Transcript Senate Meeting
February 3, 2015
Patricia Duffy chair: Good afternoon, I am Patricia Duffy, Chair of the University Senate. This is our sixth Senate meeting of the 2014–2015 academic year, and it’s our first meeting in the spring term. Welcome back everyone from the break. If you are a senator or a substitute for a senator, and have not signed in at the back of the room, please do so now. Also because we will have votes today, please get a clicker if you have not already picked one up.
If you would like to speak about an issue or ask a question, please go to one of the microphones at the side of the room and wait to be recognized. Then please state your name, we have audio but not visual in the room, so for us to get your name in the minutes we have to have it on the tape. So please state your name and the unit you represent whether you are a Senator or substituting for a senator.
The rules of the Senate require that Senators or substitute Senators be allowed to speak first; after Senators have had a chance to speak, guests are welcome to speak as well.
The agenda for the meeting was set by the Senate Steering Committee, it was sent around in advance and is now shown on the screen. So, if we would now please come to order, we will establish a quorum. There are 87 members of the Senate and a quorum requires 44 Senators. If you are present and a senator or substituting for a senator please press A on the clicker. A quorum has been established.
Our first item of business is approval of the minutes from the November 4, 2014, Senate meeting. These minutes have been posted to the Senate website. Are there any additions, changes, or deletions to these minutes? (no response) Do I hear a motion to approve the minutes? Second? We have a motion and a second. All in favor, please say "aye." Opposed like sign? The minutes are approved.
Dr. Gogue is out of town and cannot be with us today, so our next agenda item will be remarks from Provost Boosinger. [2:19]
Dr. Boosinger, Provost: Thank you Patricia. It’s good to be with you this afternoon. So I have a good crowd here, I’m sure you all came to hear what the Provost had to say. Okay, that was a joke.
I did want to bring you up to date on a few things. In December 2014, so just 2 months ago, the SACS commission on colleges and schools approved our monitoring reports so that was a one year follow-up on the full site visit. That was because we were continuing to work on some issues related to assessment. We have filled those requirements and I am pleased to tell you we do not have to provide any additional follow-up reports until we do our standard 5-year review. And of course we communicate with them on a variety of new things that come along in the interim.
That’s a good segue into reminding you, I know it’s been announced widely, but reminding you that we are doing a national search for Director of Assessment. Those interviews are ongoing. The third interview is tomorrow. You are encouraged to participate in the open forums.
Again we have a national search for the Dean of the School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences. The search committee today is going to decide on the candidates that will come to Auburn for full interviews. Announcements on that will be made shortly, so watch for those.
I wanted to bring you up to date on 5 items that will be on the Board of Trustees agenda on Friday. The Board meeting is at AUM. There is a much longer list, but these are the 5 issues that are important to the academic mission. There is a request for an academic classroom and laboratory complex. This is actually a very large project. Previously we’ve been referring to this as the Roosevelt Classroom and the Math and Laboratory Science building. The decision was made for purposes of presenting this to the Board, to combine those together. There will be 2 buildings but they will be in the site of Allison and Parker just off of the green by the parking deck by the stadium. That will be a sizeable project, assuming that project initiation. Selection of the architect when approved we will go forward with that.
We are also asking the Board on Friday to approve project initiation and architect selection processes for a new School of Nursing. If approved, the site for that will be on Donahue in the vicinity of what some people call the “beach” property, along Donahue between Ham Wilson and the new VCOM Building. [5:30] That’s an exciting opportunity for not just for Nursing, but for Auburn University.
The College of Veterinary Medicine has private funding to support a food animal research facility and again we are asking for project initiation and architect selection pool on that one.
The College of Engineering has proposed the renovation of the Textile Building and they’ve ask for permission to select an architect, project initiation had already been approved.
We are also going to ask the Board of Trustees to approve an establishment of university college that would help us support the Interdisciplinary Studies Program that’s been going for a number of years and approved by this body. It’s currently, if you didn’t know, it’s on paper housed in what’s called the Provost’s College which is not an appropriate designation. So we are going to establish a University College. That University College will also help provide support for the fully distance-learning completer degree programs that we’ve been talking about. It came out of our Strategic Planning priority, it also will provide oversight for programming and sustainability, cyber security, and leadership minors and through leadership the director of the University College will be Dr. Relihan, who is also the Associate Provost for Undergraduate Studies. And that will be used to help provide oversight for the first year advising center for exploratory students. Also a priority our of the Strategic Plan.
Finally we learned just recently that the Alabama Commission on Higher Education has selected Auburn University as an Alabama Green Ribbon University. Auburn is the first university in the state to receive this designation and we will know on Earth Day if we’ve been selected for national recognition by the U.S. Department of Education. I’d be glad to answer any questions that you may have. [7:45] Thank you very much.
Patricia Duffy, chair: Thank you Dr. Boosinger. I want to thank everybody for coming out on this chilly February afternoon for our Senate meeting.
On our agenda today we have 2 action items from Academic Standards, one action item from the Rules Committee, nominations for new members of the Rules Committee, and 2 information items concerning athletics. So this is a pretty busy agenda and I will try to keep my remarks short.
After our last meeting our parliamentarian, Dr. Bailey, met with me to discuss the change in the Graduate Council that passed. [8:26] He pointed out that under our Constitution even a very minor change to Senate Committees, and in this case it was specifying that one of the 15 allowed members of the Graduate Council will be from the Library, would be a Constitutional change if it changes any of the wording in the (Faculty) Handbook because that part of the Handbook is the Constitution.
So a Constitutional change needs 58 votes, which is two-thirds of the total membership (of the Senate), This item passed with 60 capable votes so the threshold was met. Using similar logic, the same would apply to the non-voting Library representative on the university Curriculum Committee even though it’s a non-voting ex-officio spot, if the language goes in that part of the Handbook which is the Constitution. That item passed in November, thank you Laura for recording so diligently, with 65 favorable votes so that also cleared the threshold.
The Provost’s Office is aware that these two items of Constitutional changes and also will work on the post-Senate approvals, which have more steps than other Senate votes. This did lead me to wonder whether the very small details of committee membership should actually be in the Constitution, or if maybe the Constitution should maybe layout committee and general rules of membership without the small details, and then the small details go in another part of the Handbook that’s not the Constitution. This is something that the Senate might want to consider in the future, certainly not today. There is enough on our agenda for today. And even if a supermajority was desired to add someone to a committee it could still be out of the Constitution and in another part of the Handbook with a specified supermajority vote.
