability to put together your own course packs. We have a relationship with LAB Publishing so if you go to the University Bookstore that’s the same publishing company that helps deal with copyright issues and helps you put together CoursePacks now. They can help you put together an electronic version of that CoursePack as well. [1:04:10] So the concept doesn’t change the distribution medium may change over time or will change over time. That’s a relationship that already exists and we can already do.

Writing your own textbook is getting easier. I’ve already had at least one faculty member approach me and say they’ve downloaded these free tools that are available from Apple and are starting to work on not really a textbook, but some manuals they are using for some training that they are doing with some grant dollars. Apple’s tools, Apple wants you to use Apple products, so their tools work best in developing textbooks that work in the Apple environment. So this was an article from January. In February we see an announcement of two more products that are in this space, so back to that slide where I said the technology is changing rapidly, really developing fast, but there are lots of different ways for you to electronically publish you material. Amazon makes it really easy. I have a friend who has recently published a children’s book through Amazon, there will never be a print version of that. They paid her $6,000 up front and it’s a really nice book but it was a very simple process for her to do that. Publishing is really changing.

I think one of the most interesting aspects of this and something that will really eliminate or potentially eliminate at least some of the issues associated with piracy is open courseware. So this is courseware that is made available for free, you can download it, you can work with it, you can modify it however you would like to; the California system is looking at this. There is legislation in the California legislature that is pending to put 25 million dollars into locally developed courseware. The Washington State system is working on this as well. MIT has had online materials available for a long time. They have just announced an initiative to move that forward. They are actually going from a model where they just have material available online to having programs available for free online. They are actually talking about moving in a direction where you can earn a certificate through MIT at no charge, not a degree but a certificate, it will be interesting to see where that goes.

The feds are setting aside 2 billion dollars for the development of opencourseware. They are really concentrating on the 2 year colleges and technical and trade schools, but I think that would have an impact certainly on our core curriculum. The publishers don’t like this they think the Feds should not put any money into this, that all courseware development should take place in the commercial environment. I don’t think I really blame them. This is a Web page from the Open Courseware Consortium, and if you look at their site and do a little searching and poking around you will see there are materials for 4,500 different courses, this is just the English language courses, all available for free, I get pretty excited about the open courseware initiatives. If you want to hear somebody that’s really excited about it you can, we are not going to watch a youTube video today but Dr. Cable Green from the Creative Commons, he’s from Washington and spent a lot of time on this, he has a lot of interesting information and interesting point of view related to open courseware and he really sees it from a global perspective. How necessary this is for taking higher education, K–12 education, to the third world.

So beyond textbooks, our math department has been doing some interesting stuff with online materials since about 2009. In 2009 they started using My Math Lab, this is a Pearson product, for one of their pre-calculus courses. They did some interesting comparisons between conventional classroom methodologies and the My Math Lab product and they got some favorable results. They are moving on to the next level of this. Regina Jackson in the math department coordinates this effort. This is a screen from My Math Lab and they make homework assignments available and quizzes and the students seem to like it pretty well. Now they’re reviewing some additional products as well. The one that intrigues me the most though is from the Mathematical Association of America. (MAA) The mathematicians decided they didn’t like the way the industry was doing it, so they developed their own product. The math department is using this as well. The Web work is developed by the MAA, it’s available for free, it’s open source, so that’s one of the 3 products that they are looking at to see if they can do them better with what they are doing with their online instruction.

So how does the Learning Management System (LMS) fit into all of this? We know we’ve made big investments, a lot of you have made big investments in your time in terms of putting material in Blackboard, now you are having to go through the transition to CANVAS. As you know Blackboard is going away at the end of this calendar year in December. We will be moving entirely to CANVAS at that point. In many cases publishers make material that goes hand in hand with your textbooks that will snap into the LMS these are called course cartridges. Blackboard or Web CT supported course cartridges, again it’s technology so we can’t have one format we’ve got to have lots of different formats for this, they have come up with a common cartridge format and CANVAS supports that or will support the import of some material out of some of the other cartridge formats. So the LMS has a roll in all of this in terms of presenting electronic materials to your students.

