transcript_05_19

Patricia Duffy chair: Hello, thanks for coming out for our May Senate meeting. I am Patricia Duffy, Chair of the University Senate. 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. As we will vote today, please pick up a clicker if you haven't already done so.

If you would like to speak about an issue or ask a question, please go to the microphone and wait to be recognized. Then state your name, whether you are a Senator and the unit you represent. 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. In addition, we would ask that people please limit their comments or questions to no more than 4 minutes at a time. People may speak again, but if anyone wishes to speak a second (or third) time, please be sure that others have had a chance to speak at least once first.

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 April 7, 2015, Senate meeting. These minutes have been previously posted to the Senate website. Are there any additions, changes, or deletions to the April 7 minutes? Hearing none, do I hear a motion to approve the minutes? Second? We have a motion and a second. All in favor, please say "aye." Opposed? The motion carries

President Gogue could not be with us today so our next agenda item will be comments from our Provost , Dr. Boosinger.

Dr. Boosinger, Provost: Good afternoon, it’s good to be with you today. First of all Dr. Gogue sends his regrets that he could not be here this afternoon and to speak to you in person. He wanted me to congratulate all of you that helped make the LEED gift possible that’s going to allow us to proceed with a world class performing arts center at Auburn University. He also wants to thank all of you for your good work during the last academic year.

I have agenda items kind of in two sets. First of all I want to update you very briefly on what’s going to be on the agenda for the Board of Trustees on Friday, June 5. And a few updates from Montgomery on the State Legislature.

On the Academic Affairs agenda for the Board of Trustees we are going to take forward 3 items. The first is a proposed bachelor of science degree in food science from the College of Agriculture. The food science program was previously an option so it is being converted to a very interdisciplinary bachelor of science degree in food science, still in the College of Agriculture.

The second item involves two new graduate certificates from the College of Education. One would be a certificate in how to teach instructional technologies to be used for distance learning and the other is for technology educators, if you will, to help teachers use how to use technologies more effectively in the classroom. [4:01] If approved that will be, this is at the master’s level, our 34th and 35th master’s level certificate programs at Auburn.

Third items is a proposed closure of the Department of Polymer and Fiber Engineering, and the elimination of a bachelors degree in Polymer and Fiber Engineering, this decision comes after a 2-year review process of all the multiple committees at the college and university level. If approved on the 5th the department will close effective August 15.

A forth item slightly different, we are also proposing the establishment of a dual enrollment policy for high school students who desire to complete Auburn University courses. This is not a brand new concept. We just want to put policies in place that have the appropriate Board approval so it has the right structure so the fees and tuition can be charged appropriately and competitively. The policy will allow high school students to earn college credit from Auburn University. Most of the high school students who enroll will be instate students, typically junior or seniors in high school. Students will be enrolled typically in core curriculum courses offered online by the College of Liberal Arts and the College of Science and Mathematics. And again almost all of those will be Alabama residents that we hope are bound to Auburn University.

I also have some updates from Montgomery, thanks to Sharie Fulford. The first is Senate bill 159. If you’ve been following this, I know some of you have, this is enabling legislation for Alabama to join in the National Council for State Authorization of Reciprocity Agreements. Also know as SARA. This was signed into law by the governor on May 5. The bill amends two state codes that currently limit our ability to join into regional reciprocity agreements. This actually allows us to join a national cooperative, if you will, it will make it much easier for us to teach and work and compete in a national environment with distance. It’s also establishes a reciprocity committee that will help negotiate and monitor distance education agreements and the quality of distance education being delivered to the citizens of the State of Alabama. The committee will select and oversee the State Agency that would be selected to operate this agreement. It’s no small task for those of you who are familiar with it.

The second, is House bill 101, this is the age of consent bill signed into law by Governor Bentley on May 5. This bill designates the age of majority as 18, previously it was 19, the purpose is to get consent to participate in certain research conducted at colleges and universities, typically surveys and those kinds of things. I know that a number of you in the room have worked on this lobby to get this passed, so I appreciate your efforts on that bill.

