Transcript Senate Meeting
March 5, 2019

Michael Baginski, Chair: Welcome to the March 5, 2019 meeting of the University Senate. This is our seventh meeting of the 2018-19 academic year. First, if you are a senator or a substitute for a senator please be sure you sign in on the senate roll sheet at the top of the room and take a clicker.

Second, we need to establish a quorum. We have 87 Senators in the Senate and we need 44 for a quorum. Please press A on your clicker to show you are present.

Let the record show that we have 53 present so a quorum is established. I now call the meeting to order.

I would like to remind you of some basic procedures for the Senate meeting for senators and guests. If you would like to speak about an issue or ask a question, please go to the microphone on either side aisle. When it is your turn, state your name and whether or not you are a senator or a substitute and the unit you represent. The rules of the Senate require that senators or substitute senators be allowed to speak first and then after they are done guests are welcome to speak.

The Senate is not a time for personal conversations with a speaker. Please limit yourself to one or two questions. Unless you are making a motion or amendment to a motion before the Senate, for additional discussion you should meet with the speaker after the meeting.
The agenda today was set by the Senate Steering Committee and posted on the Web site in advance, it’s now up on the screen. 

The first order of business is to approve the minutes for the meeting of the February 5th, 2019 senate meeting. Those minutes have been posted on the Web site.

Are there any additions, changes, or corrections to the minutes?   pause

Hearing none, the minutes are approved by unanimous consent.

Michael Baginski, Senate Chair: I now have a few short comments. First, let me say that the storms that hit Lee County have caused an enormous amount of damage and loss in this area and there are number of charitable and disaster relief groups working in this area. President Leath has asked for time to make some additional remarks and announcements regarding Auburn University’s response to this disaster which he will do shortly.

Another bit of bad news is that our FAR and Senate Secretary Beverly Marshall broke her femur and will be out until the end of the semester. Adrienne Wilson is the secretary-elect and she and I will be taking over her senate duties until further notice. Our thoughts and prayers are with Beverly and the victims of the horrific storms.

Finally, the Officer candidate’s statements and bios are posted on the Senate Web site for review. It is listed under NEWS in the left side bar.

Okay, now I would now like to introduce the officers of the Senate and our administrative assistant. Dan Svyantek is the immediate past chair, Nedret Billor is the chair-elect, Beverly Marshal is the secretary this year and unable to attend, and Adrienne Wilson is the secretary-elect; Herbert Jack Rotfeld is our Parliamentarian. Finally, our administrative assistant is Laura Kloberg.

Are there any questions? 

President Leath will now make some remarks and announcements [4:24]

Dr. Steven Leath, President: Thanks Michael. I’m going to give you an overview on that tornado and then I’ve asked Chief of Staff, Steve Pelham to come up. What I’ve done is I needed a point person on this disaster and Steve is the right person especially since he’s coming from the Governor’s Office, but as Michael indicated, it was a horrible tragedy that we’re going through. A number of employees have been severely impacted, we have employees who’s families have had loved ones killed in the storm, we have a lot of employees that have lost all or parts of their home, even General Burgess lost a good part of his home. It’s a complex recovery effort, but we’ve had requests from students, faculty, staff, athletics, a number of people of how they could help and we’ve also tried to partner with the state emergency management team to figure out when and how is the right time to get involved. But we are raising money, we are raising resources. Steve has implemented a couple of administrative changes that he’ll tell you about to help deal with the tragedy. So I am going to turn it over to Steve and when he’s done you could ask either one of us questions about this. This is kind of new territory for us and we are going to do everything we can to help our employees and the surrounding community.

Steven Pelham, Chief of Staff: Thank you sir. It’s been about 48 hours as you well know since this storm hit Lee County and one of the things I am grateful for is that I am no longer in the Governor’s Office because I know what I would have been doing on Sunday up to this point. But let me share with you as President said a couple of things we’ve done to try and respond and provide some assistance to you and our students and staff. The first thing we did was make an administrative decision yesterday and put out a notice to provide 3 days administrative leave for those people who were impacted. We’ll consider more days beyond that if their circumstances that that individual can share with us. Pretty much those that have come in so far, we’ll just approve those and let those people stay at home and do what they need to take care of their children or other family members or their property that has been impacted. That was the first short term option that we implemented.

