Approved 2-2-2006
Meet and Confer Notes
dECEMBER 15, 2005
Admin: President Saigo, Provost Spitzer, John Burgeson, Steve Ludwig, Anne Zemek de Dominguez, Mark Nook, Kristi Tornquist, BernaDette Wilson, Rex Veeder, Patty Dyslin (note taker)
Faculty: Judy Kilborn, Annette Schoenberger, JoAnn Gasparino, Jayantha Herath, Steve Hornstein, Robert Johnson, Balsy Kasi, Bill Langen, Andrew Larkin, Susan Motin
Meet and Confer Notes of October 20, 2005 – approved
Meet and Confer Notes of November 17, 2005 – approved
FA: We have a lot of items today that we’re reporting back to you folks, so I’m going to do a lot of those just to help us speed through so we have more time for the things that we need to talk about.
1. Attendance Policy ( Admin) (09/08/2005)
FA: We had agreed before Meet and Confer to have a taskforce with two faculty and two administrators.
AD: Right.
FA: And I believe I sent the names of the two faculty members, Judy Dorn and Rod Dobey
AD: Do you know when you sent that?
FA: It would have been after Senate two weeks ago. I can send it again electronically if you want. I’m wondering if you know which administrators you would like to have work on that.
AD: Yes, Mark Nook and David DeGroote.
FA: And do you have any sense of who you would like to convene that meeting?
AD: Can we have Mark convene it?
FA: That’s fine with me. The faculty should hear about that fairly soon then?
AD: Yes.
FA: Okay. Did you have anything else?
AD: On that? No.
FA: So we’re done with that until that taskforce comes back to us?
AD: Right.
2. Taskforces on Diversity (a.k.a. Motion from Teacher Development) (FA) (9/22/2005)
FA: We also had the taskforces on diversity. I just wanted to know what the status of those were.
AD: I think that group has…
FA: Which taskforce first are we talking about?
AD: The one, a.k.a. the Motion from Teacher Development.
FA: Okay.
AD: That have to do with the College of Education taskforce. That one, I believe, is scheduled to meet at the very start of the spring semester. All of the members, I think, have been identified, and they’ll be notified of that meeting.
AD: There’s a notation stating that it will meet at that time. There’s been no official notice.
FA: Do the mediators know?
AD: The mediators know.
FA: So they have already selected two mediators then to facilitate that?
AD: Yes.
FA: Cool. We have the other one then too – the taskforce on diversity.
AD: We’re still in discussions about resources. We will meet and report back once the semester starts.
FA: Now when you say the group has met, are you talking about the large group or the small troubleshooting group that’s trying to figure out ….
AD: No, the large group has not met, just the small group.
FA: Have you met since the last Meet and Confer?
AD: Portions of us have met off-and-on, and we’ve been e-mailing and discussing.
FA: Okay.
AD: It’s an on-going conversation about resources and other items.
FA: What do you mean by resources?
AD: There was a suggestion of added resources in terms of clerical help and those sorts of things, so this is part of the on-going discussion.
FA: So the resources really have to do with the larger proposal that was made?
AD: That’s correct.
FA: Okay. Should we leave this on for an update about that next time?
AD: Yes.
3. Search for Dean of COE (FA) (10/06/2005)
FA: You have received the names for the search committee for that, and I believe that that committee was supposed to meet with the search firm. Has that happened?
AD: That committee and the committee for the Dean of Social Science is scheduled to meet with the search firm on Monday.
FA: Okay.
AD: With regard to that, I met with the advisory committee for the Interim Dean search yesterday, and the committee unanimously recommended, and I accepted it’s recommendation, to appoint Kate Steffens as Interim Dean until a permanent Dean is on-board.
FA: Which we hope will be when?
AD: Which we hope will be some time during the summer.
FA: Okay.
FA: Will Kate continue to work on the North Central…
AD: She will continue to do work on the North Central although I am in the process of identifying and bringing a person to the Academic Affairs office who will take on a portion of this work.
FA: What about the other work that Lin Holder did?
AD: And that work as well.
FA: Okay.
FA: Where is this person coming from?
AD: Minnesota.
FA: Will this be an external appointment?
AD: If it comes to pass the way I expect, it will be on leave from another segment of MnSCU for a year on a temporary, one year assignment - Someone with experience in that area.
FA: Anything else?
AD: The only reason I’m not mentioning a name is because I’m not entirely certain that it’s going to happen.
FA: I was just wondering about the Academic Affairs situation.
AD: Well, we have a interim person who was in my office who is now serving as an interim dean, and this would be an interim in replacement of that interim. So is that musical chairs? Yes. (laughter)
FA: Just to clarify, Kate has moved to Education as an Interim Dean?
AD: Yes, she has been doing that on an acting basis until now anyway.
FA: So the person, who will remain unnamed, will be doing the program work. Is that person also going to be working with students who have serious problems, like, they find that they have to leave school right away, or the ones who need that blue form signed…
AD: Some of that, the bulk of that activity gets done by Kathryn Kelly. Lin used to handle those as a final appeal person. So the number of cases Lin heard was much smaller than the number of situations that come into the office in the first place. But I’m also talking with the President about getting somebody else in to assist with some of that.
AD: For the past year or so, I have been doing probation and suspension appeals.
AD: And in my office, Lin was doing, and Rex has been helping with some of those, late withdrawals, medical withdrawals and those kinds of things.
FA: I think it’s the late withdrawals and the medical withdrawals – some of that’s been brought to my attention that it’s not being done as smoothly as it had been in the past, and there’s some concern on campus about that.
AD: Well we certainly want to smooth that out.
FA: So I’m assuming we’ll hear more about this?
AD: Yes.
AD: Talking about musical chairs, Kate did take up a lot of that work. I was doing it along with Kathy along with some other people. Kate picked it up, then Kate moved and during that transition there was a little glitch before we were able to get things running smoothly...
AD: And Kathy was out for awhile.
AD: We’re up and running full-speed at this point.
AD: I think things are running smoothly now and should continue to do so.
