Transcript Senate Meeting
August 28, 2018

Michael Baginski, Chair: [Late start by 2 minutes due to parking] We’ve got a full agenda today, so I will cover this quickly.

I want to thank personally Dr. Leath for a lot of things he has done for us that a lot of you don’t know about. Thank you.  And I also speak for a lot of people, the fixed price residuals that were set to be in effect, he got rid of for us. Second thing is a lot of people complained about the in-state reimbursement for travel and other things…well, he took care of that, believe it or not.  We mention these things because he does take care of them right then.

I complain always about parking, but one of the things that a lot of people complain about to me is 24/7 parking for faculty. People that have research and they have to get back on campus, and there’s a lot of us, you are doing something about that and I appreciate that.

I could go on but I am going to stop now because it is a full agenda. I will let Dr. Leath come and talk.

Dr. Steven Leath, AU President: Wow, I am not that tall. (referring to microphone positioned at a high level for Mike Baginski, laughter)

Good afternoon. A good crowd is here today, that’s good to see. The other side of that stuff Michael was talking about, and I’ll add some commentary, is sometimes there are people on campus who wonder about the effectiveness of Senate, but it was the Senate Leadership that explained the per diem rate to me. I called the Governor, she said she’d do what she could, especially with timing, there is a big event in November. [2:00bk/1:22] She did a lot to fix our situation. Good relationship with her, good relationship with Senate, so, if you have some issues we can’t guarantee we can fix them all, but for those of you that sometimes wonder, I do meet with these folks all the time and I do try and where I can be effective move as quickly as I can. Hopefully when you are traveling in-state you will get a little more of a reimbursement back when you are out and about.

The semester started well. We welcome back 4,800 new freshmen. This is big for us, for those that don’t know this is the biggest it has ever been, when the census comes out on the 10th day you will see that. This is a struggle we have right now, to try to decide what is the right size for Auburn. You will hear a lot about that later on. But we are the largest that we’ve ever been. Applications were up 21%, so we were pretty strict on who go in, but we had so many applicants and such a good pool, we did grow.

As I mentioned, bring issues to Leadership. They will bring them to us, the ones that we can resolve, we certainly will. Part of the reason behind this is, this may sound old-fashioned, but the faculty and staff are what do things here, it’s not the buildings, so if Leadership brings something forward that I think will benefit faculty or staff it goes straight to the top of the list. So that’s how that thing happened.

I want to talk some about the strategic planning process. [2:43] I talked about what is the right size for Auburn. That is one of the many objectives of the strategic plan. You’ve heard me talk about a sense of urgency…if we are going to go forward faster and stronger than we ever have before, we need to make sure we’re going in the right direction. So, we have 14 listening sessions going on right now. Probably will be the most widely vetted, largest input we’ve had in a strategic plan. I just came back from one in Montgomery, there’s another one in Montgomery tonight. I am doing one in Atlanta, Friday. Either the Provost, me, Bobby Woodard, or Ron Burgess will be at every single one of them.

This is a faculty lead initiative. If you see Beth Guertal or Bruce Tatarchuk, you need to thank them. This is probably a bigger job than they thought they were saying yes to. It is faculty lead with a committee that includes faculty, staff, and students, 14 listening sessions and we are going to try to get this all done by February (2019). So it is a pretty fast pace, yet a lot of input on this, then we will set those priorities and move forward on them fairly quickly. So, I want to let you know where we are at on that. I am hoping at the end of it we have a pretty clear path to raise our research profile, enhance our great student experience, increase our reputation, so that’s the plan.

Some of the things we have already implemented before the plan is in full effect, like the pair initiative, the 5 million dollars we put forward to incentivize multi-disciplinary research is working. A meeting with all those investigators tonight, but one of the programs for example was in additive manufacturing, and they were awarded a 3 million-dollar NIST grant last week. So, we have already captured back 60% of the investment on the first grant. So, this is good. It’s not only good because we captured some of the investment back, but it helps raise our profile. It tells other universities and industries around the country when they see a prominent grant like that from a Federal Agency laying here, that Auburn really is a leader in these technologies. And that is something we really want to do in terms of raising our profile and reputation.

A few comments about who’s over in Samford. [4:56] There have been a lot of changes and I just wanted to go over some of those changes that have come and some that are about to come, so we are all on the same page. Ron is still serving as Chief Operations Officer of the university and Chief of Staff. We have a Chief of Staff job on the street with 30 some applicants, I’ve not seen them all yet, but the committee is working and will land with me at some point. Ron is doing a tremendous job. His capacity to expedite paperwork is like none I’ve ever seen. Jamie is giving a fresh perspective to the General Counsel Office, she’s doing a good job. I’ll say in front of Bill, he’s exceeding expectations as Provost. He’s been great.

