Final Approved 10-2-08
Meet and Confer Notes
August 21, 2008
Administration: President Potter, Provost Spitzer, Dennis Nunes, Larry Chambers, Mitchell Rubinstein, Diana Lawson, Wanda Overland, Kristi Tornquist, Judith Siminoe, Patty Dyslin – note taker
Faculty: John W. Palmer, Mark Jaede, Judy Kilborn, David Warne, Robert C. Johnson, Frances Kayona, Balsy Kasi, Bill Hudson, Debra L. Leigh, Michale Tril, JoAnn Gasparino
Approval of Minutes: May 15, 2008 – Approved
FA: Welcome to the new year of Meet and Confer. For today, we have identified high priority items. Those are the items that we believe we absolutely, positively need to deal with today and we’ll deal with those first. Then what I thought I would do is ask if there are any other items that people have a special interest in next. Patty has asked, and I’m sure when Polly returns she’ll ask the same thing, and that is, if you’re making a comment, please speak up so that we can get an accurate recording of what was said and then we can approve it as the minutes of the meeting.
I did have a request from Dave Warne who is our lead on Foundations of Excellence to have a time specific on that of 4:00 p.m. What about Mike?
AD: He’s coming at the same time.
FA: So we’ll deal with that item when Dave and Mike show up. Is everyone here?
FA: No. We’re missing Robert.
FA: When Robert comes in we will do introductions.
AD: Okay.
Task Force on 9-month Appointments (AD/FA – 4/17/2008)
FA: This is something in the collective bargaining agreement and is something we are to do. I’ve listed it as Administration and FA. Michael and I talked about an approach that would have a small taskforce – 3 from our side and 3 from excluded management. We believe that that group could then interact with the larger campus community to solicit concerns, identify problems and then move forward with a completed piece of work with regard to the use of the nine-month appointments which will go into effect on July 1, 2009. All new hires, after July 1, 2009, will be considered to be nine-month employees. So we need to be sure that we have taken a look at the implication of that and how we might use that provision on this campus. So I’ve talked to my team about 3 members.
AD: We’ve talked about the same thing and we have 3 people who we’ve identified and we’ll wait for you to provide us with the names of 3 individuals and we can move forward with that and get it started. I’m assuming you’ll have an election process or however you’re going to do it.
FA: We will move in an appropriate way to get our 3 identified. My team only heard about that less than an hour ago.
Request for the participation in Searches (AD – 8/21/2008)
AD: We have several positions that need to be searched beginning early this Fall Semester. The first one is my position, the Provost Position. We are requesting membership on a search committee to find a person, I wouldn’t say to replace me, but to succeed me. We also need a search committee for the Dean of the College of Fine Arts and Humanities. We need a search committee for the Associate Dean in the College of Social Sciences. We need a search committee for the Associate Dean in the College of Science and Engineering. We had a search for an Associate Dean position in LR&TS that did not reach fruition so one of my questions would be whether or not you want to reappoint the same committee members or constitute a different group for that? We need one faculty member to serve on a search committee for a Post Award Coordinator for Sponsored Programs.
FA: Is that MSUAASF?
AD: Yes. And we need search committees for a P-16 Coordinator and a STEM Coordinator – new positions that were recently approved.
FA: Which bargaining group?
AD: Faculty. I believe they’re faculty.
FA: Do you have a suggestion as to composition?
AD: Provost, six. COFAH Dean six. Associated Deans, each six. I don’t have a number for the P-16 Coordinator. I don’t think that would be a six faculty search committee – three for each of those I think would be fine.
FA: But you said those are faculty positions.
AD: Yes.
FA: So what would the other composition be?
AD: Administrator.
FA: So we would have one administrator and three faculty members?
AD: Which one are you looking at?
FA: The STEM and P-16.
AD: Yes. At least one administrator, perhaps two, and three faculty members.
FA: Three faculty – okay.
FA: Do you know what unit they’re going to be rostered in?
AD: Academic Affairs.
FA: Are the searches internal or external?
AD: All of these will be national searches.
