Final approved 12-15-05
Meet and Confer
November 17, 2005
Admin: Roy Saigo, Michael Spitzer, John Burgeson, Steve Ludwig, Bernadette Wilson, Anne Zemek de Dominguez, Mark Nook
Faculty: Annette Schoenberger, JoAnn Gasparino, Andrew Larkin, Robert Johnson, Jayantha Herath, Susan Motin, Bill Langen, Polly Chappell – Note taker
Approval of Minutes
Admin: Can we approve the minutes of September 22, October 6, October 20?
FA: Ah, September 22… Okay in September 8th there are still lots of errors in the copy we were given. We don’t know if that’s the final copy. We would appreciate a copy with our corrections. I think we approved that one but…
Admin: Okay.
FA: Right. September 22 we’ll accept those if the corrections we sent are made. The last copy we got of those did not have those corrections made.
Admin: September 22.
FA: Right. October 6th was okay, so we’ll accept that.
Admin: Um hum.
FA: October 20th we just got on Monday evening, so we haven’t had time to look at them. Have you had time to look at them?
Admin: Yes.
FA: We didn’t get it until Monday evening.
Admin: All right.
FA: I’m thinking that if you want us to look at them the week before, we probably ought to get them by the Thursday before.
Admin: Fine. I read them last night.
FA: Well we have classes…
Admin: Yeah…
FA: … it’s harder when you have classes to teach ‘cause you have to meet those deadlines.
Admin: Well, I have those deadlines too. (Laughter)
FA: Anyway, so that’s where we’re at.
Admin: I have someone who imposes a lot of deadlines.
Admin: I even give quizzes.
FA: Yeah. (Laughter)
Admin: I’m a tough grader.
Admin: Okay. October 20th not yet?
FA: Right.
Admin: Let’s go to unfinished business: Attendance Policy.
Meet and Confer Notes of September 22, 2005—accepted with corrections from FA.
Meet and Confer Notes of October 6, 2005—accepted.
Meet and Confer Notes of October 20, 2005—not ready to accept.
Unfinished Business
1. Attendance Policy (Admin) (9/08/05)
FA: Okay, where are we at on that? Let me find a sheet. We have a motion from the Senate on that one, which I can read. Did Judy send you a copy of it?
Admin: I don’t think so.
FA: Okay, it says:
In response to the Administration’s proposed policies regarding mandatory attendance-taking and reporting, the Faculty Senate resolves as follows:
1. We recognize the critical importance of class attendance to our students’ success. We acknowledge the value of monitoring attendance and providing appropriate warnings and services to students who chronically miss classes. We are eager to work with the Administration to craft appropriate policies and guidelines that will improve our students’ rates of attendance.
2. Notwithstanding the above, we cannot accept the unilateral imposition of a requirement that all faculty members take attendance and report absences to the Administration. We believe that this constitutes an increase in workload which is both unfair and contrary to the terms of our contract. We also have reservations about its potential infringement on academic freedom. The decision to take attendance is a pedagogical as well as an administrative decision.
We therefore request that the Administration enter into good faith negotiations with the FA to craft a new policy that will encourage student attendance and facilitate the identification of students who need help, but will not infringe on academic freedom and will not impose new duties on faculty without some appropriate offsetting benefit to faculty.
Admin: I just have a couple of questions first. Can you explain how taking attendance is an infringement on academic freedom?
FA: People don’t want to take attendance. For example, there are some courses where it may not be necessary to take attendance.
Admin: I still don’t see how that relates to academic freedom, which is the right to speak your mind on a topic related to your subject.
FA: Well, developing classes, and developing course materials, developing approaches to the courses, those are all things that would be involved.
Admin: Well, yeah I think the subject matter of the course and how to teach it, but I don’t see how taking attendance interferes with that?
FA: If how I teach a course is part of academic freedom, and how I teach that course has been whether I take roll every day, that’s part of the approach that I take. Taking roll does infringe on my academic freedom because it changes the way I teach the class. And I also think that you’re missing by focusing on that particular statement. You’re missing the whole point of this…
Admin: Well, that’s only my first question. Tell me what the whole point of it is?
FA: The whole point is…
Admin: ‘Cause I’m…
FA: … that this is… we would be willing to work with you to develop a new attendance policy if you’re not satisfied with the current attendance policy. We recognize that it’s very possible that having an attendance policy could help certain problems.
Admin: Okay.
FA: But we would rather work with you on trying to solve those problems rather than being handed an attendance policy that doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense.
Admin: Well, let me respond to that because basically what this draft was is a statement saying let’s work on an attendance policy. If we came in here and said we want to establish an attendance policy, you would say to us well, give us a draft proposing. That’s what this is. It says draft on it. So, essentially what it was is an effort to begin that discussion. Now you’re saying you want to begin the discussion.
FA: Yes. So could we have… how would we begin that discussion other than give it to the Senate to tear apart? How would we… ? What’s a better… ?
Admin: Well, let’s…
FA: … let’s think of a better approach than the one that we just tried.
Admin: Well, I think, you know, the thing that you talked about, and that’s what this was intended to initiate was a conversation about how to handle this most effectively. And if you’re saying well, let’s get together and have that discussion, then that’s fine. Let’s identify who will do that.
FA: So are we talking about a task force?
Admin: So that’s what you’ve come up with.