A lot of people wondered about all the moves we made to put Student Affairs traditional items back in Student Affairs because it grew Student Affairs portfolio tremendously. [6:29] And Bobby appears to some of you as young. But Bobby is really stepped up, the students are delighted to have all those student affairs services back in one office where they are well coordinated. If you see Bobby, you owe him a thank you. I don’t think he is getting much sleep right now. Allen Greene seems to be hitting his stride in Athletics, very different approach to athletics management that we’ve seen in a while, but you will hear more about that from Beverly and Rich today.

Now, I talked about hiring a Chief of Staff, in addition we’re going to search out a Vice President of Enrollment Services. This is going to be critical when we figure out how big we want to be, how many in-state and out-of-state students we want, how many international students; we probably have never managed enrollment like we are going to in the future. So once we figure out what our family wants Auburn to be, Enrollment Management will be a big issue for us.

One of the jobs dear to my heart and I think critical to our long-term success is Vice President of Research. That position is well under way and I think Bill is hoping to have someone at the end of the semester and start of the semester as VPR, which will be good. Tomorrow morning we’ll announce the new Director of Public Safety on campus, Kelvin King will be joining us. It’s possible some of you have met him. Kelvin is the special agent in charge of the FBI for Central Alabama in Montgomery, has worked in Auburn on a lot of cooperative projects with our police and brings a large body of experience in law enforcement as well as threat reduction and many other things to our campus. Kelvin will join us October 1. [8:14]

So, I would say thing are going well at the beginning of the semester, but there’s lots to be done. If there’s time for questions I will take them.

Michael Baginski, Chair: There is time for questions, Senators first, there’s microphone on either side. Anyone have any questions? (no)

Dr. Steven Leath, AU President: Oh, can I say one other thing? We reached a decision the other day. At the beginning of the fiscal year, which is October 1, I proposed to Senate leadership to give kind of a State of the University Address, a much longer detailed address. Everything from budgeting to priorities to how we are going to approach significant difficulties on campus. I am going to do it at the next Senate meeting. We’ll publicize it more widely and we’ll see how that goes and if there’s interest in getting a road map for the year, so to speak for me, in the fall. If it is well received we will continue to do it, but we are going to test it out next month.

Michael Baginski, Chair: One other thing too, this is going to come a little bit later but there’s a survey that went out. There is going to be more information, we’d like the Senators to take time and poll your faculty about this. We will talk more about this later.

Next, will be approval of the minutes.

I should have recognized the past chair and chair-elect, Dan Svyantek and Nedret Billor. They are here.

Now we need the approval of the last two meetings. First, we will approve the minutes of May 15, 2018. Excuse me, first we will establish a quorum. With the clickers on, press A. A=56, a quorum is established.

We have two (meetings) to approve because we did not have a quorum last time. The first is the meeting of May 15, 2018. Are there any corrections or comments? If not, approval of the meeting? A=56, B=0

Now, approval of the June 12, 2018 minutes (no official business took place, due to no quorum). There was one correction, already made, which was to correct the statement that James Goldstein would present the By-laws motion at this August meeting, it was corrected to state that the motion would be presented by someone. The corrected minutes are posted. To approve, press A.  A=52, B=0.

Now, Ralph will be presenting an amendment to the Faculty Handbook. [13:15bk; 12:32]

Ralph Kingston, chair of Faculty Handbook Review Committee: Hello everybody. Some of you will have been here the last time I presented this as an informational item. Some of you won’t actually be able to remember because it is quite a long time ago that I presented it, back in March or April because we haven’t be able to manage a quorum since then. I am going to go quickly through for everyone who doesn’t remember, which I suspect is most of you, exactly what is going on here.

There are 2 things going on here in terms of the Research Committee. The major one is making the Libraries and Research Data Management Librarian a continuing, voting, ex-officio member of the committee. And the second thing that is going on here is adding separate representation for the Libraries faculty. The brief version of why I am presenting this scintillating change to you is that last year the Senate Leadership received a request from the Library to add the Research Data Management Librarian as a continuing, voting, ex-officio member. This is the same status as members of Institutional Biosafety Committee, the Institutional Review Board for Protection of Humans Subjects in Research, the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee and all of those chairs already sit on this Committee in that capacity. The reason that the Research Data Management Librarian doesn’t is that’s a new position. Or was a new position when we first started this process. [14:21]

Effectively the role of the data management Librarian is to develop and implement policies for research data management in the university. She works closely with coordinating data management policies between the various units involved in research on campus, including but not limited to the associate dean for research, the office of proposal services and faculty support, and OIT.

So, most Federal funding agencies now require data management plans to be included in grant proposals. Many other institutions that give funding do as well, hence the reason for this position. So, as well as taking a lead in determining data management policy and the data management librarian also works within the Library. She works with subjects specialists, with research faculty to manage the data generated by the research, she offers training sessions, data management seminars.

