Final Approved 4/15/10

Faculty Association

Meet and Confer Notes

April 1, 2010

 

Administration: Kristi Tornquist, Steven Ludwig, David DeGroote, Lisa Foss, Judith Siminoe, Wanda Overland, Mitchell Rubinstein, Larry Chambers, President Potter, John Palmer

 

Faculty: Judy Kilborn, Susan Motin, Tom Hergert, Bill Hudson, Frances Kayona, Michael Connaughton, Balsy Kasi, Mark Jaede, Debra Leigh, Michael Tripp

 

 

Admin: For the admin team, Provost Malhotra is on a family related trip and I get to sit in for him today. Mark already instructed me that he wouldn’t let me run the meeting under any conditions.

 

FA: Absolutely not.

 

Admin: So the reason Provost Malhotra is not here is that he is taking much needed time to spend with family and he’s asked me to sit in.

 

FA: Since the President is with us now we will begin. We had agreed at the end of the last Meet & Confer, because we didn’t get fully through our agenda, that we would be starting on Progress Reports of Long Term Concerns. However, indifference to Cori Beckerman who’s with us to talk about New Business item four, Smoking Tobacco Free Policies, without objection we will move to that item first and allow Cori to tell us something about smoking and tobacco and freedom.

 

New Business

4.      Smoking/Tobacco Free Policies (ADM)

Guest: Thank you for inviting me or for allowing me to come to your meeting. I’ve never been to a Faculty Meet & Confer meeting before so I wasn’t sure how many people to expect. I did make some copies of some handouts and I was asked after President’s Council by the Provost to come to Meet & Confer and share the information I shared with President’s Council at that time attempting to have a lot of transparency in what’s going on on campus around tobacco and smoke free policies.  For the last few years since I’ve been the director we’ve been gathering information on campus about smoking. We have been getting concern calls, email from faculty, staff and students about different aspects related to smoking and tobacco on campus including cigarette butt litter, the way it looks, concerns about smoke coming back into buildings, concerns just about second hand smoke. A lot of things you have seen on SCSU announce about walking through smoke filled air. So as a health service of course there is a health concern, the American College Health Association recommends that campuses look at tobacco free or smoke free policies.  So we’ve been quietly doing this work of gathering information. There have been several surveys that have happened on campus in the last couple years. There’s an Employee Health and Wellness Committee survey that was done last year that showed support for a smoke free campus. There was a student government survey done last spring that also showed support by students. So I learned there would be some funding available through the state, the Minnesota legislature allocated some dollars and it’s called the SHIP program, State Health Improvement Program, and the goal of those funds are to allocate money to counties to work within  the county with different areas on issues regarding tobacco free policies, nutrition and physical activity. I’m hoping that the state is able to implement some policies and environmental change around these three important areas that are going to in the long run end up making changes and savings to the state in health care costs. So Stearns County public health director, Renee Frauendienst and I had a conversation and I said that we at St. Cloud State Health Services were interested in all three areas and let us know if you’re interested in partnering. So she called me back and said we’d really like to see if these funds could be used on your campus if you feel the campus is ready to start having these discussions, let’s talk about that. So with the survey data that we had we felt it might be the right time to look at these issues. A lot of campuses are looking at tobacco free and smoke free policies. Several campuses including two of the MnSCU four-year schools have gone tobacco free, Moorhead and Winona. So we’ve had conversations with those folks about what’s worked well, what’s not worked well. So we went ahead with the SHIP proposal and we were funded. So we have some dollars available to help us bring in some folks that know how to do this grass-roots organizing, getting focus groups going, involving both smokers and nonsmokers, and talking to folks in neighborhoods to have a discussion to really review St. Cloud State’s current smoking policy and decide which direction we want to go. I just wanted to come and share a couple of things, the first one I am passing around is a two-sided document, on the first side is what the current smoking policy is, it’s from the Human Resources website. I probably didn’t bring enough copies but I did share it at President’s Council so those folks already have one, if you could share it I would appreciate it. So that’s what the current policy is. It hasn’t been reviewed for a few years so it might be a good idea to do that in light of what’s been going on around us.  On the back side is just a map and this probably is not even current because things are changing all the time. Campuses that have gone tobacco free or smoke free in the state and right now with the SHIP dollars there are quite a few campus both public and private, two-year and four-year that are currently doing what we’re doing, having conversations and I think we’re going to see some big changes around this in the next year. The second thing I brought is something that I didn’t bring to President’s Council but I think most people are aware of this. There was a news release that was sent out March 17 that says that Minnesota State Colleges and Universities passed a resolution today encouraging college and universities to consult with students, faculty and staff about further restricting tobacco use on the system’s 54 campuses. So I didn’t know this was going to be sent but it’s really interesting timing with the work that we were hoping to get started any way. That’s kind of where we are at right now. We’ve been keeping a list of the people who have been calling us with concerns saying we want to be involved or are interested in this topic. We did post an event one year ago, University of Minnesota Boynton Health Services asked us to host a regional event for campuses to come together and start talking about tobacco free policies. We hosted that even, we invited all of the attendees and interested folks that we knew of back to a luncheon that we held last week Wednesday. We had 17 people attend and others who suggested they couldn’t come to that date but keep us informed. We’ve got a number of students on a list that have expressed interest so, we are at the point of very, very early stages of starting to work on this on campus and the President and Provost thought it would be important to come to each of the Meet & Confers in some way and open up the doors of conversation so we can hear both ways, concerns you might have starting this process.

 

FA: We knew that this was on the agenda but we knew very little about what the nature of the concern that would be raised. I appreciate the information; it isn’t clear to me exactly what you are asking of us. That is are you asking for an opinion as to what we think about proceeding with the study, are you asking us if we are willing to participate in the study, what exactly are you looking for from us?

 

Guest: I think my purpose after Monday’s President Council meeting was the direction I heard from the President and President’s Council was it was important to come and bring information about where we are at in the process.

 

Admin: Let me say a couple of words. We will use the grant funding to start a conversation which will lead to policy decisions about tobacco use on our campus which could include a commitment, could go as far as a commitment to banning tobacco use on campus. That would be a policy decision of interest to everybody. Our conversations with Cori were just preliminary and I guess what I would like is, Cori will put together a task force and I would like your opinion, direction, whatever. Do you think that is a group to which the faculty would like some appointing rights in accordance with the agreement or is anybody who wants to come who wants to and we’ll have conversations and just trust that people will show up and participate? It will lead to policy proposals that will be handled through the regular Meet & Confer process so it is not a decision making body but it is the beginning of work that will lead us to policy changes probably.

