Final Approved 5-31-07
Meet and Confer – Notes
April 19, 2007
Administration: President Saigo, Provost Spitzer, Kristi Tornquist, Mitch Rubenstein, Mark Nook, Rex Veeder, Wanda Overland, Nancy Jessee, (Patty Dyslin – note taker)
Faculty: Annette Schoenberger, Judy Kilborn, JoAnn Gasparino, Bill Langen, John Palmer, Fred Hill, Andrew Larkin, Jayantha Herath, James Lindsey,
AD: Good afternoon. Yesterday, we had the exit report from the committee of the HLC and you all got an e-mail. Renee Neely, the chair of the committee, came in and basically said St. Cloud State hit 3 for 3, like in baseball and we have a 1,000 batting average. That was her bottom line. We all kind of knew that we felt pretty decent about where we were, but I will tell you, the room pretty much inflated because we all exhaled and the air all went out of the room. I know that in my chest, I felt like yelling, but we held our decorum and we just seemed pleased. The rest of the committee members were fantastic and again, a two or three-year initiative through Michael and others, and Kate and Kurt and so many hundred plus faculty. You should all be proud of what we have achieved. This campus came together, we used data, we made plans and when I read the self-study, it was not just a glossy cover-up. It also showed areas of challenge that we were willing to show and talk about. That was much appreciated. So again, what a relief. For me, in a selfish way, what a way for me to go out after seven years – to see that a ten-year report won’t require any on-site visit and for the chair to give us such a wonderful, positive response. I thank all of you for all the extra work. I’ve served on committees as a faculty member. These are thankless hours that we can’t get a personal principle investigator publication, but it was wonderful to see St. Cloud State come together as a team. It shows that when we put our mind to things, we can work together to get us to where we need to be. The whole campus should be very proud and feel very good about the outcome. This is not from consultants. This was not from somebody outside in the private sector. These are our academy colleagues that look at us with a critical eye with a sense of trying to help us to get even better. For them to say you bat 1,000 is wonderful for us. So again, I want to express my congratulations and appreciation, Annette, that you might pass on to our faculty and faculty senate when you get together. Thank you very much and congratulations.
FA: I thought they had a lot of nice things to say.
AD: Yes. Annette was there and we had a room full.
FA: They were also very careful…
AD: Well, sure.
FA: About what they did say so we really aren’t going to be done until sometime in August.
AD: Six months. I’d rather be here then otherwise.
AD: They make recommendations – they could have recommended a follow-up visit or report…
FA: But they didn’t do that…
AD: But they said we don’t have to do any follow-up for our regular accreditation.
FA: Right, which is the first time in many visits. It’s the first time in my 20 years at this institution that that’s happened.
AD: Good.
AD: We also had two special requests in addition to the regular reaccreditation. One was a change of affiliation to offer applied doctorates and they said they would recommend and support that. Although in that case they did want a report in 3 years on how we’re doing. The second request for change of affiliation had to do with off-campus offerings. They are going to recommend that we can offer programs at any site in the state of Minnesota without prior approval from them. That also allows us to move, when we feel the need and there’s demand, to offer an off-campus program without having to go through a process of requesting approval from them.
FA: What I heard on the doctorate programs, they’ve given us specific permission for the Higher Ed with a report to come. We can do other ones but we still have to go through the MnSCU/HLC process for anything else we want to do.
AD: Sure.
FA: I think it’s important for faculty to know that it’s not blanket permission to offer doctorates but that we’ve been given permission to go through the process.
AD: Typically they give permission for the institution to do one and then to come back to them for the next several.
FA: Right. That’s where we’re at on that. We’re not out of the water on that one, but we’re not treading water either.
Approval of Minutes:
Minutes from March 22, 2007 - approved
Unfinished Business:
1. Continuation of the Peer Review Committee (FA) (1/18/07)
FA: That’s still at the Senate. They just haven’t gotten to it yet. They have some other exciting things to discuss.
AD: Okay.
New Business:
1. Budget Request from the FA budget advisory committee (FA) (3/22/07)
FA: The Faculty Association committee has forwarded a series of motions that the Senate has asked that we bring to Meet and Confer. Those motions are in the spirit of the transparency and openness that we’ve strived to achieve here on campus. There are some things though that are still open-ended in our response. One of which is the up-to-date accounting of the actual expenditures of the one-time investments from 2005 that were carried forward. We did get a verbal statement. We were told something about the land. We would just simply like to be kept up to date on what it actually costs to do the things that were on that list. We also asked and have presented some budget information that uses the numbers that I’ve received through the Office of the Vice President of Administrative Affairs that yields a different kind of set of conclusions than the one that was presented at the Town Hall Meeting. I did get some feedback from Steve that talked about where some of our differences occur. He identified some carry-forward (fenced ?) money that we were unaware of. It affected the total of fenced dollars and I believe you’ve been handed the set of motions that we passed?
FA: Yes.
FA: I do have a meeting next week with Steve and President Saigo and I believe it is about coming up with a common set of numbers.
AD: April 1st has come and gone.
AD: Yes. It’s hard to meet your deadline here…
FA: It’s like the Board’s document that said you’d have the statement on the budgeting process numbers in late April. They wrote that back on March 13th, and of course, they’ve not provided that information and the legislature hasn’t finished its work.
2. Second Associate Dean in COSE and COE (Admin) (3/22/07)
AD: The deans in two of the colleges want to modify some of their administrative structures in such a way as to create what are in effect, two associate dean positions. This is in the College of Education and the in the College of Science and Engineering. One of the motivating factors – let me talk about each of those a little bit separately. One of the factors in the College of Science and Engineering is that when ABET visitors come to review some of our programs there, they have expressed some concern that there isn’t anybody in the administration of the college with a background in one of the disciplines that are represented by ABET. Similarly, the folks in nursing talk about wanting to have somebody with a health science background, at least, in charge of the Nursing program. So that’s one of the elements that’s involved with this idea for the College of Science and Engineering. In discussing what’s going on there, it seems that there are a number of things that an associate dean could help further as an activity for the college. Somewhat more specifically, it would make it easier to get a timely review of class schedules, making certain that course availability is taken care of so that the associate dean could approve, for example, adjunct and overload; that departments will have additional assistance in developing articulation agreements with two-year colleges; the associate dean could assist with recruitment. I think right now, the single associate dean in the college visits a lot of high schools and two-year institutions and that takes up an enormous amount of his time leaving less time to do work on campus in support of faculty needs on campus. So there are lots of things that could be added to support the work that faculty are doing. Increasingly, the deans are being asked to spend more time off-campus doing fund-raising and development activities and they need to spend significant amounts of time, probably more than they have, on EPT materials. Having a second associate would allow the dean to focus more time and attention on that activity. So that is a rationale for adding the second position in the College of Science and Engineering. With the retirement of the current associate dean, this is an opportune time to make that kind of change and seek individuals with the appropriate background.
FA: You want a nurse who has an engineering degree?
