final approved 5-31-07
Meet and Confer
May 3, 2007
Admin: Michael Spitzer, Nancy Jessee, Larry Chambers, Wanda Overland, Kristi Tornquist, Diana Lawson, Mark Nook, Mitchell Rubinstein, Kate Steffens, Rex Veeder
Faculty: Annette Schoenberger, Judy Kilborn, JoAnn Gasparino, Fred Hill, Andrew Larkin, Bob Inkster, Jayantha Herath, John Palmer, Frances Kayona, Balsy Kasi, Bill Langen, Polly Chappell – Note taker
Approval of Minutes
Minutes from April 19, 2007—not ready to approve.
Admin: The President is unable to come today, and he provided advance notification to the Faculty Association. Also, Steve Ludwig is attending a funeral and will not be here today.
FA: Thank you.
Unfinished Business
1. Continuation of the Peer Review Committee (FA) (1/18/07)
FA: We took your alternative proposal of the Peer Review Committee to Senate, and they passed a motion that rejects Administration’s proposal because it is acontractual in nature.
Admin: Why?
FA: Because the contract makes it very clear that the chairs move the recommendations to the dean, and this would add a step in there that would sidestep what the contract says.
FA: If you want that, bring it to negotiations.
Admin: Where are we on that?
FA: I don’t know.
FA: Our last position was that you said that you wanted tenured, full professors on that Peer Review Committee, and we had agreed to that.
Admin: That was one of the…
FA: That was the last thing that we had agreement on.
FA: In any case, anything we did would have to go to the IFO office for approval.
Admin: So at the moment, we don’t have anything?
FA: Correct.
FA: I guess not.
Admin: Any further discussion on this? Let’s move on.
2. Second Associate Dean in COSE and COE (Admin) (3/22/07)
Admin: Those two deans were going to be here, so if we can hold that conversation until later.
FA: We actually have something to say about that in response to what you gave us last time.
FA: We believe it’s premature to go forward with the searches for Associate Deans without complete consultation with the faculty. We further believe that the request for funding, which is associated with the budget, should be linked to the Strategic Planning and the Strategic Map process.
FA: I will say that in my college it has not been discussed in my department. It has not been on any of the agendas or notes that I have seen. So if a statement is being made that it has been discussed with the departments, that’s false.
FA: My college has had no discussion either.
Admin: I’d like to come back to this.
FA: As we said we think this needs to go Strategic Planning through the decision-making process because it’s about budget.
Admin: I think there is a difference in Strategic Planning and budgeting. And I’m not sure if Strategic Planning necessarily determines budget. That’s something we need to look at. Next item.
3. LR&TS Associate Dean (Admin) (3/22/07)
FA: I think we made it pretty clear in earlier Meet and Confer meetings that we don’t believe that the position descriptions for the Associate Deans are Administration positions; we believe that much of the work that’s described there would be the work of a chair. We’ve taken the administrative position descriptions up to the IFO to get a bargaining unit determination on those positions.
Admin: So you’re not providing names for the search committee?
FA: We’ve actually never been asked to do that.
Admin: Oh, I think we’ve asked you that every time we’ve met since we had it on the agenda.
FA: We’ve never gotten a description of what the committee would look like. I know you said something in email, but I think our process is that those specific requests with the determination of the committee makeup come from Meet and Confer.
Admin: I originally asked for as many members as you wished to appoint. I would welcome to have them on the committee. That was the very first time we discussed this. That still is the case.
FA: We want to know the makeup the committee.
Admin: What I said before was that my intent was to appoint fewer members of other bargaining units so that the faculty have the majority of membership. That’s what I said. If you guys wanted to have five—I have a lot of people that want to be on this committee that I wasn’t going to have any more than faculty. Someone cracked a joke and you guys said that well, then we’ll appoint one so that would be the only person on the search committee and I said, no we need more than one. That was the very first time it came up.
FA: I don’t think any of us said that. You may have.
FA: Perhaps there is a misunderstanding what bargaining group determination means. It’s a formal process that the state has, and it involves the Bureau of Mediation Services reviewing a position description, reviewing the status of the proposal, and making a unit determination. If they were to review that and make a unit determination that says our opinion is correct, that it is a faculty position, we think it would be foolish to have tried to do a search. We think we should wait for a formal opinion to come from the state agency that has the authority to make a unit determination, and that’s the Bureau of Mediation Services.
Admin: Are you sure that’s the outfit that would do that?
FA: Yes, we know that it is.
Admin: So, we send the description to MnSCU and they review it for classification, and that’s all I know to do.
FA: MnSCU doesn’t get to decide that. The Bureau of Mediation Services makes the determination.
Admin: Larry, you know better than I do.
Admin: We’ll have to consult with HR Labor Relations.
FA: It’s my understanding that the process is to review the position description and hearing both sides before they make a decision of which bargaining group the individual position ends up being. The Bureau of Mediation Services is the final decision maker. That’s why the state created the entity to do that; to resolve disputes over what bargaining group the state employee ends up being in.
Admin: Or not in a bargaining group?
FA: By default you are in a bargaining group, which is excluded management. That is a group. Maybe not bargaining collectively, but they are in fact a group.
FA: And Bureau of Mediation Services recognizes them as a group.
Admin: We have a personnel plan and administration is not part of a bargaining group. It’s different.
FA: It’s still a group that you are in that has a plan.
Admin: If you’re correct in what you said, and that’s what has to happen, then we will await the outcome. In the interim it might be useful if there were some folks designated by you, and you can give us the names after the determination.
FA: You know it’s the end of the school year?
Admin: I understand. I am well aware of the date. I have it written right here on my wrist. (Laughter)
New Business
1. Privacy during advising and the Honors program (FA) (5/3/07)
FA: We have two motions from Senate. The first motion is that the Honors Program should have adequate office space co-located with an office manager, designed in consultation with the Honors Advisory Committee and Honors staff. The second motion is that Executive Committee take to Meet and Confer the need for private space for advising students to be incorporated when planning new spaces for academic programs.
Admin: The private spaces are being considered in the planning. There are still discussions going on about where Honors will be located, as well as Undergraduate Studies, FYE Programs, and the DGS Director, and the support staff for each.
FA: In terms of privacy for advising, I think it’s important to know that the temporary dividers that only go partially up are not private. I know we used them in the advising center when it was new, and it’s not a private space; you can hear exactly what’s going on in the next cubicle. We had talked earlier about developing some principles for long-term planning for academic needs. I think this is an important one. Certainly, we don’t want to be sharing private information after just taking three workshops on D2L about it.