 

FA: Well I think we need to have a conversation about that among ourselves. I think I can say safely that to the extent that you wish to convene one-time open meetings to have conversations that that’s not something that’s a problem, it’s an informal anybody invited to have an open session. If we’re talking about a group that’s going to be developing some specific policy recommendations then that’s more likely to be something that we would want to be handled in a more formal way with appointments. Let’s take that among executive committee and get back to you.

 

Admin: Thank you Cori, that’s all we need from you. Thank you very much.

 

Guest: You’re welcome.

 

Admin: Wanda and Cori we can talk about the preliminary work that needs to be done.

 

FA: The student government has been approached?

 

Guest: Student Government I haven’t been to this week since President’s Council but they haven’t asked me to be on their agenda yet but I did have a conversation, two conversations with them already letting them know that we’d applied for these funds and were expecting to get funded and I told them I would report back to them once we had secured funding and they could move forward. The contract just got signed probably a week ago so I was thinking I would wait until after talking with the President to see if we were going to have a task force but I do intend to update them.

 

Admin: Would you talk for a minute about the roads they’ve taken and the survey.

 

Guest: Last spring student government posed a question, it was a nonbinding question asking would students support a smoke free campus and of the students that voted 56% percent of students said they would support that. Then there was an article in the Chronicle and then student government president suggested that now we have to do research and see how we would implement that. He was saying we’ll work on this next year. So that was the student vote, the Health and Wellness Committee survey was done last spring there were 300 people surveyed 277 completed it, this is of employees, and 86.2% of the 277 said they would like the campus to go smoke free. We also had some nursing students who did a survey and they did report to student government after they completed their survey, they had 441 students surveyed and 65% agreed they would prefer a smoke free campus. Steve Frank on his survey has asked that question also and it looked like the last information I had I think was 2008 and he said about two-thirds of students in his survey supported it and I don’t have the exact wording of his questions but he was noting in his summary that he had seen a change in the trend over the last years since 2000, that there’s less students smoking and there’s more students supporting smoke free campus. So those are the basis of what we took that the campus is ready to start having this conversation.

 

FA: Do you have any data from smokers as to asking questions like how would this affect your decision to come to or stay at St. Cloud State, what would you do if there were… just curious as to whether you have any data?

 

Guest: I don’t think we’ve asked that specific question but part of the funding we have allows us to do additional surveying so I think with this task force or group that get’s put together I think those are some important questions to ask.

 

FA: Does anyone else have any questions or comments toward this. If not, thank you Cori.

 

Guest: Thanks.

 

Progress Reports on Long-term Concerns

1.   Report on Budget (ADM) (10/18/07)

FA: We’re going to move to Progress Reports on Long Term Concerns item one, report on the budget. If you recall at our last meeting we didn’t really get through the Progress Reports because we had one or two other important topics.

 

Admin: Just a couple things to note, one the house and senate have passed similar bills in terms of the budget reconciliation that are similar to what the governor suggested in terms of the impact on MnSCU, and we would expect on the University. The Times article that was in this week was incorrect that passage of the house and senate did not result in a six million dollar reduction allocation to St. Cloud. The six million is the number we’ve been using and have talked about here that among the influence and factors was the assumption about that 10 million dollar reduction that we expected as a result of the balance of the bill. So it’s still in the same area, there basic provision or there was in some discussions around a requirement of a portion of that, a large portion of that ten percent being assigned as a cut required in the central office that had some strings about its difficulty, that it could not be shifted to the campuses. I don’t know the resolution of that particular issue. That could influence our practice services received but also the resources we receive on a scale of a two to three hundred thousand dollars, perhaps. So the passage of that is kind of what we expected so it’s not news that’s affecting our status.  We are just sending in our tuition today, proposal for next year that we’re going the five percent that MnSCU had allowed which the way they calculated it’s just a few cents over five percent but in any case we’ve sent that in. There was only a tuition or two we’re waiting to hear from a couple of deans but I’m not sure if that was sent in this afternoon or not. That was the only one or two we were missing and that goes to the board the end of this month for a first reading from all the schools and they will actually get a good indicator from the board meeting but they don’t set tuition until the May board meeting for next year. We think that that will be fine. We also sent for fees, levels are still tentative because the process is working itself through the students. In turn requires the President’s approval before what we would expect the fees to be but the board is still having to review. After their meeting on the Tuesday and Wednesday something like the 21st and 22nd or so of April we will then have greater assurance of what we would expect for fiscal year eleven. So we’re expecting our town hall meetings on campus around fiscal year eleven to occur in the afternoon Monday the 25th and the Tuesday or Thursday morning as well, I expect two similar presentations. We are also making arrangements we think we would like to record at least the audio of one of the presentations and include it with the power point that supports it so those unable to attend could get more of the substance of the presentation through our budget website online and be able to hear what was said and see the information that was presented to allow more access to that than even the two occasions we will provide. That’s something to look forward to.  There will be a joint Budget Advisory Group and Strategic Planning Committee meeting on April 15 and so the chairs have been talking but we continue to want to, we both have a lot of work to do, but we want to continue discussion between those two groups and so we’re going to sort of help with a meeting. Also their group is coming together to look at administrative costs and I sent a note to the President and you Mark so if you’d like a faculty member to participate that is certainly open. That group is pretty well formed now and its initial meeting is being scheduled for that to work through that issue and have that ready to bring back to campus in the fall as we work through with the information we had earlier as we work through discussion of that and discussion of our budget for fiscal year twelve and fiscal year twelve is still a difficult case for us.

 

FA: When did you send me that email?

 

Admin: Ten days, I suppose.

 

FA: Let me double check on that.

 

Admin: Given that response I will double check too.

 

FA: O.k. I will confess that over the last couple of weeks there may have been some things that I have slipped in my attention on so I’m not making any accusation but my question obviously feels I don’t remember that.

 

Admin: I will e-mail Lucy when she’s working with this to copy you on another email related to it so I’ll go back and check too. The character of what we’re doing is we’ve been consistently trying to make decisions with the best information that we can and that is resulting in a decision process in we frequently compare to Mankato that is a little behind what they’re doing in their similar situation over the last couple of years to us but I think we’re giving it greater consideration and making the decisions with the best information at hand that we procure with a little more and I think that strategy is a good one and I think it’s been helpful to us to have a little more time to consider things rather than moving more quickly with reductions.

 

FA: I’ve got a couple of questions. One thing that came through our, actually we were intending to ask two weeks ago but we didn’t have time to was about we had at least for a period of time last year a practice of having some kind of monthly financial statement released to the community and Meet & Confer and wondering whether that would be possible to do that again.

 

Admin: I believe they were quarterly and so the next one is due in a couple of days.