This is a fairly busy time of year at Auburn, the spring semester, at least in my classes is clearly in full gear and there are a number of searches in progress which Dr. Boosinger mentioned. He mentioned the Director of Academic Assessment, interviews are ongoing and there are others going on and in departments I am sure there are many faculty searches getting started or underway.
We will nominate new members of the Rules Committee today with the election to be held in March at the March Senate meeting. Candidate for Secretary-Elect and Chair-Elect of this Senate should also be announced very soon, with the election taking place electronically in the days before the spring Faculty Meeting. March will be a very busy month for the Senate because in addition to the Senate meeting and the spring Faculty Meeting, Steering has approved and scheduled a Special Called Meeting of the Senate on Tuesday, March 31, 2015 for the presentation of the report by the Ad Hoc Strategic Budgeting Committee. If you recall the resolution last June called for a presentation to the Senate by the end of March. So this date is the very last date in March. You can’t get any closer to the end of March or you are in April.
Finally I’ve been asked to pass on a reminder from Dr. Johnny Greene that the Auburn University student’s Veterans Center is available to answer any questions that faculty may have in regard to Veteran students in the classrooms, so please contact that office if you have questions.
That brings me to the end of my remarks. Are there any comments or questions on my remarks? Hearing none we will now proceed with the action items. We have two proposals from Academic Standards. They are separate items they will both be presented by Dr. Constance Relihan, Associate Provost for Undergraduate Studies.
Dr. Constance Relihan, Associate Provost for Undergraduate Studies: Thank you for entertaining these proposals. Which were presented in full at last month’s meeting so I am not going into detail.
The first of them is a proposal to limit the number of times a student can repeat a course in which he or she has received a D or F. [12:14] Currently as our policy is written, we have limitations on the number of times a student can repeat a course in which they’ve earned an A, B, or C, but a D or and F a student may repeat as long as they wish. This is not in the best interest of the student. We have found students who have repeated courses multiple times, more than 3 times, up to 7 times. Generally these are lower division courses, frequently rather than taking the same course 3 or 4 or 5 times the student might be better off being advised to switch a major or switch into a major that was better suited to his or her talents.
So the revision to this proposal merely says that a student may repeat a course in which he or she has earned a D or an F twice without special approval. If there’s a legitimate reason for a student to take a course a third time, give it a third try than can certainly be done, but the policy calls for a conversation between the student and the academic associate dean prior to enrolling in that class a third time. [13:36]
Academic Standards felt that this was a very reasonable proposal to help get our students on track. It’s consistent with the Strategic Plan’s focus on moving our students into the right majors and helping them progress through their degrees in a timely fashion.
Patriciaia Duffy, chair: Are there any questions or comments concerning this proposal? Please go to the microphone at the side if you’d like to speak.
[14:12]
Larry Crowley, Immediate Past Chair: Like I mentioned last month, you mention here, I’m in support of the objective the intended objective, mentioning the statistics that 60% of the students would be affected and a few allies you gave as reference is a practice against this cause. [14:40] One of my concerns, a continuing concern is not the intended consequences, it’s the unintended consequences. We have a class in the engineering curriculum for example where one third of the students fail or not fail (and something I cannot hear) and my concern is when the students take it when they fail the first time, the second time they reduce their hours, game the system, or take junior college classes, which is not in our strategic objectives.
Patriciaia Duffy, chair: Thank you Dr. Crowley.
[Microphone trouble] [16:00]
Mike Stern, senator, economics: As I mentioned last time, this issue about the student’s academic dean and the verbal remarks that were just made that said the student’s associate academic dean which is different than the student’s academic dean. I’m generally concerned about Auburn about us writing policies that we can from the get go to be violated as they are written. So if we in fact know that someone would verbally describe as policy that referred to somebody other than the academic dean is going to be doing approval, I’m not sure why we want to write the policy to meet our expectations in how it will actually be executed.
Second, I raise the issue of whether this is the appropriate individual to be reviewing it. Now the course that often when we looked at those courses listed the 3 that were most often failed were math courses which are commonly taken by engineers and the university core classes that are most commonly composition II so the very good math majors at this institution and English majors compared to other disciplines so the courses that are this high failure rate, whether the students are allowed to take them or not, will be reviewed by somebody that doesn’t’ actually have academic credentials in the discipline for which they would be making the decision about whether student can take a course again. So I am notsure if it’s the students academic dean that is necessarily the right individual to be making that decision. As mentioned last time, since this relates to a specific course not just a specific curriculum but a specific course–we’re down to the course level–it seems to me that the individual that has been tasked by the university to teach the students in those courses for the semester in which the student wishes to register for it is the biggest expert on that course and whether someone’s life will be successful in it. further more if it is the professor in question that is teaching the class that has to give written approval for the student to take it, it forces that professor to be aware if he is to allow the student into his class that there is a troubled student in his class. And allows him to keep watch of them and keep track of them and have to take more responsibility for their performance. So I’m not sure from a number of levels that the student’s academic dean is the person that should evaluate this situation. I think someone should evaluate the situation, I’m just not sure the student’s academic dean is the appropriate person to have in the policy making a written approval on it. Thanks
Patriciaia Duffy, chair: Michael, thank you for your comments. Was there a motion there or was it comments?
Mike Stern, senator, economics: No, I do not want to make a motion.
Patriciaia Duffy, chair: Thank you. [19:04]
Dr. Constance Relihan, Associate Provost for Undergraduate Studies: I would just say that the policy was written to be as flexible as possible. There are a number of advising models to allow campus. Some that rely more heavily on faculty advisors, some that rely more heavily on professional advisors. Frequently, academic dean in our departments on campus does mean an associate dean. The individual colleges themselves could made up a designation on how they were going to follow it and with whom they were going to consult prior to making any decision about the student.
Mike Stern, senator, economics: Well that’s not what the policy says. It’s very specific in the person, the student’s academic dean and it also requires written permission from that person. If we expect what’s in the policy, again I don’t understand why the policies aren’t written in a way acknowledging what should occur, what will actually occur just from a matter of writing policy or law or so forth.
Patriciaia Duffy, chair: Thank you. Are there other comments or questions about the proposal? Seeing no one going to the microphones; this is a proposal from a standing committee of the University Senate so it does not need a second. I would now like to call for a vote, turning on your clickers. Please press A if you agree if you support the proposal and B if you oppose it. A=55, B=14. This is not a constitutional amendment having checked that in advance, so the motion passes with 55 positive votes and 14 negative votes.
Dr. Relihan will now present the second proposal from Academic Standards. Modification in the wording of the CAP Policy.