FA: Okay. What do you think the make up should be? Are we… do we have an idea… ?
Admin: Well, if I gave you an idea, you’d bring it back to Senate and say we don’t like your idea.
FA: Well, we might… I don’t know…
FA: Probably.
Admin: So why don’t you propose an idea?
FA: We are asking… we’re saying the apparent underlying concern is student retention. And some folks think mandatory attendance would help.
Admin: We never said that. I think we said that people should have an attendance policy for their classes.
FA: It says right here in the statement for faculty, faculty members are required to keep attendance records on all students and report to the registrar on the last day.
Admin: That’s something we need to do for financial aid purposes.
FA: You don’t have to do…
Admin: To report the last day of attendance.
FA: You have to report the last recorded day of attendance.
Admin: Right.
FA: Which is different from the last day of attendance. I read that the document from the federal government.
Admin: So if you don’t take attendance, you won’t have a recorded date of attendance.
FA: There are other ways of perhaps getting at this. See that’s where we are getting into problems because there is the perception, there’s a question about mandatory, which is required. So once again, is this about student retention?
Admin: Right.
FA: That’s where we are getting into the problem. I say we help the students. If that’s the common concern, then let’s address that. Retention takes us down another road.
Admin: I think we have two issues we need to deal with. One of them is student attendance, but the other one is this need to meet…
FA: Legal requirements to…
Admin: … to meet the federal guidelines.
FA: We did that already. We’ve got a letter and we’ve got… I’ve spent hours on that.
Admin: Mark, you look like you were going to say something but…
Admin: Yeah, um, I’m not familiar with the letter yet, so I don’t know… I know there’s been some problems addressing that within the last academic year, of being able to report.
FA: I guess there are several concerns. The workload is one. The other one is, personally, that the image I have of myself as a professor. I’m a member of an academic scholarly intellectual community, and I assume the threshold that we set among our students for admission assures the likelihood that they’re ready to join that kind of a community. And the policy I set for my students regarding attending in my class is a reflection of that assumption. And it’s not for the most part: 1. a study of techniques of compulsion. I consider the techniques of compulsion, attendance being one, a gloomy study, and one I don’t look forward to. And I have no interest in developing any particular expertise in that. I would far rather assume that the students are intrigued in my subject. Where I failed to capture their interest, we’ll devise mechanisms to correct that down the course of time. And their attendance will be a sign of their common commitment with me to the subject matter I teach. That’s how I prefer to view myself.
Admin: That’s a very idealistic view.
FA: That’s right, but it’s worked up to now. And I find my days more pleasant living in that impression. If you go about enrolling students at a threshold that will no longer allow me to retain that vision of myself and what I’m doing, you’re changing my terms and conditions of employment.
Admin: Show me where in the contract it says that.
FA: You know where it says changing the terms and conditions of employment.
Admin: But it doesn’t address this particular issue. I think we can have a serious discussion on this subject, but I don’t think it correct to say it changes terms and conditions.
FA: Well, I meant that as a ____.
Admin: That’s not at all covered in the contract.
FA: Okay. We could get off on that, but you understand the argument, however idealistic it might have been.
Admin: I understand your argument. One of the questions one could ask in response to that argument is how do you know that the students are responding in a way that demonstrates that they are in fact intrigued with your approach to your subject matter.
FA: Well, heavens know we’ve been down the long path of assessment, which the experts now tell us was futile anyway. But, and here we are in the eve of committing ourselves to a culture of assessment anyway. God knows we’ve been bashed on the head with ways to assess if we’re actually intriguing the youth of central Minnesota.
Admin: But if you’re not… if they’re not… how do you know if they are there being intrigued or not?
FA: You count the number of people there, that’s…
FA: We’re getting off on this subject.
Admin: Yeah.
FA: The point of the faculty is that there is more than one way to teach a class. And attendance becomes part of the pedagogy of the class in many ways. One of which is the act of taking attendance. This would be especially an imposition in the larger the classes, the more you’d have to put into it. Another factor is the time spent after class doing this administrative work. And I’ve looked at that, and I’ve thought, am I going to return my office and go down the list today and see who has not attended and then send this… these names off to somebody? And now I’ve become kind of a policeman. And this is where I’m kind of hearing Bill coming from. I don’t want to take on that role as a college professor. So I think there’s a lot of factors in here. And I think we just ought to get back to the notion that we would continue discuss it.
Admin: So let’s talk about constituting a task force. Who would be on it? So why don’t you provide some suggestions?
FA: We’ll probably have to go back to Senate. We need…
FA: Let’s be clear about this. Again, what would be the purpose of a task force?
Admin: You’re the one who proposed it.
FA: We proposed to examine the issue of student attendance.
Admin: That’s not what I heard Annette read.
FA: It says negotiations number three.
Admin: Number three is to encourage student attendance and facilitate the identification of students who need help, so that’s basically… We want something that will work on encouraging student attendance and some facilitating.
FA: We are eager to work with Administration to craft appropriate policies and guidelines that will improve our students’ rates of attendance. That’s the premise.
Admin: And it says we therefore…
FA: It says, we therefore request that the Administration enter into good faith negotiations with the FA to craft a new policy that will encourage student attendance and facilitate the… So at some point we need to ask… simply to address this one question of an attendance policy because the rest of the cases we have it listed in the bulletin you just passed out. It says that faculty are encouraged to take student attendance, encourage students to be in class, and so there is a policy.
