Faculty
Association: Andy Larkin, Theresia
Fisher, Chris Inkster, Robert Johnson, Judith Kilborn, Tracy Ore, Terry
Peterson, Annette Schoenberger, Sandra Williams
Administration: John Burgeson, Larry Chambers, Nathan
Church, Lin Holder, Steve Ludwig, Roland Specht-Jarvis, Michael Spitzer, Rex
Veeder Jackie
Zieglmeier, Notetaker
Approval
of Previous Notes:
The
minutes of December 12, 2002 were approved as amended.
Amended
Agenda:
FA: We would like to add Item 19 – Center for
International Studies Search. For
faculty to participate on the search committee, there needs to be discussion
about the position itself. We may want
to move this up on the agenda in case we don’t get that far today.
Adm: I think we can wait two weeks.
FA: We would also like to move Item 15, Chairs’
Summer Responsibilities, to after Item 9.
Procedures [FA]:
FA: We have a process for faculty and
administration to work collaboratively on university issues. There are recent concerns: the affirmative action person placed without
faculty participation, the search for the international studies position and
changes in academic policies. The
approach of being brought into topics late in the process is a constant assault
on trust. We are concerned about the
process of shared governance and this concern is not solely with administrators
on the meet and confer team but other administrators as well. Faculty are concerned that its ownership is
not being recognized. We are
professionals with expertise to contribute.
We regret that topics come to us as surprises. For the past few months we believed we were relating more
collaboratively and collegially.
Adm: I am not sure how to respond. Personally, I am disappointed if the FA
feels there is a genuine lack of trust.
We can talk about specific issues later.
FA: We will not repeatedly mention the problem
of lack of trust as we go through the agenda items, but please keep this aspect
in mind.
Adm: Last semester I held meeting with department
chairs. You requested that these
meetings be opened up to all faculty.
Several chairs indicated to me that they preferred the meetings to be
with chairs only. I suggested to you
that we alternate meetings. I proposed
four meetings for spring semester: two
with chairs; two open to all faculty. I
requested your agreement before setting the schedule.
FA: This came up at Faculty Senate and we want
to take it back to Faculty Senate. We
will respond to you at the next meet and confer.
Adm: Can you clarify issues from the faculty
perspective?
FA: The questions are:
How do the meetings differ from meet and
confer?
How do the meetings differ from deans’
advisory councils?
We understand the meetings are
informational – so why chairs only?
We raised
those questions here at an earlier meet and confer. You responded. You agreed
to open the meetings. Now you have come
back to us with another request to have meetings with chairs only. We would like to take this back to Faculty
Senate. As you presented, some chairs
are concerned that the meeting would be open.
As part of the Faculty Association, we would like chairs and faculty to
talk to us about their reasons for feeling this way.
Adm: The meetings are not another meet and
confer. There were Faculty Association
representatives present at the chair meetings last semester. Again, I have verified that the meetings are
not a substitute for meet and confer.
There is a pending budget crisis.
I want to have an open channel of communication. The meetings give a different perspective to
me than the dean’s perspective. I have
the sense that the more channels of communication we have – open, honest and
free – the better off we will be.
FA: We will take this to Faculty Senate.
Adm: Please express my perspective.
Plans
for Budget Cuts [FA]:
Adm: Unfortunately the budget officer, Diana
Burlison, is not here today. She is at
a MnSCU budget meeting with President Saigo.
The main issue is that the governor directed/requested (subject to
legislative approval), a $50 million cut in the higher education budget. MnSCU’s share is $25 million. SCSU’s share of that is $2,253,162 for
FY03. It is important to add that this
is a permanent reduction to the base.
Next year’s cut is predicated on this reduction. Diana’s plan is to take $1 million or $1.2
million from the reserve and $1 million from the operating budget. We can discuss options. If you have ideas, please send them to
Michael, Diana or Steve. We think we
can find the money without any major hardships, but I am not sure. Anything that we can take from the reserve
is not a structural cut. MnSCU
recognizes that the reserve is for hard times.
We are looking for a plan to restore the reserve. MnSCU does not expect the reserve to be
restored before the 04-06 biennium.
Seeing the $2 million come out of the base is a tougher time.
FA: Have you talked to constituent groups? Do you have a process?
