Approved 11-6-08
Meet and Confer Notes
10-16-2008
Administration: President Potter, Provost Spitzer, Judith Siminoe, Mitchell Ruvinstein, Kristi Tornquist, Wanda Overland, Diana Lawson, Steve Ludwig, Patty Dyslin – notetaker
Faculty: John W. Palmer, Mark Jaede, Judy Kilborn, JoAnn Gasparino, David Warne, Bill Hudson, Michael Connaughton, Frances Kayona, Michael Tripp, Balsy Kasi
Approval of Minutes: 10-2-2008 – approved
FA: We do have some awkwardness here. It’s my understanding that Polly sent the draft of the minutes to both you and myself simultaneously.
AD: That’s correct.
FA: Bringing it back together, we should have the same person that did the notes bring the comments back together.
AD: Ordinarily we do.
FA: Okay. Thank you.
UNFINISHED BUSINESS:
UB1. Email as Official Communication. Redux (AD – 3/31/2008)
AD: We gave this to you at the last meeting and you were going to review it and respond with some comments to that this session.
FA: Yes. Judy Kilborn has asked to lead on that.
FA: We appreciate the revision of this. We do still have some concerns regarding this. I’ll just start the conversation and I assume other people will add their perspectives. The second statement that was stricken from the record here “An e-mail shall not be used as a means of communication for confidential information or personnel actions.” Senate asked specifically that that kind of statement be in here so it’s very clear that personnel information won’t come out electronically.
AD: Isn’t that put in further down?
FA: Where do you see it further down?
AD: I’ll have to check. I’m looking for my copy.
FA: Because I don’t see it added to…
AD: Yeah. I think what was substituted for that is the statement that highly sensitive information should not be sent by e-mail.
FA: Could we include personnel actions?
AD: Sure, as an e.g., an example?
FA: Pardon?
AD: Do you want it as a “for example?”
FA: Yes. Under the added bullet item 3 in the bulleted list, the second part of that statement seems to undercut the first part. If we say “highly sensitive information should not be sent by e-mail” isn’t it true that any personal or private information should not be sent by e-mail? Is there really any way of having appropriate security safeguards when sending protected information via e-mail system?
AD: We know that you really can’t assure the privacy of any e-mail so that’s sort of an idea of communicating the idea that there are some things that you probably shouldn’t send by e-mail. Highly sensitive information would be among those.
FA: I certainly agree with the second part. What I’m saying is that the first part seems to suggest that there’s some way of safeguarding information when in fact there isn’t. So it seems to be a contradictory statement.
FA: Many of the e-mails that I receive from offices on this campus come with a disclaimer at the bottom that says that it isn’t a secure means of communication. So why would we even think about using this means of communication when the information is sensitive and protected?
AD: Michael, did Judith think she was coming later?
AD: Yes.
AD: I would like to ask that we hold off on further discussion until she arrives.
AD: Yes. Can we do that?
FA: That’s fine. We’re partially into it though. Do you want to repeat our statements then?
AD: We’ll come back to this particular point. Then if there are others….
FA: There are a few additional things.
AD: I think it would be better if we waited. She has another meeting to attend first.
FA: Okay. I’ll put this back in my folder and pull it back out when Judith comes.
UB2. Overhead on Grants (FA – 2/28/2008)
AD: I went back to our original discussion in February just to get where we’re at and what I would like to propose, particularly around stipends for faculty that are in addition to their regular compensation, there appeared to be excessive charges for benefits. So what I would like to propose is that for research activities funded by the university that are under $3,000.00, that we used a rate of 15% which more clearly aligns with FICA, Medicare, and the other things that are in addition to what the employer pays on stipends to faculty. The only caveat is that either the faculty member or Sponsored Programs notifies HR in a timely way so that they can make the exception, because it’s an exception to the compensation program. That’s what we would propose for projects funded by the university programs – to reduce it to 15% for under $3,000.00.
FA: That certainly does address, I think, smaller awards. Will we see this in writing in some way?
AD: I certainly could provide it to you in writing. Would you like me to send it to you, John, just a proposal along those lines? If there was some discussion about it, rather than go iterations back and forth, I thought I would present it this way.
FA: Any number that you would pick would be arbitrary, I recognize.
AD: More or less…
FA: I recognize that. But there is a philosophical discussion here. That is: if a faculty member is full-time for the academic year and the M&E budget then provides full compensation for the fringe benefit package, the fringe benefit package is paid for.
AD: Some of it is.
FA: Not counting the employee contribution.
AD: There are other parts as well for the employer.
AD: Social Security and Medicare proportionate to your salary/compensation.