Admin: So then we’re talking about some modifications of that somewhat?
FA: In order to…
FA: Why do we need a modification? I think that’s the thing we… that’s never really been really explained to us.
FA: One thing is that attendance is related to students.
Admin: Right.
FA: Attendance taking is related to student retention.
Admin: That’s a true statement actually. Yes.
FA: Attendance taking---
Admin: Yes.
FA: ---is related to student retention or attendance of students are related to retention?
Admin: Both of those are related. If students are there, it’s important that there is a policy in place that students know that they have to be there. It makes the difference in their attendance.
FA: Okay.
Admin: That is a national statistic.
FA: And so that literature is available to us?
Admin: It will take me some time but…
FA: I looked up… I went to look for the records. When I looked at the experts who spoke on this, and I looked at their writings, I found other things, but I didn’t find those particular links. So that’s what I’m saying. If we’re saying that attendance taking is related to student retention, and you provide us that information, I don’t think I have a question about me coming around. The question is the relationship between attendance and performance in the class.
Admin: Right. And that’s the central issue. That’s clearly the central issue, which is attendance. Attendance taking does create a sense of importance to attend. But…
FA: If someone could help me find that literature, and I’m sure there would be other Senators who would be interested in looking at that particular thing, and that would take it somewhere. It would probably help people serve on that task force.
Admin: Okay. Do you have any suggestions for how many folks should be on the task force?
FA: Four?
Admin: Four?
FA: Two faculty and two Admin. And we’ll just ask…
Admin: Okay.
FA: We’ll probably take… it will take us a couple of weeks. I think it would be useful to gather the stuff and to be very clear about why you want to do this because I think… When I read these, it seems to me there’s more going on here than just an attendance policy. The assumption seems to be the attendance policy means you’re required to come to class. An attendance policy is just how… what your take is on attendance. And so what it is is you’re trying to have an attendance policy that essentially requires attendance without requiring attendance. It requires faculty to take roll without actually saying faculty have to take roll. It’s just not---
Admin: Well, the policy part of it, the attendance policy part of it, I think a faculty member would establish, tells the students to basically---
FA: That’s not in this document. And so this---
Admin: Yeah, it is.
FA: It needs to be… whatever you want created, you need to be very…
Admin: The attendance policy in a particular faculty member’s class will tell students what the consequences are if a student doesn’t meet those attendance requirements. And that can vary very easily among faculty.
FA: But that’s not here. It doesn’t say that.
Admin: Well that’s what it says about establishing a policy. I mean…
FA: But at the same time it says…
Admin: If it’s not clear, we’ll make it clearer.
FA: Yeah.
FA: Are you addressing the statement for faculty? Faculty members are encouraged to establish an attendance policy for each of their classes?
Admin: And in the statement for the… I guess. So, all right, we’ll have a task force. Notify us, and we’ll get representatives, and we’ll get that group together. Next item?
FA: Sure.
2. Motion from Teacher Development (FA) (9/22/05)
FA: This is the motion from Teacher Development, and at the last Meet and Confer we agreed to do something about that Diversity Education Task force. So we need to get the EEOC Task force started.
Admin: Um hum.
FA: Do you have any idea where we’re at on that?
Admin: Yes. The acting dean in the COE has requested, as we discussed, that each department elect two representatives to work with that particular group. We’re going to ask, once that is established with the mediators, to assign a team, two mediators as kind of a neutral party, to work with the faculty in the college, and two administrators on the task force. And then we had a discussion about, and this isn’t done yet, it’s come up in several conversations I had with Judy, but we haven’t acted on it because there hasn’t been any formal agreement to it, that Nancy Jessee, the 1B1 investigator, would be involved as a neutral party to clarify departmental policies and procedures. But we haven’t put that into place because we hadn’t discussed it in this group. We did spend a lot of time talking about it, her involvement in the task force.
FA: I want to caucus. We’ll be back.
CAUCUS
FA: Yes, having Nancy Jessee on that task force is consistent with the motions from the Senate. So, yes, please put her on the task force.
Admin: Okay.
FA: I can actually read you something that, about the Diversity Education Task Force.
Admin: All right.
FA: This is from Frankie Condon, who couldn’t be here today, she says that Frankie and Rex had two meetings. Debra Leigh and Roland Specht-Jarvis were not able to come. But Rex and Frankie discussed organizing a large task force to maximize productivity by limiting the number of full task force meetings and dividing the work into subcommittees. Rex is out of town until next Tuesday. She thinks he’s writing the recommendation up and will distribute to Michael and FA as soon as that is done. So, we’ll leave that on because we’d like to continue to update on that. Can we change the name of this to maybe, you know, Task forces on Diversity instead of—
Admin: Instead of motions from Teacher Development?
FA: Right.
Admin: That’s fine. So we can move on?
FA: I guess.
Admin: Uniform start date.
FA: Okay.
3. Uniform Start Date (Admin) (9/22/05)
FA: We actually got a response on that. There are two motions from the Senate. The first one is that FS rejects MnSCU’s recommendation for a uniform start date calendar on the grounds that the calendar should be adapted to local conditions and we need to see evidence on the necessity of the uniform start date.
Admin: Is that here?