 

Admin: I remember reading something that I think came out to the Budget Advisory Group that indicated that the quarterly report would be available on the 9th of April.

 

Admin: I think that’s about right we finished the quarter yesterday so we’ll put the report together in the format that we put it together before so it’s comparable over time. That actually should be out in the next few days and I will send you an email of its arrival.

 

FA: Thank you. I will be eagerly watching my mailbox. As you all may know there is a certain amount of anxiety on campus about the budget picture and one aspect of that anxiety is that looking forwards towards the 15 million dollar cliff of fiscal year twelve I think it’s fair to say that most faculty members don’t have much of a sense of how even a range of numbers within which those budget cuts can be achieved.  We’re aware of a strategy of savings some money through reduction in fixed term and adjunct faculty, we’re aware that retrenchment is on the table, President Potter gave a guestimate of something like twenty to twenty-five positions being retrenched, we’re aware that there is hope to achieve savings through some kinds of restructuring/reorganization but as we try to piece this all together it’s hard to image how it adds up to 15 million.  Now there are probably other things we’re not thinking of, maybe some other revenue pieces, there are some savings in administration in academic affairs, there are a number of pieces here but we don’t have even a very rough estimate of in what kinds of areas are we targeting to get to this 15 million dollar number and in the absence of even a rough understanding people are speculating, sometimes speculating in rather creative ways as to what may be going on or might have already been decided or things like that.  There are a few things more unhealthy than that kind of enterprise of speculation and we’re wondering at what point is it possible for you to share with us some framework that would give us some idea of what kinds of pieces in what kinds of areas we can get to a better understanding as well.

 

Admin:  You’ll remember my answer last week to a similar question which is before we can think about retrenchment we have to tell you we’re going to think about retrenchment to the degree that retrenchment has to be part of how we address the budget challenge for fiscal twelve, we have nothing in writing, there is no plan, there is no secret, there is nothing to share because we followed the contract and didn’t even pencil out anything without first telling you that we’re going to be doing that.  So we now have to begin that thinking.  We are just coming to closure on those specific changes we have to make in order to reach our fiscal eleven targets.  Everybody understands regretfully that notice requirements being that we have to tell you probationary faculty in August and tenured faculty the 20th day of the school year if their positions are going to be eliminated.  So there is a point at which we must have the picture that you describe.  There’s a point at which we could begin to even sketch that picture and that point was last Tuesday, a week ago and we now have to begin to do that.  So with respect to a plan I can’t imagine we would have anything worth sharing before the end of April in which we would have the kind of decision framework that we had prepared to help to vision to start thinking about the budget.  We could probably do that.

 

Admin:  What we intend to do is take another look at the best information we have relative to FY 12 and share it at the town hall meeting at the end of the month.  We will know something about what happened to tuition issues so at least we will know for next year and we review again since January our latest enrollment projections for the next year we’ll also know a little more about debt service.  There are some additional assumptions, we hope to get some guidance on tuition for 12, there has been some information that there may be greater flexibility than the five percent, there’s assumptions around even seven or eight in the previous materials in terms of tuition increase.  So we will take another run at what is our best estimate of the number just to recall as we go into, two things are how are we estimating severances because we’re in another year, we don’t have any information on that or guidance.  And the second is I’ve asked and am interested in what the impact of the health care bill will be on our health care costs that have been increasing pretty dramatically for the last several years. I’ve asked of the Office of the Chancellor, and Larry’s pursued it through the HR areas, I believe to try to discern of what the impact of that would be.  If it’s saving great, if it’s not we’ll have to come up with that.

 

FA:  I’m thinking that it might be useful once we know what 2011 looks like how we balance that to release that so people can see the sorts of cost savings that have happened across campus and where it’s coming from.

 

Admin:  The purpose of the town hall meetings is for each vice president to talk through their approaches to doing that. They will still be a little preliminary and not final numbers but it will give people a sense of the approach and then shortly after that we will be… let me just comment that anybody in their right mind could look at the way this is proceeding and say “why don’t you have a budget for fiscal year 2011 already, shouldn’t that be fixed” and just remember that you’re in Minnesota and we are dependent on a lot of legislative and system inputs to really know what our budget is and I think we are producing numbers as soon as possible with the constraints with the way the state works.

 

FA:  So the town hall will be presented for 2011?

 

Admin:  What I heard is that within the next few days we’ll have a picture of the budget that we don’t have right now.  We pretend we have a budget but we really make guesses at it and we don’t know unless we track expenditure and revenue, what the actual performance is of this fiscal year.  We should be in a very good position to project our end of the year status because we’ve hired just about everybody we’re going to hire to do the work. We have booked the overwhelming majority of potential revenue; we know the fixed costs that are associated with that and that then helps us when we go to review fiscal year eleven.  I do believe in Academic Affairs that the original budgeted amounts were overly aggressive in cost. We did do some things which resulted in structural savings and the deans are doing some things that deal with structural savings in to the next year and when we look ahead to twelve we do have to look at ten and know where ten is because that informs whether or not eleven which was based on our estimate of ten moving forward.

 

Admin:  Headed to the end of April is the soonest point we can even have a shadow of a description of what 2012 might look like.  It will be fraught with uncertainties and not of very great value at that point.

 

FA:  Actually I understand in terms of real budget planning there will remain a great deal of uncertainty and its value will be limited. The value in terms of simply something to frame fall on for faculty members will be considerable even if its details remain incomplete in a lot of respects.

 

Admin: Let me ask one facetious question, the people who suggest there is a plan already in place, what do they not understand about the fact that the contract does not allow us to do this kind of planning until we’ve given you notice.

 

FA:  I’m sorry to be the bearer of annoying news, spokesperson for people who bring there concerns to me, it’s my job to do that.  I don’t know what people understand or don’t understand I do understand that the contract requires you to notify us of the moment that you’re contemplating retrenchment and I accept that you have done so in good faith.  The question asked that was not related to retrenchment but to the overall… for example it took a degree of thinking about budget to come to the conclusion that we can no longer rule out retrenchment, it takes a degree of certainly and a degree of framing of the possibilities to come to the conclusion that we can no longer rule out retrenchment unless you’re thinking about it.

 

Admin:  A question could be how do you get to that point?

 

FA: Yes

 

Admin:  You get to that point by squeezing every drop of blood out of what you can to get the six million dollar cut for 2011.  At that point recognize you couldn’t possibly go double that without having that tool available and at that point it is we have to talk to the faculty.

 

FA:  I will tell you one thing that I heard twice today and that is they said that notice begins for all probationary faculty at the first of August and I’ve been told that’s a fact by people who were not in a position of course.

