Meet and Confer Notes
January 20, 2005
Faculty Association: Annette Schoenberger, Theresia Fisher, Judy Kilborn, Frankie Condon,
Bill Langen, Steve Hornstein, Tracy Ore, JoAnn Gasparino,
Donna West, Notetaker
Admin: I’d like to introduce my new Administrative Assistant, Patty Dyslin. Would everyone please introduce themselves to Patty (introductions were made).
Meet and Confer Notes of November 18, 2004 – Accepted.
Admin: I have a few minor corrections (Kristi Tornquist will send them to Donna West).
Meet and Confer Notes of December 16, 2004 – The FA needs to review these; therefore, they are not ready to be accepted.
1. Internal Audit (FA) (4/22)
FA: We are compiling questions at this point.
Admin: I have a quarterly report for expenses. I have contacted Sarah Grachek to get this out on the web; and we’ve been missing each other, so it will be put on the web as soon as we connect. I want to point out that on January 1, MnSCU’s benefits changed; and right now, MnSCU’s systems are unable to project the change. They’re working on this, and it will either be done in January or later (this is a direct quote).
FA: There was a report you brought to us at the Budget Committee meetings -- a single page.
Admin: On reconciliation?
FA: You give us something new each time. Would you mind sending an e-mail to Dale Buske, because he was the one who asked me, and Dale is chairing the Budget Committee. We had asked for this, since maybe we could get started on this for next year.
Admin: This report was by VP and by Dean. I’ll talk to Dale.
Admin: We agreed we’d do this on a quarterly basis. The totals on the last page are screwed up, and I need expertise on this.
FA: The totals are correct.
Admin: But they’re not in alignment. I’m working on this.
FA: Okay -- thank you.
Admin: One of the other issues related to the budget has to do with the $4.8 million surplus for ’04; and this is a memo that has gone out to the campus community regarding a portion of that I want to share. (Copies were distributed.)
FA: How are these compared to the original request?
Admin: This is a very small portion.
FA: No -- I mean classroom maintenance of $70,000 – what is this in proportion?
Admin: This is just for the remainder of this year; and since we couldn’t do anything regarding massive replacement of classrooms once the semester began, this is the amount of dollars put aside for replacement of any equipment. We have a larger plan for updating electronic classrooms, but this is not included. You’ll see this in a list for longer-term expenditures. This is just funding to get in place this semester and to get some hiring done for this fall.
FA: One of the things that came out of the Budget Committee was a question on how you’re getting recommendations that deal with the university overall, for example, buying reassigned time for lots of faculty. I think one of the recommendations by a committee had to do with hiring more people to work on the e-classrooms. Is there any way an individual is allowed to make a recommendation?
Admin: We’ve had recommendations from individuals, from committees, from Student Government, and we’ve had recommendations from individual students regarding particular issues. The two items you identified -- both of them are within particular units on campus, anyway, and have been addressed by those units.
FA: If people had a proposal or idea, whom would they send it to?
Admin: Me (the Provost) or the President or any of the VPs.
Admin: For example, the ADA Committee is asking the President to increase money for software; so that’s going directly from the committee to the President.
Admin: Does anyone have any questions?
FA: So this letter is going to the community?
Admin: It should have gone out via e-mail a little while ago.
FA: These things are going to happen?
Admin: Yes.
FA: Are other positions being considered in the next round?
Admin: Yes.
FA: We heard about positions today in my college that aren’t listed here.
Admin: These are new positions.
FA: Not the ones already in process -- okay.
Admin: This round of funding was for things we deemed critically important and/or time-sensitive -- only a very small percentage of the number of dollars.
2. Search committees for administrative positions. What are the prerogatives of the committee chairs? We still don’t have the Administrative VP position description. (Admin) (9/9)
FA: We’re still waiting for the position description for the Administrative VP.
Admin: Here it is (distributed).
Admin: The job description existed for quite sometime and needs adjustments and updates, and we’re providing this to you for recommendations and updates.
Admin: Can we get it in 10 days?
FA: Thank you, and I appreciate your seeking our feedback.
FA: Do you have an electronic version?
Admin: No.
