Faculty Association: President Fisher, Andrew Larkin, Terry Peterson, Jack McKenna, Judy Kilborn, Annette Schoenberger, Judy Foster, Tracy Ore, Bill Langen
Administration: President Saigo, Steve Ludwig, Ruth Meyer, Roland Specht-Jarvis, Lin Holder, John Burgeson, Diane Burlison, Nathan Church, Larry Chambers
Guests: Joe Christensen, Marya Teutsch-Dwyer, Richard Rothaus
ADM: Good afternoon I am going to start with number 5. First I want to commend PIC members for all the good work they did. What we have decided are the automatics (19) and we are going to award the first four in the list of rankings from PIC.
FA: My colleagues and I thank you.
FA: We are proposing TOEFL requirements for undergraduate. This would put us on the same scale as sister institutions in MNSCU. The proposal suggests that students with a score lower than 500 can’t be admitted until they complete level four. We know that higher TOEFL scores tend to attract better-educated students.
FA: I think I would like to add that we used to have 500 and it was lowered to 475. At the time we had practically no international students and we wanted to have an incentive for them to come to our campus I think with now almost 900 international students we can afford to become a slightly more competitive institution. I have also noticed that when you graduate and want to move into other graduate degrees you have to complete level four successfully. A lot of our level three students take the TOEFL and get 475. I have been observing this for the last two years. I have very informally spoken to the admissions office and the numbers that were provided in terms of the percentage of students we admit with lower than 500 is roughly 25%. These students are not prepared. I have been dealing with TOEFL for more than 20 years and there is a very significant quality of difference between 475 and 500.
ADM: Is there any special country that appears to grade lower?
FA: I don’t believe so. Students see we have 475 and once they have that they will apply to our universities. I suspect that there will be a slight drop in enrollment for the first couple of semesters but it should level off.
FA: One point I would like to add is that I think the students with the lower scores really struggle in their classes.
FA: This is exactly what we were talking about. You may do relatively well on that test without knowing how to answer the reading comprehensive questions. By increasing the score you will have to increase your reading comprehension skills.
FA: I have students from other countries that have difficulty learning and I was wondering if there is any testing for their abilities communicating orally?
FA: There is not. There is no such thing as checking oral capabilities.
ADM: I think we have all agreed that we will accept that, it makes sense.
ADM: I am just here to provide an informational update. I am sure you have all heard about the $2 billion deficit. The structural part is $1.25 billion. MnSCU has not issued any kind of guidelines. The couple of things I have talked about are the belief that higher education will be protected. I believe that higher education will suffer. I don’t believe it will suffer the 10%. I am about ready to present what it would look like if we had a 6-7% decrease. If we end up around 7% and we raise tuition around 13% we are just about at a break even. I hope higher education is protected. The other thing I am seeing is that it looks as if they are building a front to protect higher education and they are building that front in a manner that is based on a number of years of reallocation and a number of years of absorbing increased expenses. It will be interesting to see how this all comes together come January or February. We are waiting for direction from the Governor.
FA: Is it also the belief of the more optimistic?
ADM: I think they were about 55% confident in what they presented in December. What that tells me is that they put some numbers together but they really don’t know either.
FA: The chancellor said they are making cuts in the central office. Have you taken that into account.
ADM: Yes. They surveyed the institutions to see where they would like the money to go. I have not heard anything since.
FA: In the IFO board meeting we had a discussion. One of the points that was brought up was that during times of recession higher education is a place that can be cut. If we look at cuts in the customary way, that kind of has an adverse affect since that is exactly how we generate revenue. Is there any other way of looking at that?
ADM: That discussion is ongoing; the U of M is coming out with a 13% they implemented last year and is looking to implement this year. Revenue is always an interesting animal, we are limited in that arena and there are so many other things we can charge for. If anyone has any suggestions, I am certainly willing to listen
FA: One of the chancellor’s comments was that students were not able to get the classes they need. So it seems we have the clientele and if we were able to offer more courses that would generate more revenue.
ADM: That is not an unusual behavior as we see our enrollment go above the projection. My biggest problem with this is that I don’t have a clue what I am looking at. I have some speculation, and so I am just at a loss right now.
FA: I think this is the form that all employees would fill out. Is there a draft we can see for this?