 

Admin:  We talked about that at length in our senate meeting and it is truly problematic and is going to require that we make subjective judgments about where people might be at risk.  Without using the verb “over-notice” (laughter) we might have to give people notice of that in the end will not receive a layoff notice.  But we can limit the degree of which that happens by doing good risk assessment in our thinking between now and then.

 

Admin:  There is good news on the budget that we sometimes forget to acknowledge.  The good news is that there were 15,067 full year equivalent students paying tuition or some other means for their education this year. The planning documents we started with had even smaller enrollment, we recognized in October we were going to be bigger than what we thought. I think we recognized we budgeted on 14,700 which means in terms of this fiscal year there are 367 full year equivalent students giving us revenue we did not anticipate.  The other good news is as far as I can tell from the Provost’s office we didn’t spend any more money than we planned to spend to teach classes, to provide services and ended up serving that 15,067.  Now what that means is that when we project that we’d be at 14,850 there is some room you see to reduce 150 less roughly, now remember that’s that bubble that we guess at, the bubble created in a change of practice. Some people have been very concerned at how in the world can we serve the students we need to serve if we’re going to cut the budget, the fact of the matter is the budget for teaching on this campus didn’t go up and we produced more credits. That’s all good news.

 

FA:  I feel so much better knowing that (laughter) but yes let’s take credit for what we’ve achieved.  The issue of rumors about numbers of notices that will go out on August 1st we are given to understand that inconsistent messages have been coming out from different administrators and I think we understand that as of this Meet & Confer group as of our last meeting here and also as of senate, that there is a possibility that it may be necessary to give a larger number of notices than the number of faculty that will be ultimately laid off and I think we understand why that may be necessary and prudent for the administration to do.  I think we also understand that it’s desirable to make that as small a number as is practical so that we don’t terrorize the entire campus unnecessarily. So if word is perceived as coming from the administration that all probationary faculty are going to get notice on August 1st that is really bad to moral and in a way that is… quite a number of faculty members have been reporting to us as they have heard this rumor.

 

Admin:  Well let me say that you know that Devinder and I did not say that.

 

FA:  I do know that.

 

Admin:  Have you said that?

 

Admin:  I did not say that?

 

Admin:  Did you say that?

 

Admin:  Not in that way.

 

Admin:  I don’t have any more to ask.

 

FA:  I did not want to report this on any individual basis but the reports that I’ve gotten are from the College of Science and Engineering and the report was that you said “I wouldn’t be surprised if they sent notice to all probationary faculty”.

 

Admin:  The question was asked of me what probationary faculty will be getting notices and I said I didn’t know, that it could be as many as all of them but I didn’t know.

 

Admin: That is a truthful and fair statement. 

 

FA:  That is a truthful statement and I’m not saying it’s an unfair statement.  You understand how those words as much as, I’m not saying you’re lying or anyway trying to deceive that point, I’m trying to draw attention to how a statement like that can be read.

 

Admin:  And you need to put the context in there, the question was asked “how does it go in terms of layoff”, and I said first of all there’s adjuncts, and then there’s fixed terms and then at that point and time when those folks have been notified that we would not hire them again then we would start with probationary faculty, the scope of that I don’t know.

 

FA:  I’m also involved because I’m doing seminars for faculty about what does retrenchment mean, what does the contract say about that and I’m also getting questions like that and I also have to be very, very careful about the way that I answer those questions.  I think we’ve said what we need to say here and it’s not just about what we say but it’s also about how people can understand what we said.

 

Admin:  Devinder addressed the Academic Affairs Council on Tuesday to emphasis the importance of having a consistent message from consistent sources.  So Devinder is responding to this concern that the answer come from a place in a manner that is thoughtfully developed and doesn’t end up being heard differently because it’s said slightly differently by other voices.  So there’s an effort to identify who the contact point is with regard to certain matters.  With regard to the collective bargaining agreement the contact point with questions and retrenchment would be one of them, is myself.  I am that contact and he told the deans and all of the vice president’s present that that would occur.  That was Tuesday.

 

FA:  I understand the difficulty of responding to these questions and I guess I would caution us in the direction as being as minimalistic as we can.  I guess I would prefer to hear the answer, and I understand that your response was speculative, I would prefer to have the answer stop with “I’m really not sure” because I’m concerned with what people hear being exacerbated.  Let me just give you one simple example, after retrenchment was put on the agenda before we even talked about it, I walked into a meeting with my department with primary tenure track people and just the feeling was lay low.  I understand that we don’t really know but I think that if we try not to be as broad in the scope of what we say and try to be as minimalistic as we can so that I think it will help soften it down so that people realize that it’s going to be as much as possible a rational process where we learn what we need to do as we go through the analysis. 

 

Admin:  To describe the position we’re in a little differently, we have not yet put together a revenue picture for 2012.

 

Admin:  Not since January.

 

Admin:  A lot has changed since then.  We haven’t given direction to any of the decision makers to begin to develop an approach to cover it because they were in a process of doing that for fiscal eleven.  As that draws to a close they can turn that energy to fiscal twelve. So we don’t have a current, with the tuition information, etc, that projection for twelve and we certainly don’t have the expense picture updated by our experience in ten and the processing of eleven because in eleven we are making the final choices to eliminate positions that will not be filled that have structural implications going forward to fourteen.  I understand that we’ve got some assumptions that some of the savings have been temporary and some of them have been structural and some of the solutions for eleven still has temporary stuff in them which magnifies the challenge for twelve.  So we haven’t finalized the eleven picture and we don’t have a final understanding of ten so our expense picture for twelve is still abstract. It’s the picture we have to develop for the projection for fiscal ten, yearend plus the processing of our plans for eleven which allow us to confirm our expense understanding for twelve and allow us to begin planning for that.

 

FA:  Is it your expectation that increased revenue will be available to be part of the solution?

 

Admin:  Yes, of course.

 

FA:  Even that, it’s obvious to you it isn’t necessarily obvious to everyone that we’re talking with.

 

Admin:  I said a week ago Tuesday in response to Bills question we had talked about a response to Larry Roth’ question about strategies and why we’re delaying decision.  I talked about additional revenues and cost savings and process improvement we were doing and Bill Langen’s question was “Are you going to do everything you can before you get to cutting faculty positions” and the answer was “yes”.  He said “will we see what you’re thinking” and I said “yes” and he said “is that a commitment” and I said “yes”.  So much of it has been given in a public forum the fact that everybody on the campus wasn’t there or hasn’t heard that yet, I understand and it does not anger me that everybody does not understand but it’s not because a very clear or ambiguous message has not been communicated.