Admin: One of the problems we encounter in this process is that the renovation in Centennial Hall was planned six years ago, I believe. The design was done for the way the renovation would take place at that time. The first time the bonding bill didn’t get funded. So that postponed the whole process two more years. Since that time the advising center has grown, the Honors program has grown. We are aware that there is inadequate space in the current facility. We’re trying to find additional space so that the offices will have the kind of privacy that is necessary. We’re looking at probably relocating some functions so that workspace is available for the units that are going to stay in Centennial Hall.
FA: I understand what you’re saying about all the areas growing. I think one of our assumptions should be that we’re going to need more space by the time we get to it than we currently have at this point. I know in all the discussions our department has had with the architect, and other departments who are making moves now -- Business, Political Science, and so on -- say that essentially the room that is planned is the room they have, or maybe less than what they currently have. In our case that is certainly where we started. I think you end up getting in this rut because you’re not planning for any kind of growth in the programs.
Admin: I agree with you entirely.
FA: I think the other part of it is that, you’re saying you’re aware of this, that you’re looking for new space, but the faculty and all the people involved in these programs don’t seem to be aware of that. They seem to have the feeling that they are talking to the air. I don’t know how that happens or why they continue to feel that way. I’m not present during those conversations, I don’t know what is being said to them or what is being presented, but they still continue to feel that way and that nobody really is looking for another space for them. The people in the Honors programs, I just figured this out finally, they’ve been two-and-a-half blocks away from their clerical support for the whole year. How long is that going to continue? How do we expect them to be able to expand that program? Or to even do the minimum?
Admin: It lasts one more week. The clerical staff person moves in one week.
FA: How far away will they be then?
Admin: They’ll be in the same room.
FA: Somebody should have figured this out; that that even got proposed and somebody actually agreed to it -- what were they thinking?
Admin: One of the things that is important to realize is that before this time, they had no true clerical support. They were using somebody, but it wasn’t part of their job description.
FA: So we had a program that we expected to expand that had no clerical support essentially?
Admin: At the time that we asked them to expand, we got some clerical support, but they weren’t able to co-locate the clerical support because they were also clerical support for another entity: FYE Programs. We couldn’t co-locate those two programs.
FA: So they didn’t basically have any clerical support?
Admin: No, they did. They were two blocks away. But before that they had none.
FA: Did somebody think there was something wrong with this picture?
Admin: Of course we did. But we were out of options. It was a temporary thing. We at least got them some clerical support, but before they were kind of nickel and dime-ing off the Advising Center. So, we were making steps. They weren’t the steps any of us really wanted to make but they were in the right direction. And when we can get moved together, in a week, that will be solved.
Admin: Okay.
2. PDP/PDR calendar for 07/08 (Admin) (5/3/07)
Admin: Can we take this one off?
FA: We’ll see. If something else comes up. It might have to stay on. There are actually two issues. One is that when you read the contract, or if you read the contract, you’ll notice that the emphasis is really on the plan. People make a plan, they work on that plan, and then when they make their report, the idea in the report is did they fulfill the plan. And if they didn’t fulfill the plan, is there a good or understandable reason for that. The calendar only allows 14 days of consultation for the departments. There really isn’t enough time for them to look at that plan and to do a real consultation because it is done right in the beginning of fall. So that’s a problem.
Admin: Are those dates contractual?
FA: They are not.
FA: One thing that we’d really like to do is to get departments really focusing on PDPs. Having a little more time would enable us to do that. It helps to get that PDP process functioning the way it should be. So the timeline is really important that way.
FA: What’s the other one, John?
Admin: Before you go to that, are you suggesting that we extend that time? Is there a problem if we do that?
FA: I don’t know.
FA: Maybe we should bring up the other one as well.
Admin: Is it related to the PDP, too?
FA: It’s related to the PDR.
Admin: Well, let’s try to address the PDP first, and then we can get to the PDR.
FA: The only contractual deadlines are, I think, January 31st and in May.
Admin: There is a series of them, because there is also a presidential one in June.
FA: Are there any in fall that would preclude our moving down that date for departmental consultation?
Admin: The problem gets to be where the different contractual dates are and then backing up all the work from them and what you run into when you do that. The other one with pulling the plan out too far is where do you start the clock on what’s accomplished on the plan. So what’s the end date? What’s the beginning date, so the plan is not done in a ridiculous scenario until January? That’s a really bad extended example. But then the report is due in May. I’m not saying we can’t extend them. I don’t have the document in front of me at the moment.
FA: Well, let me give you a for instance. Currently faculty are supposed to submit the PDP to the department via the chairperson by the 5th of September. And then the department is supposed to turn that around and have comments to faculty members by the 19th, which is two weeks. So, what if we extended it a week? I’m just picking this date out from the air. That would allow for more consultation and we’re still in September. So there is lots of time to start the plan.
FA: This is for probationary.
FA: Yes.
Admin: It doesn’t change for 2nd or 3rd year really?
FA: Once you’ve been tenured, you start doing things in the spring.
Admin: Right.
FA: But the thing is they consult with the dean in the spring.
Admin: By the 3rd and 4th year?
FA: We may have pinned ourselves in this corner in prior years by trying to do too much, too quickly in the first year. Faculty in a probationary position are hired, the presumption is that they are returning. They will have five years, if not six years, of employment even if they don’t attain tenure. If we try to do everything in the first six months of hiring a faculty member, we do that in the second year, we start off with a very rushed system. I think then people don’t really give it the importance it should have. As far as I know, there isn’t anything we have that says we couldn’t have an extended period of time to the PDP for new hires right the first year. And by the second year, get them into a cycle very much like the 3rd and 4th and after that. What I’ve observed as Grievance Officer is the failure to do the PDP/PDR process within the department, and this leads to big problems when we get to promotion or tenure decisions. So by, perhaps, looking at those first two years in a different way, than we have it will give us the more leisurely approach to get the plan and the initial report taken care of and have faculty truly embrace the consulting role we have with our non-tenured members. There are many departments that don’t meet monthly, let alone every other week.
Admin: I think that we’re talking about being able to review the calendar for the following year because of the difference in our academic start date. So what we’re really looking at here is the last year of the old calendar. I don’t know if we could revise the whole thing at this meeting. It certainly sounds feasible to extend it a week. Then we have time the following year to work out what makes sense in a meeting where that is the focus and not just one little item of a long agenda. So, I would propose that we do that: extend that one deadline a week.
FA: Step three and four are the same dates. So you’d be talking about changing step three and step four...