If you would like to get your hands dirty with electronic textbooks, if that’s not something you’ve tinkered with at this point then we have a good way to do that. We have a relationship with the CourseSmart folks. CourseSmart approached us a couple of years ago and asked if we would be willing to participate in a pilot program with them. If you log onto AU Access and go to the faculty services tab you will see a button that will allow you to log into CourseSmart. From CourseSmart you have access to their entire catalog of textbooks. [1:12:06] It’s a pretty extensive catalog you can search and get access to any of those textbooks for free as a faculty member. You can test drive those materials, if nothing else you are going through the textbook selection process, it’s a good tool for you to use in the textbook selection process. It has great search capabilities for you so if there are particular terms that you look for or topics that you look for in your textbooks it’s an interesting way to compare and an interesting way for you to get exposed to electronic textbooks. They have an iPad app so you could see them on the computer you can see them on an iPad, it’s an interesting way to get involved with the technology with a minimum of commitement.

So there are some friends that you should know about related to this technology, related to learning technology in general; one of those is Rusty, he is sitting up at the back there and he can help you with the services that are provided through the AU Bookstore. Kathy McClelland with Instructional Multimedia Group can answer questions about some of the other presentation methods for course materials and of course about CANVAS, then Raj Chadhury in the Biggio Center is pretty fired up about electronic course materials as well. And he may have good feedback for you or good information for you. Any Questions?

Ann Beth Presley, chair: Thanks Bliss. Right now we have Mary Boudreaux scheduled to give us an update on the Intercollegiate Athletics. [1:14:01]

Mary Boudreaux, chair Intercollegiate Athletics Committee (CIA): Thank you for inviting me, I know it’s getting late. It’s kind of tough following Bliss with all the moving parts, this is just a plain old PowerPoint presentation, okay? My name is Mary Boudreaux and I’m chair of the CIA and I am also the faculty athletics representative. Some things I am going to go over with you in the next few minutes include what is the CIA what is their charge, composition, and sub-committees. I’ll also start talking about student athlete eligibility especially academic wise progress toward degree requirements. I will go over the GSR and the APR with the latest data that we have for Auburn and also compare it to the other schools. I also would like to go over some accolades for our student athletes, I’ll give some statistics on our Auburn University students, mention our new CIA Web site, the seminar series and at the end I will show you who the other faculty athletic representatives are in the SEC just in case you are curious.

Intercollegiate Athletics, number (1) recommend to the President the policies for the operation of the Intercollegiate Athletics program at Auburn University, (2) monitor for the President all aspects of the Intercollegiate Athletics Program at Auburn University for compliance with University policies, and with NCAA and SEC legislation. (3) assist the President and the Director of Athletics on any aspect of the Intercollegiate Athletics Program for which advice or assistance is requested. The Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics shall meet once per quarter and additionally as called by the President of Auburn University. I think that language was written when we were on the quarter system, I interpret that to mean we should meet 4 times a year and we do meet 4 times a year.

Our next meeting is going to be in May but what we’ve done is we’ve changed a little bit of format, I call it the 4th meeting because there is a change of committee when the fall starts. But anyway, the next meeting will be in May. What we are doing with that now is we are basically making that a tour of the athletics facilities. So we spend 3 hours touring athletics facilities and all the CIA members do that at least once a year. I’d like this year to invite at least 5 senators to accompany us on that tour if you’d like to do that. It’s going to be in May, I’d like to limit it to 5 because I am worried about if we have 100 people who want to come there would not be enough room and it’s not going to be a good tour. So if you are interested if you could just send me an e-mail if you’d like to be included on the tour, it will be sort of a first asked first served basis and preference will be given to senators who are in their last year of their term, so if you are not going to be a senator next year you won’t get an opportunity to do this, I’d like to make sure you have the opportunity to do it this year. So just drop me an e-mail and tell me if you are in your last year of your term and you’d like to participate.