ADM: I would like to begin by discussing this. This is the proposal, item #1 includes two steps between the first and second rectangles. It is for the HR office to share that responsibility with the Affirmative Action office.
Item #2 is not etched in stone, just the general direction of what we are thinking about. I understand that there has been problems in the past of information getting out that should not get out.
FA: In a real sense is there anything in here that changes or is in conflict with appropriate state laws that currently exist? Others can view this as a truth pledge and refusing to take that pledge doesn’t make you a bad person. How does this relate to state law and how is it different?
ADM: Before we put this into affect we would check with the Attorney Generals office.
FA: I was on a search some years ago and everyone on the committee committed themselves to confidentiality. The sole breach of confidentiality came from administration and when we confronted them we were told this does not apply to us. This confidentiality appears to be open ended. In the past the faculty has considered that we have a duty to serve on these committees. Administration has always been very resistant to that idea. For our part we’ve found our participation in the process is greatly hampered by any restriction on our ability to reveal to our members our ranking.
ADM: I am not going to address these questions here. The deans would need to be contacted and see what their response would be.
FA: Would this agreement apply to administration as well as faculty?
ADM: When it surfaced it was people who would participate in the search.
FA: Can you tell us if you were going to implement this form would it apply to everyone?
ADM: Also a statement you made about ranking. Normally you do not rank you make a recommendation of a certain number of candidates.
FA: The way I remember doing this thing at the department level. The committee searches and makes a recommendation to the department and therefore is sharing the information.. How do they do that without breaking confidentiality?
ADM: I think part of it is we are proposing that because there are so many recruitments we can clear up a lot of issues and get on our way.
FA: I think we would have a stake in how that clarification is done. I think there is a lot of difficulty signing a statement. I am going to recommend that your office prepare some sort of document that outlines what sort of information can and cannot be shared and then provide that to people and essentially go with an element of trust in the people who are participating in this committee. I think it would be better to approach it from an informational perspective.
ADM: I think we should make it clear what the expectations are.
FA: Are there any other schools in MnSCU that have this type of agreement?
ADM: I would have to check into that.
FA: I certainly don’t think there is a problem with telling people what the procedure is. Regardless of whether the process is working, signing something is going to cause problems.
FA: The biggest problem is that this doesn’t give anyone any information about what they can’t do. And whether or not they sign this is a state law. You need to give the information about what they can and cannot reveal. People don’t know what they are signing.
ADM: I think they just want to get the point across.
FA: You have on this form the last integrity statement as an example? Will we see these documents when they are revised?
ADM: Yes you will be able to see these. This is just a draft. Something like this will be part of our application process. Yes you will see a copy of the revisions. When we get to that point.
FA: Typically they say I have not knowingly provided false information. This statement does not provide for that. When people submit information that they believe to be true, and circumstances change, they could be held responsible. I would like the opportunity to consider this.
ADM: Number five we are planning on shifting that responsibility to the HR office.
FA: Who writes the notice of vacancy.
ADM: Departments do in coordination with the deans offices.
FA: Number six is just more details about what we would do and part of this is allowing affirmative action to focus more on their issues.
FA: Number four I am not quite sure what hat means
ADM: That was something that deans put in there about potential disagreements with the affirmative action office regarding the process.
ADM: They are held accountable for who is hired at the end of this process and they want to make sure that they are the recommending authority. If they are gong to be held accountable he want the authority to make the recommendations.
ADM: If there are problems we will have to step in and do what we have to do.
FA: So it is not just the final hiring decisions but you are saying the deans can overrule the faculty.
ADM: They always have had that authority but it doesn’t usually come to that. I think they felt they are sometimes shut out of the loop.
FA: So this directly affects the confidentiality agreement. There will be an exception with regard to the deans who aren’t on the committee. That needs to be clarified in the process.
ADM: I think the deans will be included in this.
FA: Does this apply to the AVP?
ADM: After listening to this discussion it would be my view is that people that do no have a legitimate need to know then the committee should use their judgement as to what can or cannot be said.
FA: So you are saying that a dean could get any information but any other administrator we should get permission to give out information?
ADM: Whatever is legitimate for the deans to have but their may be some information they cannot have a the time of the process.