FA: So we’ll go ahead and keep this on for an update next time?
AD: If you’d like, sure.
FA: The on-going saga…
4. Grade Appeal Policy Guidelines (FA) (10/06/2005)
FA: Senate has referred the Rights And Responsibilities under the Grade Appeal Policy to the Academic Affairs Committee. They’re the ones who worked on it in the first place. I’m assuming it will be a fairly fast check for them. We’ve asked that they bring back a recommendation to Senate no later than February, so we hope to bring that back to you soon.
AD: This is the document that the students wanted speedy action on?
FA: Right.
5. Early Notification System for Students (a.k.a. Early Warning Notice) (Admin) (10/06/2005)
FA: Senate approved the pilot project – very quickly actually. There was very little discussion at all. It was clear that people understood how much work and conscientiousness had gone into it, and we do understand that there will be fine-tuning as things go on there.
FA: If you’re going to do anything different than what’s in the pilot project, then we want to know what it is.
AD: Is there a faculty contact person in the event that there are any changes to be made?
FA: Changes in what? That document was actually two levels, as you know, the second level was pages of examples, right? Senate understood them and approved that those were examples, and we expect to see changes in that. What we wouldn’t expect to see changes in would be that first part that we passed.
AD: Right. When I meet with Administrative Affairs, I will be clear about communicating that.
AD: I would like to thank the faculty for speedy action on this matter and extend my appreciation for that.
FA: So we can take that off, and we assume that if it becomes more than a pilot, we may hear about it again.
6. Template on Teaching Schedule/Office Hours (FA) (10/20/2006)
FA: We’ve agreed to do a taskforce on this also to work out the remaining bugs. You would have received the names in the same e-mail in which you received the other two names, so do you want them?
AD: Yes.
FA: John Palmer and Steve Hornstein. We have similar questions to the ones we had on the other ones. Which two administrators do you want to work on this, and who is going to convene?
AD: Kristi Tornquist and Roland Specht-Jarvis.
FA: And who is going to convene?
AD: We’ll have Roland do it.
FA: Okay. I’m assuming that faculty will hear about this soon then?
AD: Yes.
FA: Okay. That will come back here again, I imagine, when they finish their work.
7. DGS and University College (FA) (10/20/2005) and (Admin) (11/17/2005)
FA: You brought to Meet and Confer a proposal of a taskforce, right? And Senate approved the idea of a taskforce, but they’d like a little bit different configuration. The main difference is that they would like representation from the colleges as well as people with special knowledge and special parts of the university. So we’re looking at one representative from each college, an executive committee member, and then pretty much what the list of what you had, and I can give you this list. The other thing involved in the motion is that they would like the taskforce also to ask the question, “Is this a feasible thing?” They would like to start with: is this something we really want to do?
AD: The feasibility – it would be nice to have the proposal on the table to figure out what the feasibility is so that people know kind of what’s there. It would let people know what the resource needs will be, what the costs will be, what the cost and benefits will be, those sorts of things. It would be difficult to do feasibility without those things on the table.
FA: On the other side, should St. Cloud State start to become the university with a general college in the state of Minnesota? I think that this is part of the concern. When we’re talking about feasibility, it’s not necessarily resource feasibility; it’s more the question of what direction we want St. Cloud State to go with.
AD: When you raise the question of a general college, do you envision faculty within the General College? It’s one of those things outlined in the proposal. It won’t look exactly like the University of Minnesota’s General College. It’s going to be much different than that. It will service specific populations of students…
FA: It sounds like you already have a proposal.
AD: Here. (pointed at head)
FA: If you already have a proposal, it’s proper for the committee to look at that and then say, “Is this something we really want to do?” as opposed to “Is this something the University can afford to do?”
AD: That’s right.
FA: If you don’t have a proposal, then it’s still proper for them to somehow say, “If we did it, this is what it would look like” and then ask the questions, “Is this something we can afford to do? Is it something we want to do? Does it make sense to have this as part of our university?” So those last three questions are the things that the faculty want answered when they’re given whatever proposal it is. They want to see the committee’s response to these questions. They want an argument that will convince us of why you need to do this, or they want an argument that will convince us why this is a dumb idea.
FA: Actually, when you look at the difference in the configuration of the committee, and we’re not talking about pulling people out, we’re talking about layering on, and people can correct me if I’m wrong in the way I’m presenting this, people at Senate want a broader view as well as the focused view of the people who have the knowledge involved with serving the special populations that you’re thinking about for this. So there’s the large university view and then the specialized expert view from people who have been involved with DGS, for example, student services of a particular type and so on. So that’s what we’re proposing.
AD: I don’t see any reason not to have those people on the taskforce.
FA: So we can put the call out for volunteers?
AD: Yes.
FA: I’ll go ahead and put the call out for volunteers.
AD: Do you have a timeline of when you could have that group put together?
FA: I can put the call out right now, but it will be January before we can have an election. It will be late January or early February.
8. Diversity and Public Celebrations of Religious/Cultural Differences at SCSU (Admin) (10/20/2005)
FA: I sent e-mail to a bunch of people, and you know that Senate did approve that, but they did have some concerns that I wanted to raise that would become really relevant if this statement is expanded into a different, broader kind of policy that would affect more people. Faculty were concerned that there needs to be a process for responding to people’s complaints if they’re offended by things that are there. So one example of something that offends people is the triangle – for two reasons: first of all, it could be seen as a Christmas tree but second, it’s also a symbol for GLBT, the triangle is. So if people were offended by that, what process would they use for bringing their complaint forward? There was also some concern about the inclusiveness of the statement – that it really wasn’t broad enough/inclusive enough, in terms of religions and cultures. There were some concerns about academic freedom. There were also some concerns about what can be displayed in their private “cubbies.”
AD: Where is this going?
FA: It may not go anywhere, but there was some concern that if, in fact, it became something outside of Atwood and the student’s display, that those sorts of things need to be considered. We had a long discussion, and I figured I should bring in what people's concerns were.