FA: The six, six and six are consistent with tradition. The Post Award one is consistent with what we’ve done in the past where we have a MSUAASF search where there’s direct interaction with IFO faculty. The P-16 and the STEM, since they’re faculty searches for faculty positions, it strikes me as a bit strange to do them differently than we would for all of the other faculty searches.
AD: It’s a bit of a different position. It’s a position where the person is going to be coordinating across a number of different, in both cases, different colleges working with K-12 and so there’s a lot of additional activity there that is not comparable to a faculty position in a department.
FA: I’m going to pause, because we were waiting. I think everyone who is going to be here is present so we’re going to do self-introductions.
(Everyone present introduced themselves to the group)
FA: Welcome to the new folks. To those of us who have been at Meet and Confer, it’s still a new day. We’re talking about the P-16 and STEM searches.
FA: If these folks work across colleges, how many colleges do they work across?
AD: I think the P-16 Coordinator will have something to do with the College of Education, College of Science and Engineering, College of Fine Arts and Humanities, College of Social Sciences – I think all the colleges with the possible exception of the College of Business – although maybe there too. The STEM Coordinator would be primarily the College of Science and Engineering and the College of Education.
FA: It seems to me, especially the P-16 is working across at least four colleges, that it would be good to have representation from each of the colleges that that person will work with.
AD: I certainly wouldn’t object to that.
FA: So we’re talking four then?
AD: Yes.
FA: We didn’t have a chance to talk about those two in our pre-meet and confer. My sense is that four and three would work for us on these searches. We recognize that these are acting items funded coming out of the academic planning process last spring and it would be in our interest to have the searches move forward quickly. I was waiting for Robert for two reasons. Reason number one is that I’ve never understood why when we do introductions you go all the way around the room and then someone comes in and they only introduce themselves. So we don’t have to do that. But Robert, you had shared with our group some observations with regard to the number of excluded management searches that we’re being asked to participate in and what the implications may be for the institution as a result.
FA: It represents an opportunity to realize the vision of the university in terms of diversity in all ranks. We have an opportunity to review and reflect upon ways to enhance administrative diversity. In the past, we’ve been faced with time crunches trying to meet a number of deadlines to fill positions on an interim and permanent basis over the past couple of years. Now there are a number openings available and we can look to see where we are in terms of having people from across the spectrum filling these positions.
AD: That certainly is something that would be a goal of the process.
FA: One of our new Executive Committee members asked how the goal setting for the searches would occur. We know how goal setting happens with regard to faculty searches with regard to affirmative action because we’re familiar with that process. But we wondered how we would hold ourselves accountable while in a search that’s for excluded managers.
AD: In the same way as for faculty.
AD: Let me comment on that. I’m sorry Susan Moss isn’t here for my comment. Larry, I’d ask you to listen with Susan’s role in mind since you partner so closely. We’ve just filed a diversity report which is required every two years. It’s the first report that I have signed. It doesn’t reflect the comprehensive diversity plan which the taskforce is going to work on this year. But it does make commitments that in my mind we don’t keep. The character of the report to DOER, which is the authority to whom we are reporting, is such that they don’t ask for evidence that we are in fact doing what we say we’re doing. They just ask what we do. I don’t believe we have the evidence to support the commitments that we have made. Having said that, that reporting structure, even before we get into a comprehensive diversity plan, does establish specific commitments and expectations. I would expect that as we form these committees and we prepare to do the work of search and selection that each committee struggle with the questions or the opportunities that Robert describes. We don’t search aggressively enough. We don’t use strategies other than advertisement very effectively. Frankly, if you don’t use networks and very aggressive outreach strategies to strengthen the pool we will never get to where we want to go. I think we do have the time, and I appreciate the fact that Michael’s putting this on the table for this discussion early. As far as I know, there are none of these that are urgent. In fact we have a full year to do this and we should, in the committee, be addressing the responsibility to search aggressively and not simply the committee being focused on the screening and selection part.
FA: I’m wondering if there is any intention to use search firms for any of these searches.
AD: The Provost search – definitely. We have not discussed using search firms for any of the others.
FA: Okay.
FA: I think we’ve come to agreement on all but the LR&TS request that you made for us to consider using the same committee. We’ll take that back and get back to you at the next Meet and Confer.