FA: There’s the other issue too, in the contract it says: “that at the end of the evaluation period the faculty member shall prepare a report and send it to the dean together with appropriate documentation describing progress made in respect to achieving his or her objectives as specified in his or her professional development plan. The copy of the report shall be sent to department members and the chairperson.” This, to me, means it gets done at the same time; so, when you’re sending in your report, you’re sending it to both the dean and the department. We have two weeks apart. There’s no reason to do that. They should be going at the same time. The other issue, and it’s the same with the plan, I don’t think it talks about the plan in the contract going before…? Does the plan go to the departments first?
FA: It goes to the department first, yes.
FA: Let me see if I can capture what the Provost said. If we were to add a week for the departments to respond next year—
Admin: Right.
FA: —the dates that the deans get their comments, gives the deans a couple of weeks for the senior faculty. For the junior faculty it looks like a couple of weeks. It doesn’t look to me like any of this would be extending beyond the Thanksgiving holiday. It would be done for everyone by then, simply by adding that extra week in there.
Admin: Let’s just try to do the extra week for the departments and keep the other dates the same.
FA: I’m not a dean so that’s fine with me.
Admin: The only thing I want to be careful of is the possibility of running into Article 25 deadlines that we’re not thinking about in getting this all taken care of. There are so many evaluations that have to be done before a person can apply for a promotion or go up for tenure and promotion. It’s easy to look at how we can move in Article 22, but there are real ramifications coming out of Article 25. And if that evaluation isn’t done, then the person can’t apply for promotion because they don’t have the requisite number in. The department can’t start the non-renewal process because the of review evaluation. Off the top of my head, I don’t know those dates. It would take a little bit of work. I think moving the department one week probably isn’t a problem, but the time that it took to work all these dates out there was interplaying all these dates and you got to really work with both Articles 22 and 25 calendars. They are not separate; they are tied. I’m just throwing out a word of caution in doing this quickly -- especially since it’s only for next year.
FA: This is something we’ve talked about in the past. I remember arguing about this in the past. We weren’t given the opportunity to talk about it last year because we didn’t get this document until after school was out. But every year that I’ve been here, we’ve said this is too tight for the departments. And every year we’ve gotten this thing saying, well, we’ll look at it and nothing changes. So you say that, and I think, oh yeah, right!
Admin: This calendar was developed jointly by a committee of Administrators and faculty, and approved by the Senate.
FA: But we have looked at it since then. After the first year, we said there wasn’t enough time. After the first year, we said that, and we have said it continually. And we have not been paid attention to. So at this point, are you saying, I mean, you’re doing the same thing. I’ve heard that before. You know those calendars are this and they are that. And then it doesn’t change.
Admin: What I propose is that we make sure there isn’t a conflict, and if not we’ll extend the date by one week.
FA: Okay. Thank you.
FA: Will the second part of that be that we’ll consider this when we look at the calendar for the next year?
Admin: Absolutely.
FA: I think we really need to start working with the deans in the departments on plans.
Admin: I think you’re absolutely right about that. We had a discussion about it at Deans Council. We specifically talked about the relevance of the plan and how that fits in terms of recommendations.
FA: We have faculty who have plans. The deans tell them the plans are wonderful. They do what is in the plans. Then the dean says, well, I can’t promote you. It’s like, if my plan wasn’t good enough, why didn’t tell me that?
FA: Would there be any interest on your side to coming out with a joint statement on the importance of taking that process seriously from year one?
Admin: Absolutely.
FA: Especially focusing on the PDPs because I think that the way it is now being put…
FA: In some departments, colleagues take mentoring very seriously, but then somehow the ball gets dropped. And then suddenly there are all these problems.
Admin: It shouldn’t happen that way.
FA: It shouldn’t happen.
Admin: I’d like to point out that in the documentation that goes in front of the calendar in the description of the steps, there is a focus on the plan in that discussion. That was a real emphasis of the joint committee that was writing this document. The plans need to be developed well. The departments need to review the plan and PDR very, very seriously. The focus of that document is pretty clear and up front. And that was five years ago, six years ago, and it’s sort of the joint statement of faculty and Administration.
FA: Can I clarify the point that Annette was making about the PDR? There seems to be a missing step relative to what’s in the bargaining agreement. If we simultaneously submit the PDR to the dean and to the department, the faculty member gets to respond to the comments their peers provide. And then there would be, I think, a delay of what actually gets sent forward to the dean as the final comments. There isn’t a step in there that allows the faculty member to respond to their peers’ comments before it goes forward to the dean. The language in the agreement talks about providing guidance; it must go to the faculty member. It just looks to me like there was a step that was left out between seven and eight.
FA: This doesn’t say that they ever go to the person. And so we have departments that say, well, you don’t get to see it because it doesn’t say that in here. And I say, well, pull the contract out and show it to me.
Admin: Pull out the front piece of that, too.
FA: I know. I know.
Admin: That’s part of this document. It’s the description.
FA: You’re right. The dates on seven and eight, they can be the same. The dean can get that report before they get the comments from the departments and from the individuals. And the individual who makes the report, remember, can add things to the report. And that might help the deans in the difficulty they’ve been having making their deadlines.
Admin: You’re suggesting in a way that the deans can read the reports before the comments?
FA: Right. They could.
Admin: Then they get the comments from the department. They want to see the department comments as well.
FA: It’s missing across the board the exchange between colleagues in PDRs.
Admin: If I remember right, and I haven’t seen the document in a while, there’s a place where the faculty are encouraged to meet with their department colleagues to develop their PDP—
FA: We’re on the report.
Admin: —even on the report. To have them read and discuss before they submit them. So they get the informal input. What we were trying to do when we wrote that was to develop a mentoring attitude so that they would be developing these with that committee, get the comments, write the final report, and that’s what is submitted. But that’s not in the contract. But it’s the way mentoring is done: develop a plan in consultation with the department.
FA: It’s not in the heading. It’s important. I’ve had faculty members call me and say their departments refuse to give me the comments because it’s not in this. And I say get the contract out and read it. I’m just reporting what occurs.
FA: You also have people who send the comments directly to the supervisor. And often they do it simultaneously with the faculty member and that creates problems. In some cases they send it to everyone from the President on down. That’s not contractual either.
FA: We shouldn’t take this off, because you want to make sure we start next year right.
Admin: I agree.
3. Budget motion from Senate (FA) (5/3/07)
FA: Faculty Senate approved the minutes of the Faculty Association Budget and Oversight Committee. Included in the minutes was a motion that the Faculty Association takes the position to support the total amount of spending articulated in the budget document circulated at the town hall meetings, which was $131,700,000 of expenditure this fiscal year. I did have a meeting with the President, Steve Ludwig, and Diana Burlison last week. We are within a $1,000,000 of each on the overall projected revenue. We have a handout we’re providing to you that shows where that $1,000,000 difference is. We’re going to try to get that clarified. I was told that all account receivables end up being a wash from year to year.