So there are 2 main reasons for her to be included in the Senate Faculty Research Committee. First of all she’s likely to hear about potential data compliance issues and be in a position to offer solutions, and two, she can act as a conduit for faculty perspectives on data into the Research Committee. So, she’s embedded in the process of how the research gets done mechanistically on campus across departments, and that’s why it’s a good idea to have her on this committee.

In the process in adding her to the committee it came to the Handbook Review Committee and we noticed that the Libraries faculty don’t actually have their own representation on the Faculty Research Committee. So, even though we were looking to add a librarian to the committee, the data management librarian, the idea that the Librarian’s own specific research concerns had to be fed to a specific person, the data management librarian, and nobody else seemed problematic to us. It was treating the Library faculty differently than faculty members in academic schools and colleges elsewhere. [16:30]

So, Librarians, library faculty in order to be tenured and promoted have, like their colleagues in other academic schools and colleges to demonstrate productivity and research and creative practice and they are subjected to internal and external peer review and recognition. Their research is done and judged in the same way as the rest of ours. So, the Faculty Handbook Committee therefore propose that the research related concerns should be represented on the Senate Faculty Research Committee in the same way as all of the other faculty in the university. The only other thing that I will add to that is last time I presented this somebody pointed out that I couldn’t do math, and it was 13 rather than 12. You will notice that is it 13 rather than 12, I am an historian and my math ability has been justly pointed out as kind of rubbish. So, that is that. Any questions?

Mike Fogel, senator Physics: I am also the Chair of the Faculty Research Committee and I would say that this is a welcome addition to the committee. We have talked about data management plans quite a bit as a part of research and infrastructure and things that the Librarians and the Library can provide would be important to the research enterprise at Auburn.

Ralph Kingston, chair of Faculty Handbook Review Committee: Yet again thank you for pointing out my math (chuckle).

Mike Baginski, chair: Any other questions? I have one comment to make, to pass this we need 58 votes or more. So, please if you did not get a clicker or you have a malfunctioning clicker, please get another one. It’s important, I’ll wait. And if you are substituting for a senator you have the right to vote too, so please do get a clicker.

[Some confusion regarding if the president could vote and should have a clicker. A clicker was asked to be brought to the president for voting.]
Alright, if you are in favor of this (motion) vote A. A=61, B=0. Ah, we did it. [19:44]
[20:43bk]

Ralph Kingston, chair of Faculty Handbook Review Committee: The next item I am presenting to you is in fact not an action item, but a pending action item for information, because I have not presented it to you before. It’s a change to the Faculty Salaries and Welfare Committee. It’s a change responding to a request to the Senate Leadership from Karla McCormick, associate vice president of Human Resources (HR), to expand slightly the representation of the folks from HR on the Faculty Salaries and Welfare Committee. HR is currently represented on the committee by the Director of Payroll, Benefits, and Records, and the concern here is that while she can present information about employee benefits she is less able to relay to the committee information on employee compensated related items. So, the Senate leadership therefore has decided to propose adding the Senior Director of Talent Management as a member of the committee. So the intention behind this change is to make sure that HR is sending the right people to meetings that can give good counsel regarding their areas of expertise, not just benefits but also compensation.

The other change you see here is that the Executive Vice President will now officially be represented by his, or her in the future, Chief of Staff rather than by the Executive Vice President. Currently, Ron Burgess, the Chief Operating Officer and the Executive VP for Business and Finance sits on the committee and since he is acting Chief of Staff, presumably he will continue doing this, but once there is a Chief of Staff in place, the Chief of Staff or designee will take the place instead. So you don’t have to vote on this today, this is something that you will be voting on next time. Thank you.

Michael Baginski, Chair: Beverly Marshall is next presenting Senate Committee nominees.

Beverly Marshall, Secretary: We are getting very close to filling all of the Senate Committees, but one of the things that happens is with some of the 3-year terms and when we send out the letters of appointment then find out that the faculty member has left or retired or something like that. So, there are a couple of loose ends we always have at the beginning of the year as we find out that people have left the university.

We have couple that will need to be approved today. Again, these are Senate committees that have to be approved first by the Rules Committee and then by you. Any Questions? This is not a complete list, they are just new replacements. If you will then use your clicker in the same manner to vote on these, press A if you vote in favor, press B if you oppose. [24:14bk] A=55, B=0. Thank you.

Michael Baginski, Chair: Now Dan Svyantek will be talking about By-Laws and a recommendation to go forward.