FA: I think some of those concerns even had to do with Atwood. Some of the mentions of the other holidays besides the Christian ones were holidays that aren’t necessarily considered to be “big deal” holidays, so it’s not clear that the people who were involved in this are as aware as they probably ought to be of the other kinds of things that could be done, so there was some thought that maybe a broader group of people should be consulted.
AD: This was intended to be guidance, not a procedure, and there needs to be a way to say, “What you’re doing is insensitive.” Those in the group would be the first to say that we aren’t and didn’t intend to represent every possible group because they change over time. I think I would like to go back, particularly to Atwood, and ask them to develop procedures for both complaint and inclusion so that if we don’t know about a particular celebration, that can be communicated to us. The attempt was instead of excluding all celebrations, to try to include celebrations. And although much of the discussion is about religion, it’s about cultural celebrations too that may or may not have some basis in faith in religion, but represent celebrations of the culture. I think we will go along with that. I agree, it’s not inclusive enough, and it would not be because, what would be included would change over time. I’m not sure about the academic freedom, what the issue was. I don’t know what that might have been, so I don’t quite know how to respond. In terms of the triangle, or Christmas tree, or candle flame, or whatever people refer to that symbol as. That’s one of the things that we thought was celebratory and representative of all kinds of things that in the northern hemisphere happen around solstice. So there will be a process to respond – both for complaints and inclusiveness – because the only way to find out is to have people speak. Whatever becomes of academic freedom I will defer to others.
FA: I would like to ask about individual workspaces…
AD: We don’t have, I looked to see if we do, a policy on individual workspaces with respect to anything except what I would call political displays which was discussed this week, somewhat. There have been letters written or guidance given about “don’t be offensive to people and listen to you co-workers about something that may or may not offend them.” It’s very difficult to write such a specific policy or procedure, and it’s not in any of the contracts, for example. It’s not in MnSCU policy. We try not to do things, in our individual workspace, that is offensive to other people and try to work with our co-workers and be open-minded.
FA: I would like to invite anyone who is interested in observing a climate where folks share in the reverence and the joy of the broadest imaginable array of holidays and expressions of faith to come over to Lawrence Hall. I say that not because I have any role in that. As much as I’d like to take total credit for it, I can’t take any, but it’s remarkable how they have created an open, supportive and celebratory atmosphere toward everybody. I’m very serious when I say, come over and see how they do it because they do a really good job.
AD: I did want to add that at one point I attended a meeting where there were discussions about these policies. There was guidance on this campus a few years ago, a Campus Life e-mail about personal space. and a number of people at the meeting were made aware of it.
FA: I’ve been in this situation before, at Ohio State. We had to bring everybody together and try to create what is public space, what is private space. We decided that outside the door is considered public space, and we came up with policies of what should be done. Inside the door is considered private space, and they created some public space where everyone can express their feelings, but we had to make it happen together.
FA: Do we have this one taken care of? We’ll take it off for now.
AD: Thank you for acting quickly on this.
9. Applied Doctorate (Admin) (11/17/2005)
AD: This is a draft of MnSCU’s policy for dealing with the process for approving applied doctorate programs, and it’s their proposal for the way this would be done. I think we mentioned last Meet and Confer that there are various departments at the university that were considering developing and/or are in the process of developing proposals for applied doctorates. They were primarily in Educational administration, Counseling, and Audiology, and Nursing has talked about it, but they’re behind because they don’t have a master’s program yet, and there’s been some talk in the College of Business as well. As you know, the legislature approved the possibility of MnSCU institutions being permitted to offer applied doctorates, and that’s where this has come from. I also have, I’ll give a copy of this to Judy, a proposed procedural document to amend MnSCU’s policy to which degrees can be awarded.
FA: This we got through Meet and Confer.
AD: That packet?
FA: Yes.
AD: So you don’t need this?
FA: Right. Michael, what is the status of this and this draft? Do you have any sense of what their timetable is to make this draft into a final version?
AD: No. I know that it was distributed to and shared with the Vice Chancellors, Academic and Student Affairs Policy Committee and others for comment and feedback, and then it will go to the Board. I think it went to state-wide Meet and Confer?
FA: I haven’t seen it.
AD: This was just finished about 2 or three days ago. I saw an earlier version of this, and this is the most recent version.
FA: We might see it again before then?
AD: Possibly.
AD: One of the things that we’ve been thinking about is that if we are going to be offering these kinds of degrees, there are certain issues that we’ve got to discuss. We know that we have to have sufficient library resources and would allocate funds to strengthen the library collection in any area where this would be the case. We’re talking about a competitive market-value tuition for this so that the programs would be self-supporting. We would not allocate much in the way of current institutional resources to support these programs, and MnSCU will not be providing additional funding to campuses for applied doctorates. We’ve looked at the tuition rates of other institutions for applied doctorates, and we’ll be in that ball park – the lower end of what private institutions charge as tuition in order to sustain these programs. I’ve been thinking, we haven’t really discussed this fully, but in terms of how we would handle faculty workload, a 3 credit doctoral level course would count as 6 credits so that if we had a faculty member teach exclusively in a doctoral program, I’m not sure how many of those we would have, then 2 courses, or 6 credits, would constitute that full load for the semester. I haven’t mentioned this to the President yet. He doesn’t look too surprised (laughter), but that seems a reasonable way to address the need for the doctoral faculty to engage in significant and substantial scholarship in order to maintain currency in the field and to have credibility as a faculty member for that level of education program. I just wanted to fill you in on where we are and where we’re going. I think one of the proposals is fairly well drafted out, but there are elements that are addressed in this approval process that we would have to have done that haven’t been done yet. In order to offer an applied doctorate, we also have to go to the Higher Learning Commission and secure what they call a Change of Affiliation Status. That would be something that would happen after we look at approval from MnSCU to offer the program. Any questions?
FA: If we have to add faculty and MnSCU’s not going to supply money, how will that be done?
AD: From tuition.
FA: So we aren’t going to make part of our North Central visit be an approval of an applied doctorate?