FA: We’re interested in search committees and what are the prerogatives of the search committee chairs. We got into a discussion whether the chairs are elected or appointed; and I think, really, the issue is more we want to make sure the search is a fair search. I’ve been on committees that have failed because the chair was doing too much, sort of guiding the committee in a way that the committee didn’t want to be guided.
Admin: I think there is an administrative manual for administrative searches that lays out the responsibilities and duties of the chairs of the committees, and that should be followed by chairs.
FA: Do chairs have access to this manual?
Admin: I guess we could provide a copy.
Admin: Do you have a copy in the FA office?
FA: Yes, we do.
FA: Part of the issue is the chair who is not working collaboratively –- when the committee doesn’t have a copy (of the manual) that goes to the chair.
Admin: This is a problem since manuals are so scarce.
FA: We should get this manual scanned and made available online.
Admin: The problem is it’s outdated.
Admin: But, we could put it on reserve at the library, for sure.
Admin: I’ve asked the Affirmative Action Office when they get a request within reason to provide a copy, but we’ve never had a request until Annette or Theresia asked.
FA: I’m wondering if a set of copies (three or five) could be made available so we could have them on reserve at the library so committees could come look at them. I realize we don’t want to create 600 of them, but more than one would be better.
Admin: We could do that – I can do that tomorrow.
Admin: Anne, if you get one copy to us, we can scan it within a week so it could be online.
Admin: The big issue is you want it to be housed in the right place.
Admin: It would be under Administrative Documents.
Admin: Or under the HR site?
Admin: When you just get on and it says Faculty and Staff, one of them says Administrative Documents.
Admin: It wouldn’t hurt to have this (document) in two spots – we have a lot in the HR spot.
Admin: It makes sense for it to be in HR.
Admin: We can put it on the HR page.
Admin: We can put it on both.
FA: We’re agreed that we’ll get the manual on the SCSU web page – the HR web page and the Affirmative Action web page (or links from those places).
FA: Thank you.
FA: In the guidelines for chairs with regard to being appointed or elected – is there a rationale?
Admin: The President has the option of appointing a chair – primarily for administrative positions.
3. Article 22/25 process and explanations. Removal of inappropriate comments. (Both) (9/9)
FA: Mark has contacted Kristi, Annette, myself, and Bill; and we’re going to meet again to discuss the process and a possible LOU and work in conjunction with Mankato, possibly, since they have some of the same issues.
Admin: Okay. Can we take this topic off of the agenda and put it back on when the group reports back?
FA: Sure.
Admin: And the same with item #2?
FA: Yes!
4. NCA Committees (Admin) (9/9)
Admin: Is there anything additional here?
FA: We’re just waiting for an invitation.
Admin: We’re trying to schedule a steering committee ASAP, and we’re finding not all constituencies have appointed representatives; but we’ll go ahead with organizing a meeting.
Admin: We shouldn’t wait.
Admin: Once that has happened, the steering committee will take the role in getting other committees initiated.
FA: So, we should leave this topic on the agenda?
Admin: No.
FA: I should have a bunch more names after the Faculty Senate meeting.
Admin: Very good – you may send them (names) to Lin.
5. Summer school low enrollment classes (FA) (11/4)
FA: Last time, we agreed to have an ad hoc committee, and we haven’t had a Faculty Senate meeting; but we’ve had one volunteer, and we’ll try to get another one in Senate. As soon as I do that, I’ll send you the names.
6. Draft Policy on Evaluation of Prior Experience (Admin) (11/4)
7. Revision of Curriculum Process (Admin) (11/4)
8. Program Review Procedures (Admin) (11/4)
Admin: Items 6, 7, and 8 we’ll do together.
FA: On Items 6 and 7, Senate said they wanted to take these to their departments -- it takes about a month, and I expect to have something at the next Senate. On Item 7, the Curriculum Committee spent most of their last committee meeting this week working on this, and I don’t know where they are.
Admin: If you could have something back on Items 6 and 8 -- if not, we’ll have to go ahead.
FA: I know one problem with Program Review is there was a concern regarding the extra work.
Admin: Guess what? That’s part of the work!