Then importantly Senate bill 179, that’s the Education Budget. The bill has passed the Senate and is in the House Committee currently. I was hoping I would get a phone call to give me an update on that. If it goes on through in it’s current form we will see an increase in Higher Education of .25 percent. For Auburn University that is equivalent to about $300,000 in our total allocation from the State. We expect this to be voted on and passed by the House Committee late today or tomorrow,

House bill 551, which you may not be familiar with, calls for a constitutional amendment that would adjust the composition in terms of expiration of Auburn Board of Trustees members. It does 2 things, one it adds two minority seats from the continental United States to enhance the diversity of the Board. It is also is being written to assist us with the problem that is going to emerge in 2019. In that year slightly more than two-thirds of our Trustees will rotate off of the Board of Trustees at once unless some modification is made. This provision provides a mechanism to adjust terms so that there will be a smooth transition in future years so this won’t happen again. [8:58] But unfortunately it takes some time because it’s a constitutional amendment there will have to be a vote on this sometime in 2016. This Bill is awaiting final passage by the Senate.
Okay, moving from the Senate announcements, we continue to make progress on the cluster hiring initiative that I’ve mentioned in previous presentations. After an initial review of ten very competitive proposals the review committee has narrowed those proposals down to 5. Respective Colleges and Schools are being asked to now come forward with full proposals and so those will then be reviewed in the coming weeks and hopefully we will be able to make a decision in a reasonable amount of time this summer. It is my goal, working with the colleges and schools to be able to fund at least 3 clusters this year, maybe more and if you don’t remember the process involves the contribution of typically vacant positions and start up money from the colleges and schools with matching funds being made centrally by my office. So, that’s kind of where we are with the cluster hires.
At an earlier Senate meeting there was a presentation and discussion about the enrollment distribution of student athletes by colleges and by sport. Following that meeting I asked the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment to evaluate the enrollment patterns of all student athletes relative to our general population of undergraduates. Karen Battye, and Institutional Research Analyst in the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment will provide you with a brief update on that office’s findings and then I will be available to answer any questions on this or other topics. [11:05]

Karen Battye, Institutional Research Analyst, Office of Institutional Research and Assessment: Thank you Dr. Boosinger. I am Karen Battye, I work in the Office of Institutional Research.

In response to a question asked at the Senate’s February meeting Senate, Dr. Boosinger asked the Institutional Research office to compile information about the curricula in which Auburn’s student-athletes are enrolled. Using our official enrollment tables for Fall 2014, we looked at the curriculum distribution of undergraduate student-athletes by gender, sport, and scholarship status.

In Fall 2014, Auburn’s 283 undergraduate female student-athletes were enrolled in 76 different curricula. Their largest enrollment in any single undergraduate curriculum was 30 students, in Pre-Business, followed by 21 students in Unclassified Sciences and Mathematics. I won’t take time this afternoon to break down enrollment patterns of female student-athletes by sport.

In Fall 2014, the count of undergraduate male student-athletes was 254, a count composed of 178 scholarship and 76 non-scholarship students. These male students were enrolled in 57 different undergraduate curricula, with the largest enrollment occurring in the Bachelor of Arts program in Public Administration. A total of 48 male student-athletes were enrolled in this curriculum, which was 19% of all undergraduate male student-athletes. The second largest enrollment was in Pre-Business, with 41 enrolled (16%). No other single curriculum had more than 13 male student-athletes enrolled. If we look only at male student-athletes on scholarship, these two undergraduate curricula remain by far the most common, accounting for 22% and 18% of this group.

We can further break this enrollment information down by sport:

Baseball: There were 43 undergraduate student-athletes in this sport. The two most common curricula were Public Administration with 9 and Pre-Business with 8. In percentage terms, Public Administration accounted for 21% and Pre-Business for 19% of all student-athletes in this sport.
Men’s Basketball: There were 16 undergraduate student-athletes in this sport. The two most common curricula were Public Administration with 4 and Pre-Business with 2. Public Administration accounted for 25% and Pre-Business for 12.5% of all undergraduate student-athletes in this sport.
Football: There were 120 undergraduate student-athletes in this sport. The two most common curricula were Public Administration with 28 enrolled and Pre-Business with 13. Public Administration accounted for 23% and Pre-Business for 11% of all undergraduate student-athletes in this sport.
Men’s Golf: There were 9 undergraduate student-athletes in this sport. The two most common curricula were Pre-Business with 3 and Public Administration with 2. Public Administration accounted for 22% and Pre-Business for 33% of all undergraduate student-athletes in this sport.
Men’s Swimming and Diving: There were 27 undergraduate student-athletes in this sport. The two most common curricula were Pre-Business with 8 and Economics with 3. Two male swimmers were enrolled in Public Administration. Public Administration accounted for 7% and Pre-Business for 30% of all undergraduate student-athletes in this sport.
Men’s Tennis: There were 10 undergraduate student-athletes in this sport. Five were enrolled in Pre-Business, three in Finance, and two in other curricula. None were enrolled in Public Administration. Pre-Business accounted for 50% of all student-athletes in this sport.
Track/Cross-Country: There were 27 undergraduate student-athletes in this sport. The two most common curricula were Public Administration and Undeclared Sciences and Math, each with three male student-athletes enrolled. Two male student-athletes in this sport were enrolled in Pre-Business. Public Administration accounted for 11% and Pre-Business for 7% of all undergraduate student-athletes in this sport.