FA: I don’t know what that means.
FA: That means the impact on the total amount of revenue is a neutral impact. So as a result the projected tuition income for FY2007 would be our budgeted amount, which was $74,065,000. That number was calculated by taking our budgeted amount, which was based on 14,200 FYE and subtracting 100 FYE we fell short of obtaining. And that’s the same number that appears over in the column called base FY2008 low. We budgeted $74,000,000. We had a shortfall of about $500,000. And that’s where I came up with that figure. That figure differs from the one that Steve published, and I’ve not had an opportunity to find out why they’d be different. They should be the same if in fact account receivables are a wash. So if you take that number all the way down, we would expect that from the April date that we had this information we’ll spend another 2.8 million, we’ll carry forward or we’ll have a net excess revenue of 1.5 million, and we’ll have a projected balance to carry forward of 7 million. And then that falls and cascades to the right in those ways. So we’re within $1,000,000 of agreement as we go forward in planning. If you flip the sheet over, I was provided a copy of all committed carry forward that is currently in our carry forward budget. And it comes to $17,945,000 and some change. We’d like to get answers to some questions. The question starts with what should we expect to occur when this money is spent? What would be the outcome of spending the money in the categories that are on the left? When were they approved as expenditures? Why weren’t they spent, because they haven’t been spent? And when might we expect that they might be spent? We’d like that in a written form. We don’t expect that you’re going to be prepared to answer it today. We didn’t know that Steve wouldn’t be here. He would, in all likelihood, be the best source of those. So if you have questions about what we’re asking, I’d be happy to respond.
Admin: Can you give me a copy of the motion?
FA: The one about the budget expenditure amount?
FA: Yes, I’ll send it.
FA: Can you get that information for us or is it secret?
Admin: Everything is secret. (Laughter)
FA: I know. So can you do that?
Admin: I can try to do that. It would be better if I had your request in writing.
FA: We have a list of committed carry forwards by label, which I was given by amount and by account.
Admin: What is it that you want to know?
FA: We want to know what we would expect to see happen when those funds are spent. What is the plan in spending? When were they approved? How many fiscal years back were they decided and committed? Why haven’t they been spent? When might we expect to see them spent? We understand the contractual piece on the bottom. It is not within the control of the Administration directly on how faculty, both MSUAASF and IFO choose to spend their professional development money on their calendar rather than the administration calendar, but the ones that have very specific accounts have responsible people for them that we would expect would be able to answer those questions. I didn’t have time to go and find out who are the responsible people for each of these accounts. But I suspect that could be done quickly if you have access to our accounting system.
Admin: We’ll get you the answers that we can get you as soon as we can.
FA: Thank you.
4. 1B.1 officer (Admin) (5/3/07)
Admin: The interim 1B.1 officer’s term expires June 30. From the information that I’ve been given, President Potter wants some time to look around and figure out what he wants to do. We don’t want there to be a gap in service provided by the 1B.1 office. At the time the present interim officer was appointed, we were well aware that there were some concerns expressed that CARE wanted to be consulted in the appointment of that officer; however, that did not happen. But in the appointment of the subsequent interim person, we wanted to include CARE. This is not a search that’s being conducted through the Affirmative Action process. It is process that is being conducted through an appendix to the administrative hiring procedure. The interim appointment can be made without any kind of screening committee, without any kind of consulting anyone, but we wanted to have some kind of screening body and include input from CARE as well as the FA, if the FA would like to be included. And that is why this is on the agenda today. We had a meeting yesterday at which this was discussed. You might have some questions. But that’s where we are right now, is to appoint someone who would take over July 2nd.
FA: Do you understand how insulting it is to tell us that you don’t have to consult with us? That you don’t have to have our opinion but you want us to contribute our time?
Admin: It is not intended as an insult.
FA: I know it’s not intended as an insult, but it is an insult.
Admin: I said it to express the reason that it is not going through the formal Affirmative Action search process. That is an explanation as to why it is not going through because it’s not actually a required search. And when I say that, I don’t intend to say that we don’t want your opinion because we wouldn’t be here asking if we didn’t want your opinion. So, I’m very regretful that you feel insulted by it.
FA: We think that it would be best for the stability of the institution to leave the current incumbent there until the new president is here and can make a decision on how to do this search.
Admin: That individual’s appointment will end, and there’s been a great deal of consternation and concern on the part of a number of faculty.
FA: We understand that. There are strict expectations for faculty searches, even when we do fixed term searches that they follow. There are certain processes. When you’re hiring a 1B.1 or the Affirmative Action officer, we have to be even more careful. We’re not comfortable with what we’re being asked to do. I look up the rules, and yeah, the rules say we can do this. That’s not really an issue here. What’s an issue here is the appearance that you’re going to wait until the last minute and we’re filling this position as quickly as we possibly can. You waited so long. We have only one more Senate meeting next Tuesday. I would have had to send out an announcement two weeks ago Wednesday to have faculty volunteers to do this. I wasn’t even asked, I think, until early in April.
Admin: I think what Nancy is asking for is the establishment of a screening committee to do this process to include faculty to serve on the committee.
Admin: I would like to give them an opportunity.
FA: As for expressions of faculty consternation, it’s a big faculty with quite a range of opinion operating in a context of acute awareness of academic freedom. We, however, are the contractual officers and representatives of the union speaking to you, giving you the official faculty position today. There’s a qualitative difference between the two kinds of expression of opinion, I think.
Admin: The ad is already being placed. It will run in a variety of newspapers this coming Sunday. The other part of it, we have a job description for the position. And if you look at the job description on our website, it’s more in the line of Title 7, Title 9 Civil Rights background with investigative experience. And so this is also the opportunity to attract people with that sort of background because it’s a very important job.
FA: I agree. It’s really an important job. In fact I think it is an important enough job and there’s enough concern about the process at this point, I think it’s really important we take the time to be a little reflective about what’s happening here. I think if the current person were willing to extend a couple months so the new president were here and we could set up a process that was more participatory, I think that people would feel much more comfortable about the person hired. I understand that there’s a job position out. We frequently will put positions out, advertise them, and not fill them. I really do believe too that it’s important for the incoming president to have some sort of involvement in this decision of how we hire the next person. I really strongly urge, and this is obviously the EC’s position, that we delay it.
FA: It’s not even a permanent position. It’s a temporary hire. You’re right, maybe you’ll get someone with better experience, but it’s a temporary position.
Admin: The goal though, with the new president, is to have a full blown national search for the position.
FA: With somebody already in there?
