Final approveD May 12, 2005
Meet and Confer Notes
April 14, 2005
Admin: Roy Saigo, Michael Spitzer, Steve Ludwig, Diana Burlison, Larry Chambers, Nathan Church, Roland Specht-Jarvis, Kristi Tornquist, Rex Veeder, Patty Dyslin - note taker
Faculty: Annette Schoenberger, Judy Kilborn, Theresia Fisher, JoAnn Gasparino, Steve Hornstein, Susan Motin, Tracy Ore, P.N. Subba
Called to Order: 3:05 p.m.
Meet and Confer Notes of March 31, 2005 – These notes are still being reviewed and are not ready to accept.
1. Internal Audit
AD: You have provided us with a copy of a series of questions and President Saigo had indicated that I would respond but I haven’t gotten that information together yet. So, we’ll delay that to a subsequent meeting so we can leave this item on the agenda.
FA: Do you have any other questions for us at this time about that?
AD: No.
FA: OK.
FA: So Provost Spitzer, you realize, of course, that our list of questions were not questions for the administration to answer, right?
AD: What were they then?
FA: They were questions that we were interested in getting an outside source to come in and answer.
AD: Some of the questions are answerable from data that is on the MnSCU website. And citing that information would be the equivalent of having an outside person respond.
FA: The context of this when we were first looking at questions that, the context was from a meeting that I had with President Saigo and Diana on data that was coming up and the interpretation of that data – how much Mankato spent on instruction and how much St. Cloud State spends on instruction. And from there, we got into a conversation of questions that we had on both sides, relating to data that we were unsure of it meaning. And we were putting it under the title that you see under the current Meet and Confer agenda – internal audit, but that we said, well that doesn’t have to be an internal audit, it could be any kind of a third-party come in. Then we had that meeting and Steve was there and Diana and we were saying ‘We’re going to do a list of questions’ but the questions were not for…
AD: Well, I read the questions as questions to be answered and I don’t see how an external person would respond to a question that reads: What accounts for the needs of these huge class sizes and continuing pressure to increase class size. There’s no external person who’s going to come in and give you a response to a question like that - assuming that the terms and conditions of the question were accurate, which they’re not. But that’s another matter.
FA: OK, then if our original intent was not to just get answers from the administration on the questions, and you’re saying some of these questions don’t make sense to go to a third party, then perhaps we should get together that smaller group again and look at those questions and come up with recommendations for Meet and Confer. We’d hate for you to spend all that time for us just to say we didn’t want your answer – no offense intended.
AD: That’s my answer. Well, I’ll be glad to meet with you and go over the questions and see where we can find specific data that would be responsive to those questions.
FA: Annette, do you want me involved?
FA: You just asked for the meeting… (laughter)
FA: I would be happy to meet with you, Provost Spitzer.
AD: And I would be equally pleased.
FA: Thank you. (laughter)
AD: Next item is Summer School
FA: Yes, the summer school enrollment.
AD: Low enrollment in classes? Ok.
FA: We asked several meetings ago, and Dennis was going to get us kind of a crib-sheet of our current policy because we discovered that a lot of the faculty don’t seem to have a clear handle on what our policies were to begin with and they were providing misinformation and there is a lot of disinformation out there. So what we were promised was kind of a listing of what the current policy was. Then we were going to come back and talk about that because we found ourselves so out in the woods about what the policies were to begin with. And that’s where it stands. We haven’t received that so we can’t get back to the issue.
AD: My understanding from Dennis was that he met with you and Mac?
FA: Right, and that was the next week.
AD: And he said that he was waiting for something from you.
FA: No
AD: So I think what we need to have happen is for you and Dennis to meet again...
FA: I’ll set something up with him…
AD: and clarify who’s waiting for what…
FA: OK.
AD: and get it resolved.
2. Revision of curriculum process
FA: It is with our university curriculum people and we are looking into it and we don’t have a response right now.
FA They’re working on it. It shows up in their minutes that they’re working on it.
AD: OK.
FA: So they are – I think it’s a big thing.
3. Student program completion
AD:
We started a conversation at Faculty Forum Day on issues relating to first-year
experience and student satisfaction and student program completion and as you
all know, Vince Tinto will be on campus for the Fall convocation. He’s an
expert on student satisfaction and student engagement. He’s at
FA: Do you want to take this off the agenda?