Summing up the analysis- by sport – for all male undergraduate student-athletes and comparing football with all other men’s sports, the two most common curricula for the 120 undergraduate football participants were Public Administration with 28 and Pre-Business with 13. For the 134 participants in all other men’s sports, the two most common curricula were, again, Public Administration with 21 enrolled and Pre-Business with 28. [15:28]

Dr. Boosinger, Provost: Thank you Karen, I appreciate that. As a follow-up to the previous discussion this report from Dr. Clark’s Office I have appointed an ad hoc committee of 5 faculty, 4 current members on the Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics, plus the chair-elect of the senate, Larry Teeter, to review the information, all information that’s available to us on this topic and make whatever recommendations are appropriate to the president and to do that in a timely maner.

Does anybody have any questions or comments? Dr. Witte, are you in the back? I want to especially thank you for your help with getting the reciprocity agreement through. I know that’s important to your College and Distance Learning. Thank you to you and others that helped.

Patricia Duffy, chair: Thank you very much Dr. Boosinger. And thank you very much to Miss Battye and also from your office for providing this information for us.

On our agenda today we have two action items from Rules Committee, one pending action item from Academic Standards, and several information items. As always, with respect for your time, I will endeavor to keep my remarks brief. First, I'll introduce the Senate Executive Committee.

Gisela Buschle-Diller is our Secretary. Laura Plexico is the Secretary-Elect, whose term will start next July. Larry Teeter is our Chair-Elect, and his term will also start July 1. Larry Crowley, the immediate Past Chair, serves as the faculty representative to the Board of Trustees. We have our chair-elect-elect, James Goldstein who is here and he will officially be the chair-elect on July 1. Conner Bailey is our parliamentarian, but he couldn't be with us today, so Constance Hendrix has graciously agreed to serve in that role today.

Also, I'd like to introduce our helpful administrative assistant, Laura Kloberg. Ms Kloberg assists us with every one of the Senate meetings, and also does much more for us to ensure the business of the Senate is conducted as smoothly as possible. We are in constant communication with Ms. Kloberg to make sure that the committees are filled and everything is up and running with the Web site.

There are a few things I'd like to bring to your attention. The Steering Committee is authorized to act for the Senate between meetings and there are a couple of recent actions from Steering I'd like to mention. The first involves a slight revision to the wording of the policy on Auburn University students taking transient credit elsewhere. Working with the Provost's office, Steering approved a revision to the wording to reflect current practice. The policy itself hasn't changed in substance, but the wording was out of date given the practice based on the use of online forms. Because the substance of the policy didn't change, Steering's decision was not to send the revision to the full Senate but to have Steering itself provide the approval for the changed wording. Those of you who advise undergraduates may want to check the revised wording.

The other item that may be of interest to those who work with undergraduates is that there is now a set of guiding principles for the Provost's Office to allow exceptions to the policy of requiring a 2.25 GPA for students doing Study Abroad. The 2.25 GPA policy remains in effect, but Steering, working with the Provost's Office, came up with guidelines for the Provost's Office in allowing a very few exceptions for juniors and seniors whose GPA is in the 2.0 to 2.25 range but who have had strong academic performance in their last 30 hours of coursework. Your Associate Dean for Academics can provide you with the full details if you know of a student who is in that range and is an upperclassman who has done well in the last 30 hours of coursework.

Finally, I'd like to bring to your attention a mistake I made in the last meeting. When we put up the set of recommendations from the ad hoc Strategic Budget Committee, I didn't notice that because of an automatic formatting problem in Word, recommendations 1 and 2 from the committee had merged into a single recommendation because of the lack of a bullet between them. Thus, when recommendation 1 from the report was removed by vote, it also took with it recommendation 2 from the report because those two had merged in the posted set of recommendations that was separate from the report.