Composition of the CIA, basically these are the members, this does not include people who help us and serve on CIA sub-committees who are not official members but serve valuable functions and help us get our job done. These are the official members of the CIA right now. There are several sub-committees of the CIA including academic standards; awards; compliance; drug education testing; equity, welfare, sportsmanship; priority and seating; and the newest one is the seminar series that we’ve just developed and I’ll give you more information specifically on how that’s going near the end of the presentation. All these sub-committees work very hard to get things done and we are appreciative of that.

I want to start talking about student athlete eligibility. [1:18:24] There are lots of things student athletes have to do in order to become and remain eligible, I will focus mostly on academics. Academic eligibility model basically starts when a prospect is in high school and goes all the way until they graduate from a Division I institution. So there is a lot going on there. Before a high school student can be eligible to play he or she must meet academic requirements in high school. And these standards include the successful completion of 16 core courses, A sliding-scale combination of grades in high school core courses and standardized-test scores. Example, if a student-athlete earns a 3.0 grade-point average in core courses, that individual must score at least 620 on the SAT or 52 on the ACT. As the GPA increases, the required test score decreases, and vice versa.

To give you an example of what that might look like, this comes right from the NCAA manual. I failed to mention when I started, a lot of what I’m talking about comes directly from the NCAA manual, so if I am going fast and your wonder, what the heck is she talking about, you can spend as much time as you want looking at the NCAA manual, there is lots of stuff there. This gives you an example of how this sliding scale works, the one I talked about was the 3.0/620/52 and it’s in orange (text) to show you where that is. This scale goes down to 2.0 and at that point you have to have an SAT of 1,000, but I am just showing you a part of what the scale looks like so you can get a feel for what I am talking about.

Now that I’ve said that I’m going to tell you that things are going to change. Recently there has been a lot going on, there have been several presidential workshops where presidents are meeting and working in groups to try to change things related to athletics. And these workshops are composed of different presidents, there are several workshops, the one that’s called committee on academic performance was chaired by Walter Harrison, President of the University of Hartford, the Vice Chair was Roderick McDavis, President, Ohio University. This is CAP, the committee on academic performance and they have proposed some changes and they will likely come into place. One is changing the Initial eligibility minimum from 2.0 to 2.3 GPA ; they want to increase sliding scale – so the GPA must be higher than what it is right now when comparing across to standardized test scores. And they also want for this, what I mentioned to you earlier of the 16 required core courses, what they want to change there is they want to make sure prospective student athletes will complete 10 of those before they start their senior year and 7 of the 10 must be in English, math, and science. Try to make sure these students get their education over a broad period of time and not load up in their senior year. I think this if really good for the students, the problem where athletics are going to come into this is coaches/recruiters are not allowed to talk to these students often before their senior year. So there is no way to communicate to them that they must do this or they will not be eligible. So something is going to have to be done to allow some kind of communication, we will somehow need to enhance communication, let’s face it a lot of counselors do not care what the NCAA wants or what the eligibility is. They will not be telling these students if you are a really good prospect in football or basketball or tennis or whatever, you need to be doing these things you need to be paying attention. [1:21:54] Right now, like I say, the recruiters cannot do that, coaches cannot do it themselves. I think it’s a good change but it needs to be worked out a little bit better.

Another thing about student athlete eligibility, once the student is in college, we have what we call the 40-60-80 rule. What that means is that this is to make sure students are making progress towards degree. They must declaire a degree fairly early because they must be 40% completed bye the end of their second year, 60% by the end of their third year, and 80% by the end of their forth year. So they have to know really fast what they want to be when they grow up. Because they have to make progress toward degree and they can’t change their mind. If they are a history major and they decide suddenly to be an engineer, not going to happen especially if they are far along as a student athlete. If they do they are not going to be eligible they will have to give up their sport. That’s just how the NCAA has things set up right now.

Student athletes are allowed 5 years to graduate while receiving athletically funded financial aid. All student athletes must receive a minimum of 6 hours each term to be eligible the next semester and that’s kind of hello, I guess so, they are going to be taking a lot more than that because they have to make that 40-60-80 progress.

Graduation Success Rate (GSR), this is relatively new within the last 10 years.