AD: I want to keep it on for the next six years…(laughter). Well I think it’s an important topic and we’re not going to know the outcome of certain things that we do for several years, so we don’t have to keep it on the agenda, but I think we need to keep it on the front burner.
FA: Is there a formal way of monitoring this?
AD: Well, I think we need to come up with a list of initiatives, see what they are, and see which ones we can adopt, and which ones we can pursue, and what sorts of things – partly, we need to identify where the difficulties are and address those. In other areas we’ll need to see if there advantageous things that we can do. For example: how can we speed up the process whereby you move from 60 students in a first-year experience to 250 to 2,300 – because there’s evidence, strong evidence, that when students spend their first year on campus, they’re much more likely to complete their programs. And so, what can we do to encourage those students? Is it time to introduce a requirement for all freshmen to live on campus? Are there other things we can do? Does banded tuition make sense in order to improve student credit-taking patterns? These are questions that I think we need to look at and examine and come up with some recommendations on and take some actions. Those are just two ideas, but they’re major changes in what we do.
FA: So you’re not proposing anything formal at this time.
AD: What I’m proposing is that we engage in some serious conversation and planning around these questions so that we can then come up with specific strategies – and do it together. I don’t want it to be administration requires “x” kind of thing. I want it to be a collaborative process whereby we work together to come up with some strategies that make sense to the university community and that everybody can support – or most people can support.
FA: So you’re thinking about creating a task force and have them go out and gather…?
AD: That’s one possibility. I’m really asking for your recommendations about how to proceed with this rather than saying ‘this is the proposal.
AD: I think that , I don’t know if a taskforce – it’s an idea, otherwise we’ll be coming in here with individual suggestions – we need to find a way to come in with a package.
FA: So if you created a taskforce, who would be on it?
AD: I think it should contain some faculty, it should contain people from student life and development, maybe some people from administrative affairs, some other administrators, so that we have broad representation from offices across the campus that can have input into this process. Or maybe we just need to do this within various units on campus and then come back with a plan that will encapsulate recommendations from these various entities.
FA: I’m getting a little lost here. So, as I can make out, you’re saying from one, you’ve asked the deans to take this to the departments for suggestions. So now you are saying that you would also like from the faculty association side, that we discuss this topic
AD:
Maybe the answer is to support that initiative through the
FA: Which would basically, as of now, be saying ‘yes, we recognize that this is a topic of importance and something needs to be done.’
AD: Yes.
FA: I think the reason we have questions about this is that some of us don’t have a handle - we know what we want to respond to, but we don’t have a handle on how we’re going to respond. As I suggested several weeks ago, we don’t have anything that tells us; are we getting there or are we not and I think that’s the concern that we’re trying to get at. How do we know that things are getting done? How do we know that there is a package? We don’t have any mechanism for reporting other than piecemeal right now. That’s the problem.
AD: Well we have a couple of surveys that are being conducted. We’ve done the NSSE survey twice now, we’re doing it again this semester. We’ll have three years of reports that we can look at and see if there are any trends. We’re conducting this Spring, for the first time, the ACT Student Satisfaction Survey so we’ll get some information from that. We have data on both graduation rates and retention rates that we can look at and see how we’re doing in those terms. So in that sense, we do have access to some data. What we don’t really have is a series of strategies where we’re saying ‘Well these are things that we’re going to do…’ other than, where we’re starting to increase the first-year experience program. Other than that, we’re trying to focus on better advising. What other things do we need to look at? That’s really what I’m trying to get at. What are some of the other issues we need to look at? Can we identify any particular courses and particular programs – gateway courses that students have a lot of trouble with? And is there something we can do to assist those students to be more successful in those courses? Those are some of the things that could be looked at. We need to first identify a series of issues to look at and then figure out how we’re going to address those things in a package, so to speak, rather than piece-meal as you’ve said
FA: I just have a question. After John Gardner came to me and shared his first-year experience survey, first-year student survey, is the university looking into possibly doing that?
AD: We have…the NESSE has the first year breakdowns. And isn’t the strategy, Michael, that we’ll do the NESSE on odd years and in the future do the ACT Student Satisfaction survey on the even years?
AD: Yes. Correct.
AD: I think probably, there’s more date there than we can probably make sense out of. And now we’ll have three years data…
FA: So, are you asking for a taskforce to make a report, say, in January or something like that?
