Transcript Senate Meeting
October 7, 2014
Patricia Duffy chair: Good afternoon, I am Patricia Duffy, Chair of the University Senate. This is the third meeting of the 2014–2015 academic year. 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.
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 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 a 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. Our clickers are not working today there seems to be a problem with recognizing the software however, Larry Crowley has counted members and we do have a quorum. There are 87 members of the Senate and a quorum requires 45 Senators. We do not have any votes scheduled for today so the absence of clickers should not pose a large problem at this meeting.
Our first item of business is approval of the minutes from the September 16, 2014, Senate meeting. These minutes have been previously 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 motion carries. Our next agenda item will be comments from President Gogue. [2:13]
Dr. Gogue, president: Just one item that I wanted to share with you today. On Monday the Provost held a retreat to try to look at where we are with the strategic plan that’s in the first year. We just concluded a 5-year strategic plan. We spent a couple of hours, a number of people made presentations and I wanted to simply say thank you to a lot of people. Really some impressive numbers that have been able to be achieved within the last few years, when you look, this year was the first year that our graduation rate numbers went over 70%, 70.9%, I realize that you’ve been making progress every year but I remember 7 or 8 years ago when I came it was 61%, and that is a dramatic increase. So that was important.
We went over 90% in the retention rate for freshmen, good numbers. I wanted to simply say thank you on those. There are a couple of other things we looked at faculty metrics in terms of additional research dollars in the university was up about 15 million dollars in terms of expenditures. We looked at increases in the number of journal articles, increases in the number of books, increases in the number of citations for faculty work. All those to me were very impressive.
At one presentation I particularly enjoyed, Auburn needs to look at kids that are really bright that are Pell Grant eligible kids, kids that are resource challenged. So they’ve done a couple of things, number one they tried to say if you’re getting free lunch (I forgot the correct name) in high school, then in essence you do not have to pay the application fee to apply. It doesn’t sound like a lot but it is enough to discourage some kids. Second thing is we have always said once you get accepted you have to put a $200 deposit down. They have waived the $200. Minor things in the scheme of the world, but I would just say thank you to those that have been involved with that, those are good recommendations. They make a difference in the type of kids served and the type of kids that we have. Thank you.
Patricia Duffy chair: Thank you, Dr. Gogue.
Dr. Boosinger has indicated that he doesn't have any formal remarks for today, but he is here if anyone has questions. No questions?
Patricia Duffy chair: First, I'd like to introduce the officers. Dr. Gisela Buschle-Diller is our Secretary. Dr. Laura Plexico is the Secretary-Elect, whose term will start next July. Dr. Larry Teeter is our Chair-Elect, and his term will also start next July. Dr. Larry Crowley, the immediate Past Chair, serves as the faculty representative to the Board of Trustees. Dr. Conner Bailey is our parliamentarian.
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.
On our agenda today, we have three pending action items. It has become customary in the Senate these past few years to bring items that require a vote to the Senate first as information, and then to return at the next meeting, for the vote. Today, we will hear two proposals from the Academic Standards Committee, and one from the University Curriculum Committee. We have one additional agenda item, an update on Academic Sustainability programs.
We have a number of Senate committees and by this point in the semester, a lot of work is already in progress. You will see some of the work from two of our Senate committees in just a few minutes. I will mention today just a few of the other initiatives currently underway.
Between Senate meetings, the Senate Steering meeting meets regularly both to set agendas and to handle other matters. Recently, Steering has approved the formation of an ad hoc committee on copyright policy. The objective of this committee is to look at the copyright policy published in our Handbook, to ensure it is up to date, and offer any clarifications viewed to be needed by faculty. In particular, with technology changes, some faculty members may be unsure of what is and what is not allowed as "fair use" in the classroom. Rules will staff the committee, and will probably primarily be drawing from existing Senate committees and from the administration to bring together the required expertise.
The Administrator Evaluation Committee is looking at ways to be most effective in its charge to oversee and/or conduct a periodic evaluation of University administrators involved in the University's teaching, research, and extension programs. About six years ago, the university implemented a periodic and comprehensive review for all deans and department heads. Many of you have seen this process work in your own departments and colleges, and some of you have volunteered to serve as a Senate representative for a review in another unit. I thank everyone who has done that and those that will do that in the future. Also, in recent years, some of the deans have launched their own annual electronic surveys concerning the effectiveness of heads and chairs and of members of their own staff. So the committee is looking at ways to be most effective in an environment in which more administrator evaluation is going on from other sources than had been the case some years ago. Yasser Gowayed is the chair of this committee. He will be meeting with the Executive Committee later this week to discuss ideas.