Admin: This has been vetted with the Office of the Chancellor, Office of General Council, the President, and I’m not sure on this but the President may have spoken to Potter about this. So this is what we are proceeding to do. I know you don’t like to hear this, and I hate to even say it, the opportunity is there for people to participate in this process. It could have been filled like it was before.
FA: When you do that, when you take a position and you wait until the last minute, and then you say to us, “Oh, you know, we got to do this in a hurry. Hurry up and find somebody to participate.” And then you say, “if you don’t want to participate, that doesn’t matter, we’re going to go ahead anyway.” That is so… That’s what you’re saying. And it’s…
Admin: That is what Administration is saying. It’s not necessarily the best position.
Admin: We had a Meet and Confer several meetings ago where faculty said appoint somebody to the position as soon as possible.
FA: Right.
Admin: And we did. So now we’re saying there’s a person temporarily in that position. That position is ending. We want to appoint someone on a temporary basis until the new president is in and we can do a national search. One way to do it is to say we’ll just continue the person who is there. We’re saying that we’d like it to be more representative than that. We’re asking for some faculty to serve on a screening committee. If it’s going to be after the semester ends, we’ll pay those people for their time. We will be able to conduct the search for an interim person until we can do a search for a permanent person, which is the way we have often done it.
FA: Which we think is bogus.
Admin: It’s not bogus.
FA: I have a very practical question. I served on a search committee, and I thought we permanently filled this position a couple of years ago. This person, I thought, took a different position but still is employed here independent of that position. Nancy was hired to be the designated Lead Investigator. We did a national search. That’s how we hired her. My understanding is that she didn’t leave that job. That’s her job here; that she temporarily went to serve as confidential council to President Saigo. Am I mistaken about that? Because I did hear twice now that after the temporary we’re going to do a national search to fill this position.
Admin: It would be a national search to fill the position Anne Zemek was in. The position she’s in now.
FA: I don’t know that we’ve ever done a search for that position.
Admin: Yes we did.
FA: So does that mean that you will be the Special Assistant until this person is hired and what will happen with the 1B.1 officer on June 30th? Or are we looking at moving you back on June 30? I just got totally confused about what’s being searched with the search committee.
Admin: What we’re talking about for the search committee is to find someone who is an interim in that position until the new president decides who’s going to be where.
FA: Interim in the 1B.1 position?
Admin: Interim now in the 1B.1 position, yes.
FA: Okay. So, the other thing, there’s nothing we can do about it now, but I think that maybe it can explain why we’re concerned about this hurry up and wait stuff. We had this conversation several Meet and Confers ago about appointing the current person. Had we had the conversation that we’re having now then, we wouldn’t have been last minute at the end of the semester. I think that’s what builds up to this kind of emergency, you know, hurry up and wait stuff.
Admin: When we had that conversation, if I’m not mistaken, I might be, Anne Zemek was serving in her position and we were not aware that she would be gone.
FA: No.
Admin: I’m not sure about that.
FA: No. We’re talking about the timeframe when Nancy moved over and we had the temporary appointment, which we agreed to. I’m saying at that point, we could have had this conversation.
Admin: You’re right. My timing is wrong.
FA: Now we’re at a spot. It’s the end of the semester. The last Senate meeting is on Tuesday. It’s too late to send out a request for people to volunteer because we don’t have… it’s almost another month before we have another Executive Committee meeting because nobody’s on staff, so we don’t have them every other week all summer. These are things that you can find out by looking at our website. Because we have everything out there. And yet there doesn’t seem to be any kind of consideration.
CAUCUS
FA: Our initial request that we delay the hiring of this position, that we ask the person who is in that position to extend for a few months, and that we look at this position and hiring after that point and after incoming President Potter comes in is really based on strong concern that this process be done correctly and that it be done with a great deal of thought. We have a population out there who is very, very concerned about the 1B.1 process. They are not well served by this kind of hurried process. And we want to make sure that it is done right. And under the current circumstances, we don’t feel comfortable participating.
Admin: I appreciate what you have to say. But I think this is one that we’re going to have to agree to disagree. We will have to move forward under the circumstances. We think this is the best approach for the institution to move ahead and go forward.
Admin: We would much prefer to do that with faculty representation.
Admin: If you have any kind of change of heart, change of mind, change of anything, up until Tuesday we’d love to hear any recommendations you have about anybody you’d like to have on this committee.
FA: You’ve made it impossible.
FA: This is really our official response.
FA: You’ve made it impossible. We wish you hadn’t. But you’ve made it impossible.
5. Alignment with MnSCU Academic Policies an Procedures (Admin) (5/3/07)
Admin: We have three policies to bring to Meet and Confer to discuss. There are three policies and four items; one policy requires two different things. Some background, each of these has gone through the Academic Policy Working Group that we set up a year ago. There were four Faculty Association members named to this group; three of whom have attended regularly. The working group consists of representatives from the FA, Business Office, Undergraduate Studies, Financial Aid, and there might be one or two others… Graduate Office. This is an informal body used to form draft policy to send along for further consideration by the Administration and by the Faculty Senate. In the case of the first item, we’re making changes to the college level examination program. This is an item that results from change in state law a year ago that authorizes high school students to take CLEP exams and receive college credit. And it requires MnSCU institutions to accept the CLEP exam as college credit. Up until now we’ve selected what exams we would accept; we are now accepting every exam for which we have a course. As I understand it, this particular policy has made its way through the Academic Affairs Committee and Senate.
FA: This one?
Admin: Yes.
FA: I thought so. Is this different?
Admin: No.
FA: So it’s done.
Admin: It’s gone through and coming to Meet and Confer for your final blessing.
FA: Okay.
Admin: The next item is Military Withdrawal. This, again, is the result of a Board policy requiring each institution to adopt a policy to enable students who are called up for active military duty to withdraw with as little penalty as possible. This is the proposal that emerged from the Academic Policy Working Group. It has gone to Academic Affairs Committee.
FA: I have it on the Senate agenda for Tuesday. Is this document different from the one I have?
Admin: No. It should not be.
FA: Although we do want to make one change to it. It’s really a simple one. If you look at the third paragraph, it says, “If in the instructor’s judgment the student has completed sufficient course work to earn a letter grade, that grade will be entered on the student’s academic record. If in the instructor’s judgment the student has completed sufficient course work to earn a grade of “S,” that grade will be entered on the student’s academic record and the student will be given credit for completion of the course.” The addition of that last phrase doesn’t really add anything; it might suggest some confusion.
FA: It might suggest that in the first case they wouldn’t get credit.
Admin: Right. So we want to strike that part of the language. Just take that out.
FA: Starting when?
Admin: Starting with “and the student will be given credit.”
FA: On line six. These are going to go to Senate. And I will just inform you of what happens in Senate. If Senate approves these, then we’ll assume they are done. Okay? You won’t bring them back here again?