AD: I think maybe that’s not a bad idea.
FA: We could take that to the senate – a request for a taskforce and what kind of faculty representation should be on it. Then you could bring us what you’re representation would be. When we bring this up in senate they’ll ask: ‘What do you want to do?’
AD: We want to collect ideas, figure out where the problem points are, and come up with ways of fixing those.
FA: That’s right, we want to do that. We all agree we all want to do that. What’s the mechanism for getting that done?
AD: Well, this sounds like a good approach.
FA: So we will go to the senate and tell them that we’d like to form a taskforce and would they like to participate and if they do, what they think our participation should look like.
FA: Are we looking at a reporting date of January?
AD: My preference would be September, but January is ok…(laughter).
AD: What we need in the end is a person a person in each department, or several, just like we need them for the assessment process. They need to be knowledgeable about retention. They need to be able to tell newcomers who come to departments what it takes, and they need to understand how the different elements from admissions, to departments, to the undergrad dean, to the colleges, and to individual faculty, collaborate to this end. So we need one or two persons in each department who are the specialists on these items because we cannot rely on other departments telling you what to do because programs and their target groups are different. And it is not a short-list, it is a long process that we’re entering into. I liken it to assessment. It’s changing the culture a little bit to be one of retention-oriented processes and programs that involve faculty, staff and the administration.
AD: I think there are some things that we can do on a university-wide basis and some things we have to do on a department basis.
FA: I continue to be concerned about the context of the data we’re getting. I’m still worried about students who come here who really have no intention of staying at all. They come here with the intention of staying here for about a year and maybe getting an AA, maybe just do their first year and move on to someplace else. And I’m still worried, and I think because of our situation in the state, where we are, we get quite a lot of that. I’m wondering if there may be some data in there that we can capture. I don’t know how we capture it, because I think that right now we appear as the non-completers.
AD:
I think one of the ways of addressing that is to look at peer institutions and
see to what degree they have the same situation and to what degree their
completion rates differ from ours – even though they don’t have the same
student bodies. For example, compare our student population to that at
FA: I would just like to advocate for having the report in January because we have our first year experience program and those of us who are teaching in that program data would not be available. I know you would like it earlier.
AD: No, I didn’t say September. What I meant was the sooner, the better.
FA: I wanted to respond to what Roland was saying. Do you mean that part of what the task force could do is suggest some short-term relationships and then some processes for long-term sorts of attention. And I think we need to deal with both levels in your recommendations.
Ad:
Just a small comment.
FA: I don’t remember the institution, but I do know that at the last IFO board meeting, several institutions were talking suspending banded tuition because there were problems.
AD:
Yes. I threw that out just as a point of discussion just to say that
there are a number of issues that we haven’t considered as an institution that
we might want to look at. I wasn’t a proponent of doing that
necessarily. You could look at
AD:
I’d like to recommend that Roland put together kind of a charge and some of the
ideas he’s articulated. The conversation doesn’t have to go very far,
just put together some of the ideas we’ve discussed, what we’re trying to
achieve and what the procedure will be, then adding input from what others have
said. The other thing that was amazing to me, we welcomed about 35
counselors this last week. And I understand that we always go to
AD: We’ll have it in place that Judy has agreed to help.
FA: If you can get it to me before the next senate meeting we can have that discussion
AD: My sense is mid next week?
FA: Yes.
AD: Great. Thank you. I think this was helpful.
4. Weekly schedule
FA: This one is going nowhere. It hasn’t gone any further.
FA: There is another faculty member I was supposed to meet with who agreed to meet with me on it…
AD: And didn’t have to hours free to do it (laughter)
FA: Basically that’s what it is. We’re trying to just get together – we’re not leaving it alone. Maybe next year we’ll get it figured out.
AD: If possible, we would appreciate a response by October 1st. So if we’re going to do something for 2007 we would need to be able to start planning by then.
FA: Ok, that’s a good deadline for us.
FA:
The next item should be the Zmora agreement and the
AD: Do you want to do that one next?
FA: Yes.
5. Zmora Agreement – College of Education
FA: We would like this discussion off the record
(This discussion took place off the record.)
6. Affirmative Action manual
FA: We took the proposal to consider Mankato’s manual…
FA: Moorhead.