Dan Svyantek, Immediate Past Chair: I am here to present By-Laws for James Goldstein. James talked about this at the June meeting which didn’t officially occur (due to lack of a quorum). The recommendation is that Departments who do not have by-laws are to create a set of by-laws. The primary justification or reason behind this in James’s mind was graphically pulled out today at Biggio Center during some pretraining for mentoring new faculty and one of the things that was brought up was one of the trainees was told that the first thing you should do is read the Faculty Handbook and the Departmental By-laws. That will help you understand how to be a good organizational citizen. Well, if you don’t have departmental by-laws it is hard to read them. So, the Senate is going to make a recommendation, that departments consider creating their set of by-laws if they do not yet have them.

If you do have them, the second part, which if you go to the last page, Laura, is that you revise them as needed. Periodically go back to them and revisit them. I hope you all have read that because it is about 4 pages and I don’t want to read it to you. I will try to answer questions. I have the transcript from June and will try to answer as James did, and if there are new questions I will answer them. Are there any questions? (No questions.) [26:05, 26:48bk]

Michael Baginski, Chair: Do I have a motion to approve this Recommendation for Departmental By-laws? Do I get a second? Let me just say, James spent a lot of time on this and could not present today, but it is very important for new faculty to have by-laws. So, if you are in favor of it and I don’t see any reason not to be please vote. Alright, all in favor press A. A=54, B=5, C=1. The motion passes.

The next information item, our presenter will be Lindsay Doukopoulos. [28:03, 28:47bk]

Lindsay Doukopoulos, Assistant Director, Biggio Center for Teaching and Learning: Hello, I am Lindsay Doukopoulos the Assistant Director of the Biggio Center and I am going to quickly talk about 3 tools that we are excited about for enhancing teaching and learning that you may not be aware of. One of these tools is designed to help you, one is designed to help your students, and the other is designed to help your students help you.

The first tool is digital badging. We have started a digital badging program at the Biggio Center in collaboration with Auburn Online. Auburn Online established a contract with Credly to allow different departments on campus to offer digital badges. So, if you are interested in offering your own you can talk with Asim Ali at Auburn Online, he can help you out. We are offering these as digital credentials or micro-credentials that signify some kind of development investment in teaching excellence that the faculty have done. A digital badge, if you are not familiar, it’s just like girl scouts or boy scouts, if you remember those days, except instead of sewing it to a sash you sew it to your electronic Web site, or your linked in account, or you can print off a hard copy of the certificate to include as evidence of your teaching effectiveness in your tenure portfolio or annual review file.

A badge consists of an icon, you click on it, it is not an image, it is an active link. You click on it and the meta data pops up which shows what the faculty did to earn the badge as well as the issue or details. So the credibility of the badge is included as well.
We started our badging project in 2017 and we started collecting some data about how they are being valued, how they are being used. We have learned that heads and chairs departmental leadership value it as evidence of effective teaching. So striving to be a better teacher documents that investment in your own teaching. The faculty value it for a number of different reasons. One of the most significant ones we found is it fulfills a kind of social aspect. There’s a lot of opportunity for interdisciplinary sharing of resources, teaching, advancements, and things like that. We have created a badge site on the Biggio page. This isn’t it it is just a slide with badges, but there’s a badge site where you can click into the individual badges and see the faculty who have given us permission to share their image and their name who have earned the badge. We are hoping to create it as more of a social way to show how people are investing in their teaching the different opportunities we are offering for professional development.

Currently we offer badges for course redesign, new faculty scholars both for mentors as well as for participants, and also for pedagogy space technology, this is EASL Active Learning badge. To earn a badge, faculty have to participate in at least 4 hours of professional development; so, attend a workshop series or invest time in some other significant way and they have to provide artifacts of teaching. So, show what they used from that professional development to actually improve the material for the strategies that they use in the classroom. We give you feedback on that and once you’ve completed the artifact then you receive the digital credential. [31:44]

The second tool I want to introduce you to, this one is extremely exciting, this is Canvas design tools. One of the biggest issues that students have with Canvas is that there is no consistency from one class to another. Faculty organize their Canvas site in whatever way makes sense to them, which is not, as you might imagine, a consistent format. So, Shandra Bowers in Auburn Online has been really instrumental in bringing design tools to Auburn’s campus, an example is one of the courses she has created using design tools, and essentially what it does is provide a more consistent experience for students, it also fulfills accessibility in a much more dependable way. There is an accessibility check, a tool checker for it. And it also requires less time from faculty to set it up for the course shells they are designing.