ADM: I would suggest that we take some of these concerns to academic affairs. I would have a problem making my staff sing it and then not signing it myself.
ADM: Do we have to invite each and every finalist to the campus?
ADM: It depends on how you do the process.
ADM: The back is the list of phased retirements for the next year. The middle section is the retirees for this academic year. The third section are the searches that we have preliminarily started… they are all contingent on the budget.
FA: Have any priorities been established.
ADM: Not yet the deans will get together with administration and we will set priorities.
FA: If things need to be halted when would that be? If a search is already completed by then would you have to fill that position?
ADM: I think right now we are putting together a whole collection of data.
FA: Will this affect the promised lines for racial issues?
ADM: We made that commitment those will be at the top of the list.
ADM: The only disclaimer is that those are reallocated they are not new positions.
ADM: If you look to the front page of the document there is a grid that addresses the vacant positions.
ADM: This is just preliminary and discussions will be ongoing.
MN Highway Safety Center
ADM: We have two concerns. One we
do not generally operate centers on totally soft money. It is in the experience
of many universities it is almost impossible for centers to run grant to grant
to grant. Another problem is there is
nothing in our budget to maintain the center.
The grant application is between the university and the entity. It’s a huge liability.
FA: First you tell us that we have successfully been able to do this for twenty years. To me that doesn’t make sense. You have demonstrated quite clearly that you could protect yourself beyond the time. They contribute all kinds of benefits to SCSU and I don’t want to see us place ourselves in this position to make it impossible to continue that.
ADM: We didn’t place ourselves in that position, we were placed in it. We were caught by surprise. We are looking at saying that maybe people can raise this money and hopefully nothing goes wrong because there is no more money. It is just not doable.
FA: I would tend to disagree. I know there are totally grant-funded centers at other major universities. We are not asking you to jeopardize the budget of the university. We are asking if they were able to get a grant to fund them for a year, that they will be allowed to continue for that year. I am hearing it’s impossible and you won’t even consider it.
ADM: We have people saying this money would go to highway safety and now they are saying it is not. Now there are people saying don’t do this to us. We are not doing it.
FA: I could disagree we could speak about that. Let’s not deal with 10 faculty. Again what we are asking is for some dedicated faculty to be allowed to participate in some grants that are going to be put out. I am hearing that they will be punished
ADM: I am saying it is too big of a liability. If something goes wrong there will be too much danger for SCSU.
FA: We seem to be at different places on this issue.
ADM: We have a proposed revision to this. The revision as the misconduct policy is now the administrative individuals involved are the deans and the assistant VP research the roles are all allegations... page 3 section A. If the dean has a conflict of interest…at our institution that is the same individual we wish to change that to “or similarly ranked individuals in Academic Affairs.”
FA: That’s the only proposed change. In senate there was some discussion of this policy and numerous other issues were raised. I think we had agreed at an earlier meet and confer that we could take this to senate and bring back a proposal.. We would like to propose a joint committee 3 faculty 3 administration to review this process.
ADM: There has to be a context to that. This has to be federally approved.
FA: We understand that. We would like to look at other issues that we can reach agreement on and that are federally approved.
FA: In any case faculty do have questions and concerns and if you could give us this opportunity to review them we would appreciate that.
FA: I think there are faculty that want to help fix this. If we could do a joint committee is that possible.
ADM: I am not sure I want to jump immediately into a committee without seeing a list of what the exact concerns are.
FA: That sounds like we don’t have enough voice in things. Then for there to be a process to establish whether the concerns merit a committee. Who decides that?
ADM: My worry is that if a committee is established to revise the policy the committee will be expected to revise that policy.
FA: I think the language was to review the policy
ADM: That is acceptable to me.
FA: Itseems to me if you implement something and problems arise no matter how long that has been in place you need to review it. The committee should decide what should happen.
FA: I just want to say one of the problems that exists on this campus is when people say we want to have a voice on this and we are told no not now.
ADM: I think we have agreed to set up a committee to review this policy.
FA: You give me three names and I will give you three.
Searches
FA: You have probably noticed that I put a call out for volunteers. (PROVOST AND AVP) We have received some questions from faculty regarding when this search committee will convene.
