Final Approved March 19, 2009
Meet and Confer
February 19, 2009
Administration: Provost Spitzer, Larry Chambers, Mitch Rubinstein, Judith Siminoe, Kristi Tornquist, Diana Lawson, Steven Ludwig, Patty Dyslin - notetaker
Faculty: Mark Jaede, JoAnn Gasparino, Bill Hudson, David Warne, Frances Kayona, Debra Leigh, Michael Connaughton, Judith Kilborn, Robert C. Johnson, Balsy Kasi, Michael Tripp
Approval of Notes for 1/15/2009 and 1/29/2009 – approved
Unfinished Business:
1. E-mail as a Means of Disseminating information to Employees
FA: We’re waiting to hear from the TPR committee. Is there any news?
AD: I was checking with them earlier this week related to some other issues. It’s my understanding that they haven’t yet met this semester. We have other IT issues we’d love to have them address.
FA: Okay.
AD: I don’t think we’re quite at that point yet but I think we’re getting close to the point where we need to start moving this one forward.
FA: Okay. We will take that under advisement. Since we have some other things to deal with today we’ll forge ahead.
AD: This is not the most important thing on the agenda.
FA: Right.
FA: Did I just hear the Provost say that you’re initiating that policy?
AD: I said we’re getting close to making that decision.
FA: Okay.
FA: Thank you.
2. Cell Phone Dead Zones in Context of Star Alert
FA: At our last Meet and Confer we talked about the possibility of creating a taskforce of some sort to explore the dead zones for cell phone service in relationship to Star Alert. Steve do you have any further news on that?
AD: I wasn’t aware of that. The news that I have is that when we did our Star Alert test on November 24, 2008, we had over 97% success in the messages getting out. Some of those, the 3% or so lack of success may be due to dead zone but may be due to people having the instrument off, or being in another location without service. We don’t know. That was out of 1,825 messages sent. Ninety-six percent of the cell phone numbers we have from five service providers – AllTell, Singulair, SPRINT, T-Mobile and Verizon. The failure rate for those was approximately proportionate or a little less than proportionate to their percentage of the total number or numbers. There were six other firms who were 4% of the total numbers but amounted to 28% of the failures because they just don’t have very much service in this area. Since that time three of those six firms have been purchased by the larger firms that have service more prominently and so we were satisfied that the 97% rate of the Star Alert system, given that we will never achieve 100% was pretty good and that in the future it would be improved. We don’t think we can add, with the diversity of vendors who make some effort to prevent their instruments from getting on other people’s networks. We wouldn’t have much influence in getting dead zones changed for some particular vendors. But it wasn’t a material impact on Star Alert.
FA: Okay. I’m not sure we entirely share your degree of confidence about that based on practical experience based on cell phone usage and the reality that people have of dead areas on campus.
AD: The use of a cell phone or voice communication requires a more consistent signal than it does to send a text message, from what I understand, because it’s short material transferred quickly and limited in its content. In any case, for the purposes of Star Alert, from what we can gather, it was successful. It may not be as successful for some for voice communication.
FA: Would you be willing to convene a task force to discuss this further?
AD: I guess so. I would ask Ilya Yakolev to work with the task force. He’s been working with the Star Alert system and has been keeping track of the success. If you would provide some names I guess I could call them together with Ilya and see what they could discuss.
FA: That sounds to me like an appropriate next step if there is no objection from anyone on our team. This allows us to keep the conversation open and we can get back to you in terms of people who would be interested in participating in that conversation.
FA: Can we get a copy of the study and the results – of the methodology?
AD: You can have a copy of the results. The methodology was seeking the success rate from the carriers. Sure. I don’t know what methodology they used. The message was there. They look at successful transfers of messages.
FA: I mean, just questions like were there voice calls….
AD: No. It was the Star Alert. We sent a text message.
FA: Okay. Just to cell phones?
AD: All of those who had registered to receive Star Alert – 1,825.
FA: Right. So there’s some approach – whatever approach was used to obtain the results, we can get that?
AD: Would you like me to forward it to you, Mark?
FA: Actually, you should send it to John. By the time you do that he will be back and he will be at the helm again.
AD: Okay. I’ll forward this e-mail from Ilya to John which describes the results and that can be some basis for their task force discussion.
FA: Okay.
FA: Steve, you may have included this in the past but I’m just curious about the number of faculty versus students who signed up. Could you send that in an e-mail as well if you don’t know that today?
AD: I don’t recall that today.
FA: I’m just curious as to the ratio.
AD: I don’t know that we have it by faculty or by faculty/staff and students. And the number is now different than this 1,825.
FA: Okay.
AD: Also, parents can also sign up so it isn’t exclusively faculty, staff and students.
FA: The best you’ve got. And if it’s not available, I understand that.
3. Prerequisite Checking and Grade Change Follow-up
FA: My understanding is that prerequisite checking has been made available to departments at their request and that grade change follow up has been turned on?
AD: That’s correct. In order for departments to have the prerequisite checking they need to notify Records and Registration that they wish to have that turned on.
FA: Does anyone see any reason why we could not then regard this as settled? We will then regard that as complete.
4. Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education Director Search Committee – Senate appointed the following people to the committee: Stephen Hornstein, Steve Klepetar, John Harvey, Susan Motin. Administration proposed to add Joseph Edelheit for special expertise.
FA: The Faculty Associate has elected four representatives to serve on the committee but the Administration has a proposal.
AD: We’d like to appoint Joseph Edelheit to this committee by virtue of his special expertise for several reasons. He’s been functioning, essentially, as the director of that center this year in an unofficial capacity. He also is the primary contact with the individual whose financial support has made it possible for us to maintain this center. We’re looking to increase the amount of money that that person has been providing. Joseph is the one who knows him best. He wants to check on the progress of the search and I think it’s important that Joseph be involved in that search in order to accomplish those goals.
FA: I had shared with faculty members those aspects of what you see as special expertise. There were some questions raised as to whether those elements constituted expertise in the sense of the contract and we wondered if there might not be some additional items in his resume that would be relevant to establishing that expertise.
AD: He’s the person who basically led the tour this past summer to Europe with the various musical ensembles that performed in concentration camps and elsewhere in Germany and France. He’s the one who was the spokesperson for that group. He’s the one who was cited in the newspaper – whose comments were quoted broadly. He’s serving and leading the trip this semester to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. for faculty, staff, and students from this university and from other campuses in MnSCU. So he has very deep expertise in this area.
FA: I’m looking around the room at my colleagues. Do we feel the need for a caucus or are we content that this establishes the expertise that we regard as necessary? I’m going to answer that yes, we accept this and of course, as always, we note that a person chosen for special expertise, a faculty member chosen that way, is chosen not as a faculty representative, but as a participant based on that expertise.
AD: Correct. Thank you very much.