The NCAA developed the Division I Graduation Success Rate in response to college and university presidents who wanted graduation data that more accurately reflect the mobility among all college students.

The rate measures graduation rates at Division I institutions and includes student-athletes transferring into the institutions. [1:23:45]

It differs from the FED rate mandated by the federal government, which does not count incoming transfer student-athletes. It only counts students that start in the fall and does not count the students that star in January. And it doesn’t count a student-athletes that transfers, maybe starts in a pre-business or pre-med or pre-something goes to another university and becomes a doctor, it doesn’t count those because they transferred out of the institution. So the Fed rate does have problems there.

The Graduation Success Rate was created to try to include all of those students and get a more accurate representation of what the actual graduation rate is.

This comes right out of the NCAA.org it details what is the FGR, the Fed rate assesses only first-time full-time freshmen in a given cohort and only counts them as academic successes if they graduate from their institution of initial enrollment within a six-year period. It makes no accommodation for transfers into or out of an institution. The rate is very limited because it ignores the large number of transfer students in higher education, but it is still the only rate that allows a direct comparison between student-athletes and the general student body. There is not Graduation Success Rate for students that are not athletes.

GSR begins with the federal cohort, and adds transfer students, mid-year enrollees, and non-scholarship students (in specified cases) to the sample. Student-athletes who leave an institution while in good academic standing before exhausting athletics eligibility are removed from the cohort of their initial institution. This rate provides a more complete and accurate look at actual student-athlete success by taking into account the full variety of participants in Division I athletics and tracking their academic outcomes.

This give you in numbers what we are talking about if you compare Fed rate with the Graduation Success Rate. On the left it show that under the fed rate you have your enrolled that’s only that cohort that starts in the fall, you’ve got 76,536, you start your same number with your GSR, but on the GSR side now you are adding anyone that comes in in January, also adding in two-year college transfers, four-year college transfers, those don’t get added to the Fed rate. You drop down to the exclusions, under the GSR we exclude student athletes that leave the institution, but they were still academically-eligible, they are included. You will see that they are not included under the Fed rate, there is a zero there. So down at the bottom you have your total denominator for the two different groups. Both the GSR and the Fed rate evaluate a 6-year graduation rate, but it’s basically percentage of students graduating by the end of their sixth year before the seventh fall.

So how is Auburn doing and how did they do? The graduation success rate numbers were released in the fall of 2011, so this is 2001 data on the right. Basically our GSR is 75%. I also put up here how Auburn has done historically from 2005 down to the present of 2011. To give you an example, how does that compare with how we’ve been doing and you can see basically the last 4 years or so we’ve been roughly in the same graduation success rate. It hasn’t changed that much. At the bottom I have some of the highlights of the different sports. Some of them have 100% graduation success rates.

So how does Auburn compare to other SEC schools for this cohort? You can see here Auburn is sort of in the middle, some below and some above, and of course Vanderbilt is sitting up there at 92, but again we are not that different from the other SEC schools. You can see Division I is at 80%.

Graduation Success Rate by sport, we give you numbers for specific sports. You can see for yourself, baseball, basketball on the men’s side; women’s side you can see what the GSR is and of course I’ve got the Fed rate up there to give it a comparison, but remember the GSR is a better comparison for athletes because of their unique situation, you see where they are falling.

If you go to the bottom there, Graduation Rates for all Students, now this is Fed rate because you can’t compare to regular students you have to use the Fed rate. So if you go to Division I, all students, you see men, women, and combined, is 62; Auburn’s combined (all of Auburn’s students), 65; and all Student Athletes combined is 60. So again we are not talking about marked differences when comparing our student athletes to Auburn students or Auburn students to all Division I schools.

If we want to compare the GSR we can do that if we only compare student athletes, if we look at Division I, combined of 80, we look at Auburn we’re looking at 76. Again very similar numbers we are not markedly different from the national average. That’s GSR, I’d like to move to Academic Progress Rate (APR).