Admin: If the Senate approves it, we’ll be satisfied.
FA: Right.
Admin: Upon receiving notice of Senate’s action.
FA: Right. If they don’t, we’ll have to figure something else out.
Admin: There are two items that are together. Board Policy 2.9 was modified a year ago. These modifications require that each MnSCU institution bring into alignment its standards of satisfactory academic progress on both its academic policy side and its financial aid side. Up until now we’ve had different standards. On the academic side we say a student must have 2.0 or that student goes on probation. For financial aid eligibility we said the student must have a 1.5 in the first 30 credits, 1.75 in the next 30 credits, and 2.0 above 60 credits. We are forced to make a decision to align those two. The two choices were essentially to use the current academic standing policy of 2.0 and use that for financial aid or the financial policy, or the sliding scale of 1.5 to 2.0, and adopt that as the policy to determine probationary status for students. The proposal here is to go that second route, which reflects what the policy was at this institution up until about 10 years ago; sometime in the 1990s we had a sliding scale.
FA: Yes, yes.
Admin: It is a difficult decision. Because on the one hand by adopting this it could be viewed as slackening our academic standards. On the other hand, we would be removing students from eligibility for financial aid. If we did that any student who received between 1.5 and 2.0 their first year of attendance would lose eligibility for financial aid, and many of them would have to leave.
FA: This isn’t any different from what was sent to Academic Affairs?
Admin: No.
FA: I don’t think they made any changes. So, again, if this goes through Senate then we’re done. If it doesn’t we’ll have to have a discussion about it.
Admin: It does force us to do another probationary status because we have to take into account the students’ course completion rate. This is an inconvenience. I don’t know anyone in favor of this board policy. We are essentially forced to do this, as we understand it. We have tried to phrase it in a way so that the effect on students would be minimal, but we still require them to jump through a few hoops in order to stay enrolled should they fall below this standard.
FA: Is that because financial aid has course completion requirements?
Admin: Yes. In order to be eligible for federal financial aid, students have to complete 67% of their attempted credits.
FA: So, we lowered the grade point requirements for academic qualification, but we’ve added a course completion, which we didn’t have in the past?
Admin: Right.
FA: So we may not be necessarily more lenient?
Admin: Well, we are because of the terms. The penalty that we’ve placed on this, the consequences that we’ve established, enable students to get away from this as long as they come up with a plan for reaching the 67%. The final item, the undergraduate policy will require the inclusion of developmental courses at our institution included in the GPA.
FA: Could you repeat that?
Admin: Where it says computing grade point average, on the second line, there’s another underscored phrase that we have to include courses below 100 in the GPA.
FA: They are requiring that?
Admin: Yes. The less complicated one is for graduate students. As it turns out the financial aid requirements, the academic requirements are already fairly close in line. We’re just tweaking this a little bit, especially in that last paragraph where we have to include the credit completion standards. Otherwise pretty much everything is in place. The strikeouts and additions that you see on the top portion of the page bring up-to-date some changes in Academic programs over recent years. What we used to call 5th year and 6th year programs are now called graduate certificate programs.
FA: Okay. This is the same document from Academic Affairs?
Admin: Yes.
FA: I don’t think they changed anything. We’ll get back to you on this. If you don’t hear from me by Wednesday or Thursday of next week, send me a reminder. I thought there was another one that came?
Admin: There’s another policy we’re working on regarding credit overload. You might have already approved that in the Senate. We’ve been reworking it, so we’ll have to take it through the process again.
FA: When will we be adding doctoral programs to this document? Are certificate programs different than licensure programs?
Admin: Yes.
FA: Are licensure programs included on this? It says 6th year. I suppose they are? But is a licensure program different than a certificate program, and should we have language regarding that?
Admin: The certificate programs are addressed here.
Admin: There are a number of instances where departments offer what they call a licensure program, and that is a collection of courses that students take and by virtue of completing those course, they will receive state licensure. But we do not confer a formal award for completion of that. In the case of a graduate certificate, we do confer an award that is called a graduate certificate. When students complete that program, they receive the certificate. Now in some instances the licensure program and the graduate certificate are the same. I think in case of the fifth and sixth year programs those were converted to certificate programs, so by virtue of completing that program, they also receive a graduate certificate.
FA: Many students who complete the licensure program often lament that they didn’t get a certificate. They want something from the university to demonstrate they completed this program. Will that then allow these students to receive an official document…?
FA: Talk to Mitch about getting a certificate program.
Admin: Yes. That’s a curricular issue.
FA: We don’t need to do that here.
Admin: Sometimes there’s a complication that they are undergraduate courses involved in this.
FA: This is a conversation you guys need to have somewhere else.
Admin: To respond to your first question, though, it says candidates in all graduate programs, so that would seem to imply doctorate students as well.
Admin: I will defer any questions about language regarding doctoral programs to the Dean of Graduate Studies.
Progress Reports
1. Taskforces on Diversity (a.k.a. Motion from Teacher Development) (FA) (9/22/05)
Admin: You asked for a report. I have a memorandum that indicates they have been meeting. They requested that Administrators not be present so we haven’t been. They have some recommendations they want to discuss. Kate, Rex, and I will attend the meeting with the co-facilitators of the task force to discuss some of those recommendations that have to do with identifying an external facilitator and some reassigned time for folks to continue to work on that. That meeting will take place on Monday.
FA: One of those facilitators isn’t going to be here. Has there been a discussion about that?
Admin: No. Because we haven’t been at any of the meetings of the task force. We’ll have to follow up on that in the meeting on Monday.
FA: So this discussion, it’s just a full and frank exchange of views?
Admin: I would hope. And full as possible. Full of what, I can’t say. (Laughter)
FA: But it’s not a Meet and Confer.
Admin: No, it’s not.
Admin: I think it’s an overview of the report and the accomplishments of the year.
Admin: And what to do next.
Admin: And one of the things we want to talk to them about is what do they intend to do with the Faculty Association. I mean is there going to be a report to faculty?
FA: There was a report sent to the faculty in the college.
FA: But I didn’t get it.
Admin: Did the people in the college get it?
FA: That’s what I understand.
Admin: So, that’s another issue to take up.
Admin: There’s a COE Task Force so I guess they distributed within the college.
Admin: We set up a listserv for the facilitator so she could send out information.
FA: So you’ll know by Monday what the plan is?
FA: It’s my understanding that there’s a budget request for the next step?
Admin: That is probably the case, yes.
FA: So what’s happening on the university-wide task force?
Admin: There’s a meeting on Monday to discuss the next step with Annette, Debra Leigh, and me.