FA: All I’m saying is that is part of it.
Admin: Any other comments on these? Moving right along to #9…
9. Zmora Agreement (FA) (11/18)
FA: We’d like to go off record now and caucus with the entire group.
(A caucus was held.)
Admin/FA: When searches fail, the department shall be consulted.
Admin: Let’s take this one and the OCE topic off of the agenda for now.
10. Search committees and ranking of candidates (FA) (11/18)
Admin: We were going to talk about expanding this idea to a larger one and establish a taskforce to revise the hiring manuals.
FA: Should we go get some people?
Admin: We need to identify people to do one of the things we discussed -- it would be very helpful for people who have been involved in a number of searches, since they’ll understand where the changes need to be made.
FA: We’ll go back to Senate and ask them to make a recommendation.
Admin: We’ll need some Deans.
Admin: Would you also seek input from those who have made improvement recommendations in the past few years so we can see the issues that have been addressed, so the committee can live off of this experience. Would you ask Senate members to ask their departments for their improvement recommendations so we can collect this information for the new manual.
FA: I produced a number of documents….
FA: So did Judy Foster.
Admin: Do you have an e-version? (Laughter!)
FA: What it really needs is someone who is a good editor to reorganize it -- part of the problem is the material is scattered.
FA: I think, maybe, we should take some of this $4.8 million to hire a real editor.
FA: I’d like to say I would be willing to do it; but if you’re hiring an editor….
FA: One of the librarians would be good. My Dean is sitting here –- I’m not going to volunteer! (Laughter!)
FA: I don’t know if you want a huge number. Unless they’re going to brainstorm, you don’t want a huge writing project.
FA: We’re thinking three of us and two or three of you….
FA: If we know someone who would be good at it, we need to encourage them; we’re back to rewarding people for doing service.
FA: I think it’s something that people should get credit for.
11. Special Assistant to the President/Lead Investigator replacement and Affirmative Action Officer update. 1b1 intake person (FA) (11/18)
FA: We want to thank President Saigo for the letter clarifying how the Designated Officer position will be filled. We were going to ask you to notify everyone, and I discovered it just went out via e-mail. Is it also going to go out on Announce?
Admin: Eighty percent of faculty and staff will get it.
FA: So twenty percent won’t see it?
FA: You could send it to Department Chairs.
Admin: The secretaries send it to them.
Admin: We’ll send it out to departments, and I’ll communicate this to the President.
FA: This topic can come off of the agenda.
12. First Year Experience (Admin) (11/19)
Admin: This topic should not be here, since we covered it.
1. Enrollment Management Committee surveys (FA) (12/16)
FA: We have a handout showing the Faculty Senate’s position they asked us to give to you.
FA: After what occurred in Strategic Planning, you’ll find there is a lot of interest in this. This is something a research planning taskforce, if implemented, could work on. There is also someone in the room from the Enrollment Management Committee.
FA: I think the issue is that we all agree we need good data, but we think we need to gather it in a coordinated and intelligent way; and it’s not clear this is what we’ve been doing, and this is a recommendation.
Admin: Does this refer to the NSSE data?
FA: It started because there were three or four surveys the Enrollment Management Committee wanted to do. One survey they wanted to do was with students; and, first, they asked us to take an hour or so to complete it -- people aren’t interested, and it wasn’t clear how the data would be used. Therefore, Senate said we need to have good data to use, but we need to collect and gather it in a way that makes us trust the data we get back.
FA: The issue is the recommendation that was made for people to complete the surveys – a random number of surveys by a smaller number of people with higher reliability -- and those recommendations were ignored. Part of the concern is that we put trust in people who are trained to do this kind of data collection and not be overly sampling our freshmen; and since we’ll get into the business of collecting data, it’s a matter of making sure we don’t have this “silo.” If I’m doing a survey and you’re doing a survey and we’re not sharing data, we’re doubling our efforts and wearing out the students. This is really in the same spirit of my request to Michael to put together an ad hoc taskforce to look at planning and research across the institution so we’re sharing information.