This is a little bit different statistic number that has been introduced it says “creates a level of institutional responsibility,” so it is more of an immediate kind of a thing of what’s going on. It was developed to track the academic achievement of teams each academic term. Each student-athlete receiving athletically related financial aid earns one retention point for staying in school and one eligibility point for being academically eligible. So each student athlete can get 2 points. A team’s total points are divided by points possible and then multiplied by one thousand to equal the team’s APR. [1:29:46]

This is an example that was given in the NCAA manual basically for instance if there is a Division I Football Bowl Subdivision team and they have 85 scholarships. If 80 student-athletes remain in school and academically eligible, 3 remain in school but are academically ineligible and 2 drop out academically ineligible, the team earns 163 of 170 possible points for that term. Divide 163 by 170 and multiply by 1,000 – team’s APR that term is 959. That’s how the APR is calculated.

The NCAA calculates the rate as a rolling, four-year figure that takes into account all the points student-athletes could earn for remaining in school and academically eligible during that period. Teams that do not earn an APR above specific benchmarks face penalties ranging from scholarship reductions to more severe sanctions.

Teams that score below 925 and have a student-athlete who both failed academically and left school (0 for 2) can lose scholarships (up to 10 percent of their scholarships each year) under the immediate (contemporaneous) penalty structure. [1:30:57]

If you are below 900 at the present time you can face additional sanctions, increasing in severity for each consecutive year the team fails to meet the standard. Year 1: a public warning letter for poor performance. Year 2: restrictions on scholarships and practice time. Year 3: loss of postseason competition for the team. (such as a bowl game or the men’s basketball tournament). Year 4: restricted membership status for an institution. The school’s entire athletics program is penalized and will not be considered a part of Division I.

So that’s not good, now I’ve just gone over this, but remember I told you about these presidential workshops and they are meeting and changing things, well that cap group has changed some things related to APR. They want he APR to change from 925 to 930.

They also want to change the penalty structure. [1:31:51] So these are the proposed changes. Level 1, I assume what they mean is the first year this happens, you have practice penalties in season; Level 2, added on top of that you have practice penalties out of season, , cancellation of nontraditional season or spring football and for sports without a nontraditional season, a 10% reduction in contests and length of season. And Level 3 a menu of options including financial penalties, restricted NCAA membership, coaching suspensions for a designated number of contests and/or recruiting, restricted access to practice for incoming student-athletes that fall below predetermined academic standards and multi-year postseason competition bans. And you will stay at Level 3 until you get your act together, basically is what they are proposing. So this is what they want to move to from 925 to 930 with these penalties.

I’m thinking it’s going to happen because they haven’t labeled out when this is going to happen. You can see right now in the present post season competition year 2011–2012 is staying the same, but as you move on in 2012 through 2014 it says Four year APR of 900 or Two most recent years average at or above 930. And once you hit 2014–2015 you’re looking at a Four year APR of 930 or Two most recent years average at or above 940, then after 2015 930 period. So this is how they are thinking to phase this in.

How did our student athletes do? This APR is almost a year old because this was released in spring 2011, the new data will be released to the public probably in a couple of months, so this goes back to last year, but it will give you an example of how our different sports are doing with APR. This is a 4 year rolling rate. Most of our sports are doing pretty well there are a few especially after that 930 hits they are going to have to get their act together, and I think they are. Things that affect this APR are things we don’t think about a lot of time, coaching changes and things like that, that can affect if student athletes will leave or move on and do other things. Of course there are other factors as well.

So that’s our GSR and APR. I want to go over a few of our accolades because I really like to brag on our students. We have some fantastic students and of course the reason we have our fantastic students is because of our fantastic faculty who help make these students succeed. I am very proud of them. The Rhodes Scholars Jordan Anderson of course, was awarded the Rhodes scholarship in 2009. We have Erica Meissner and Krissy Voss who were Rhodes Scholar finalists in 2010 and Dan Mazzaferro is our most recent Rhodes Scholar finalist. And he was a finalist in 2011. Auburn is the only SEC institution to have 4 student-athletes as finalists in the last 5 years. So I think that is something to be proud of.