FA: No, it’s not in that document. But it will show up in these Meet and Confer notes. Okay, this document pertains to the second motion, which is that the FS will also send to Meet and Confer a list of challenges and problems we would face with a uniform start date. So what we did was we just collected things as quickly as we could. One of the things we’d like to point out is on probably the second page from the end. It is the May 2003 memo to Andy Larkin from Tracey Ore, chair of the Committee on the Institution. This list is what was essentially adopted by the FS. This is our… what we think a calendar should take into consideration. So, you know, we’re not… Number one we don’t think we should have the uniform start date. Number two is what we think the calendar should be based on.
Admin: Okay.
FA: That make sense?
Admin: It makes sense.
FA: There’s a whole list of other things that faculty sent.
Admin: Well I will read it, but I don’t think there are folks on campus here that think that a uniform start is a wise thing to do.
FA: Yeah. So you guys don’t think it’s a good idea either, or you’re not willing to make a commitment?
Admin: I’ve said it’s not a good idea.
FA: Yeah, okay. So here’s some of our ammunition for you.
Admin: Okay. Thank you.
FA: I wonder if the topic isn’t really uniform calendars for all MnSCU institutions?
Admin: Well, that will probably be the next step.
FA: Okay.
Admin: So you can all take attendance on the same days. (Laughter)
FA: I think we’re going to have to get bathroom passes.
Admin: Number four, Search for the Dean of COE.
4. Search for Dean of COE (FA) (10/06/05)
FA: We’re just wondering what’s going on there.
Admin: Okay. To give you an update, I have held a meeting as we said we would do with the representatives elected by the departments in the COE to talk about the duration of the time for the interim dean. And as a consequence of that meeting, I sent a note to the faculty in the college that we would select an interim dean for the remainder of this academic year, and during this academic year, we would conduct a search for a permanent dean. So I then asked Judy Kilborn to identify members for interim dean search committee and interim dean advisory group, with whom I have met, and as soon as I get an opportunity to write it I will send out an announcement soliciting applications.
FA: So you’re using that group that we picked?
Admin: Um hum.
FA: Okay, and the announcement you’ll send out?
Admin: Okay.
FA: Did you say three searches?
Admin: Three. COB, COSS, COE.
FA: Did you tell us that? Or are we just learning about it now?
Admin: I think we had that on the list.
FA: Right and I understand that.
Admin: Next item.
FA: It’s the one we just discussed.
Admin: The search for the dean of COE?
FA: … it would be nice to have RFPs.
Admin: Um hum.
FA: It would be nice.
Admin: I think they are available electronically by email. Should we email that to the FA email?
FA: Right. Are there search firms…?
Admin: Right. I don’t know.
FA: So have you selected someone?
Admin: There were actually five positions, a RFP was put out to Cizek and Associates. COB is going with a firm called Isaacson and Miller. COSS and COE were bid out; another search firm is doing both of those. The search firm is the same firm that did the dean searches for Mankato and Bemidji. I think I…
Admin: Yeah… the interim will go forward. I notified Judy and at the same time the HR office to proceed with that search that had been held in abeyance.
FA: Okay. I think we need to see more information than RFPs.
Admin: There are responding proposals.
FA: So the search committee can get those online?
Admin: Those aren’t online.
FA: Have there been any negotiations? Have you said to them make these changes?
Admin: I don’t think we’re allowed to do that. From each company, there will be the actual details in the contracts.
Admin: Well that’s right. In some cases the contracts are very chatty.
FA: That’s why we want to see the RFPs.
FA: Well I think it’s really two things. Is there only one company that bid?
Admin: No five.
FA: Is that in the contract?
Admin: Right. Each company was offered the option to bid on one or all of the searches. Each of them bid on all. The recommendation for the bids to be split, I think, was a good decision.
Admin: Anything further on this? Can we take this off the agenda?
FA: Let’s wait and see, probably not.
Admin: Okay. Grade appeal policy guidelines.
5. Grade Appeal Policy Guidelines (FA) (10/06/05)
FA: This one and the next one are both on the Senate agenda.
Admin: Okay.
FA: We just received this in October. We gave it to you in May. If we would have had it in August we might have gotten it back to you sooner.
Admin: Okay. Go to the next one.
FA: Template for teaching?
6. Early Notification System for Students (a.k.a. Early Warning Notice) (Admin) (10/06/05)—not discussed.
7. Template on Teaching Schedule/Office Hours (FA) (10/20/05)
FA: This is a tricky one. There is a Senate motion that states the FS instructs the Meet and Confer Team to reject the Administrative policy on advising and other contacts with students. The policy goes beyond the contract in restricting the flexibility faculty have in meeting this contractual obligation. The second motion is that the Faculty Senate instructs the Meet and Confer Team to ask Administration to confer and work with faculty to find mutually agreeable solutions to the alleged problem. So while we think that, the correct approach is conversation on how we may solve this.
Admin: And how do you propose doing that?
FA: Are we talking about another task force?
FA: We are having trouble identifying the problem. We have two constructions to choose from. One is the Fox news that came up here. Now the MnSCU board feels belabored. In other words, is this a PR problem? If so, this problem points to a really different solution.
Admin: I want to be able to document that so when questions are asked, we can demonstrate effectively that our folks are really doing beyond the level of work that is minimum required, and going beyond by a lot. And I think there are people that it affects, and there’s been talk, and it’s been beneficial to have had some of the discussion that we had here about what some of the other activities are that faculty engage in besides…
FA: The first word in that part of the contract is “normally.”