The original recommendation #1 was to adopt weights. The original recommendation #2 was to re-examine the rationale for splitting tuition into components based on department of instruction/department of the major if weighting were adopted. Thus, although they were originally presented as separate recommendations from the ad hoc committee, they were directly related and committee report recommendation 2 didn't make sense without committee report recommendation 1.

I was contacted by a Senator after the meeting that these two once separate recommendations had been accidentally merged. If you see something like this during a meeting it is helpful to tell me while we can still go in and put the bullet point in between. However they were accidentally merged, #2 without #1 doesn’t make any sense. That’s probably why nobody commented on it during the discussion.

Are there any comments or questions for me?

We will now move to our action items from the Rules Committee. These will be presented by Gisela Bushle-Diller, Senate Secretary. [21:51]

Gisela Bushle-Diller, secretary: Good afternoon. We have a replacement to vote on today and that is Teresa Gore is leaving the university so on the Non-Tenure Track Faculty Committee we need to replace her slot and James Witte is willing to agree. This is a motion that comes from a Senate Committee and needs no second. I hope you had a chance to look at this proposed motion and if there is any discussion. Seeing none, please turn you clickers on.

Patricia Duffy, chair: Press A to vote yes, B to vote no. A=54, B=1. The motion passes.

Gisela Bushle-Diller, secretary: The Senate Constitution asks that the Rules Committee finds and nominates members for Senate Committees. I hope you had a chance to look at the list of nominees that are up there (on the screen). They have been posted on the Senate Web site. I would like to send out a big, big thank you to the Rules Committee first and then to the whole people who volunteered. It was a very smooth process I have to say even though you might have gotten several e-mails from me, and I apologize for that.

The names have been posted and I hope you have had a chance to look at them.

Patricia Duffy, chair: This is a motion coming from a standing committee of the Senate so it needs no second. Is there any discussion? Hearing none I will now ask you if you approve the slate to press A, and B if you don’t. A=49, B=1. The motion carries, thank you Gisela.

Gisela Bushle-Diller, secretary: Thank you very much. If you did not get voted onto a committee there are University Committees that are ready for volunteers.

Patricia Duffy, chair: I have told some of you that my term as Senate Chair ends July 1 and your thinking “okay I don’t have to worry about those Friday 4 o’clock phone calls from her to get on another committee,” but I do have one more year on the Rules Committee, just so everybody is aware, you are not safe yet.

We now have an item from Academic Standards, which is a more detailed policy on military credit than the one adopted by the Senate in March. This is a pending action item with a vote to follow in June. Xing Fang, the chair of Academic Standards will present it. [26:30]

Xing Fang, chair of Academic Standards: Good afternoon everyone. First I will give you a general idea of the Policy on Academic Credit for Military Service and Training. ¨Auburn University has the current practices dealing with academic credit for military service and training but there is no formal policy. So we put current practice into the policy so it is not totally new. A policy proposal was developed by an ad hoc committee and the policy was proposed for the compliance to the current state law.

I will show you some key points on the policy and the whole description of the policy is posted on the Web site. First of all the total credits awarded for military training and service will be limited to 10 semester credit hours.
Based on the following situation, service members may earn up to 4 hours of physical education credit according to the following formula: [Existing Bulletin Language to be Edited]: A student who has served in the Armed Forces (on active duty, in the National Guard, or the Reserves) may receive physical education credits as follows: 2 hours of credit upon completion of basic training and advanced individual training for those serving on active duty, reserves, or national guard; 4 hours of credit for active duty service of one year or more.

Second part is service members may earn up to 6 hours of military science elective credit for training documented on the JST (Joint Services Transcript). If this policy is approved, the transcript evaluator will work with the current Military Sciences leadership to chart equivalencies eligible for credits.
Service members may earn up to 6 hours of general elective credit for other training documented on the JST in accord with this policy.
At the discretion of the student’s academic unit, some upper level elective credits may be allowed to satisfy specific degree requirements by substitution.
Added all together is a total of 10 credit hours.
There are some restrictions about granting the credits. For example recommendations for credit at the vocational level are not acceptable for credit at AU. Also Auburn does not award credit for military occupations or for courses with ACE (The American Council Education) recommendations that are considered low-level vocational/technical in nature. ¨Duplicate credit recommendations will not be allowed. ¨In most cases, credits will be awarded as elective credit.
Basically the policy was discussed by the committee and then presented in the Steering Committee. These are the basic points for this policy.

Patricia Duffy, chair: Any questions for Dr. Fang? Thank you Dr. Fang. This one will come for a vote in the June meeting. If you’d like the full written out policy, it is posted to the Senate Web site, so please take a moment to look that over before the June meeting.