I do want to go over the SEC academic honor roll to show you what student athletes and how well they are doing. Definition wise they must have a grade point average of 3.00 or above for either the preceding academic year (two semesters or three quarters) or have a cumulative grade point average of 3.00 or above at the nominating institution.
(2) If a student-athlete attends summer school, his/her grade point average during the summer academic term must be included in the calculation used to determine eligibility for the Academic Honor Roll. {1:35:14]
(3) Student-athletes eligible for the Honor Roll include those receiving an athletics scholarship, recipients of an athletics award (i.e., letter winner), and non-scholarship student-athletes who have been on a varsity team for two seasons.
(4) Prior to being nominated, a student-athlete must have successfully completed 24 semester hours of non-remedial academic credit toward a baccalaureate degree at the nominating institution.
(5) The student-athlete must have been a member of a varsity team for the sport’s entire NCAA Championship segment.

I’m going to run through these list for you fairly quickly. I’m not going to read all this to you but I want to look at it. This is for spring 2011 SEC Academic Honor, it goes from 2010 summer and fall through spring 2011. You can see how many, some of you may recognize some of these students as being in your classes. On the right is shows what they are majoring in, and it’s a wide variety of things, student athletes are not focusing on any one major to try to get through, there is a diverse selection of their interests. And it goes on, this is still 2011 spring. Then we go to 2011 spring, summer, and fall terms, all 2011. Again lots of student athletes are on this SEC Academic Honor Roll.

Anyway you guys should be proud of these students that you are helping mentor. I’m very proud of them. [1:37:04]

I want to go over a couple of the post–graduate scholarships that are given by the SEC and these [1:37:10] scholarships that I am talking about right now are basically decided upon by… the at least when it gets to the scholar athlete of the year, by the faculty athletics representatives. Each SEC school recognizes student athletes, there is an SEC H. Boyd Mc Whorter award, it’s a post graduate scholarship and there is also the Brad Davis which I’ll go over with you in a minute. There is one male and one female, each SEC school will recognize one student athlete, one male one female and they get $7,500 a piece. Basically it recognizes for outstanding and meritorious academic and athletic achievements during their entire college career. They demonstrated qualities of leadership that bring credit to the student-athlete, the Institution, intercollegiate athletics and the goals and objectives of higher education. Our student athletes at Auburn Katy Frierson, Soccer and Cory Luckie, Baseball, excellent students. Cory Luckie he’s a reliever and he basically has been accepted into medical school, he will start at UAB in the fall. In 4 years he’ll be you doctor possibly. Katy Frierson she’s has won so many different awards, the other day I went to a soccer banquet, they had to have a trailor take her awards away she had so many of them it was incredible. So very good student athletes. What will happen now is their names have gone forward to the SEC office, all 12 schools forward the names to the SEC office, then the SEC office will go through collate everything, send them back out to the faculty athletics representatives. faculty athletics representatives then have to read through all of them, we are not allowed to read or rank our own, then rank them. I spent about 20 hours reading and ranking all of those between McWhorter and Davis, which I’ll show you in a minute. [1:39:13]

Last year, what happens is we (the FARs) go to a meeting and we vote to see who is going to be the scholar athlete of the year. Last year Auburn won both. It has never happened before where the same university won both male and female athletes of the year. It was incredible. There were a lot of people slapping me on the back at that meeting, but I had nothing to do with it, it was the students and their faculty mentors and I was just so proud of you and so proud of them. Anyway Erica Meissner and Dan Mazzaferro both won last year’s SEC scholar athlete of the year. I’m hoping Katie and Cory will do just as well this year. We will be meeting at the end of this week and we will be voting at the end of this week.

Brad Davis, this is community service postgraduate scholarship, it’s very similar to the McWhorter except it more heavily leans on community service and athletics. The 2 from Auburn that have gone forward are Laura Lane in gymnastics and John Stembridge in golf, again two very, very excellent student athletes I can’t say enough about them. So we have some very good student athletes going forward that we will be voting on. I will know the results by the end of the week, but I can’t tell anybody until it’s released publically so I have to hold it for over a month and not tell anybody. That happened last year and when Jay Jacobs said that I knew we had two McWhorter award winners for a month and didn’t tell him he was like woo!…but at least I can keep a secret.

