Transcript Senate Meeting
November 12, 2019

Nedret Billor, Chair: Good afternoon. Thank you all for coming to this Senate meeting in this cold weather. It is pretty cold outside.
Welcome to the November 12, 2019 meeting of the University Senate. This is our forth meeting of the 2019-20 academic year.

We have some procedures, I know it is boring but is what we have to do. 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 task is to establish a quorum. We have 87 Senators in the Senate and we need 45 for a quorum. Please press A on your clicker to show you are present.

Let the record show we have 55 present (senators), so a quorum is established.

I now call the meeting to order.

I would like to remind you of some basic procedures for the University Senate meetings for Senators and guests. If you would like to speak about an issue or ask a question, please go 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 the guests are welcome to speak.

The Senate is not a time for personal conversation with a speaker. Please limit yourselves to one or two questions, unless you are making a motion or an 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 is now up on the screen.

The first order of business is to approve the minutes of the October 15, 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. Thank you.

I would now like to make one short announcement today.

The search committee for the Executive Director of the Biggio Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning has selected the finalists for this position.
These are (two internal and two external):

Asim Ali and Wiebke Kuhn have already had open forums and small group meetings yesterday. I hope you were able to attend them. The other two candidates will have the open forums on November 18 in the RBD (019 CMD Auditorium).
Details of the search, including candidate information and opportunities to provide feedback, can be found at the following: https://auburn.edu/academic/provost/Biggio-ExecDir.php
I strongly encourage you to attend the remaining candidates’ open forums and provide your input through this Website. It is really important and really important to provide feedback.

Any questions? [5:12]

Emmett Winn, Assoc. Provost for faculty affairs, not a senator: Dr. Billor, I have a question. I believe that the quorum stated that we have 55 senators present. I believe that there is a total of 86 senators in the Senate. A vote of two-thirds of the Senate would require 57 senators to vote positive on a change to the Constitution

Nedret Billor, Chair: Yes.

Emmett Winn, Assoc. Provost, not a senator: Since our first action item is a proposed two changes to the Faculty Constitution I was wondering if we want to check and see if we actually have more people here than originally counted in the quorum or not go forward with that vote. Not being a Senator I cannot make any motion, it is just a question.

Nedret Billor, Chair: I would like to ask if you could press on your clicker one more time. Thank you Emmett.
We have 61 present at this time. Thank you.

Now, I would like to introduce the officers of the Senate and our administrative assistant. We have Adrienne Wilson as Senate Secretary, Don Mulvaney as Chair-elect, Greg Schmidt is the Secretary-elect, and Michael Baginski is the Immediate Past Chair, and James Witte is our Parliamentarian, and our administrative assistant is Laura Kloberg.

Since, Drs. Gogue and Hardgrave are attending an annual association of public and land-grant universities meeting in California they are not here with us today. I just wanted to make that announcement. On our agenda we have one action item. I think we can move forward with that and we also have 3 information items and one discussion item.

We will start with the action item. Our Senate Secretary, Adrienne Wilson is going to present. [8:23]

Adrienne Wilson, Secretary: While we get the clicker ready, I just wanted to mention that our second Senate Survey of this semester closed officially and pleased to announce that there are 520 responses so far. Thank you all for your attention to that.

For these action items we need two votes. To review we are voting on the Curriculum Committee, taking out the representative from the University College. So, the Handbook would change to reflect that.

Please take you clickers and press A for a vote yes, and B for no. Oh, I am sorry, any discussion or questions? [9:50]

(apparently the microphone on the east side of the room is not working)
Mike Stern, not a senator, Economics: I will speak loudly.

I asked or it was discussed in this body back when the University College was moved by Administrative (fiat) with remarks why it did not need to go before the Academic Program Review Committee. It was stated, because it has nothing to do with the curriculum. And now I see that we move to remove the University College from the Curriculum Committee. So, if this move was neutral with respect to the curriculum, why does the representation of this particular curriculum need to be changed with respect to the Curriculum Committee? First of all.