Adm: Yes to both questions. We are looking at some things that we never
looked at before. For example: any faculty who might want to contribute
their professional travel back to the university. We have seen no pattern of faculty spending their allocation to
reduce the total amount we carry forward each year. The total amount just gets bigger. It is more than one million dollars.
FA: Can we do that in the contract? Would it require an MOA?
Adm: Perhaps.
FA: How many millions of dollars exactly?
Adm: I do not know; we will find out. The early allocation is always more than
what is spent yearly. We understand
that faculty want to save their professional money so that there is enough to
go and accomplish something. We will
get the information to you before the next meet and confer. You asked about talking to constituent
groups. We are talking to MnSCU. We have talked to bargaining units. We have set up a website. Steve Ludwig has met with administrative
affairs staff. We are open to anything
you can suggest.
FA: Is it wise to make a single suggestion
without knowing the big picture?
Adm: I can say that I know the big picture looks
serious.
FA: Seeing the big picture would let us make a
comprehensive approach.
Adm: Our reserve has more than $3 million. If we go down to a reserve of $2 million,
it gets harder to meet needs. For
example: We have seen a 50% increase in
the cost of a unit of fuel this winter.
We estimated 15%. That
difference will need to come from the reserve.
Remember that MnSCU will require some reserve.
FA: My point is simple: We need to look at all of the possibilities
on the table. To simply say that
faculty can give back travel money is not a reasoned approach.
Adm: Giving back travel money would be a one-time
change and a cushion to make the transition to the real cuts.
FA: We would like to see this put in a context
that is more precise and responsible.
Adm: The degree of freedom that we will have in
the next 5 months is not great.
FA: Our Budget Review Committee has met with
Diana Burlison. We have looked at
things. Clearly, SCSU is behind other
universities in terms of discussion of this.
Most other universities have had massive discussion. We need to jump-start this. Will we maintain the schedule for program
reviews set to take place this year?
Adm: I see two things as primarily
important: 1) to provide services for
students; 2) to maintain the quality of academic programs. We will not stop the program review process for
this year. Please note that there is
not a significantly amount of money involved -- $18,500.
FA: Does this include accredited program
reviews?
Adm:
Yes. There is a separate budget for
accreditation.
FA: How will you proceed with campus-wide discussion? At the last meet and confer we had just had
a meeting with Diana Burlison. At that
time you asked us not to distribute the materials we had received until you had
discussion with other constituents. The
President sent an e-mail that you are now ready to talk about the budget.
Adm: We were hoping to kick off the discussion
when Ken Mortimer and Dennis Jones were scheduled to be here this week. Their visit was postponed due to a health
issue in Ken Mortimer’s family.
Mortimer and Jones are scheduled to be here February 12 and 13. We will pursue that discussion at that time. We have started to formulate a set of plans
and decide which groups to meet with:
the Faculty Budget Review Committee and other bargaining units that do
not have such committees. At this point
we are saying that nothing is off the table.
We have started a series of informational materials. We have set up a website. We will solicit suggestions from people and
place those ideas in the larger context.
We established a University Council.
That body will meet again January 27.
The University Council has members from across bargaining units. We will talk about budget issues there. If you have suggestions on how we might
solicit discussion, we are interested.
FA: The internal audit recommendation was that
there should be a standard, consistent report of revenue and expenditures. The university community should see that
information.
Adm: At the previous meet and confer when you met
with Diana that morning we asked you not to distribute information because
Diana had not yet met with the deans.
Steve will talk to Diana about the release of information now.
FA: Information needs to go to our Senate. That is the conduit back to the
departments—other than what is filtered through the deans. There are several pathways: here at meet and confer, the FA Budget
Review Committee, Faculty Senate, and going to the deans and then through
chairs and directors. We need to use
all pathways as much as possible. Another
option is a university-wide meeting. We
have had those in the past during tough budget times.
Adm: We certainly can do those as well. Deans are aware of the issues. We are trying not to release premature
information that sounds more Draconian than what the reality will be. All of the vice presidents attended the
Legislative Chamber Priorities Session.
We heard from legislators and we heard from legislative analysts. It was an education for all of us. We are trying our best to get a read on the
extent of the budget cuts.
FA: We need to strike a balance and not give an
overly optimistic picture.