That takes us to our information items. The first of these includes two items from Faculty Salary and Welfare, presented by Mike Kozuh, Committee Chair. At the beginning of the academic year, Steering charged Salaries and Welfare with looking into the rights and privileges of emeritus professors, based on concerns raised by an emeritus professor. Additionally, the committee wanted to look into the possibility of 9-month faculty receiving their pay over 12 months. We will now hear the report from Salaries and Welfare addressing these 2 issues. [31:32]

Dr. Michael Kozuh, Chair of Faculty Salaries and Welfare: So indeed we received complaints from emeritus professors in the spring and the fall last year over some issues. I had a chance to read through it, policy and try to understand the policy and how they fit together.

What I would generally say is the policy itself is fairly vague, I was a bit off put by it at first, but then I realized fairly quickly that when you compare it to other institutions especially other peer institutions they more or less say the same thing. Grant Library privileges, computer access and that sort of thing. Auburn’s emeritus policy isn’t out of the ordinary. And so, it doesn’t exactly say this (a glitch in recording) of the policy is for issues to be handled within the department or the school or college as they will know the issues better. In other words they need to be handled locally and this took care of and at least addressed a lot of the concerns that were coming in to us, such as mailboxes, travel funds, computer software and so on. So along those lines it seems as though the departmental chair at the time should be the one who is sort of the interface for emeritus professors and the university.

Again, I stress that Auburn isn’t different from other universities in this respect especially peer institutions. I think that this is the spirit of the policy. But since we had the issues in front of us and we had a long list of them, we tried to run down and remedy or at least understand why there were issues, as many as we could.
So, I’ll put up a slide here and give you a slice of some of the ones that came to us and how we dealt with them; for example there were issues of emeritus professors not appearing in People Finder, which is now remedied, Parking tags was the big one, being able to pay for them; because they are not getting a salary the salary withdrawal cannot work. It doesn’t seem like there is much we can do about that. I will say that when you look at emeritus policies at peer institutions they often do mention parking, but it is usually in the spirit that emeritus professors should not be denied a spot. That is they seem to have more acute parking problems than we might have here.

There were some things, again just as a representative sample that just weren’t clear from going to the Web site. The pool for example does not make clear that emeritus professors pay the same rate as actively engaged professors, so we clarified that. Others I should say like the wellness center, it is actually very clear on Web site even though it was coming up as a complaint, that retirees pay the same as actively engaged professors. So things like the pool we were able to solve fairly quickly. And a few more that you see here Au Access and Lynda.com.

A few of them remain uncertain. This is probably the most uncertain of the bunch of whether emeritus professors can get MEDEX coverage if they are paying for their own trip through Auburn. But in Steering Committee and maybe it is well known, MEDEX is not expensive, it’s a few dollars a day whether you are going through Auburn or whether you are going on your own. So the whole issue may be moot, but this is something that I wasn’t able to get answered.

Ultimately I would say this if I am to understand the spirit of the policy, that is it nearly impossible to say who does what where and why for retired professors as it is for actively employed professors. We all engage the university in different ways all of which employ different channels of communication. So there isn’t one place to go to remedy issues because there isn’t one place to go for me to remedy issues. Again, normally we think you should go to your chair first, which is what I am saying in this last slide here, and then if not, bring them to the Senate or bring them to my committee.

What I’d say if you do that this is the general pattern for the slate of issues that we addressed. Some things can be addressed immediately. Things like out of date lists, unclear Web information can sometimes be addressed immediately. Some of them that were brought to our attention may take time. There are issues that just have to be ironed out that may take a few months if it can be addressed at all, and it may take some time for it to be brought up to where it should be. I will reiterate finally that it’s important to know these. If it sounds like I’m putting off the information or trying to avoid responsibility, that’s not the case. The spirit of the policy is for most things to be addressed locally, but since Auburn has very diverse mission and departments, so on and so forth, some of these things we may not know about. I had never heard of Lynda.com, for example, it’s important to know them as they happen.

Want me to take questions separately for each one? Okay are there any questions? Nope, okay.

The second one was faculty salaries, this was colossally bad planning on my part in the sense that the survey ended today and I didn’t have a chance, it would be perfect to get a PowerPoint together for the committee by Friday when it was due, but we have Periot who is here from AUM, he and I have been working on the results over the past few days, so I will discuss them in a very general way.