Biggio is offering a couple of different workshops. I know a few of you participated in today’s workshop on the design feature tool. Tomorrow morning we’ve got one on using the multi-tool, which is basically it helps you set up the organization and the navigation. So, there is a module builder, there’s different ways to integrate the things you are uploading, your syllabus, into actual usable layed-out calendar deadlines and things like that. So, it just functions a lot better, all the work you do goes across all the different aspects of Canvas so you are not having to enter the same information multiple times. [33:15]
The last tool I will quickly go over is the Canvas Feedback tool. This is a new tool that is available in Canvas. If you go to your settings and go to that navigation tab and scroll down to all those hidden options down there, you can drag up the feedback tool. Hit save at the bottom. But this is a tool that can help students get practice on giving you meaningful feedback to improve your teaching. It give you the opportunity to teach students the skill of giving feedback. As you know with AU Evaluate the response rate tends to be a little bit lower than when we had traditional paper-based responses. And from what we’ve heard in our teaching feedback workshops we’ve been giving faculty feel like students use them as Yelp reviews as opposed to giving them meaningful critiques on their teaching. So, this is a tool that’s designed to address that problem and give them practice throughout the semester.

On the student side we have included a little video that teaches students how to give specific actionalble and respectful feedback. We suggest that you have them watch that first. They can then enter their anonymous feedback so it comes to you anonymous through the Canvas tool, but you also as faculty have the option to report abuse if somebody is abusing the privilege of giving anonymous feedback. You don’t have to allow someone to continue to give you harmful or abusive feedback.

Finally, students will be notified when you reply to their feedback. So the main way to teach students how to give feedback is to give them feedback on their feedback. But as the instructor you are getting to see when your students have comments, read, unread, and you also have the ability, again, to block them or to give feedback on it.

This a an exciting tool we are hoping will improve the data and the response rate for these AU Evaluates and teach this valuable skill that employers say they are…that it is really important for students to graduate with.

We have workshops on all of these tools on our events page and while you are there you can check out which of your faculty colleagues have earned digital badges, or find out how to earn one yourself if you are interested. If you have any questions, I think I still have got a few minutes. Okay, thank you. [35:38]

Michael Baginski, Chair: Next will be Avoiding Academic Extra Benefits, Rich will present. Oh, you are going to present, okay.

Beverly Marshall, secretary: So, I became the Faculty Athletic Representative in January and I have been a faculty member here at Auburn now, this is my 20th year, and there was a lot I did not know about NCAA and SEC Rules and Rich does not expect us to know NCAA or SEC rules, which is great, but hopefully his presentation will give us a heads up about things we might at least know that we need to question. So, I appreciate Rich Mcglynn, who is the Executive Associate Athletic Director in charge of Compliance. Do I have all that right? Again, he is going to give us some information from the academic side that we need to know about student athletes. Thank you. [37:02]

Rich Mcglynn, Executive Associate Athletic Director in charge of Compliance: Thank you Dr. Marshall. I appreciate you all being here.
Do I have to stand here? If I move around away from the microphone can you all hear me? [No, is the answer, we record the meetings for transcription]
Thank you.

So, I am here to talk about academic misconduct. We’re talking that way simply because at the NCAA level what is occurred is if you follow what’s going on is the University of North Carolina had a pretty significant case coming out of their basketball/football programs. The NCAA used to attack academic “fraud” was the definition they utilized, and they did it under very limited circumstances when it came to just athletics and athletics personnel being involved. They used to attack it first ‘academic fraud’ and then they would come back attack it as an ‘extra benefit.’

What you see up there is you have an old legislation where we used to have academic fraud and an extra benefit. An extra benefit is just something that a student athlete gets that the general student population cannot receive. So, originally the NCAA went after North Carolina for academic fraud and that they say we did not find academic fraud there. So, then they went after them under extra benefits, trying to say that student athletes actually got an extra benefit, something the general student population could not. Now, if you remember on appeal North Carolina came back and actually said the general student population was able to also receive these same-type of classes, and because of that, the committee on infractions determined that there were no violations. There wasn’t academic fraud and was not this extra benefit legislation. That caused new legislation to come about which is why I am standing before you today. Because the new legislation has changed that analysis. We no longer have an academic fraud analysis and an extra benefit analysis, we now have an ‘academic misconduct’ and we have an ‘impermissible academic assistance.’

I am a chart guy and I have 8 slides that I am going to run through as quickly as possible, but the last slide is a chart and I think it’s the best so I am going to jump to that as we move through this quickly because I think I can explain it best with the chart to put it all together [to see what they are trying to do].

The first thing we are trying to do is ensure that all institutional staff members, that’s important to understand that legislation there, all institutional staff members. That means everyone that’s employed at Auburn, that we act with integrity and honesty in all academic matters. That seems sad that we actually have to state that in NCAA legislation, and it’s sad that you have to have academic honesty policies on campuses, but the reality of it is, we do. [39:45]

Now, you can see the difference of what I was just talking about. Earlier I was talking about academic fraud and that had to be within the athletic nexus. Now it is ALL institutional staff members, so you can already see that it’s expanded. Which is why I am standing before anyone who will listen to me say, this is different, now we all need to be tracking on this. We all have to make sure that we are acting integrity and with honesty. Actually, to that end, one of the things that President Leath did not point out to you is that last year we actually had me, instead of reporting to the athletic director, I now report directly to him. The genesis behind that was to ensure that we are operating with integrity and making sure that we’re in compliance and that we’re doing everything the right way, and if we find something wrong we are going to address it and going to fix it. So, that’s one of the significant changes within athletics that you now see I report directly to the President instead of to the Athletic Director. [40:39]

So, this academic misconduct definition is different for us now, so we are trying to figure out what this means. Really what we are talking about is, the number one thing is what is the institution’s policy, what is Auburn’s Academic Honesty Policy? Whatever it is, the number one thing we have to do is follow our own policy.