AD: Okay.
FA: We’re hopeful that we can move as quickly as possible to put our six people in place and have the meetings of the committees occur as soon as possible for these searches – which allows us to go to the marketplace in a very timely way. We do share the president’s thanks for having these items on today’s agenda which means that we have a year to do as you said, Earl, at the opening; “Do the right thing and do it in the right way.”
Vehicle Use Authorization and Prohibition of Driving by Under 21 year olds (FA – 8/21/2008)
Fa: We bring this as a result of concerns of what the faculty behaviors will be concerning the travel of their students to locations off of the campus that are used to enhance the learning environment. You did provide me with the list that shows how once someone enters the system it will be determined whether they’re eligible, conditional, or ineligible and that it was your desire that if someone was identified in either category of eligible or conditional, that the intention was to permit them to do the business of the university. I think the policy says…
AD: In a vehicle.
FA: …using a vehicle to do that business. We’re still unsure what falls into the category of business covered by this policy. What kinds of activities are covered? Faculty are engaged in planning and will soon be conducting instruction that may involve having students traveling.
AD: Certainly if a student or students are using State vehicles, this policy would apply. Beyond that, Judith, would you speak a little bit to that?
AD: Yes. One thing is, to a certain extent this doesn’t change things in that we don’t take responsibility for the safe travel of a student to an event – even if it’s a required event like student teaching. We don’t assume responsibility to supervise that they have safe equipment and we really make the student responsible for that the same way that as employees, the university is not responsible for getting us to work safely. What we talked about at the one meeting I’ve attended on the subject of how to implement this, is that the control would be focused on who has a vehicle. For a student to use a vehicle that is checked out or whoever is handing over the keys from the university, those individuals, and it would only be maybe about 10 people at the university, would have access to the database to know whether a student’s eligible or not. So it won’t be generally shared information, but those people who have charge of vehicles would have that. We also talked about the fact that there are very rare circumstances where a student might be reimbursed for their own travel. But that would only be when they are doing something that qualifies as university business. When a student is going to an internship or some other type of experience they’re our customer, as much as I hate that word. They’re receiving the benefit of education. They’re not really doing university business. That’s for their benefit not for our benefit as if we would have them driving a mower or picking up equipment in a vehicle for the bookstore or something like that. I guess my point is, I don’t really think that this changes things as far a faculty behavior although it’s an opportunity for us to emphasize the fact that people ought to be thoughtful about not putting students in the position of driving vehicles when they’re creating risk for themselves and us.
FA: So what if they’re representing the school in something like players performances or are going to conferences or have field trips?
AD: The question is going to be: do we control the travel? If we are controlling the travel, for instance, you’re in theatre or debate, if we’re controlling that travel, then we’re going to be aware of whether the driver is somebody who has a license and is a safe driver. If a student is responsible for getting themselves there, then we wouldn’t.
FA: I’m thinking about a circumstance like – I’m part of a first year experience cohort, we’ve got a dozen students who want to go to the Twin Cities to see a cultural event related to Latin America and I can’t fit them all in one vehicle, whether it be a university vehicle or otherwise, one of them drives for others of them, are they traveling on their own or is the driver transporting them on behalf of the university? This is only one example, but it seems that there are going to be a lot of these things where we’re kind of controlling the travel. We’re saying where we’re going and approximately when. We’re not driving the car.
AD: Again, I don’t see where this changes anything. Is it our practice to assure students that we’re going to make sure they’re going to have safe travel arrangements to those kinds of events. Knowing whether someone is an eligible driver or not is only one component of taking responsibility for student safety.
AD: I would say that if you are arranging for them to get there, then yes, even if they’re driving their own car there need to be an eligible driver because they’re taking other colleagues with them.
AD: I think in that context if you say to the students “Work out your own transportation.” then they’re responsible for it.
AD: When I have had the job I used to have of being the university’s attorney, when I’m talking to a faculty member who’s going to do field trip or some kind of travel thing I would say “When does this experience begin? Do the student convene on the site – in which case we put in the document ‘I assume responsibility for my own safe travel’ or are we making the arrangements – in which case we have the responsibility to make sure we set it up in a prudent manner.”