All faculty should know that over the past few weeks you have been receiving invitations from me to participate in a survey about faculty preferences for payment schedules. [38:23] Simply put we were trying to find out, is there an interest among faculty to have pay disbursed over 12 months rather than according to the schedule. We did this because when I became chair, I asked the committee what they would be interested in pursuing. This was one of the things. We were getting requests from outside to look into this as well and as a coincidence this has been a topic for ripe discussion at Auburn University Montgomery for quite some time, who are paid from the same payroll, so I got in touch with Jeff to pursue this.

We did the survey because we just didn’t know if there was an interest in this. I had sort of been told about a variety of surveys that had been done with the faculty, I asked to see them, I never did. All of the information as far as I could tell about faculty preferences were anecdotal. So we were just trying to figure out if there is actually any interest among the faculty.

We have the numbers. We have a fairly representative set of results. I took the information from 2014 on how many faculty were in each department and then compared it to the percentages that took the survey. More or less we’re represented well. Liberal Arts is over represented by about 10%, and Pharmacy and Veterinary Medicine is underrepresented by about 5% each, but more or less everything else is in proportion.

Let me talk about the numbers in general before we get into them. When we were discussing the survey it was really suggested, and I believe correctly, that people might like the idea of a 12-month payment schedule in the abstract, but then confronted with an actual reduction from their paycheck to be paid out over the summer they would balk. [40:16] So we really tried to put this front and center. We made it clear in the invite letter that this would happen. In 2 of the questions we stated specifically, “if you were to accept this option, you would have a reduction in the pay you are used to receiving and it would be paid out in the summer. We really pushed it forward to make sure people knew that and in some ways we over stated it saying that you would loose about 25% when it’s really more like 15%.

Here’s what we know. We had 38% response rate on the main campus, AUM had a response rate a lot higher, about 60%, so the first question was, would you support all Auburn faculty who are currently on a 9-month appointment to being moved to a pay schedule where their 9-month salary was paid out over 12 months? This is for example how they are paid at the University of Alabama and the University of South Alabama, everyone is paid over 12 months. The majority were 57% of Auburn Faculty, 63% of AUM faculty thought they should move all faculty to 12-month payment schedules.

Now I don’t think we should explore this option. My guess is a lot of faculty simply don’t know that some grants are structured on a 9-month salary schedule, that some people take extramural work because we are on a 9-month payment system and so on. And let me add this more than a few expressed concerns that moving to a 12-month distribution might result in all faculty moving to 12-month contracts with concomitant summer duties on campus. Moving everybody to a 12-month contract in any form is not an alternative I’d be willing to explore. I learned a lot from the comments that people wrote to this question, so that’s not a line I’d be thinking of pursuing.

The next question was, would you support an option for faculty to choose to have 9-month pay scheduled either over 9 months as we do it now, or over 12 months. That is an option. The overwhelming majority, 91% here, and 93% at AUM, supported giving faculty an option to choose between 9- and 12-month salaries. Now this isn’t surprising, this is no skin off of anyone’s nose that it’s an option.

But, I think this is the key number, the next question was, if given the option would you choose a 12-month option? The number was high, 57% of faculty said that if given the option they would choose a 12-month payment schedule and 63% of AUM faculty said the same. I’ll give some context to that 57%. 5% of the faculty were already on 12-month pay schedules. So I don’t know which way they would go if they were moved off of those 12-month pay schedules, if their job shifted.

Some people said no, they would not take it because they were worried about tax implications, they wanted more information. Some were worried about how summer teaching money would be taxed if they were paid over 12-months. So some wanted more information on that before they would vote yes. A number of faculty said that they would not take the option because they count of summer salary to make ends meet., that is they need their checks as they know them right now, and summer teaching money to pay their bills. So a number of participants said they would not take the option because their salary was frankly too low to do so right now. They can’t make it without summer teaching. So there is some context to the 57%. [43:53]

The rest of the questions asked how a 12-month payment program would affect one’s ability and desire to teach summer school, to do summer research and outreach. The raw numbers aren’t that useful. People sort of understood the question in different ways, the comments to those questions that people are allowed to write in are really important and really interesting, so I need so time to dig into those to understand it better. Generally though on both campuses most people thought it wouldn’t influence their desire to teach for the summer and if anything it would help their research productivity in the sense that a consistent paycheck throughout the year would greatly aid them in setting up a summer research agenda and so on. A few people got a little Darwinian and said that summer pay would make us complacent, there were other sides to it. So I can say one thing with certainty before deep dives into the numbers and that is it expresses without a doubt there is interest in this. We can no longer say there’s not. What I think we’d like to see most is to explore giving faculty the option in some form of receiving their pay over 12-months instead of 9-months. A variety of universities locally, UAB, UAH, and Jacksonville State all do this. And UAHs Handbook captures what the desires of faculty perfectly. It says, faculty members are appointed on an academic year 9-month basis who’s salaries that are not supported by grants and contracts during the academic year are normally paid over 12-months. You can elect if you want to get it over 12- or over 9-.