That becomes important to us because now I need to understand if a student athlete is going through the process of our academic dishonesty and are ultimately found guilty, that can affect their NCAA eligibility. That’s different than the old rule. So, that’s important for us so we are now tracking on, okay, what’s going on in the academic honesty policy so we can ensure that we are not violating NCAA Rules.

And now, all staff involvement, including student workers. That’s what that bottom box is getting at, is student workers. That can be student tutors, student managers, it doesn’t matter, if they are employed by us they are subject to this rule. Volunteers under NCAA rules are also considered employees of our institution. So, it’s not just you and I salaried individuals, it’s is anyone who is volunteering or working on a part-time basis, if they are involved with our students and they don’t follow our own academic honesty policy, it could cause us to have and NCAA violation.

The new legislation also then changes that academic fraud; we have this academic misconduct and we have impermissible academic assistance. This is where it gets a little gray and I am going to go to the chart for you. So, here’s the chart. The first question we are going to ask is; Does it violate our institutional academic policy? If the answer is yes, we are immediately going to go to the left. And if on this chart if the answer is yes, we are going to ask one of these 3 questions; 1) Does it alter their transcript or fabricate their transcript? 2) Is an institutional staff member or booster involved in this fraud, in this violation? 3) Did they compete, did they practice, or receive athletics aid based on this violation? Then you drop down, if it is yes to any one of those 3 boxes we have and NCAA violation of academic misconduct. If it is no to all, then we do not.

So, you start running that through and start realizing, we need to be paying attention to our own policy, number one, we need to be sure that is being followed. We need to be communicating what those outcomes are because we need to be able to ensure that we are certifying our student athletes properly every academic term. Really where this can catch you if you think about is, if you have a football player who may have an issue right at the end of the semester in December and we play in a bowl game in December or January and we’re going to certify eligibility, well the academic honesty part may not play itself out for a couple more weeks or a couple of months sometimes depending on the process. It retroactively goes back. So, we always have to be communicating to make sure we are not certifying our students athletes…I’ll give you an example…if something were to happen where there was cheating going on in a class, there was a violation of our academic honesty code, but the professor gives the individual a grade of a B, and we go out and we certify that class as being part of their eligibility and allow that individual to play in that bowl game, then the academic comes back in February and finds them guilty and now says you get and F in that course. If I use that course and that B to certify our student athlete eligible for the bowl game, we have an NCAA academic misconduct violation. That’s drastically different than how the NCAA used to look at academic fraud. They used to ask the question of: is anyone in athletics involved in the cheating of it and if the answer was yes then academic fraud could have occurred under NCAA rules. If the answer was no, then academic fraud did not occur under NCAA rules. That’s a very general synopsis, it gets more detailed than that, but I am trying to move quick.

So, understand the difference now. We are now basing our academic misconduct violations under NCAA Rules based upon each institution’s academic honesty code. Which kind of gets to what we were just talking about, your policy and procedures and your by-laws are incredibly important and making sure that we are following them. Making sure we are going dot by dot and this is our policy, and are we following it? Let’s just say we ask the question, did it violate the institution’s policy? And the answer is no, it did not, we are not out of the woods. [45:21] There’s still then drop over to this impermissible academic assistance. The key is in that very top one, the substantial academic assistance. This is where it gets gray because I can’t sit here and tell you what substantial academic assistance truly means. It is going to be fact sensitive and it’s going to depend on what’s going on within the system. That analysis would be done by us within the Compliance Office in conjunction with the SEC and the NCAA to help us determine based upon those facts, really what that substantial academic assistance mean.