FA: So, Michael, this is Senate’s position on what the Enrollment Management Committee plans to do very shortly with regard to surveying the students. Faculty members came to Senate to explain the surveys and their pros and cons, and the Senate was unanimously opposed.
Admin: How did the Enrollment Management Committee come to this determination?
FA: Who was on the committee? (It was done in the spring.)
FA: It never went to Senate. Faculty members on the Enrollment Management Committee, very similar to the Strategic Planning Committee, can make a recommendation; but faculty has to bring it to Senate, and Senate makes the decision for the FA. Although the Enrollment Management Committee supports the surveys, Senate does not; and that gets us in a bind, because Senate disagreed with the NSSE survey. I believe we need discussion beforehand. I know the Administration wants to use the NSSE survey…
Admin: Where is the appropriate place for that discussion?
FA: On the NSSE survey or on the ACT survey?
Admin: On NSSE and on ACT.
FA: The faculty who have understanding about surveys made a recommendation on how they thought they could get good data; but the response they got was we already got 2,500 of these, and we have to use them.
Admin: A clarification -- both the ACT survey and the NSSE survey are administered at hundreds of colleges and universities and on our campus, and we’re saying they’re not good?
FA: No – we’re not saying that. The plan for administering them is not good.
Admin: You’re saying it won’t be equitably distributed to get a valuable result.
FA: There are a whole bunch of things to make sure it is really representative, and they’re dismissing how to get good response rates.
FA: The surveys are good. We just want to get good data back. We set up committees, and they work hard; and I still hold a big grudge about the Nickels Survey and rewriting questions to get good data. After working for hours, we were just told “too bad, we don’t want it”; and it was a flawed survey. Even when there is flawed content, we ignore it. Do you want to get good responses? It’s frustrating. We not only don’t reward committee work, we also insult them.
FA: For example, one suggestion was to send the survey home with students. Stat 101 says if you send a survey home with people, you’ll get a bad result. For us to say “yeah, go ahead and use this data,” what are you doing here?
FA: That used to be our job to do surveys and get good response rates; and you don’t send them home, or you won’t see them again unless people are angry.
Admin: We talked at Strategic Planning to set up a taskforce, and I propose having a taskforce look at this issue ASAP.
FA: What about this survey due to come out?
Admin: We’re looking at how this will come out.
FA: Could we have some discussion between you and Annette so she can bring this back to the Senate?
Admin: Sure. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.
FA: The chair of the Enrollment Management Committee should be sending minutes to Annette, and a research planning taskforce is one area they’ll be looking at.
FA: I’m hoping Senate will support this, and we need to coordinate that data.
2. Retention (Admin) (1/20)
Admin: One of the tasks I think the university needs to attend to is to improve our retention, and I asked that this item be placed on the agenda so we can talk to the FA and ask Faculty Senate to consider ways faculty can assist in improving retention and graduate rates. There are all kinds of good reasons to do this -- we want our students to continue on to achieve their degrees, and we want students to move on from lower to upper division courses so we can offer more upper division courses and have sufficient enrollments to continue to offer them. If we are able to retain upper division students, we can maintain stable enrollment. If we do this, I think we can reduce how much money it costs us per student, and we can better spend the money on retaining students. There are external reasons as well – King Banian sent an e-mail to the Announce list giving information on a website now available to identify graduation rates from virtually every university. There was a press conference in Washington, DC. The website is sponsored by the Education Trust – it is http://www2.edtrust.org/edtrust/collegeresults.default.htm where you can find SCSU’s retention rates. You can do comparisons between colleges – there is a wealth of data there. I know people have begun to ask about these things. People visit campuses to decide whether to enroll, and they’re beginning to ask “what is your graduation rate”? Institutions whose rates are lower won’t fair well, so the long-term loss of enrollment and the negative implications that come with that are possible. Our retention rates are in the lower to middle range, and our graduation rates are several points below our sister institutions, and we need departments and the FA to help with this effort. Please consider various strategies the FA can propose to retain students.
FA: Faculty are also concerned. We have concern about how retention rates are being explained or understood and what the causes are for lower retention rates; and some of our concerns will be represented in the questions we’re developing for the internal audit. Its fair to say this is another area where faculty have been explaining why the retention rates are low, and we feel the Administration hasn’t been listening.