FA: I’m sorry, Moorhead’s manual to the senate. The Senate’s response was that we spent a lot of time on our own manual and lots of people have done lots of work over a number of years. We would really like to get at the manual we have here and have our folks work on that and if you folks want to go revise from what we’ve given you and bring that back and then we’ll go over it again that’s fine, or move the proposal forth, our group will work on it; but our group did not want to begin with someone else’s manual. We’d rather go back and work on the one we have.
AD: Well I have the stuff that Annette gave me and I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet, but I will do so relatively soon and we’ll decide where to go from there.
7. How to deal with issues before they become issues
AD: One of the things I thought we could spend some time discussing has to do with a matter that’s become increasingly in the public eye and increasingly of interest both to higher education and in other places like state legislatures – and that has to do with the issue of academic freedom, the academic bill of rights and academic responsibilities within those realms. I thought it might be a good idea to discuss some of those issues in relationship to where we stand as a university. We’ve had some issues on our campus revolving around some of these matters and I think we ought to work at developing a policy that addresses both the faculty members’ rights, the institutions commitment to academic freedom, but also, faculty responsibility. I’m pleased to see that the senate has passed a motion pertaining to the establishment of an ad hoc committee on academic freedom. I would add that it should also include faculty responsibilities.
FA: I’m sorry, what?
AD: Faculty responsibilities.
FA: We did pass this motion in senate on Tuesday and we are very interested in beginning of discussions. We certainly could begin with this issue. Certainly one of the things we’re wondering is what sort of forum you’d like and how you’d like to set this up. I’ve gotten the impression from what President Saigo has said earlier that he’d like, rather than having just one a semester, to have an on-going series of conversations – is that right President Saigo? That would certainly be a different kind of setting than say convocation or for faculty forum days and we could set up something and begin with this topic.
AD: A series of colloquia on the subject.
FA: So it’s a matter of what kind of form do we want.
FA: But again it appears to me we are agreed that there is one common topic, academic freedom. Am I correct in that? So we should go with that topic and find out how we want to explore that.
AD I don’t want to separate that from faculty responsibility, because in our contract, they’re linked very specifically.
FA: Does even the AAUP separate it?
AD: No, I don’t think they separate it.
FA: So I’m guessing that that’s included…
FA: It mentions the AAUP document here
FA: Right.
AD: This mentions AAUP document?
FA: Maybe it’s mentioned in another document. We talked about it.
FA: Yes. So what you want us to take back to senate is that you would agree to participate in this if we add faculty responsibilities.
AD: Yes.
FA: And that this seems to be kind of separate and the same as setting up a series of discussions.
AD: Yes. Right, right.
AD: I was just going to add that the more public and sustained these conversations are, the better. The series is a wonderful idea and we have to encourage the public discussion of this. We need to get people involved, not only on our university committee, but from the community as well.
FA: Michael, in senate motion, you mentioned academic misconduct. Can you give some examples of what you had in mind?
AD: I would go back to the contract on that one.
FA: And can you give articles or particulars?
AD: Yes. Article 4, which deals with academic freedom. In fact, the subject of Article 4 is Academic Freedom. Section C on page 15 says: “ In the exercise of academic freedom, the faculty member may, without limitation, discuss his/her own subject in the classroom; he/she may not, however, claim as his/her right the privilege of persistently discussing in the classroom any matter which has no relation to the course subject. In extramural utterances, the faculty member has an obligation to not represent himself/herself as an institutional spokesperson, unless so designated by the President.” So academic freedom pertains, as I read this, and as I read the AAUP statement, as the ability of a faculty member, without limitation, to discuss the topic/the subject of his or her discipline in class but not to talk about topics that are unrelated to the course that’s being taught. That’s what I mean by faculty responsibility. Section C, Article 4 page 15. I don’t think you can separate those two things.
FA: The AAUP statement did come in to our group discussion and I’m sure the entire point is to look at that and figure it out.
FA: Perhaps there are different things that we can use. As I recall, the way was proposed by President Saigo. I’m wondering here if we are going away from the original intent. As I recall the president said, and I’m using my own words not, that there are some rather dramatic or drastic events taking place that would impinge on the university and these are the topics we would like to discuss. So in that sense, the subject of academic freedom makes sense. But I see the conversation seems to be becoming more about policies and procedures. That is all I have to say. The topic came up regarding Ray Churchill, as I recall.