Adm: Some feel the Chancellor’s position is
reasonable but not realistic. We have
been asked not to break ranks.
FA: MnSCU has $7 million from an incentive
program. Can we rattle that money
out? We have heard when MnSCU does
continuing education for companies, they do it for half of what it costs. That comes from the MnSCU budget.
Adm: Faculty have more latitude than we do to
bring things to light. We can slip
ideas to you from time to time. For
example: the pay stubs that used to
come in the mail are now only online but the entity is paid the same amount to
process the pay advices. You should
know that of the $25 million cuts for MnSCU, the first $3 million came from the
Chancellor’s Office. The Chancellor has
also said no layoffs.
FA: We have gotten divergent numbers from the
Chancellor’s Office.
Adm: I have a spreadsheet that I can share with
you. You can return the favor if you
have other numbers. We re-emphasize
that we will have a university-wide meeting so that we can have broad input so
as not to miss something.
Adm: Here are two handouts that I will not go through
but the handouts will provide information to members of your team who have not
seen them. (handouts: Proposed Changes to Current Guidelines for
Official SCSU Web Pages & Recommendations on SCSU-discuss and SCSU-announce
(March 12, 2002). I will provide a
brief history. Prior to 1997 when the
web was new, a review was conducted and a policy was developed for the web
environment. One to two years ago, a
campus committee was formed – the Web Council.
There are two faculty representatives.
The committee was formed to develop policies to keep SCSU web pages up
to date and standardized. The committee
has rewritten the current guidelines with proposed standards and a rationale
for change. My understanding from the
committee is that the proposed changes have gone to the FA Technology and
Pedagogical Resources Committee.
FA: We have looked at it.
Adm: The proposed changes were taken to Academic
Affairs Council. The second piece is
the listserv guidelines. A decision to
split announce and discuss was made in 2000.
Guidelines are distributed regularly on the listserv. TLTR regularly reviews usage. Last fall the increased number of posting
on SCSU-announce advertising items for sale brought this item to the TLTR
agenda again. The EEOC report came out
at almost the same time with the recommendation that the university look at
revising the listserv guidelines. TLTR
incorporated the EEOC recommendation, state laws and DOER statewide policy. TLTR’s recommendations range from
conservative to liberal. Academic
Affairs Council has provided input on the recommendations. This item went to President’s Council last
spring. I believe that Vice President
Meyer took the recommendations from President’s Council to Theresia
Fisher. We have had transition in
university administration and FA leadership.
This sort of got lost. We would
like to kick this loose to get the recommendation moving forward.
FA: We have taken the two documents to the FA
Technology and Pedagogical Resources Committee and asked them to make a
recommendation to Faculty Senate—then we will bring it back to meet and
confer.
Adm: We will look again at the listserv revision
at Academic Affairs Council.
FA: If Academic Affairs Council is reviewing
this again, can we get their recommendation so that those recommendations can
get filtered into this?
Adm: Academic Affairs Council doesn’t have a
bulleted list of concerns. Most
questions that arose were answered in
our discussion.
FA: Are there major problems with the listserv
or web pages?
Adm: No.
The idea is to keep the webpages current. The policy asks for regular review. For example: If the web
page is developed by a GA and the GA graduates, there needs to be regular
review to keep information accurate and timely.
FA: Is there an accountability issue to be in
compliance with the law?
Adm: We are talking about official web pages –
not personal web pages.
FA: Is there a regular review by the department?
Adm: That is what the proposed changes are
asking.
FA: Doesn’t
LR & TS staff construct web pages for departments?
Adm:
Not if departments want to do it themselves.
We are saying there needs to be attention to how the web pages represent
the university’s ongoing presence. Here
is a piece of information. This data
was pulled in late December. 70% of all
faculty and staff are on SCSU-announce; 60% of all faculty and staff are on
SCSU-discuss. The belief that
SCSU-announce is the official listserv for the campus community is not
accurate. When you use SCSU-announce,
you are not hitting 30% of the population.
FA: When you move from server to server it is
hard to keep up with where the pages are.
How is that covered in terms of infrastructure for websites?
Adm: Changes should be seamless. MnSCU pushes for centralization. We run on a single server.
FA: When upgrades or changes are made, how are
people notified?