 

 

2.   Status of Administrative Searches (ADM)

Admin:  The College of Education Dean search has entered the phase where they’ve narrowed the list from which finalists will be selected.  As quickly as possible after finalists have been selected the on campus visits will be scheduled to allow the College and the wider University community to interact with the candidates.  With regard to the place that’s been announced that’s good news is Devinder cut his central office staff by two and it’s a done deal.  There are six jobs that disappear at the end of this year and from those six there are four that emerge.  The preparation of the position description for three of the four is approaching final stage and for the fourth it’s in a different state of affairs.  As those documents reach the point of final draft they would be shared with the FA since I suspect the FA has great interest in the work those people will be doing.

 

Admin:  I would say an ultimate draft.

 

Admin:  I believe those are the only administrative searches that are current.

 

FA:  We are curious as to whether the plan is to form search committees on an interim basis and what’s the time frame?

 

Admin:  All four of the positions will be filled on an interim basis.  The means by which the positions will be filled is still under discussion.  Keep in mind that in order to fill the position the Office of the Chancellor has to review the position descriptions, determine the placement on the salary range and it would be very awkward if in the end of the process the preferred candidate is identified and MnSCU has placed a salary range which would preclude the preferred candidate from accepting the position.  Conservatively talking to my friend Mitch he suggested two weeks of time for review by Office of the Chancellor was probably optimistic and that the norm for review would be closer to four weeks. There are some people in the room who know because the nature of appointment when they’re done and there’s one person in the room that knows that 90 days notice has to be given.  So there is some urgency and it’s time as a result of an action that none of us control which is how quickly will the Office of the Chancellor respond to these four new positions.

 

FA:  It’s hard to express our level of gratitude to the Office of the Chancellor for their cautious and careful review.

 

FA:  It’s been said that we will see an ultimate draft of the position descriptions, will those have already gone down to the Office of the Chancellor at that point or will they come to us and then go to the Office of Chancellor, what’s that pattern going to be?

 

Admin:  What I would say is you see it before it goes to the Office of the Chancellor.  The Office of the Chancellor doesn’t tinker with content.  What the Office of the Chancellor does is look at what the content is and assigns a salary.  They wouldn’t be messing with the kinds of things that we will want to talk with the faculty about.

 

FA:  So would it be possible then once we saw the description and given feedback to move forward to populating whatever kind of search committee was or deciding on that while the Chancellor is helping us with that.

 

Admin:  That is possible.  I leave that to the Provost but I think that is possible.  We can work in more than one channel to try to get this job done.

 

Admin:  This is the way it works, when it goes to the search committee it’s usually in final form and make sure there are no changes by anybody else so it’s usually in final form when it goes to them.  If that’s your question?  To be able to take a draft and say let’s start the search process pending review of the Office of the Chancellor, no it had not been done that way in the past.

 

Admin:  I appreciate that and it’s going to be done differently this time.  The process of forming a committee takes time.  You don’t want to go through until you get an approved finalized, through the Chancellors Office document until you begin the process of forming a committee. There will be some sloppiness on the front end because you begin forming the committee and those things are still in play, the committee will be formed you will come together, you’ll get all the usual pre-search lectures and then you might have to spin wheels for a bit.  I’m not pre-determining that the Provost will choose to create separate search committees for each position or that he will use search committees at all, that’s the Provost’s decision as how to fill those positions.

 

Admin:  I just want to make sure we’re clear that how in a permanent job search you have to go through the front HR procedures but if this is just going to be advertised inside for like a week or two then it’s not the same process.

 

FA:  Well we’ve done different models for different internal searches for temporary positions and I was just kind of trying to get my head around what this one might look like.

 

Admin:  It’s my understanding from having heard discussion of how Mankato’s Faculty Association or maybe its Winona deals with interim appointments during a time period that is rather short and that is that they use their Executive Committee and the Executive Committee is given information and the Executive Committee provides feedback.

 

FA:  Mankato works quite differently than we do.

 

Admin:  Well I’ve heard the story described at how Mankato or Winona Faculty Associations handle the late year and summer appointments.  I’m suggesting you may want to check with folks down at the IFO about how that happens.

 

Admin:  I would wait until the Provost has the opportunity to determine as how he wants to approach this, o.k.

 

FA:  We’ve been spending a good deal of time on a small number of items and we have an hour left before us so I’m going to try to move us ahead here a little more expeditiously.

 

3.   Students First Initiatives (FA)

 

a.    IFO Statement on Students First

b.    SCSU SGA Resolution on Students First

 

FA:  The outstanding question that we had was that we I believe in our last meeting or had inquired as to whether or not the administration was able or willing to make any statement of endorsement or agreement with either the IFO statement on Students First or the SCSU’s student government association resolution on Students First.

 

Admin:  Essentially no.  I couldn’t as the President of this University who reports to the Chancellor take a position with the student’s association or the faculty association against the project directed by the Chancellor. 

 

Admin:  You could, you’d just get fired.

 

Admin:  Absolutely not. (laughter)  Do we have concerns about the way this is being managed, the stuff we’re hearing, yes we do.  Do we share some of those concerns, yes we do.  Kristi’s charge is the representative of the administration in that conversation to represent our positions in that circle.  What we do want to do is create an advisory committee on campus or advisory board on campus to consult with Kristi as she performs her role and that’s one of the primary purposes of such an advisory group would be to consider the impact on us or the implications for us of the practices and timeline under discussion. The advisory group would not direct Kristi’s participation but would inform her participation.  Kristi is responsible to me for her participation at the Chancellors Office.  We talked about this in President’s Council Monday and came to the conclusion we should constitute the advisory group through the bargaining unit process.  I’ve asked Kristi to put together a document which we would look at to use to give us some representatives in that process.  I think it will be a venue where we can talk about our common concerns and Kristi can be fully informed by the perspectives of the people whose work is going to be affected by this project. I think that’s a good thing to do. I cannot make an official statement that supports the FA’s or the student resolutions.

 

FA:  I think that answers the questions but I do want to confirm that I received an email from Kristi framing that general concept at least.

 

FA: Is it your intention to include among the advisory committee members students.

 

Admin:  Sure.

 

FA:  I would like to pass over, at least for the moment Report on Late Withdrawals because I think there are some other items that are more pressing. Is there any objection to that?

 

Admin:  No.

 

FA: So we’re going to go back to Unfinished Business.

 

Approval of Minutes

1.   April 5, 2010

Admin:  Are we going to approve the minutes?

 

FA:  We approved them on our side.  We made corrections and forwarded them on but I have not heard back from Devinder whether there were any further corrections there and I’ve not seen any corrections come back.