There are a couple of long term options that we are implementing. We met this morning, and yesterday we put out a notice about collecting at 3 sites here on campus where people can bring specific items that EMA had indicated to us that are needed. I’ll be honest with you, most of that is not needed now, not because they don’t need that but because logistically, we’re a very benevolent state, I know you know that, there’s more supplies there already made available that they can handle, but we’ll continue to receive those items and facilities will warehouse them here on campus and then we will cascade them out as they need them in the future. Recoveries take a long time as you well know. What we’re doing now will not only impact to help in assist those families today but probably for several weeks and several months. The other thing, just because donating materials and supplies is fairly labor intensive, you’ve got to house it, got to move it, got to store it, got to transport it–probably the best way for any individual in the Auburn family, you, alumni, and other folks, and friends and family around the world to help is to make a financial contribution. We looked at a number of options which we could do that and rather than recreate the wheel and us get into the funding apparatus and make decisions about winners and losers, we have partnered with the Governor’s Emergency Relief Fund, which was established after the 2011 tornados in the other part of this state, and that will go up here shortly. We are in the process of finalizing the details on that. Anybody will have an opportunity to go to that Web site and through a secure, friendly process to make a financial contribution and it can be designated for Lee County. That money will be made available through their process to provide assistance to families, businesses, and property owners that have been impacted. All those decisions will be made through a process which the Governor’s Office has in place and has been in place for 7 or 8 years. This is the same platform or conduit that you will that Bo uses for BO Bikes BAMA. So, when you make a contribution to BO Bikes BAMA, that’s where that money goes. We’ve already got, a few hours ago, $3,000 and a couple of pretty substantial financial commitments from corporations who are going to make significant contributions. This will go live sometime later today. I suspect, as you well know, Auburn Alabama playing basketball tonight, they experienced sort of where we are in 2011, I think that message will go up tonight at the game in Tuscaloosa. My guess is we will get a pretty good response out of Tuscaloosa and West Alabama from people who want to provide financial assistance. Then I think, Dr. Leath, we will get a lot of clicks in the next 24 hours as this goes out to the Auburn Family and everywhere and the resources that will be available.

The other thing, more of a long-term option that we’ll consider and have considered in the process of implementing in addition to the leave for those that are impacted, we’re going to look at making administrative leave for one day for those individuals and we will coordinate this, to go to the impacted area and help and provide assistance. We are not doing that now, we had a couple of people who went and got turned away. They are still in the search mode and still have a lot of utility work to do, but once we get the green light, through a number of departments here on campus we have a process where we will identify those people. We want to go with a purpose, we want to go and help our neighbors and those people that have been impacted. That will make a big difference too. Students will be leaving next week so we are trying to find a window maybe before they get out of town at the first part of next week, if the green light is there for some students that were chomping at the bit to get out and help. That says a lot about the students we have here at Auburn who are already wanting to help.

Then we are looking at a couple of other long-term options that we may consider. Possibly a project where we would consider partnering and building some housing for recovery down the road if we have the resources as a project. Those are the things we are doing now. That will go live on the Web site later today /tornadorelief and it will be there for you to look at and contribute for those that want to. We will be able to track and see how much money has been given to help those people that have been impacted.

Any questions about where we are on tornado relief? It’s been about 48 hours and there will be some other things we will implement along the way but I think this is the best and easiest and fastest track that we could implement to help provide assistance for those impacted. Any questions?

A question about blood donations.

Oh, thank you. Blood, I’ve heard 2 stories on that; 1) we really need blood, and 2) no we have enough. One blood bank was on campus today, that was coincidental, they were already scheduled, and I understand they had a huge response. Once we determine if there still is a need for more blood we may have another blood drive in a week to 10 days. Good question, that is one thing I forgot.