The Faculty Salaries and Welfare Committee is looking at two issues at this time. The first concerns reviewing the current privileges of emeritus professors and possibly brining forward suggestions for ways to ameliorate any perceived problems or difficulties that the emeriti may be facing. The second involves investigating the interest and feasibility of 9-month faculty being paid over 12-months. Michael Kozuh is the chair of this committee.
The Teaching Effectiveness committee is a very active committee, and this year, among other concerns, they have been asked to review our current methods of teaching evaluation, and in particular our method for student evaluation of teaching, to determine if the evaluation methods are effective. Don Mulvaney is the chair of this committee.
We are always happy to hear from members of the faculty or of the broader Auburn community if there are issues of concern or matters that folks believe should come to the attention of the leadership team.
Finally, I'd like to remind everyone of the General Faculty meeting, that will take place on Tuesday, October 28.
Thank you for your time. Are there any remarks or questions?
Thank you. We will now move to our pending action items.
First, we have two pending action items from Academic Standards. Lisa Kensler was scheduled to present the items, but she was unable to be here today. Larry Teeter, from Steering, will therefore present the items. The items originated from Academic Standards, but were also approved by Steering. [9:49]
Larry Teeter, from Steering, chair-elect: Good afternoon. I am not a member of Academic Standards Committee. When we heard about this proposal in our Steering Committee meeting, we reviewed in September. Lisa was planning to make the presentation and when she found out that she would not be here Constance was going to make the presentation, and now Constance is not here, so I am going to go through it. And if there are any very pointed questions I will probably have to differ those for a later time.
The 2 proposals that were brought forward from Standards include an Exploratory Freshman Admissions Program and a Conditional Admissions Program. [10:36] The genesis of the proposals and proposal development process, the 2013-18 current strategic plan establishes promoting academic success as its first priority. It includes the following
¤Strategic Goal 1.D: “Develop a Freshman Advising Center for Undecided Students.”
¤Strategic Commitment B.2: “Revise first-year orientation programs to emphasize not only academic success, but also career and professional readiness.”
During 2013-2014 ad hoc groups developed plans in response to both Strategic Plan objectives.
This is the membership of those 2 Ad Hoc Committees. I would like to that those, if any of you are present in the room, for your service developing these proposals, they were forwarded then to the Provost’s Office in spring of 2014. Specific proposals were then relating to the Exploratory Program and the Conditional Admissions Program were prepared and submitted to the Academic Standards Committee. the proposals were discussed there, advised, approved unanimously by Academic Standards and then the proposals were submitted to the Senate Steering Committee in September where we discussed them and further revised them and recommended them for full consideration by the Senate and vote next month.
Other recommendations—such as to create a “Finish in Four” program (to move more orientation materials online, to increase just in time orientation opportunities for all students, etc) are still being studied.
The people on the Senate Review committees included Academic Standards, and you can see the distribution of units represented both in the Standards Committee and on the Steering Committee, so these have been vetted by at least 2 full committees of the Senate.
The Policy: Individuals applying to Auburn as first-time College students would be eligible to select “Exploratory” as a major option on their Auburn application for admission form. Exploratory students would not be aligned with an existing College/School, but would exist within a unit reporting to the Associate Provost for Undergraduate Studies. Advising for these students would be assigned to the Freshman Advising Center, where they would be provided with intensive advising and career counseling provided by a cadre of advisors cross-trained in the rudiments of all majors on campus. Student-to-advisor ratios must be appropriate to meet these requirements. Students would be required to select a college/major and transition into a College or School by the time they have completed two semesters at Auburn.
The Rationale for the proposal:
¨20% of incoming freshmen change their major before they attend Camp War Eagle
¨Many students change their major 3-4 times.
¨The longer it takes a student to find the right major, the longer it takes a student to graduate.
¨Helping students find the right major in their first year should decrease the length of time students need to complete their undergraduate degree, thereby reducing student cost.
¨Institutions permitting exploratory admission: Purdue, Florida State, Virginia Tech, Mississippi State, Georgia State, Indiana State
Moving freshmen who are uncertain about their major out of colleges will permit college-level advisors to focus on students committed to their majors and lower advising ratios in the colleges
These are all good reasons for the policy proposal.
Practicalities: Exploratory Freshman Admission
¨Exploratory Freshman & the Freshman Advising Center would not be housed in an existing College (this would prevent steering students toward particular majors), they would be in a unit that reports to the Provost
“Undeclared CLA” and “Undeclared COSAM” would still be appropriate for many students
¨The student to advisor ratio would be capped at 150:1; a career counselor would also be on the staff of the Center
¨Students would undergo an individualized regimen of advising sessions and assignments, which would begin at CWE
¨No student would be permitted to remain Exploratory after two semesters; no transfer student would be permitted to enroll as an Exploratory Student
¨Auburn would begin admitting Exploratory students for Fall 2016 (the Freshman Advising Center will begin in a pilot fashion Fall 2015 with incoming students who opt to be advised in the Center)
¨The location for the Freshman Advising Center is still being determined.