AD: That’s correct and I think that there’s a very broad range of subject matter that we’re talking about and it has to do with in fact, publications that allege a liberal bias in higher education, legislators that are introducing legislation to prohibit academic freedom. But I think as part of that discussion of what is academic freedom, what is the right of a faculty member to speak about the subject that is that person’s discipline, there are also some responsibilities. I don’t want to leave that piece out. But I think the real focus does also have to be on the issue of academic freedom.
AD: I think in some context this was stated and to be dealt with when we raised the whole issue of civility. Again, there’s a flip side to this. Academic freedom is not a blanket right that faculty have to treat others in the community in a way that is not civil. I know you haven’t responded back to us with regard to that set of standards that we put forward, but I think that’s one of the issues that we need to dialogue about and I think that the university needs to move forward with setting out those expectations that conversations and interactions between members of the academic community have to occur within the context of civility.
FA: We did respond to you on that. We said that we were not going to talk about that anymore because the way that was worded caused too many problems. So we did respond to you on that.
AD: But we never came to, we didn’t come to a resolution.
FA: We may not have come to any resolution, but we did respond.
FA: I’m wondering if what you’re asking for when you refer to the contract is to have a discussion about things that could impinge on us here that a discussion that’s more contextualized taking into consideration things like the contract, things like our processes and procedures, is that what you’re asking for?
AD: No, no, no. What I’m really, and I think I wanted to make one point in reference to Subba’s comments, which was that this was not, the comments that I made were not in response to this motion. This is something I put on the agenda without knowing you had a motion. So the time for this kind of conversation is now. But it was really an issue that’s been very much a hot topic lately in higher education in general, and the public media, in the legislature. And the whole question of, there is a kind of assault on academic freedom out in the world in which we live once we leave the campus. We need to address those topics, but we need as well to be mindful that we have responsibilities as well. That freedom comes with some responsibility. I didn’t want to make it a contractual issue, per se, but simply to say, that our contract interest is that piece of it?
FA: Piggybacking a little bit on what was said before, the senate did decide with regard to the civility statement that the administration already had the options under the contract that the civility statement provided. And so that’s the reason they did not support the statement and they recognized the administration’s prerogative. And I’m not sure if this is the caucus thing, so Annette, tell me if it is, but I don’t see faculty resistance to discussing the contract; especially things that are in the contract. So…
AD: I don’t either, but I didn’t want it necessarily to be a protracted discussion of the contract, but simply to point out that even the contract addresses this topic. And that the contract addresses the two pieces of that together in the same way that I think we should address the two pieces of it together – and not separate one from the other.
AD: I think also we need to keep in mind in terms of framing things, there are things here in terms of professional relationships and professional ethics and responsibilities that we have beyond the contract itself in terms of professional growth and I think a part of that discussion will be dealing with that. And this is about a campus-wide thing, I know it’s being phrased in terms of faculty, but includes others as well. Having this discussion in an open forum sets that sort of tone that it isn’t just about one person or just faculty or staff, or whatever.
AD: Or a student.
FA: So what I should take back to the senate on this?
AD: I think within the context that we responded about looking a both parts of this issue. That we are supportive of having such a taskforce or a committee, but we also want to engage the campus in a series of discussions on a larger scale about these issues – an academic discussion of what is, in one sense, a very intellectual topic – or an intellectual discussion about a very academic topic, depending on how you want to phrase it. But that the need for campus-wide conversation about these issues exists and that we should pursue that and make it a feature of what we talk about on the campus
FA: This formation of the task-force, is in fact a convergence but they are obviously separate. And we will go forward with the taskforce, getting members and so on. But I think the question really is: what kind of forum are we going to have. We can’t begin working on that unless we have some sort of mechanism for it and I’m wondering what the mechanism is for setting this up.
AD: Well, if we have such a committee, the committee could address some of that as well. And maybe some of the public forum that we create could be sponsored by this particular committee.
FA: So then the request would go back to faculty senate and we ask if they’re willing to have this ad hoc committee be charged with that forum…
AD: Yes, and to work with some of the members of the administration on finding appropriate speakers and venues to pursue that.
FA: Do we understand what that is? I have to make sure that I take the right thing back.