Second point is; Why in the name of shared governance do we construct committees on the basis of administrative bureaucracy? If it is to represent the faculty, in this case the curriculum, why are positions on the committee not apportioned relative to the curriculum? Indeed, Liberal Arts, Business, Engineering, when you look at them the fraction of the curriculum that they have is a fraction of the students and thus the interests for the charge of this committee are vastly asymmetric to very small administrative bureaucracy that have very little curricula such as Forestry or Nursing, and so forth. Yet look at how the voting is proportioned on it. This has been a concern that I have raised in the past in the Senate in the construction. The only change that we were told that happened with University College is purely a bureaucratic change relevant to the curriculum. And that is a quote, and now we are asked to remove them from the curriculum committee. [11:55]

Adrienne Wilson, Secretary: Emmett, Can you answer that?

Emmett Winn, Assoc. Provost for faculty affairs, not a senator: I believe that my colleague Dr. Stern’s second question is more a statement about how the Senate and administration interacts. Since I have only been here 20 something years, I don’t have answer how all that got started. In terms of whether or not the…why this is being offered at this point, what I can tell you is that it came forward as a recommendation from the Curriculum Committee via the chair of that committee, Norman Godwin. So, that’s the answers that I have and will be happy to speak with Dr. Stern after the meeting.

Adrienne Wilson, Secretary: Thank you. [13:18] Any other questions or comments?

Alright, clickers ready, A for yes and B for no to approve the change on this committee. A=60, B=5. The change in the Curriculum Committee passes. [14:05]

The second action item is about the Lectures Committee. This is a committee that dealt with very small grants for Lectures and it is being passed on to the Provost’s Office so, this is still possible. So, we are taking this off of the (standing Senate) committees. Again, any questions, comments, discussions? (long pause)

Alright, clickers again, A for yes and B for no removing this committee. A=55, B=8. It is 55 to 8, so this Lectures Committee is no longer in existence.

Laura Kloberg, administrative assistant: No, because it is 55 (we need 57 to pass).

Adrienne Wilson, Secretary: Alright, thank you. Lectures remains a standing Senate committee. [15:33]

Nedret Billor, Chair: Alright, thank you. We will move on with our information items. We have 3 information items as I pointed out earlier. First information item is on Strategic Budgeting Initiative for Senate. Kelli Shomaker, Vice President for Business & Finance will be presenting about that.

Kelli Shomaker, Vice President for Business & Finance and CFO: Good afternoon. Thank you for the invitation to be with you guys today. I am not a history professor, but I do always believe that it’s a good idea to know where you came from and to know a little history. [16:26] So, we’ve probably got some new faces in the group here. I, myself, have only been at Auburn for 3 years, so as budget development guidelines we are going out to the university fiscal year 2021, I thought it was a good idea for the new faces in the room to actually go back and take a look at how we derived the budget model that the institution currently uses to allocate funds and how we got here.

It all started with conversations around the development of the 2013–2018 strategic plan and how to get the financial resources to flow toward strategic initiatives that were included in that plan. The strategic budget initiative established some guiding principles and was very open and determinant that the model was not perfect, but was designed to be simple, transparent, and logical.

You will note that one of the guiding principles of that plan was focus of resources and to allocate them appropriately to the strategic initiatives. Those conversations were begun in January of 2013 and a budget steering committee was put together and formed to begin to investigate what might be the best strategic and budget allocation process for Auburn Univesity. Those talks continued until the plan went live with full implementation in fiscal year 2017. We are now into the fourth year under this model. So, we’ve been in it for ‘17, ’18, ’19, ’20. And one of the guiding principles of the model is that the model would remain constant through 5 years. It would then be evaluated to determine if any tweeks were needed. So, next year, will be the last and the fifth year. So, during this year we’d like to begin to get recommendations from those that utilize the model to come forward for investigation of how they might be included in future models.

As a reminder, the strategic budget model has all funds flow into the colleges and schools, other than Auxiliary Enterprises. It only flows to the dean’s level within a college or school, and then how the college or school determines the allocation to the department remains their call. All data to determine that allocation model is for 2 year in arrears. So, the institutional revenues tuition, state appropriations go down to the colleges and schools. Some units generate their own revenues, they keep those. Those revenues then at the colleges and schools are used to pay unit level expenditures and to cover overhead or central unit allocations. From the funds the central units receive they cover their own administrative cost and may also generate unit generated revenues. [19:51]

Additional charge is that the colleges and schools contribute to the mission and enhancement fund. The mission and enhancement fund is used to balance the budgets of some colleges and schools and provide institutional strategic funds. The model that was adopted includes shared governance representation of variant constituencies. It also includes the inclusion of 3 committees, the Budget Advisory Committee, the Space Management and Repair and Renovations Committee, and the Central Unit Allocations Committee. The makeup of those committees which I have included for you here includes various representatives from all the constituencies from across the university.