¨This proposal has the support of the Admissions Office.
Second recommended policy from Standards is on Conditional Admission: Applicants who are first-time freshmen, and graduates of an accredited high school, but who do not qualify for admission because of inadequate SAT or ACT scores or high school records, but who do meet the first-time freshman curriculum requirements, may be admitted to Auburn University on a conditional basis.
Students who are admitted on a conditional basis are given an opportunity to demonstrate that they can perform college-level work and can reasonably be expected to make progress toward a degree; they may be required to successfully complete a summer “bridge” or other program prior to enrolling in their first fall or spring semester at Auburn. Applicants must demonstrate their ability to perform at the college level by obtaining an overall “C” grade point average (2.0 on a 4.0 scale) in 15 college credit hours. Upon completion of at least 15 college credit hours of approved courses at Auburn University with a grade point average of at least 2.0, students admitted conditionally will be in academic good standing at the University.
Some of the rational for this type of a program, Conditional Admission program:
¨Students in this category would clearly know the performance levels needed to remain at Auburn after their first fall semester.
¨The proposal would help us “clear a pathway to student success” as called for in the Strategic Plan by providing a more accurate category of admission for some students Auburn is already admitting.
¨Students who begin college at a 4-year university are more likely to complete a bachelor’s degree than those that begin at a two-year school. (apparently, some students are in this situation where they are trying to decide am I potentially successful at Auburn or should I go to a lower level school? Or maybe even a 2-year program. It’s demonstrated that students do better if they start out at the 4-year university.)
¨Institutions with Conditional Admission policies: Texas A&M University, Clemson University, University of Maryland, Portland State University
¨Conditional Admission will also be of benefit as we increase our number of international undergraduate students.
¨This proposal would permit Auburn to support and monitor a group of students who may need some additional resources to help them make the transition to success at Auburn.
Practicalities: Conditional Admission:
¨Conditional Admission would only be available to first-time college applicants, not to transfer students.
¨Conditionally admitted students could enroll in any major available to students in good standing; there is no connection between this proposal and the Exploratory proposal
¨The “bridge program” for Conditional Admission students would build upon successful bridge programs already in place in Athletics, Engineering, COSAM, and the Office of Multicultural Affairs. It would continue the support and community-building structures through the fall semester.
¨Academic support and Student Affairs would work together to develop and implement the bridge program and support structures for these students.
¨This proposal has the support of the Admissions Office.
¨No predetermined number of students will be admitted into this category; the intention is not to admit a larger number of additional students (with this program).
¨The intention is to provide the support needed to increase our yield of students who, because of their academic profile, may be anxious about their ability to succeed at Auburn.
Recommended Action: Approve both recommendations in November. And this is information that you have already heard, but from Steering we recommend the approval of these proposals and if you would review them with your colleagues over the next few weeks and come back to our November meeting you will have opportunities to ask questions. Hopefully Constance will be there then. Mellissa may be willing to answer some questions as well. [21:10].
Patricia Duffy, chair: Questions?
Mike Stern, Senator, Economics: Let me see if I understand this correctly. On the Conditional Admission the issue is insufficient standardized test scores?
Melissa Baumann, Asst. Provost, Dir. Honors College: The insufficient ACT or SAT or it could also be high school GPA.
Mike Stern, Senator, Economics: Okay, but they have to have a high school diploma?
Melissa Baumann, Asst. Provost, Dir. Honors College: Yes.
Mike Stern, Senator, Economics: I attended Wayne’s presentation a couple of times at the Provost’s Retreat about this and I asked him about Auburn recruiting students prior to obtaining high school diplomas. I know there are some Exploratory programs at universities where they try to get people to come to college (the strong students) prior to finishing high school. That is to me more important bringing a student who has strong standardized test scores than high school diploma. Performance in actual classes they are taking which is GPA rather then the issue of the diploma. I don’t think that diploma is a good metric for the conditioning while weakening the other ones. I think a diploma is one of the weakest measures of all in terms of predicting performance, so I’d like to see the Conditional Admission also be flexible with the issue of the high school diploma. Which is, I don’t think it is any more important than the standardized test scores in terms of performance at college level. And whether we are recruiting students that potentially can do college work much younger than normal high school graduation in that regard.
Melissa Baumann, Asst. Provost, Dir. Honors College: I’m not hearing a question.