Several people talked off microphone. (I do not have their comments)[12:40]

Herbert Jack Rotfeld, Parliamentarian: As you mentioned administrative leave for people going down to help out, I talked to a staff person yesterday morning who’s mother’s house does not exist anymore and was wondering about administrative leave for people to help out their families for more than a day? Is anything being done to help those people who are dependant on their daily wages to go and help family?

Steven Pelham, Chief of Staff: A person now can make a request for 3 days administrative leave. We don’t question who they are helping or what they are helping, so 3 days are available. We would consider more days beyond that. Separate from that we are making 8 hours available to everybody with pay to go volunteer, “boots on the ground” and participate. So, there is more than one day available if people have family or friends or themselves who are impacted and unable to come to work. So, yes. Hope that helps.
Also off microphone: Some reference to President Trump visiting and the chatter about that.

Michael Baginski, Chair: Thank you very much.
Next, we are going to have the action items. –At this point Ralph Kingston will present an amendment to the faculty handbook. However, this action is a constitutional amendment.  As such, 58 Senators (representing two-thirds of the Senate) must vote for the amendment before it is approved.

It would be a waste of time for him to go through his whole talk if we don’t have 58 votes here. What I would like everyone to do who is a Senator or substitute for a Senator is first make sure it’s on (the clicker) and then press A.

Ralph Kingston, chair of Faculty Handbook Review Committee: Thank you very much, all 58 of you.

The last time I was here it was January and I presented 2 changes to the Faculty Handbook. You will notice that there is only one change to the Faculty Handbook for voting today. The change to the Retention Committee making it the Enrollment and Retention Committee has been pulled. It was pulled by the Senate Executives and they want a little more time to think about it.

So today all I am going to talk about it is this change to the Senate Constitution on the schedule of meetings. The proposal, as I told you last time, is to reduce the number of Senate Meetings by 2 every year. It’s a change that comes from the Senate Exec. and as you know there was a straw poll in the fall and a clear majority of the Senators indicated that they are in favor of it.

So, the 2 meetings; first is the meeting that usually takes place in August. The August Senate meeting will be replaced by an orientation for new Senators. The idea of an orientation for new Senators is that it gives new Senators a way to get to know what happens in the Senate. Senate can be kind of bewildering for those that have never encountered it before. There’s a lot of knowledge, arcane knowledge some might say, that is necessary to understand what’s going on sometimes. So, this is the idea of an orientation, a meeting where new Senators can get comfortable with the institution.

The second meeting is the meeting that usually takes place in June. If you look at the Senate minutes, that meeting always struggles to achieve quorum. Last June a quorum that required 44 Senators, was not established because it had 36 Senators recorded as present. In June 2017, 45 Senators were present, so there was a bare quorum. In June 2016, 44 Senators were present, the bare minimum, again. None of those meetings met the two-thirds requirement for certain types of votes and amendments, like this one. So, effectively, this is a meeting that Senators struggle to turn up to and there’s a feeling in the Senate Exec. that maybe it might be better off letting it go. That does mean, and this is where it shows the opposite side of the argument, this does mean that there will be a 3–4-month gap in the Senate schedule every year where the Senate will not be meeting in regular session. Obviously if something comes up the Senate can meet extra ordinarily, but there will be a 3–4-month gap. The other fix for this is that Senators turn up in droves in June, that more Senators become present in June.

Here today we are proposing that we get rid of the June meeting and the August meeting is replaced by this orientation. Does anybody have any questions? (none) We should vote then.

Michael Baginski, Chair: If you are in favor take your clicker and press A, opposed press B. A=53, B=5

The vote is 53 to 5. It doesn’t pass because it was not unanimous. What we’ll do is put this on the agenda for the General Faculty meeting, we are basically at the hairy edge of everybody voting for it at the General Faculty meeting based on last time we should have an overwhelming number, unless somebody objects.

Thank you, Ralph for bearing with us.