FA: So if I make $100,000.00 that’s what it costs the university, why would we, philosophically reduce that $100,000.00 commitment if an outside agency wanted to hire me above and beyond the $100,000.00? What difference would it make if it’s $3,000.00 or $10,000.00? Wouldn’t the philosophical position be that the real cost of the added compensation would be charged, which is the variable cost of FICA, Medicare…
AD: That’s a different question than the one that you originally asked. In talking about this, if opening this door begins to pull forward a whole lot of additional questions with respect to overhead, indirect charges, rationale, for the whole array of grant funded activity, that’s work for a taskforce to examine. What we’re doing now is we answer one question and then another one is asked. When we answer that question, another one is asked.
FA: Uh-hum.
AD: That’s not a productive way of doing this work. The original questions was: on small grants that the faculty get, that are paid in accordance with the contract as stipends, it appears to us the charges are excessive. We examined that. We’ve agreed with the FA and are suggesting that an appropriate charge would be 15% - the problem being that the stipends are paid as salary and that’s about the additional cost.
FA: Uh-hum.
AD: The cost that has to be paid as a consequence of that additional salary. So I’m not opposed to exploring other aspects of the way grants are administered and how charges are assigned, but it seems to me that if we’re going to undertake a wholesale examination of this territory that we ought to put together a workgroup to do that. An iterative series of questions is not the way to get there.
FA: What I was trying to do is see if there was a philosophy behind. What I’m hearing, your response is, that this was a direct response to the narrow question of what to do with these small grants.
AD: That’s correct.
FA: Thank you. So you’re going to send me something?
AD: Yes, I will – a summary of that, carefully written.
AD: Again, I have no interest in shutting down the conversation, but if we want an extended conversation we should structure it differently.
FA: So one thing we might do is take a look at that and respond to that and also think about if we want a more extended conversation.
FA: Uh-huh.
FA: Okay.
UB3. Sponsored Programs (FA – 4/3/2008)
AD: At our last session we said we would have a meeting between Dennis and John. That meeting took place.
FA: Yes.
AD: Since you were there, John, would you like to provide us with an update?
FA: Sure. You and I and Dennis and Francis and Robert met initially for a very productive conversation. I then met with Dennis one-on-one for a progress report and I’m satisfied that the actions your office and Dennis’ office have initiated will address our concerns with regard to the Sponsored Programs.
AD: Thank you.
UB4. Status of 1.B.1 Task Force (FA – 5/1/2008)
AD: There hasn’t been any real change in that status yet but we expect that there should be some conversation about it coming up shortly now that Susan Moss is back.
AD: Just the nature of the conversation and because she will be leaving, it offers us the opportunity to rethink the way the job descriptions for those folks associated with the 1.B.1 be configured. I’ve agreed with the Color Caucus and others that we’ll go through a consultation process to look at how duties are assigned and how that job is defined. One of the things that appeared to be at issue was that people aren’t sure of where to go with conflicts that do not satisfy the legal definitions in the 1.B.1 process. I had suggested whether or not this calls for an ombudsman sort of position and the Color Caucus felt that that would not be helpful. So we’re focused on the Affirmative Action office and the way it’s configured and duties are assigned and that’s the next step. We’ll begin to do that now that Susan Moss is back from leave.
FA: So we can expect that people are going to be asked for a common meeting time?
AD: Yes.
FA: Thank you.
UB5. Vehicle Use Authorization (FA – 8/21/2008)
FA: I had shared that at statewide Meet and Confer we were given a copy of the frequently asked questions document that had been prepared. That appears to address the concerns that we’ve had over some time. I forgot who it was I talked to about that, but we’re hopeful that we’ll see something come out from the person that’s responsible for the vehicle use authorization to the faculty that encourages them to look at the latest document – which is the latest interpretation of critical words. The Chancellor did engage in this conversation and the Chancellor did ask “what if” questions as if he was teaching. He sought that counsel at the Meet and Confer table and Gail Olson, legal counsel, said “Well if you did that Chancellor, you would be in compliance with the policy.” So if somebody gets those Meet and Confer minutes they can get a definitive answer to what university business is or is not right from the Chancellor’s example. But the frequently asked questions, the latest version, does give what faculty would need to know to do the right thing. It doesn’t address the challenge of not giving direction to students as to how to get to an event.
FA: I’m wondering, is that on the MnSCU website or is it a print document? How would faculty get to it and can we have some direct pointing?
AD: You said this was at the statewide Meet and Confer?
FA: Correct.
FA: Sometimes the give us things that have been on a website. I’m wondering where faculty would get this if they needed it or if somebody is going to point to that document somewhere?
AD: I’d like to see what it says.
AD: Are you talking about the document that came from Keswick?
FA: Yes. Keswick/Joiner. At statewide Meet and Confer we were given a document that was two days old in preparation. At the Meet and Confer we were given a new document and following Meet and Confer there was a final version of the frequently asked question section that I would think would be in the web page areas of the vehicle use authorization policy.