AD: Let’s say I want a nurse and an engineer as opposed to a nurse with an engineering degree. There will be one component that deals with the technical disciplines and one for the natural sciences and nursing at this point. In the College of Education I am giving you a document that describes what the difference in the two positions would be in that college. I can get a copy of that to you electronically if you’d like. Essentially, one person would be doing work that has to do with monitoring grants, implementing professional development opportunities for faculty in the college, coordinating international and cultural diversity initiatives, working with community outreach in the K-12 schools and collaborations with the university, assisting in the development of various partnerships, overseeing off-campus programming and on-line activity. The other associate dean in that college would assist in coordinating other kinds of initiatives, assisting faculty with evaluation and development of curriculum, addressing student concerns, implementing assessment and accreditation activities - the accreditation activities required under NCATE are much more time consuming than the general assessment that we do for other academic programs – Coordinating student and faculty recruitment and representing the college on various professional committees and doing a lot of data reporting to meet both federal and state requirements. So those are the distinctions. In the College of Education, there’s essentially been a person who’s been focused on grant development and many of the same activities. That person, too, has retired so that position is vacant and can be shifted for this purpose. I wanted to inform you officially at Meet and Confer that we wanted to move in this direction.
FA: We’ve got some concerns that we expressed the last time these associate dean positions came up in another college. One that is a very serious concern is how this affects the EPT process – the inner workings and relationships – if there are multiple excluded managers that a faculty member has to maintain a relationship with to be successful in achieving promotion and achieving tenure. We don’t understand how this is going to work, how it would be contractually appropriate. These are matters that should be taken care of before hiring, not after people are here. That’s an observation that applies to the expansion of administrators at the college level. Another fundamental question is consultation and involvement of the faculty in each of these colleges. I can only speak for the experience of the college that I’m in, but there has been no discussion at the department level, at the college level, about reorganizing in such a way. It seems to me that the faculty have a right to be consulted, and have the right to express their opinions rather than respond to what might be perceived as an accomplished fact. You did mention the research director position being vacant, but you didn’t talk about the fact that the college has a full time diversity coordinator – has had a full time diversity coordinator for quite a long period of time. It seems strange to me that we would need an associate dean to do the work of a MSUAASF employee.
AD: It’s not a matter of doing the work, it’s assisting in that process, but not replacing that person in any way at all. In terms of the EPT issue that you raised, the dean is the responsible person for all of the EPT materials and is the person who would be engaged in doing those activities. In the same way now that a dean could consult with an associate dean about certain issues, that could still occur, but it’s the dean who would be the one who writes the reports and writes the recommendations.
FA: As I said, we have concerns there about this being clearly articulated and clearly committed to. It would certainly begin a process of assuring faculty that they’re not subject to multiple supervisors who may end up competing and have differing opinions relative to what a faculty member is expected to do. The fundamental question becomes: how does this benefit the student and the delivery of our instruction? We are concerned that there seems to be a great deal of overlap in tasks that are described in these position descriptions that are really the roles of department chairs. If the department chairs aren’t getting that job done, then they ought to be supervised to assist in those roles. Much of this work is faculty work. We’re not happy… we’re not happy about the fact that it comes at this time. I would hope that there is no desire to go forward and do searches for next year. I hope that’s the case.
AD: I think in one case, there might be, and at the very least the department chairs have been involved in a series of conversations with the dean about that. I assume that they have gone back to their departments, but they may not have. I don’t know about that piece.
FA: That’s not union input.
AD: I didn’t say it was union input.
FA: Okay.
FA: I’m just curious. Are faculty lines going to be reallocated to hire these people? Where is the money coming from?
AD: In one case I think the answer is: yes. In the other case I think it’s a position that has been a faculty line but it’s been in the dean’s office for years and has not been teaching.
FA: Thank you.
FA: So the documents that Steve showed us Wednesday of last week show a deficit. So why are we hiring people who won’t be in the classroom?
AD: We hire a lot of people who are not in the classroom. In many cases they’re people that you recommend that we hire.
FA: Right. But we’re not recommending that you hire these.
AD: I understand that.
FA: We can’t see how having these people would in any way assist us in the classroom.
AD: We hear lots of discussion about the fact that the deans aren’t able to do this and aren’t able to do that and they need assistance. If you look at the level of administrative support that’s provided on this campus compared to our peer institutions, we are severely out of balance – severely understaffed. Far more so than other professional positions and faculty positions. I’m not saying that we have enough faculty to do the things we want faculty to do, but we certainly have fewer administrators per FTE student than any one of our peer institutions by a ratio of about 4 to 1.
AD: It seems to me, if I can just jump in, that you all have a lot of questions. I don’t think we’ve done a very good job of sharing the information. As Michael said, we collected data that shows that of 20 or 30 peer universities, we are at the bottom of any kind of comparison between FTE students and faculty on the number of administrative positions. I don’t think we’re going to achieve very much going back and forth. Let’s come back with a full-blown proposal, explanation of why, where the money’s going to come from, and more justification. I don’t think this bantering is going to help us so let’s do that. Okay?
FA: That’s what we’re asking for.
AD: Okay.
FA: Thank you.
3. On-Line Policies & Procedures Ad-Hoc committee recommendation(FA) (4/19/07)
FA: I think I sent you this in an e-mail and I also think there’s one of these… there’s a list of people here but I don’t think…. Who did you tell me was not interested?
FA: Bob Prout.
FA: Yes, Bob Prout. I don’t know who the substitute is.
AD: Okay.
FA: I’m on that ad hoc committee and they’ve been meeting very regularly and making progress and trying to put together a set of subcommittees that are associated with doing a self-study leading to a request to have HLC approval to offer on-line degrees much like was described for offering off-campus degrees.
AD: Actually, we don’t have to go through HLC for that, we have to go through MnSCU.
FA: We were told at our initial meeting that the desire was to go to HLC and receive the ability to offer on-line without involving Minnesota On-line. That was given to us by John Burgeson’s associate, Patty Aceves. That’s what we were told we were to do.
AD: We need to clarify that. My understanding is that HLC has given MnSCU the authority to authorize on-line programs and what we’re doing is requesting of MnSCU permission. Once we get that permission from MnSCU, we’re authorized by HLC. It may be a slight nuance in the way it was described, but I’m pretty sure that’s the current status. Is that right Mitch?
AD: My sense is that there’s a conversation, to put it politely, between HLC and MnSCU over who has what authority. That might be the issue here.
FA: I can report what the committee was told. What the committee is working on.
AD: We’ll clarify that particular point.
FA: That would be helpful.
FA: What John has said is what I have understood from discussions with John Burgeson and Patty Aceves as well. If there is some other thing going on here….
AD: I’ll clarify that.
FA: What they need to do here is to expand the people that are involved when they put together the report for whoever gets it.
AD: Okay. Thank you.
FA: There’s a meeting tomorrow in the large conference room of Shoemaker Hall. It would be nice to know and have purpose for the committee clarified or maybe cancel the meeting.
AD: In either event, whether it be HLC or MnSCU, the same things have to happen.
AD: Even if MnSCU does have the authority, it will still essentially be HLC standards that will have to be met.
FA: Okay. Was there a discussion of when the committee is going to do the work that it’s doing?
FA: The impression that I’ve had in attending the meetings is that this work is of high priority to be completed. I’ve mentioned that the school year is coming to a rapid close. Once the school year comes to a rapid close, the faculty are not on assignment and the work won’t happen unless, like Annette said “where do we go to get the form filled out.” The sense of urgency is from your side, not our side. It sounds like we need to have a number of things put together to figure out what’s happening here.
AD: Okay.