Mike Stern, Senator, Economics: Whether a question or comment, I want to make sure that you are not flexing on the issue of high school diploma, but you are flexing on the issue of grades and test scores.
Melissa Baumann, Asst. Provost, Dir. Honors College: There are students already admitted to Auburn that would have been put in this category. So just not the strongest, I don’t think there is an issue of the strongest admits, high ACT, high SAT. There are a lot of people who would argue the opposite that ACT/SAT is a poor predictor and high school grades are a better predictor, but that proposal is looking at the combination of both. [24:10] But certainly, your comment I am going to pass it back on to the Associate Provost.
Mike Stern, Senator, Economics: I wasn’t clear in reading it exactly what the flex is and why the high school diploma part of it is somehow key or something in terms of being flexible in admitting people that don’t have all the standard stuff.
Melissa Baumann, Asst. Provost, Dir. Honors College: Is Dr. Alderman here? I believe we have to have both and I think the committee went off of both of those. Those were the 2 triggers that the committee used for that conditional admission.
Mike Stern, Senator, Economics: One other thing. There was a slide on the Exploratory Admissions, if you could flip back, there is one comment I wanted to ask you about. In parentheses on the first item it says “this would prevent steering students toward particular majors” is that saying that colleges are misadvising students for some reason, favoring certain majors or something?
Melissa Baumann, Asst. Provost, Dir. Honors College: If a student is an engineer, and I chaired this committee so there was strong feeling amongst everyone on the committee that if a student came in claiming undeclared engineering that the advisors in engineering are there to help the students find their best engineering match. They are not necessarily prepared to help the student find a good match if they want to go outside engineering. The same would be said for COSAM or CLA. So the idea is to remove it from having a home field advantage.
Mike Stern, Senator, Economics: Oh, you mean steering students toward remaining in the college, you are not talking about distribution within majors like steering students toward Mechanical Engineering instead of Civil Engineering.
Melissa Baumann, Asst. Provost, Dir. Honors College: Yes.
Ed Youngblood, senator, Communication and Journalism: I was curious because you said the conditional admittance policy would cover students that are already being admitted, so the idea is that, I‘ve only recently joined the Faculty Senate so I may have missed previous debate on this, so the idea is that we are just trying to find a way to better serve those students that we are taking in.
Melissa Baumann, Asst. Provost, Dir. Honors College: Absolutely.
Ed Youngblood, senator, Communication and Journalism: My other question was, some of these slides were not quite visible, can we get to this powerpoint?
Melissa Baumann, Asst. Provost, Dir. Honors College: I think it is already on the Website.
Ed Youngblood, senator, Communication and Journalism: Great, thank you.
David King, senator, geology and geography: How does this relate to the seamless admission program? Or does it relate or does it replace the seamless admission program? I am curious as to how that will work now.
Melissa Baumann, Asst. Provost, Dir. Honors College: It’s my understanding the seamless admission program, those are students who were denied admission to Auburn, they have gone to AUM. That is separate so this is unrelated. It is a completely separate process. Those students are still going to go to AUM and then transfer in.
David King, senator, geology and geography: So a student that comes through the seamless program would not be eligible to enter this program, is that correct?
Melissa Baumann, Asst. Provost, Dir. Honors College: That’s correct.
Bob Locy, senator, biological sciences: I think I have 2 questions. The first one is somewhat related to the seamless admission, but my understanding is that for example students who do not enter in the beginning, the fall of their freshman year are not counted in our graduation rate. I’d like to know what the impact of creating this conditional admission group will be on how we calculate our graduation rate.
Melissa Baumann, Asst. Provost, Dir. Honors College: I want to say…I don’t know. I want to say they are still counted as being admitted to Auburn, but I am not sure. Drew are you here? Drew Clark? He just stepped out. I am not sure if they count, that is a great question and that’s something we can get back to you on.
Bob Locy, senator, biological sciences: The second question is, it seems to me that there’s a group of students who fall in this similar category that often seek admission to Auburn that come from community colleges, I noticed there was a sentence in there concerning the fact that this might be a better way to serve those students. I wonder if we could at least elaborate a little bit on considerations in that regard and whether there were any other proposals for how we might serve those students that the committee has addressed that either could be incorporated in this or that might additionally serve those students better.
Melissa Baumann, Asst. Provost, Dir. Honors College: Is there anybody from that committee who is in attendance today that can speak to that? I do know the literature seems to support and the point was made on one of the slides, that a student has a better chance of graduating if they come directly to the 4-year school versus going to the 2-year school and then coming on. That’s why part of this is really geared toward helping that student understand that if they make the choice to come to Auburn the support programs will be in place. It is not to say other programs would not be there that we don’t already have for transfer students, this is an attempt to bring in those students and identify them and have the support mechanisms in place. Did that answer? Okay.