 

Admin:  O.K. I did review the document and the document does reflect what occurred two weeks ago.

 

FA:  Could we handle it so that we don’t need to come back to this and could we say that pending approval from Devinder, you two can just decide to just go ahead and do that?

 

FA:  Would there be any objection to that?

 

FA: No.

 

FA:  It was a very important meeting and we want to get those notes out as soon as we can.  I don’t think there are any items of dispute.  It’s just a matter of courtesy to Devinder and I want to make sure that it’s been approved by all parties.

 

Unfinished Business

1.           Use of Adjuncts (FA)

FA:  Devinder and I and Lisa and John have a meeting scheduled where we’re going to continue the conversation about how to conduct the next step in an investigation of the numbers and patterns of usage and so on.  We are eager to move forward in this process.  Any questions or comments?

 

Admin:  Let me just comment that the exploration of this particular issue is directly related to the planning and the budget work we have to do for fiscal year twelve so it’s good developmental work for us to do this.

 

FA:  This is a moment when we can do multiple good things at once but in terms of the relatively short term budget issues and in terms of broader consideration on how we teach and who teaches and how we meet the ongoing needs of students and so on.  Not to mention complying with contracts and of course we’re eager to make some progress on this so that it can inform the decisions that have to be made in the short term as well as the long term. I appreciate that this has been a collegial and cooperative process so far and I look forward to keeping it that way. 

 

2.           Status of General Education and Approval by MnSCU (FA)

Admin:  I can report that the Provost has sent the follow up correspondence to Linda Baer that expressed what he committed to doing at the last Meet and Confer which was the gently push to say we have a pending registration deadline and that in the absence of other direction we would be populating courses into the ten goal areas and using the bridge that we had built last year as the gen ed program until we hear an answer.  Mitch has more detail and information.

 

Admin:  Generally that sums it up.  We have already in advance the statement on liberal education that the faculty association has approved as the framework philosophy for general education curriculum at St. Cloud State University.  We do have a framework in place for populating courses in the curriculum designating them into various goal areas and so our goal is to populate those ten goal areas with courses that at some point we hope will have a permanent status as St. Cloud State’s liberal education curriculum.  That’s the MnSCU side the overall philosophical nature of our general education curriculum. There is a second issue that we need to address and that is natural population of courses, assign courses to those goal areas.  That’s been a subject of another discussion.

 

FA:  I can share with you that I’ve been in contact with the chairs of both the general education and UCC.  I am expecting to be receiving a large number of additional courses, we’ve already approved some and I expect to be receiving a large number of new approved courses from UCC to be taken to senate on Tuesday for approval.  I am going to do it and I expect senate will be diligent in considering those and approving things as rapidly as we can.  I’m not sure whether that is going to be the full list of courses that will ultimately be approved, I rather expect that it won’t be the 100% fullest but I understand it to be a very large number of courses.

 

Admin:  In that process we do have a deadline that we face, the arising registration date is coming up April 19th I believe and we need to have a curriculum in place so what we have proposed to the faculty association, through Mark, is for those course that have not received approval through the curriculum process that we on a provisional basis adopt courses approved by the general education committee as courses to populate, the ten goal areas.

 

FA:  I have received an email from you in regard to that this did not take the form of a formal request to place this on Meet & Confer today.  I want to be cooperative within the limits of what our procedures allow and I’m willing to place on the agenda of our Tuesday Senate meeting this question but I can’t say what the response will be.  This is a fairly big procedural adaptation to have provisional approval of courses that haven’t completely made it through the process because it would as you said, people are going to be registering on the 19th which would mean that this would affect at least some number of students and their careers here at St. Cloud State and their education so this is a fairly large matter but we can place it on the agenda and the senate will act as it deems appropriate.

 

3.           Performance Review of Deans (FA)

FA:  I spoke about this briefly with Devinder on Monday but I don’t want to speak for him.

 

Admin:  I have been asked to explore and determine whether there is a perspective from the Office of the Chancellor about the evaluation for deans, performance review of deans and whether or not there’s a system approach or any of that.  I will have the report to you when I have the information. I don’t yet.

 

FA:  I believe that there are a couple of our sister institutions that do 360 degree performance evaluations.  I believe Mankato does and a few years ago Moorhead was moving in that direction, I don’t know if they got there.

 

FA:  I will be happy to assist in your research by inquiring of my fellow FA presidents what they know about the experiences on their campuses.

 

 

New Business

1.     Strategic Program Appraisal (FA)

FA:  We have a couple of comments on this ongoing process. Before I do anything else, I want to express my thanks to Devinder and to Lisa for having conducted the two sessions that they did.  I think they were very helpful.

 

Admin:  Judy too.

 

FA:  Yes, and Judy too and I was there to so thanks to me.

 

FA:  And I wasn’t quiet.

 

FA:  Yes, and God bless us everyone. (laughter) Those conversations were helpful and positive and I think constructive and in many respects forward thinking and people beginning to see not only the down side of this process but also the fact that there are opportunities here for us to start doing some things better.  That is my bit of good news to share.  At the same time I have to talk about anxieties in the faculty I want to share that there are also some excitement in the faculty about the possibility that this all can have some good outcomes and well as some bad outcomes.  There are a couple of specific requests or suggestions that we got about this process and one is that I think it’s fair to say that Devinder has been trying not to be overly directive in this process and be respectful of the input of the faculty and I think we all appreciate that. But in all honesty we may be at a point where a bit more directiveness would be helpful at least with regards to fleshing out the concept of schools, clusters, affinity groups and how they might actually work and also how they might actually save money as well as being positive in a  programmatic sense. I think that many faculty members are frankly confused about; it doesn’t mean that we might not propose some alternate vision, and I think that that dialog is entirely possible but I think it would actually be helpful to us to have a bit more specificity in terms of what those things might look like.  That is one request.

 

Admin:  I will take that as a friendly suggestion. At least as Michael framed it in his most recent email, the most new and approved academic cereal. (laughter)

 

FA:  Hmmm… academic clusters.  (laughter)  O.K. another thing is a perfectly rational statement by the Provost is that any new structure should not cost more than current structures.

 

Admin:  I made that statement.

 

FA:  And you too, you’re rational too. (laugher)  But the one question related to that is how much does our current structure cost?  That is I realize that’s a very wide open question but we need to have some way of assessing what are we spending now on those things that we might save money on if we did something differently.  Off the top of my head that includes things like administrator salaries, support staff salaries, office space, as much information as we can get about that and about a sense of where changes in numbers of these might have something to do with dollars that would be helpful to us in thinking about this.