Adm: We tell them. The kinds of servers you are talking about are not serving the
whole campus environment.
FA: Are there resource questions to be addressed
along the line? How does a department
receive support for web pages?
Adm: Please read the handout. Departments can ask for support. It is at the department’s discretion. Your faculty representatives on the
Technology and Pedagogical Resources Committee are Plamen Miltenhoff and Leslie
Valdes.
Affirmative
Action Office [FA]:
FA: We have two questions and a couple of
issues. We were under the impression
at one point that because of a pending settlement the hiring of an affirmative
action offers was on hold until details and specifics of the settlement were
worked out. We understood that there
would be a temporary assignment to fill the void in the affirmative action
function on campus. The person hired
would be in an interim position to process materials and not in a position to
do high-level affirmative action work.
It appears that an appointment has been made with more responsibilities
than we were led to believe—though still a temporary person. There is a discrepancy between what we
believe we were told and the President’s message which indicates the person
will be more involved. The second issue
is the decision from the members of the Affirmative Action Committee to
resign. What is the role of the campus Affirmative
Action Committee? They feel that they
are not informed and not recognized.
Adm: I can answer some of the questions, but the
President and Anne Zemek de Dominguez are not here. It is the President’s message that you mentioned and Anne was in
charge of the search for the interim affirmative action position. My understanding is that the interim
position was hired to process paperwork.
It is a temporary appointment.
The President’s e-mail to the campus community said this position will assist
in other activities—not be the person in charge. I would like to defer a response to the next meet and
confer.
FA: There appears to be a settlement. When will the search for the next
affirmative action officer begin?
Adm: The settlement has not been approved but we
expect that to happen in a month. The
judge’s ruling will be to oppose or uphold the settlement. A part of the settlement is to have a
consultant review the affirmative action office and make recommendations on how
it should be structured. This is what
has to happen: identify a consultant,
the plaintiff’s attorney and SCSU need to agree on the consultant, the
consultant makes a recommendation. If
we don’t agree, we send the judge written objections. Then we can search for a permanent position.
FA: In their letter of resignation, the
Affirmative Action Committee said that they were excluded in the development of
the Independent Review Committee. As
Faculty Association President, Theresia Fisher met with the Affirmative Action
Committee chair. The chair said the
committee was not recognized – ignored.
Theresia encouraged the Affirmative Action Committee members not to
resign. She spoke to President Saigo
and Vice President Meyer. Rex Veeder
was assigned to help. Things got better
for a while. The President asked
Nathan Church and Theresia Fisher to get the Independent Review Committee
going. Theresia forgot about the
conversation with the chair of the Affirmative Action Committee. Neither Nathan nor Andy knew about that
conversation. Theresia admits some
ownership in the Affirmative Action Committee being left out of the Independent
Review Committee. Theresia offered to
write a letter to the Affirmative Action Committee to apologize.
Adm: The letter of resignation mentioned a
question about web assistance. When
Provost Spitzer arrived he did not know anything about the Affirmative Action
Committee. He stated he would have
liked to meet with them in the fall and talk about a role. Pieces got scattered. Rex Veeder didn’t know what the Affirmative
Action Committee Chair had proposed.
Provost Spitzer would like to make amends. If the Affirmative Action Committee resigned because they felt
they have not been listened to or didn’t have a role, we think we can fix that.
FA: Theresia Fisher would be interested in
meeting with the Affirmative Action Committee and the administration.
Adm: We appreciate her willingness to do
this.
FA: We are asking for an update. What is new? What is the status of the student applications?
Adm: John Burgeson sent 29 letters to students
(not SCSU students) stating that he is reviewing documents and will be sending
a recommendation back to the Board of Teaching. Upon successful review, students will be transcripted as prior
learning. John believes that the letter
from the Board of Teaching states that unless students have college
certification, they are out of luck.
FA: We would like a copy of that letter.
Adm: The Board of Teaching originally decided not
to accept an alternate form of licensure.
I think we can take care of it.
FA: Is that part of their policy?
Adm: Yes, the Board of Teaching told Records
personnel that we would have to seek a specific exception to that policy. BOT staff folks talked to our Records Office
and said they could not support that.
They have a long-standing policy not to accept applications not backed
up by credits.
FA: Is the driving range a unit?