Admin: We’re asking for your input so we can listen to faculty, or at least hear what you have to say so we can talk together regarding changes. The most recent data regarding graduation rates is 2003 and goes back to students starting in 1997. So, what we’re doing now may impact what we’re doing in the future; but we can look at annual retention rates to see if we’re making improvements in a shorter time span. That’s not something you can affect overnight.
FA: We tried to talk about this last year, Michael, regarding our concern with retention and our concern with what was causing it; and because we haven’t discussed this in Senate, I’m representing one perspective and that is we get into a cycle where we’re so concerned with getting a certain number of students having seats. In the past, we kept including DGS students and those students in need of support. Faculty have been concerned regarding retention and its counter effect on majors; so if this is a time to move together, its good and fine and I think faculty are ready to see some changes.
Admin: Well, I think if I remember the data correctly, the retention figures of DGS students have not been that different than the general student population. We reduced the number further this year and raised the criteria for admission into the DGS Program.
FA: Relatively recently -- within the last two years. It takes a long time.
Admin: It only takes a year -- from freshmen to sophomore.
FA: We can’t solve the problem together -- we would be better served to go back to Senate.
Admin: I want to initiate a conversation in ways to work together.
FA: Maybe we need to share data more so regarding DGS’s higher-than-normal student retention. I’m concerned about other sorts of data. I have an anecdotal concern about losing people and not retaining people because there is difficulty getting into courses in their majors and am wondering if that’s been mapped -- if there’s a correlation between retention and our decision to put resources into Core. We can look at some data and do some more talking. Faculty have concerns as well. We need to figure out the kind of forum for discussion so it’s more broad-based.
FA: I think the Conversations on 2010 could be helpful regarding retention and graduate rates.
FA: We never got those notes.
FA: That would be a good place to spring from.
FA: There were lots of good ideas.
FA: That was a combination IFO/MnSCU initiation, and we’d get good support.
FA: It was the assistant for Linda Bair who promised us notes.
Admin: We can ask Linda to provide us with the notes.
3. Weekly schedule: 2 hours free for committee work (FA) (12/16)
FA: We agreed in Senate to ask about this at Meet and Confer and come up with a schedule for two hours of open time for committee work.
Admin: Some people with only a two-day schedule might need to consider another day! (Laughter!)
Admin: The original discussion we had was to have the 12:30 to 1:30 PM hour open to allow for brown bag lunch meetings. It’s not so feasible to do this late in the day.
Admin: We could make a shadow schedule -- then faculty might not feel so concerned. I think we could work on this quickly -- it would take a year or two to implement, but we could do it.
FA: What would you need in order to do this?
Admin: A small taskforce that could go back to Senate and Administration.
FA: How many people would you need?
Admin: Two, three, or four.
FA: We need to keep in mind we’ve been having problems with people to serve on committees; and even if we do, it’s pretty impossible to schedule meetings. We lost two hours of meeting time a day when we moved to semesters. The other piece is it is equally difficult for students to get together in organizations. Sometimes, if you bring group work for students to come up with times, they have class times. There would be pedagogical advantages, too.
Admin: I don’t know if anybody thinks it’s a bad idea -- it’s a matter of finding a right time.
Admin: There are very few bad reasons.
FA: The Committee on the Institution made recommendations.
Admin: We took some of them.
FA: The committee (Committee on the Institution) spent a lot of time on this, and I don’t know how many people we have left.
Admin: We’re talking about a couple of folks from faculty and Administration to come up with a proposal to submit.
FA: Could we take this back to Senate to ask whether this issue should be referred to the Committee on the Institution?
FA: They said they want volunteers.
FA: We could ask if they want volunteers from the committee and the Administration.
Admin: Are you willing to make a proposal for consideration?
Admin: Sure. It won’t take more than a couple of meetings.
FA: If you have an idea, why don’t you just bring it to the next Meet and Confer, and then we can take it to Senate. If you bring us something, we can say this is what we came up with.
FA: Can we include in the proposal when the start date would be?
FA: It would have to start in FY ‘07.