The Budget Advisory Committee includes 4 deans, faculty, includes representatives from the University Senate, A&P, Staff. The Central Unit Allocation Committee, again another set of 4 deans, faculty members. The Space Management and Repair and Renovations Committee also includes 3 deans, faculty representation and others.

At this time if there are any questions I can answer for you, I’d be happy to. If you’ve got suggestions please seek me out, would love to hear from you. Thank you.

Nedret Billor, Chair: Thank you Kelli.
Our next information item is about open enrollment. On November 1 we all have received e-mail regarding enrolling in and/or change your benefit elections for 2020. Ann Shore, Executive Dir., Payroll and Benefits will provide us information about the changes.

Ann Shore, Executive Dir., Payroll and Benefits: Good afternoon, thank you for having me. Today’s presentation includes the information that was distributed to you the last week in October. So, in the event you didn’t delve through the packets as soon as you received them, we will cover some of that today. As Nedret stated, November 1 began our open enrollment as we typically do each year in November. This year is a little bit different. The Thanksgiving holiday falls quite late and the actual last 3 working days of November we are closed, so December 2 at 4:45 p.m. ends open enrollment this year. This is your opportunity to make any changes; drop coverage, pick coverage up, make other changes etc. that are effective January 1, 2020.

Year two of our online enrollment systems. We are quite happy about this, we don’t have paper anymore. We ask that everybody enroll through AU Access Self Service. There is an umbrella icon, and we do have benefit enrollers available. Our benefit enrollers, we sent out an e-mail yesterday from University HR stating their schedule, but they are going to be in OIT Human Resources and at both benefit Fairs, AUM and at Auburn. Also, the e-mail yesterday gave a direct link that folks can sign up for one-on-one sessions if you prefer to sit with a benefit enroller instead of doing it yourself.

A couple of reminders: many of you have heard this before but our plan is self-insured, what that means is our claims are paid by the combination of employee contributions and employer contributions and we are able to pay Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Alabama to administer our claims, provide customer service. We pay a per member per month fee for that. So, each year our insurance and benefits committee meet. There are several of these guys in the room today that are current members on the Insurance and Benefits Committee and we begin to plan what it is going to look like for the coming year based on our expenses, our plan design changes, and any premium changes. And our last bullets talk about some of the things we discuss in detail. We had an increase in our admin fees from BC/BS over the last couple of years. We still have a very low rate compared to their book of business, but it has increased a bit.

American Behavioral, we all know that we carve out our mental health and substance and alcohol abuse claims, still the same BC/BS card, but American Behavioral is actually the provider. [24:28] for years we had a fee for service arrangement and about 2 years ago that changed, excuse me, we had a cap arrangement where we had a set per covered head in our covered plan but now we have fee for service. So, our mental health, our substance abuse claims have increased this year. We had to consider that. Our stop loss insurance, that’s insurance that Auburn purchases in the event that we have a very large claim; for example, 1 million dollars, and claim that went over that the stop loss insurance would pick that up. We have steadily been a bad client for the stop loss carriers. Every year they have paid out well in excess of the premium we’ve paid. So, our renewals have not looked real good the last couple of years. And then medical cost trend. This year our consultants in Blue Cross asked us to prepare for about a 6.5% medical cost trend increase.