I realize that there are big administrative issues here. I realize it is a contentious point, this is the first time that I’m aware of having some actual numbers of faculty desires. Thank you. Any questions? [46:00]

Patricia Duffy, chair: Just as a follow-up to this we have discussed with the business office appearing in the Senate in an early fall meeting to address some of the administrative issues that are involved with the option. If there are no comments or questions for Dr. Kozuh we will move to our next agenda item which is Dr Diane Boyd’s presentation on teaching and learning in Biggio Center. Thank you very much Dr. Kozuh and thank you Dr. Boyd.

Dr Diane Boyd, Director of the Biggio Center: Good afternoon. Thank you for the invitation from the Steering Committee to present to this group. So now in it’s 11th year the Biggio Center is what we hope will become the hub of teaching and learning at Auburn. [47:18]

I joined the team as the director in September, was welcomed back to Auburn at that time and at that moment we decided to retool our mission to better reflect what our daily activities consisted of to better align with the Strategic Plan. So these units comprise the Biggio Center. They are fairly diverse. Most recently we added the instructional multi-media group in October. We rolled that into our umbrella of services for faculty and students. You will be aware from previous iterations that faculty development in course design still remains a focus of the Biggio Center. And we also support students with testing services. What you may not know is that is the testing business is thriving. This is the academic face-to-face testing in our 2 different locations in the past year, in both locations. One is in Foy, the other is in Biggin Hall, it increased an average of 70% this year alone between these 2 locations. Last year we gave over 15 thousand vendor-based and academic based tests.

One exciting development is our plan to align our 2 different testing centers into one location at Biggin Hall. Part of what’s driving this is the culmination of years long work with the Graduate School to bring prometric vendor-based testing to Auburn. That would allow our students to take GREs that would be externally reported here on campus. Currently if our students want to take a GRE that’s reported externally, they have to drive to Columbus or Montgomery. So there’s some pretty exciting things happening with testing.

You will be aware, I hope, of the long-standing successful programs that are part of the Biggio Center, including preparing future faculty and new faculty scholars. If you happen to look at the online version of this new faculty scholars is there twice, because we love it so much. I was able to fix that for you all today. If you’ve been to our Web site you are aware of our professional development seminars. Which this year we tracked out so it would be easier for faculty and teaching staff to select if they wanted to learn about teaching with iPads or active learning.

Our longer-term goal is to help move these programs into long-term relationships with faculty and teaching colleagues. So currently we have several different cohorts that have begun in the fall, they are helping build momentum for teaching scholarship here at Auburn. Those include the iPad faculty cohort, last year 250 students used iPads in courses. The following year (next year) we are moving to bring your own device along with the iPads in the classroom to help students harness better learning using technology. One of our main focuses over the next week or month is the course redesign seminar. We are in the midst of it now and the goal of that course redesign seminar is to help faculty re-envision their teaching for the new to them environments which might include online learning, working in the EASL (engaged active student learning) Classroom, or using mobile technology to support student learning.

The immediate long-term goal is to help faculty be ready to thrive in the new classroom buildings that are coming online over the next 5 years. So I spoke briefly about an immediate long-term goal, perhaps a long-long-term goal is to help faculty and teaching staff promote a sense of work life balance. You can see this is kind of a startling idea that “life is a grindstone that polishes some people, but grinds others.” There is some research done in faculty development and organizational development theory that shows that when people feel an integrated approach to their work they are more likely to be polished than ground. So all of the ways we interact with faculty and students are designed to help them connect teaching, learning, and research.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention something that’s in the works now. I think I did see George Crandell earlier. He and I and a team of faculty and graduate students recently went to this CIRTL Network forum meeting. CIRTL stands for the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning. Although it’s focused on undergraduate STEM preparation it’s an institutional commitment. We had a town hall meeting on May 1 and have invited participation from across the campus. So you’ll see there the 3 pillars of the CIRTL Network. What we’ll get if our application is successful is 23% more likely NSF funding because the elite groups that are already involved in the CIRTL Network have that much of a better chance than other schools to get NSF funding. Plus we have the chance to impact student learning throughout the lifecycle which also aligns with the Biggio Mission.