4. LR&TS Associate Dean (Admin) (3/22/07)
FA: Senate hasn’t done anything with that. They’re wondering what the make-up of those committees are going to be. There still is a feeling that there’s no need to do that. I have to say that we don’t those deans. That work can be done by the department chair and as you described it, there’s no place for an associate dean in the PDP and PDR. I understand that’s the position that was taken. The Provost just said that. That’s not what you said at the last Meet and Confer about these deans. They want that cleared up also before we act on it. We’d like something in writing. What’s that search committee supposed to look like? What is this plan for having them be involved in the PDP/PDR process because we don’t think that there’s a place for them. I think the other issue is: they’re doing 8 searches in that group right now. I don’t know how you expect to get someone by July 1st or whenever it is. When do you think this is going to take place? If you want to get somebody for fall, maybe you could have told us about it sooner so that we could work to get these questions answered and resolved.
AD: I can answer some of those, Michael. The reason it started when it did was that was when we first had notification from MnSCU of approval. We had to wait until that was approved before we could start a search. I told the faculty I was interested in starting one of them right away because of an overlap with a retirement that’s coming up. The faculty asked that the other one be started right away so I agreed to that because that was their request.
FA: I don’t know that they asked for those to be started right away. In fact, the faculty have continually said, and they continue to tell me, that they are opposed to doing this so I find it hard to imagine that they would have said that they wanted it started right away. I think you’re misinterpreting whatever it was they told you.
AD: I’d answer back that I probably have e-mail to that effect that I would be glad to send you because that was their recommendation.
FA: With what I heard the Provost say in the context of the other associate deans, if you remove supervision from the job descriptions that I’ve examined, those are department chair positions. The tasks that are identified correspond directly to the Appendix tasks that’ are in the collective bargaining agreement. In fact, one of the positions, as best as I could determine, was supervising 13 faculty, which is a small department. It’s also my understanding from Rich Josephson said at the last meeting, and what we’ve had communicated to us, that the faculty desired the use of department chairs, not associate deans. If the job does not involve supervision, there’s no need to have an excluded manager. I’m hearing the Provost say.
AD: I didn’t hear him say that…
AD: I think there’s a difference between doing the EPT and in some cases, day-to-day supervision. A lot of the people in the LR&TS are not faculty.
FA: So what do you need a dean for them for?
AD: They need supervision as well.
FA: But faculty can supervise.
AD: They can’t supervise. They can do some supervisory tasks. We’ve been clear that they can only do up to half of the supervisory tasks. We can’t have you be 100% supervisors of staff.
FA: What I heard today changes the nature of the job description. I call a spade a spade. The fact of the matter is: if you look at the job descriptions, they’re department chairs. I expressed that opinion. I’ve put that opinion in writing. That information has been shared with our director of labor relations. I’m of the opinion that this is a shift of faculty work to administration. I don’t believe we’ve had adequate consultation. I don’t believe the faculty in the unit have been allowed to freely express their desire to have an organizational status that puts them in a status very much like their colleagues in other colleges. I would hope we could find some way that we can meet the needs of our colleagues in LR&TS without adding layer upon layer of administrative staff.
AD: I should mention, the faculty did ask me to discuss having department chairs. I said I would welcome those discussions this fall – that I would be happy to meet with them. I think we talked about this last time. One small group of the faculty met with me. I said that if we’re going to do this, we need to have the full faculty involved and they told me they were not prepared to have that discussion this year. That was the last I’ve heard from them. I told them I would be happy to discuss that.
FA: I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to be telling us what the faculty have been telling you in light of the fact that you said that they were on line with it and they sat here and said they weren’t.
AD: I have never said they were all on line with it. Never. They’ve expressed their opinions clearly to me where they’re in opposition – absolutely been clear.
FA: Last year they requested a department chair and that was denied so they’ve already put that request in and specified that it was a departmental vote. I believe that was transmitted to you. They chose this year to have a person who did chair’s duty even though he was not a chair. I think they’ve been pretty clear about their desire to have that kind of faculty role doing the items that are described under the associate dean positions – many of the duties.
AD: What I’ve heard from them is more complicated in that some of the faculty wanted to have an additional department that was aligned with the College of Education – separate from the service faculty. It was a much more complicated discussion. When they asked me last Spring I said “certainly, let’s have this discussion” because it’s very complicated and there are a variety of opinions. I will try not to respond for the faculty. Maybe you want to ask Fred those questions.
FA: I guess I’m puzzled because the mapping out that I’ve seen, the reorganization – it is actually a reorganization – includes these two positions with supervisory responsibility over groups of people and now there’s another side discussion that’s happening with a group that wants to be a department aligned with a different college?
AD: We talked about this for a year. We had this reorganization discussion for a year before I settled on something as the administrator of the unit. That came up a variety of different ways. There was a fairly elaborate proposal that came forward from one individual faculty member that had support from a few others. Many other faculty were opposed to that proposal.
FA: Is what you’re saying then is that this really is your decision to organize this way and that really, the other part of the discussion that happened, this is the result of that discussion and there won’t be more discussion or there will be more discussion…
AD: There would still be more discussion about departments. I thought we would be doing it this year.
FA: But you made them wait to do it and so now they’re doing 8 searches.
AD: They asked me for that in the spring.
FA: When they talk to me, what you say your faculty tell you is not what they say to me. I have to believe what they tell me.
AD: Sure.
FA: I don’t think… if you bring that evidence, I would have to have that because that is not what they say to me.
FA: It’s like I’m in a time warp. Rich Josephson sat here and Rich Josephson serve in the capacity, in all but name, as chair of the unit and I’ve been to that unit’s meetings on more then one occasion and it certainly feels like they operate like a department and that they’ve expressed their collective opinion. I trust there are minutes of those meetings that have occurred and there’s a record of the actions and the recommendations that they made. I may be wrong, but I had the impression that the department, the unit, had reviewed a plan that had department chairs in the slots that are associate deans, and that that was the position of that unit. The way in which the faculty speak is through the democratic process. Minority opinions have a right to be heard, but when a vote is taken, the department has expressed its opinion. Each member of the faculty, by contract, has a right then to express an opinion to their supervisor different from that, but we’re not going to solve this here today.
AD: So the first time they asked for a department as a whole came in that proposal Rich gave me when the four of us met. That was the first time. It was his proposal. He was clear that he needed to take it back to the full faculty and I said “please invite me to the meeting and we’ll talk about that.” My understanding was that they were going to do that in the fall. I have never received a proposal that had two department chairs in it from them. If they’ve done that, I’ve never received that recommendation.
AD: I think we need to continue some conversation about this with the folks involved.
AD: It seems to me that this has been going on a long time. It kind of fits into where the institution seems to be moving. I was talking to Sue Prout right before coming over and she’s about had it with trying to do her job as well as do graduation. The graduation is expanding. My interpretation is that this institution continues to evolve. Remember, I asked, and Robert Johnson was here before when we had a conversation before about “What is this institution going to look like when we start getting doctorates?” He said: “Do you have a proposal?” and I said: “Robert, you always kill me… when I have a proposal you accuse me of leading you and I’m asking you for something…” and he laughed. That’s kind of where we are. I think eventually that we’re going to have to have some evolution and growth of administrators. As I said, we have this data that shows we are the lowest as far as the ratio between whatever students or faculty or administrators. This is a meet and confer. It’s not a meet and agree where you guys make a decision. On the other hand, I think we’ve had a difficulty here in coming to a understanding. I often times have a difficult time when I hear “the Faculty.” I don’t know if that means 100%, 10%, or 1%. We seem to be talking by each other and I think we need to get to a point where we talk about: where does this institution want to go; how are we going to get there; and how are we going to get there with as much help as possible? We have always put our resources into faculty first. When we were cutting, we cut AFSME and administrators. We tried to stay away from cutting faculty. Again, I would like to see some coming to the middle of where we need to go. We can’t continue doing all these things. Remember, Andy, I forget how many years ago, when we brought in nursing? You all disagreed with me. But look at this year, we have the only nursing program in the state that passed the board exams 100%. I’m sorry, but sometimes it’s going to come to a point where we’re going to have to make a decision and we want to consult and we want to discuss and we want to answer questions. But at some point in time, John, we’ve got to fish or cut bait.