So, these are the things we considered. It became clear early on as we were analyzing our data that our plan is very rich as you guys may know and our spouses represent 24% of our membership while accounting for 34% of our claims. So, we had to address that. [25:35] There are different employers that have addressed spousal claims in different ways, for example spousal surcharges. Perhaps you’ve heard of that where someone has to pay an additional amount of money every month to cover a spouse whether they have an option somewhere else or not. There are different models but Auburn had not had a spousal surcharge, but we did need to address that our claims that are occurring and our very rich plan which is often the plan of choice even when spouses work. What we have done for that is our spousal tier rates are going to increase 8% for the employee and spouse tier and 10% for the family. This increase represents anywhere from 18 to 53 dollars difference per month. [26:19]

Our non-spousal rate for employee and employee plus child tiers are not going to change. We always remind you that you do have a section 125 plan where the premiums come out on a pre-tax basis. So that $53.03 might not feel like a full $53.03 it might feel more like $40 by the time you have it come out on a pre-tax basis

Plan design, this is what our current PPO plan covers and we did tweek as we have in the last couple of years some of our categories. The co-payments increasing essentially from $200 to $300. Our specialist office copays, this is not the primary care physician, or the urgent care, or the obgyn, BUT specialist; cardiologist, allergist, orthopods, that kind of thing will increase by $5. Then as we’ve done the last couple of years we are increasing to the maximum out-of-pocket allowed by the affordable care act. In reality we only have a couple of people per year that get anywhere near these numbers (some have), $8,150 for individual and $16,300 for family. These are actually protectors for our employees. If somebody had a really terrible year and had lots of claims and lots of expenses these are the maximums you’d pay in any calendar year before you had 100% coverage. [27:42] Back in the day before the affordable care act when the max out-of-pocket was one and two thousand dollars, that was only a combination of your co-insurance, so that percentage you’d pay for an expense at 70% for an ambulance bill, that 30% you have to pay; so now this 0out-of -pocket includes any expense out of your pocket, such as deductibles, copays, co-insurance, etc.

Our prescription drugs, we are increasing each tier by $5. CVS and Target do remain in the non-preferred category. They have not elected to sign their theraputics contract. You can still use CVS and Target, but they have a little bit higher copays. Always, we like to remind you that our AU employee Pharmacy has the tiger meds program, which working through that, all of the tier 1 generics have a zero copay and many tier 2 are lesser of the copay ($10 vs. $20, etc).

Good news on our dental and vision, it will not be increasing. Coverage remaining the same, rates will remain the same for 2020.

We have a flexible spending account and have offered this for a number of years at Auburn. This is an IRS approved plan that allows you to pre-tax certain medical expenses and/or daycare expenses. You don’t pay taxes on this money. We are often asked, “if I don’t want to make any changes during open enrollment, do I need to do anything?” You don’t, unless you have the flexible spending account and you wish to continue the flexible spending account. You have to re-elect that every year. That is my 3rd bullet there. You must enroll annually into this plan, those monies do not roll over.

Auburn is looking at offering in 2021, not this year and as an option, a High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP). We would keep our PPO plan, but offer in addition the HDHP which is asked for quite often and mostly from faculty. Each orientation we have faculty members coming from another institution and can’t believe we don’t have a HDHP and have a great interest. So, we are looking at that because the IRS regulation state that any monies that are carried over into a plan year from a flexible spending account automatically disqualify someone from participation in a High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP), means that our carryover provision is going to end this year, so this is an important slide when you are making your elections for 2020 make sure that it is monies that you can spend. The fact of the matter is we have a very small percentage of folks that have a carry over. Most people are like me and it’s gone by June and wished they’d elected more. This is something to be aware of this year. More info is coming on the HDHP in the coming months as the Insurance and Benefits Committee continues to meet and we will roll that out.

WageWorks is the provider and these are the ways and of course this is on our Web site, the ways you can contact them. For information on your balance: call 1-877-924-3967 or visit www.wageworks.com, maybe you get an e-mail that says you have to substantiate a claim and you will need to send in a receipt (that kind of thing).

Last year we offered some improved coverage products. Our cancer products were improved, we introduced a critical illness policies, some whole life, and an additional long-term disability rider. So, this year many of those same claims have plans with guaranteed issue again. That’s a big deal because it means you don’t have to prove medical insurability. Please look at that again if you’re interested in any of the critical care, cancer, whole life plans. We will still provide term life insurance and the long-term disability rider if you like to purchase that. The online enrollment system is very easy, you can go in and out as often as you like. You can make changes up until December 2 at 4:45 p.m. All of the premiums are calculated for you, so you know exactly what you are spending. [31:51]

Just to reiterate, because it is open-enrollment time. We have the mandatory retirement plans through the state of Alabama. You are either a tier 1 or tier 2 and you can see your contribution based on what tier you are, and you are vested after 10 years of service.