So I’ll end, are there questions?

Patricia Duffy, chair: Thank you Dr. Boyd. I’ve had an opportunity to participate in some seminars with the training future faculty program and I think it’s an excellent program and if you get an invitation to participate to give a seminar, I would urge you to consider it seriously.
Our third item is information about SENCER, presented by Bob Holm and Paula Bobrowski. [53:26]

Paula Bobrowski, Assoc. Dean of Liberal Arts and SENCER Leadership Fellow: Good afternoon, first of all I want to thank the Faculty Senate for inviting Bob and I to come and talk to you about SENCER. Actually, Diane, it fits very well with the goals of the Biggio Center, so this was an appropriate place to put us.
The title of our presentation is “What is SENCER About: An Invitation to Participate” We would like to invite all colleges to participate, so let me tell you a little bit about SENCER. It’s the Science Education and New Civic Engagement and Responsibility, and that’s what SENCER stands for. The whole idea of it is to look at the STEM, now I am calling it STEAM to include the arts and humanities in here, but to look at teaching in the STEM to engage students and connect it with civic engagement, responsibility, and decision making. It’s been a really effective way to teach the sciences.

Let me talk a little bit about the background of SENCER. It’s been around for several years. It’s currently housed at the National Center for Science and Civic Engagement. The founders are David Burns and Karen Oats, but there are several other people that are on their board like the chancellor professor of integrative biology from Cal Berkley, Jay Labor, he’s a senior advisor from the National Academy of Sciences, and there are institutions throughout the United States who are involved with this initiative. It’s also funded by several foundations but mainly by NSF. I think for our ability, as Diane was saying, is to start looking at getting NSF funding, some of these initiatives are really important. In fact we’ve had 2 SENCER grants and NSF sub-grants come to the university since our participation in it.

Their motivation is really to flip the science education and get students engages so that they are not just learning textbook science, but they are learning in a way that they can go out and engage civicly and help make decisions and improve their communities. The other part of SENCER that I think is critical for you to know is that they are really big into student assessment. Based on those assessment models they’ve been able to demonstrate that students actually learn much more effectively.

A couple of things that I want to cover is we would like to invite colleges that are interested and getting involved with SENCER to join us. There is an institute every year and there’s also regional centers round, innovation centers, so we would love to get you connected with that. But some of the great things that they do is that they have model courses that they can share with faculty to start showing how they can integrate these things in and their whole idea is to take a little piece of your course and start redesigning it so it really engages the students with the community. What we’ve seen is that once somebody gets started in it and sees the effect it has on students it totally flips the classroom around in a mater of time.

So they have models for us that we can use, such as things like global warming, sustainability, human health, chemistry, and the environment, and a pelthora of other sustainable type models that they have been able to engage with.

So without taking up too much more of you time I would just like to talk about what we’ve been able to accomplish on Auburn campus. We got involved through Research Week with SENCER so they have come to our campus. They will come if you are interested in having them come to your college and talk about the different models. I am going to encourage Diane, I would really like to talk with you because we would really like to work with Biggio so we can reach out to the whole campus on this. The SENCER team would come to our campus to talk to faculty and who’s ever interested. We’ve been able to develop in our college a science and music course that is now part of the general education. We’ve attracted mainly engineering students into that course. It’s also got a very engaged undergraduate research project in it where the students are hooked up to biofeedback and they can see the physiological effects that music has on humans and the next step is to look at how we can start looking at different environments, such as the health care environment and use a free good such as music to improve people’s lives. I wanted to give you a real live example. That project has been extended out with the outreach program to start looking at involving students from high schools to get them onto our campus and start getting them excited and interested in science, engineering and those kinds of things. We are starting to talk with engineering and psychology, with MRI research in these areas.

We want to make this known. It really is interesting because it focuses on science and engineering and yet they have really embraced this idea of expanding it into other areas. So be sure to contact Bob Holm or myself and we’d be happy to talk to you. Diane, I’d really love to partner with you on this initiative. Thank you. [1:00:28]

Patricia Duffy, chair: Any comments? Thank you very much. Just a reminder, we do have the June Senate meeting in 4 weeks and we will have a vote. So if you are a senator and you cannot be here for the June Senate meeting please do your best to arrange a substitute so we will have a quorum for the vote.

This brings our information items to a close.

Is there any new business?