AD: Might I suggest – we have not received it per se, we can go look around for it on the various web sites – but if the Faculty Association can request it’s location, then if you wanted us to publish that via e-mail to the faculty or something, we’d certainly do that. That might be the quickest way to get it – if you could ask where it is. I suspect too that it’s published on a website. If they got you the link, if you wanted us to forward that, we can do that. It’s good information for students too, so I think its helpful to lots of people.
FA: I believe I have an electronic copy of the document and I certainly can ask for assistance. We were not given a URL for the information.
AD: Okay. So if you could send that link, or send that electronic file, we can get it on a URL someplace.
UB6. Guest Parking (FA – 8/21/2008)
Ad. This was a document that we provided at the last Meet and Confer that you were going to respond to.
FA: We have a couple of questions. The important piece here is the brief paragraph here that talks about the daytime guests – the people invited to campus and so on that we were talking about. It says “ there would be issued through Public Safety and the sponsoring unit a temporary permit.” One question is: who will pay for that and at what cost?
AD: There are two kinds of people – guests and visitors.
FA: Right.
AD: The guests are the ones who are defined as being compensated while they are here.
FA: Well I think that it should include people who aren’t compensated but who are volunteering their time to….
AD: Guests who are volunteers are supposed to be included.
FA: Okay. So the temporary permit is complimentary to the guest?
AD: For those who are coming out of good will to the campus.
FA: Okay. In some cases, there may not be a dean involved. The Public Safety and the sponsoring unit – you talked about the deans having access to permits.
AD: In addition to the fact that you can get these permits through Public Safety, deans can also purchase permits, and that might be more convenient and cover both guests and visitors, that they can loan out. They’re permanent permits.
FA: So the actual application process would go through Public Safety than to the dean.
AD: Yes, for the guests. Just the dean is another option who has these permits that they purchase.
FA: Okay. I guess the new element here is the creation of the possibility through Public Safety of issuing such a complimentary permit.
AD: Actually, that was the previous practice.
FA: Okay.
AD: So it’s codified somewhat more, but that was the previous practice.
AD: Hang on a second. I think we’ve got something else going on here.
FA: Are you on the back side of the document?
FA: We’re looking under “Proposed Resolution.”
AD: The visitor and guest are defined on the front page.
FA: Uh-huh.
AD: Who’s paying the cost of issuing free permits?
FA: We’ve already stipulated that parking is never free, there’s always a cost. It’s just a matter of who is paying for it.
AD: Yes. But we agreed that in these certain cases that we would give them.
AD: But there is no cost to them.
AD: That’s right.
AD: The question is: who’s paying? In that case, the university is assuming the cost as lost revenue of that permit.
AD: Yes.
AD: I think Mark’s question is: does this process set up an unlimited number of those passes for guests?
AD: No. There’s another paragraph that goes on to talk about large numbers of guests that we just can’t accommodate or large groups. There would have to be special accommodation. It’s the occasional lecturer to a class or professional that comes to help is what we’re talking about. If it’s on a large scale, we won’t be able to do that.
FA: Let me make an attempt here. When I read this sentence, there’s Public Safety involvement, and the sponsoring unit. What I heard the President ask is: are we simply absorbing the cost of the temporary permit and no one is going to be charged-back for the issuance of that temporary permit.
AD: That was his first question and that was correct. The second question was relative to the limit on this. On a given day there could be limits to where the permit is or what we might do.
FA: If on that day there are across the day, guests from multiple departments and there happen to be 15 guests arriving on that day and there’s plenty of room in the ramp, that there would be 15 temporary passes issued without charge-back to the college or department.
AD: Yes, except they’re typically not issued for the ramp, they’re for surface parking.
FA: There would be temporary passes issued without charge-back to the college or department?
AD: Yes.
AD: So the only line that’s a little vague, and I think it needs to remain vague is for special programs and what can be accommodated. The intent there is for a large group such that it would exceed the parking capacity.
AD: We’re having one of those kind of peculiar events today with MEA.
FA: Right.
AD: Okay. So does that answer the questions?
FA: Let me push one of the things he was asking a little bit different direction. Let’s say now that I have an interdisciplinary program and it’s not in any one department or any one college. I’m assuming that somebody who is a part of that program could go and would be included under that, correct?
AD: Certainly.
FA: So we can assure people of that. That’s helpful information.
FA: I just want to clarify. It says “through Public Safety and the sponsoring unit.” Now, does that mean that if I’m bringing a speaker into my class I must speak to both Public Safety and to my dean?
AD: Thinking back, we should have said “or the sponsoring unit.” If UPB is sponsoring some speaker to come to campus, or the Women’s Center, rather than a faculty member for class. I think a faculty member independently could say I’m having the banker come to talk about finance and he’s volunteering his time….
FA: And that could be directly through a contact with Public Safety and it wouldn’t require going through the dean’s office?
AD: Yes.
FA: Okay. And if it involves a large number of people then we’re talking about something different and I think we all understand that.