AD: If we have a proposal and it’s gone through the appropriate channels of MnSCU, and we’re permitted to do that, we would ask them to look at that issue when they’re here in 2007, perhaps with an eye to us offering a program as early as Fall of 2008.
FA: We have to go through MnSCU before we go to North Central, or do we go to North Central before we go to MnSCU?
AD: I think we might be able to go to them simultaneously.
AD: I think we have to go through and get the MnSCU approval first.
FA: So if we have a proposal that comes from this campus, it has to go to MnSCU, go through their process before we can ask North Central?
AD: We have to get their approval before we can go to North Central.
FA: Okay
FA: The College of Education has a proposal that they’re going to start circulating tomorrow for feedback.
FA: They told me that they would have something ready to go at the end of this semester.
AD: They’re the most advanced in this process.
FA: When it comes to the workload issue at the doctoral level, the advising of students takes up a much greater amount of time than at the undergraduate level. We are experiencing problems with that at the master’s level. This will have to be addressed at some other level as well as here on campus.
FA: I’m not sure if other MnSCU institutions are working on the same thing, but time is of the essence. We must act quickly.
AD: There are so many different thoughts on this issue. The legislators gave us permission, when before, we couldn’t even talk about doctoral programs. The two years have changed their names. We’ve just had a letter from St. Cloud Tech discussing their mission. The University of Minnesota is moving toward being one of the top three in the nation. It seems that we need to get moving on this. So if we’ve got permission from the legislators, now it’s up to MnSCU and the North Central Accreditation. We need to move aggressively, but carefully. It’s going to take a lot of give and take with the Office of the Chancellor, and we will need the help of you all. What I’m going to do is ask Judy to share this with the Faculty Senate because I don’t see all of the nuances of what this is going to do for this campus. Do you understand what I’m saying? I don’t understand how this is going to affect us ten years from today. I think it’s going to affect our workload, our job description of the people we hire, faculty advising, scholarship, library. it’s going to affect lots of things, and I’m going to need faculty input to have this thoroughly thought out as we move. We’re moving in all directions, and at the same time, we need some help from you all to discuss what this is going to mean for those departments, but especially at the university level.
AD: My comment is about the doctorate. There’s a section in here about library. I’m a little bit concerned with their language in here that indicates that library resources may include online and regional access. Online doesn’t bother me so much as this regional access idea that Southwest State might send their people here or out to the U of M or something, and I don’t think that quite meets the intent of what the doctoral program is about.
AD: I think that’s a good point because when this was discussed at the Academic and Student Affairs Advisory Committee meeting yesterday, Manny Lopez said “any library.” I think we need to revise that section and suggest that it’s got to be the campus’ library because that’s where the students are going to do most of their work. I think most of us who were in doctoral programs did most of our library research on our campuses – in the libraries on our campus.
FA: The way you put this I sense some sincere ambiguity on your side, and you’re inviting the faculty to look at this open-mindedly and critically.
AD: What will this mean to us ten years from now? What will this campus look like if we pursue these degrees? I think it’s going to be huge. But I don’t know how that’s going to be affecting us so it would be wonderful to look at this, make suggestions. It’s probably going to mean increasing the number and I’m guessing the size of the graduate awards. How will this affect promotion and tenure procedures – I don’t know. This is going to be a lot more than just four doctoral programs, I think.
FA: I would hope that due to the complexity of the change-over that you would ask your negotiators at the negotiating table next time to think about these sorts of issues that Robert was talking about when we’re looking at language because I didn’t see any movement in a direction that would be supportive of this change. I was personally disappointed, and I’m speaking for myself now, that they didn’t even try to make a proposal.
AD: I would like this to be an agenda item for the Faculty Senate.
FA: It is an agenda item.
FA: What are you proposing, a taskforce, a discussion in the Senate? We can discuss this and nothing may come of it. How will this benefit us?
AD: If I may attempt to interpret, I think one of the things the President is asking is: what are the areas that will be impacted at the university over a longer period of time by the introduction of applied doctorates. If faculty can identify those topics, then we can begin to talk about how to address those issues.
FA: What will be the nature of this institution if we proceed and do we want to become that institution.
FA: Do we want to ask for a taskforce?
FA: Let’s go with taking it to Faculty Senate for discussion.
AD: I thought Dennis was having some meetings about this.
AD: Dennis has had some meetings with departments who are considering doing this.
AD: I like what Robert said about looking ahead and envisioning what the changes will be, and that will provide us with some guidelines. I would just like to have conversation on this issue. I don’t think we’ll have the answer in a short time, I would just like to have on-going discussions.
FA: Isn’t this the kind of matter that Strategic Planning picks up?
AD: I don’t think that’s what the Strategic Planning Committee has been working on. They’ve been working on identifying more general themes and then coming up with ways of measuring the degree to which we are accomplishing those themes. This could be something that a Strategic Planning Committee would look at. For this institution, that hasn’t been in that place. There are a whole host of things that we might need to consider that we just need to identify some the areas we might need to look at, and the more people we have making suggestions, the more likely it is that we’ll hit on all the appropriate questions.
FA: A lot of your questions seem to me to be long-term and theoretical.
AD: That’s an absolutely valid observation.
FA: My feeling is that, I can speak only for myself, if the faculty and administration agree that this is a good thing to do, can we do a SWOT analysis?
FA: We will take this back to Senate.
FA: I’d like to get back to the tuition part – there will be absolutely no State support.
AD: That’s what I understand – correct.
FA: And these programs would be supported by the tuition they generate.
AD: Ultimately.
AD: It will also create a domino effect for the allocation model. I think we do need to have a very broad discussion, and then maybe frame it in such a way that a taskforce would take it further and then give it to the Strategic Planning Committee. As I continue to think about this, it seems to me that it’s a huge step for this institution, and the way we move on it is going to be - one or two doctoral degrees may not affect the whole institution, but I think over time it will start to affect the way we are and who we are.
FA: We have this on the Senate agenda and will take this to them and come back with something.
New Business:
1. AP/CLEP Exams and MN Statute (Admin) 11/17/2005)
AD: There was a policy that MnSCU adopted that requires universities to accept AP scores…
FA: State law.