 

Admin:  I would suggest is Steve, Lisa that that is a need that gets shared with the present advisory committee and that the way to frame the data will be discussed with Strategic Planning. The answer to that question is essential in order for us to make decisions about steps forward so getting that answer is the important part of the process that leads us to an outcome.  Putting the model together that allows us to array, for example you just said space.  Space is not an element in the budget for the most part unless we’re renting. It’s not a cost that’s assigned.  So for example the cost of classroom use is not cost it’s just assigned, although one could go back and figure out that number but I don’t’ think that would be useful in our going forward because capitol planning is a different world.  There is in the plans for managing the budget closing Eastman, is one of the elements on the table but what’s saved there is not the cost of the space but the cost of heating, lighting and GMW services to that building.  Those elements are in the space. The reason I’m going on so long about this is that’s why it’s important to talk about it in those committees because somebody will say, well what’s the cost of x, x has no impact on our current budgeting practice and will have no impact. It’s not worth spending a lot of time putting that information together.  The question of how do we array the cost of current operations so that they can best inform the decisions we have to make.

 

FA:  That makes sense to me.  We are looking for numbers that are useful to the process not numbers that are not. I respect that how we organize those numbers is as important as what numbers we ask for so that sounds like an appropriate response to me.  Another thing that we wanted to raise in the context of Strategic Program Appraisal is also related to budget, is that we’d like to request that we schedule at least three Meet & Confers over the summer.

 

Admin:  Sure.

 

FA:  And possibly more depending on the circumstances.

 

Admin:  Absolutely.

 

FA: Since you said yes I won’t do the rationale.

 

Admin:  Of course. Thank you for asking.

 

FA:  These are times that demand more talking.

 

FA:  One area that we really have to talk about in terms of SPA is the role or when or how we’re going to review the liberal education service courses.  For many of our departments that’s a large portion of what we do.

 

Admin:  What we wanted to focus on initially there was some discussion of what to do with liberal education and the gen ed as a program and the program appraisal we specifically decided to focus on academic degree programs to start with and then move to other academic programs could be general education, could be FYE’s, and some of the other non major and minor programs. That’s not scheduled for this year but could be included in the reorganization in costing discussion that we’re looking at over the summer and the fall. We’re looking at things like instructional capacity which would more directly look at departments that have a lot of general education credits and at what level of capacity there at compared to for example other programs of similar disciplinary means at other institutions and that’s one way of looking at it. But that would happen over the summer and next fall.

 

Admin:  The thinking about how to address that is still being planned.

 

 

2.     Summer School: Timing of Contracts (FA)

FA:  The agreement says that we’re supposed to Meet & Confer every year about the process for assigning summer school courses, I’m not sure whether we have always done that, I don’t believe that either side has been diligent about initiating that process but the one specific question in regard to the summer school contract that we wanted to raise, we recognize that in tight budgetary times it will be necessary for the administration to be conservative about when they approve contracts and whether or not classes will have sufficient tuition revenue to justify running them.  At the same time we would like to preserve flexibility for faculty members who are able and willing to tolerate the degree of uncertainty to keep the door open to not making a decision to close the course right away if that’s something that can be agreed upon usually between the faculty member and the administration so that the general thrust of the request that we have is that to the extent that the administration is confident about the numbers or the perspective numbers such that you are prepared to sign contracts that happen as early as practical.  In those cases where you cannot make that determination because of the financial risk involved that you consult with the faculty members who are scheduled to teach those classes and explore what kind of time frame, what kind of planning is appropriate.

 

Admin:  Let me respond to that.  I appreciate the fact that you recognize that the administration in these kinds of times is likely to be more conservative which would mean cancelling uncertain classes.  We’re being more cautious and not letting the process run to see what’s going to happen but in fact making decisions that don’t create obligations for us.  In conversations with the associate deans the general sense is that they’re willing to in April, and the words are really letter of appointment not contract, the letters of appointment can be issued for the majority of the courses.  We got as far as needing to think about the remaining courses that may or may not make it and I’m certainly friendly to the idea of consulting with the faculty about their willingness to extend that period of uncertainty to give those courses an opportunity as long as by doing that we’re not creating an obligation to alternative employment.  That’s the thing I want to be really careful about.  Because in times like this paying people for not teaching is one of the very worst things we can do so we all have an interest in not doing that.

 

FA:  I think that we’re in agreement on that.  That we recognize that in times like this money spent on not teaching is money that’s not available to pay for somebody to teach.  We like people to be paid to teach.  I think we have some agreement on that.  We want to allow faculty members the opportunity if they chose to say o.k. if you can’t commit to me in May or whatever time it is than I am going to make alternate plans and that’s that.  At the same time we want to leave open for those faculty members who are willing to keep the door open to say o.k. we’ll keep waiting for some more registration.

 

Admin:  Keep this in consultation with the Provost.

 

Admin: I would have expected the Provost to say to you Mark, I can’t agree with you more.

 

FA:  I think there are some patterns with certain sorts of courses where they tend to fill light, for example with teachers you don’t start registering until there at school, that you could actually look over time and see what the pattern has been and be able to predict with more regularity or certainty if you will what might happen.

 

Admin:  I think that thinking will occur.

 

FA:  It sounds as though we’re in substantial agreement then.

 

3.     Academic Year Calendar 2011-2012, 2012-2013 (ADM)

Admin:  The task force on the academic calendars has reviewed potential calendars for the 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 academic years and they have brought forth two draft calendars one for each year as well as the draft schedule of evening classes for both years.  These drafts are now being brought forth as proposals for consideration through Meet & Confer.

 

FA:  I’m concerned about the noting time between semesters and particularly I know there’s almost a week difference between 2011 and 2012.  In spring 2012 faculty workshop days would start on the 3rd of January, spring semester the next year it would be January 8th and by the time you start classes it’s the 9th and the 14th and I’m wondering why not the 16th and the 14th.  My concern is that there is very little time for prep even for a new semester in between and it seems to be an increasing difficulty.

 

Admin:  The start dates are designated by the Office of the Chancellor.

 

FA: So for spring too?

 

Admin:  Spring and fall are designated by the Office of the Chancellor and they have designated these through spring 2013.

 

FA:  Would it be possible for you to raise the concern I’ve raised with them.

 

Admin:  I believe we have raised the concern about it when Provost Spitzer was here, he raised that concern with the Office of the Chancellor in the context of the burden placed on international students who have difficulty…

 

FA:  It’s a huge burden with this schedule.

 

ADM:  My recollection is that there was some sympathy for them respectively but I have heard no further comment on that or seen no change in the future academic calendars.

 

Admin:  Wanda, you and Devinder are both sitting on the policy committee for that. They sit at the table where that should be brought up.