We also have voluntary retirement plans (403b) with four providers. You can participate immediately. Our match is the first 5% of $1,650 per calendar year. You are vested after 5 years of service. The IRS just release last week the 2020 maximums allowed. Under age 50 is $19,500 per year and over 50 has a catch-up provision and you are allowed to put in $26,000 per year.

The name on our 457b that we offer without an employer match. Typically, the 457b participants are folks that max out on the 403b. Thursday is our Benefits Fair. We hope you will come join us there. We will have all the vendors and prizes and drawings, the benefit enrollers will be there for any of your employees that don’t feel comfortable doing the online system on their own or if they want to sit down with someone and go through everything. They are happy to do that, that is why they are there. It will be from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Beard Eaves Memorial Collisium.

Don’t forget our Healthy Tigers discount program. Hopefully everyone participates in that because it provides up to $600 per year discount if you cover a spouse or sponsored adult dependent. You do have to have that done annually. I’ve got to get mine done at the Benefits Fair. The Healthy Tigers folks will be there.

Open enrollment ends Dec. 2, and I will say it over and over, invariably somebody will call on Dec. 3 and we will have to tell them we are sorry, but open enrollment ended on Dec. 2.

We are going to conduct a dependent audit. Some of you that have been around for a while, I think the last one we did was in 2014. Best practice is to do that every 5 to 8 years. What the audit does is it insures that the people on our health plan are eligible to be on our health plan. We do a good job in orientation when new folks are coming on and we get the required documents to prove that their dependents or sponsored adult dependents are listed, but frankly what we don’t know is divorces. A lot of time people get divorced and do not remove their spouse, step, or half-children who may be ineligible. So we will be conducting a dependent audit for the financial soundness of the plan. More info to come on that, it will be a pain in the fanny for a minute to find those documents, but again we do it for a reason.

Any questions? We have a dedicated Web site aub.ie/benefits and you have already received your packets in the mail and Human Resources is there to help you our phone number [844-4145] and e-mail address <benefit@auburn.ed> if you want to send us an e-mail. That’s all I have today. Do you have any questions? [34:58] Thank you for your time.

Nedret Billor, Chair: Thank you Ann. Our next information item is by Nadine Ellero and Toni Carter. There is a new tool called Discovery that was introduced in August, today they will present what this tool is all about. [35:27]

Nadine Ellero, Head of Technical Services: Good afternoon and thank you for this opportunity for us to unveil a bit more of Discovery. Discovery is a single search engine tool that we’re providing that tries to do quite a few things with a lot of our content, both what we own and subscribe to into one space, and also allows more seamless linking and easier access to resources.

So, if you go to our Web page this is what you will see. This will be the single search box that you can begin your discovery. In August 2018 the Library administration, EBSCO, excuse me I am getting ahead of myself. First, let me describe what single search is. Marshall Breeding who writes extensively on library technology describes the single search engines as this: “…tools that search seamlessly across a wide range of local and remote content and provide relevance-ranked results – have the ambitious goal of providing a single point of entry into a library’s collections.” Again, these collections are both the print that are owned, electronic that’s owned, and electronic that is subscribed to.

This is just a short list of many other academic institutions that do have one of these search tools. There are 4 on the market. The library where I started before chose EBSCO Discovery service in 2018. EBSCO is located in our state. They also provide a lot of our databases and electronic books, they have also given lots of money to the Libraries for renovating some space. So, many of our subject databases are provided by EBSCO. I will talk a little bit more about the databases in a minute.

The bottom part of this screen is what the search tool looks like once you enter into it. I would like to take a minute or two to briefly in a very simplified birds-eye view compare and contrast the Library catalog, which you’ve been familiar with, against or opposite to the Discovery service.

So, the Library catalog still does exist. The Library catalog is essentially a database and we do still build that catalog. The catalog primarily is an inventory tool for our print materials, but it does have a lot of representation with our electronic resources as well, but not as much as the Discovery service has. So, for example, a search of Thomas Edison in the catalog will yield about 268 results. The meta data that is contained in the Library catalog allows you basically to search books, audio visuals, government documents, reports, on a title level, author level, and subject headings, with some additional other fields, but primarily those. It also you to search journal titles and their subject headings associated with it.