FA: I nodded my head about the fish or cut bait.
FA: If I could just make one point. Michael knows that a year to year-and-a-half ago I went over to his office and told him that we need some help for Kristi – she’s got way too much to do. But never in wildest imaginations was I talking about help to supervise me. I think that’s the problem that our faculty is having. We want to be supervised by Kristi and not supervised by someone else. We’ve had lots of conversations and they’re very complex, as Kristi pointed out. These have been very complex. The second thing is that in terms of the faculty wanting to have two different departments, Kristi is absolutely right. She’s not received anything from us along those lines. In fact, on Monday, when we had our regular faculty meeting we said, in fact, I’ve been pushing hard, we need to have a chair. We were told through the years that we can’t have a chair because we’re not a department, we’re a center. Every time we would bring it up we would be slapped down and told “you can’t have a chair because you’re a center.” We need to have a chair. We need to have a chair to interact with Kristi and with however many associate deans we have. I’m thinking the conversation, in part, would be tied to the point that Michael said about having a conversation about all of these associated deans and who are they and what they do. Kristi knows. I’ve been very clear with her, I want her to supervise me rather than have someone else supervise me. That might not be a luxury that I have, but that’s certainly where I’m coming from. As far as whatever else they do, it doesn’t make any difference to me as long as the job gets done in terms of faculty responsibilities. Is that close enough to what you and I have talked about? In public settings, by the way.
FA: Roy, in response to your earlier remarks and then also tangential to something that I believe Michael said that the deans are finding themselves doing new tasks involved with fundraising and that there energies are saturated so that something has to flow downstream. I think that we’re at a point where energies have reached the absolute terminus of their elasticity, but down here too. This is flowing downstream. I’m going to be addressing an item a little bit further along where I’m going to discuss that more fully. From your side, you need to look not downstream, but rather upstream for relief because downstream it’s pretty much – we’re full up. Thank you.
AD: Thank you.
FA: I just wanted to say one thing briefly. We have a really specific definition of what we mean when we say “faculty say this.” That is the result of departmental discussion with motions being passed and transmitted. When we say: “The faculty say this,” that’s what we’re talking about.
AD: I appreciate that. Thank you.
5. Lead Investigator 100% (FA) (4/19/07)
FA: There are two things. One of them is: when we were at the Senate when you came, thank you very much that was actually very nice, I appreciate that you did that, there was a remark that was made about the amount of time that the lead investigator had and we want to know…. Someone said that he’s only 50% - don’t we need someone who’s 100%? I said that I would ask what percentage of this person’s time is spent as lead investigator.
AD: Stu was teaching two classes an adjunct faculty. We couldn’t do overload, is what I’m told, for adjunct faculty so he could only be put on the payroll for 50% as an administrator. He has worked between probably between 40 and 50 hours a week. It’s the best bargain we’ve ever had. There is nobody going un-served as a result of that.
FA: Okay.
AD: The paperwork is in HR to make him full time effective May 17th. Whoever fills in after July 1st will be 100%. It was the intention to make him 100%. We didn’t go into this thinking, oh, we’ll get half an investigator. We were restricted by his load so we were forced into that. He agreed simply because he is a magnificent man. Like many of you all, he doesn’t focus on how many hours, but getting the job done.
AD: Have you heard any concerns or complaints? Is there anyone not being served?
FA: Somebody got a letter from somebody who wasn’t Stuart about an investigation and there was some concern that kind of fed into this earlier question because how can that be?
AD: If you like, I can address that.
FA: Yes, as much as you think you can, please, because I think everyone should hear.
AD: Stuart reported that he had a conflict of interest in that case and that is the reason that the outside investigator was contracted.
FA: Okay.
AD: It wasn’t because he said “Well, I’ve put in my 20 hours this week and that’s all I’m doing.” If I had still been in that job, under those same circumstances, I would have still had to go get an outside investigator.
FA: How many outside investigators do we have right now?
AD: Presently, there are two and neither one is as a result of his being 50%.
FA: Okay. There’s some concern with where that letter came from that it’s not confidential anymore. The letter had confidential stamped all over it. The person that it came from, it’s not clear that person has the same confidential bounds or requirements.
AD: I’m not sure that I exactly understand something. If my answer is not fitting with what you had in mind for your question, you let me know.
FA: The problem is, I don’t want to breach confidentiality.
AD: I don’t either.
AD: It’s all being taped and typed.
AD: We can go off the record.
FA: We don’t want to talk about anything that we can’t talk about in a group this size anyway, so we’re fine.
AD: I’m going to talk in hypothetical terms.
FA: Okay.
AD: I’ve had this discussion before with Renee Hoggeboom (?)
FA: Okay.
AD: In looking for outside investigators, she suggests these people to me who are attorneys, because I’ve tried to get something going where we exchange 1.B1 investigators with other institutions and apparently they’re not interested in doing that or somehow that’s just not a practice that’s done. I think it’s unfortunate, but it’s not happening right now. They I say to Renee: “ The procedure says they have to be trained in !.B1 by the Chancellor’s Office before you can put them on the payroll.” That’s why I’ve always shied away from contracting with this particular person, because that was my understanding. She says that if they are supervised by a person trained by the Chancellor’s Office in 1.B1, that’s good enough. The only people around here who could have provided that supervision, as far as I’m aware, would be Stu, who had a conflict, me, who has a conflict, or Sharon Cogdill, who has too much to do. Now, I promised him I would not let this secret out of the bag, but somehow we inadvertently discovered that years ago, Steve Ludwig had been trained in 1.B1 investigations so he was the only one we could put in charge of supervising. And when I say supervising, I don’t mean as to the substance of the investigation, but just as to the procedure that is to be followed. So Steve is not privy to, shouldn’t be – and I don’t believe he is, privy to any of the facts. He’s just making sure that people have meeting places and that they are following the procedure. At least that’s what his job would be.
FA: Do we give a copy of the procedure to the people we hire – to the outside investigator?
AD: They’re told where to find it on the web site.
FA: Okay.
AD: I think that was clear and helpful.
FA: Yes, very helpful. Do we have any other…
FA: There seems to be a serious investigation. What sort of discussion should we be having publicly?
FA: We shouldn’t be having any discussions about the investigation itself. The procedure and the questions about who’s conducting it…. The fact that we have a contract with an outside investigator is public because there’s a contract on file.
AD: I think it might be good to discuss who other people are who may have had investigator/decision-maker training. I do believe there are other people on campus who have been trained.
AD: I’d sure like to know who they are.
AD: I’m one of them. (Rex Veeder indicated himself) I’ve had the investigator and decision-making training.
FA: MnSCU ought to be able to tell us who has had the training, right? It’s not secret?
AD: You’d think…
FA: Would you be willing to come and talk at an Executive Committee meeting about some of this?
AD: Sure.
FA: Okay. Probably in the Fall?
FA: Yes.
FA: Thank you.
AD: Can this come off the agenda?