FA: There may be only ten or so people who have access to a database pertaining to student’s eligibility, so how would a faculty or staff member know whether or not they can turn over a key to a student to drive a state vehicle?
AD: What we’re trying to do is make sure that the people who have the keys have access and we don’t think there are more than about ten. So if you’re going to have something where a student needs to get a vehicle from the motor pool, the motor pool people are not going to check it out to that student unless they’re eligible.
FA: I don’t think students can reserve vehicles. Often it’s office managers and staff members who reserve the vehicles then they assign students to do the work. So two things: one is then we wouldn’t know whether or not these students are eligible under these policies, and secondly, once we find out that a student is not eligible, then ten becomes eleven, twelve and multiplies so the anonymity and privacy has now disappeared once that student has been identified as being ineligible or questionable, then at least the people in that office would know that.
AD: Two questions: one question is logistics. If we’re not currently doing this so that you have to disclose who’s going to be driving, then we’ll have to change that. Because the idea is that we know that the driver will be an eligible driver and that other people who are not eligible will not be driving. That’s a logistical issue. The second one, on the confidentiality, it’s a FERPA protected record because it’s not a public record, it’s not directory information. So yes, you will know whether or not that student is ineligible to drive and you will have to solve the problem of finding an eligible driver. You have that information in confidence, the same as you would any other student information.
FA: I agree. But if, for example, for class purposes a student volunteers to drive one of our vehicles and then we inform that student that he or she is not allowed to drive that vehicle, then people will begin to suspect that the student is not driving the vehicle because they are ineligible.
AD: I’m not sure how this process will work, but I think we need, at least I would like to find out whether or not the students are notified if they are eligible or not eligible when their information is submitted. If the students are notified, then one of the things to suggest when you’re asking for students to potentially be drivers is to say “If you’re an eligible driver, then you can apply for this particular task. Otherwise, you can’t.” That way, only eligible students will apply and other students won’t apply and we won’t know whether they are eligible or not eligible – they just haven’t applied.
FA: Right now, Buildings and Grounds asks for the names of the passengers in the vehicle.
AD: I just found out that they do.
FA: They may want to start asking who will be driving the vehicle.
FA: I want to remind us all that the policy applies to all vehicles, private or state. So there is the problematic issue of saying who controls access to a private vehicle for travel to a university piece of business. We’ve been talking about the one that we have control over. I also want to remind us all that if the policy as proposed rolls itself out, in January, 2009, it applies to a number of other bargaining group people and in July, 2009 it applies to the faculty bargaining unit. So as we talk about this, we’re not just talking about how to deal with what’s been referred to as risk management. How are we going to deal with that?
FA: Obviously we need more clarity on this. I’m wondering if we can revisit on this next time and perhaps get more specific guidelines that we can let faculty know about.
AD: We can do that.
FA: Thank you.
FA: We are at the state level interacting and getting new information at each turn with regard to how this works so I suspect we will be interacting locally. There will come a point when the faculty will need to be advised and it sounds to me like that advice will probably come from Judith. She’s nodding her head.
AD: She’s a good advisor.
AD: I’ll report back on logistics and information campaign.
FA: Thank you.
FA: I’d like to have information from somebody else because if I’m going to take my students to Ely this semester, should I be asking individuals who are 21 to be doing this? If not then go to the next point; no one in my class is 21. How early should I ask the person to register with the parking folks.
AD: They only have to be 21 if the trip is going out of state. If it’s in-state, they can be 18.
FA: If it would be nice to have that information. How long will the turn-around time be for approval.
AD: Have you customarily arranged travel for that?
FA: Yes.
AD: The process is up and operating and I guess they get in touch with Darla Benson.
FA: Okay. We will revisit this. You have two requests for representation.
AD: Correct.
Representation on Academic Affairs Working Group (AD – 8/21/2008)
AD: We’re seeking representation for the Academic Policy Working Group it should be. This is a group that has been active for two years. We’re entering the third year. It has members from various offices in the Academic Affairs area, Student Life and Development, Multicultural Services and other units; and we’re seeking renewal this year. There have been four faculty members named in the past and we’re seeking the names of four more representatives. The one qualifier in this is that we have established a regular meeting date of Wednesday mornings. Depending on when we start, it will be every other Wednesday morning from 9:00-10:30 a.m. so we’ll need individuals who will be available during those hours.