We need to present the 2019 Rules Committee Nominees. Beverly would have done this but she is unavailable. We have 3 nominees: Mary J. Sandage  (Department of Communication Disorders, College of Liberal Arts), Mathew Hoch (Department of Music, College of Liberal Arts), and Anthony Moss (Department of Biological Sciences, COSAM). Information about them has been available on the Senate Web site

If you approve the candidates, press A on your clicker, if you do not approve, press B. A=57, B=0
The vote is 57 to 0. 

Next, Robin Jaffe will now present the Calendar.

Robin Jaffe, Chair of Calendar and Schedules Committee: Good afternoon everyone. Thank you, Michael. Thank you everyone. [23:06]

This is a report from the University Senate 2018–19 Calendar and Schedules Committee. The proposal if for the 2021–2022 Academic Calendar. Today this proposal has the consensus of all the members of the committee that attend the Calendar Committee meeting on January 14. Here are our members and we have a representative from the Student Affairs office who we invite to come to talk. Everyone was there and everyone voted for, excuse me, not everyone was there, but everyone that was there and present voted for the calendar and then I had separate meetings with the people that weren’t available to come.

So, the committee doesn’t just pull the dates out of our hats. This is a committee that we actually work on to follow guidelines. There is a 3 page guideline, I am not going to read them all, but basically these are the selected guidelines where fall and spring semester are 70–73 days, and the calendars for the summer term is 48–49 days with the two mini ones being 24 days. Graduation is preferred on Saturday for fall and summer, graduation on preferred days are Saturday, Sunday, and Monday for spring. As we start getting more graduations and more commencements we will start adding more days, I guess.

Five days for finals in fall and spring, 2 reading days after classes end in the fall and spring. That leaves one reading day for each mini term and the full term for the summers. Fall break has 2 full days, unless 72 days in the semester aren’t available and then fall break would be one day, but that has not happened in a long time.

So, here is our proposal. Most of you have already seen this. Classes would begin on August 16, we’ll have a Labor Day break on Sept. 6, fall break will October 7 & 8, Thanksgiving Break will be 5 days on November 22–26, with 72 days ending the 3rd day in December, with finals the following week. We’ll have 10 days there for the Registrar’s Office and then the Christmas break will end on January 12 when student classes will begin. Martin Luther King’s birthday will be January 17. The thing about Federal holidays is they are all on Mondays and we can’t do anything about that, as much as we would like to. The spring break will be March 7–11, and classes will end on April 29. Followed by 2 reading days, finals will be the following week with graduation on May 7, 8, and 9. The summer term will start on May 18, we will have Memorial Day on May 30 and the 24th day is June 21. There will be a reading day and 2 exam days and during that time the full term of the summer does not meet, so they have more time off. Classes then will begin for the second mini term and the second half of the full semester in the summer on June 27. The 4th of July will be on the 4th of July this year. Then we will end classes for the summer on July 29, two reading days, and 3 days of finals, with commencement on August 6.

Are there any questions? I guess not. This is our proposal from the Calendar and Schedules Committee, and since this is a Senate committee there is no need for a second. [27:37]

Michael Baginski, Chair: All in favor, make sure your clicker is on, press A. Opposed, press B. A=58, B=0.
Thank you Robin.

The following will be a pending action item. We will have Emmett Winn and Christian Dagg come down here to talk about the Professor of Practice. I don’t know if you’ve heard about this but there has been some talk back and forth.

Christian Dagg, Head of the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture and Associate Professor: Thank you for letting me be here today and give a quick presentation about this new title series for Professor of Practice. I want to share with you first of all some of the ideas behind why this particular title is a good idea for certain schools and certain departments within the university. I also then wanted to share with you some of the units that have reached out to me directly to explain why exactly they think this title series will be useful for them and share with you some of their comments that were sent along via e-mail. Then finally, I want to share with you some of our aspirational peers. A small list of other schools that utilize this title and utilize it for very specific reasons and again share with you who is using it and why they are using it and Dr. Winn will follow up with more specifics of the actual mechanisms by which this title series will work. [29:29]