AD: Or if on that day others have a large number of people coming to campus. Even though you’re having one, it’s impacted by others’ behavior.
FA: Sure. I think that’s reasonable enough.
FA: Having received the inquiry in mid-August, the concern that I heard from our members was who was going to pay for the guests that volunteer their time to serve us in classrooms. What the President described would be exactly what we would hope would occur, and that is; if someone is coming to the campus to do a service for us, that we’ll do what we can to make that parking piece free of charge and not penalize, financially, individual departments. But, there is a point at which, when you’re planning an event that it will grow so large as to be problematic in giving away the parking. That’s what I’m hearing come forth from this. Your response is one that I feel our membership will be happy with.
AD: That’s what I’m interested in – your response. Of course, guests, I think, will increasingly choose to go to the ramp and pay/park because it’s simple and they can find it and it’s covered. So that option remains. There is this option too.
FA: Thank you.
AD: Any other comments or questions?
PROGRESS REPORTS ON LONG-TERM CONCERNS:
PR1. Academic Plan (AD 10/18/2007)
AD: Progress on that is proceeding essentially the way we described it at the last Meet and Confer. There will be a meeting next week for the workforce development working group. There will be a review of their progress. The community of scholars work has gone to the Strategic Planning Committee for comment and that will be distributed to the campus for comment and feedback. We’re moving forward with those activities and several of the other working groups are scheduled as well to have reports in the next couple of months.
FA: One of the recommendations identified in the work plan was by the first of January was, and approved also, PK-16 and STEM Initiative searches and we’re wondering what the status of those is.
AD: They haven’t started yet. It’s taking some time to write the job descriptions. That hasn’t been done yet but it’s high on the priority list of things to get done quickly.
FA: So that means it hasn’t gone down to MnSCU for assigning a bargaining unit?
AD: No, not yet.
FA: Okay. Thank you for the clarification.
FA: Do we still expect to meet the January 1 target date?
AD: Unlikely.
FA: There was a lively discussion at Strategic Planning regarding the Community of Scholars document. I did get asked by Lisa Foss how it went. I thought it was a very productive discussion and that the document that will emerge is going to be a good document to assist us in becoming something more than we are today.
AD: That’s very good.
FA: We checked it off.
AD: Okay.
AD: Do you want this item to stay on the agenda under Progress Reports because it’s on-going work or is there comfort now that there’s ongoing work in progress on the Academic Plan and it doesn’t need to be reviewed at Meet and Confer?
FA: Probably not at every Meet and Confer but come back to it occasionally.
AD: Okay.
FA: The same is probably true for number 2 here.
PR2. Diversity Plan (AD – 11/1/2007)
AD: Shahzad is back from Pakistan and I will meet with him and Jane Olson before I go to China next week. That meeting will constitute the steering committee and they will begin their work. There’s some pre-work going on already and they’re gathering information. That work is moving ahead.
FA: Thank you.
PR3. COE Climate Task Force (FA – 9/22/2005)
FA: I’m happy to say that the consultant, Pamela Lassiter, was on campus Monday, Tuesday, and didn’t end up being on campus Wednesday because she was called out of town by a personal emergency. She met with Provost Spitzer, with the task force, with several Jewish faculty members from the College of Education, with the Faculty of Color from the college of Education. The task force had what I thought were very productive conversations with her both at the beginning and at the end of her visit and we came out of it with a promise that she would be getting to us by the end of this week a draft of a survey instrument. I think that in general, the task force was happy with the interactions, confident her competence and intelligence and experience in doing this kind of work, and the plan is for the actual on-site work to take place the week of November 17th. There will probably be some on-line surveying of faculty and staff and administrators in the college that will start earlier than that, but her actual presence on campus will be during the week of November 17th. The schedule is that by the end of the term there will be a report and a set of recommendations for future actions to remediate any problems that are identified in the study.
AD: Any questions or comments?
FA: The one thing that didn’t happen because she had to depart early was a meeting with Dean Kate Steffens. I understand that Ms. Lassiter is going to be attempting to confer with her by telephone. One way or another that input will happen because it’s an important part of the process as well.
AD: Okay.
PR4. Intellectual Property and Releases from PR (FA – 8/30/2007)
FA: We’ve sent that down to the IFO office. I’ve not heard back from them. I would think that we’ll be at a disadvantage without Judith here to talk about what was there I’m optimistic we’ll have a response back to guide us for the next Meet and Confer.
AD: So we’ll leave it until then.