Adm: Officially, no unit exists except what is
listed in Academic Affairs. Something
needs to be done in March to rectify that.
I suppose that you want me to address the issue of part-time employees.
FA: Please.
Adm: The part-time employees are people who work
fee-for-service. That is why they are
listed on the website. They are not
adjunct or fixed-term. They don’t fall
under the normal procedure for hiring.
I will talk to the folks at the driving range and Jerrill and Cheri to
see if they want to participate.
FA: People who are already employed by the
university and are qualified should have first opportunity to do this.
Adm: That is why I am visiting with them. I am not sure if there is a selection
process of if these fee-for-service people are creating things for themselves.
FA: Are they teaching?
Adm: They will probably be teaching a specific
skills to do the training. In
Continuing Studies private vendors are contracted to do non-credit courses.
FA: SCSU is not giving credit for these courses?
Adm: No.
FA: Are these people SCSU employees?
Adm: They are independent contractors.
FA: Is there a policy or procedure for
determining whether an outside vendor or a faculty person teaches a non-credit
course?
Adm: Continuing Studies has a list of 50-60
faculty interested in doing different types of training. John Burgeson also has private contractors
who contact him. Currently Continuing
Studies has a relationship with an entity in Colorado to do paralegal
training. In that instance, Continuing
Studies serves as the administrative unit.
FA: Again, if you have two entities, how do you
determine who is hired to provide this training?
Adm: That has not come up yet. If a faculty member asked to provide the
training, we do that with them. If I
have a request for a course, I talk to faculty first. Private vendors come to us to do something in the private sector
and ask us to market it. 99% of what we
do involves faculty and credit courses.
FA: The driving range is another operation
outside of your purview. I don’t
understand why the driving range would set up its own continuing education
training.
Adm: There has always been fee-for-service going
on. It is not usually associated with
other units. Under the current
structure, we should be able to find a way for Jerrill and Cheri to be part of
fee-for-service if they choose to do so.
FA: Is that how some faculty no longer with us
were supported?
Adm: And also by grants that no longer exist.
FA: Have you been able to get a meeting of the
unit?
Adm: No, I am asking your advice on how to get
this illustrious body together. I know
that you want the unit to select a Senator and curriculum committee representative. There are two separate units. Can we break this up and have two
representatives?
FA: That is a meet and confer topic. Is it one entity or two?
Adm: It is one.
FA: Then that group needs to get together.
Adm: We will have a representative by the next
meet and confer.
FA: What is the status of the committee?
Adm: The committee met at the end of fall
semester. The President came and gave
the committee its charge. Then Nathan
Church discussed resources and gave a history of the cultural audits and asked
the IRC to prepare recommendations for the administration. The committee is off and running. They have not yet met this semester.
FA: The committee has asked when the Rankin
report will be available. The students
indicate that it will be ready the end of January. Rankin wants as much input as possible before she releases the
report. The committee has some
hesitation. They have three of the
reports and don’t want to go too far until they have the fourth report.
Adm: A listserv has been established for the
committee to have conversations with each other as they are reading the
material. There has also been an
informal ad-hoc approach to solicit information from people on campus. I assume there will be a process to get
formal input.
FA: Is there a chair or convener for this
committee? Is there a way to provide
communication with the committee?
Adm: Not yet.
FA: Does the committee have an e-mail address?
Adm: At the next committee meeting we can get
something settled.
Curriculum
Processes [FA]:
FA: Where are we on overlapping courses in
majors and minors?
Adm: We reviewed the issue. We basically have agreement to approve the
minors requested with overlapping credits except in cases we believe are out of
the ordinary. In those cases we will
ask for a review by departments. That
should resolve the matter for now.
There are 15 cases that we know of.
3 or 4 seem particularly problematic.
We hope the Curriculum Committee will take action on this issue.
FA: Except for the egregious ones, have all been
allowed to go forward? In only three
cases will we have discussion between administration and faculty? For the students who graduated in December,
will their degrees be adjusted?
Adm: We don’t know of any students in that situation. If you know of some, let us know.
FA: The Curriculum Committee started to meet on
overlapping credits. The Curriculum
Committee will formulate a recommendation and send it to the Faculty Senate for
discussion. We will then send a
recommendation to you.