Admin: Right.
FA: And speaking very bluntly, it’s no accident that it’s the first word. And words like that, you can drive a Mac truck through. And that was our intention. And so the whole question of flexibility in meeting fully and complying with this, we insisted in framing in the larger, in a context of flexibility and to put a limit, like say two hours on email or any of the other confining sorts of constructions that you’ve adopted up to now, are really inconsistent with the flexibility that we have in the system.
Admin: What we put on paper was for discussion.
FA: Okay. Good. And it’s in that spirit that I’m speaking differently than I did at pre Meet and Confer.
Admin: Okay. It was… in fact I think I was pretty clear in my conversation with Judy that that was not an all inclusive list.
FA: But the idea of a list implies… could imply in some minds closure. We think that—I think that a first step would have been to educate both the MnSCU Board, which sometimes seems to have a rather fragile idea of what goes on, and what should go on here. We don’t have obligations for office hours. There’s no such thing. We have an obligation to have contact hours for the students, and the active requests of our students. We have a lot of flexibility, and they take advantage of it. It’s what they prefer.
Admin: Well, I think what---
FA: In most cases.
Admin: ---the Board saw was somebody else taking advantage.
FA: That’s right. And there are procedures for investigating that and then taking the necessary measures.
Admin: But it doesn’t address those particular areas in a way that would be helpful to do.
FA: But again we are looking for closure.
Admin: Looking for what?
FA: We are looking for closure.
Admin: We are looking for what normally people do. But the thing that the contract does say is that you will be available at hours that are posted. And that they would be at a place and time that is posted. And that’s what we’re asking to see. What are the hours and the place and time?
Admin: The discussions that I’ve been involved were very open. As a faculty member I referred to them as office hours, but I had to be there waiting for my students to drop by. Creating this list has changed a lot of people’s understanding of that particular portion of our contract. And we’re trying to get at large how people think about those ten posted hours and move away from just contact hours. We recognize by developing that list that we view as not a closed list that faculty do a bunch of other things. And some of those are scheduled so you don’t have to talk about ten hours that are devoted to hours in your schedule that you’re available for anybody in your class to stop by and just see you. There are these things that you can say I’m the faculty advisor to this club, that was student contact. The contract says they need to be posted. Don’t limit yourself to office hours. There are other things that faculty do, get that in the posting. But let us know what it is because we do have people that are asking for accountability and are asking us to enforce that contract.
FA: Do people really understand the subtlety of the contract? Do they, these people that have concerns, do they read the word “normally”? Do they read it as “contact hours”? Do they read it as “office hours”?
Admin: At the moment it doesn’t matter because where this all started from there was nothing “posted.”
FA: So in terms of “posted,” so if it’s posted---
Admin: We got a good start there. (Laughter)
FA: I think I have the same concern about the public relations of Fox news that they are going to come back in the spring. If they come back and everybody has something posted, then they’re just going to have to leave with no story. They cannot… there’s nothing for them.
Admin: Well, I think what they would do is check to see if people are doing what is posted. It was posted in fact in the case of the folks that did come here. They went to the department because there wasn’t anything posted at the office to get a schedule or give them one, and then followed up on that.
FA: Well I think that my concern is, again, the television just does not deal with the kind of subtleties they brought up, like we have by just looking at this so carefully in the past couple months. And how are we going to get across to them and also the Board of Trustees? I’ve also considered, can they deal with it?
Admin: I think they certainly can deal with it if they saw what we’re talking about. I mean, I think it would be pretty clear. They would simply look and say, oh yeah, these hours are accounted for. They’re not going to pay attention in the way we’re talking about in terms of how they are accounted for. We can say, yes, look these are the hours the person is doing these things that involve contact and advising of students. I think they’d be happy with that.
FA: So what exactly are you going to do? Are you just going take all these things to… go around and take pictures of all our offices doors with our hours posted on them and---
Admin: No.
FA: ---take a stack of photographs and give them to the… (Laughter) I mean…
Admin: Yeah.
FA: … it’s not clear to me…
Admin: No.
FA: And the other piece of this---
Admin: If they’re going to say to us, are your faculty doing what they’re supposed to do, I want to be able to respond affirmatively. And I want to be able to do it with the knowledge that I know what I’m talking about.
FA: One thing that I think that distressed me more than anything on this was the sudden knowledge that my dean didn’t know what the contract said, and that my dean didn’t have a clue what I was doing.
Admin: Well, that’s an advantage I guess.
FA: And, given when I said to him I do these things, many of them, he said those don’t count.
Admin: Okay. But we had a conversation about this.
FA: I know.
Admin: We had a conversation about it. They do count.
FA: Not all of them.
Admin: Now the deans should know what you’re doing. So that’s a benefit.
FA: Not all of them anymore.
FA: So we’re at the point now where we need to… what’s the motion before us?
Admin: Have another task force.
FA: We can have another task force, or we can go back and we can continue to discuss this.
FA: Well the template, you were saying here are some things so, myself I decided it would be easier than trying to figure out the office hours. I just put down the things that I’m doing. So that, this is what I’m hearing you saying you want to know. So if I am going to do two hours or three hours of email, whatever I just say in my schedule, I am available at this time for email, here’s my URL? Is that what I’m hearing? That’s what you’re more interested in?