New Business:
1. Department and College practices with regard to course scheduling, room assignment, and class size
FA: We asked for this item to be placed on the agenda in a broad context of the process by which scheduling decisions have been made, are being made, in the current environment of budgetary difficulties and the relationship of that to the contract, article 20, the provisions regarding the departments’ roles in proposing/drafting schedules for their departments. We have in general a number of concerns about the way that late decisions that come at the end, or even after the end, of the scheduling process when they involve things such as room assignments, class sizes and so on, amount to, among other things pedagogical decisions because they have pedagogical implications that take away from the departments’ ability to perform their functions as provided for in the contract as drafters of the schedules. We acknowledge there is an administrative role in the scheduling process and we’re not saying that there is no such role and no such authority, but we also regard as very important the role of the departments in this and we have concerns about things that could be presented as guidelines early in the process that the department could take into account and use as part of the departmental drafting process. Instead, if done late, and depending on the manner in which they’re done, may have the effect of taking away from the departments’ appropriate rights and duties under the contract. Now we have also something more specific to talk about but this didn’t start with the specific example I’m about to turn to, but is part of a broader issue.
AD: Why don’t you talk about the specific example.
FA: There is a specific example in the College of Business and I am going to allow Robert to take the lead in expressing our concerns about that.
FA: Several faculty members have contacted the Faculty Association about what appears to be decisions made regarding scheduling and assignments and the like. So our concern is if it wasn’t done according to the contract, then faculty may be deprived of their right to make recommendations and departments, their ability to develop schedules that meet their needs and objectives. What we’d like to do is just find out what transpired – why these concerns are being expressed – so that hopefully we can avoid any grievance or any other problems with the process. We feel that if there are changes to be made then they should come to Meet and Confer or more importantly, that the contract be respected and that they follow the procedures or at least the guidelines outlined in the contract.
AD: Do you want to respond for the College of Business?
AD: Where would you like me to start?
FA: I can give you a suggested starting point, but I don’t want to deprive you of the right to say what it is you have to say. One thing is that you were kind enough to provide us with a copy of the PowerPoint you used in the meeting with the college on the 13th and one page, with the heading 2009-2010 Class Scheduling says “Master “Schedule to Increase Flexibility for Students.” Guidelines: 50% classes Monday, Wednesday, Friday; 50% classes Tuesday/Thursday; Large class faculty has schedule preference; Faculty rotate Monday/Wednesday/Friday – Tuesday/Thursday each semester. We have a concern that it would appear, first, because of the timing of it, very late in the scheduling process. It is problematic whether that constitutes a guideline.
AD: Let me try to clarify this. We started talking about this in September at my DAC.
FA: Okay.
AD: Because the chairs are responsible for putting the schedule together. We talked about these guidelines then in September and October. The Monday/Wednesday/Friday – Tuesday/Thursday happened for a very specific reason. Apparently I have some departments in my college, which I wasn’t really aware of, who schedule classes on Monday and Wednesday and they don’t use Friday. One of the issues about facilities is that we don’t have enough space. When you schedule classes on Monday and Wednesday for an hour-and- fifteen minutes, you’re taking up two time periods. So we can’t schedule as many classes within our classrooms that we have allotted to us and so we can’t meet all of the student demand. It was requested, and when the deans talked about, from the Provost and probably from Facilities, but from the Provost, that we utilize our classrooms as much as possible and that classes on Monday and Wednesday should be on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. So I went back and I looked. Sure enough, two of my five departments did not utilize Monday, Wednesday and Friday. They utilized Monday and Wednesday. They did not have pedagogical reasons for doing that. They did it out of convenience. So the way to make it as equitable as possible across all five departments, across all faculty, so the students could get as possible, when we schedule Monday and Wednesday, we have five class sessions that we can use. When we schedule Monday, Wednesday and Friday, we have seven. So we were actually able to schedule all of our classes without having to use the extra classroom outside of our building which we’ve had to use in the past because of the way our departments schedule. That was the purpose for setting that guideline. It was communicated to the department chairs early on last semester as were all of the things communicated to the department chairs and they are documented in our notes. The notes are placed on our D2L website for the college where every faculty member can go and read what we do in the meetings. Do they go and read them? We just happened to check to see how many faculty went to look at our AASCB accreditation report. Less than a dozen have gone to look to see how we did on our AASCB review. I don’t know if they’re looking or not. Are the department chairs telling the faculty and reporting back to them about department chair meetings? I don’t know if they are. I am assuming that the department chairs are doing what they’re supposed to do. We talked about putting together a master schedule for the college. Our college is a bit unique compared to the other colleges because regardless of the major that our students follow, they have a core set of courses they have to take that cross over all of the departments. That’s a core that every business major takes. As a result, it’s really important that those courses are spread out through the day and throughout the week so as many of our students as possible can take the courses that they need. We said that we’re going to put together a master schedule and we’re going to identify timing conflicts, we’re going to send it back to the department and say: these need to be changed, here are some suggestions of where you can put them so it doesn’t conflict with other courses. I asked for the schedule, it was I believe mid/late December so that we could start putting it together. Or it might have been at the beginning of January when we first came back. All the department chairs said that they hadn’t done the schedule yet so we can’t give it to you to start any earlier and that they’d try to get in done in the next few weeks. As soon as they got them done we started putting the master schedule together. Then we had several iterations of going back and forth with the department and trying to fit everything in. We still have some conflicts that the departments are unwilling to change, we’re going to leave those. Unfortunately the students aren’t going to be able to get their courses because there are some departments who have four courses scheduled at the same time in two different time slots. Students just aren’t going to get their courses and the faculty refuse to change it. I will only go so far in requiring some these changes. So we’ll see what happens. We also looked at enrollment from last year and we saw where there were under-enrolled classes and we went back and looked at the master schedule and part of the reason was due to class schedule conflicts. By putting a master schedule together we have been able to separate out, use up a much better capacity of our facilities, which we think will give our students more choices so that we can get them through. We’re having to offer fewer sections because one of the other guidelines that’s not on there is that the department chairs had to do all of the scheduling with no fixed-terms unless they’ve already been approved and no adjuncts. We have a lot of students we have to meet the demand for and a pretty tight budget environment and there is no other way to do it. I see my responsibility being first to the students – we have to meet the demand for their courses so that they can get through. I have five departments – I’m lucky I only have five departments. For three of them, we didn’t have to change their schedule at all because they do at least fifty-fifty. They rotate Tuesday/Thursday – Monday/Wednesday/Friday. They make sure that the courses don’t conflict with each other and don’t conflict with other courses. But there were two departments where that was not the case.
FA: I do want to clarify that we are not saying that the kinds of concerns that you’re raising such as classroom usage… It is not our position that management has no role in providing guidance.
AD: I did discuss all of this with John as I was doing it.
FA: Actually there’s a related point on that and Judy, I think that….
FA: We’ve heard from various people during this presentation with the college that you at a certain point said that the Faculty Association has approved this. Or that “I’ve talked with the FA and the FA is okay with this.” We simply need to go on record that informal conversations don’t constitute FA’s positions and that we really need to be the ones to state what those are through the meet and confer process.
AD: It wasn’t really…. I said that I talked with the FA about scheduling and confirming that I have the authority to determine the number of sections that we need based on demand and try to set the schedule so that it maximizes the flexibility for the students. The things I talked to the FA about really didn’t involve scheduling.
FA: We would prefer that we represent the FA perspective through the Meet and Confer process and that if you want faculty to gain the FA perspective that they come to the FA.
AD: They have every right to do that. I wanted the FA perspective so I went to John. He did not recommend that I go to Meet and Confer.
FA: This is pretty dicey I think. I think it would be more useful that if you want the FA…
AD: Can you clarify what you spoke to John about?
AD: It had nothing to do with scheduling.
AD: So in terms of the meeting on Friday, what was it exactly that you said and told the faculty at that meeting?