AD: State law, and I think that Annette is probably in a better position to discuss the details of this because you were on that taskforce right?
FA: Yes. Do you want me to?
AD: Yes, because the other piece that I’m not absolutely certain of has to do with having identified the scores that campuses need to accept for student performance on CLEP exams.
FA: We agreed on those cut scores on statewide Meet and Confer last week – cut scores of 50, which is what ACES has recommended, I believe.
FA: There’s a law that was passed at the last legislative session that essentially says that if a high school student takes the CLEP test or the – I think there are three types of exams – that then the institutions have to accept those for credit, and there’s some money involved to help pay for low-income students to take these exams. The CLEP scores had to be set. The two other than CLEP were very clear so that was taken care of because we’ve been dealing with them all along. The CLEP ones, not all the institutions had been dealing with. So what they did was they had the CLEP people come and talk to a group of people about what they do. CLEP set a score of 50, and they do this in some magical way, and I could describe that to you, but I know you don’t want to hear it. That’s essentially a C. They say that a score of 50 is equivalent to a C. If we want, they have this ACES program, which I actually don’t remember what the ACES stands for, where they will come in and help you figure out what your institution’s cut scores ought to be. But given that, only about less than 10% of the people who take these tests are actually high school students. Doing anything other than 50 really doesn’t really make sense right now. Our recommendation was that they use 50, and so that’s they it was accepted. I think that eventually we might invite those other people to come in and help us set our own institutional cut scores.
FA: 50 is the minimum, right?
FA: 50 is the minimum, yes.
FA: So they could be set higher than that.
FA: They could be set higher, but I think what they’re going to do is leave 50, and then we would have to have some data to do something different.
AD: 50 will probably be the score because of how the legislation was written.
FA: Right, but if we wanted to change the score, MnSCU would have to gather the data, and then that would take a couple of years to accomplish.
FA: Do we need to do anything else with this besides share?
AD: No.
FA: It should go on our web site so that students know they can take the CLEP test.
FA: That would be really helpful. How do we have that happen.
FA: It may already be there. I know there is some stuff out there about the AP.
AD: It’s in our undergraduate bulletin.
FA: So we can take this one off?
AD: Yes.
2. Request for Hire Form (Admin) (11/17/2005)
FA: We passed two motions, one at Senate and one at Executive Committee that we move forward with hires for this year and not wait until we have a final draft of the Request for Hire form. We understand that you’re using that form as a draft form.
AD: Right.
FA: We’re gathering feedback; we don’t have it all. We need to bring that feedback back to you. I don’t know if you just want us to transmit that to you in writing or if you want us to leave this on the agenda.
AD: Since it’s a draft as it is, if you have suggestions that could strengthen it as we speak, we would try to incorporate those earlier rather than later. So if you have feedback, I’d appreciate receiving it.
FA: So we can just send that to you in writing? Is there anything pertaining to this item?
FA: A couple of questions… This is being used as a draft form, in other words people would need to fill out this form in lieu of the forms we used in the past?
AD: If they’re using the A-1 form, that should be attached to the A-1 form.
FA: Would this form make it any quicker to review the requests.
AD: I think it does. It standardizes the format by which requests are made so that we can make better choices between competing requests – we have comparable information that we can review. I think it does make explicit what has been a practice but hasn’t been documented in the same way in each case.
FA: One of the chairs came to me. and he didn’t feel he had enough direction as to what is needed. He wasn’t sure of exactly what is expected. A suggestion for down the road is that some more instruction of what kind of things should be included might be helpful.
AD: I think in the cover memo that I sent to Judy, I did identify some of those issues, but I wanted to make certain that Faculty understood that the quantitative data wasn’t the only thing we’re looking at. There are programs that have limitations on class size for very specific reasons, and so in those cases, those faculty will not have the same credit hour generation as in other cases. There are issues that have to do with certain departments and their offerings that we must offer regardless. There are certain sub-disciplines that if you’re going to offer a major, you have to have. So there are a number of issues that need to be looked at apart from just the number of credit hours being generated.
FA: Probably, in the middle of the hiring season, having two different, changing processes and requirements may lead to confusion or misunderstanding. It’s just an observation I wanted to share.
FA: We were struggling with the same thing, quantitative versus qualitative…
AD: There were three elements on that form, and one was quantitative data, the other, there are qualitative things, and then there was a space to put some other justification for the position so that people had all kinds of ways of doing it. What we’ve gotten in the past, what’s come to my office in the past, has simply been this form, the A-1 form, and it says “Will you fill this position?” and that’s it.
FA: What sorts of things might you find in that third slot? Could you give us some examples?
AD: The department has two faculty members on phased retirement.
AD: Re-evaluation of course offerings in the department; they’re changing direction, etc.
FA: So if I were going to come up with a doctoral program, for example, that would be in that third slot – it’s a shift of mission kind of thing.
AD: Also, if there’s something that we didn’t think of that didn’t get on the form that you think is important and needs to be noted, here’s the place to tell us.
FA: I’m still a little concerned. I’m wondering if in the long-term if there will be a weighing of the quantitative versus the qualitative. For example, in my unit, we probably have, by the time we add it all up, four or five full-time positions devoted to student teaching. Generally speaking, those folks generate about 2/3 of the credit hours of somebody who is teaching a class of say, 25 to 28 students. So that’s fine if you’re going to pay attention to that. How do you compare a supervisor’s role to someone who is teaching 25 to 30 students in a class?
AD: I think that’s where you use that section that gives you an opportunity to comment on the qualitative information and use that other element of the form to balance that out. Ultimately, the decision has an objective and a subjective component.