So, number one, it doesn’t violate your policy, but you still have someone that got substantial academic assistance. Let’s just say in that scenario we are talking about a grade change again. The professor changes the grade because the student went up and said, “hey, is there any extra credit work that I can do?” and the professor say, “yes, absolutely, you can write a paper.” They write the paper and they change the grade from a D to a B. We are going to come in and we’re going to have to now ask that question when that grade change comes in and say okay, did we follow our institutional policy? Yes we did. Okay. Is there substantial academic assistance? Is there and issue here? We will start asking questions like, did everyone in the class get the opportunity? Have you ever provided this opportunity before? Is it just this single individual that was given that opportunity? Those are the types of gray areas we now have to start looking into that in the past this is a huge, significant, philosophical shift at the NCAA level. In the past the NCAA used to look at academic autonomy and say if the professor wants to change that grade they have the authority to change that grade. NOW they are saying, the professor has the authority to change the grade, but if we are going to use that class to certify their eligibility we have to do an analysis of that substantial academic assistance. It is going to be fact sensitive. I may come and say oh yea, it’s on the syllabi, everyone had the opportunity to do extra credit, the individual did the extra credit. Once they did it I changed the grade from the D to the B. Great, we’re good.

We go to point 2 then.  Point 2 is it is not generally available, no, it is available to everyone in the class. Drop to point 3. Not permissible under by-law 16.3. Who knows what by-law 16.3 is? Nobody. By-law 16.3 is the by-law that allows us to provide our tutors and our mentors and our things for our student athletes to insure academic success. I can give you more information if you come see me afterward, be happy to talk to you about that.

Point 4 is provided by a former or current institutional staff member or a booster represented. Obviously if we have a booster engaging in something like that, that’s a concern for us. If we have and institutional staff member, not just an athletic department staff member engaging in that type of activity, that’s a concern for us, we need to know about it. That means it is important for our advisors and tutors across campus to understand your actions no longer just limited to your department, but it could actually affect and NCAA violation; which is drastically different philosophically. We just all need to be aware of that.

We have set processes up so you understand, we are working with the Registrar’s Office. At any time our student athletes a grade comes in and there’s a grade change or get and incomplete or something along those lines that is totally within parameters of what’s permissible on our campus, so it doesn’t violate a policy…we drop over to the right here and ask, if they got that grade change we need to understand why that grade change occurred. And 99.999% of time I would expect it’s going to be okay because we are all going to operate with honesty and integrity. But it’s that one time that we have to figure out and make sure that we are acting appropriately.

Then we drop down to 5. Does it result in the certification of eligibility? Again, if we use that class to certify someone’s eligibility that would be a problem for us. If you get to the bottom, if you have yes to all, you’ve got a violation. If it’s no to any, there is no NCAA violation.

I can run through different scenarios, if a boyfriend and girlfriend, one is a student athlete and one is not, they decide to cheat together, try to help each other somewhere along the line, does that violate the academic honesty? Probably does, right? So we’d be on the left side. Let’s just say for the heck of it, it doesn’t, so it drops to the right, then we are going to run through that analysis. If it’s no to any then it is not a violation. The girlfriend or boyfriend is not an employee of ours or anywhere within the institution, it would not necessarily be an NCAA violation.

It is all going to be fact specific as we move through. I am standing here before you today to make you aware. I don’t expect you to leave here and understand the difference between academic misconduct and permissible academic assistance. I just want you to know that it is out there. And that you know who I am, you see my face and you go, there a guy by the name of Rich Mcglynn and the Registrar’s Office will be calling and asking about a grade change or an incomplete or something just doesn’t feel right that in the past we would have just defaulted to, you have the authority to do what you want within your own departments, now the NCAA requires us to do a little bit more.

Last but not least I am going to tell you, you always have the opportunity to come forward if you see something that doesn’t look right. You can always report it to me. We use Kevin Robinson in Internal Auditing as well, we use the Ombudsman, we use General Counsel, you can use Dr. Marshall as our FAR. We are trying to do it right. Now, I will tell you I understand cheating goes on on college campuses. My theory on this, I always tell people, “Desperate people do desperate things.” I try to tell our student athletes, “Don’t be desperate. Don’t get yourself in a desperate situation.” Right? Because that is usually what happens, is you are desperate. Our kids are worried about their eligibility, they are worried about playing a bowl game, they are worried about their scholarship, they are worried about playing time, and sometimes you take the easy way instead of the right way. That is what I’ve been honing-in on our staff, my theory, “exemplary conduct and don’t take the easy way, take the right way.” That’s way I continue to say. We are going ask some questions, don’t be offended by us asking questions, we have to do it moving forward.

Last but not least if you want to ever report something to us anonymously you can go to ethicspoint.com, there is an Auburn tab and put it in there. You can put your name, but you can do it anonymously also. It comes in, it comes to me, goes to the General Office, goes to Internal Auditing as well and we run it all down. There are times we find NCAA violations because of that, sometimes we look at it and say this is not and NCAA violation. I encourage you, if you see something to please say something, because if there is smoke there is probably fire. It may affect one person’s eligibility, but if it saves someone as well, we’ve done our job. We try to be proactive instead of reactive in the world of compliance. There is a philosophy, you can either be a police officer and try to come in and police the rules, or you can be a fireman and try to put out those fires. We do the opposite, we try to be someone that advises. We try to help someone from the get go and advise you along the way and be proactive instead of reactive.