Adm: We had an excellent meeting today with the
Curriculum Committee. Please
clarify: Is the Upper Division Writing
requirement still on the table? Do you have the names of your representatives
for the Schedule 25 Committee?
FA: The names will be approved Tuesday. I do not know about the Upper Division
Writing requirement. We want to talk
about the Anoka-Ramsey Community College Connection on campus. The Anoka-Ramsey students are taking
reading/writing study skills courses and are being admitted into SCSU class
without faculty involvement or approval.
We understand that this is a bridge program--if they meet criteria set
up by Anoka-Ramsey, they are admitted as SCSU students.
Adm: They need to meet our standards for
transfer.
FA: If they are on campus and do not have enough
Anoka-Ramsey credits to meet the requirements for financial aid, are they put
into SCSU classes?
Adm: We suggest that you contact Kathy Mansfield,
the program coordinator. These students
have been given placement tests in reading, writing and math. Based on the results, they are placed in
developmental courses where needed or transfer courses where eligible. Most take only Anoka-Ramsey courses through
their first year. A few students may
need only one developmental reading course and take regular transfer courses
for the rest of their schedule. So, it
is true that Anoka-Ramsey Community College students may take a small number of
SCSU credits their first year.
FA: Are SCSU instructors informed that there are
Anoka-Ramsey students in their class and are those students identified?
Adm: No, but we haven’t also notified instructors
when students are PSEO.
FA: If students in our classes are not doing
well and we know that they are DGS students, we work with them. It is a related issue with
Anoka-Ramsey. I will take this to the
DGS Advisory Council. There should be
some system/process to follow.
Adm: The Anoka-Ramsey Community College
Connections program is small—150 students at a time. Kathy Mansfield follows students very closely. I do not know the procedure she uses to
follow-up with students in SCSU courses.
I can ask her. It seems
inappropriate to identify these students.
It might be a violation.
FA: We are told when students are athletes or
on the GI Bill.
Adm: That is on a voluntary basis.
FA: Not the GI Bill.
Adm: That is because of financial aid
issues.
FA: We suggest a study be done.
Adm: A study was done previously in the DGS
program. A couple of years ago, some
DGS students in composition and speech were enrolled in DGS sections and some
DGS students registered independently and were scattered in classes. The independently registered students did
better than students in courses identified as DGS sections. There is research on this phenomenon. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. There can be a problem when a student’s
self-perception may cause them not to excel.
When instructors know, they may tend inadvertently to treat students
differently. As a result of that
study, Communication Studies has asked that DGS students be distributed across
sections. English wanted separate
sections. We have cooperated with both.
FA: Students are not as separate as they might
seem. The behaviors exhibited were DGS
behaviors. It is a complex issue that I
would like to take to the DGS Advisory Committee.
Adm: It may be appropriate to also look at the
Anoka-Ramsey Community College Connections program. Kathy Mansfield is on the DGS Advisory Committee.
FA: Do Anoka-Ramsey students live in the dorms?
Adm: They can.
FA: Faculty are not fully informed about all of
these programs. Departments feel
pressured not to offer as many courses in their major because they are serving
other students. Some departments have reported that PSEO students get into
classes that their own students can’t get into. Can you find out how that happens?
Adm: PSEO student register last—after the rest of
the students register. Some SCSU
students don’t register when they can.
PSEO students are savvy—they watch drop/add.
FA: Can you check on that?
Adm: We should be able to.
FA: It appears to these faculty that this is not
what is happening. Is it possible that
something got changed in the registration system to allow this?
Adm: We will check. The policy is that PSEO students do not register before a set
time. We are required to offer PSEO
students the opportunity to take classes.
Chairs’
Summer Responsibilities [FA]:
FA: We are concerned that that the Graduate
Studies Office handbook, “Summer Sessions Academic Instruction Booklet” was
produced without faculty input. Part of
the problem is focused on chairs’ responsibilities. The statement from the Academic Instruction reads:
Chairpersons are required to provide
instruction to a maximum of one course of not
more than 4 credits (previously 3 credits).
The contract
is cited (Article 20C, page 89).
The
instruction booklet also states that associate deans are responsible for:
Chair teaching duties of providing a maximum of one
course of not more than 4 credits of instruction (previously 3 credits) Article
20C, page 89 is met and recorded. If an
associate dean elects to exempt a chair from her/his teaching duties and
reassigns he/she to project work, the decision will negatively impact
collegiate funding for the following summer.