Ed Duin, senator, chemistry and biochemistry: I have already talked with the rest of the faculty about this and not too pleased with this idea because we believe that the only way you can figure out if you like a major is if you are actually doing it. So if you postpone this for a year it’s going happen that the students don’t take the classes that they are supposed to take; our classes are stacked in such a way that you can graduate in 4 years but now if you don’t take those classes the first year and take them in the second year, you are one year behind. So this is not solving the problem that the student has, it is not going to speed up the student graduating, it will put the student a whole year behind. I think the committee has to make clear how this is going to solve this. I don’t think it will help the student graduate quicker, it will be delayed one whole year.
Also on advising, we’ve had bad experience with advising outside of the college. People are advised to take physics without calculus because it is easier and then decide to stay in the college and have to retake the course with calculus and again they are a year behind. So this is not helping the students at all.
Melissa Baumann, Asst. Provost, Dir. Honors College: Okay, 2 good points. Let me take the second one first. [31:49] These would be specially trained advisors. They are going to have to be advisors with training from multiple disciplines across the university. The advising ratios are expected to be much lower so that they can devote the adequate time to those students and make sure that they are properly advised.
The ideal student would come in and say, I know what I want to do and they do, and you are right, they go through in 4 years. The problem and the system that you think is a good system and I would have thought was a good system, until you actually look at the data, is what we have now. And we have those higher graduation rates, the 6-year rates because of that. Because students really are not exploring their major often until much later and then they make the decision later. So when they changed that 20% change even before they get to Camp War Eagle. Then they still are changing 3 to 4 times during that time. If we could have them changing majors earlier, and that is what the exploratory part is designed to do. We are only taking those students, and we are only talking about the ones that don’t know what they want to do. If we could have them doing more exploring earlier then it’s not going to take more time. Their average for that group of students may still be 4.5 or 5 years, but at least it is not 5 years or 6 years or 7 years. So the idea is to get them changing their mind if they are going to change it, change it early when you don’t have as much fallout from time.
Ed Duin, senator, chemistry and biochemistry: Thank you. Related to that I am not clear why we cannot solve the advising in the colleges, why do we need to set up this whole structure that’s expansive and already (?) so [33:27] fix the advising in the colleges. Because it is already set up, it’s there so why not use it and staff than create a whole new layer of…
Melissa Baumann, Asst. Provost, Dir. Honors College: The advising in the colleges when you bring the advisors together they would tell you that they are assigned far too many students, so the fix would be to add more advisors either way. And it’s very different to advise students who know what they want to do versus advising students who come to your office and say, just help me I don’t know what I want to do. Or I want to be an engineer, but I am not good at math and science, that is a whole completely different conversation. So the idea is really to give the advisors in the college better time with the students who are more focused and take this other group out and have different levels of conversations with them in a special center.
Jerrod Windham, senator, Industrial Design: By the way if you’ve got a student who wants to be an engineer and is poor at math and science, send them our way. But this is building on the advisory roll and the 150:1 ratio, is that a typical ratio? What are the standard ratios within colleges? And it would seem like this, as you already alluded to would need to be more, and more advisors seem to be the key component to this. I guess an additional question to that, the colleges who are pursuing the exploratory admission, has it been going on at those colleges and have they seen improvement?
Melissa Baumann, Asst. Provost, Dir. Honors College: [35:04] The number here that we’ve been shooting for in terms of advising ratios is roughly 300:1, 300 students to one advisor out in the schools. There we have that so the expectation is that longer conversations will be held so that is where the 150:1 we just have that. I believe it is engineering, COSAM, and CLA who have the undeclared major. Do we have any of those schools represented? Charles, to bad I see you. Do you want to field this for CLA? [35:40]
Charles from CLA: not at the microphone
I had a conversation with Bob Karcher earlier this afternoon and he felt the undeclared major was very, very helpful for the engineers in sorting out which way they were going to go. [36:08] Anybody here from COSAM that wants to address this? No, okay. Chris? [36:20]
Chris, COSAM I am guessing,: not at the microphone
Absolutely. If you look at the dropdown menu on the admissions, a student can still select undeclared CLA, undeclared COSAM, the engineering is undeclared engineering–pre-engineering. So they can absolutely suggest that. Those are not students who would go into exploratory. Those are students, actually that’s the success point of the end of the exploratory was to place student in a college, so you’re already, you got it.
Patricia Duffy, chair: Thank you.
The next pending action item (for a vote in November) comes from the University Curriculum Committee. The item will be presented by Sara Wolf, a member of the committee.