FA: Sure.
6. Return of TITLE IV monies (Admin) (4/19/07)
AD: We talked about this last time. We need to have some clarification of what the grading processes need to be in order to create a situation where we’re not in violation of some of the policies and procedures so that we don’t have to return money to the federal government. Those have to do with having faculty understand what the right grades are that they need to provide to students who cease attending class so that if a student is not in attendance in all of the student’s classes, we need to know the last date of attendance in order not to have to return funds to Title IV or to the federal government or for certain loans and then go after the student to collect the money back from the student. If we don’t have the appropriate notations on the grades of when the student ceased attending, then we are liable to have to have those returned. There are certain grades that faculty sometimes give that are not the grades that are supposed to on the record. Sometimes we have a faculty member who will give a student an “I” who has never shown up. That implies that the student has been there and creates confusion.
FA: There are also some things that need to be done by Records and Registration and Financial Aid at the end of the semester and we need to discuss how we’re going get those things done.
AD: Right.
FA: What’s going to happen is, I actually have scheduled this already, a meeting between Annette, Judy, Sue Bayerl, the Provost and Steve Ludwig to take a better look at what we’re doing and what we can do to better communicate to faculty what they have to do, and to Financial Aid and the Business Office about what they have to do.
AD: And to make sure people understand and that the system is in place to facilitate what they need to do. There have been some issues with that as well.
FA: We also need to make sure the deans understand so that the new faculty, when they to the campus, can get this information as well. I think we thought we had it solved, but we didn’t so we have to come back and revisit it.
AD: Right.
FA: There was a discussion at the State Meet and Confer about this which is what got this back on the agenda again.
AD: Okay.
FA: We’re going to have to put this on hold, okay?
AD: Certainly.
7. Assessment: If MnSCU and Administration want to see high quality assessment, they need to provide reassigned time or compensation to faculty. (FA) (4/19/07)
FA: Senate passed a motion that if MnSCU and administration want to see high quality assessment, they need to provide reassigned time or compensation to faculty.
FA: Bill was going to explain that.
FA: I delivered a rant at Faculty Senate.
AD: Not you, Bill, no… (laughter)
FA: This goes back to my earlier remark. One faculty line is reallocated for an administrative position in response to an evolution in the deans’ roles. Our perception from down where the rubber hits the road, is that the demands on our time are just increasing all the time. It seems that the increase, itself, is accelerating. Our attitude on assessment is tempered by the increasing feeling that a line in the sand is really just not far away. Part of that comes from what we take to be, bluntly, a dismissive attitude on administration’s part when we bring up this issue. You and I, for example, have had conversations and you’ve been candid in saying that from your perspective, our work load is appropriate. That was, perhaps, three years ago that we had that discussion down in the lunchroom on our way to get our lunch. Of course, we disagreed at that point. Three years later, holy cow, everything is mushrooming. I won’t put you on the spot and ask you if you still think it’s appropriate. You’re part of a bargaining organization and you’re not at liberty to say that. However, we’re very close to drawing a line in the sand. It’s getting harder and harder for us to recruit people for the enormous array of tasks we perform on this campus. You need to have your discussions among yourselves and when you do, I hope you will take serious cognizance of where we are on this.
FA: My department was the original maker of the motion that came to Faculty Senate. We weren’t talking just about having assessment directors in the college or even in the department. We were talking about a recognition that this is part of a load that’s getting bigger and it could actually be negotiated as part of load contractually. I think that this recognition that it is going to be an on-going part of our load is really important. When we say reassigned time or compensation, that compensation could come in a variety of ways including lowering the amount of credits we teach per year, for example. That’s just one instance. I do think that if we want high quality assessment to happen, it can’t just be done by a director in a college or even somebody in the department who puts together assessment materials. They have to get them from someone. This came as a response to forms that came to Senate from the Assessment Committee and discussions in our department where we have multiple programs and each one of them needs an assessment plan. We ask that you take that into consideration. We did say MnSCU as part of that motion. I think it’s important to get the message through to your counterparts at the bargaining table that we are serious about workload relief.
AD: I appreciate the information and we will certainly have some conversations in response to it and look very closely into this situation and what the demands are and how we can deal with those.
FA: It took forever to get the General Ed Assessment Director. We literally had to twist arms… It’s part of the same thing.
8. Placement Testing Policy Group (Admin) (4/19/07)
AD: As I think most people know, there is a MnSCU policy that has just been implemented – Board Policy 4.3 – that requires us to have a policy on placement testing of students. Some of that is a written policy on who we exempt from placement testing – not on whom we require to take tests, but who we exempt. We also, in that policy are required to use Accuplacer in some of that placement testing. The university needs to put that policy together – our local policy. We need a committee of faculty to work on that policy. There is a group from the faculty who has asked me to make this request as well as us wanting to do it too. We really need someone with background and experience in English, in particular, English placement testing or developmental English; somebody with a background in reading and also in math. Those are the three areas that we have to test. In addition to that, I would like to request that we have somebody with an ESL background because there is ESL testing going on and we might just as well put all of these placement like exams and policies under the same policy.
FA: How soon do we have to have this?
AD: We have to have a policy in place for the students who are coming in next Fall. We have to have what our policy is up by July and then we have to have a new policy for whom we test up by for Fall of 2008.
FA: So how long have we known we needed to do this?
AD: I haven’t known it very long.
FA: So you’ve got really specific expertise in mind.
AD: Yes.
FA: You have four specific people you’re looking for? You said writing, reading, math and ESL.
AD: Right.
FA: You’re talking about placement. So you’re talking a minimum of 4 people and you’re talking about them needing to have something done by July?
AD: Yes.
FA: Are we willing to pay them duty days or something for work this Summer?
AD: There is a group that has already drafted that policy that we can start with. They have all indicated to me that they are going to volunteer for this committee. I understand that may or may not happen, but we do have a document to start with. What we need is a pretty straight forward policy.
FA: We only have one more Senate meeting.
AD: I understand. What we need for this Fall, by July, is a simple statement of what we currently do. That’s relatively easy to pull together. The more difficult one, and what we need this committee for, is what we’re going to do for an exemption policy for the following year. This is a committee we need to work early in the Fall, get a policy put together by October – early November, so we can let students know what the placement policy is for the Fall of ’08.
FA: We have a Senate meeting next week and it’s too late to do it for that. We have another Senate meeting two weeks from that and that’s the last one. If you get me something tomorrow morning that I can send out to announce it, then I can send it out and get volunteers and we can have them for you two weeks from next Tuesday.
AD: That will work fine. The thing we really need to write is the thing for Fall of ’08 and that has to be ready by the middle of Fall semester.
FA: The idea would be to have it go through Senate as well.
AD: It needs to come to Senate in the Fall. If we can get it to Senate in early to late October, we’ll be okay for meeting the deadlines for informing students of these placement tests and what’s going to be expected of them.
FA: If anyone in this room knows people who ought to be on this committee, please encourage them to look for the announcement.
AD: We have four people on campus who have been involved with this policy at the State level. They’re the ones who said they are willing to work on this.
9. CETL Director (Admin) (4/19/07)
AD: We had talked about conducting a search for the CETL Director – for a person who would actually assume the office in Fall 2008. We requested of you the names of individuals to serve on the search committee…
FA: And I gave them to you.
AD: …and you gave them to me, and I have them. But more recently, the present incumbent has accepted a position at another institution so we’re not looking for somebody who would be working with the current CETL Director, but rather, somebody to replace the current CETL Director for next Fall.