The Discovery service on the other hand is a Library catalog plus a whole lot more. So, doing a Thomas Edison search yields 19,000 discrete items, and that is with limiting to what we own in print, and what we subscribe to electronically and own electronically. So, it includes a Library catalog and a huge increase to this service is that it also in? in one central place [39:08] journal articles and book chapters and various other reports as well. It is a service so we do subscribe to it separately and it includes other features that are able to help enhance the search experience. One of these is context-sensitive help, Toni will be showing this a little bit more in detail so I will go very quickly over this part. It includes dynamic lining to research starters. These are published by EBSCO by thousands of popular topics, they are Wikipedia like in length and they do have references associated with them as well as additional key words to help undergraduates as they conduct their searches. It also allows us to seamlessly integrate subject guides that are created by our research and instruction Librarians. These subject guides are created in a separate software and database external to this system, but due to the 3rd bullet, APIs (application programing interfaces) essentially computer code, allows those subject guides that are created externally to be seamlessly accessible and searched within the Discovery service. Even when a new one is created it is automatically, once it’s released for publication it is indexed in the Discovery service. When they are updated, they are updated in real time, so it allows us to provide quicker service.

Other APIs that are employed, this brings me to the databases. The databases that we subscribe to only a portion of them actually are searchable (the meta-data that is) provided by those databases is only partially searchable in the Discovery service. This is due to the fact that EBSCO has to first have legal arrangements with publishers and other vendors in order to get their meta-data. They are not able to do that in all situations. So, only a portion of our database content is in this service. But we are able to if they have the legal arrangements to do so, we are able to extend the search from the Discovery service out into one of these external databases. Toni will be showing a bit of what that looks like.

So, in summary this is very bird-eye view, very simplistic, and certainly not to scale, but the Discovery sphere is larger than what the Library catalog was. You see the tiniest sphere in this Discovery sphere is the Library catalog. We have many citations for articles from journals, that’s the largest new addition here, and then some of our database content that we are able to also index in the central service. Thank you. Toni is next. [41:42]

Toni Carter, Libraries’ Instruction Coordinator: Good afternoon, I’m Toni Carter. I am the instruction coordinator for the Libraries and I am going to talk a little bit about why this is important and how it benefits your students. Two big things; first we have gotten feedback from graduate students over the past few years as to why we don’t have a service like this, because they are coming to us from other universities that have this single search box that we are all used to. That is what they are used to, the web skill Discovery. So, this is going to be something that should appeal to our graduate students. Also, the big thing is that it searches for books and articles at the same time. That’s huge especially for undergraduates. I see this, when you think about freshmen who come here who are asked to do research, but they don’t understand that you search the catalog for books and you search the databases for articles and which databases do I search? And they may not have Library instruction yet. This gives them instant access to articles, they just go to the search and they can put in their words and they can find something to get them started.

I am going to show you a little bit of the context sensitive help that Nadine was talking about. This is a library catalog search results for Dante. It is a very broad search, most of you probably would not just type in Dante, or maybe you would, I don’t know, but you will notice that these are all book results and there’s about 1500 of them.

When we add the Discovery layer on it what happens is it jumps up to 87,000 and that is because of the number of articles that it is picking up. Don’t despair, over here you can refine results as usual to full text. The one that I’ve been seeing students use already that is just a natural one is this academic journal. They just know that when they hear they need to use scholarly sources they know to click into that box and limit their searches.

This right here is a research starter that Nadine was talking about. Again, this would sort of be aimed toward your freshmen, sophomores; it gives them a little bit of an encyclopedia sort of introduction to a subject. This here is the publication finder, it works really well. What it will do if you type something in, it is going to give you suggestions for books and journals. It works particularly well, I found it helpful for journals especially if it is a journal with one word like Engineering or journal of social work where there could be multiple ones, it will pop up and ask: “is this what you are looking for?” If it is then you can search it right here. You all might find that helpful.