PR5. Report on Budget (AD – 10/18/2007
AD: Briefly, if you followed last week, the state provided an economic report on the state. There was some speculation with the precursor to the revenue forecast in November. But it wasn’t a lot about that but talked about somewhat more than expected tax revenues earlier in this year. But did do some handwringing about a recession and what might be the future. So we’re still waiting for that to inform our process. We’re having good discussions, I think, within the budget advisory group and within a group that we had on assumptions. I’m going to be calling on those folks again. I haven’t been able to talk to Dan recently, but to talk about an additional scenario based on some discussion of a $3 billion or so deficit in the state – just to look with sensitivity at what that might mean to us. We have a $2 billion scenario now. So we’ll be looking at that for sensitivity as we go along. The materials are available at the Budget Advisory Group web site and we’re moving along.
FA: Giving a historical perspective, the last time we had a deficit was about 2002. How does this one compare to that one?
AD: In 2001 there was a $4 billion deficit and it was, of course the budget was smaller then because inflation has increased that. So now if we talk about the scale of $3 billion model, it’s somewhat smaller than the conditions we faced in 2001 statewide. With respect to the university, we’re in better financial condition now. In 2001 we didn’t really have reserves and we didn’t have much flexibility. We now have reserves that we built over this time period.
FA: Because of that?
AD: Well, no. We were supposed to have reserves then, also. We’ve chosen to build them and be consistent with Board policy at 5% of our revenues. If this becomes a deep recession, that sure would seem to be an extenuating situation where you might consider using those reserves. Also, we won’t be in the situation we were in 2001-2002, but at the same time we’re facing difficulties with appropriations. We have concerns about trying to build our reserve at the same time. As you also recall, at that time there was less constraint on tuition increases then there has been recently. Those are a few characteristics comparing that time to this time.
AD: I would just temper one word you used and say that we chose to build our reserves in accordance with Board policy as one chooses to obey the speed limit or pay your taxes. (laughter)
FA: And in that light, through the Budget Advisory discussion it came to our attention that there is discussion of a change in Board policy with regard to what the mandatory reserve amounts might be. If it became what they propose, would take money away from being able to do our delivery of service and put it into a fund, that in my opinion would make it easy for the legislature to steal that money. So the process yielded information. I did send that down to the Government Relations person at the IFO to alert them to the fact that there was this policy that sometimes when you look at financials, not everybody reads the fine print.
AD: There were two issues: one is the level of reserves and how they are calculated and there’s a separate issue out there about accruing funds for what’s called uncompensated absences. It’s balances of vacation or sick leave that one might expect to pay when a person ends their employment. There’s also some discussion around that both as a concept in accounting to recognize it and in actual cash. But that’s the next few years or so.
AD: Anything else on this topic?
PR6. Article 22 Task Force (FA – 2/1/2007)
AD: The PDP/PDR group has met and finalized the calendar and the information regarding promotion and tenure and schedules. Those are currently updated on the Web. I have a few copies to pass around if anybody wants a printed version of that. There are still some other topics that we’re working on. We haven’t finalized the non-renewal and we need to do some more examination of the issues relating to fixed term faculty and their PDP/PDRs. Any questions?
FA: Somebody forgot they were supposed to ask a question here so I’ll ask the question. There seems to be a difference of opinion emerging with regard to the PDR. The document that’s posted on the web site is verbatim language from the agreement about the PDR. But I do know that at least one dean interprets what’s in the contract differently than we would interpret the contract. PDRs are being reviewed as we speak. The time frame for finishing them is close at hand. We take the language that is in Article 22 to be literally what it says. I’m not sure what message is being conveyed to the deans with regard to PDRs.
AD: This is one of the topics that is on the agenda for the task force to discuss and I think that’s the appropriate place for us to address that and then come back.
FA: In the meanwhile, people are getting mixed messages about what’s supposed to happen. Specifically whether or not comments go to the individuals or if they must be passed on to deans.
AD: According to the contract, the dean can ask the department and the chair to make comments about the extent to which the PDR and PDP meet the departmental goals.
FA: Uh-huh.
AD: That language, I think, is pretty clear in the contract.
FA: We bring the concern because faculty get asked. We don’t like to have them in the position of having to be the advocate for language in the contract with their supervisor. I know that’s a matter we need to talk about. I raise it so that you’re aware that we do take the language to mean what we believe it says and that is that the PDR comments go to the faculty member. We also do acknowledge that if a dean chooses to ask of the department and department chair whether the plan which the PDR is based upon meets department goals. We acknowledge that.
AD: Uh-huh.
FA: Unfortunately, there are other planning activities that are going to cut into the meeting time of the task force right.
AD: Yes, there are. It’s unfortunate unless we can schedule to meet at an alternate time.
FA: So the faculty can be asked to give comment and they’re supposed to give it?
FA: I hesitate to get into a discussion of precise language in the contract in Meet and Confer. I can give you the page in the contract where that is described. It’s described on pages 92 and 93. If the dean asks how the plan relates to the goals of the department, the department is to answer that question. The department would answer that question.
AD: And the Chair.
FA: The Chair could be asked the same question.
AD: Anything further on this one? We’ll go back to the first item on the agenda.