FA: Did anybody apply for the position?
AD: No one has applied for the position. It may be that people didn’t want to think 2 years in advance – I don’t know. I think we’re going to need to do a call for applicants. I think the point here is, if it’s acceptable, we’d like to use that same screening committee.
FA: Fine. There really isn’t enough time for us to get any more…
AD: We wanted to let you know that that was the status of that particular situation and that we need to do it differently now.
FA: Okay.
AD: If we can use the same committee to facilitate the process…
FA: You might want to …. The problem with “Announce” is that people have gotten off of “Announce” because there is so many items coming at you. There was something that was happening that I got six announcements on.
AD: Don’t we have this on the agenda? (laughter)
FA: Yes. People are getting off of “Announce” so if you’re just sending out to “Announce,” you’ve got to figure something else out.
AD: I know the faculty investment is very high in this position. Perhaps you all know people who might be interested. I think talking it up and spreading the word is a good idea at this point. I appreciate it.
FA: Okay.
AD: We can take that one off too.
FA: Sure.
Progress Reports:
1. Taskforces on Diversity (a.k.a. Motion from Teacher Development) (FA) (9/22/05)
FA: What we’d like is clarification of what taskforces we have functioning on campus and where they are in their progress.
AD: I suggest, and John and I had talked about this too, that ask the two faculty who are organizing the College of Education to come in and talk about their progress with us because I don’t know. I have no idea what’s happening there. The university-wide taskforce is, I think, pretty much dead in the water at this point and has been. There have been a number of attempts to get together a group that could sort of begin to organize. I gave you the names of the people who were sort of trying to organize this thing. We tried about eight times to get everybody together and never could. Part of it might be that people are out of gas. This has been an issue and I think the taskforce and the motion is appropriate, but huge, so therefore it’s intimidating to some people to work with this. If we can get those people together, we have a great representative group to begin to organize the kind of plan we’ve talked about in terms of having some questions asked of all the various groups on campus and having meeting times and doing all that. There’s a plan there, but I can’t tell you the whole planning group agrees on it because every time I’ve had a meeting, there’s been 2-3 people there.
FA: One of the things that occurred to me…. I went to the budget presentation last Wednesday. Diversity is on the strategic plan. I didn’t see anything for the future that talked about supporting this. So if I had been asked to participate on that committee, I would think “Well, I’m just chopped liver?” There’s a financial commitment to doctorates. There’s a financial aid commitment to parking cars. There’s no financial commitment to this. How important is it? I think we need to have a discussion about that in light of…. If we’ve got a strategic plan that’s got diversity listed as one of the five things we think is important, then we should be looking at that and that should be part of our discussion when we’re talking about the budget.
FA: Just on a macro-funding level, faculty in the College of Education did receive correspondence from the taskforce recently that reported the progress that they’ve made and their plans. Do we know if they have the funding to execute their plans? There were two funding requests, as I understood it. One was to be sure that the two members who were facilitating the taskforce had reassigned time to do that. I just learned today that one of the two is gone for next year so there’s a vacancy. The other was they were engaged in securing an outside consultant who would begin involvement with the College in the Fall. Do they have the money?
AD: You know much more than I do, John. As you know, the administrators haven’t been involved. I don’t know if a request has been made to the Dean or to our office…
AD: I haven’t seen it.
FA: Were they given reassigned time this year? The request came in the Fall Semester.
FA: Did it go to the dean?
FA: I thought it went to the Provost.
AD: I don’t recall seeing it.
AD: Is this for the taskforce leader?
AD: Yes, the coordinators of the taskforce in the College of Ed.
AD: I believe one of them is going to have reassignment for next year because they’ve asked somebody from my unit to teach in replacement for that person.
AD: So that must have gone to the dean then.
AD: I guess.
AD: Since we haven’t had administrators working closely with this it’s hard to tell. If something hasn’t come forward, we don’t know.
FA: I would hope that in fact, the planning has been funded.
AD: I’m hearing that there are no administrators on that committee?
FA: That was something that happened in the Fall.
AD: As you know, when we first came, we had a strategic planning committee that had zero administrators and we had very little communication. Now, we have better communication and it fits into the priorities and fits into MnSCU and us. Also, it gets you into the pipeline for data analysis as well as budget resources. I would recommend that there be some kind of communication because it doesn’t seem to be the case.
FA: We did talk before about inviting the people who are facilitating to come here. Why don’t we do that?
FA: Would you do that?
AD: Yes. Do you know who they are, Rex?
AD: Yes I do.
AD: Okay.
AD: I know that much. (laughter) On the other taskforce, I think that the motion and the acceptance of both the administration and the faculty association to do this work is clear. There’s a big part of it that has to do with assessment of the programs. I think that it’s important that we continue the work. I’m open to discussions with folks about how to move that project forward. I would like to try again to try and get everybody together, in terms of that team. If that doesn’t work, we’re going to have to get another group of people together. I would like to have representatives from those groups.
FA: What’s your phone number?
AD: My phone number?
FA: Yes.
AD: 308-4066.
FA: We’ll be in touch with you.
AD: Okay.
FA: My question had to do with the third group, CARE. Could you explain how they are inter-related to this, how they might overlap with this university-wide taskforce? Are they doing two different things?
AD: The university-wide taskforce is a full diversity taskforce. We have representatives, if you look at the list, Owen is included, we have GLBT services, Women’s Center. It’s dealing with the holistic issue of diversity on campus. CARE is specifically an anti-racism team – it’s very specific folks. Also, CARE has some community members involved.
2. Upper Division Writing Requirement Status Report (FA) (03/02/06)
FA: Can we take this item off? I think we’re headed in a good direction on that.
AD: I think the only outstanding question is the successor to the ad hoc committee.
FA: That’s it, you’ve got a committee there.
AD: Okay. The point is that there is ongoing work in the area of assessing.
FA: Right. They’re it.
3. Budget Advisory Group (Admin) (09/07/06)
FA: I believe the group is close to completing the differential tuition discussion. There will be a meeting with the students to share that piece of information. The next meeting of the advisory group is at 12:45 p.m., on Tuesday, at which time, guidance documents that have been received from the Office of the Chancellor will be circulated and discussed. There’s a meeting of the modeling and base budget working group at 1:30 p.m. on Monday. I’m hopeful that we’ll be bringing something back to the larger group that will result in finishing up with that process. Steve will be out of town, so I get to co-chair the meeting and we’ll get it done.
AD: Do you get a feeling that things are moving along pretty well and everybody’s pretty on-line?
FA: We’re moving.
FA: There’s been good work done this year. I have felt the group has had good communication and really good discussion. Don’t you think so, Annette?
FA: Yes. I think it’s been good.
4. Announce, Discuss and Bulletin Boards (FA) (09/07/06)
FA: There are two matters that revolve around this item. The first is, you had indicated to us your desire to make e-mail an official form of communication. At an earlier Meet and Confer, we had given you a list of concerns around that proposal so we’re awaiting your reaction to those concerns. I mean, an official reaction. The second aspect of this item is the increasing decrepitude, and in fact, dysfunction of the “Announce” list. We had strongly requested a method of options that would offer the faculty options of which kinds of announcements they were going to receive, and we would like your strongest reassurance that when we arrive here in the Fall, we will be confronted by a dazzling new approach to announcements. For if we don’t come to that happy situation, people are really getting irritated. I think recent events point to the need to have a viable, functioning system for rapid e-mail communication to the faculty – not one that they automatically pro forma toss in the garbage.