FA: I think that’s it’s sort of telling that the section on quantitative data is on the top (laughter), and it takes up about as much space as the area for the qualitative in the sense that there really isn’t room on the form for the qualitative information. So when we look at that, I have a friend in speech who talks about verbal and non-verbal communication, the non-verbal communication here doesn’t really correspond with the verbal communication. I think that may be the biggest problem with that form is that it really does look like the most important thing is the data. I know that at least one dean that I’m familiar with, all the justifications for not even forwarding the information that the faculty have forwarded to him, to you, is based on a numbers argument. None of it is based on anything other than a numbers argument. There’s no response in what he says to us that addresses the qualitative stuff, that addresses accreditation requirements, that addresses the extra amount of work master’s degree students require. So while you’re saying that’s important, that’s not the message that we’re getting. The message we’re getting is: “That little piece, that number on top, that’s what’s important. I’m not even going to send forward your request because you’re not in the right spot with this data.” If that isn’t the only thing that’s important, we’re not getting that.
FA: So you’re suggesting document design shifts?
FA: I don’t know what I’m suggesting, it’s not my problem. (laughter)
FA: I think that’s part of the problem I was trying to get at. If we shift mid-stream here, that kind of orientation, education if you will, this kind of discussion that we’re having here, isn’t shared by every party so everyone is operating with two systems at one time.
AD: What’s the other system?
FA: What people have done in the past.
AD: There hasn’t been a system.
FA: It’s something people are used to – that’s what I’m saying. I appreciate what you’re trying to do, and I understand the need for this, but the introduction of it at a time when people have been busy planning and operating under one approach that they’re used to, and now they’re being asked to shift that information to another approach. We’ll get there, but it’s not going to be easy.
AD: I agree, it may not be easy, but I think it’s a far more rational approach than we’ve used in the past. To the extent that we have the information on that form, I think a reference to, for example, 9 credit load mandated by accrediting agency makes a statement by itself without having to have other information. It allows for a review of comparable information so that decisions can be made on a more equitable and more transparent way. That’s ultimately the goal.
FA: It sounds like what we can do is get you some quick response.
AD: If we want to put quantitative data under qualitative data and follow an alphabetical listing, that’s fine. Maybe we need to add more items to the form.
FA: We certainly can do that as we work with the form and have more experience with it. Are we ready to move on?
3. Counseling Center (FA) (12/15/2005)
FA: We will present you with a review of various counseling programs within MnSCU. We maintain that the nature of the position today is that of an IFO position, and it should be filled as such. It is our position that it is an IFO position.
AD: Thank you for the proposal. We’ll take it back and look at and bring it before our Senate and provide a response.
FA: Our understanding is that there are other proposals out there, and we’d like to have copies of those if that’s possible.
AD: I don’t see why not.
AD: Can we share yours?
FA: We don’t know what you’re going to do with ours.
AD: I’m just suggesting that we share information among the folks.
FA: Does anybody else want to say anything?
FA: Are there other proposals to look at?
AD: MSUAASF has submitted something.
AD: They suggested we have somebody study it.
AD: I think there are several ways the position can be approved. I think the fundamental issue is the nature of the position. There are guidelines on how positions will be justified based on the duties, responsibilities.
FA: It’s our position that you’re out of line with this unit clarification order and that in fact the way the position is defined would make an IFO position. We have taken this through discussion with IFO.
AD: Let’s read this and then respond to it before engaging in further discussion.
FA: I do think that the position is laid out concretely, and it makes a lot more sense for us to discuss it after everyone has had a chance to read it.
FA: We’re not suggesting anything in that document. We are making statements of fact.
FA: We’re providing information.
AD: We will read it.
FA: Let me also add that the document addresses attendant and emergent questions. It also anticipates certain questions and issues that may arise.
FA: So we’ll leave this on the agenda?
AD: Yes.
4. Additional Duty Day (Admin) (12/15/2005)
AD: The same problem that occurred with the academic calendar for this year was re-observed for the calendar for next academic year. There is one less duty day than there is supposed to be. I don’t know why we couldn’t add up the number of days correctly. We want to propose the same thing that we did this year, to add the Friday of Convocation Week as a duty day next August.
FA: Would that be described in the same way it was last time as a day for faculty to prepare.
AD: I think we could also have some other activities as well.
FA: Well, if it’s one, it’s not the other.
AD: We did both last time too. They were optional although I think one of the things we’ve been talking about for next year’s Convocation Week is – this past year we spent a great deal of time providing information to new faculty and a number of them felt enormous information overload. What we’re talking about doing is spreading that out over the week so that all of that same information isn’t presented to them in one day or a day-and-one-half. We’d like to be able to do that, and it should be a duty day.
FA: If we did this, you’d essentially spread out…
AD: For new faculty in particular.
FA: You wouldn’t fill that day up the way you fill the other days up?
AD: We had some other workshops on the Friday this year, but they were more on the order of optional for returning faculty.
FA: That’s my concern. I know a lot of faculty who use that day, whether or not it’s a duty day, to prepare for classes. So if we fill that day up with stuff, just the way we fill the other three days up…
AD: It would be a lighter day than the other days.
FA: And/or it would make it possible to make the other days lighter.
FA: Being short one duty day, how does that affect instruction days?
AD: I don’t believe it does.
FA: Sometimes Fall semester has 3 less instructional days than Spring.
FA: I would like to propose another instructional day in order to serve our students better.
FA: I just have a concern, particularly for newer faculty being able to prepare properly for their classes. New faculty don’t necessarily know what’s expected. I would strongly encourage that we stay away from scheduling much.
AD: I’ll admit to being the one who raised this issue, and I did suggest to Michael that we look at that Friday. If the faculty would prefer to have an additional duty day, great. There was no other than that that he proposed it.
FA: How quickly do we need to do this? Could we take time to look at those dates and then come back to this next time?
AD: I think we could. While we’re on this topic, I just want to give you a copy of this draft document – Proposed Procedure for Academic Semester Start Dates – by MnSCU - telling us when the first day of classes would be.
FA: I have to say that, and President Saigo can support what I’m saying, when I was at state-wide Meet and Confer, they didn’t even know when we started. They thought that St. Cloud started when everybody else did. We brought forward the list at state-wide Meet and Confer from our Senate. So you pretty much know that we are not in favor of this unified start date.
AD: I understand that. When I was at a meeting at MnSCU, they knew exactly when we started because I told them. In fact they pointed out that this year we were the outlier by about two weeks. We started two weeks later than everybody else.