AD: That in our accreditation we are getting a 6th year review and AASCB has said that must put faculty into faculty development plans to make them academically qualified and I have to show them, step-by-step-by-step what I’m doing in order for us to get a clean review for accreditation.
FA: I was present.
AD: I brought this to John.
AD: Is that what you’re saying you spoke to John about?
AD: Yes.
AD: So it had nothing to do with these other topics?
AD: On this topic I said I went to John to clarify that it’s okay for me to set some guidelines. I went to him for clarification. Most of what I talked to John about was the faculty development plans. I don’t know if that needs to go to Meet and Confer. I asked to help interpret the contract and how to do it.
FA: I was present. I heard this story about the opinion of the FA being invoked and I was confused because I was present at one conversation, but I wasn’t present at any conversation about scheduling – certainly not that I can recall – but I was present at the conversation in regard to academic qualification and the accreditation process. I thought that was an appropriate and positive meeting conducted in good faith to talk about what the contractual provisions were that related to that. I do not recall, since you’re telling me now that you were not stating an FA position in connection to that in the meeting, I don’t have anything to complain about as regards that specific matter. However, we are getting reports from faculty members who, well, as often happens when people are talking with one another, the versions of what happened to not always come out the same way and as we are receiving reports, they sound a little different from what you’re saying right not. I wasn’t there so I’m not saying I know precisely what happened, but the issue of who gets to represent the FA position remains something that is quite important to us.
AD: My intent was never to say this was an FA position. My intent was to tell them that I am conferring with the FA in the things where I’m confused or need some guidance from that group. I did not use those words specifically, but that’s what I said. That I’d been in touch with and in conversations with John. That’s what I meant when I said FA.
FA: Robert, did you have something you wanted to add?
FA: Just that as a rule there have been situations in the past where people have had conversations of some nature with faculty members who may have certain positions either as committee chairs or some elected position within the Faculty Association. Often times those conversations get interpreted or construed as the Faculty Association’s position when indeed they simply represent a conversation between two individuals who happen to have certain titles. As Judy was saying, the Faculty Association position is determined by Senate action, by Meet and Confer consideration and the like. Sometimes if there is a request for consideration of a proposal or an idea, maybe to ask the faculty representative to take it through the Faculty Association process for consideration/review/comment and feedback. That way it will avoid the problems of someone getting the impression that the Faculty Association has taken a position on something that hasn’t really been brought to the Faculty Association for action. I don’t know the particulars of this specific situation, but I know that in the past we’ve had that difficulty and we need to reiterate that the way to get Faculty Association feedback on a matter is to ask for a formal Faculty Association review.
AD: I’ll be a little more precise if I use the FA in any of my conversations. I did not think of the distinction between the two.
FA: As I said, I was not present and there are things that for many of us, we don’t fully understand all of the details of the situation at this point. I think that this is going to remain a matter of concern. We have received expressions of concern, of very serious concern, from a number of members. At this point, I think that what I want to say is that we expect that we need to have some further conversations about this and that we’d like to move this in a positive direction that would avoid the need, if this is practical, to going into the area of a grievance based on article 20. We’re just not at the point of being clear about all of the details at this point.
FA: Some of the issues that you’ve identified that served as the basis for these guidelines are certainly not uncommon issues. I guess I have concerns as a representative of faculty about faculty’s ability – they’re really the ones who know the classes and the needs and their teaching styles and the pedagogical concerns the most. It really concerns me to have them detached from this decision making. Let me just look at these guidelines for just one minute in a general sense and talk about the Monday/Wednesday. We actually have in our department Monday/Wednesday schedules. And you’re right, those do create concerns for scheduling and availability of classrooms, but there are ways that departments can work around that – so we have some Friday classes, for example. I would hope that what would happen is that the departments would be asked to address the concerns that you have individually and that the departments would be asked as a group and that the chairs would be asked to meet with their departments to consult about these concerns. I personally have concerns with some of the implications of this. I’m not speaking as a FA spokesperson here. I’m just looking at this and thinking: large class faculty have schedule preference. What if I’m not a lecturer? I would never have preference here because what I’m good at is not working with large classes; it’s working with a different kind of pedagogical structure which is more interactive. So this would have repercussions for me personally if I were here because it’s kind of valuing of one pedagogy over another. One more example here with the faculty rotating Monday/Wednesday/Friday – Tuesday/Thursday. Some classes are really good in a 50 minute format with particular age groups or with particular topics or particular pedagogies. Others work much better with 115 minutes?
FA: Seventy-five.
FA: With that format. So I would hope that… And I think some faculty are better in some timeframes than in others. So I would hope that faculty would not lose the ability, which I think is guaranteed through the contract, to make decisions based on pedagogical and instructional concerns. This is what my personal concern about this is and of course the contractual thing is more than just personal.
AD: I think that what we’re talking about is a set of guidelines not rules. They’re not iron-clad. They’re not inviolate. The contract does say that the administration may develop guidelines to aid the faculty in scheduling their courses. So that’s what this is – a set of guidelines intended to aid the faculty in determining the schedule. I’m not sure what the sequence was. Then the faculty can recommend the schedule and the dean can accept it or make some modification to it.
FA: We have to look at the language and the manner in which these were presented. It says here in article 20, subd. 3 “Department faculty shall establish, annually or more frequently as appropriate, through a democratic process and in a manner consistent with university procedures and the provisions of this Agreement, departmental policies procedures, and teaching other work schedules.
AD: Keep reading.
FA: The department shall make every effort to ensure that teaching and other work schedules meet departmental, college and university objectives.
AD: And the next sentence….
FA: The administration may develop - as opposed to shall in the other sentences – guidelines to aid in this effort. Do you want me to continue? All I’m saying is that we can’t have, unilaterally, and I’m not saying this is the case, I’m just arguing…
AD: And I agree with you that it can’t be unilateral, but I think the administration can develop guidelines to aid in the process and that’s what that says.
FA: This is what we’re trying to avoid. What we may be discussing here only gets resolved through the grievance and arbitration processes. If people are perceiving this language that faculty will rotate, we don’t know how it was presented. We don’t know the manner in which this situation was presented other than we simply got feedback that the impression is that these were being imposed or put out as how scheduling will take place. If that’s the case, then it could be in contradiction to the language of the contract. That’s the problem that we’re trying to address. Not that we’re saying that it is a problem and that it has happened in some matter; simply that we’ve gotten reports that identify something that may be problematic. We’re trying to resolve that in a manner that would avoid…
AD: I would like to do exactly the same thing. What I hear is that there is a statement that the dean has made and then there are reports that you have received from faculty that are at variance from one another. I’m not sure how to resolve that.
FA: I’m looking at the language of the slide. To me, and I’m doing this in interpretation of text so you’ll excuse me as an English teacher. It says: Guidelines: (speaker repeated text of slide already recorded above). To me that’s a pedagogical decision. Faculty rotate Monday/Wednesday/Friday – Tuesday/Thursday – that to me is an implied will. I’m seeing this as a directive from a dean. To me that’s not the same thing as a guideline that’s meant to help and be flexible. It’s more of a direction given that takes some decisions out of the departments. For example: if I’m really good at teaching 50 minute sections Monday/Wednesday/Friday and I’m not good with 90 minute sections Tuesday/Thursday, my pedagogy is set up for 50 minutes, that’s the way I work. Every other semester I wouldn’t have that option, even though it might be the best for students and for me. This is what I’m trying to get at. Is this a flexible guideline?