Sara Wolf, member of Curriculum Committee: Good afternoon. During the 2013–2014 academic year Bob Buchanan has served as a member of the faculty from the Library on the university Curriculum Committee as an ad hoc member. What he’s done is he’s represented the interests of the University Libraries in cases where new programs, new courses are being proposed as they might be affecting Library collections and things like that. It’s been very useful to have his perspective in these cases especially given the recent problems with budgets and things like that that cause everybody to have to make hard decisions all the time. Consequently the UCC would like to recommend that the Senate approve making a representative of the Auburn University Libraries a permanent ex-officio member of the committee. It further recommends that the Dean of the Libraries be charged with assigning this responsibility to a member of the Library staff on a rotating 3-year term. This was presented and discussed at the last University Curriculum Committee on 11 September 2014 and approved. [38:44]
Patricia Duffy, chair: Comments about this pending action item? We are finished with the pending action items. We now have one information item. Nanette Chadwick will present an update on Academic Sustainability Programs at Auburn.
Nanette Chadwick, Academic Sustainability Programs: Thank you very much. I was asked to come and give an update about the Academic Sustainability Programs and I believe that the Senate heard an update from the Office of Sustainability a while back, so I will be playing off on that.
First of all, just to make sure that we are all on the same page I thought I would redefine for everyone what is sustainability? I am not sure if everybody in the room knows the definition that we are using at Auburn University, and the definition that we are using here is sort of a classical definition that was created in 1987 by the United Nations and it is: “Meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” So sustainability is a forward thinking idea and it looks at integrating, looking at many different systems to make plans for upcoming needs in the future. The Office of Sustainability here on campus through our director, Mike Kensler modified that definition somewhat and is using a modified definition for Auburn for the Facilities and Operations side of things. Mike has defined it as: Meeting human needs now and in the future in a fair, equitable, and socially just manner, and in a way that protects and maintains healthy ecosystems in perpetuity. So this definition incorporates 2 of the major systems that we look at in sustainability which are social systems and Eco systems.
Also the University Office of Sustainability has slightly modified the system that we look at as well. In our classes on sustainability on campus we teach about sustainability as 3 interacting systems, this is know as the triple bottom line in terms of sustainability in a business context. So we can think of a sustainable system as being one that incorporates consideration of social, economic, and environmental systems. This kind of definition is helpful for me because if you think of a business or an institution like Auburn University, or even something like a neighborhood or a city, it is not sustainable unless there is consideration of all 3 of these integrated systems.
So for example, an institution could be viable if it doesn’t erode its environmental resource base and it is economically sound. It could be equitable if it includes social systems such as fair living wage, health care, socially diverse system and it has a good economic base. If it is an institution that creates a healthy environment and doesn’t erode the environmental resource base and has appropriate equitable social structures it could be considered to be a bearable system. But it is not truly sustainable unless it incorporates consideration of all 3 areas. So it is a highly interdisciplinary field.
In addition the Office of Sustainability on campus is employing the sustainability compass which adds a 4th system for consideration, so in addition to ecological, environmental or natural systems, and economic systems, and social systems, there is the idea of looking at individual wellbeing. Issues of individual health, self-actualization, individual wellbeing is added as well.
When we think about consideration of sustainability programs on campus and why the university is pushing to enhance out teaching and research in sustainability we need to justify why this is such an important issue now. The latest textbooks on sustainability are now going beyond just teaching about understanding these systems and they are looking to prepare students for what is called The Great Transition. The Great Transition is defined as being as large potentially as the agricultural revolution or the industrial revolution and it will be a major change that humanity has to undergo in the next 100 years or so. That is do to 4 major changes that are going to be happening in the future.
One is we are going to get a lot more crowded. Human population is set to peak at about 9 billion within the next 50 years or so, that’s 2 billion more than we have on the planet. So our resource use, feeding the planet, etc. is going to be a lot more challenging. We are going to be a lot more crowded. Also we are going to have an end eventually to an ever-expanding fossil fuel-based economy, so the classical economic models that are based on continual expansion of the economy given our upcoming major limitation of resources and overpopulation we need to start converting to more steady state economic models, which have already been developed in many countries. Also fossil fuels are a non-renewable resource and they are going to run out at some point. In addition the predictions are we are due for a couple of centuries climate change and increasing sea level before this go back to what they were even 50 years ago. Even if humans were to stop using fossil fuels and stop putting more carbon into the atmosphere tomorrow, we have what’s called Climate Change commitment which means that because of the huge lag time in these natural processes these changes are already going to be happening and they are not reversible for quite a time in the future. Especially coastal cities are going to be experiencing major changes, such as New York City, Miami, etc.
