Faculty Association/Administration
Meet and Confer
February 7, 2002
Faculty: President Fisher, Andrew Larkin, Judy Foster, Tracy Ore, Terry Peterson, Chris Inkster, Annette Schoenberger, Judy Kilborn, Robert Johnson, Bill Langen, Negotiator
Administration: Steve Ludwig, Ruth Meyer, Diana Burlison, Roalnd Specht-Jarvis, John Burgeson, Larry Chambers, Laurel Allen
FA: Faculty Senate asked us to bring this here because we received it and there was no explanation for why the allocations were made. It appears to be disproportional to some colleges. There may be reasons for that?
ADM: The first thing is that I believe the date on this is somewhere in November. I will explain the numbers and this was prior to the $1.9 million cut in the budget. First of all, if you look under the column it does appear that Science and Engineering has a huge number of searches. These are probationary searches. There were 14 total retirements last year and this year 15 and 7 phased retirements. In this are the six new faculty positions from nursing. Which means it doesn’t even meet the retirements from the last two years.
FA: You said this includes six positions for nursing and I only see four for nursing.
ADM: Yes, thank you. There were six nursing positions when they started the search but since then it has been reduced to four. There were six searches authorized in the beginning. Under the vacant column are fixed term and we had not considered fixed term at this point. We have put together an entire portfolio of data regarding the budget. At the top are student credit hours generated by the 5 colleges for the 5 year time period. The other important piece is that a graduate student credit hour is counted the same as an undergraduate student credit hour. Subsequent to semester conversion there has been a dramatic decline in the number of graduates, other than the COB. So we calculated these numbers and workload and then what I did was take the fiscal year 02 budget, deleted the overload, the extra duty days and the adjuncts and I started with that base number to allocate to the different colleges for next year’s budget. By doing it that way every college has the opportunity to hire the same number of probationary and fixed term as this year. By doing it that way right now the fiscal year 03 budget is $1.7 million lower than the fiscal year 02 budget at this current time. I received from the COSS their work plan, if they hire 7 probationary searches they can do ten fixed term searches starting right now. And he has 49 adjunct sections planned for next year.
FA: Thank you for that analysis. It is very helpful to hear all those things laid out. Is it correct that these are the number of searches going on this year in the various departments?
ADM: I don’t recall if this is the same list that COSS gave me, but this was a draft. Every search that is listed on here has a statement that the search is dependant on funding.
FA: Can we get an updated list? Could we get a statement of what you just told us?
ADM: I could get you those.
FA: Pending funding – does that include racial issues searches?
ADM: Every one is dependent on funding. I don’t believe racial issues will be cut.
FA: Could you talk a little about the decision regarding grad and undergrad? You are using credit hours and mixing it into the money mix and for some of us a lot is lost.
ADM: I think where it comes in is the allocation of the adjuncts because we used credit hour production for last year to allocate the adjunct monies. I would expect that there would be requests from deans for special cases for graduate courses.
FA: When do you think we could get an updated sheet?
ADM: As soon as we get it from the deans. This year there was a 9 % increase in the number of graduate credit hours.
ADM: I have been watching what is happening in the legislature. The senate has come out with $24.5 million cuts and $19.5 million from the house. My concern is these are numbers with no information about details. There are a lot of variables out there, so when I hear a $19.5 million cut from the house I have to wonder if there is another piece that I’m not hearing. There is a pretty fair discrepancy between what the governor is saying and the house. As I learn things or hear things I will gladly share them with you. Budget cuts for MnSCU are only for fiscal year 03-04. I am concerned about 04-05 probably not being pleasant.
FA: I think it is important to note that right now this state is still in the black and the deficit is a projected deficit and the forecast that comes out in the end of February will probably be more measurable than the previous one. I recently talked to some senators who seemed to be more optimistic than they previously had been.
ADM: The governor has pretty much taken the position that he is going to ignore the February forecast. He still has the legal authority to de-allocate us.
FA: Would the legislature pass a law that would set a cap on tuition?
ADM: They can cap the percent increase if they so choose.
FA: It has been brought to our attention that these democratic citizenship classes, if you teach one in economics that has 70 student in it, it’s considered two courses; if you teach in history dept with 60 students it is considered one course. What we are concerned with is how can they essentially be the same but counted as different number of courses. Also, that this is breaching an agreement that we reached about lowering class sizes to 30 students.
FA: If you look at the first chart, this is a bar chart of the percentage of the curriculum offered. I you look at the next chart 99-00 basically the same trend continues.
ADM: What do you mean by percent of curriculum offered?
FA: Of the curriculum that History has to offer 35% they teach, so on.
FA: On the third chart you will see that we are looking at percent of credits that are Gen. Ed. The History dept is around 74% for the 98-99 year. The next chart for 99-00 year the same trend continues. What I would like to point out with this is that very recently we had the Step III grievance for the History dept. This data came forward and was discussed at that meeting. MNSCU basically suggested that why wouldn’t a dept carry the brunt of gen. ed. for their dept. The concerns here are very troubling to us. We would ask that we could explore how we can address this type of situation.
ADM: I did request the generation of the reports on headcount for democratic citizenship and racial issues for fall and spring. I did not have a chance to analyze it in detail. In the fall democratic citizenship and spring there has been a significant decrease in the numbers. The bulk of the course has 50 some students in them in fall. (For History) Spring is even lower.
FA: The question is given those numbers that have already occurred how does that affect Article 22 and 25 that is going on right now?
ADM: We will consider that and I just haven’t had a chance to look at the data. For economics in fall (History) they are the same for spring but not for fall.
FA: People are teaching is democratic citizenship and that is why we are bringing this up. One thing that maybe we could look at is that when a course is identified there is a maximum number that can be put in. We would like some examination for that and some uniformity in terms of what those numbers would be.