FA: I’m sorry to keep hammering on this, but it appears the more neutral we keep the topic, the more we will be co-opting (couldn’t transcript next words) and using or adding the term academic responsibility I think defeats the purpose. And by sending it to this ad hoc committee of the faculty it will be all the more again the thing: Oh yeah, now you asking one more for us to be responsible about. So I’m suggesting, requesting, that we drop that – because it will come up in the discussions. It’s two sides of the coin. So it is from that point which I’m saying that it will help us all to keep it as that and the discussion of that and the consequences.
AD: I think that if we engage and some way make an agreement and look at the AAUP standards for faculty rights and responsibilities, all that will be in there and open for discussion. And you’ve already brought up that’s part of the picture. I understand what you’re saying. You’re afraid of waving the old red tablecloth. I don’t know how the phrasing might go, somehow if it included looking at the AAUP standards of rights, freedoms and conduct – something like that – as part of your conversation, I think we would then be including both sides of the coin. And if that were part of the motion I would be more inclined to accept what Subba has said – but it’s not in there.
AD: One of the things that I’m uncomfortable about in terms of not addressing both sides of this issue. What I wouldn’t want to see happen is that the faculty association is looking at this only from the side of the issue of academic freedom and how to defend it; and then puts the administration in the position of being the only regulator, if you will, of what the limits on that are. That really ought to be something coming from the faculty itself. The administration should really not have to, except in to most extreme circumstances, set the standard. It ought to be coming from the faculty itself understanding both freedoms and looking at the constraints and parameters within which those freedoms are experienced. And I’d hate to see it set up where it’s already a dichotomy when in fact that is faculty responsibility.
FA: But I don’t think any faculty discussion of academic freedom is going to cover that. And the minute we have people with two different perspectives they have to deal with that and you have to work that out and that’s a part of what should happen on a university campus when we talk about any topic that doesn’t have consensus – and how many topics to we have to cover – too many. So I can’t imagine it wouldn’t be included. I guess I’m worried if you wave certain flags that it’s going to make the discussion for difficult. For example, when you use the word ‘civility’ that makes various people uncomfortable and that doesn’t mean that people don’t want to treat people with civility or don’t want to be treated with civility themselves, but we want to have a conversation using parameters to encourage conversation rather than, you know, getting people to put their heads down and put little horns on the top because that flag’s up.
AD: I firmly believe, first of all I know there are faculty on this campus who are very much aware of both sides of this. We’ve already talked about this quite a bit. Now I’m not worried that that conversation won’t happen. I think we’ve got to advertise that it is. We’re looking at the whole issue of academic freedom. How does it involve the community also? I mean, we’re talking about a relationship not only with each other but how does somebody, such as Tracy, how does this affect your life – we need to look at the different contexts. I think if we look at the AAUP statute on these issues, this issue’s been around for a long time and that doesn’t mean that we can’t talk about it in that context, but that would give us a chance at both of those. And I think that all you’re asking for Michael is some sort of statement – I know it’s on the record that that’s part of the conversation, but if it was part of the motion maybe that would ???
AD: Yes.
FA:
So in other words, just to get this clear, the
FA: Are we talking about the same composition of people with the taskforce and the ad hoc committee?
AD: Yes, we could do that.
FA: Thank you.
ADL Are we ready to move on?
8. Proposed Policy on Naming Facilities
FA: The senate declined to comment. The Executive Committee would like a little bit more detail on how the planned consultation with the unions and we’re wondering how that’s planning. We do have a committee on the institution that is – part of their charge is to do that at that meeting facilities and buildings and things. We also have as another model the honorary doctorate, how you do that. We’d like that piece fleshed out a little more and when I said that at senate, everybody nodded their head.
AD: Jill Rudnitski would be the one to talk about that. I think the expectation is that Jill would come to Meet and Confer. We would want the process to move along – sometimes there is some timeliness involved around this whole thing. But if you made a suggestion, it appears now, maybe that sentence should say ‘ via the Meet and Confer process.’ If that’s what you want, you could suggest that.
FA: We didn’t know what you had in mind.
AD: That’s what we were expecting – Meet and Confer, then the President, then MnSCU, It might go to the University Council as a discussion, the foundation board may have an interest in what we’re doing. So we don’t want to limit it to exclusively Meet and Confer, but we would certainly expect that it would come to meet and confer. What do you think?
FA: We could try that. The thing is, until we do it, we don’t know how well it’s going to work.
AD: So maybe, consultation will include the meet and confer process and such other groups where appropriate.