 

FA:  I’m wondering if it would be possible to have some sort of poll or survey of international students. My sense is when the time frame was wider last year, I’m thinking about last year’s schedule, I had quite a few students individually say there’s no way I can get home and back and this is a much tighter time line and so I’m wondering if we should query international students specifically about that because it seems to me it would be undue hardship. My other concern is back to the original concern I mentioned and that is preparation for class.  This sort of seems like it’s kind of almost a high school model preparation for class. I don’t know about other people but it takes me a considerable amount of time to prep for an upper division or graduate class and this doesn’t even seem to give you closure from one semester before beginning another and I’m not criticizing you for this, I know you understand but it seems to me they don’t always get the differences between the kinds of institutions and I’m very concerned about that.

 

FA:  I’m not sure it gives me time to get home and get back again and I live in St. Cloud. (laughter)

 

Admin:  I understand what you’re saying.  I dare to go so far as to say I’m sympathetic but these are issues that probably ought to be raised through the policy committees of the Office of the Chancellor. I think it’s also fair to say they are looking at from their perspective at the interest of all students in the system and the imperative idea of common start dates was to serve students who are attending more than one institution.  Mostly in the Metropolitan area but increasingly it does affect us because we have students who take classes from St. Cloud State as well as institutions in the Metropolitan area probably increasingly with St. Cloud Technical and Community College so these are all issues that deserve more discussion than has occurred here today.

 

FA:  The other question relates to summer sessions and the dates especially in 2012 those are really early in terms of thinking about some of the students who take course in the summer, faculty at the school districts and they wouldn’t even be out by the time summer session one starts.  I wonder if we considered and I am not sure if it would be reasonable or not but given these early start dates whether it might not be advisable to move to one summer session rather than two short ones.  I don’t expect you to answer that now but I’m wondering if you’d consider that.

 

Admin:  I’ve pictured a couple of observations and that would be one clearly for discussion. The task force on summer session back in the past year or so ago and came up with its proposals, which I understand have been issued and accepted and their proposal for summer session starting in 2012 was to have two six week blocks and if you look closely at this it says there is summer session block one and summer session block two.  The idea was to have most of the courses for teachers occur either in summer session block two or through flexible scheduling later in summer session one or even the flexibility that the courses overlap both sessions.  They’re very sensitive to the needs of teachers who are coming back here in the summer and if there is a probable perception and perception alone perhaps that’s something through publicity the University can address.  If it’s something other than that than perhaps the office who administers summer session should be taking a closer look at that, reexamine that.  If there are any changes of course we would be coming back with revisions to the academic calendar.

 

FA: We intend to bring this to senate and see if there are comments from senate so this is not our final response but we appreciate the information on the answers to the questions that we asked.

 

 

4.   Report on Late Withdrawals (FA)

FA:  At the end of our last Meet & Confer we had begun to ask some questions about the numbers and what the numbers meant in the report that you gave us in our last Meet & Confer and we didn’t really have time to get answers to any of that.  I wondered if you had made any changes or revisions or had an additional clarifications to offer.

 

Admin:  I recall that there were a couple of detailed questions and which we tried to address in the short amount of time that we had. MY recollection is that we had concluded that section with the possibility of the faculty association preparing questions and submitting them to me or raising additional questions in this forum.

 

FA:  I wasn’t here at that particular Meet & Confer but the one thing, as I looked this over, I don’t want to repeat stuff that you already went over. First I guess wondering if there was consultation with the instructor was not always at 100%, I assumed that you must have discussed why that was the case.

 

ADM:  That reflects some practices that occurred in the Office of Academic Affairs as it turns out as we reviewed this information.  First of all this analysis is students who are requesting a late withdrawal in the previous semester, not the current semester.  We addressed that in a different report.  What happened is it had been a long standing practice when a request came in for a withdrawal from a semester more than a year back we tried to get a last date of attendance but we did not necessarily ask for the faculty members opinion on the request and when that became evident, last fall we made an attempt to change the practice and routinely we ask not only for a last date of attendance but also for the faculty members opinion on the request.  Some express and opinion, some don’t.

 

FA:  I am going to suggest if there’s no objection that the most productive thing for us to do on this is we need to develop a fuller set questions for you if we are going to get productive answers and that probably further exploration of that at this meeting is not going to be that helpful.  I’m not trying to cut off anybody who has a question there about to ask, but if not we have completed our business.

 

ADM:  There was something from the minutes we approved that either it was you or Devinder prompted was to give you an update on teach-out.  Today a message went out to the deans of the various colleges where programs have closed or suspended that gives them the information to pass on for the program individuals with regard to the process that will be followed in the individual teach-out.  So that went to deans today.  We also sent to deans today information about only the deans have suspended programs instruction about a process that could or may lead to the lifting of the suspension of the programs.  For the programs that have been asking that question, that information is now out in the deans hands and finally we are close to correspondence with the student body in an effort to make sure all students currently enrolled know how they can be identified for participation in a teach-out.  That deadline is that departments must have admitted the student to the program no later than April 30 of this calendar year.

 

FA:  When you say the department must have admitted the student does that mean that advisor and the chair have signed off and sent it over to records and registration or does that mean that the registration, that the plan of study has been approved by that date?

 

ADM:  The signature of the, however the department handles it, the signature date on the form of the approved course of study for the major can’t be later than April 30.

FA:  So if the chair and the advisor, if the student has gotten all of the signatures by that time, this student is fine?

 

ADM:  That’s correct.

 

FA:  And will be involved in the teach-out.

 

ADM:  And would be involved in the teach-out.

 

FA: O.K.

 

ADM:  You’re talking about the time line for students, we would deal with students who had been enrolled as recently as two years ago spring semester.

 

ADM:  200%

 

ADM:  Oh, yes the 200%.  The teach-out plans themselves, once it’s identified what the normal course of progress would be, there will be given 200% of normal to complete the program.  So if the student was halfway through the program in a four-year program they would be given four additional years to finish the teach-out.  We use that which is a standard that the federal government uses in defining an orderly progress and then we were very conservative and added 50% to it.  Federal government talks about orderly progress as 150% of normal.  We’ve set for the teach-out purposes it would be 200%.

 

FA:  Tom asked a question before about people are asking a question before and I’m not sure he got an answer.

 

FA:  Actually we got an answer for our program that said transfer students meeting these criteria and getting in an approved program were o.k. including currently enrolled students who hadn’t declared a major, the question I was asking about was six students were identified it was either majors or minors who were new students and they were slated for phone calls to say never mind and we were able to get those made in time to contact them ourselves.  Incoming freshmen were basically those where transfers were possible.

 

Adjorned:  4:45 p.m.