AD: You’d have to ask the dean that.
FA: Yeah.
AD: My response to the faculty who asked that question was that I would be very happy to review, to consider other types of schedules based on pedagogy, but I want to see the evidence and I want to see how the faculty member is meeting our learning objectives and part of our assurance of learning which is part of our accreditation that is required and is honestly, not happening which is why we have a 6th year review. The faculty believe “No, we don’t have to show you what we’re doing in the classroom you just take our word for it that this is what we need.” In our core, our learning goals for our accreditation are in our core. We have multiple sections of each course within our core. We need to have consistency across those sections. That’s where pedagogy comes in. But to date, the faculty have chosen not to figure out a way to do that so that we can address pedagogical needs relative to learning goals and the learning of our students. We’re going to do program reviews next year so I’m really hopeful that we will be able to do that. Then we will be able to say – okay, these courses really do need 75 minutes so we need to figure out how to put these courses into a two-day-a-week schedule. These courses do not, based on learning goals
FA: Are these guidelines based on pedagogical research?
AD: They’re based on what our peers and our aspirants do. The courses that are large, we have not taught large classes really in the College of Business though you might remember before me whether or not large classes were taught. I think in a couple of marketing classes there were some large classes. Because of our classroom limitation none of our classes are more than forty. With the number of students we have and the number of faculty we have we cannot meet demand with forty.
FA: The question remains, are these based on pedagogical research?
AD: Yes. It’s based on looking at what our peers and aspirants do. Not pedagogical research – not teaching.
FA: I’m just saying if they have some pedagogical basis for their practices then certainly we should have some pedagogical basis for guidelines.
AD: I agree and I’ve asked for it from the faculty. I asked for it starting the first year I was here.
FA: So the agreement is whatever guidelines and recommendations that come forth should be pedagogically sound based on sound evidence.
AD: And agreed upon by the faculty who teach in that core course. In discussions with the faculty about large classes, the reason that there’s a preference for faculty teaching large classes is because it’s a new thing that we’re doing. Our faculty haven’t taught classes this large except maybe in one department and the classes are anywhere between 120 and 200. It’s a new thing for us. Faculty have stepped up and they’ve volunteered to do this. To make it easier for them they’ve got preference of when they want to teach. But that had to be aligned with when classrooms were available too. It’s not quite as cut and dried as it sounds.
FA: In some of the areas. Large classes – that question raises other issues. Number one, in some disciplines, people make the case that class size effects the amount of learning that takes place. Secondly, in terms of public relations, late at night I’m watching television or something and various faces pop up and we proclaim how much we are accessible to students as faculty members and that when you come you’re going to see a real professor and we’re going to have this contact. So we have to make a case that we are accessible faculty and that you won’t be a number in some auditorium. I think there are other issues here that go beyond the contract.
AD: I agree. I think that’s beyond me. I think that’s the administration’s decision. In terms of the College of Business, given the budget constraints we have for next year we have two choices: we either have large classes or we reduce enrollment and we reduce tuition and revenue. We don’t have the resources to teach all 40 or less size classes. In the long run, the university has to make a decision; if we want to have small classes for all business classes then we have to reduce the size of our student enrollment because we do not have the faculty resources. I think faculty resources in business are too expensive to continue increasing the resources with all classes being at a specific size.
FA: For years we’ve gone through these cycles of budget reductions and inevitably faculty have stepped up to the plate. We’ve managed meet student needs, offer classes and things of that sort. So through whatever arrangements we make, our number one priority is serving the students.
FA: We began with this topic, really, not in relationship to specifically College of Business matters but in terms of matters that are popping up all over with regard to decisions concerning course scheduling and assignment and class size tied into our budgetary situation here. One concern is that we really need to be dialoguing a lot now so that the principles are out there and we’re talking about them so that we’re not making decisions based on monetary systems that we don’t have to make that are stupid decisions. I’ll just give one example from the last time this happened when we put a lot of money in First Year and we lost majors who couldn’t graduate because they couldn’t get classes – we didn’t have enough major classes out there. This isn’t intended just to be a topic focusing on the College of Business but we’ve got concerns about announcements coming out from various colleges that were enacting principles that we really haven’t talked about yet.
AD: Can I look at combining this point of discussion with the one that has to do with reassigned time?
FA: We intentionally placed them near one another because they are clearly related and they relate to the same principles about when did consultation take place, how does it work, what are the principles we’re following.
2. Reassigned Time
AD: Here are some that I want to discuss with you. Since it starts with reassigned time we can go to the second and third items first and talk about those first.
FA: Okay.
AD: They are kind of a set of principles having to do with scheduling classes and class size that I would like your feedback on as we move forward.
FA: I think that this is something that we will want to look at.
AD: Sure. It’s not that complicated. The reassigned time one is a little more complicated but the scheduling and the class size items are fairly straight-forward, I think. I would like your responses to that and your feedback on that and your views on this. These are essentially the kinds of conversations that I’ve had with the deans about how they should proceed in terms of doing these things.
FA: Reading through the scheduling and the class size things, my immediate reaction is that these are rational and that they are related to legitimate concerns about the budget and efficiency though there are other factors that will be at work in terms for example, numbers of sections may be offered at various times because of the need for students to attend classes at different times depending on which students we’re talking about and so on. These take the form, as I see them, of being guidelines, of being principles, not being mandates that each and every class shall follow exactly this and so on.
AD: That’s correct.
FA: I accept your statement that these are conversations that you’ve had with the deans and things like this did not appear in writing to the university as a whole at the beginning of the scheduling process. I think that central to this question of: what’s a guideline is timing – that is, when it arrives earlier it can be taken into consideration, its reasonableness can be looked at if there are, at the department level, pedagogical issues or other issues that would tend to work against the guidelines, then there’s time for that conversation. There’s also time for the departments to figure out: if we are going to reduce the number of sections of this course, then how do we do it and who teaches those sections and so on.
FA: I would ask that we caucus.
FA: Okay.
FA left the room to caucus.
FA: Having just received this we feel we that we need some time to consider it and we also need to take it to the Senate which meets on Tuesday. We recognize that we are in a stage where timeliness is important in the scheduling and budgeting process so we intend to give it priority in terms of addressing it at Senate. We have a couple of detail questions that we want to ask. We also want to reiterate that this would have been very helpful earlier in the scheduling process as a conversation to be having earlier so that we could have a joint understanding.
AD: Let me just respond to that by saying that I’ve had conversations about these topics with the deans and it has been my assumption that they were bringing that back to the colleges, through the department chairs and that it would then get to the faculty. It was a mistake, I think, to assume that and I’m sorry about that. It should have been information that was shared more broadly, earlier.
FA: Given the nature of these principles and given the situation that we’re facing, the most direct link for consultation is the Faculty Association.
AD: I understand that.
FA: I believe that Michael had a couple of specific questions that we might have to answer in Senate and we’d like to ask now.
FA: This is a greatly crafted document and it’s filled with shoulds and can be’s and so forth. Under scheduling of classes, the words low enrollment and that upper division classes have low enrollments. There are discussions all over campus if there are magic numbers as to what constitutes a low enrollment. Is there some guidelines to be given to deans about…
AD: We’ve talked about what to do in the context of whether or not to cancel a class. In that context we’ve talked about six and twelve as the minimum class size.