FA: Thank you. We’ll get back to you with the four names.
AD: Thank you.
Representation on the Task Force on Academic Calendars (AD – 8/21/2008)
AD: We’re reactivating/reconstituting the Task Force on Academic Calendars. We had a task force named last year but for a variety of reasons, we never got around to meeting. We finally got around to doing some preliminary work by the end of last academic year. We do need to move this year most immediately on the calendar for 2010-2011 academic year and then beyond that to see if we can look at calendars for subsequent years. And just as importantly, begin to examine issues that might have arisen from the common start date. This is the first year we’ve operated under the Board of Trustees common start date and I’m sure there will be questions that we’ve only begun to imagine.
FA: The number on that?
AD: Last year the Faculty Association asked that the entire Committee on the Institution be members so that’s what we’re requesting this year.
FA: I suspect that’s exactly what we’ll do. Thank you, Mitch.
D2L Status and Plans
FA: I see that Kristi is handing out a document.
AD: This is the same information that’s going out to individuals who are on the D2L list serve. We’ve had this on the agenda at previous meetings and I thought that with the start of school it might be wise to share what our expectations are next week with the common start date. They are not able to do load testing at the level they are expecting next week so we have some hesitancies about how smooth it will go. I’ve been working with the Office of the Chancellor and there are contingency plans in place should there be problems next week – particularly you’ll see in number 4 they identified some subsystems that they would take down to hopefully improve load issues if they should arise. We’re hoping for the best but we’ve asked them to think carefully ahead of time about what their answer will be if there are problems instead of waiting until problems occur. I wanted you to have this. If you have questions I’ll do my best to answer them.
FA: Having just received the document…
FA: I don’t know that it’s a question – it’s an observation. I just got this via e-mail because I’m a D2L user. Suggesting that they avoid copying/importing/exporting processes as of August 25th when we just got the D2L e-mail yesterday seems a little bit short notice.
AD: I agree.
FA: I guess for future planning, if you could remind people that now is a high push time for getting documents up – especially since duty days just began.
AD: You do know that we struggled to have them pay attention to the possibility that there might be problems at all. We’re please that they thought through this much. This is a positive step and we’ll try to back them up.
FA: And of course I’ll send a message to our folks as well. But if they could remember that fall start up means that’s when classes begin and that’s when faculty upload materials.
AD: I agree.
FA: Your enthusiastic group at the recognition ceremony yesterday is going to have their enthusiasm tested.
AD: I think that the Office of the Chancellor, about a month ago, was telling us there weren’t going to be any problems at all so the fact that they’re acknowledging that there might be problems is a step in the right direction.
FA: So they are now seeing the world the way you’ve seen it for a long time.
AD: Yes.
FA: Thank you for the report and we all hope that our worst fears are not realized and that we can, in fact, deliver the instruction in the preferred manner and with the least amount of disruption to students and to our faculty using the system, and to your staff that support us.
AD: We will do our best to communicate with you any and all issues as quickly as we can.
Diversity Plan (AD – 11/1/2007)
FA: I can announce to you that we have initiated the process to make the selection of our three designees to serve on the task force. I have received feedback from a number of the other groups that have been designated as having slots on that task force – some of which include faculty members. We can move as quickly as we have which will identify three which I hope will result in the other groups being able to move quickly also.
AD: We have recommendations from many groups. At least one group wrestled with internal issues around which of the persons who would like to serve they would recommend for service and elected not to make a recommendation. It puts in my office the challenge of choosing between two folks – both of whom are qualified – when there’s only one slot and the group was unwilling to make that choice.
FA: Perhaps if they’re faculty we could encourage them to stand for election to one of the three slots we have.
AD: If it’s okay, I’ll point those out to you in case they are faculty.
FA: Thank you.
Article 22 Task Force (FA – 2-1/2007)
AD: That task force did some work last year. There are still some elements of its charge that have not been addressed and a couple of things that need to be reviewed about the academic calendar. I just wanted to let folks know that we need to reconvene that task force early this fall semester and begin to work on the elements that have yet to be addressed.