ADM: But that is going to naturally occur in the different department and classes. Course loads in Social Science, generally speaking are higher than other fields. That doesn’t excuse looking at the specific question that you raised.
FA: You misunderstood; we are looking at the same class and the same curriculum being counted differently in different departments.
ADM: I would also point out that the dept itself designed two racial issues and one democratic citizenship.
ADM: I have worked with a Faculty member and went through the manual and we have come up with a draft of the change in the hiring manual. It is combining comments from both sides and trying to put into the hiring meeting. Is it realistic to request that I get something back from the faculty association in a couple of weeks?
FA: A month definitely.
FA: I attended one meeting last week and we did a lot of discussing and what we would like to do is get some kind of assurance that if there is any recommendation that comes from this committee in terms of employment of faculty, that it go to faculty senate. It could be something like moving some offices or it could be the restructuring of entire colleges or the creation of new colleges. I was concerned in the first meeting that the memo from administration addresses mission, vision and core values. I have had numerous calls from faculty about going ahead with restructuring without full participation from the faculty. We are troubled by this process and where this process is going in terms of the lack of participation. There will be recommendations that come tomorrow and we would hope that any plan to restructure would be more involving of the community.
ADM: I share this concern. I think the recommendation tomorrow cannot be the final product it can only be describing the process. The concern that this be addressed to STP authorities is one that I share and I am convinced that we will do that.
ADM: I took number four of the charge to be the product that I would expect from this broadly based committee. I share the view that we aren’t going to have a template that we distribute to the university but that we will have something that represents some things that are commonly known that we can address broadly.
FA: I think a concern is that the recommendation would not have involved discussion with people who have an interested view. If we look at the role of a recommendation, we would want it to come from many different perspectives. What is troubling in this process is that the date on this memo is January and the original one from administration is dated September. The deadline is a concern and the focus on restructuring, rather than mission, vision and core values is also a concern.
ADM: The original request was September and it was to come up with recommendations. The intent is anything coming out of this task force will be taken as recommendations to a wide variety of groups throughout SCSU.
FA: Would you also connect this with strategic planning? The way you just clarified it I can’t distinguish it from Strategic Planning.
ADM: It is to implement some of the ideas brought out of Strategic Planning.
FA: This is philosophical. What you are talking about here may be more focused and this to me takes a lot more conversation, though. I guess one thing we are asking for is not making decisions that will greatly affect us without deliberation.
FA: So everything will come back through the regular governance process.
ADM: I have talked to Dr. Nichols and shared the concerns explaining your hope for expectation for participation or perhaps reviewing some material he is gathering. In my understanding in terms of timeline, they are working on the survey and he still would like the faculty participation understanding the process they are implementing on this campus.
ADM: They plan to have a web-based survey hopefully ready by Monday or Tuesday and we will be getting all information that is available to you.
FA: What kind of a timeframe are we talking about?
ADM: The plan is two weeks.
FA: This is a situation where the president promised something would happen and it didn’t and now it seems like we are stuck now. Is there anything we can do not to be in this situation again?
FA: The concern is that we didn’t have any participation in selecting the instrument.
FA: The entire faculty on that committee stated that they did not feel that they had a voice in this.
ADM: I think what the Faculty association expected to occur didn’t occur. I think that sometimes we need perhaps to have written agreements and that we should craft them better. We did in fact hire this organization.
FA: They are not being honest in what they are stating to you. They did not ask the focus groups about the items.
FA: What we asked was, that at the point of the draft, to include some input from faculty here regarding that draft. It is still input to them and they will deal with it however they see fit. But we thought we could work on this by giving some additional information.
FA: I think we could agree on having a committee to look at this report when it comes in. This should have never happened. We are trying to do something to pull ourselves out and we are screwing it up again. There is something structurally wrong with the way we are approaching things.
FA: What I think we’ll do is discuss this in EC and let you know where we are with this instrument and with this process.
ADM: To what degree can we latch onto the students and their review?
FA: I would ask them if they would be interested in providing you with a draft also.
FA: Will the collective set of activities give us information and will that information be useful? The basic question is are we really addressing the core issues. When the smoke all clears have we done anything to advance the university away from where it has been.
ADM: This campus has a history of problems that affects us in a whole lot of ways. At some point the campus community is going to have to focus on what we can do to improve the campus environment. I understand that this has been discussed for years; I understand that they discussed this to do a study combined.
FA: I have to disagree. The questions you ask determine the type of data you get. The question is the key element and that is our concern.
FA: The statements that are made on this does this mean that this is how we will govern our campus. If we assume that he is telling us how to behave we have every right to get upset.
FA: This is something we had discussed with you. Certain departments have a high number of fixed terms positions and it was our understanding that we would have a committee and we would like to know if we have agreement on this.
ADM: This happened in October and our labor relation’s people at MNSCU said we did not need this because we cannot do fixed term as we have in the past.
FA: We would just be requesting that you would sign a LOA.
ADM: Labor Relations said we don’t need this because we have one between IFO and MNSCU.
FA: Because we don’t need it does that mean we can’t have it?
ADM: I will find out the answer to that.
CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS
FA: We discussed an item on the agenda related to workload and your team informed us at negotiations that they had conferred with you and explained to you the budgetary impact that any implementation of any workload relief would have on us. Some of the material is troubling to our side. Your team’s position is that the last contract details events that occurred in the latter part of that contract. Your figures show something different than your stance. When we informed your side about how we had always proceeded with tails, your team said “no, we presented it this way, we just never told you about it.” Another item that you support that is bewildering to us, your side contended that your position seems to state that every settlement that we make will be taken out of the money for the next round of negotiations. Your side said that from your point of view every settlement is a tail.