Dr. Constance Relihan, Associate Provost for Undergraduate Studies: Thank you, Dr. Duffy. As you know we have a policy that permits some majors to have limited enrollment. These are majors that have perhaps specific accreditation requirements or have limited studio space or other capacity reason why they need to be limited. For other majors we do not have a bar to admission to students except as is written into the preamble to the CAP requirement or the CAP Policy, which currently says that students need to be in good standing in order to transfer into a major that does not have a CAP policy in effect. Technically ‘in good standing’ means that they have a 2.0 GPA. It is possible for students to be on academic warning with a GPA of 1.8 or 1.9 and still eligible to take classes.
As the policy currently is written, those students who are eligible to take classes at Auburn may not be able to transfer into a major for which they are much better suited than their current major because they are not technically ‘in good standing.’ The revision to the policy changes the preamble to the CAP policy from requiring the students be ‘in good standing’ to say that they need to be eligible to take courses at Auburn. It does not affect any major in which there is currently a limited enrollment policy already in effect.
Patriciaia Duffy, chair: Are there any comments or questions for Dr. Relihan on the proposal? Both microphones are now working. Hearing no comments or questions I will now move to vote. This is from a standing committee of the University Senate and needs no second. Please press A if you support the proposal and B if you are opposed. [23:22] A=52, B=7 This passes by a vote of 52 to 7 so both proposals from Academic Standards passed, again, not a constitutional amendment. Thank you Dr. Relihan.
Our third action item is from the Rules Committee. A vote for replacement on a Senate Committee. Dr. Gisela Buschle-Diller will present for the Rules Committee.
Gisela Buschle-Diller, Senate Secretary: Good afternoon. On occasion we have to find a replacement for a member on a committee do to retirement or medical reasons, or what ever. I would like to ask that Don Ross Heck is replaced on the University Writing Committee and the Senate needs to vote on his replacement by Mark Taylor to finish his term. The term will end in 2016. So if you approve I would like to press A, if you do not approve press B. [24:45] A=68, B=2. Mark Taylor has been approved. Thank you very much.
Patriciaia Duffy, chair: Our next item is a Pending Action Item in February. Under the Constitution we call for nominations for the Senate Rules Committee. The members must be sitting senators at the time they are elected, after that they may roll of the Senate, but they have to be sitting senators at the time of election, which is the March meeting. We will have the bios posted and then we will have the election at the March meeting, from the Senate floor. Dr. Gisela Buschle-Diller will call for nominations.
Gisela Buschle-Diller, Senate Secretary: The Rules Committee is responsible for providing the president with a list of faculty nominations for University Committees and to provide a list of nominations to the Senate for the Senate Committees. The Rules Committee consists of 11 members total. Six members are elected by the Senate and 5 are the chair of the Senate, the chair-elect, the immediate past chair, the secretary, and the secretary-elect. As Patricia said, the term is two years, so we will have 3 openings in August 2015. The nominations are made from the floor at the Senate meeting in February and will be voted on in March. The nominees must be sitting senators at this time. As we said we will post the bios of the candidates before the March meeting so you get an idea of who.
So I would like to call for nominations from the floor.
Lisa Kensler, senator, EFLT: I would like to nominate Jada Kohlmeier from Curriculum and Teaching.
Larry Teeter, Chair-elect: I would like to nominate Evert Duin from Chemistry.
Larry Crowley, Immediate Past Chair: I would like to nominate Daniel Mackowski, senator from Mechanical Engineering.
Gisela Buschle-Diller, Senate Secretary: Thank you. Are there any more nominations? Self-nominations? Thank you very much.
Patriciaia Duffy, chair: Thank you. We now have information items. The first information item will be presented by Dr. Large, the Executive Vice President, and it’s about changes to faculty and staff athletic tickets. [28:00]
Don Large, Executive Vice President: Well there are some changes coming in our faculty and staff tickets for athletic events. The good part of it…well let me back up for a second. This comes by way of the Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics, this is not an Athletics Department decision. The Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics is a cross-section of faculty, staff, A&P, and administration, but it is chaired by Dr. Boudreaux, who you’ll hear from in a little while, an overall report of the activities that have been going on and the kind of feedback that you’d want to know on your athletics program.
So the Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics has discussed these matters a lot, sought a lot of input and brought recommendations to the President’s Office. The President has approved and I am now the deliverer of the news which is generally good, I think, in that your tickets in the future staring in 2015 will no longer be this little laminated document that you have to carry to every game with your ID and you are restricted to one gate, and if you are trying to share it you have to give your ID to somebody else so that they can present it. All of that goes away. You will now get if you are ordering tickets a regular ticket. Just like anybody from the general public you will get game tickets for every game. All those things go away of IDs and gate restrictions, much easier to share with your family or friends, so really just more value in the ticket quite frankly I think. With that will go an increase in cost, it’s not so much to hit you with that increase, but it is a requirement of IRS that since these tickets are now clearly the same tickets that the general public gets…the laminated were a little different argument that maybe ther’re not quite the same value, we can discount them a little more than IRS allows,…these you can’t. IRS will allow us to provide you a 20% discount without taxing that as a benefit. We could certainly extend that, but then we’d have to start taxing everybody for the difference below 20%. And that becomes another nightmare of challenges that we decided that we just couldn’t cost out and make sense and probably couldn’t even keep track of. [31:12]
So the discount will now be 20% of the face value, but a different value on the ticket I would argue. A couple of other things this does from just a pure security standpoint, a much better thing for Auburn University and for you not having the ID out and about and handed off and those kind of things. A point the some people have asked, “Will athletics get this extra money?”; No that’s in the general fund because the general fund has been paying for that discount already as a benefit. What we decided to do is just shift that amount over to the health care area, which with the affordable care act, trying to keep healthcare as affordable as we can, the extra $400,000 or so will be helpful. It doesn’t accomplish much in a healthcare plan that costs us 40 million dollars, but it helps.
The other key thing I want you to be aware of is athletics with a concern by some have said, well you know that increased cost will make it harder to pay as we normally have. In one month we’ll be providing a payment plan for up to 6 months, so a little easier way to address that increase of the tickets. So that’s the FY 2015 change. So it’s coming and when you order tickets for this year for athletics you’ll get general admission, general public tickets.
FY 2016, not this year but the following there will be a change in the way priority points are assessed for faculty and staff. What it will do is tie an honor and reward, more of your ordering of tickets, it’s more focused on that, of how many years you’ve ordered not so much the job status and the job rank that was considered by the committee and a lot of discussion and the fairest way to reward something that is athletic related; if you’ve been ordering tickets year-after-year, you really should get more credit than someone who orders from year to year and gets higher priority simply because of their job status.