Admin: For that piece of it, yes.
Admin: The email is somewhat problematic. I’m hearing that from faculty and the deans as well. I think that, the email, maybe that’s something that a group of people can kind of figure out. It’s kind of new, and we have to worry about things like people teaching online courses. I see that as a need to meeting the contract of posting when faculty are available for all interactions. And interactions via email, we have to discuss. Getting faculty to post that to the public when they are having direct contact with students, when they are available for actual office hours for students.
FA: I think we can answer one or two of the questions. We are trying to resolve the public relations. The question is how can that be resolved. The second issue of that is having posting of faculty required times for students for advising and other contact with students. So those are the two concerns that are on the table. The question is how can they be resolved. Perhaps there is a way of solving those so that they are both addressed with whatever recommendation comes forth. And so I mean I think if that’s the idea, then we can charge a small group with pondering those concerns for proposing a solution or at least a recommendation.
Admin: So how many folks do you want in that?
FA: Four?
FA: Four.
Admin: Two and two again?
FA: Yeah. (Laughter) There are fewer of you than there are us.
Admin: Yeah.
FA: You don’t think we should ask for three? (Laughter)
FA: No. (Laughter)
Admin: Okay. Let’s go on to DGS Student Admissions.
8. DGS Student Admissions Spring 2006 (FA) (10/20/05)
FA: Um, we understand that we’re going to be adding more DGS students in the spring, and that we will be increasing the number of DGS students for fall?
Admin: Yes.
FA: We’re interested in knowing exactly what additional support will be available to assist these students. ‘Cause you know we can’t currently support an increase in the DGS program. And we want to know what that support is.
Admin: You want to talk, Mark, or shall I?
Admin: I think the first thing you got to do is refer to the budget meeting yesterday. There is a budget plan there. There is a DGS director’s position that will start in the spring. The current DGS is a MSUAASF position, something less than half-time. The other portion of their duties is handling student affairs, academic probation, suspension, and appeals for academic things. The new director will be a faculty member instead of a MSUAASF member and will oversee the program. In addition to that, there is $300,000+ for DGS improvements in next year’s budget. What we really want to do is return sort of a 1985-90 model of DGS, which was effective where we saw retention numbers well over 70% in some cases, which was the best retention.
FA: Yeah, they used to have the best retention.
Admin: Yep. And that’s what we’re looking at. We’re looking at limited class sizes, and that’s going mean some faculty resources so that we can handle it. We are looking at a issue, I was talking to the DGS Advisory Committee about, to start to think about the process to move through the curriculum requiring all of the DGS students to take Reading 110, which by the way isn’t a reading class, but a strategy and skills. That course addresses what most of these students need, why most of these students haven’t been productive in high school—because of basic study strategies and skills. If you go back to the late 80s and early 90s, most of the DGS students were through that class their first semester. So it’s really a re-creation of what was an extremely strong first year experience for DGS students, going back in the early 90s. These things take resources so that people can understand developmental education.
FA: I just have one clarification—this will start in the spring?
Admin: The DGS director’s position is allocated—there is money allocated for this spring. Of course there is always issues with the time frame to get that hired. So it’s not clear exactly how that will all play out.
Admin: As soon as those budget provisions are approved, we will be able to move forward and discuss all of these items at the town hall meetings where… giving people a chance to provide some feedback to see if there are any adjustments to be made, and any important revisions that were made, then to go forward with those.
FA: How many additional students are you expecting this spring?
Admin: It would be cohort sizes, I think, in about terms of twenty. Now what we expect, and what we can get, I don’t know—this is a new game for us.
FA: So you’re hoping to do twenty in the spring?
Admin: Twenty or forty.
Admin: Twenty to forty.
FA: Okay. So what about the increase that you’re expecting for fall? How much?
Admin: We going to be at about five hundred in the fall. We’re at 250.
FA: We’re at 250. So we’re doubling?
Admin: Yeah.
FA: What’s the percentage increase in the amount of money we’re putting into this?
Admin: Let’s see, I’m not good at percentages because it goes over one hundred. (Laughter)
FA: Okay.
Admin: It’s a factor increase of…
Admin: How many positions in the Academic Learning Center now?
FA: Yeah.
Admin: We have one probationary and one fixed term.
Admin: And we’re adding three.
FA: We’re adding three? Okay.
Admin: Yeah.
FA: So we’ll be able to do some of that testing that they now have to farm out on campus? Plus the reading courses?
Admin: The reading course and more with basic advising.
FA: And so the $300,000 that you mentioned will cover those three faculty?
Admin: And I think some positions in related fields where we’re going to pick up some slack.
FA: After faculty development and small class sizes, where’s the money for that?
Admin: That’s in here. We need to either have new people, or we have to fill behind the positions of the people we pull out.
FA: Well I’m just thinking, I was one of those persons who was involved in DGS back then, for that time period you talked about, the time of success. We did that since we had time, and so I’m asking for faculty who will be engaged in that. What kind of support will come to those faculty in those departments?