FA: When can we expect to see the calendar on the Web site.
Note taker: It’s in progress and should be up tomorrow.
FA: Folks really need that to proceed in departments.
FA: Thank you.
FA: Are the task force members aware that their charge is not yet complete?
AD: Yes.
FA: I was under the impression that they had finished last year.
AD: We had three things to do and we worked on one of the three.
FA: Certainly our members are aware as are yours.
Status of Administrative Searches: Interim COFAH Associate Dean, AVP for Faculty Relations (FA – 5/15/2008)
AD: I have a couple of announcements to make. First, the search for the Assistant VP for Faculty Relations is underway. The person to my left is on that search committee, so is Balsy. That committee is meeting and working. For the Interim Associate Dean in the College of Fine Arts and Humanities, Mark Springer has been appointed to that position. He is formerly the Chair of the Department of Music. And for the Interim Dean for Undergraduate Studies, this has not yet been announced, but Amos Olagunjo will serve as Interim Dean for Undergraduate Studies. That announcement will go out later today or tomorrow.
FA: Thank you. Are there any items that are on the remaining list that people would like to discuss?
FA: Being a Parking Lot H person in a lot that’s been oversold, I would like to discuss that and Guest Parking since they’re related.
FA: Are there any other items people would like to move to?
FA: College of Ed Task Force.
FA: Anything else? Shall we deal with parking?
Parking Lot H Over Sold (FA – 8/21/2008)
AD: I think what we’d like to do, particularly since Steve is not here, is listen to your specific concerns and try to answer the ones we can and get further information.
FA: Judy, why don’t you address Parking Lot H and I’ll do guest parking.
FA: Okay. Well, obviously, Riverview is under construction. That parking lot’s a mess. We were asked to volunteer – they asked for 20 volunteers to give up their parking spot there.
AD: Right.
FA: I went over to parking, I don’t know, a week-and-a-half ago and asked them how they were doing and they said five people had volunteered. So I’m wondering what will happen with that parking lot when classes start.
AD: I think the plan was to talk to people with the least seniority in the parking lot and ask them to relocate to a different lot.
FA: Has that happened?
AD: I believe, looking at some e-mails that I’ve seen recently, that it has.
FA: There was a piece to that that I saw in a correspondence that talked about changing the coding on the gate that would not allow faculty to enter the parking lot who had been identified to move to other lots.
AD: I wouldn’t even know if that were technically possible.
FA: Well certainly it would be possible. I mean you just – it’s a swipe card. If all of a sudden your swipe card number is taken off from the lot… I guess my concern is: I would hate to have somebody show up to teach Monday morning, go to get in the lot, not be able to get in, not know what to do, and be responsible for teaching a class in 20 minutes.
AD: I think everybody has been informed.
FA: Diana, I hope that’s true. I’ve seen a number of e-mail exchanges that would lead me to believe that it may not be true. We think that if we treated people the way the airlines treat over-subscribing, over-selling of an airplane, that we would have gotten 20 volunteers. But the price or the benefit to volunteer price was not high enough and so it yielded too few volunteers. If we dealt with it the way the airlines do, the volunteers’ reward would be free parking for the year. These people do pay a higher amount to park in the lot that’s gated than an un-gated lot. I think if we did that, we’d have the 20 volunteers and have our problem solved in that manner as opposed to a matter that identifies somebody then essentially forces them out of the lot.
Guest Parking (FA – 8/21/2008)
FA: The rumor is – and I haven’t seen any evidence except from a faculty member that told me that they were informed by Parking Services that when the garage opens, all guest parking will be in the garage – that guests and visitors that come to the campus will go to the garage for their parking. Which means, we’re back to that issue we looked at last year where there was an effort to charge departments for guest permits. It’s my understanding that the system that was in place all of last year worked. We were able to find places to be gracious hosts to our visitors and guests and we met their needs. When I get a note from a faculty member that is concerned about the issue, the only way I can get an answer is to ask.
AD: We will get back to you with an answer to that at the next Meet and Confer.