A number of the schools and universities that utilize professor of practice as a title, utilize it in order to identify industry, business, and government leaders that may not necessarily have the traditional credentials for teaching at a university level to bring them in to the university to teach very specific classes. One of the things this title will allow us to do is recognize some of the innovation that is happening in business, in government sectors again that are not necessarily tied to the traditional research of universities. One of things that I think we all believe with everybody who has responded to this request for some information about this title have responded to me with this idea that it is typically the mark of mature programs that they have this professor of practice series that they are able to utilize it in order to create endowed professorships. And also this particular title carries a great deal of significance. What we’ll hear from a number of units that often times when we do have somebody who has been incredibly innovative in practice in their industry, but do not have a master’s degree, maybe they have a bachelor’s degree, but they’ve invented something or have done something incredibly innovative, what we tend to do is we find a shortcut. We hire them through TES or through some other mechanism as a workshop employee to share that information with our students, but we think that in many cases it’s an honorific title that we could use to celebrate their expertise and have them engage with our students.

For many of the units I’ve heard from, particularly with Engineering; I’m speaking from the point of view from Architecture, Nursing, Pharmacy, those of us who carry licenses that have been verified by a state agency; what we tend to understand is that level of professional practice includes with it a certain amount of education, continuing education, experience, and examination and what I would actually suggest to pay attention to here is it also includes mentoring that next generation of professionals.

Often times what we’ll find is that there may be somebody with a bachelor’s degree who is the principle of an incredibly large successful firm and they are already in the business of educating young people. So, the idea that they can teach is something that’s part of their practice and part of their nature.

Just as a quick story, what I will say is this semester we have brought in Laura Shue who is a project manager with TVS Architects out of Atlanta. Laura was the project manager of the Mell Classroom Building, which I would suggest has been a huge success for this university, a beautiful building that really contributes to the life of this campus and she has a bachelor’s degree from our program. At this point she is not qualified to teach, although she’s perfectly qualified because she carries all of the professional information that we would find valuable to engage with our students. So, she’s been teaching a series of workshops for us recently. That’s the way we’ve been able to hire her. We had an internship fair a week ago, she was there interviewing a number of our students. I was talking to students and they informed me that she was their favorite professor, and I didn’t have the heart to tell them that she’s really is not a professor. We brought her in to do some workshops. [32:57]

Again, I heard from a number of units about the importance of this particular position within the university. And I have heard from more people since we had our meeting on Tuesday when this PowerPoint was submitted, but we can see there is a lot of colleagues in Engineering and the College of Architecture, as well as Nursing, Pharmacy, Plant Pathology, Fisheries; these are schools that have reached out to me and said they would find this title series really useful. I’m not going to read all of this but will point out some highlights: schools have explained that some programs feel that they are at somewhat a disadvantage because they can’t utilize a title like this or bring in innovators in industry to teach students. I heard specifically from Aerospace Engineering that we have these resources in Huntsville and the Florida space coast that we are not able to take advantage of necessarily in order to enrich the learning experience for our students. Fisheries said the same thing, there is an opportunity to engage with world leaders in their field that they are not able to do right away but could do with this particular title. We think there’s some opportunities for grants and research that we could then pursue if we had this title series. As we hear from the School of Pharmacy is that TES is way that we’ve been able to bring in a number of people for workshops in order to engage this expertise. We would like a much more significant sounding title to be able to recognize the contributions of these instructors, these new professors of practice within our schools. Then of course also to be able to allow those faculty members to then engage in scholarly work.

Finally, just to share with you briefly a number of schools, aspirational universities that we look up to and I would think we would like to think if we are able to utilize this title series we could put together some similar programs to what they are accomplishing. I am only going to point out 2 on this list. One of course is the John Portman Professor of Practice of Architecture at Harvard University. This is held by a very important well known, Architect from the Netherlands. And what you are hopefully seeing is this is a great opportunity for an endowed professorship for a new form of sponsorship that we could begin to contemplate as a part of all of our activities. And also, the University of Alabama utilizes this title. They have a Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Law. Joyce Vance is within their faculty and I assume putting the University of Alabama would get everybody’s attention on this particular list.