The other piece of that is that even with that, no one will move backwards as long as in FY16 you keep ordering your tickets. Priority points may change, but you won’t go backwards, but the key will be going forward, consecutively ordering. You can’t cherry-pick years and go back and forth, it will be the highest reward goes to those who continuously order. Those are the 2 big changes. There is probably a lot more detail to the FY16 that we could go in but I don’t know if you want to do that now. I’d be happy to answer questions or respond to concerns.
Patriciaia Duffy, chair: Are there any comments or questions for Dr. Large? Go to the microphones at the side of the room. Please remember to state your name and your department.
Ed Youngblood, senator, Communication & Journalism: I’m just curious why the decision was made to go with the standard ticket rather than say the ??? card the students use? If you are talking about pretty substantial differences
Don Large, Executive Vice President: Current use of the ID was one factor of people handing the ID off and having to pull it out at game time and show it and the restricted gate and all, but the other real reason was I really felt like we were probably already exposed with the IRS on the discounting we were doing. Our argument for years was, well it’s not the same product so we can really discount it more than 20%. The evolution of thinking and watching others be audited, we felt like we needed to clean that up. So I take the blame for the 80%, but I still would argue that you are getting a lot better product.
Greg Schmidt, senator, Libraries: Regarding the request upgrades for priority is that a paid upgrade and if so how does that reflect this business?
Don Large, Executive Vice President: I’m going to ask David Benedict, because now I am getting beyond my area of knowledge. David is the Chief Operating Officer for the Athletics Department.
David Benedict, Chief Operating Officer, Athletics: Thanks Don. Welcome, thank you for having us. I think the question was whether or not there’d be a payment required to upgrade? No, there would not be. That would just simply be an opportunity to request that. As Don mentioned you would have the same seats that you had the previous year. In a worst case scenario, you would then be allowed, part of this transition will be to allow our faculty/staff to use the same system that our other season ticket holders use. it’s a system called Belina, where you will now actually have access to see what seats are available. So you would be able to go on and look to see what availability there is and if there is, if you decide to choose a different seat, that will be up to you. But there will be no charge.
Mike Stern, senator, Economics: Why is it that we are discounting these tickets at all?
Don Large, Executive Vice President: That goes back before my time as well, but I think athletics (I don’t know how far it goes back) started extending that as a, they didn’t call it a benefit they called it a privilege I guess of purchasing and I think some other schools do it, some don’t, some charge regular price, but it’s just a history that predates us. I don’t really have a better answer than that.
Mike Stern, senator, Economics: Well, did you say we were paying for that out of the general fund?
Don Large, Executive Vice President: Yes. We give Athletics credit for that discount in our assessment of overhead charges to them.
Mike Stern, senator, Economics: So that just like saying.
Don Large, Executive Vice President: No, it’s a benefit that we provide. It changed from an Athletic privilege to probably 8 or 10 years ago to really a benefit.
Mike Stern, senator, Economics: I saw a poll recently that said 67% of Americans adults thought athletics had too much influence over colleges and universities. And I am wondering why the entertainment experience, which is a football game of course, that sells to the general public is provided to as a discount to the faculty particularly from an ethical standpoint because students in the production of this are often in our classes and in reply we’re receiving a subsidy on it I can resell and profit from? I am wondering from an ethical standpoint whether that’s something we should be concerned about.
Mary Boudreaux, FAR: It’s a violation to resell your tickets at a profit.
Mike Stern, senator, Economics: Of course.
Don Large, Executive Vice President: Anyone want to take a shot at that one? I can’t give you a good explaination. [40:14]
Andy Sinclair, senator, Aerospace Engineering: I have a question on related issue on ticket prices for the general public. You said there was even involved administration of the proposed budget to close the loopholes that allows tax deduction on donations related to ticket purchases, I was wondering if the University or Athletic Department had any comment on that.
David Benedict, Chief Operating Officer, Athletics: At this point in time that was something that just recently came out. I was aware of that too. It’s something that has been talked about for several years now. There was just an article here, maybe a few days ago, Don you may have seen it, that said Athletic based donating to colleges and universities was the highest it’s ever been in the past year. I think it was over 1.2 billion dollars the past year. So it’s a significant issue and something that we are definitely going to track. I am not sure that that is necessarily going to impact a huge amount of the number of people that buy season tickets, but it certainly will be something that we track.
[41:36]
Don Large, Executive Vice President: That actually does relate to the donation part that the general public gives (a piece of information that may or may not make you feel better) in looking at this, so I went back and worked with David and said, “so our face value is this and we’re discounting 20%, what’s the real market value of those tickets. So you look at the average donations in sections 1–5 that it takes to get a priority ticket in the same area that many of our tickets are in and when you look at the face value plus the donation and look at what we’re paying at our 80% of face value, we are actually paying about 25% of market cost. So a different perspective of what your real value is that you are getting. Michael that may make even make your question a tougher one to address. [42:46]
Peter Stanwick, senator, Management: I have a question based on what I read about the lottery for the away games and bowl games. Can you explain how that system works?
David Benedict, Chief Operating Officer, Athletics: Yes the question pertains to post-season as well as away game tickets. In the previous policy those tickets had been awarded just based on the total points whether it was base points or your years of purchase. Moving forward, actually in 2015, all individuals will have an opportunity to request those tickets and then they’ll be distributed based on a lottery system that will be done through a formula that, our ticketing system which is called “Packial” and will administer. There will simply be a formula that will distribute it based on a percentage of tickets that will go across the board. There will be people that probably are first-time ticket holders, 5-year, 10-year, 20-year, that will wind up having the opportunity to purchase those tickets if they put in a request to. So it’s just a way to distribute them out across the collective group that’s purchasing season tickets as opposed to only those that order them that have a high enough point total, which in some cases, from what I’ve heard, you couldn’t get post-season tickets if you had been purchasing tickets for 25 years. Which is a very long time. So this really eliminates a lot of people from ever having the chance to even qualify to purchase.
That piece of the new policy will go into effect this next season. In 2015 [44:34]
Patriciaia Duffy, chair: Are there any further questions about the changes in athletic tickets, priority and pricing? Thank you Dr. Large and Mr. Benedict.