FA: Six being graduate and twelve being undergraduate?
AD: Yes. But a low enrollment class could have more students than that and looking at the pattern of enrollment in the course over a period of time, if the course has ten or twelve students every semester then perhaps doing it once a year makes more sense. That’s what we’re getting at with that.
FA: That raises the issue of timing. As Mark said, this would have been a really helpful document three months ago. Is the assumption that this, or something like this is now being contemplated for use. Is it going to be used yet this year? Let me put that in a frame of reference. There’s also a sentence down below about adjusting class sizes accordingly. My great fear in all of this is that some time this August it will be clear that we don’t have enough seats in courses and that deans or the Provost or whatever will feel compelled to increase class sizes at a time when the faculty is conveniently not here. That would be a much better process if we knew sooner rather than later.
AD: That would be a very Machiavellian approach.
FA: I think I’ve been here longer than anyone else. I can tell you the specific years in which that was done.
AD: That wasn’t the intent. The schedules still have some malleability because they haven’t been printed yet. They can go to the registrar, there can be some changes made now. However, we don’t know what the final budget reduction numbers are going to be so we’re not sure yet at this point how far we can go with our staffing.
FA: The IFO has, of course contributed, we feel, immensely to speeding that process up by resolving one of those…
AD: One of those issues has been resolved. I agree. Now if we can only resolve what we’re going to get from the feds and what the state deficit is going to be and what the budget is going to be and what our tuition is going to be, then we would have the ability to make very concrete responses. But we don’t know a lot of those things.
FA: We understand that. A document like this doesn’t depend on having a specific budget number.
AD: Right.
FA: Do you have a sense of when, exactly, these principles would become effective?
AD: Actually, I thought they would be looked at by the departments as the schedules were being prepared. That was my understanding when we had these conversations weeks ago. The failure has been not having put on paper and distributing it so that everybody could see this information. That, I think is the piece that should have happened that hasn’t happened in the way that it should happen. But I think that we’re still open to comments from you about this. Even if it may be late in terms of how it gets applied for the fall, there’s still the spring coming after that. So these things can be broadly shared for the scheduling for that semester.
FA: Under class size, which of course is a substantial issue, I would suggest some editorial changes. For what it’s worth I wouldn’t use the word “small” I’d say that course size is mandated by accrediting agencies. They may or may not be small – certainly they might be small given the size of the classroom. When we talk about recognized pedagogical reasons I assume that some process is in mind where departments and deans could agree what those courses are because that’s been a point of contention in the past.
AD: I think that these are things that should be discussed.
FA: We consider ourselves professionals and therefore are recognizing pedagogical reasoning. It seems like professional reasoning to us.
AD: Within the profession. (laughter)
FA: From my perspective, I assume that when comparison is made to peer and aspirant institutions that that information would be made available to departments – just in terms of a matter of trust. Having been a dean it’s easy to say everybody else does it this way.
AD: Just to give you an example, the University of Minnesota just built a new building for their undergraduate business program and smallest classroom has 75 seats. The largest is 120 seats. So all of their undergraduate programs in business are classes of 75 to 120 seats.
FA: Do we want to be the University of Minnesota and have the reputation of not giving?
AD: Their students do pretty well. When our students go out to get jobs the students of the University of Minnesota still take a priority over ours. So yes.
FA: I would definitely hope we would have a conversation among the faculty and deans. I would just hope that would happen. I think faculty keep up on, certainly faculty in certain roles keep up on recommendations by accrediting agencies and national guidelines.
FA: Just one last reminder. Again, with the caveat, this is a very off the top of the head response from a couple of people. It in no way should it serve to predict what might, in fact, come out of Faculty Senate. I have no idea what that conversation’s going to look like. We will get back to you with their response.
AD: Okay. Thank you.
FA: I assume we will send this out prior to Faculty Senate.
FA: Yes. Yes, we should do that. If you could provide me with an electronic copy that would be helpful.
AD: I can do that. I’ll try to remember…
FA: Small and large are kind of buzz words. Some class sizes are dictated by accreditation requirements and some are for pedagogical reasons.
AD: Right.
FA: We did not address the reassigned time portion of this document or the chart that you provided for us and I circulated among our members.
AD: Didn’t you get the whole thing?
FA: This is what I got.
AD: You’ve got only the summary.
FA: Unless – was it on multiple tabs?
AD: Yes. Each college had a separate tab.
FA: Well then, we may have gotten it but I didn’t open all of the tabs.
AD: You didn’t open the whole worksheet. I have some copies but I don’t want to communicate the idea that we’re springing this on you quite as late as this.
FA: Actually it was sprung on us in pre-meet.
FA: I think I received it this morning by e-mail.
AD: Right. There were still corrections and changes being made to it this morning and there will continue to be changes and corrections.
FA: Then I will consider myself vindicated for my own errors here.
AD: Look at this as a proposal that is subject to discussion and certainly potentially subject to change.
FA: How was this difference calculated?
AD: You’ve got two sets of columns on the summary page and for each of the colleges. One is the reassigned time that is currently in place for this academic year. The next set of columns is a proposal having to do with next year’s reassigned time. The difference is the difference between, on the bottom of that page, between the total for 2008-2009 and the total for 2009-2010. What you’re seeing is that this is a recommendation or a proposal that would reduce reassigned time by the equivalent of 35.1 full-time faculty positions.
FA: So that’s 95 minus the 60 is the 35.
AD: Correct.
FA: The calculation of the savings?
AD: The calculation of the savings is looking at this change in reassigned time and in a department where there are adjuncts, if the reduction is one or two courses it’s calculated at the replacement cost or the cost of an adjunct that would no longer have to be hired if that course was taught by a full-time faculty member. Looking at the offerings of a given department, in some cases a department didn’t have adjuncts, but they paid faculty overload, then I used the overload number. If the reassignment reduction is equal to a full-time equivalent or more, then I took the lowest fixed-term faculty member’s salary and used that number. It’s a fairly conservative estimate. And then were there were cases where the amount of reassignment wouldn’t be sufficient to cover the cost of a course so in that case it’s been left blank on the page, but there might be some savings realized from that if a full-time faculty member taught a course with partial overload.
FA: So in every case this is based on the assumption that every additional course being taught as a result of reduced reassigned time is eliminating somebody else who is already teaching that course, whether an adjunct or through overload or a fixed-term person?
AD: Except in the case where it was a small number – mostly that’s correct.
FA: Okay. Though the reality could be that the real savings would be a lower number than what we see.
AD: If you look for example at the one where this happened least frequently was the College of Science and Engineering. There’s a reduction listed here from .5 to .33 and I didn’t put any savings down.
FA: Okay.
AD: So there potentially could be some savings there that’s not listed here so the number could be higher is what I’m getting at.
FA: Okay.
FA: I’d like to ask a question. I’m just picking for example in Management it says .25 times 11 courses their teaching?
AD: That’s the number of faculty who would have that reassigned time.
AD: It’s research release. It’s part of the accreditation requirement.
FA: So they teach 3 courses with one reassigned. If that’s the case, for example MME and Theatre do consulting also. I’m not sure I can speak for them – they teach 3 classes maybe – I don’t know. They don’t teach 4 courses though.