UB1. Email as Official Communication. Redux. CONTINUED
AD: There were some questions, Judith, with regard to the policy. Judy would you like to…
FA: Would you like me to start with bullet item 3?
AD: Yes, I think so.
FA: Which is kind of where we were before?
AD: Yes. Right.
FA: We see that as contradictory. The end says that highly sensitive information should not be sent by e-mail which we certainly agree with. But given that and given the fact that it’s not private, it even says that on the e-mail stamp, we’re wondering how that fits in with using appropriate security safeguards when sending protected information. I mean, there aren’t really any so that’s a confusing statement to us.
AD: Well I’ll tell you what the thinking is and it may not be perfect. There was a more restrictive statement before about not sending any personal or any personnel information through e-mail and the problem with that is that it’s more restrictive than the state law about information and it’s more restrictive than the system procedure and it raises a question if somebody sends you an e-mail saying, of course this wouldn’t necessarily apply to everybody but, I need to take leave and you reply and say yes or no, then you’ve violated the policy. So the intent was to make it restrictive enough to be protective, but not so restrictive that it’s not practical for the institution to have policy that’s more restrictive than state law about personal information.
FA: I don’t know if we can clarify that some way. The other thing that we had talked about the statement being taken out about confidential information in that opening paragraph because that’s something that Senate actually asked for.
AD: Okay.
FA: I certainly understand your example. That’s not what we had in mind. What we had in mind more were things like disciplinary action or things that normally come by what might even be certified mail. Can you help with that?
FA: The bargaining agreement does define notice – how one is given notice of certain actions.
FA: That’s really what we’re talking about there.
AD: So maybe….
AD: In this policy, we couldn’t violate those doctrines or statements in the contract without that kind of notice being delivered in certain ways. So that is a kind of protection essentially.
AD: You would like to have that stated that if there’s a contractual agreement to deliver a certain document in a way that would be honored.
FA: People, I think, need reassurance of that. Another thing that we had a question about was at the bottom of the first page. This is new information in terms of following university procedures to preserve official records which may include e-mail. We think that probably is restricted to certain sorts of people.
AD: That’s right.
FA: And that it really doesn’t apply to… not everybody would need to keep records. We’re wondering if we could clarify somehow what kind of people we’re talking about. So for example here’s a question. Let’s say that we get something via e-mail regarding a student’s progress or regarding a grade or something like that. Do we have to hold onto that? And so that was a confusion and that’s a new piece in here. There was also a question on Appendix B regarding the last item under formatting. “When a message is to be sent to many recipients, use an e-mail program that will not list all the recipients in the message.” There was a question about software for this. Apparently in D2L you can’t do this very effectively. I know I tried the other day and I’ve been told this is an issue with that program. As I said, the question was simply: what software are you talking about here?
AD: These are messages that would be sent via the regular e-mail system not through D2L.
AD: Potentially we could set up a some work committee in D2L.
FA: Doesn’t D2L use the regular e-mail system to….
FA: It sends it to Husky Net.
FA: You can do this in D2L but the default is you click on the student’s name or you click in your class list all the students you would like to e-mail and it automatically puts them in the “to” line. You have to then select all, cut and paste, pull it down to the BCC or you have to just open the e-mail and use the address book. Like everything else in D2L, there are three or four ways to do this. If this is going to be something that’s a concern, we need those pieces of information included more intentionally in the D2L training when we talk about data privacy or something. If you just use the function as it is defaulted in D2L, it will be out of compliance with this statement.
AD: This wasn’t policy, just guidelines suggested. It was suggested as a common courtesy. I don’t know if you ever get things from the system office where they’ll have a hundred different people.
FA: So is the emphasis in that bullet to use an e-mail program or is it to not list all the recipients in the message or BCC people. The weight of the sentence really is talking about using an e-mail program that does that and that raises the question then. Perhaps it would be wise to get that out.
AD: The idea is not to list 79,000 names in the “to” list so that you get six pages of to’s before you get to the message.
AD: If I can go back to your earlier one. The intent of part at the bottom of the first page has to do with our records retention schedule which is monitored by our university archivist. They have for each office, which documents should be maintained. I think that’s where you would find out what kind information should be kept. That was the intent.
FA: Does this apply to everybody though or are there just certain people who need to do this.
AD: Depending on your role. If you’re chairing a university committee, then most likely maintaining those records would be appropriate. But your communications between each other in your office/department may not be covered.
AD: The only thing I would add to it is that it wouldn’t be fair to give you the impression we’re only talking about things that are subject to the records act the way public records are defined. If it’s doing university business, it could be requested and we would have to see if we could find it and provide it. Certainly when you get into issues of litigation, the burden on us is to produce every record, including e-mails, that are in people’s possession. It is intended to give you some hint about the importance of being thoughtful about destruction of records.