That is a
significant hook. Our concern centers
around the assertion by the Dean of the Graduate School that chairs should
teach because allocations for chairs comes from summer session allocation. Yet there is the possibility of a person
being assigned non-teaching responsibilities as part of their responsibilities
for the 28 extra duty days. We do not
think the chair is required to provide instruction. We don’t believe the funding of the chair allocation is generated
by summer school. It seems to us to be
a full-year M & E responsibility.
Adm: Your question is of the booklet and
methodology? It is my understanding
that the booklet is a compilation of existing policies pulled together. I prefer to have the graduate dean respond
to the chair issue and budget. I
understand that this is no different than the procedure followed for 15-20
years.
FA: It is out of sync with the current
contract. It may have been that the
chair was not required to teach. It may
have been not in conformity with the contract.
There is a change in the contract language now. Chairs can take their 28 duty days some
other time than the regular year. See
page 76 – the last sentence…. “plus twenty eight (28) additional duty days
which shall be mutually agreed upon by the chair, the Association and the
President/designee.” Our concerns are
with the interpretation of the current contract, and the two statements are
contradictory because the instruction booklet also goes on to say chairs may be
exempted from teaching. Are chairs
required to teach or not?
Adm: We will bring this back to you. How soon do you need to know?
FA: Summer session material needed to be turned
in yesterday. We were not told in our
college that there is an impact on college funding for summer session if chairs
do not teach during summer session.
Information is not equally spread.
Not every chair expects that they have to teach.
Adm: Summer session has a small emergency fund to
use when the formula is not fair.
FA: There are three issues:
Ten
years ago Dennis said that the chairs’ contract wasn’t in the summer school
budget. We asked to look at the budget
program he was using. The data drop was
all salaries for all faculty. Faculty
were even counted if they were paid by an outside agency. The formula is fine but the data is not the
correct data. There are fundamental
ways to take the 28 contractual duty days out of summer session. You need to look at what you are doing to
chairs. Do you work more than half of
your vacation?
Adm: Yes.
FA: We are asking you to read the contract and
do it right. We have been trying for 10
years to get it straightened out.
Adm: The other side of the equation is
tuition. You can redistribute it, but
there is no
more money.
FA: The question is: Are department chair contracts paid out of summer or is it
contractual?
Adm: You are right in that the document was put
together in a way that there was not enough review to see that the contract language
is new. The 28 duty days show up on
the M & E spreadsheets I have seen, so is it appropriate to count them
against departments in the formula? A
non-IFO person, a MSUAASF position, put the information booklet together. We will review both issues and get back to
you.
Assistant
Deans [Adm]:
Adm: I think that I can make this brief. With the current budget situation, there
will be no assistant deans.
FA: We requested information about IFO and
MSUAASF faculty who work out of deans’ offices.
Adm: We will get that to you.
FA: Are there part-time assistant or associate
deans? Are there pseudo assistant deans
– faculty who do the work of assistant deans but are faculty? For example, in one college a department
chair is accomplishing the responsibilities listed on page 3 of the summer
session information booklet – that of being the chief college summer session
administrator. Can we have faculty
members being given reassigned time to do excluded management
responsibilities?
Adm: Remember from our MnSCU training up to 5
supervisory tasks doesn’t make someone a management person.
FA: What about faculty reassigned with excluded
management duties and still participating in department votes? Let’s not talk about what we can legally do,
but rather what is the healthy thing to do.
Is it a good idea? Take a look
at this and you will find out that we are submitting colleges to a kind of
stress they don’t need.
Adm: It is a fair question.
FA: If a person is in a bargaining unit, can
that person assume excluded management duties?
Adm: Yes they can.
FA: Over their own people?
Adm: Some department chairs will have some
supervisory duties.
FA: We are talking about people appointed in
deans’ offices and making management decisions as a faculty member.
Adm: We are looking at every appointment in the
deans’ offices.
FA: We would appreciate further discussion—keep
communicating with us. We have had bad
experiences.
Adm: Are directors part of this conversation?
FA: They are on the same level as department
chairs. Notes
by Jackie Zieglmeier