AD: In Mechanical Engineering, undergraduate, I believe they teach 12 credits a semester – yes.
FA: Okay. I don’t know. I’m just speculating.
AD: Unless they’re teaching graduate courses.
FA: So I’m not sure I’m interpreting this correctly, but it looks like some university functions for which faculty reassigned time that aren’t departmental functions but are university functions are named in the department. Is that true?
AD: Some of them are named in the department because that’s how they would show up on the cost study.
FA: Okay.
AD: And some of them are listed separately at the end. I was moving them to the department but then I was told that in some cases that it may not be the same person next year so some of them are listed separately on the last page.
FA: I also see coordinators. It’s not clear to me who those are – if they’re program directors, if they’re people like Write Place director, or…
AD: They would be the program directors or coordinators of programs – yes. And if the person is hired – and there’s a statement about that in an earlier document – if the person’s job description and NOV indicated a partial teaching assignment, we’ve kept that.
FA: So that person wouldn’t be represented in this document?
AD: That person would not be reduced.
FA: Would they be represented in this document?
AD: I’ll have to go back and look.
FA: Okay.
AD: This has been a very complicated process putting this together. Every time I looked at different sets of documents there were different numbers listed. So there may be errors in here and we’re certainly ready and willing to correct errors and also to consider making some changes if there are good reasons to do so.
FA: As you engage in conversations at the administrative level my concern is with specifically reassigned time with program coordinators. That work still has to be done. I see how much work our program coordinators do and it’s a lot of work. Now they still have to be expected to do the work and having to pick up their teaching load. It’s still being communicated to us, rather frequently and rather directly, that we need to up our research productivity. Something has to give here. Something has to give for those folks who are – I’m not talking about me, I’m talking about folks who are being stretched so thin yet there’s still that research-research-research, where are your publications… As soon as I get the schedule…
AD: I understand your point and I want to make one comment that kind of addresses it. There’s been a rather inconsistent history from college to college in terms of which programs have program directors and get reassigned time and which do not. In some colleges no program director gets any reassigned time and in other colleges every program director got reassigned time. One of the things to do here is to be more consistent about that. The exceptions we’re talking about making with that has to do with programs that either have significant complexity or large numbers of students that would demand more time. Some programs that have five students in them have had reassigned time. Other programs with 100 students have not. We’re trying to be consistent and be fair about the process and also, I’ve relied on the judgment of the deans about the amount of work required for a given position.
FA: I think we also need to recognize that there may be cases where faculty members are going to say: this is too much work for me to do with no reassigned time.
AD: It’s possible. And there may be some instances in which we can do some extra duty days in lieu of that or manage in some other way. There may be cases where somebody might say they can’t do it then we’ll have to figure out some other way to handle that.
FA: On top of the pressure and trying to meet the criteria of promotion and tenure…
AD: Whatever we’re trying to do, we’re trying to do to save people’s jobs. That’s the bottom line goal.
FA: I don’t think we have a categorical objection to that. We don’t have a categorical objection to saving jobs. We don’t have a categorical objection to changes in reassigned time in the context of the pressure of budget that might cause us to make decisions that really would not be the decisions we would make under other circumstances.
AD: I think, if you look at the history of the last several years, we’ve been more generous with reassigned than has been the case in the past.
FA: Yes.
AD: In many cases we expanded the amount of time to chairs above the contractual limit and we just can’t continue to do that.
FA: I also want to let you know that there might be some cases which have relatively low numbers of students, but in fact are a lot of work. In my department, the Public History program is an example of something that’s got a few graduate students, it’s not a big program, but it’s a great deal of work because somebody has to be arranging internships and building relationships with museums… that’s just one example. It is a case where there are relatively few students involved and that directorship is a lot of work to do. There are going to be some challenges where these types of programs are concerned.
AD: I think that what we should have happen is that the people should come back and say: these are areas where we think something should be restored and here are the reasons. We can then evaluate those. This is a proposal.
FA: Okay.
FA: Two things. I think part of the difficulty of doing just that is where it’s unclear what titles include as with coordinators. The other piece that I’d just like to emphasize what Frances has said is I think that while we understand these are unusual circumstances and we hope that they will be gone in our lifetimes, we also acknowledge that when people are biting the bullet and doing more for less that there ought to be some give in terms of other things and we’d like to be able to have conversations about that.
FA: I think the contract allows faculty members to place emphasis on different areas at different times…
FA: It does.
FA: Over their professional careers so it’s not a real issue. If indeed they are serving students or developing programs or the like, there cannot be a unilateral or arbitrary determination of career development plans.
FA: That is absolutely true except not in my college.
FA: Okay.
FA: The emphasis is not just across the board, it’s in one criteria area.
FA: We have one contract for the university system that applies to all faculty and all administrators. One contract.
FA: Right. And your concern is not limited to one college either. That’s probably as far as we need to go at this point. We need to get to talking about the general education curriculum. I would like to take all of the reassigned time information back to the Senate along with the remainder of the document that you presented to us.
AD: Let me just make one point that is kind of in response to what Judy was asking. I didn’t include each individual case, but the deans have that information.
FA: So we can ask the deans how those break down?
AD: Yes.
3. Top-down Budgeting Process
FA: For today, unless we find we have more time later. On item #3, I’m going to give you a copy of the resolution that came out of the Budget Committee and was approved by the Senate at our last meeting regarding our concerns about the process by which the budget has been done. I’m going to ask that we don’t discuss that further, unless we have time after doing General Education. That doesn’t mean we’re necessarily done with it but we need to move on to the General Education item.
AD: Right. Okay.
4. General Education
AD: You and I worked on something and I made one little change to that version of the document for clarification so I have new copies to distribute. And it’s really not a substantive change.
FA: Okay.
AD: Did you discuss the whole issue with your folks so I don’t need to go over that?
FA: Yes.
AD: There is a statement in our catalog which is a violation of MnSCU policy that we’ll need to change and it’s quoted here that talks about how basically any student who begins at St. Cloud State University and remains here and receives a degree must complete the standard SCSU program and that is the violation. Did you also share the letters we received.
FA: Yes, I did – the letters that you forwarded to me I copied to the Meet and Confer team.
FA: Mitch, while you’re passing things around, it surprised us quite a bit, some of us anyway, that this statement was in the catalog because it’s certainly not in line with the advice we’ve been giving in advising. Can you tell us when this appeared in the catalog?
AD: Before my time.
FA: Okay.
FA: I think that in order to perhaps save us some time on this, our perspective as faculty is that we have no objection to your including in a letter to MnSCU a statement that we are going to be deleting that piece from the catalog.
AD: And from the Web site and from our practices.
FA: Yes. I would say that we would expect that, and to be honest, I’m not certain of the procedural process by which such editorial changes are made. We are not in a position to say that we hereby waive that process or that it won’t go through the ordinary curricular process, but we are saying that we as a Meet and Confer team don’t see any problem with this and we recognize that you need to respond and send a letter. Am I correctly representing the sense of my colleagues on that point?