FA: Two weeks?
AD: Yes.
FA: At state-wide Meet and Confer, they were talking about this coming Spring. They thought we started the 9th or 10th.
AD: We’re a lot closer to the others for the Spring. For Fall, we were quite a bit later. We tried to explain that institutions that have residence halls have different requirements and needs than technical and community colleges that don’t have on-campus residence halls.
FA: Our list went to Linda Baer, for your information. Thank you very much for providing this. I will plan to share this with the Senate.
FA: I think Lin Holder had a calendar that showed all the duty days, and it was divided up by class days. Does anybody know where that is so that we could actually have that to look at?
AD: We can try to find that.
5. Use of Search Firms (FA) (12/15/2005)
FA: First of all, I want to thank Michael for coming to the Executive Committee meeting on Tuesday. I want to start by stressing that the Faculty Association is deeply committed to finding an Affirmative Action Officer this year. I wanted to say that because there has been a rumor that the Faculty Association is trying to sabotage the search. I just wanted to set the record straight on this. I know for a fact that everyone on the faculty want very much for this search to move forward and succeed. The other thing I wanted to stress is that our goal is to maintain the integrity of the search process. What we’ve come up with is a set of agreements based on what you brought to us. The first thing is that we had agreed that the search firm would sort the applications by removing those that did not meet the minimum qualifications. So we want the search committee to inform the search firm what the minimum qualifications are. It is not a simple black and white issue. Secondly, we’re okay with the search firm redacting files, and we would agree to removing identifying characteristics such as the name of the applicant, personal addresses, birthdays, social security numbers, and that sort of thing that can identify an individual person. However, we’re not comfortable with scrubbing to the point where we cannot identify articles that may have been written by the applicant or the institution that is employing them. Those are just a couple of examples of important information for evaluating applicants.
AD: Can I comment on that? Given the nature of the kind of position that we’re talking about, if you know the institution or affiliation, it’s very easy to identify the individual. The likelihood is that there is only one person at the institution with that position.
FA: So the reason for that is confidentiality. We don’t have a reason for believing there is a threat to confidentiality from our search committee. The real problem is being able to assess the qualifications of the applicants. We do not expect anybody to violate confidentiality. I think that they have been and probably will be repeatedly informed about the importance of confidentiality. We need to know the important information. If this person is working as an Affirmative Action Officer somewhere, that is very important information.
AD: If that person is doing that, would you have any problem if it said “Blank State University?”
FA: Well again…
AD: And it said, “Institution with 14,000 students.”
FA: We can go ahead and discuss it, but that is important information.
FA: Should we maybe come back to this after?
FA: Thirdly, we agree that the search firm can sort the applicants according to minimum qualifications as determined by the search committee. When those applications have been sorted, the search committee will see all the files of the qualified applicants and will have access to the files on the designated unqualified candidates. In other words, the committee will be able to review those files to verify that they clearly are unqualified applicants. With regard to airport interviews, the search committee needs to be at those airport interviews, wherever they are held – whether held at the applicant’s home city, the Twin Cities, or a neutral site – the entire search committee needs to be there. This is not the sort of thing that can be handled by a search firm. We want the search committee to meet with the applicants personally to get a personal feel for the candidates. Finally, this information that we’re agreeing to will be presented to the search committee by the FA president and the administration. The committee is presently in a state of limbo because what we agreed to last February was revised, and so they need to be informed explicitly, by the leadership here, by the Faculty Association President and by somebody representing the administration, and by the head of the search firm, what we’ve agreed to so that there is a common understanding by everyone who’s involved in this.
FA: Keep in mind that although we’ve mentioned the Affirmative Action Officer, there are two searches that are affected by this.
AD: Let’s go back to the redacting of files piece a minute, and if you’re comfortable with what I proposed in terms of not necessarily identifying the institution where a person might be employed, but rather identifying them by a kind of generic description of the institution.
FA: It is important for us to know some information about the institution.
FA: The other thing that would be important would be whether or not the institution that they’re coming from has a union, a faculty union. Is that something they would take out of there? Sometimes it’s not clear to me what information they would be taking out, and before we go on, I want to know if someone has an explanation of that.
AD: I don’t see why it would be necessary to delete it if it’s included in the individual’s material, but it may not be.
FA: If we don’t know the name of the institution, we will have no way of knowing the answer to that question, and that’s something that we do look up.
AD: We can ask the firm to do that.
FA: That’s a piece of information, when people come in, we want to know does this person work for a unionized institution, does this institution have a record of getting along well with their union or do they have an administration that is constantly fighting with their union. That’s an important thing for us because it gives us attitudinal information. If we don’t know the name of the institution, and we can’t find that information out, it can make a big difference for us.
AD: We can certainly get a lot of that information from the search firm.
AD: In fact, we’ll make it a point of having the search firm check on that.
AD: I came in on the tail end of this conversation. Am I hearing right that whether or not the individual comes from a unionized institution is something you wish to take into account in considering the candidate?
FA: It’s an important piece of information.
AD: I think depending on what is said in the notice of vacancy, and I don’t have it in front of me, that is really not something we should be taking into consideration.
FA: It’s not taking it into account. It’s not using it as a means of assessing the application, but wanting to know whether or not that person comes from an institution that is unionized or not and then how well that’s functioning at that institution.
AD: That’s not fair to the candidate. That’s an extraneous factor.
FA: It’s part of all of the information. When you sit down and go through a pile of applications, and you see the name of a university, and you know that that university has had troubles with employee relations, then that does…
AD: What does that tell you? That person is coming from a place that has union problems. What does that tell you about the person.
FA: It doesn’t. It doesn’t tell anything.
AD: It tells you nothing.
FA: I think in involves more the type of questions you might ask a candidate. For example: what is your experience with bargaining units; what is your experience with campuses that have employee contracts? So that does affect whether or not the person is able to function in an environment like St. Cloud State. It doesn’t mean that the person doesn’t have the ability to function in this environment, but it says something about the person’s past experience working in this type of environment. So those have been questions asked in interviews.