Our final information item is a report from the Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics. Mary Boudreaux, who is the faculty athletic representative for Auburn University is the chair of that committee and she will present that report. [45:01]
[45:14]
Mary Boudreaux, FAR and chair of Intercollegiate Athletics Committee (aka: CIA): Good afternoon, I’m back to report on the CIA. Sounds sexier anyway than Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics. Over the next few minutes I am going to be going over the things listed here. Basically the charge of the CIA, composition of our sub-committees, I’ll talk a little bit about student athlete eligibility, progress toward degree, I’ll talk about GSR and APR, also some accolades here. Then at the bottom, towards the end, Dr. Gary Waters gave me some statistics to share with you, and a little bit about who the other members of the…who the other FARs are in the SEC. [45:52]
Charge of the Committee of Intercollegiate Athletics basically recommends the president’s policy of the operation of IA at Auburn University be monitored to the president aspects to the athletics program at Auburn to compliance with university policies, NCAA, and SEC. And we assist the president and the athletics director on any aspects of Intercollegiate Athletics programs for which they may ask for advice or assistance.
The members of the CIA are listed here, represented by several faculty members as well as staff, chair of the staff council, chair of A&P, also the SGA President, and several administrators, and the ex-officio members are listed here. There are several sub committees of the CIA, including Academic Standards, Awards, Compliance, Drug Education Testing, Equity, Welfare and sportsmanship, Priority seating, and Athletics Dept. Seminar Series. The Seminar Series is a relatively new sub committee. We haven’t been having many seminars; if any of you have ideas on topics that you’d like for us to present, something you would want more information on related to athletics, send me an e-mail and let me know and we’ll try to set up some seminars that are of interest to faculty and staff.
A little bit about initial eligibility, academic requirements they are getting tougher and tougher. Mr.Rich Glenn gave a little talk last year on this. There are now going to be 3 possible academic outcomes, these are students who are in high school right now who are interested in coming to a university and being part of the athletics getting a scholarship. Right now as of August 1, 2016 there will be three possible classifications for these students. One is a full qualifier, meaning that they can compete, they can get a scholarship, they can practice; academic register, meaning they can come and they can practice and get a scholarship, but they cannot compete; and then non-qualifier. So it’s going to be 3 different categories here. so what’s a full qualifier? What do you have to do in order to be a full qualifier? Again, these are students who are in high school right now. If they aren’t doing what they need to do now; actually if they are a junior now or a senior now and they aren’t doing these things it’s too late. It’s already too late. [48:24]
They must complete 10 core courses before the 7th semester of high school, of the 10 core courses completed 7 must be in math, English, or science. These 10 core courses become locked in for the purpose of core course GPA calculation. If they repeat one of the locked in courses it will not use if it is taken after the 7th semester they must also meet the sliding scale for course course grade point average and an SAT/ACT sub score, meaning they can’t have less than a 2.3 GPA. But above that, if they have a lower GPA above 2.3 then their ACT/SAT subscore must be higher. So it’s a sliding scale, the higher their GPA the lower their subscore has to be. They have to meet that and of course they have to graduate from high school. There is more information on this you can go to ncaa.org and find more information on this. If you know of kids who are in high school right now they need to be aware of these changes. Hopefully they are just freshmen because if they are juniors or seniors and they aren’t already on track, it’s too late.
There are listserves, basically NCAA provides information to high schools, also to homeschoolers that are basically given the information on what these kids have to be taking, what classes count, etc. as they progress toward graduating with a high school diploma.
Once they get here they have to do things to stay eligible and this is called basically the 40-60-80 rule. Once they get here they must make steady progress towards degree. They have to declare a major fairly quickly and they have to make progress toward that degree. What does that mean? It means that by the time they are in their second year they have to have 40% complete to stay eligible. By the time they are in their 3rd year they have to have 60%, by their 4th year they have to have 80%. If they decide to change a major, for instance in their 3rd year, and it’s a major change, it’s not going to work. They will not remain eligible. So it’s kind of…I have my issues with 40-60-80, I understand why they put it in place to make sure kids graduate, but unfortunately how many of us know exactly what we want to be as soon as we step foot on campus? And that’s really what they are almost requiring the student athletes to do. They have to make a commitment and stick with it, and not change their mind. That’s just the way the rules are. They are allowed 5 years to graduate while receiving athletically related financial aid. Because of these rules it’s very important for student athletes for us to work with them to make sure they are taking the right courses at the right time, so their advisors, counselors, etc., faculty members, make sure they are taking, especially if they are sequential courses they’ve got to make sure they are taking them at the right times and on track, because if they get out of sequence it’s going to blow this, and then they become academically ineligible. And they have to have a minimum of 6 hours each term to be eligible for the next semester. So it is very, very strict on them.
Graduation Success Rate (GSR), I want to go over that, this data came out, the GSR and the APR data. I want to go over that about how Auburn looked. Before I go into how Auburn looked I do want to remind you of what this information tells us. The Graduation Success Rate was developed fairly recently because the college/university presidents wanted a better way to track how well student athletes were doing as far as academics was concerned. And the existing Fed Rate really was not a good method. I will compare the two so you know how they compare. But the graduation success rate takes into account students that transfer in in the middle of the year, it also takes into account students who leave, but they leave academically qualified. Unfortunately the Fed Rate does not do that. The Fed rate for instance it says here, the fed rate does not count them as graduated regardless of whether they actually did or not. Under the Fed rate if you came to Auburn and you were here for 3 years and you got accepted to medical school or law school and transferred out of Auburn and got a law degree or a medical school degree, as far as the Fed rate is concerned you didn’t graduate. You’re a failure, which obviously is bogus. Those are things that the Fed rate just does not have a handle on. The Fed rate is only looking at students who come to the university and only come in fall and they look at it over a 6 year period, over 4 years in a 6 year period to see if they graduated within 6 years. So it is a little bit different from the GSR which counts other things and I’ll go into that in just a minute here.
Again as I mentioned the Fed rate is only assessing first time full-time freshman in a given cohort and looking at whether they graduate within 6 years. As bad as the Fed rate is it is the only rate that we can use to compare to other students. because that is what is used for non-athletes. [54:02]. So the Fed rate is still in there because it’s the only one we can use to compare our student athletes with the general student body. Again the GSR does it differently because it adds in students that the Fed rate does not add in and it takes students out that the Fed rate will not remove from the cohort.