ADM: We have been working with MNSCU to get some job descriptions that may include the provost title. As soon as that is drafted we will share that with you. If that gets approval we hope to start putting the committee together. We expect six representatives fro the faculty. I am considering bringing in proposals from different companies for a search firm. I am wondering if it would be helpful to go to a search firm as we develop this.
ADM: The other thing is the data that people are using on this shortfall for the budget comes from national data it’s not just local. Those figures are fairly real. I am hopeful that we can put this committee together quickly.
FA: Do you have an idea of a date you are targeting?
ADM: If we can get this to MnSCU before holiday break we should be able to start middle of January.
FA: You mentioned security, are you referring to tenured administrators? You may know that this issue has risen over and over again in negotiations. Why doesn’t MnSCU just offer its administrators MnSCU tenure?
ADM: Will that mean at the MNSCU System level or will they be housed on campus.
FA: That is something that MnSCU can negotiate.
ADM: I think it is in the benefit of the university to assist faculty to do the things they need to do. We are not from a different team. These are issues that are going on all the time we are very supportive we want to compete in our own criteria to be fine institution.
FA: What is the role of this search firm in the context of getting faculty involved in these searches earlier? Is the search firm going to take away from the voice of the faculty.
ADM: From my experience with search firms they do have people who are open for a certain kind of universities. They have a network much broader than ours. A lot of times they will match you up to the needs of that institution at that time. They do a wonderful job in that sense. If we had security, salary and a balmy environment we could do without. We can do without, but I think it would be helpful.
FA: This is in addition to our ordinary search?
ADM: They work with you to bring in people. That’s the way it works. I will follow your lead. If we get the approval from the system I think HR is going to ask for proposals from this firm.
ADM: The results of search firms are getting more candidates and more information about those candidates. We got people who weren’t looking for work but matched the description.
FA: What was the cost
ADM: I am guessing around $50-$70,000.
FA: For the assistant VP for academic affairs search we have two faculty reps who were put on the consent agenda. Senate did not approve it. They would like more representations on this search committee. Could we go to six faculty reps on this committee?
ADM: I think it is balanced pretty well with the makeup the way it is. Put three on it.
ADM: We have been working on setting up this mediation.
FA: I found that the reason we have not have Faculty representatives on the consent agenda is because we were waiting for a presentation on the visions mission and the core values. We are concerned about the February 1st target date. We are also concerned about the scope of the topics for the committee. You can see that some refer to curriculum. Could we get a list of the items that will come up in that committee?
ADM: I agree with you the time is getting short but the request did come out the first part of September.
FA: Yes it did come out then but since we were waiting for the mission vision and core blues to go to senate, we can’t move ahead until they do.
ADM: I agree with that.
FA: Since faculty senate does not meet again until the second week in the semester that only gives about two weeks until the February 1st date.
FA: There are so many different components that will be affected by this. Wouldn’t it make more sense to think of this as a yearlong process?
ADM: It probably will be that long of a process.
FA: Will that still work if we don’t get to that until first senate meeting of next semester and then we could have representatives at that time.
ADM: I believe the committee is set to meet and I will pass that date onto you.
FA: I am still a little uncomfortable with these issues not having been to senate.
FA: We are going to get the names to you right at the beginning of next semester.
FA: We have had some events from time to time and so finally we decided to draft a policy and make it available. I have sent a copy of this to the director of Public Safety. We would like the university to adopt this policy as a way of handling this problem.
ADM: We do not have a written policy on this. There are about 8-12 of these events a semester that we are aware of. We found that cel phones and pagers have declined some of these. There are a couple of things. First we do not control the police and their access to the classrooms. We may write a policy but we cannot enforce what the police may or may not do. With respect to the message of timeliness, they shall not be delivered by a uniformed officer. We are concerned that the message could get confused, not get there in a timely manner. If you were dependable it would be the department secretary, you will have essentially a stranger coming in. Finally this lists specific items that may be included and just thinking there may be items that need to be included that are not. I wouldn’t mind writing a policy but it has some problems.
FA: We worked on this without even knowing that many. It entirely disrupts the class. And it is also the officer will ask the instructor to identify a student. What we are trying to do, obviously this is not black and white. I think it would be good to have a policy that would give some kind of an idea to the officials of what would be acceptable.
ADM: I tend to agree with you.
ADM: I would be happy to work on it.