Admin: Can we take off Academic Policy?
FA: Yes, we can take that off.
Admin: Can we go back to number two?
FA: No. There was no consultation within the department and that needs to be done. The colleges need to have consultation. They said that was done, but it hasn’t been. I don’t know what else there is to say.
FA: Annette, what are you discussing?
FA: He wants to go back to number two, and I said it was pointless.
Admin: I thought we skipped number two?
FA: No, we did not skip number two.
Admin: I said that those folks weren’t here.
FA: No. I’m not sure I see any point in discussing them because the premise was that those had been discussed in the colleges with faculty, and we know for a fact that neither of them were.
Admin: In the COE we discussed the second Associate Dean position at the DAC level, and we’ve asked them to go back to their departments.
FA: That hasn’t occurred. And I know it hasn’t occurred in COSE. I haven’t even seen it in the notes from the Dean’s Advisory Council. They stopped sending those to me. If it’s not there, it didn’t happen.
Admin: We believe that it has happened.
FA: Your faculty testify that it hasn’t.
FA: There’s been no discussion in my department.
FA: It’s never been discussed in Frances’s department either. So it hasn’t happened. It’s unfortunate that you believe it has when it hasn’t.
FA: I guess I would ask for evidence that the conversation has taken place, and then once it has we can talk. But it really needs to come forward from the colleges. When two of our representatives from your college haven’t seen it in their departments, that indicates it hasn’t happened.
2. Budget Advisory Group (Admin) (09/07/06)
FA: I can report that Lisa, Steve, and I are meeting tomorrow. The purpose of our meeting is to discuss the process and timeline leading to expenditure decisions based on the Strategic initiative fund proposal. I suspect that will be shared with the Budget Model Sub-Committee at 1:30 on Monday. And then it will then come to the full Budget Advisory Group on Tuesday of next week.
Admin: Thank you.
3. Announce, Discuss and Bulletin Boards (FA) (09/07/06)
Admin: I have an update. We have it on the agenda to show a template of it at TLTR on Friday.
FA: Can we speak afterwards. This is a very hectic time. It is entirely possible that I overlooked it.
Admin: We’ll have something on Friday.
FA: I have two things. One of them is that the draft policy for email as a means for communication is on the Senate agenda. And the other is that the Faculty Senate has a position with regard to this confusion about the various discuss lists and that sort of thing. And our position is that there ought to be a separate bulletin board or a bulletin board in your listserv to handle commercial messages, trade-free items and that sort of thing. So, I guess this is the point you were just talking about.
FA: That’s actually an old motion from a few years ago and I think that, I understand you’re taking that to TLTR. Do you have any sense of when that bulletin board might be up?
Admin: They’re going to show something for people to react to. The technology part of this hasn’t been hard to do. We just need someone to look at it and say, yes, that looks fine.
FA: So are you thinking about some possible timeframe we might expect this bulletin board?
Admin: You know in the same way it’s a very hectic time for you, this is the spending deadline today, so our folks are trying to get all their purchases in so I haven’t been asking them for deadlines. They’re going to show it tomorrow and we can ask them then.
FA: Is it possible that when we come back in fall, we might be surprised by a beautiful bulletin board and no extra email cluttering our email accounts?
Admin: Well, at this point Announce and Discuss don’t go away because they were mandated by President’s Council. So we still have to have that. But the part of having a bulletin board, that’s never been an issue to do.
Admin: And what is the status of the document that we have with regard to…
FA: It’s on the Senate agenda. We haven’t had time. If you get us stuff at the end of the year we may or may not get at it until fall.
4. Doctoral Programs (FA) (10/19/06)
FA: You asked me to take this off.
Admin: Okay.
5. Searches in Academic Affairs (Admin) and elsewhere (FA) (09/07/06)
Admin: There are still some searches pending. There’s one position we wanted to have some conversation about in the COB. I asked the new Dean of the COB, Diana Lawson, although she’s hardly new since she’s been here all year, to come today.
Admin: In the last 10 months I’ve been working on a number of things. One is, my Executive Council as they call themselves, I inherited it, they call themselves that, and my DAC we’ve been working on doing some restructuring within the college. I am proposing to change the MBA director to a MSUAASF position. Currently it is a faculty position. Here’s my big dilemma. We are, as you know, being accredited. We’ve been for 30 years. We go up for reaffirmation in three semesters. We have three semesters to get things in order. According to the standards of AACSB and what I have learned, the standards have changed. For schools that have been accredited as long as we have, there are four major issues that cause schools not to be reaccredited to go onto a sixth year review and on to probation. We are out of compliance in all four of those areas. So I have a year and a half to try and get us back into compliance. The two biggest areas are assessment, and we’ve been talking about assessment here all year at the university as well as in the college. And I think we’ve got that moving in the right direction. Whether we can get that in place in time, I honestly don’t know at this point. The second big one is the academic qualifications of our faculty. We are allowed to have only 10% of our faculty non-academically and professionally qualified. Currently we are at about 25%, out of compliance.
FA: What is academically qualified?
Admin: They have to make certain academic standards, such as teaching and research and publication. And that’s part of the standards that we have had for 30 years. And we’ve known we had them for 30 years. But the down side of the old accreditation was that every 10 years we would reaffirm. So there hasn’t been anything in almost 10 years. Schools have a tendency to just slide. And then they say now we wake up and we have to start doing something. Well, they changed the standards to the point where it is a bit more difficult for us to come back into compliance. And one of the things that I see with the way the college has been structured in the past is the number of directors we have that have reassigned time is that they don’t have time to be faculty as they should, and maintain their academic qualifications. And our accrediting body doesn’t care. As long as they were hired as PhD faculty, they are expected to maintain their academic qualifications. And having them as directors, and do scholarly work, and teach is too difficult. The only way to get around that is to take them out of the faculty and make them something other than faculty according to our standards. So my proposal, my hope, is to take and put in a MSUAASF position to do the recruiting and the paper processing and all the things that go along with our graduate programs. We still have a faculty member that has the curriculum, which is the faculty part of the graduate program. That is part of the restructuring, if you would, if you look at the bottom two lines of this chart. I apologize to those of you who know how to do this, this doesn’t look so pretty, but it gets the point across. The faculty committees, if you start from left to right in the second row from the bottom: Curriculum Committee, Assessment Steering Committee, Faculty Development Committee, and Student Support Committee. Those committees will be the faculty driven committees for curriculum and programming and college development in terms of faculty and student programs. The other positions above them are all current positions except for the Graduate Programs Director and the Director of Communications and Community Relations. Most of the positions above that second line are MSUAASF positions. And the way that this is structured is that all of the reporting goes up through the Dean’s Executive Council to me. So in the past the way the governance structure has been in the college is that we have all these little groups doing things, and they haven’t been talking to each other. But by structuring it this way, we’re all talking to each other, and everything is funneling up through to the decisions that are made at the college level. This is also required as part of our accreditation, but we have to have a governance structure that makes sense, and in the past we didn’t. Everybody was doing independent things. There was no reporting and no cross communication in terms of how one decision affected another decision. So that’s what this does. And the Graduate Programs Director, the MBA Director position that I want to change, if you go to the second page, it will give you a brief synopsis of what that person will be doing. It’s basically administering programs, running the offices, helping to recruit, developing relationships with companies and things like that.