So to give you an example this is for the 2004–2007 entering class, so this is like ancient data. We are looking at a GSR that entered in 2004–2007 and how many have graduated after 6 years, so it’s a long time ago. But if you look at the Fed rate they start off with enrolled 84,374 GSR starts there as well, but then for the GSR they add in students that come in January, they add in 2-year college transfers, 4-year college transfers, also non-scholarship athletes under certain conditions they add those in and they exclude students that left eligible so those guys don’t count. So you can see when you look at the number you end up with a larger number of students in the GSR than what you look at in the Fed rate. [55:23]
Both of them evaluate with a 6-year graduation rate, so the percentage of students graduating by the end of their 6th year. Again this is the 2004–2007 class. Well how did Auburn do? This is where they are right here 2014 at 78 and if you look at this historically over several years Auburn has for many years been mid-seventies to upper-seventies, they really haven’t changed that much as far as percentage is concerned. As far as the GSR. This is individual sports statistics, I’ll have that on another slide as well. I do believe, again this is a long time ago, it’s historical data almost, I do believe that especially with changes in the APR and other changes with initial eligibility, etc. these numbers are going to continue to increase and get better. These numbers are reflective of class that years before several changes were made. [56:17]
So this is the GSR by sport, men’s and women’s sports split out and it has the GSR compared to the Fed Rate to give you an idea of what the differences and how those numbers calculate out. At the bottom I’ve got the Fed Rate because it’s the only one you can compare all the students to each other. For Division 1 this is what the Fed rate looks like, across Division 1, all students, This is how Auburn looks; Fed rate over that same 4-year, it’s 4 years over 6-years, this is how Auburn looks; and this is the athletes in that same group. So the student athletes are not quite as high as we’d like for them to be, but again I think these numbers are going to improve as time goes on
Just look at the graduation success rate. For Division 1 your looking at 93 thousand plus students and this is how Auburn athletes in that same cohort compare to overall Division 1.
The APR, Academic Progress Rate, this is different than the GSR, basically this is a metric that was developed to attract the academic achievement of teams each academic term. The way this works is that each student athlete gets 2 points for staying in school and one point for remaining academically eligible. So what they do is they add up their points each year, so the team’s total points are divided by the points possible and then multiplied by 1,000 to end up with the APR. This is an example that’s given on the NCAA web site. For example how does this work; they used football for their example. If you have 85 student athletes have scholarships of the football team and 80 of them remain in school and remain academically eligible, but 3 of them become academically ineligible but remain in school, so they will loose one point per student there cause they’re still in school, so loosing 3 points. Two of them drop out and they were academically ineligible, so they are loosing both of their points, so 4 points there. So a total of 7 points have been lost from the football team. So 7 from 170 equals 163. Divide 163 by 170 and multiply by 1,000; the team’s APR that term is 959.
Now they are giving an example here of football, football is a pretty big squad list. You might imagine especially if your squad list is small, APR can really get you in a hurry, because one person dropping out of a team that only has 10 members on it is a lot more than happening on a football team. So football can loose 7 and not have it affect them as much as a team with a smaller roster.
Basically it is a rolling 4 year figure and if it drops below a certain amount the teams are going to be penalized. I will show you some of the types of penalties that can be invoked in a minute. Now I’ve got here 925 but actually it’s 930. The APR has been raised over the past several years. I believe it should be 930 at this point. If a team has a score below 930 and they have a student athlete that has basically gone 0 for 2, they lost both points because they failed academically and they left school. They can loose scholarships, up to 10% of the scholarships each year. So that’s an immediate contemporaneous penalty that can occur. Don’t want that to happen. The APR penalty structure has been revamped and the mark that teams need to be at has changed over the years. It was at 900 for several years, but they have been slowly ramping it up and right now it is at 930. [1:00:49] 930 is the APR, which supposedly represents a 50% graduation, I don’t know how that works out it doesn’t make sense to me.
So what happens if you do not meet 930 there is different levels; level 1 you have practice penalties for in season; level 2 they will add more practice restrictions including even out-or-season and may include competitions particularly if they are non-championship segment they may not allow you to compete,; and level 3 then you’re getting into problems where there are financial penalties coaching suspensions, competition issues. So you really are going to get nailed if you end up with a level 3. So there is a very good incentive to keep your APR above 930.
Also, postseason competition can be affected by this. They don’t consider this a penalty they are calling it basically another requirement. If you want your team to compete postseason in championship type competition, obviously your team has to win so many games and they have to earn that athletically, but they also have to earn it academically. Now they are saying if you don’t have for your team either 930 or the two most recent years average at or above 940. It must be met, if you’ve got an excellent basketball team that has won every single game, but that basketball team does not have and APR of 930 they are not going to postseason competition. They are staying home.
So this is just another thing that a team must meet in order to be able to compete in postseason competion. In 2015-16 it’s just going to be plain old 930.
So this is auburn’s APR for their teams. This was posted in the spring of 2014, again we are about a year behind. They have the data out for 2015, but it is not available for public viewing now but will be in a few months. Everybody is in really good shape right now. So we don’t have any teams that are facing problems as far as penalties or inability to go to postseason competition, they all look really good. [1:03:23]
I do want to go over some of the accolades as far as our student athletes. I am really proud of many of them and I have to credit the faculty and staff that work with these kids and allow them to achieve some of these awards. Paul Harris especially he is amazing, him and his team. I’ve showed you the slide before as far a s the past Rhodes scholars, the most recent ones that were basically finalists include Ashton Richardson. In 2012-2013 he was a Rhodes Scholar Finalist and Tofey Leon of swimming and diving was also a Rhodes Scholar Finalist. Obviously that is really a great thing to accomplish.
I have to brag on Ashton Richardson, I am very proud of this young man. He is an Auburn graduate, he was accepted into Veterinary School at Texas A&M and he is now in his first in his class and was named a Marshall Scholar. That’s a really great honor. As it says there’s about 900 students that compete for these and only about 40 are selected and he was one of them. I was really, really proud of him and the things he’s accomplished.
I want to again brag on some students. This is the 1A FAR Academic Excellence Awards, it takes a fairly high bar to get here. These students have had to have been awarded a BS in the previous year, they have to have a cumulative GPA of 3.8 or above when the graduate, and they have to have participated in at least 2 years of intercollegiate athletics at the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) institution in a sport sponsored by an FBS conference. This is the list for this particular group. Great kids, Jackie Kasler is now in Vet School, first year, great kid. They are all great kids. Jason Miller, he spent some time in my lab doing DNA sequencing and he is now at UAB Medical School. I am just very, very proud of all of these kids.
NCAA Postgraduate Scholarships, these are also very limited. These are considered to be one of the highest academic accomplishments, honors that can occur. There aren’t very many given out by the NCAA, they are for postgraduate study. Only about 174 are given out each year. This is all divisions, all sports compete for these. We are talking about thousands of people competing for these scholarships and we had 3 at Auburn this year, 2014; Spencer Kerns, Tofey Leon, and Stephanie Rucci. Again very proud of them. This gives them a $7,500 grant to help them pursue their post-graduate education.