FA: If that doesn’t work then we look around for a better way.
9. International Studies Committee
FA: We had asked for an accounting of the programs that were proposed and which ones actually made it. Have you got it?
AD: Here it is.
FA: Ok. Thank you. The international studies committee has some other stuff they’re sending but I don’t have it yet so I’ll have it in a week or so.
AD: Ok.
10. Parking rate increases
FA: The senate declined to act on this. There was a question about the cost per parking stall. If you take 9 million and divide by 300 you get $30,000. So we’re kind of wondering.
AD: 300 is wrong.
FA: Oh. It says there will be a net increase of 325 parking stalls so to get that 325 parking stalls we’re spending a little over $9 million. Are we getting anything more for that?
AD: We’re purchasing some property so that’s about $600,000. And that is for the parking ramp itself, 525 stalls, costs about $17,000 per stall and that also includes about $500,000 for the public safety facility that’s adjacent to it. So in the end, the stalls cost about $14-15,000 per stall. The fact is, and to recognize it for what it is, it’s going to be on a site that’s close in. And so the net is, we will pick up about 325 stalls and the capability to add additional levels to this parking ramp in the future because that’s one of the characteristics we asked for – to add more on top.
FA: Like Centennial Hall? (laughter)
AD: The added to the parking ramp next to the Board office in St. Paul and they added to the parking ramp at Minneapolis Community/Metro but in any case, that is the cost for that facility, and it’s a step to having parking closer in to campus and in the future we can probably add 250 more stalls if we chose to go taller.
FA: OK.
FA: So it might be a matter of packaging that so that it’s a little bit clearer. One thing that’s not on the sheet is that the ability to add stalls. The other thing that’s not obvious is that, if you actually do the calculations down to $14-15,000 that would be useful as well as details about the building that’s going to be there. I don’t think that’s obvious. There’s a lot more in there then appears when you first look at it.
AD: Would it be helpful if I maybe sent a note back to Annette to kind of follow that up. I have some additional information that breaks down the cost of the components of the ramp and shows land purchase and demolition of existing structures and things like that. So I could show that to you and a little more information.
FA: The importance of having security in the building rather than… My understanding is that the current public safety building is not really handicap accessible. It is in the same way that the North Office Center is – maybe a little better.
AD: It’s a little better than the North Office Center and meets the code for accessibility, which is not our aspiration.
FA: And this will be better than that this will be better than that so we’ll have a truly accessible public safety facility. I think that’s really significant.
AD: Yes. And we will have a durable building rather than a single-family residence that’s been converted into office space.
FA: I think in terms of some of the discussion at the senate, I think it’s important to let people know that the ramp can be added on to. Because when they do that calculation, and see that’s how much it’s going to cost per parking space, that’s a lot of money. Another thing we haven’t looked at is how many years we plan to get out of it. We didn’t have any of that information about how much the land costs and other items so it would be helpful to have that.
AD: I will send document to Annette and I appreciate the discussion.
AD: Can We take this off the agenda?
FA: Yes, and naming facilities
11. Job Descriptions on Web do not match those distributed in Senate
FA: Job descriptions that are on the Web don’t match the job descriptions of the positions announced – at least with one particular one. For example, the Vice President of Administrative Affairs. So when we look that description and we look at the Web, there is a mismatch. So we don’t know how many other people or how many other positions are there that the job descriptions don’t match.
AD: Are you talking about a comparison between the job description and the notice of vacancy?
FA: Yes.
AD: Because they’re not necessarily the same documents.
FA: No, it’s a comparison of the job description to … apparently on the web site there’s an organizational chart that shows people’s jobs and what they’re responsible for.
AD: Do you know if that’s the HR web site?
FA: It’s very possible. This was brought to our attention by another member. And apparently those things don’t match, so we’re thinking, if I was a person who might want to apply for a job, and I’m looking at the notice of vacancy for a job description and then I’m looking at the web site and they don’t match, I might….
AD: If you could let us know where on the Web this is, we’ll clean it up to make sure that there is consistency.
FA: We can give you the exact information.
AD: Can we take this off?
FA: Sure.
NEW BUSINESS:
12. Strategic planning positions
AD: I’ve been asked to research and draft a job description for an AVP for Institutional Effectiveness. I’ve just started working on this and should have a draft soon to share with the president.
AD: This is response to a meeting with the infrastructure committee of the strategic planning committee and their recommendation.