FA: Have you seen this document?
Admin: No.
FA: Okay. You need to take a look at it.
Admin: What is it?
FA: It’s a BMS Agreement. And it defines what MSUAASF does and what IFO does. And it talks about basic duties like counseling. It talks about academic advising, which is done by IFO.
Admin: And none of that is done by this person, by this position.
FA: So you want to be careful. Who’s the director of Undergraduate Programs Assessment?
Admin: Kerry Marrer.
FA: Is that a MSUAASF position?
Admin: Yes, a MSUAASF position. So these two positions are somewhat parallel at different levels: MBA programs and Undergraduate Programs. Her position, I’m requesting to upgrade, to give it more responsibility.
Admin: Let’s focus on the first one.
Admin: The Director of Undergraduate and Assistant Director, those are existing positions. The MBA Graduate Programs is a new position. It is taking all of the graduate operations and putting the responsibility on this person. The curriculum and student interface still occurs at the faculty level for our program, other than processing papers and processing applications, processing in terms of implementing policies that are set by the faculty, for our programs.
FA: I think what I need to do is, there are faculty concerned in this, and if you could organize a meeting between Judy, John, myself, and faculty, so we could actually talk to them. After sitting here and having someone say this has been discussed by the faculty in my college and finding it hasn’t been in another situation, this is what should be done.
Admin: Well, what we have done, I’ve asked the chairs to go back, and we have been working on this for probably four months, and there have been several iterations of the governance structure as well as the duties that go with the positions. And in many cases they are the ones, the chairs, who are faculty, they are not administrators…
FA: But have they talked to the people in their departments? That’s the issue.
Admin: As far as I know, yes. All of the minutes for every one of our EC meetings goes to every faculty member. It goes to the Provost and it goes to the President.
FA: Were they discussed at department meetings?
Admin: I assume. That’s the responsibility of the chairs.
FA: But, it doesn’t happen in some colleges.
Admin: I’ve gotten comments and questions about some of the things in the minutes, yes. So people have responded to the minutes. They do read them. Has everybody read them? Probably not. And can I require everyone to read them? I don’t know if I can.
FA: Has it been on the agendas in department meetings where there’s been discussion about it?
Admin: That’s a good question because they don’t send me their minutes. I don’t know.
FA: They should be doing that.
Admin: They don’t.
FA: That really is the question.
Admin: That’s a good question. I have asked them to take it back for any concerns in their departments. So I don’t know how else to document whether or not they’ve taken it back.
FA: I have a minor question. I’m looking at the Assistant Director of Undergraduate Programs, and I’m not finding it on the Org Chart. I may just not be seeing it. Is it there?
Admin: It’s probably not there because I probably forgot to put it in. The Assistant Director would go under the Director.
FA: Another thing, I think what Annette is saying is that we simply need to follow up and make sure that there’s full and thorough discussion among the faculty. Obviously we’ve just seen this so we need a little bit of a chance to respond.
Admin: Okay. I will set up a meeting for next week. I’ll call you and find out when you are available. If you want to talk to my Executive Committee, can you come next Wednesday at 10:30?
FA: I’m wondering if there are any instances at other universities. Is this just playing with words and saying we’ll call this non-faculty on campus but when accreditation comes in we’re going to call them faculty?
Admin: No, at business colleges it’s pretty common to have a non-faculty person as a director of programs. I think part of the confusion might be the terminology. It might be used differently here. We will still have someone in charge of the graduate curriculum, and that will be a faculty member. I think in some other colleges they are called coordinators? Maybe graduate program coordinators or MBA coordinators and that’s the academic side of it. I think. I’m not exactly certain. But in business colleges it’s very common, and I went through and looked at our peer institutions that are our size and looked at what kind of administrative staff they have, and they were all twice as large as ours in terms of Associate Deans and Assistant Deans. And they are all non-faculty. Well, the Associate Dean is a PhD. But the Assistant Dean and MBA Director of Graduate Director are not faculty because so much of what they do is not on the academic side. They run the programs. There is more paper work processes that have to be followed. So it might be confusion in the terminology that we’re using, and maybe there’s a better term to use. There will still be a faculty group that oversees the curriculum.
FA: I want to point out that the thing I was looking at, it says oversees HCOB on Academic Advising.
Admin: Yes, that’s what they do already.
FA: I know. Who does the advising?
Admin: There are advisors in the COB who do the advising.
Admin: Just like the university has an advising center.
FA: But they do the General Ed advising.
Admin: And they do the Pre-Business advising.
FA: So it should say Pre-Business Advising not academic.
Admin: Probably.
Admin: But they do academic advising. It’s all academic, Annette, it’s what they need to take in their first two years.
FA: MSUAASF can do non-academic related discipline advising. So they can do the General Ed advising. But the discipline related advising is to be done by the IFO.
Admin: So I’ll put Pre-Business in there.
FA: Put that in there, yes.
Admin: I can do that.
FA: I’m not weighing in on this discussion of MSUAASF versus faculty, but I just want to salute you in your concern for maintaining a realistic and humane workload for your faculty. It’s an example for all of the deans.
Admin: Thank you.
6. Orientation Task Force (Admin) (09/28/06)—not discussed.
7. 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)—not discussed.
8. Resolving Grievances and the designee (FA) (1/18/07)—not discussed.
9. OCE Searches in the College of Education (Admin) (3/22/07)—not discussed.
10. Snow Emergency (FA) (3/22/07)—not discussed.
11. Request for copies of replication, articulation and transfer agreements (FA) (3/22/07)—not discussed.
12. Request for report on Initiative Budget Spending (FA) (12/7/06)—not discussed.
13. Return of TITLE IV monies (Admin) (4/19/07)—not discussed.
14. Placement Testing Policy Group (Admin) (4/19/07)—not discussed.
15. On-Line Policies and Procedures Ad-Hoc committee recommendation(FA) (4/19/07)—not discussed.
Meeting adjourned at 5:00 p.m.
Submitted by Polly Chappell, Faculty Association Administrative Assistant