Little bit about the SEC Academic Honor Roll. This is an ongoing thing. As far as the criteria for this, student athletes must have a 3.0 or above for either the preceding academic year or have a cumulative grad point average of 3.0 or above at the nominating institution, if they attend summer school that counts. Those receiving it include those on athletic scholarship, but also includes non-scholarship students, students who have been on a varsity team for 2 seasons. Before being nominated they have to have successfully completed 24 semester hours on non-remedial academic credit and they have to have been a member of the varsity team for the sport’s entire NCAA Championship segment. So a lot of criteria here.
And the NCAA does things a little bit strange; they divide them up into groups with spring sports and fall sports, so the winter group would be equestrian, basketball, and gymnastics. And these are the ones that were on the academic honor roll for the winter. For spring we’ve got baseball, golf, softball, tennis, track and field. That particular one, we had 108 student athletes on the SEC academic Honor Roll for that group. And that was more than any other school in the conference. For fall we’re talking about football, soccer, and volleyball. So pretty impressive, we’ve got student athletes that are doing very well in the classroom. Again, it’s a credit to them, it’s also a credit to the faculty members who work with them, and their advisors and counselors, etc.
Little bit of information that Dr Gary Waters’ provided me, I thought you’d be interested in seeing. This is some information on Academic Report; what he provides here, this is for Fall 2014. There are 521 student athletes, 74 of them were incoming students, 447 had an existing cumulative GPA, the number of student athletes with a 4.0 cumulative GPA, 51. Pretty good number. And the mean cumulative GPA of student athletes is 3.09 and the median was 3.05. Now by comparison if we take a look at the grade point averages and how they progressed over the years. This is a credit to Gary and his group, also again faculty and staff working with these kids, lots and lots of people who work with…coaches who care about the academic side of things as well as the competition side of things. Lots of people working on it. What you can see over here is the steady increase of GPAs that are 3.0 or higher, and look at the Track to Graduate with Honors that has continued to increase as well. So very good record of what’ going on.
More information about the student athletes as far as average team GPA, 3.06; individual student athlete GPA for the semester is 3.0; cumulative is 3.09; Total with a 3.0 or more, 289; the top team was soccer with 3.32. That’s GPA for the semester. Tope team cumulative is volleyball, 3.43; team with the most 3.0 or above GPAs is football-50 of them; and the team with the highest percentage was Men’s Golf with about an 89%.
Wondering where these students are doing their thing academically? They are from a broad spectrum of colleges/schools that they are enrolled in. To give you an idea of where they are at, there are some that are more than others, Business school has quite a few, Liberal Arts has quite a few, Education has quite a few, but you can see they are spread out over many colleges and schools.
If you pick the 3 main ones, Business, Education, and Liberal Arts you can see what the number of student athletes are in those particular groups, to give you a feel for where are they. There are a good number in business also public administration, that’s another group, again they are spread out well over all of the different colleges and schools. [1:11:01]
Dr. Waters provided this chart, which I thought was kind of interesting, he’s talking about the Gus Malzahn Era at Auburn University and talking about the football team. He said during the last 2 years the academic performance of student athletes on the football team is at and all-time high. Reflected a very high APR scores and a record number of student athletes graduating from Auburn University. During the last 3 years the single-year APR scores for the football team have been among he highest in the nation and among the highest in the SEC. On Dec. 13, 2014 15 students on the football team graduated, 14 of them earned undergraduate degrees, 1 a master’s degree. And at the Outback Bowl there were a total of 21 student athletes playing with degree in hand, that was number 2 in the entire country, there was only one team that had more and they had 22 graduates. [1:11:57]
I just have to finish off again by…because I am the Faculty Athletics Rep I get to work with undergraduate students that I ordinarily would not get to work with because out at the Vet school we just have the professional students most of the time. So I am able to work with more undergraduate students because they are student athletes in looking at them in that way and that method and this is one group we had in the summer of 2013. This is Corey ? she’s in the Vet school and a senior right now. This is Maddie Barnes , she was on the soccer team, she is now a physician’s assistant school right now and she recently told her, I asked coach Hava, how’s Maddie doing, Maddie’s doing great she loves it. She said her classmates were stressing out because the curriculum is so hard they don’t have time to get everything done and she confided and told her parent’s, you know being a student athlete at Auburn University, I know how to finish my time, I’m just laughing at them, this is easy. So she’s having a good old time because she knows how to manage her time while her other students are stressing out. Melena is an equestrian and is pre-med and Erica has been accepted into medical school I believe at Iowa. So she’s on her way.
Here we’ve got Jason Miller, I mentioned that he’s at UAB, Caitlin Moran has been accepted to medical school at Memphis, and we’ve got Hannah, equestrian and she’s pre-dental and Kristen who is pre-med they are still here in school and are working on their way to get in. The interesting thing is I work with these students who are usually working on, at the DNA level, molecular level, looking at genes and co-proteins that are important for hemostasis. So we are talking about blood coagulation and also platelet function and we’re always talking about comparing, because they all had different species, one was working on a cat and one was working on a dog, one was working on a cow, and one was working on a horse and they are all working on different stuff and we sit down and talked about the importance of what they are looking at and how it compares to people, how it compares to human and the significance of what they are doing, so there is always this discussion of comparative kind of stuff and looking at different species. And Jason, when he was going to his interviews for medical schools, he got accepted to multiple and chose to go to UAB, but anyway he’d come back and I’d sit down with him and say how’d your interviews go? He said they went great, they are really interested in the research I am doing in the lab. So I said, what did you tell them? He said, well I told them that I was looking at the varying number of repeat of the gene of glycoprotein (something) platelets and how important, in dogs which has never been done before, and as they probably know polymorphises in that gene are linked to increased risks for biocardial infarctions in people. So they really like that. I said great. You know what going to happen Jason when you go to medical school, you are never going to hear anything more about cats, horses, dogs, or cows, that’s done. He said, yea. I said you know what that means? He said, what? That means you are way ahead of your classmates. I thought that was a good thing. Much more interesting to know about cats, dogs, horses, or cows anyway, right? [1:15:10] I am proud of them, really, really proud of them.
This is the Faculty Athletics Representatives that represent all of the different universities in the SEC. Give you a feel for how they break out with the different areas that they are in. Pretty diverse, got 3 lawyers which is a crack-up, but anyway, seven of us are professors the other 7 are either department head/chairs, associate deans, there is one provost. The provost at Vanderbilt has recently stepped down to go back to teaching and they have a new provost in place. And the provost at Vanderbilt is always the Faculty rep. This is there list in case you are interested in where they are at and what their background is.
Lori Franz from Missouri she’s been the FAR for about 8 years and she’s about to get replaced. And Susan is the one that just got replaced. Most of us are all pretty steady right now. Tom Adair, I think I told you before he’s been the Faculty Athletics Rep at Texas A&M for about 30 years. He’s been there forever.