AD: We agree, we get those same e-mail announcements, you know.
FA: I think one of the things that has been brought to my attention by someone is that it seems as though you’re holding this last thing that Bill talked about, hostage to us agreeing to do e-mail as an official form of communication. We don’t see the two things as the same. We think they’re separate. We think that while we iron out the problems of using e-mail to officially communicate with faculty, we can have this other thing. It seems to us that tying the two together is totally inappropriate. That essentially – it’s like I said, you’re holding that hostage – something we want for something we have to be very careful before we do. You’re not doing the thing we want, and that we’ve been asking for, I think, for close to five years now because we have to be careful about how this other thing is implemented. We need to have those two de-coupled and get this “Announce” and “Discuss” taken care of now and worry about that other thing with its legal and contractual implications in a separate place.
AD: I can pass out the updated version. There does need to be a way to communicate, as you mentioned, officially with people and that they would get it and read it. That was our understanding coming from TLTR, previous faculty requests, and administrative requests. The reason for this policy was to assure that there was a vehicle to get information out that was not…
FA: Can we have this with the tracked changes on it so we can see what has been changed?
AD: I can try. It’s been changed about five times based on your changes and the President’s Council changed it again. I’ll try, but it’s about 4 or 5 changes back.
FA: I’ve managed to read the first line of this. Just to frame your remarks, this responds to the discussion around e-mail as an official means of communication as clear and distinct from the other concerns we’ve brought up.
AD: Correct. Absolutely.
FA: Okay.
AD: I would hesitate to say that this was administration trying to do this to faculty because it came out of TLTR as a discussion of a broader group that said: to make announce be better, we still have to have a way to get information out to people. The intent was, here’s how we would make sure information that all employees need to see could get to them and then we’ll do this other thing that you’re requesting so that other types of information can still be communicated, but not everybody has to see all of the rest if they don’t want to. You’ve been clear on that. We have this bulletin board structure going on in the background and there are already ways individuals can manipulate what e-mail that they see or don’t see. That’s already possible to do. Our understanding from hearing from many people, and again, I don’t feel like it was an administrative thing, was that there has to be a way to still communicate important information to people. That was this attempt. The technology to do the other thing is there. We can do it right now. In fact, they were supposed to call you to show it to you. Have they done that?
FA: No.
AD: Then I will remind him.
FA: Thank you. To follow-up then, this sounds like a package deal.
AD: If we’re going to have a system on line that we want everybody to read, then if we set it up before we say that everybody has to read it, then it’s going to be one of those systems that not everybody is going to sign up to read. In which case, it won’t do what we’re saying we want it to be able to do.
FA: I’m missing something. You can simply mandate that certain types of communication that we discuss and agree upon around this table, will go to everybody. It’s not a question of whether you want to or not, get over it, you’re going to get it. Then there are other things…
AD: That’s what this policy does.
FA: There are other things that there is no reason under the sun why everybody needs to see that, but perhaps they want to anyway – in which case, they can opt into it. That’s what this is about. Those are two quite different things.
AD: Right now, anybody who doesn’t want to read “Announce” or “Discuss” can opt out. They don’t have to see what they don’t want to see. This basically sends a mass e-mail to a subgroup or the entire university community. If it’s something that applies to all staff, then it would go to all staff. If it’s just for faculty, it could go to all faculty. That’s the way this is set up, right? If it’s within a college, it could go to all the faculty in a given college.
FA: You have an advantage over me because I haven’t looked at this. None of us have looked at this yet. What I’m trying to get to the bottom of is; will this allow us to continue to ponder our concerns around e-mail as an official mode of university communication. Will it allow us to ponder those concerns as separate and distinct from the overwhelming bulk of announcements that are of a purely optional nature?
AD: I think that this is an attempt to do.
FA: Okay. Good.
AD: That’s precisely what we’re trying to do here. I think we’ve incorporated into it, changes that were recommended by the faculty and then we added one sentence, from the administrative point of view, is in that first paragraph, which basically clarifies a point that people should be aware of in any event – that e-mail is not private, but is a public means of communication that can potentially be accessed by others. People need to know that someone else might see their e-mail at some point.
FA: With that sentence ringing in my head, I’m looking on page 2 – the first bulleted item under communication procedures. You say: “When official communication is necessary with employees not scheduled for work assignment, other means of communication will be used in addition to, or in lieu of…” I guess I would have concerns that if it’s in addition to, then this confidential information will still go over the server.
AD: No. This is for things like: the campus is closed because of a blizzard – where if you’re home, we would call you. That’s sort of the intent. That’s not a good example. It’s the Summer. Something’s coming out about grants….
AD: There was a concern that some administrators would send e-mail over the Summer when faculty are not available that would require them to do certain things, but because they don’t see their e-mail, they wouldn’t know and then they would then be blamed for not doing what they were supposed to do.
FA: Right.
AD: What this says is that we will contact you in another way as well.
FA: The other issue is – actually this just happened to me and it happened to you last week too - that Transfer Oversight meeting? The meeting was at 10:00 a.m. in the in the Twin Cities. The person who runs the meeting sent us an e-mail at about 8:30 a.m. or 9:00 a.m. with some stuff we needed in it down in the Twin Cities.
AD: Actually, we were on campus.
FA: We were on campus, but we had to get to the ITV place. I think it was sent to us after 9:30 a.m. and we had to be at the ITV place to make sure that everything was ready to go for this 10:00 a.m. meeting so we had no access to anywhere to print this information off. The ITV worked wonderfully. In fact, I think I’ll go to more meetings that way. So there’s the other issue. Where does this protect someone from getting something 2 seconds before they’re supposed to have it from someone who’s not really paying any attention? That was one of the other issues that was pointed out by faculty. If I get something that I need at 8:00 a.m. the next morning and I don’t get it from the person until 1:00 a.m., that’s not appropriate.
AD: That would be true of any type of communication.
FA: You’re absolutely right. How does this…
FA: Can we have time to read this?
AD: Yes.
FA: We’ll need to take it back to Senate.
AD: I think you’ve already had it to Senate.
FA: No…
AD: No, not this new version.
AD: Not the new version, but an earlier version. Haven’t we shared earlier versions of this?
FA: No.
AD: I can tell you a couple of things. The first part, Tom Hergert redid the purpose and then there was some tweaking on top of it. That was language that we redid. We asked a faculty member to get the tone better because that was part of the concern. Then that sentence about communication when you’re not scheduled to work. That was in response to some things that you had asked for. The two main things we tried to do was address that part about not holding people responsible and then getting the tone better. I think we worked on the language about the personnel actions. We tried to make that clearer. I think Tom did that and then I tweaked it probably a few more times after TLTR looked at it. We knew that was really important to be clear. Those were the areas that were….
FA: I think the other thing was about the timeliness….
AD: I don’t remember that one as much….
FA: You’re right. When anybody does that it’s bad manners.
FA: So I’ve just skimmed this very quickly and I may have misunderstood something you said before. As I skim it, it strikes me that this addresses e-mail as an official means of communication. It does not address the problem of “Announce” – the enormous range of topics that come out on the “Announce” list. Is that right?