(several faculty representatives responded in the affirmative)
AD: Thank you. The other part of it has to do with the next section of the document having to do with the mandate from the Chancellor that by fall 2009 that we make some modifications to our Gen Ed. So the statement written here is designed to allow us to meet that requirement and yet it still maintains some flexibility in terms of our curricular processes. So to achieve compliance with the MnSCU policy and procedure regarding its Gen Ed program, St. Cloud State proposes that through the Meet and Confer process it will provisionally assign the university’s Gen Ed courses to the goal areas of the MTC for implementation for fall 2009. This is what the letter directs us to do. Then also, the second part, the list of courses and their alignment with the MTC goal areas will be distributed to students so that all St. Cloud State University general education courses will meet specified goal areas of the MTC. Then during the next academic year, when we have a little bit of time to meet the full requirement change, these provisional assignments will be finalized and the university will adopt the same general education program that meets the requirements of the MTC, this is the part that I added, with courses assigned to each of the goal areas.
FA: What you are asking again is whether we have any objection to including this in a letter to be sent to MnSCU responding to the deadline they have given us of answering by February 25, 2009 about how we are going to return to compliance by fall term?
AD: That’s right, and how we are going to assure students who are enrolled in the fall that the courses that they take will count towards the Minnesota Transfer Curriculum. We can do that by assigning each of those courses to one of the goal areas.
FA: I handed out this document referred to as a “crosswalk” which is a draft that I received from Mitch that lays out a potential/possible/not definite, but a potential way that courses currently in our general education curriculum could be matched to…
AD: If I may…
FA: Go ahead.
AD: What the crosswalk does is take all of the courses in the St. Cloud State general education curriculum and it indicates where those courses are already part of the Minnesota Transfer Curriculum. So for example, Core 1, English 191 and the others are already part of Minnesota Transfer Curriculum Goal 1. If you look over on the extreme right hand side, it indicates that Theatre 198, which is considered a course that satisfies Core Area 1, is not part of the Minnesota Transfer Curriculum. I think that happened because that course was approved more recently and never was assigned to one of the goal areas. If you go down the various columns you will see the courses that have already been assigned to a specific area, or core area, and it is in the Transfer Curriculum. It’s all the courses in the far right hand column that are not assigned to a goal area of the Transfer Curriculum. That is the immediate challenge as we understand the directive from Sr. Vice Chancellor Baer of February 4, 2009, that we must make it possible for each student who takes a general education course to slot that into one of the goal areas.
FA: The purpose being to guarantee that they will not have wasted a course and will know that it can be applied to the Transfer Curriculum and will know that it can count for something. The provisional assignment would presumably come to an end of one year at the point where we’ve approved the new general education curriculum, which can be reconciled with the Transfer Curriculum – does conform with the Transfer Curriculum. People who had taken courses under the provisional assignment could take credit for those and be sure that they would meet the requirement for that Transfer Curriculum area.
AD: Or transfer that course to some other MnSCU institution.
FA: Now in order to get from a promise being made in a letter from the Provost by February 25, 2009 to…
AD: Actually, the letter will be from the President because it was addressed to him.
FA: Okay. From a promise written in a letter from somebody to that being a reality, we would need to have that equivalency created by the time that advising begins in May. Certainly no later than that. And that would mean working through the curricular process, the Gen Ed Committee, the College Curriculum Committee, UCC, and Senate.
FA: I think there are two orders of business here. One is we need to take this draft back to Senate for approval so that indeed we will have a basis for saying that the faculty and administration have agreed that we will take this approach. The second step is to do what you’re suggesting and that is, to have someone look at these courses and make the assignments.
FA: Absolutely.
FA: Tuesday, February 24, 2009, at 5:16 p.m. we need to communicate the Senate’s action…
AD: So we can have the letter out on February 25, 2009.
FA: Absolutely.
FA: I agree with you that that’s the procedure to follow. I’m trying to stress that curricular process I described, that is not something that we here can promise. I cannot promise, we cannot promise as a Meet and Confer team, that that in fact is going to happen in that time frame. We can talk about a letter that’s about to be sent. We can say that we hear this and we can decline to raise an objection to it at this point. We cannot make a commitment that that is going to occur. We can go to Senate and Senate can pass a resolution indicating an intention – a direction to our committees to do that. Or it could decline to do that.
FA: Again, we can respond to the directive from Linda Baer to President Potter about an assurance in writing about the relationship of courses and the Minnesota Transfer Curriculum. We can do that by taking this draft to Senate on the 24th and having a response by the 25th in order to issue that written response to MnSCU. The rest we can take care of in the interim – between now and May. Let’s get past the first hurdle. We have time to talk about the rest of this between the 24th and thereafter.
FA: I want to maintain a distinction between what the administration writes and what the Faculty Association agrees to. I don’t mean to say that we are not agreeing. I’m just saying as Robert is saying, there are things we can agree to as a Meet and Confer team and there are things that the Senate has to do. I absolutely agree with Robert that the faculty endorsement of this text can only happen in the Senate. We will bring it to the Senate and the Senate will deal with it as it deems appropriate. The President has a letter to write by the 25th and we as a Meet and Confirm team can’t go beyond promising to bring it to Senate.
AD: The other piece of this that we really didn’t have time to work on was the last paragraph in Linda Baer’s memorandum and that is to propose a timeline and set up activities and actions that we will undertake during the 2009-2010 academic year beginning with fall. Gen Ed needs to come into compliance by fall 2010. Mitch and I will try to draft something in conjunction with Jean Hoff and get it to you so that also can be looked at by the Senate.
FA: Okay.
AD: That’s not going to say what’s going to be done, but rather a set of dates by which certain actions will be taken – not what those actions will be.
FA: I have a couple of really specific questions about this crosswalk document and the assigning of courses to goal areas. Is Goal 7 the environmental one?
AD: Goal 10 is the environmental area.
FA: Okay. I don’t see anything listed under Goal 7 and I wondered what that was.
AD: It’s further down.
FA: Okay. I found it. So you have some ideas for meeting that goal for environmental courses?
AD: No. What you see under Goal 10 are the courses already assigned to that goal.
FA: Okay. So the provisional assigning of courses to the MTC would include getting this through the curriculum process with these assignments listed?
AD: That would be part of it. Those courses in the far right column need to be assigned to goal areas as well.
FA: During the curriculum process it is possible that courses would be identified as meeting more than one goal, but other changes could occur.
FA: So essentially we’d be looking at those.
FA: At a minimum, in order to achieve the principles that are laid out in this draft statement it would be necessary for us to make sure that all of our gen ed courses were matched to at least one goal area under the Minnesota Transfer Curriculum.
AD: Right.
FA: I believe that what we can say to you is that are going to take this to Senate. Senate meets on the 24th. We will present it to the Senate for approval and we will explain the reason why there is urgency connected with it. We will also inform the Senate of the conversation that we’ve had about what it takes to implement this. The Senate can take appropriate action in terms of its will to direct or to refer, etc.
AD: I’ll just add one little point about this. Tomorrow there is a meeting of the Minnesota Transfer Oversight Committee and we are on the agenda. Mitch, Jean Hoff and I will attend that meeting to talk about what we hope to do. Jean will be talking mostly about the Gen Ed program that we have been developing but that’s still in progress. That might soften some of this a little bit, but just a little bit.
FA: The point that will cause the most consternation is the items in the right hand column. Mitch, if I heard you right, nobody is making any kind of a judgment as to whether or not any of those courses in fact would fit under one or more of the goal areas of the Transfer Curriculum goals, they simply have not been placed there at this point. Is that right?