AD: But those would be questions that all candidates would be asked. You couldn’t ask them selectively.
FA: I don’t think anybody was suggesting that. I’m actually thinking that we’re off-topic here. So if we could caucus…
AD: I only have one other question and that has to do with this issue of identifying minimum qualifications. If we have a notice of vacancy that’s already been sent out, doesn’t it define the minimum qualifications?
AD: Absolutely.
AD: So that’s already been done.
FA: It’s not always clear cut. There are occasions where search committee members have disagreed on what constitutes the minimum qualifications. For instance, if a doctorate is required, is a JD considered a doctorate? Those kinds of questions have come up on several occasions, so those things have to be sorted out. So we need to sort through the notice of vacancy and look at the qualifications stated there and then make some determination as to what constitutes, in the minds of that committee, for purposes of evaluation, what are the range of acceptable qualifications to meet those parameters.
AD: Shouldn’t that be done in consultation with the search committee and the search firm?
AD: Whether a JD is a doctorate or not is kind of irrelevant.
FA: That was just an example. Although something appears to be clear-cut criteria, when you get into the nitty-gritty of it, those questions come up. These types of questions come up on search committees on a regular basis. We have to come to a common understanding of what are acceptable credentials.
AD: I don’t think I’ve ever fielded a question like that as the Affirmative Action Officer.
FA: We have lots of discussions about that in search committees. I think what we’re always suggesting is that there would be a discussion between the search firm and the search committee about what these minimum qualifications meant, and anything that might seem to be something that could have a lot of wiggle-room, that might cause problems, that might cause problems with sorting, would be discussed ahead of time. That’s all we’re suggesting.
FA: The question about minimum qualifications arose out of our discussion with you earlier this week. I understand, I think we all understand, that in conversation like that there are multiple threads going on at the same time. But what led to the question in our minds, on the one hand the suggestion that the firm would do an initial triage based on minimum criteria and then another part of the conversation which said “and then there would be ten candidates that would come forward.” It is the hopes of clarifying exactly what the criteria are, crystal clear - if what you mean by minimum requirements are those items that are listed under “minimum requirements.”
FA: We need to caucus, and I would like to be back in time before we’re supposed to be done with this meeting, if possible. I’m hoping we can run a few minutes over if we need to finish this item. So we’ll go and see how fast we can be at caucusing.
(Faculty representatives left the room to caucus.)
FA: We discussed your question about identifying the institution, and we’re ok with redacting the name of the institution. What you said was something to the effect that the application materials could identify the type of university, the tier and the size, and that we would find out at some point whether or not they are unionized institutions.
AD: Okay.
FA: So we’re in agreement on that?
FA/AD: (several individuals speaking at the same time – could not transcribe)
FA: So what we would expect would happen then would be that a document would come from me and from somebody in the administration and from the search firm that would go to the search committee members so that they understand what we’ve agreed to so that there’s no kind of “We thought this – then this comes.”
FA: This could take place in a meeting between the parties so that everyone is very clear of the expectations.
FA: And they can ask questions then as well. Anything else with that? Can we do the last item in half-a-minute?
AD: I just want to note that I have spoken to the search firm person for the College of Business search, and there won’t be any difficulties with that search.
FA: Okay. I really appreciate the spirit in which we’ve worked out our differences on this.
6. Strategic Planning – (FA) (12/15/2005)
FA: This last item is very fast. We have forwarded Senate approval of the Revised Academic Distinction Performance Indicators for Strategic Planning and also the Strategic Planning membership and terms proposal. I’m assuming we’ll hear from the Administration that it has accepted those. I sent them to you, the President and Lisa as two things. I would have to check. It was after the Senate meeting in which we approved them. It would have been a week ago, I think.
AD: Hard copy?
FA: E-mail. I could send them again, and I’ll send hard copies if you prefer.
AD: No, I don’t mind e-mail I just don’t recall seeing them.
FA: It was in an e-mail that covered both topics for Strategic Planning.
FA: Lisa has the Strategic Planning stuff.
FA: Right, but I would have indicated sending in support of those two things. And we have in fact, approved those two things at Senate.
FA: What I’m saying is, the actual documents can be obtained from Lisa.
AD: I have the document, I didn’t have anything…
FA: I will send another e-mail with a hard-copy going to both President Saigo and to the Provost.
AD: Thank you.
FA: Thank you very much.
AD: I’d like to thank all of you, and I echo what Judy has said, for working to an agreement. I remember, not too far back, where I always left with a sour stomach. I do appreciate the tone with which we resolved our conflict. I do believe that in the next few years, the changes that are taking place in the State are going to be very large, and I think the challenges that we have, the starting date, the PhDs, the process that we’re going to go through – there’s a lot of uncertainty in the future. The one way we’re going to be a flagship and a leader and cutting-edge is if we take the tone of working together and being synergistic with any problems. We just got back from Mille Lacs, and a previous time, maybe four years ago, we had gone up and I remember sitting there and after an hour and fifteen minutes the leader said, “What do you want?” in a tone that totally took me by surprise. I said, “We want to be your friend.” He said “Well, we signed a contract before, and we never saw you again.” Then we went fishing in a little hut. There were four of us and three chairs, so I had to be outside with my down jacket, and then I took my turn inside. They gave the eelpout to the elders, then we had lunch and came back. We’re continuing that kind of relationship. This year, Joyce was the Chair, they changed over quite a bit. She said, “We have all of our students going to St. Cloud.” We continue to promote the positive things about this institution. I think that in the future, as we work together, it is really, really important that we share the positive things about our institution. Enrollments are very important. They are the backbone of this university. I know that South Dakota, North Dakota and Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa are all interested in our students. I thank you all for everything that you’ve done. We’ve come together, and we are in a good financial situation, and we all like to tease about it: bring your own breakfast – although I never got any of you to take me up on that (laughter). Thank you so much for everything you do, it’s the only way we’re going to survive. Have a Happy Holiday.
Adjourned: 5:12 p.m.