Again, I am here today so that you can recognize my face and my name and know who I am and ask me questions. I will stay afterward if you have any questions that you want to ask. Thank you for your time. [53:00]

Yes. You can contact me or Dr. Marshall if you have any questions about an athlete. My phone number is 334-750-9424. If you have any questions you certainly can call, you can always e-mail me, I am in the system as well. And/of again if you are worried about that in talking directly to us, you can always go to ethicspoint.com and do it anonymously.

I talk fast because I know you want to get out of here by 4:30 so anything I can do I will stay down here and answer any questions for you. Thank you. [applause]

Beverly Marshall, FAR: Thank you so much Rich. I really appreciate the opportunity to come up and be proactive and go ahead and tell you some of these things as you begin your semester.

I have a couple of things. Usually as the FAR, the Faculty Athletics Representative, I make a presentation in March, and that is usually the only time you would hear from me about the progress of our students toward their degree. But there is a couple of other things that the FAR would like to set up, beginning reminders.

At the beginning of the semester, one it those darn faculty/staff tickets that you have now received and hopefully in there this year we were successful in getting and orange sheet of paper that said, “Don’t sell these at a profit.” So I hope you noticed that in your package. Just a reminder again as we enter the season and hope to be very successful on field. Of course, a reminder that this is a benefit to you as an employee of Auburn University, they are sold to you at a discount. I do believe that the face value is the full valule, you actually pay 80% of that and you are not allowed to sell those at a profit. Be aware that if you sell them to somebody at what you paid, they need to understand the rules too. Because you would be libel, so to speak, if somebody else ends up in your seats and that is reported back that they purchased the tickets. Of course, do not ever post your tickets on Facebook. There is a barcode there and whoever gets through the gate first with the barcode gets the seat. Okay?

Regarding student athletes, remember intercollegiate athletic events are a university excused absence under our policy. Again, following our policies and procedures, make sure you are aware of our AU Policies in the Auburn Bulletin regarding university excused absences, and follow them. You will make my life easier too.

Also, help with responding to issues, I know I didn’t have any issues regarding at risk students or absences, but please respond to those. That information request that comes out from the athletic department if you have a student athlete. They really appreciate early identification, so they can address excessive absences or at risk students in a classroom.

Then again, as Rich pointed out, I am actually the one that is sending out e-mails to faculty when I am notified of a grade change regarding a student athlete. I am not picking on any faculty member, and hopefully, again, your response will be as it’s been with every case that I’ve sent out, every e-mail, that is was something that was offered to every student or it involved some delay in getting information and all of the grades had to be changed. Again, I e-mail all faculty that are involved in a student athlete grade change, and just ask for further information to make sure there is no extra benefit.

I found this article, it was inside Higher Ed that actually talked about what athletes would say to professors. I thought this was kind of good; that recognize that injuries may happen in a sport and that could actually sideline an athlete not only on the field, but also in the classroom, and be aware of that. Understand that they don’t make the schedule, so even though it is a very important week in your class, they have a competition and they are going to need to attend, and please don’t take it personally or out on them. Address your personal biases. Not all student athlete experiences that you’ve had in the past may be good, but don’t carry that over to other student athletes. Know that they’re sorry for dozing in class. I do know that they have very busy schedules, often with very early practices or strength and conditioning. Be clear about expectations, they are used to that. Their coaches pretty much tell them exactly what they need to do. That is really important.

Last but not least. Again, what I wanted to say; if you have trouble with a student athlete in a class I am also a resource for you. I represent you. Please come to me if you have any issues that I can help you with and address. I hope you have a great semester. With that, I’m done.

Michael Baginski, Chair: Thank you. I’d like to thank all of the presenters today, you’ve done a great job. They did it effectively and quickly, amazingly because I thought this would go after 5 p.m.

You need to hear this because we heard about this from several different people and Beverly took the time to put it together well.

Beverly Marshall, Senate Secretary: I was supposed to say something about the survey. The survey is due September 4. What we really want to do is begin to address what YOU want us to address if you are faculty. So. if you’ll please help to respond to this survey so that we can begin to collect concerns of faculty and addressing those that we can address. This is due by September 4. It is posted online so if somebody wants to respond and doesn’t want to respond to you directly they can respond individually. Thank you.

Michael Baginski, Chair: How many have seen the survey? Show of hands…fantastic. I know that a lot of people don’t take this stuff seriously, ‘cause I didn’t for a long time. Please do this time. I promise you, if you have a real problem and it’s not just something created because you don’t like somebody’s dress code, if it is something real, we will act on it quickly.

Next, any unfinished business at all? (none) Any new business at all? (none) Finally, unless there is a reason not to, I move the meeting be adjourned. [1:00:47]