FA: We had hoped that we might get to the College of Ed Climate Task Force before Mark Nook had to go do some advising work that he had a prior commitment on.
FA: You mean Mark Jaede?
FA: Right. Mark Jaede.
FA: Freud’s in the room. (laughter)
FA: I do have a relative that’s going to school at Steven’s Point – that’s probably where that came from.
AD: That’s probably why…. Early this afternoon I was having a conversation with Mark Jaede and Mark Mills so I was dealing with two Marks and I guess since I’m a sheister it worked pretty well. (laughter) Anyway, Mark had, just a few days ago, sent the revision for the proposal for the consultant to my office and that is being processed. The consultant’s contract will be handled/taken care of. I think a pre-meeting on campus with some folks in September and then the consultants are expected to be on campus doing work in October.
FA: Could we expect that by next Meet and Confer we will have the consultant under contract?
AD: The answer is yes.
FA: Thank you. What is the pleasure of the Meet and Confer group? Because what happened is that the Provost and I met and we identified high priority items that we have now taken care of. We’ve also taken care of items that people said they’d like to hear about. What’s your pleasure?
AD: We have about five minutes until we talk about the Foundations of Excellence but we can take a couple of minutes to talk about University Scholars.
FA: Yes. Okay.
University Scholars and Endowed Chairs (FA – 5/1/2008)
FA: That’s our request and we’re simply trying to find out what the intentions are.
AD: I think it would make some sense to establish a small group to explore the issues that are involved and the process of identifying or selecting university scholars – pointing out and figuring out the work that needs to be done and development of some recommendations on how to accomplish the goals of developing the process. Once we have that in place then a committee to do the actual criteria for selection. If we could do a small group of faculty and administrators to begin to explore what’s involved in this process that would be a good first step.
FA: Are you proposing a similar composition as the task force on 9-Month Appointments?
AD: Yes. Three and Three.
FA: That seems reasonable. One of our problems will be knowledge with regard to the collective bargaining agreement – that both the 9-Month Appointment and the University Scholars interface with the language in the bargaining agreement and the number of people on our side that are intimately aware of that language is a relatively small number. I think we can do three, but my pool of people that would really be able to contribute have to understand the language of the agreement. I doubt very much if many of my members read the bargaining agreement as night-time/bedtime reading. – which I do out of necessity. (laughter) Some people think I’ve memorized it.
FA: I think people are capable of reading it.
FA: We have many faculty members who are capable of reading.
FA: So the pool increases significantly.
FA: It seems like a reasonable thing to do and to happen.
FA: So I’m assuming this would be a task force also of limited duration.
AD: Yes.
FA: We did have a time specific for both Dave Warne and Mike Gilbert. They have both arrived and I think we have a very simple matter to deal with because of the conversations which have been occurring on a regular basis. The president kind of smirked when I said we’d be done by 4:00 p.m. He still has that smirk on his face. In reality, the reason we can use this time wisely is because there is good work and good communication occurring prior to the meeting. Let us hope that that becomes normative because all of us have more interesting things to do with our lives than sit in this room. So I’m not sure how this is going to be handled, but I see that my bridge partner, he is my bridge partner, Dave Warne has a handout that’s coming around that deals with Foundations of Excellence.
(President Potter left the meeting at 3:58 p.m.)
Foundations of Excellence (AD – 4/17/2008)
FA: Since we’re at Meet and Confer, the piece of business that we have to conduct is the formality of a request relative to, I believe, populating some task forces or committees. I take it that some of this is background material and some is action material. With the chance that by moving to action material we’ll have to back up and look at the background material, I think we can move to the actual proposed items.
FA: What we’re looking at is being able to go into the Senate, starting already next week, and get approval from them on the process for beginning to populate the task force for the Foundations of Excellence in the first year of college through the processes that we need to work from there. What you have in front of you is kind of a background piece. The only one that I think is germane to us today is the very poorly hand-drawn stuff on the back of one of them where you have my scratching. I will attempt in the future to actually have put this on a word processer, but water dripped out of the ceiling in my office and my word processer isn’t working right now so you got what you got.
FA: Okay.