Here are some statistics on our student athletes, this was gathered by Gary Waters. This is pretty impressive, I think this is great, it basically shows the average teams GPAs, cumulative GPAs, individual student athlete for semester and cumulative, total student athletes with a 3.0 or above, 52%, men’s cross country is the top team GPA for the semester and for cumulative GPA; equestrian they had the most 3 plus GPAs and as far a percentage men’s golf is up there at 93% with a GPA greater than 3.0. This is overall the student athletes, and very nice statistics.

I did want to mention to you that last year we started a new committee on the CIA which is the Seninar Series and I’m happy to say that that’s been going very well, Barb Struempler has been sharing this and we wanted a seminar series that would help educate faculty, staff, students about athletic type stuff. And when we go to the CIA meetings, it’s a fairly limited group of people, we’re very well educated but nobody else is and I wanted some means of getting the information out. So we decided to set up this seminar series and set it up so it could be video recorded and we now have 3 sessions that have been recorded and are online and you can go there anytime you want. Steve Lowcy is the one who has done this, he’s in compliance and he’s the one that’s been kind enough to do these little videos, one was on boosters, one on initial eligibility, and one on extra benefits. He did an excellent job with those. In each one of those what we are trying to do is invite a coach, so each one we had a different coach there to give their perspective on that particular aspect of what the topic was. We got very good feedback, I encourage you all to this Web site and take a look at the videos www.auburntigers.com/cia/ and see what you think. I’ve sent this information to the rest of the SEC FARs for their feedback and have gotten some really good feedback, they are happy to see that it’s a very nice way of communicating information.

I mentioned there are other SEC Faculty Athletics Representatives, each school has one, I just thought you’d be interested in seeing what their academic appointments are, one of them is a provost, Vanderbilt; we have 2 associate deans, 4 department heads/chairs, and 5 professors. So the professors are in the minority as far as the SEC Faculty Athletics Representatives are SEC wide. I also give you a little background of what their academic interests are and it’s a wide variety, there is a little bit of skewing on law, which you might expect. And on of those law professors also has a pharmacy degree, so pharmacy is in there too.

This is just a list of who they are and what their appointments are across the SEC. Of course next year we will have two new FARs from Texas A&M and from Missouri. I’ve been told is that Tom Adair has been the Faculty Athletics Representative at Texas A&M for 26 years. So he’ll bring a lot of background.

So to conclude, I said this before, I’m very proud of our student athletes and I can really see they’ve become well educated, developed and excellent time management skills and a sense of community that is unique to Auburn University. Their success relies on the cooperation of faculty, counselors, coaches, sport administrators, and the students themselves. Student athletes cannot succeed without being both academically and athletically prepared. Thanks to the faculty and staff who have helped and continue to help inspire our students to be the best that they can be, in the classroom and on the playing field of whatever sport they are a part of (court, track, pool, horse). Thank you very much for helping them out.

I have to finish with this. A lot of people said, “you know, you study platelets, what does that have to do with athletics? How can they possibly be so different?” Not really, because platelets are the ultimate team players.

Thank you very much, don’t know if there are any questions or not, I went through that pretty fast. It’s getting late.

Ann Beth Presley, chair: Thank you Mary.

Is there any new business? I think somebody had an announcement they wanted to make.

Wesley Lindsey, senator, pharmacy practice: I’ve tried to negotiated a raise based on the number of times I’m quoted in the Senate minutes so…I’m just joking. You got an e-mail survey a couple of weeks ago from Larry Crowley on behalf of the Senate Library Committee, so it’s just about your library access, resources, things that are good, things that you’d like to see improved on and whether you’d like to see a new faculty orientation from the Library staff when you get new faculty. Please fill it out and please encourage your departments to do so. Thank you.

Ann Beth Presley, chair: Is there any old business? If there is no other business then this meeting in adjourned.
Thank you. [1:46:18]