FA: How long do think that will take before we get to look at that?
AD: Not very long.
AD: The process is that he gets that information to me and we go back to MnSCU and they have to grade it and do things like that, then we have to find money for it and determine the procedure for the search. The other part is that there are a number of things happening at the same time. We came back and found that you were at the North Central Accreditation, you and 21 people, and they pushing us hard getting more data. So even the title of the office – in the old days it was called Institutional Research – and that gets confused with ??? research and then we’re talking about assessment p Annette doesn’t like accountability. So there’s a lot of different terms around and I’ve asked Larry to look at the Chronicle of Higher Education for similar positions. So we’re really moving quickly. But it came about because the internal structures came to us and proposed it. So we’re looking at that overview first that can answer questions across the university and then we’re looking at some additional staff. That’s where we’re at.
FA: Have you made any decisions about reporting lines?
AD We’ve had discussions but we are not at that point yet.
FA: President Saigo, do you think it might be feasible to have people in place for these positions by the fall?
AD: We’re hoping to, yes.
AD: Are there any other questions/comments? Any other topics?
FA: I know that of what the strategic planning committee had in mind was that all those institutional research things would be under this person – that all the institutional research type stuff would be under this person.
AD: As Annette is talking, I called Moorhead and they were having difficulty accumulating the information in such a way that they could make budgetary decisions. I called Mankato and they have one person and two faculty that are assigned into the Provost’s office. David Danna at Southwest is about a year behind us in trying to decide what kind of office he should put together. Bemidji has an office but it’s a pretty skeleton situation, and as Larry has indicated to me, at one time we had 4 people in that office, and because of various reasons they’ve been moved to different locations. As I hear the governor who was here yesterday, I hear citizens advisory committee, advisors to the governor, the trustees. The trustees continue to talk a different language which is value – so for the dollar, what value are students receiving? So you understand, we need to get on this quickly. But what I found across the system was that everybody had different kinds of process and individuals in different locations. So when the institutional research committee came to me, really we’re really thinking the same thought and we’re bringing all those thoughts together. Hopefully we’ll have something for you soon.
FA: In addition to the AVP position, the structural committee also recommended another data person.
AD: Right. And Susan’s going back. We started that way in terms of structure, but it kind of got loused up so I started putting down - on the back of an envelope type of thing – all the functions that we need and then we started putting some boxes around those that are all the same. So there are some other activities that I’m seeing are needed by the university that maybe can be put into one of these boxes. So it’s just not what they gave me but looking at a broader range. The other day we had about 35 counselors. It was well received and well done. My first questions was: why do we have these people here? The second thing was: how to better receive them and make them feel comfortable – and how can we line up those individuals and their needs to the needs to the deans, faculty or staff? We gad a wonderful letter thanking us - they’re are feeder system. We’ve had all that negative publicity and we need to counter that. So for each social engagement, we really do need to have a sense of: what is it all about. Going back to yesterday, I had a call from Bernie Olman about the governor and so he said ‘you don’t have to be there.’ I got a call about 10:00 a.m. from Linda Kohl and she indicated that the Chancellor wasn’t coming, so I told her I’d be there. So I was there and I thought, I’ll sit back here, this is Joan’s show. So I sat back and Joan said ‘I want you to sit in the front row next to the head table.’ I complied and then the Governor’s aide said ‘I want you to sit up here.’ So from “No, you don’t have to be there’ to ‘Sit up in the front row so we can recognize you’ to ‘Sit up here with the governor and speak to the audience’ there’s a heck of a difference. And I’m thinking to myself, well, why didn’t we have somebody there to coordinate this? As you all know, this is an important presence. It’s not I, it’s the position of the president of St. Cloud State to be recognized and the Chancellor wanted me to be there so I wrote him a letter and thanked him for allowing me to take the seat. I think that there’s so many times when the governor went down the hallway he would stop and visit with students. Well we should jam that hallway if he comes here. If it were here, I’d like to see 2 or 3 classes included in order to ask the governor some questions. So I think we need to be more aware of the presence that we make. To make a long story short, we need to look at the needs of the campus, talk about the infrastructure – these the things that we need to address.
AD: I think this is one of the few occasions when President Saigo is in attendance at the meeting and we also adjourned on time. (laughter and applause)
Adjourned: 4:38 p.m.