FA: What this deals with really is the structure we’re looking at. The language on the Web site, if you look at the Foundations of Excellence who we have contracted with to help mentor and guide us through the process of establishing recommendations on a first-year college program – and I hesitate to say experience because we’re using that language already to mean something more than this. They make some recommendations on the structure which is very similar to what the academic planning groups used last time around. But the language to become aware of is the task force. That is actually every faculty, staff, and student stakeholder who is involved in the process at all – everyone. So when people talk about the task force, it’s just really the people in the process. The two important groups for us are the steering committee and the steering committee has already had four faculty appointed – myself, Balsy, Victoria Williams and Debra Leigh. We have spent a bit of time briefly over the summer kind of getting ready for the process. Also on the task force will be invited several people from the other stakeholder constituencies and we’ll talk about that as time goes on. The faculty and others then also need to populate eight or nine subgroups and that’s the ladder that you see starting with Philosophy and going down to improvement. The Foundation provides a small booklet, three to 5 pages depending on the topic, of starting questions, places to gather data, find information and answer key questions in each of those particular dimensions. Based on those questions then that subgroup will make recommendations that come back to the steering committee and eventually are incorporated into the final report.
AD: Included in the documents you received today are the dimensions. There are nine of them. They’re known by the short word or phrase at the end of each one. For example, the first one, Philosophy, the second, Organization, the third one, Learning, and so forth. These would be the specific areas addressed by the subcommittees.
FA: So what we are asking is to have in essence, that structure recognized and approved so that we can take it in. Our goal is to put a minimum of probably five on each of those nine subgroups, maybe more. Two faculty, if willing, then drawing from the other constituencies. We certainly have not yet talked to students but would like to have at least one students serving on each group – that’s the recommendation. Somewhere between five and eight folk will work on those projects. The timeline has not been approved. We need to get the steering committee to meet for that. But the dimension reports, those nine subcommittees there, we are targeting having their work done on February 27, 2009. The key part of their work will probably begin around the 15th of October. We’re still gathering some information to have available to them so they can start their work in an informed fashion. I guess the action is: can we go to Senate and request a process of populating with faculty?
AD: Can I just elaborate what Dave said? The call for participation draft is in front of you and the bullet items there simply enumerate the essential elements of the Foundations of Excellence Self-study. I know the terminology is maybe a bit confusing so that is one of the reasons Dave and I wanted to come here today. As Dave said, the task force is everyone on campus who participates in any dimension of this. We learned at the national launch meeting in North Carolina back in July that the average task force is seventy members in size, so it could be that size or a little be smaller or larger. Obviously it won’t meet regularly if it’s that big. There will be some sort of luncheon or kick-off event in September, a mid-year check up and a celebratory closure event at the end of the year. The steering committee is the hub of the wheel. We are at the point where the steering committee is beginning to become clearer. It includes the subcommittee chairs, and that would include presumably the four faculty appointed by the FA, it includes the Provost, the Vice President for Student Life and Development, the representative for Institutional Effectiveness so that would be a group of around twelve to fifteen people. And as Dave said, the subcommittees will consist of approximately five to seven members. We would also like to have students involved.
FA: It’s our intention from our side to take this back to Senate with a proposal that we would populate the eight or nine groups in a manner similar to how we populated the groups for the Academic Planning. We know that the call has to go out relatively quickly to find out what interests are and we have to work on the detail of how we will work with you as we did with the Academic Planning to identify who the FA representatives are. That’s what our intention would be and I trust that Dave will represent that well at Senate. If the Senate agrees, then we’ll have the method and be able to move forward and will give reports and the matter will simply be a report.
AD: Right.
AD: That’s certainly an agreeable process. In addition to the FA representation the MSUAASF will also have their representative to act in a similar process.
AD: On the last bullet on the front page – the Web stuff. Is that something we need to develop on campus or do they provide it?
AD: That is part of the consulting fee and it is very sophisticated and well set-up. I’ve already worked through that with Lisa Foss.
AD: If we need to provide links or anything please let my folks know.
AD: Great.
FA: As far as I’m concerned, ready or not, the semester starts with students on the 25th. Move-in happens over the weekend. Have a good remainder of the day.
Adjourned: 4:05 p.m.