Additional resources. Again, Nadine mentioned that not everything is available through Discovery, so we’re adding item here that Discovery does not search. What it does is if I were to click on Google Scholar or hottie trust it is going to populate that search, so it is going to go to Google Scholar and do a search for Dante. Discovery does not search the Proquest databases, so for instance the big one is the Proquest dissertations and thesis. So, you would want to click there to get to that. You can chat with a Librarian. We have had this service for a while, now it’s available on the screen. I don’t know a lot about meta-data, but I do know that this has what we call thick meta-data, and it just means that there’s more data to search. There’s more ways for…keywords…keywords of authors.

Again, this is the publication finder, the research starter. These are guides that Andrew Whorley, who is in the room, hey Andrew, our engineering Librarian, he has created these guides for engineering that automatically pop up for students as well as databases. So, if they do feel like “I really need to narrow this down and go to the engineering village and click here. They can click there and go to a database.

This is just a guide for the numbers for maybe the people who weren’t here. And if you don’t like this change, and you don’t want to use it we still have the Library catalog. It is still availible and we still have subject databases that you can search separately. We have had some comments about this, but it’s all still there. The Discovery is just a way to bring it all together and to explore and to discover.

So, that’s all we have. If you have any questions or comments, we’re here. [47:40]

Tony Moss, senator, Biological Sciences: (off microphone) How well does this intergrate with Zotero or Mendeley citation Management systems that we are already using?

Toni Carter: How well does is integrate with Zotero or Mendeley? Does anyone in the Library that’s here know that answer?
(someone off microphone answered)
Yes it does. Jaena says it does. Like any other EBSCO product. [48:13]

Andy Whorley, Engineering Librarian, not a senator: I want to echo that these databases do work with  Zotero, I use that as my main reference manager, but I also want to say that another feature of the Discovery layer is that it makes it easier to put links into Canvas so that your students can link directly to articles. I believe that if you are careful about it, it makes it available to off campus students. Keep that in mind as a feature so you don’t have to copy or scan the articles, you can link them into Canvas and you are done with it.

Toni Carter: Thank you Andy. That actually is a good reminder that we have purchased a system or a service that connects to Discovery called Curriculum Builder. We are hoping to get the one in the spring, not sure yet, but what it will do is it will allow you to search Discovery within Canvas. And if you find readings that you want your students to do you click on it and it automatically puts it in Canvas. You don’t have to do downloading or scanning or e-mailing or any of that, so that’s pretty cool. Thank you, Andy, for reminding me of that. [49:55] That may be in spring or by next fall. We’ll see.

Anything else? Thank you.

Nedret Billor, Chair: Thank you Nadine and Toni. Next we have Evin Beck, associate athletic director and he will discuss on selling alcohol at the Stadium. This is a new issue that we need to discuss and they are here to get feedback from the Senate. [50:42 bk]

Evin Beck, Associate Athletic Director, External Relations: Thank you for the opportunity to spend a little bit of time with you this afternoon to discuss the possible implementation of alcohol sales in the Stadium beginning with the 2020 football season. Before we get into the discussion part I wanted to provide a bit of history that got us to where we are today and a little bit of information on the topic.

At the SEC meeting in May in Destin, FL the athletic directors and the SEC Conference approved to lift the ban on alcohol sales that had existed at the Conference level, basically now it is up to the universities that can each decide if they want to sell alcohol in venue and all areas of the stadium. We’ve historically sold it in premium areas as have most of our peers within the Conference, but this just lifted the Conference-wide ban. There are still some policies that you have to abide by if you sell alcohol in the stadium: it is for beer and wine only, it has to be dispensed into a cup, there are limits that have to be imposed. (With talking with most of our peers in the Conference that have already implemented stadium-wide alcohol sales it is two per serving, you must do training for your staff on how to handle high risk situations, how to identify people who are possibly over served, there are also designated stop times for when to stop serving alcohol for football games which is at the end of the 3rd quarter that you must cease all sales in the stadium.) [52:32] And and ID check is required at all points of sale, not just one point, but any spot you might buy alcohol from.