Then finally, humans are going to have to start facing consequences of what’s being called the Sixth Extinction. This is a major loss of biodiversity. The extinction rate currently in terms of species loss is as great and is actually more rapid than it was during the last major species extinction, which was about 65 million years ago. So eventually humanity is going to have to face the consequences of this major biodiversity loss.
As we teach students about sustainability we are preparing them for dealing with the issues and problems over the next century in terms of how our systems are going to have to change. So Auburn University’s Strategic Plan over the next 5 years has explicit wording about sustainability and about enhancing our commitment to sustainability in terms of education, research, etc. and my program is in charge of the education/research component.
So we have an Office of Sustainability, so just to briefly contrast what I do and what the office does; sustainability is involved with campus facilities and operations and is involved with reducing our footprint basically in terms of energy use, water use and has paired with facilities with pilot projects. I have been involved with some of these projects. We now have solar panels on the parking deck next to the football stadium and they power electric vehicles at the base of the parking deck. You can go an look at those. This if a first attempt on campus to unlink us from the fossil fuel-based grid. And we also have a fairly new sustainable water pilot project on campus at the Architecture building in terms of capturing rainwater and having a rain garden and looking at best management practices in terms of water use. We have also paired with the Waste Reduction and Recycling Dept. We jus had our Green Game on Saturday for the season with Auburn Football and they are heavily involved with reduction on waste on campus. There is also a campus Climate Action Plan and our President Gogue has signed the university president’s climate agreement which many university president’s have signed from across the country. We have a Climate Action Plan to ideally reduce Auburn’s carbon footprint to zero. You can look at all of this online.
http://wp.auburn.edu/sustainability/
The Office also administers awards and you may know some people who received awards. Some of our senior faculty, as well as alumni, students, and staff have received awards for progress toward a more sustainable campus. Finally the office offers student internships, which are not for academic credit but they provide experience for students. And there is a monthly newsletter that you can subscribe to if you go to this website (above). So that’s the Office of Sustainability.
In addition the programs that I interface with are the student organizations. We have a large number of student organizations on campus that are sustainability related. So there is a high level of student interest in this topic. More and more students are coming to me and to Mike and wanting to know how to get involved because they see what’ coming up in terms of their lifetimes and how they are going to have to be thinking between major systems and between disciplines, becoming much more interdisciplinary in terms of their problem solving.
Just to give you a couple of examples we have a US Green Building Council student branch on campus; we have a Habitat for Humanity branch which is involved mainly with the social equity aspects of sustainability; a sustainable design organization which is through the College of Architecture; we have an environmental awareness organization, there is also a student group that interfaces with Tiger Dining and with the food systems on campus and has been effective in making changes toward less waste and more food production to go into campus dining. There is a committee of 19, which is involved with aspects on Hunger and food equity. And there is actually a new sustainability coalition among many of these student groups plus others on a voluntary basis among these groups to organize activities related to sustainability. So these are the student related organizations involved in sustainability
Finally my program is through the Office of the Provost and is inside of the Office of Undergraduate Studies and deals with promoting teaching and research opportunities in sustainability. One of the things I am in charge of is faculty development and one of the things we do is offer faculty mixers and this is an opportunity for faculty to get together among colleges and meet colleagues and talk about common interests in sustainability. We had about 50 faculty at the last mixer that we held last month and about the same number at one I held the semester before that. There is sustained interest in interaction among the colleges and we have faculty from all the major colleges at these mixers. It is an opportunity for informal interaction.
We also have an online inventory of sustainability research on campus. We belong to a national association. Through that association we have become accredited in terms of having a nation rating in terms of sustainability. We have a silver rating which is pretty good, the best is gold, we don’t have gold yet. Many of our peer institutions have a silver rating. So this was our first attempt to get a rating and we got a silver rating and as part of that we have an online research inventory. So you can look up and find out which faculty, on campus are doing sustainability-related research. We will be updating that next year for our next assessment. The research that is in is across all colleges and often involves cross-college collaborations.
One idea that came up a couple of years ago was to integrate sustainability research into the Research Week, so we now have, if people submit an abstract for Research Week they can submit it under the key word of Sustainability. We have had special sessions and judging of sustainability related posters and abstracts and there is a large and growing number of faculty and student research related to sustainability.
Then Finally one of the ideas that came up in our faculty mixer was, the Engineering College is having research colloquia now in which faculty are learning about each others research across the departments and across the disciplines within a College. So we are going to start sponsoring some of these for faculty all across campus who want to talk about their research and find out about the possibility of creating collaborations and forming working groups with and end goal of submitting grant proposals together. So this idea of having research colloquia also we heard about it recently in COSAM in terms of doing cluster hires and having colloquia where people can learn about faculty research that crosses disciplines.