Admin: Let’s look at a scenario. Let’s take a faculty member who is currently teaching five classes, five-three credit, well that’s… four-three credit classes. (Laughter) Excuse me, I deal with a department that has two credit classes, okay? So we’re dealing with four courses. We’re going to take that person and say they decide they want to teach this one course in DGS, so instead of having a course there where they’re going to have twenty-five or fifty students in two sections, we’ll cut back two. So you can reduce the course load. That gives them the extra time to work with those students. We are looking at things for faculty development in the summer. So that faculty can get this sort of engagement that they used to have in the program that has almost completely disappeared except for sort of a biweekly advisory. And that’s a lunch, and they don’t really get time to really talk about it.
FA: It sounds like you folks have studied that earlier, happier time. And so looking at the history of this decline and fall, what were the missed steps?
Admin: There were actually, I think, several. One of them was removing the director’s position from a faculty position to MSUAASF position. In some respects, it didn’t give that person the clout with the faculty to establish some of the links that were needed. There was certainly a cut in resources to that program. There wasn’t continuing support for faculty development, getting faculty to discuss with each other what was going on. There wasn’t continual training to bring people up to speed in work programs. We hired a couple people to be developmental instructors but as the program sort of started to lose it’s support, both the emotional support as well as financial support, they moved to other things. And so there are bunches of things that just sort of were going in other directions. This is an effort to get back to support those students and provide an opportunity for students who are marginal, but who give us an idea that they can make it. This is the opportunity to actually support those students. If we do it right and we have a path, academically they can be successful---
Admin: The thing, excuse me, the thing that I have as a privilege, that you all don’t is I get to have lunch with alumni. And the last luncheon blew me away. His name was John Stone, and he comes from Pierz. And he makes a joke of it, but he came from a farm of about thirty-eight cows and 10,000 chickens. He had like nine brothers and sisters. And he says he never slept with anybody but his brothers until he got married. You know, they had three to a bed. He came here, he’s telling this story to about twenty-four people, and he’s the new CEO of Well’s Fargo. And he came to St. Cloud State, he was on probation, he was not allowed to take more than three courses because of his low grades, and so again because of the faculty here, and he could name them, and because of the affordability, look at where he’s at. So, I don’t know if… Robert you’ve dealt with this group obviously in the past, we can’t predict success. And so I hear over and over at events. And I think one person said, yeah, President Wick, he wasn’t president then, he was a speech teacher or something, you were the strongest C student I had. (Laughter) And these guys are on the Board. They sit with pride. They say we didn’t know what we were going to do. We didn’t have a very good background. It is because of these people, I see as we look at this situation, that more and more when I hear the stories of success that we are at a place and a point where we can kind of go back, like fifteen years ago. We don’t want to make the same mistakes. And I hear maybe what, ten years ago, we had 17,000 students and not enough courses and not enough support, so we’re trying be smart, looking at the history. Talking to a lot of people. I already spoke to Gretchen, is that her… ?
Admin: Gretchen and Joanna Pucel.
Admin: She had a lot of experience. So that’s what we’re bringing back to you, and we’re just trying to focus on the underserved and students of color.
FA: What I want to say to Roy is, we’re asking questions not because of our opposition to it necessarily. In fact, I’ve had very good success with it myself, so I’m a supporter of the program. But we just want to make sure among other things that when we do bring in these students that we don’t abandon them and have them turn out to be failures, and leave St. Cloud State as failures.
Admin: That would be equally criminal.
FA: Right.
Admin: To bring them in with no support.
FA: As someone who couldn’t make the two budget meetings because of contact with students (laughter), posted time (laughter), and other related student activities, are those proposals and details online?
Admin: Yes, they are.
FA: Available that all---
FA: They actually got posted?
FA: ---okay, so they’re available with all of the details you described and possible configurations?
Admin: The specific numbers are not there. The dollars are there. And some of the positions are there.
FA: Well, but will that tell me… for this particular activity will that tell me the information I just got?
Admin: Yep, it will. It will tell you that there is money for a DGS director for spring and continuing to fiscal year ’07, and it will show you that for fiscal year ’07, there is three-hundred-some-thousand set aside for DGS expansion.
FA: So back to number C, department A that wants to pair both people… I remember when we paired with department B, what are the resources? How will those faculty members find out what resources are available to them to support this?
Admin: Those details really… how we’re going to communicate that needs to be worked out yet, but it will happen very quickly with this budget. The handling of that will come through undergraduate studies.
FA: Call Mark Nook?
Admin: Yeah, tell them to call me.
Admin: Let me add another piece to this because I think it’s partly related. One of things that we paid a lot of attention to recently has to do with the closure of General College in the University of Minnesota. And what we’re thinking about is an opportunity that has now presented itself to us, to take our DGS program and for some other facets of what we’re doing at the university and combine them and become a general college of the state of Minnesota. But we were talking about calling it University College and putting additional resources in that. We talked a good deal about trying to provide additional resources, not just for the students who will be accepted in the DGS program, but we identified those students who meet our standard admissions of being in the upper fifty percent of their class, so those students in the fiftieth to sixtieth percentile are students we don’t retain as well as those who score above the sixtieth percentile. So there are three groups of students basically that we are talking about. Those students below sixtieth percentile, students who have no clear focus about what it is they want to study. Our undecided students, they tend to flounder quite a bit more than students who have a direction that they are moving in, and we wanted also to combine with those, students in the honors program, making those groups part of University College at St. Cloud State University. One of the things that we wanted to do, and that’s why it is on the agenda later on, but as we’re talking about DGS, it makes sense to bring it up now, to propose a third task force for today (laughter), of some folks to review a draft proposal that would describe the process and the way in which we would structure this University College.