I’m going to turn it over to Dr. Winn. [35:55]

Emmett Winn, Professor and Associate Provost: So, now to the nuts and bolts. I am also pleased to be here with you today. This is just going to be some of the dry facts about the title series. The entire document is online right now. It’s available to you from the Senate Web site (linked to the agenda for today’s meeting.) it’s 4 single spaced pages. So a lot of answers to a lot of questions in there, but I am going to hit the high points for you.

This is a non-tenure-track faculty position, just like our other non-tenure track faculty positions. It is not eligible for tenure or defacto-tenure. This one is unusual from the others because there is no promotion for this title series. In other words, there would be no ‘senior-professor of practice’ and there is no ‘assistant- or associate-professor of practice’ it is just ‘professor of practice.’ Unlike the others it can be part-time or full-time depending on what the schools need.

It is prohibited, and the Senate Non-tenure Track Faculty Committee reviewed this title series extensively, we went through several drafts with them, and one of the things they recommended is that this title series be prohibited from teaching core courses (this idea of general education). That actually fits perfectly with the way that the title series would be used as these folks are specialists in specific fields and therefore not really the type of people who would teach general education courses anyway.

For those of you who may be concerned, professors of practice like all instructional faculty including me and all of you, must meet the SACCOC credentialing requirement for teaching their courses. That’s assigned for all of us regardless of whether we hold terminal degrees or not. No Auburn University unit would ever be required to use this title.

And please note that the complete title series document is available to you now. If you have any trouble downloading it or anything like that, just send me an e-mail and I’ll be sure to get you a copy of it.

What happens next? This is informational today. I ask that you please read that title series document that’s available to you. By March 29, please send me any questions or comments that you have, I’ll be happy to answer each and every one of them. I’ll be happy to meet with you and talk about it. I’ll be happy to come to your units and meet with you and talk with you about it, however you want to do it. I am asking that you get that stuff done by March 29 because we want to meet the deadline for the Senate Steering Committee, so we can come back next month and present this as an action item.

So, there you are. We are trying to come back in the April Senate meeting for the action item. Once that’s approved and then signed off by the Provost and the President we would send it to Ralph and the Faculty Handbook Review Committee, they would review all of the language before it went into the Faculty Handbook.

Questions? [39:09]

Brian Anderson, senator, civil engineering: Our department supports this, but I do have a question. One thing we struggle with a lot is finding adjuncts in our department because the SACS requirements, especially if a graduate class is required for a terminal degree, so we are going to hold, it may even cripple us in being able to get professors of practice to come and do more than just undergraduate education. I am kind of concerned, I will take it back to my faculty tomorrow at our faculty meeting and discuss this, but I don’t know if there is a way to find a way that we can get folks that do have that experience who could also help with graduate education. Because it would kind of shut the door on that part of it with a terminal degree.

Emmett Winn, Assoc. Professor and Assoc. Provost: I’ll respond, Drew is here, so Drew you correct me when I’m wrong. [39:59] The SACSCOC credentialing requirements do not necessarily prohibit teaching at the graduate level if you do not have the terminal degree. More than likely the thing that will get in your way is your own graduate faculty requirements in your own department. That would more than likely be the problem. So, you would want to very carefully look at your graduate faculty requirements in your own department. And if you have any questions about how you can credential people according to SACS, Drew and I will both be happy to come and talk with you about it. But it is certainly possible.

Brian Anderson, senator, civil engineering: We will look out for that. Thank you.

Emmett Winn, Assoc. Professor and Assoc. Provost: Look forward to hearing from you. Thank you.

Michael Baginski, Chair:  Thank you Emmett and Christian.

This concludes our formal agenda for today.

Is there any unfinished business?  Pause …. Hearing none, is there any new business?  …. Hearing none, I now adjourn the meeting. [41:04]