To conclude I want to thank you to all the faculty for all you have done with the student athletes, working with them on the academic side of things trying to make sure that they are successful. They cannot be successful if they aren’t successful academically and athletically, so it takes a team to work with them and make the good and successful. I appreciate all your work with them and all your help with them. And again thank you for helping them to be successful and inspiring them to do their best.
Patriciaia Duffy, chair: Any questions or comments? [1:16:54]
Mike Stern, senator, economics: I was looking over this year’s slide show and I went back to last year’s slide show and reviewed the transcript last February’s Senate meeting in regard to my comments. [1:17:20] I mentioned last year that it would be nice in seeing the distribution of the majors that it be shown for the sports of the people we are concerned about clustering. And I specifically mentioned football. I noticed we put up some statistics right after showing the distribution of the majors specifically for the football team and once again do not include the distributions of the majors for the football team, but we mixed all the other college athletes; you know, equestrian, men’s golf, and so forth. In doing so we might include everyone we’d be concerned about then. [1:17:59] So if we produce statistics specifically related with the football team, this committee, present the slideshow at the Senate, and we can produce overall distributions of majors, with only respect to all again these thrown together, [1:18:16] why were we not able to produce the distribution of the majors in the past couple of years on the football team?
Mary Boudreaux, FAR and chair of Intercollegiate Athletics Committee (aka: CIA): I guess it never entered my mind to do that. We haven’t done that for any of the teams, shown exactly what each team’s majoring in. So I guess I never thought about specifically picking on them. As an example Ashton Richardson, who is a Marshall Scholar, was on the football team. So clearly they are not all clustering in one place. We’ve got engineers on the football team, we’ve got people in education, they are distributed in multiple majors now. Some student athletes do end up in a particular major, not because they necessarily want to be there, but because it’s a 40-60-80 rule, they sort of get locked in, and if they want to continue to compete they stick with a major go ahead and graduate. I’m not saying that’s good, but I’m not the one that makes those rules either. [1:19:14]
Mike Stern, senator, economics: I was think in line of the reason of the UNC scandal that we would be looking very closely what courses and curriculum the high pressure sports are taking. In fact in response to the UNC scandal that’s been all over the place, I am looking at a poll that a popular pollster took on American adults about whether the top tier athletes get a good education and it’s only 15% of top tier college athletes get a good education, if fact there is a class action law suit that has been filed based on the UNC scandal in regards to the athletes not being provided the education that was promised. And so I would certainly think especially after specifically mentioning this last year that we be, in light of the UNC scandal, in light of our own past scandals in this regard, we would surely by now taken a look at this.
Mary Boudreaux, FAR and chair of Intercollegiate Athletics Committee (aka: CIA): I think people have. There is no evidence of clustering, we are good.
Mike Stern, senator, economics: There is no evidence of clustering?
Mary Boudreaux, FAR and chair of Intercollegiate Athletics Committee (aka: CIA): No. Not to the extent of which you are talking about, I think we’re good.
Mike Stern, senator, economics: What constitutes significant clustering?
Mary Boudreaux, FAR and chair of Intercollegiate Athletics Committee (aka: CIA): Well, if the whole team is taking the same major.
Mike Stern, senator, economics: I would disagree. I am a statistician and not by field, but I certainly have a lot, typically what you would do is look for [1:20:39] high symmetry between a population that’s unconditioned and one that’s conditioned. So if I look at the distribution of majors of non-student athletes and I compare it to the distribution of members of the football team and I find statistical anomalies if they were random require one in a billion chances, I would suggest that that’s clustering. And my own students tell me that they needed to change their major because a lot of the classes they were taking were, as in their words, “for football players.” So I do think there is clustering at this institution. You don’t even need the condition in regard to football players to see that, just student athlete distribution as well only what 5% ’n’ change are majoring in engineering compared to what percentage for non-student athletes?
Mary Boudreaux, FAR and chair of Intercollegiate Athletics Committee (aka: CIA): Which slide do you want to look at?
Mike Stern, senator, economics: Engineering, 5 and a half percent of student athletes are majoring in engineering, In regards to the overall student body, what would that percentage be?
Mary Boudreaux, FAR and chair of Intercollegiate Athletics Committee (aka: CIA): I have no idea.
Mike Stern, senator, economics: Then how are you able to determine that there is no clustering?
Patriciaia Duffy, chair: Is there a specific request that you’d like to put forward, Dr. Stern?
Mike Stern, senator, economics: Yes, I made the request last year to see that distribution in regards to the football team. I see that we once again mixed all the data, even though in the slide that follows we present specific information about the football team. So you see after that distribution the next slide, the very next slide, specifically addresses an academic report of the football team. [1:21:32] So we are aware of very specific concerns about the football team. Obvious, and I can see basketball is obviously a big thing, where I’m from basketball was a big thing and so forth and people were always worried about that and took a special look at it in that regard.
I don’t know if next year we’ll get to see that, but as I mention here I would very much like to see the committee take the issue of whether all of our student athletes, particularly in the high pressure sports, are receiving a good education.
Mary Boudreaux, FAR and chair of Intercollegiate Athletics Committee (aka: CIA): Thank you. Any comments?
Michael Freeman, chair of the Staff Council: I would just like to add if you are going to have that data make sure you also accumulate the amount of time they have to spend in extracurricular to their academics and to prepare for the sport that they play, because there is a lot of time that these student athletes do have to spend on just preparation to even have a chance to play on the field. Where as other students may not have that opportunity because they don’t play a sport. So there are some other anomalies that are other factors that you have to put into that data to make it fair against the rest of the student population. [1:23:58]
Mary Boudreaux, FAR and chair of Intercollegiate Athletics Committee (aka: CIA): Thank you.
Patriciaia Duffy, chair: Thank you Dr. Boudreaux. As I looked out at the audience I noticed that Bliss Bailey was here and I did not put in my opening remarks, but I did want to give some credit to IT. All of the full-time faculty and staff have completed their training (security training).
Bliss Bailey: The credit goes to the faculty and staff, not to IT.
Patriciaia Duffy, chair: In any event, it is very good news that all full-time faculty and staff who don’t have a medical problem or extended leave are all caught up in training. I meant to mention that in my remarks but I forgot so I did it a little bit out of order.
We now get to the part of the meeting where I get to ask is there any new business? Hearing none.
Is there any unfinished business? I don’t want to rush in case somebody would like to get to the microphone.
Hearing none I will now call this meeting into adjournment.
Thank you very much for your attendance today.[1:25:11]