AD: For example, I’ve been in situations where legal action was undertaken and a list of people who had discussed an issue was produced and personal communications related to that issue were requested and the university is at fault if those persons having knowledge of that request then destroy those records. So there are a complicated array of responsibilities under the law. We can’t possibly put all of them in this document.
FA: Is it necessary to include in the statement for the policy e-mail dissemination?
AD: That’s a good question. That is a change from the previous formulation that made it sound like we’re only talking about official records. That was really my opinion that I didn’t want people to have the impression that their personal, I shouldn’t say their personal. I didn’t want people to have the impression that there might not be a situation where they would have to produce a record about university business. Does it have to be here? I don’t know that it has to be there. It’s more accurate than the previous one.
FA: As a practical matter, the operating system we have for e-mail takes away my control to delete anyway. Even if I delete and I delete a second time, the record still exists. It’s beyond my control at some point. There is a policy, I assume, at some point the record of my correspondence, received and sent, is deleted or else we’re constantly going to be buying more and more memory to retain this historic record.
AD: That’s exactly what we do.
FA: But even when we lived in a paper world, there was a limit to which one is required to keep – a statutory limit – for keeping materials. This might imply and I wouldn’t want faculty or anyone else to think that they can’t clean up their mailboxes. At the level of folders and to clean up to their delete box knowing that there is a records retention system that automatically is in play. I didn’t know it until I went from being a Mac user to being a Windows user. Suddenly, things that I thought had long ago disappeared from the ether appeared when I operated under Windows that I never saw under Mac. I was surprised and thought, no wonder my mailbox is so full of stuff. I don’t have an answer. I just wonder if this particular topic – it’s certainly parallel to the one of using e-mail and it’s true that if you record an event, you memorialize an event, that there is a lifespan of retaining that information. It’s also true that if you’re subpoenaed, you better not be caught shredding either electronic shredding or real shredding of sensitive documents.
FA: Attachments that come through the e-mail, for example. If I delete an e-mail that’s got an attachment, that all goes away. Is that attachment recoverable through the archives that you have or is that an area where our attention to keeping things like attachments are different because I frankly, right now, don’t necessarily do that. I just assume they’re always attached to the e-mail and it’s living in limbo somewhere.
AD: What happens is we back up our system so any e-mail you get is backed up. But we have it on a schedule where we dump those. We keep it so it’s recoverable for people and we have one week and a month, I can’t tell you what it is. It’s certainly less than three months that we keep those things. If you delete it, it eventually will go away. At some point we can recover it. It takes a lot effort on an individual basis, but if the whole system crashes, we can restore up to so many hours or days at any one time. But then it does go away. We’re not maintaining that. We’re not selecting some people we’re keeping and some we’re not.
FA: I’m not suggesting that.
AD: At some point, everything is deleted.
FA: There’s a misconception here. So those attachments, there may be a need for some education on how to deal with those attachments in terms of what needs to be kept. It just struck me now that I didn’t know the answer to that question.
AD: And our world has gotten messy in that our office managers are aware of these retention policies and schedules and typically have kept paper trails and every year deposited those in our university archives. But as more and more of our correspondence and work happens electronically, that isn’t preserved in a physical format and we’re all keeping things individually in electronic means and then we’re not doing as good a job at maintaining those things.
AD: We may want to have a conversation about that as a separate topic at some point in terms of what ought to be kept, how it ought to be kept, and in what format it should be kept. That’s really something apart from this particular policy.
FA: We link into it based on that paragraph….
AD: It links into it based on that paragraph you cited, that’s for sure. Are there other items that you wanted to point out because then we can make some changes and bring this back. It’s only been about three years that we’ve been working on this one.
FA: I think we’re close to being where we tweak some language. The primary obstacle is the one that deals with the precise language of bullet 3 in light of the deleting of sentence two in the opening paragraph. Perhaps someone from our side could get together with Judith.
FA: It sounded as though Judith had a way to deal with that though.
AD: Do you mean as far as adding something compliant with those requirements?
FA: So it looks like we could be one step removed from having….
FA: I don’t have the document in front of me, but it looks like looking at the one struck in the very first paragraph. It seems like to me it was taken out and moved. Maybe I’m wrong.
AD: That was the intent.
PR7. Status of Administrative Searches: Provost, AVP for Faculty Relations (FA – 5/15/2008), AVP Research & Faculty Development, Dean COFAH, Associate Dean COSE (renewed by FA – 10/2/2008), Associate Dean COSS
AD: The AVP for Faculty Relations search is moving forward. Have the telephone interviews happened yet?
FA: No. We were asked to do an additional task by the Affirmative Action Officer before we could schedule the telephone interviews. But we’re at the point where the document we were asked to produce has been produced and I would expect that we will have scheduled, and hopefully conducted, telephone interviews before the next Meet and Confer.