Auburn also has recently been awarded the title of the “Greenest College in Alabama.” This isn’t saying much, frankly, but we are listed on the national map in terms of making the best efforts in the state of Alabama toward sustainability. Part of that is our academic program. We are one of the few colleges in the United States to have a minor in sustainability studies. This was established 6 years ago and has seen fairly rapid growth. The number of graduates has increased every year. It leveled off for a couple of years, but we are going to have a large jump this year with all the students that are expected to graduate in fall. So it’s a growing minor. We have students from all the major colleges, many of them are in Architecture, Liberal Arts, Human Sciences, we have a growing number from Business. The Business College doesn’t have many courses yet that relate to sustainability, but the students are interested. We don’t have too many yet from Engineering partly because they are such an intensive curriculum that the students don’t have room for a minor. We have a small but growing number in Agriculture as well. So it is a very diverse student group. We have graduated about 100 students so far and we have about 60 current declared minor students. We have 3 introductory courses, one is an Honors introductory course and about half the students in the into courses are minor students. So these course are open to all students on campus and students can take them even if they are not minoring in sustainability.
Constance Relihan in Undergraduate Studies is my direct supervisor and we sat down and looked at this a year ago and decided the minor is now sustainable. In other words, it is well established and it is even growing.
I wanted to let you know briefly about faculty opportunities in the minor. We hire faculty to co-teach our courses. So we hire faculty, one with technical scientific experience and one with social studies, liberal arts background to co-teach to get those different systems views in each course. And we pay faculty for an overload or you can use it as a buy out for courses that you are already teaching in your college. And we have faculty from several different colleges teaching in the program, so that’s an opportunity. One of our recent successes is that the City of Auburn has now taken up a project that came up out of our classes as a potential City project that is being investigated by their bicycle committee. The students were sitting around and thinking about what to do for the capstone project this last year and they came up with the idea of what’s called Rails with Trails. Rails with Trails is a national program. It’s occurring in 45 states, we would be the first in Alabama to have this. The idea is to have a hiking and walking and bicycle trail alongside the active rail line from the Auburn Train Station down to Opelika. It’s about 6 miles. You’d have a fence separating the walking biking area from the rail line, or trees separating. These projects are very successful, they use an existing corridor for transportation already and offer alternate transportation beyond private vehicles for getting around. The students came up with the idea, they made a proposal with a budget, and the City has now taken this up and they have a Web site and they are trying to gain support for this as an actual project in the town. So some transfer from campus into the city.
We also offer electives in 3 areas. The areas encompass, economic, environmental, and social issues and if you know of courses or if you teach courses that are related somehow to sustainability or could be modified to be related, you can apply to have them be approved courses in the minor. If you do that, we advertize the courses to all of our minor students and then you get students from other colleges enrolling in your courses as electives and it increases enrollment. So this is a way to be formally be part of the minor and have your courses more widely advertized.
Beyond teaching in the minor we have faculty development to help train faculty in how to teach sustainability on campus. So we have a workshop and awards program and based on a national model developed at Arizona State and at Emory University we offer awards for faculty if faculty agree to revise a course or create a new course that has sustainability content we will give you $500. You would attend a one and a half day workshop right after graduation in the spring in which we train you about sustainability. One of the best benefits the faculty usually site from these workshops is they really enjoy interacting with faculty from other colleges. We have a lot of interaction among faculty during the workshop and we have begun to train quite a large critical mass of faculty on campus in sustainability.
The last thing that we’re doing is trying to start using campus as a living laboratory. This is based on a national model of using the systems that we already have in place on campus to teach our students about concepts. The concept of using campus as a living laboratory means that we developed as a fist step tours. Sustainability tours based on different topics; so for example if you want to use a tour in your class you could do so from one of the tours we’ve developed. The first one is a water tour at the Arboretum on campus developed in conjunction with our program. Signage and features that students can look at in terms of water sustainability issues. Which could relate to engineering, landscape design, health and wellbeing, and various issues.
We have a food tour in which students look at the campus dining and look at food agriculture systems on campus. We have an energy tour which looks at various innovative energy designs and features on campus. A consumption and Waste tour which takes students through the waste stream from use of a product all the way to the recycling office. And finally we have a walkability tour which looks at downtown Auburn and looks at walkability of our environment. So these tours are available for anyone to contact us and ask for a guide and to use in your classes.
So I think that’s about it. did not want to make this too long. Just wanted to give you an update on what is happening in the Academic Sustainability Programs. [59:56]
Patricia Duffy, chair: Thank you very much. If there are no questions or comments, I will ask if there is any new business? I don’t want to be too hasty. No.
Is there any unfinished business?
Hearing no new or unfinished business we stand adjourned. See you in a few weeks for the Faculty Meeting. [1:00:20]