AD: Not exactly. The only places that can post under this policy, if it’s approved, would be the offices that are listed at the bottom of the first page. Those office have to review the message. They’re the only ones who can send out to all employees. Any other messages are going to go into this bulletin board thing, or if you want to keep “Announce” going and get yourself off of it.... The only official announcements are going to come out of the office listed here. I think you had asked to have the FA added to that list. That was discussed. If we did that, we would have to add each of the other bargaining units so we said “no.”
FA: We have our own list.
AD: So all “Announce” will move to “My Space…”
AD: It will be moved somewhere else.
FA: Actually then, the separation of messages on the “Announce” list, other than those coming from these offices, is folded into this policy.
AD: Yes, in that this will allow us to actually have a venue to post those official things only and then we move the other things somewhere else.
FA: So if we don’t somehow come to an agreement on this policy this Spring, next Fall “Announce” will look just like it does now.
AD: We can switch into a bulletin board, but then official announcements won’t have a place to go to.
AD: What do we need to do to have a bulletin board function right now?
AD: We can do it right now.
FA: Why can’t there be an official announcement spot on the bulletin board?
AD: Sure. We can do any of those things, but we have no way to make sure everybody receives it. That’s been the problem.
FA: That’s true of “Announce” now.
AD: Yes. I agree.
FA: So by creating this bulletin board, you don’t have to wait until this is approved to create the bulletin board.
AD: Sure.
FA: In fact, you might, if you had a spot on the bulletin board that said “Official Announcements,” you might not even need this because people would sign up for that one and the other things they’re interested in. Right now, people aren’t getting important stuff because they’re not looking at any of the announcements.
AD: Let’s do the bulletin board right away.
AD: Absolutely. We need some folks to look at it. We’ve asked that before.
FA: Currently, I do get my leave report from HR through e-mail and the COSS dean is able to send out messages to everybody in COSS on a list she can run. The ability to send out announcements like that is already in place. This policy is simply saying that you’re now giving over authority to send those kind of messages only to these specific groups.
AD: To all employees. They’re the only ones who can send to all employees. That’s part of the issue; who gets to send to all employees?
FA: Okay. The issue then with the policy I would no longer be able to send out a blanket message to everyone on campus.
AD: You don’t blanket the entire campus now. That’s one of the concerns they were talking about.
FA: I would still have the ability to do what I do now manually, which is to add everyone in my department, or the COSS dean can go in and manually add every faculty member in COSS and send a message.
AD: Right.
FA: This would shut down my ability to send to everybody on campus.
FA: But you can post to the bulletin board.
AD: Right.
FA: So this doesn’t have any capability except in the sense that it cuts down on the ability for just anyone to blanket everybody. Instead, the authority to send out a message to everyone on campus would be reduced to these units listed here.
AD: Right now, the only way we send to everybody on campus is if somebody calls the IT folks, I call the VP of the area that wants to send it and ask them if they will clear us to send the message to all employees. Our IT should not be deciding what is an appropriate message to send out to all employees.
FA: When HR sends out the leave reports…
AD: That’s an individual message to you.
FA: Okay.
FA: Are we moving on?
FA: I hope so… We’ll get back to you on this. Can I have the version with the changes on it?
5. Doctoral Programs (FA) (10/19/06)
FA: There’s a great deal of interest in our college, the College of Ed, in offering multiple doctoral programs. I’m not sure I’ve heard, in precise terms, what HLC’s action means in terms of what we can do in the next three years. Could you clarify what it is that we’ve been allowed to do in the area of doctorates over the next three years?
AD: As I understand what we were told, we have a change in our affiliation status that permits us to offer doctoral degrees, but that any new proposal for the next several years, at least, needs to gain individual approval first by MnSCU, then by the Higher Learning Commission before we can offer it.
FA: Just a subtle correction there. They’ve authorized us to offer the one EDD in Higher Education Administration. They have not restricted us from pursuing other doctoral degrees. If we do pursue other doctoral degrees, we will have to go back to HLC for approval for each one of those until they get tired of us coming to them for approval.
AD: That’s what I just said… (laughter)
FA: You didn’t talk about the Higher Ed one though.
AD: Their recommendation for approval has been made, but it hasn’t been formally approved. What we had been told earlier was that we could provisionally begin to recruit as if it were to be approved. But it hasn’t yet been approved. We probably won’t know that until June.
FA: The second questions deal with this coming Fall. There are two active searches. As I understand it, there were candidates that came to campus and engaged in interviewing. I don’t know where they’re at. They will be in our bargaining unit if they’re hired. Are we reasonably expecting we’re going to have students in the Fall?
AD: I believe so, but I need to check on what the progress is of any applications.
FA: What are the students going to be told? You said that we’re not going to know until June if, in fact, the program….
AD: I believe we can begin to offer some courses.
FA: Those courses may or may not end up leading to a degree.
AD: Technically, that’s correct.
AD: That’s a remote possibility.
FA: From a student perspective….
AD: The student needs to be informed of that.
FA: My second question is: is there a sense of when we’re going to know what the tuition is? We saw fiscal information about it….
AD: That will go in with our tuition request to MnSCU when the entire package goes in about what we seek as our tuition.
FA: Do you have a sense of when a go or no-go will occur for the Fall classes?
AD: Not sure.
FA: Okay. Thank you.
6. General Education Assessment Recommendations (FA) (11/2/06)
FA: Can we get rid of this item? I think we have a General Ed Assessment Director.
AD: Okay. Can we get rid of the previous item?
FA: Probably not.
7. Searches in Academic Affairs (Admin) and elsewhere (FA) (09/07/06)
FA: We’re doing just a whole mess of searches. Does anyone know where any of those are at?
AD: Yes. (laughter)
FA: Okay. Do you want to talk to us about them or are we waiting for official announcements….
AD: I would prefer to wait for official announcements, which I hope will be forthcoming before the semester is over.
FA: Okay. I know one of them I’m involved in is going pretty slow but we’re hoping to do something next week.
8. Orientation Task Force (Admin) (09/28/06)
FA: This orientation taskforce, we want to take this off. Is there anything we should be aware of?
AD: It’s moving along really well. We have a big retreat on Friday.
FA: Okay.
AD: I can provide updates anytime you want.
FA: I haven’t gotten anything from the group to give to Senate.
AD: I’ll send you the notes from our last meeting.
FA: Okay.
9. Center for International Studies: What are the fees used for $100 administrative fee, $22 student ID, $125 Emergency Fund, $75 application fee. (FA) (1/18/07) /Center for International Studies: Request for External Review and Audit of the Center (FA) (1/18/07) Response should come on March 15, 2007
FA: There was an Excel spreadsheet that they provided for us that was quite helpful and it was indicated that further information would be provided. Do you know when that will be coming?
AD: I will have to check on that.
FA: Okay.
10. Tenure Calendar (FA) (2/1/07)
FA: When we were here last time we talked about the tenure calendar.
AD: For next year?
FA: We have to do next year’s. There was some discussion about taking a look at that and redoing some things for when we change to the new start. We were wondering if anything is actually happening there.
AD: We thought we would wait until the beginning of the Fall to start doing that.
FA: So this gets to stay on for Fall.
11. Resolving Grievances and the designee (FA) (1/18/07) - not discussed
12. OCE Searches in the College of Education (Admin) (3/22/07) – not discussed
13. Snow Emergency (FA) (3/22/07) - not discussed
14. Request for copies of replication, articulation and transfer agreements (FA) (3/22/07) - not discussed
15. Request for report on Initiative Budget Spending (FA) (12/7/06) - not discussed
Adjourned: 5:01 p.m.