AD: I wanted to ad that we will be requesting from you some time in the near future for representation on a search for VP for Advancement.
FA: The concern that the President and I talked about on Monday is, it’s probably guided by my experience of serving the AVP for Faculty Relations search committee. We knew that the incumbent in that position was leaving the institution. We knew that in early March. If one counts from the date of that knowledge to where we are with that search, and a similar time frame applies to these other searches, the concern I have is of the quality of the pool that we’ll attract as we get to the end of the cycle of doing interviews and then job offers. We’re looking March and April. Is there some way that we can accelerate this process?
AD: We’re trying to. It’s important to review, and in some cases, make revisions to the job descriptions and that’s taken some time. I do know with the search that you’re talking about there were a number of issues that kept coming up that prolonged that particular search.
FA: We got, at the last Meet and Confer, the names of people convening the other search committees. To my knowledge, none of those have been convened yet.
AD: Right.
FA: That’s part of our concern with the slow speed that we’re moving.
AD: I just can’t accept the judgment that these are slow. The question is again, what standard and expectation. I think they’re deliberate. I think they’re thoughtful and the hiring managers are doing what they’re required to do. I appreciate the questions, but I think each one of these is at the place it needs to be at this point.
FA: Thank you.
PR8. Foundations of Excellence (AD – 4/17/2008)
AD: David, do you want to report on that one?
FA: The dimension groups have formed and are meeting. The steering committee will be fleshed out once that process is completed. We anticipate probably Wednesday or Thursday of next week having met with the dimension groups, all nine of the groups, and getting them started on that process. Then the next steps deal with the faculty survey. You will be notified of that. We’re working on the notification and invitation for faculty and staff. Then the steering committee will look ahead at the next steps. I think we’re in pretty good stead as far as our tasks on campus. We are on a tight time line but we still see no reason that an April 1st deadline can’t be met for most of what it is we’re looking at. I think it’s just ongoing now.
AD: Good. Thank you.
PR9: Task Force on 9-month Appointments (AD/FA – 4/17/2008)
AD: I think a meeting for that group is scheduled for later in this month.
AD: October 27th.
PR10. University Scholars and Endowed Chairs (FA – 5/1/2008)
AD: This task force is attempting to schedule a meeting and right now we’re looking at some time in November. We’re trying to find a date that’s convenient to all of the representatives on that task force.
FA: Thank you.
PR11. Policy on Religious Observances (AD – 4/3/2008)
AD: We need to spend a little bit more time before we can bring something back to Meet and Confer, which we will do.
FA: We have announced that we’ll have three people to participate. We’ll have the election at Senate on Tuesday. It’s going to be interesting. I think there are ten or eleven faculty who wish to be involved.
AD: Good.
AD: Plus some fair share faculty who have communicated with me directly.
FA: Yes. There is that, too.
AD: So you’ll have those names?
FA: Yes.
PR12. Clarification of Student Absence Policy (FA – 10/2/2008)
AD: We’re working on a draft that will be discussed at the Academic Policy Working Group and then will come back to Meet and Confer. It will come through that group to the Faculty Association.
FA: You’ve got the three names?
AD: No.
FA: I thought I’d gotten the three names from the faculty for Mitch’s group.
AD: I’ve got the three names.
FA: We also took action to add a fourth name at Executive Committee on Tuesday that will be going to Senate. So we will have four assuming Senate accepts the action of the Executive Committee.
AD: Thank you.
FA: You’re welcome.
AD: Just to underscore on number 12, that is looking at what should be counted as university approved activities. The commitment we made to support athletic teams and that policy is not being examined by the group. That is a commitment that needs to be honored apart from the work this group is going to do separately.
FA: That is correct.
AD: Any other comments or items?
FA: Today’s boss’ day so we should be nice to the boss.
AD: Steve has something to distribute if that’s okay.
FA: My people have seen that.
AD: Do they want another copy?
FA: I don’t think they do. There was some question about the degree to which that information…
AD: For the notes, this is a copy of the schedule for the fire alarms. Whoever wants one can sure have one.
FA: There was a question about to be raised….
FA: I take it from your comment that you’re not concerned about having too much public knowledge about these things.
AD: No, I’m not concerned about having too much. No. I think it should be planned for and more or less expected rather than people worry when they hear the alarm. It’s a drill to primarily see if we can get the buildings exited and if there are some problems that we see when they do that. Or if the fire alarms work, although we do test during the summer whether they function.
FA: You sure do. I remember. (laughter)
FA: Let it be noted that your copy machine is better than the FA’s copy machine.
FA: The copy we have is not this clear.
AD: Lucie adjusts something….
AD: I think we can have the record show that we adjourned at 4:15 which I believe is a record.
FA: No, no. 4:05.
AD: Yes, that’s true.
FA: This is the second record. It’s the record under your leadership.
AD: Right. Thank you all.
Adjourned: 4:15 p.m.