FA: I think we would have to go back to Senate.
Admin: I think we have some specific things in mind. We need a couple of people from the DGS Committee, I think. Somebody from the Academic Learning Center. Center for Teaching and Learning. Someone from the Advising Center. Multicultural Student Services. From the Write Place. From the Math Skills Center. Those folks and a couple of administrators.
FA: What about the honor students? These are people who are…
Admin: The honor students were originally on that list.
Admin: Right.
FA: So…
Admin: And what we’re looking for is not necessarily the directors of those programs. We’re leaving it up to you.
FA: Okay. But you’re saying that you’d like to have the… yeah…
Admin: Someone with an interest in those areas or maybe somebody from the advisory committees.
FA: Okay.
FA: Just a point of information, I worked in General College. And they had, the way that they were set up, they had their own advising center. They had their own counseling center. They had separate offices that dealt with just that college. I don’t know if you knew that?
Admin: Yeah.
Admin: And the undergraduate studies program has it’s own advisors. The advising center is through undergraduate studies. And that’s one of the reasons we’re looking at including undecided students. We have the advising staff already to handle those.
Admin: And are adding to the number of folks in the advising center.
FA: Okay. I just meant that they were all enclosed because of the way that it was set up, in one building.
FA: Can you… go ahead.
FA: That was all.
FA: Okay. Can you tell me again what the groups of students are?
Admin: It would be the students who are below the sixtieth percentile in their high school rank, students who have not declared a major
Admin: Or an intent for…
Admin: Yeah. Not accepted to their major…
FA: The undecided?
Admin: I don’t like the term undecided. It’s like they’ve made a mistake. So those students that have not yet declared a major, and then the honor students.
FA: So those who have not been admitted into a major or…?
Admin: No. Those who haven’t declared one.
FA: Okay. Okay.
FA: So this does not include the DGS students. So you’re saying…
Admin: Anybody below the sixtieth percentile.
FA: I was going to ask where are the DGS students?
Admin: In that group below the sixtieth percentile.
FA: Okay.
Admin: I’ve heard the definition of DGS as students below the fiftieth percentile…
FA: Okay.
FA: Are you going to go back… kind of following along with Robert, if I did a paired course, are you going back to some of the departments where there were paired courses and talking to them because I know that English and 104 paired.
Admin: We’ll be working very closely through the offices and the DGS Advisory Committee. Especially the core courses, 191, 192, Racial Issues. Math is a nightmare for these students, but they’ll have 172, 193, 194, 195; those are all important places. And then some of the other general education courses that are popular: the mass criminal justice course, those science lab courses. Yeah.
FA: So the purpose of this task force is to review and develop a draft policy to consider the idea?
Admin: I think it’s to look at the way we’re trying to structure it and make suggestions, and perhaps recommendations, that we would use, but we’d like to start with a rough structure and say how do we implement this, how do we fine tune this, how we do we make it work?
FA: So it’s review and help with this?
Admin: Yes.
FA: Okay.
Admin: I think the idea is to come with a proposal, a plan pretty well written, that we actually…
FA: And where do we go from there? With this idea? So the idea is to develop a proposal or plan and then what?
Admin: Implement it.
FA: Is there some thinking about how this will go forward? Or is this something okay this will be a marketing strategy?
Admin: No, it’s not a marketing strategy. It an opportunity for us to further develop and achieve the university mission of opportunity and excellence. And we want to bring these students in, but we want to provide them with the level of support that they need in order to succeed. And we’re trying to do both of those things. Doing one without the other, as President Saigo said, would be criminal or close to that. (Laughter)
Admin: The board would see…
FA: I mean, is anyone going to walk out of here in handcuffs? (Laughter)
Admin: Well, it would be unfair to the individuals. It would be bad for the institution.
FA: I know that part, very well. I’m just wondering in other words, if we ask people to serve on this task force, they’re going to want to know for what purpose?
Admin: I think to make this a strong project or the strongest component of the university as we can possibly make it.
FA: So it’s not a question of do we consider this. It’s a question of we’re going forward, let’s see how we can shape this proposal?
Admin: Yes. I think we’re already doing a piece of it with the DGS program that we now have. We want to expand that, rename it, and add the other components to it.
FA: We’re also doing it with the honors.
Admin: Right.
FA: We have the honors, we have the DGS students…
Admin: Right. And we’re strengthening the honors program.
Admin: We’re strengthening the honors program. We also have undeclared students.
FA: Okay.
Admin: So what we’re talking about is providing them with more structure and better service. Among the various other elements in the proposal is another position in Career Services. And one of the things that those folks will be doing will be working with these undecided students to help them figure out what they want to study, what they want to major in.
FA: So are these pieces already in the budget?
Admin: They’re in the budget proposal.
FA: We may want to recommend even more people than what you suggested that…
Admin: Yeah…
FA: That’s their recommendation?
FA: Yeah. Okay.
Admin: We figured that a group of about ten or twelve would be decent size. Do you want to recommend some more?
FA: Somebody… something else just came to my mind.
Admin: Okay.
Admin: Should we move on?
FA: Sure. Okay.
Admin: Number o