For this season, after the ban was lifted, we had half of the conference that went ahead with alcohol sales stadium-wide, Arkansas, LSU, Old Miss, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas A&M, and Vanderbilt started with this season. There are 7 schools including us that have not yet implemented stadium-wide. The only school, in talking with the peers that haven’t implemented it yet, that is not considering it for next year is Kentucky. I am not sure if they’re waiting for an amendment to the policy to allow them to sell bourbon stadium-wide (laughter) or why they’re not at least looking at moving forward with this, but most of our peers are. It is pretty split as you look at the other power 5 conferences; 50% in the big ten and the pac 12 and the big 12 in ACC are a little over 50%, so about 37 of the 64 right now sell it stadium-wide. If you looked at that 5 years ago it would have been a lot less than that. That number will continue to increase.

What’s the reason for us to potentially move in this way of wanting to sell stadium-wide? The number one thing we look at is the experience of our fans. There is a decline across college football on attendance and that’s something that we are struggling with. How do we get people coming to games? How do we compete against the in-home experience that has done such a good job with that in-home experience in television that people want to stay home and have access to their own restroom and their own beverages, providing this is just another way we can potentially enhance that fan experience.

There are actually studies that show that when you implement stadium-wide (alcohol sales) you have less incidence. Sometimes you have less binge drinking because people know they can potentially buy a beer in the stadium they don’t have to load up before the game in the tailgate, so you have a little bit less binge drinking and that leads to less alcohol incidence when you have this policy implemented. Again, there are studies that show that and with talking with some of our peers that have implemented it, that’s what they’ve found.

Revenue is a part of this as well, but I think there are some misconceptions out there about how much revenue that really is. There’s not as much as you think because there’s security, there’s vendors, you are only getting a portion of the sales because you are partnering with a vendor that is selling it. It’s not a financial windfall for us but there is some revenue associated with it. Our intention with that revenue would be to put that back into the fan experience, to look at enhancing wifi, enhancing concessions and restrooms. So, our hope would be that if we are able to implement for the 2020 season that we are able to generate some revenue off of it and it goes right back in to the fan experience to keep people engaged, keep people coming to games.

Next steps. What we are doing right now and why I am here today is that we’re seeking feedback from our key stakeholders. We are getting input on all the different areas that this would potentially touch all of our campus and community partners. We want to hear from people on what their thoughts and concerns are. We will definitely do some surveying at the conclusion of every season. We send out a post-season survey that comes from the Conference, and we will ask questions specific to alcohol on that.

Then partnering with the NBA Class as well to consult the class doing research on our behalf. With that, I invite your questions or feedback.

Carlos Smith, student government: My question was the limitations that are in the SECs policies, is one of those that it cannot be sold in the student section (of the stadium) as well or is it allowed around the whole stadium?

Evin Beck, Associate Athletic Director, External Relations: There is not a rule from the SEC that says it can’t be sold in the student section. What we found is most of our peers don’t sell it in the student section, but they do allow the of age students that want to go to a concession stand or beer stand somewhere outside of the footprint of the student section that they can do that.

Carlos Smith, student government: Okay. Just wondering because I guess the barricades are up for the student section; and wondering if that would be down because we don’t want to take away from the student experience and having the student section full is very important, as we saw with the last game, so, just curious about that. Appreciate it.

Evin Beck, Associate Athletic Director, External Relations: well for the Ole’ Miss game it was definitely full to start the game and then once the sun went down…so yes that is something we would definitely would have to look at if we go forward with implementing this. How it impacts the students. Could potentially take down the barricades, could potentially have them check out and check back in. There’s a number of things we’d have to talk through on that.

Alright, thank you very much. [58:33] That’s my e-mail and phone number, if you think of something.

Nedret Billor, Chair: Thank you Evin. This will conclude our formal agenda for today.
Is there any unfinished business?

Jim Witte, not a senator, parliamentarian: I want to call you attention in the first presentation here, under the graduate tuition (from slide 8-Kelli Shomaker’s presentation).

Apparently, the way that budget is set out, if you are providing instruction you have zero compensation or recognition for the resources you expend, 100% goes to the college that sent a student to you. That’s a pretty good deal. I’d make a lot of money sending my students to somebody else and let them expend the resources. If that’s allocated by formula that’s a pretty simple formula, everything goes to one entity and nothing to the other. I would like to have that formula re-looked, just a proposition, to see if the gaining institution, the college that is actually doing the instruction could not receive a percentage to compensate for the resources expended. That was it.

Nedret Billor, Chair: Thank you.

Is there any new business? Hearing none, I now adjourn the meeting. [1:00:28]