AD: They’re orphans in terms of the Transfer Curriculum. If we are to comply with Vice Chancellor Baer’s letter, if we maintain that any of these courses are necessary to the General Ed Curriculum, they must also fit into one of the areas of the Minnesota Transfer Curriculum. For instance, if we say Mass Communications 146 that it’s a general education course, then we must move it from the right hand column into at least one of the other columns.
FA: The statement that it is not the MTC right now is not any kind of qualitative statement about the merits or virtues of those – they simply have not been assigned.
AD: That’s correct.
FA: The General Education Committee will not make a decision based on outcomes that a course fits into one of the goal areas…
AD: I think for this process we’ll have to use our best judgments given the timelines that we have. But in the coming year, as we move to a final assignment of courses, at that point we will compare the content of the courses with the requirements of the goal area and make appropriate assignments of courses in the coming year.
FA: What criteria was used to determine whether a particular course met a particular transfer curriculum goal:
AD: I can’t answer that because it was before my time.
FA: What you do is literally look at the goal area and see whether it meets those criteria. It went through a curriculum process of assignment.
AD: I believe we have to certify that a course meets 51% of the learning outcomes specified for the goal area. In some cases there have been changes in the last couple of years to certain elements of what would meet those requirements that we never addressed necessarily.
AD: Some of you may recall that in the last couple of years there was a project assigned by the Office of the Chancellor to review our Minnesota Transfer Curriculum. So we took all the courses that you see in the columns other than you see at the extreme right hand column and we reviewed those against the goals of each of the goal areas and in a sense, recertified those courses for the Minnesota Transfer Curriculum. What we haven’t done, what we really ought to do, is go through the same process for the general education courses that have not been assigned to a goal area.
FA: Are there other questions in regard to the General Education Curriculum?
5. Request for Faculty member to serve on search committee for Study Abroad Director
AD: We originally requested one faculty member to serve on this search. We would like to modify that to two faculty members.
FA: What kind of position is this?
AD: MSUAASF.
FA: We will refer this request to the Senate for action.
AD: Thank you.
Progress Reports:
1. Report on the Budget
AD: I think Michael summed it up the best when he said that it would be a much better process if we knew sooner rather than later. I think that’s an accurate assessment of the process. We kind of scheduled what we wanted to do not entirely anticipating earlier that there would not be a lot that would occur over the holiday break and a pretty short timeline on handling that. We’ve managed that, we believe. We also expected – we’ve had some guidance from the governor and what his suggested budget is. But after that, he has talked about that the deficit may be up to double what he’s first suggesting. We thought we might get some guidance from the Office of the Chancellor and the Board. The Board talked about tuition rates ranging from 4-7% and talked about flat rate increases in the dollar amount – they talked about $500.00 for a year for an undergraduate student. They talked about the possibility of temporarily reducing reserve requirements but they have not formally stated any of those things as what they intend to do. There has certainly been remarkable progress, timely progress by the IFO on contract settlement that we presume will move through the due process. There’s still an awful lot of uncertainty. In the face of that uncertainty, we’re moving forward to plan around the Budget Advisory Group and the widely shared scenario of the $7 million deficit. So we’re going to plan around that with all the units and Vice Presidents to plan around 1.5 times that amount so that we have a range to select from to share because not all ideas are good. Also, that might give us some flexibility if, in fact, the issue becomes greater. There are reports about the stimulus package being an advantage to us because it has some earmarks that go into education. In addition it increases some Pell grants that might have positive impact for students independent of our actions. The legislative relations people at MnSCU estimate it to be about $90 million that could go to MnSCU. However, they place that in the context that the stimulus package has requirements for maintenance of other parts of the state budget, mainly in healthcare – a budget that the governor previously chose to cut. So if the governor needs to restore those cuts, he may make additional cuts to higher education in deference to the fact they they’re getting $90 million from the federal government. It sounds good but one hand gives and one hand takes away. We’re planning around that. We’ve taken all the suggestions that we’ve received across campus to the budget Web site in all of their peculiar English and character, or lack thereof, we’ve published them on the budget Website. Many of them are thoughtful and carefully considered, I believe. They are virtually all anonymous. None of them are something that we couldn’t publish. We didn’t get any suggestions like that. Some are provocative and some are interesting. I’d encourage folks to look at those. There’s about, something less than 100. If you made a suggestion and you don’t see it accurately represented, and we had some difficulty understanding some of them, write back and let us know the intent of your suggestion. Let us know. Sure enough, some don’t make sense. I do not understand what they mean. Some do not save money or increase revenue. They are aspirations, I guess. We will be looking through the process over the next several weeks. In mid-March we need to provide to MnSCU a description of what we’re going to do and kind of a narrative about it. Not $50 dollars here and $100,000 here, but a narrative. There’s been some discussion here about some of the things we’re trying to do in Academic Affairs. We’re also doing similar reviews as we look at other parts of the university and university-wide things – utilities, memberships, salary savings, leave for classifieds and unclassifieds. Units may decide to hold positions open for a period of time as a cost-saving idea. We will continue to share information in as timely a way as we can. We’ve appreciated the Budget Advisory Group as being a good conduit with the co-chair that ties to Strategic Planning and ties to the Faculty Budget Committee. I think that’s helpful to serve some of the conversation goals. We’ll continue to use Meet and Confer. We’ve gone to Meet and Confer with the other bargaining units that require a meet and confer before you can even discuss the concept of a potential layoff. In some of the contracts the term layoff is very broadly defined. So we needed to have that first to even have a constructive conversation about the relative value of different decisions. As we go through the spring term we will certainly have budgets in place so we can operate come July 1st – even if the legislature is still in session – even if MnSCU hasn’t set tuition – even if the other contract agreements aren’t settled – we will move forward with some kind of an operating budget come July 1st subject to those caveats. As you recall a few years ago the legislature didn’t set the budget until into July. It takes a few days after they set it for us to get allocation from MnSCU. We will move forward in that way. We will continue our broad communication on campus. We’re going to move, I suspect, the Budget Advisory Group to weekly meetings rather than bi-weekly. There are conversations scheduled on campus for each week that are a less formal opportunity that I hope will help quell rumors. We will have another couple of Town Hall meetings later in the spring where we can bring more substance to the table. As I say, we’ll be working with the units. The state revenue forecast for February has been scheduled for March 3rd and now has probably been pushed later because they want to give full consideration to the stimulus package and its impact on the forecast for state revenues. The Board of Trustees meets the 17th and 18th of March and we will, again, hope for additional guidance. There will be a conference call following that meeting on the 19th and we’re hoping for some guidance. We encourage you to engage in the process by looking at the materials on the budget Web site and we will continue to bring updates and other information to Meet and Confer. Once the budget is set, a few days later we will receive the allocation from MnSCU and the month following that meeting is typically when the Board would set tuition. We’ll make an estimate of tuition and use it for financial aid purposes very soon because we need to give students estimates.
FA: I’m sure that you will recall that ours is one of those agreements that includes the provision about meeting and conferring at the first moment of consideration of the word I will not utter lest anyone….
AD: I’ll leave that to the Provost as to how that may or may not occur.
FA: Has the board had any discussion about that item?
AD: I don’t know. Board discussions are public and you can go out on the Web site and look at the minutes of those discussions.
Adjouned: 5:01 p.m.