Meet and Confer Minutes
September 7, 2006
Final Approved September 28, 2006
Administration: Roy Saigo, Michael Spitzer, Kristi Tornquist, Mark Nook, Mitchell Rubinstein, Wanda Overland, Steve Ludwig, Larry Chambers, Anne Zemek de Dominguez
Faculty: Annette Schoenberger, Bob Inkster, Fred Hill, Jason Lindsey, Bill Langen, Jayantha, Herath, Andrew Larkin, John W. Palmer, Steve Hornstein, JoAnn Gasparino, Balsy Kasi
AD: Welcome. I hope everyone had a great summer. You know, I’m becoming a Minnesotan. Summers are much too short and everyday is such a treasure – especially with this nice weather. Could I ask everyone in the room to introduce themselves? (All present introduced themselves to the group.)
Unfinished Business:
1. Attendance Policy (Admin) (09/08/05)
AD: We’re going to begin with some unfinished business and if we find that we’re spending too much time on that we’ll skip over some items and move on to new business. There were two items that were inadvertently left off the agenda . Number 8 is the academic calendar and number 9 under new business is the budget advisory committee that we talked about at our Pre-meet, but couldn’t figure out why it didn’t show up.
FA: It’s on this one.
AD: It’s on the other version of the agenda. So let’s begin with the attendance policy. I think there were some small edits, some minor edits, made to the version that the Faculty Association approved and we wanted to get feedback on that document with those changes.
FA: The changes requested by Academic Affairs were approved by the Senate.. I think at the May 9th meeting.
AD: Okay. I think we’re done with that. This can come off the agenda.
2. Taskforces on Diversity (a.k.a. Motion from Teacher Development) (FA) (9/22/05)
AD: Just a quick update on that. There are two taskforces. One is a university-wide taskforce. An invitation to the first meeting has gone out to individuals requesting from them information about their availability during the week of September 18-22, 2006. As soon as that information comes back, that committee will begin to meet and begin to develop further plans. The second is a College of Education taskforce. There was a retreat held last spring. As a consequence, there were some recommendations about doing an analysis of the college with regard to discrimination by an experienced, external facilitator. I agreed to fund that and this taskforce will begin to meet on Monday afternoons. It hasn’t been determined yet if it will be every week, every other week, or once a month, but they’ll be meeting on Monday afternoons.
FA: There was some concern following the opening of the school year session in the College of Education with the lack of prominence that was given, or what appeared to be a lack of urgency, to address these issues. One person was concerned that the title used was one that did not included diversity or discrimination.
AD: I think that view was communicated to the Dean and duly noted and will be addressed.
FA: Thank you.
AD: Do you want to keep that on the agenda?
FA: Yes.
3. Academic Freedom Committee Report Recommendations (FA) (02/02/05)
FA: Now that school is in session, I need to send out an e-mail requesting volunteers. I’ll be doing that next week.
AD: And we were going to provide three administrators.
FA: Yes. I think you may have already done that. You’ll have to look at the minutes from the last meeting.
4. Upper Division Writing Requirement Status Report (FA) (03/02/05)
FA: I think I gave Mitch the names of the people?
AD: Yes.
FA: So how is that going?
AD: The immediate task for the upper division writing requirement is to identify the remaining writing requirements for the baccalaureate programs at the university. Once we do that then we can go about the business of beginning to evaluate assessment of the requirements.
FA: Okay. the committee hasn’t met yet?
AD: Not that I’m aware of.
FA: Okay.
5. Maintaining Class Records (Admin) (03/02/05)
AD: Maybe we should come back to that.
FA: Was there someone who had a question they wanted to ask? This item was sent back from our Academic Affairs Committee. I think at the last Meet and Confer there was some discussion regarding ultra-late withdrawals.
AD: We had a discussion that we kind of agreed to do something and we said we would revisit in the fall and see if there were other related issues. We need to get a copy of related documentation from Kristi, and we can bring it back next time.
FA: Okay. Alright.
6. Template on Teaching Schedule/Contact Hours (FA) (10/20/05)
FA: The Senate looked at where we had been given last spring. We rejected that document. The Executive Committee took it up and has made some amendments and will be taking it back to Senate we hope this next week, we don’t know if we’ll actually get to it or not. So we’re not ready to bring it here yet because we need to get it through our own processes first. So it is in process. We have made some amendments. We want to suggest some amendments. We’ll take it to the Senate, see what they say, then bring it back here. Hopefully, we’ll get to that Tuesday. Of course, there’s no guarantee.
AD: This has been in progress a few months. There was a version that the four of us on the committee agreed to. We took it one way – you guys took it another way. We have suggestions from the administrative side – that’s what you’re working on?
FA: Yes.
AD: I just wanted to make sure.
FA: Those are part of it and we changed some “musts” back and forth on some of this stuff so we’ll see what happens.
AD: Okay.
AD: So leave that on the agenda?
FA: Yes.
7. CETL Reporting Structure (Admin) (4/27/06)
AD: Let’s postpone that until the next Meet and Confer.
8. Data Advisory Committee (Admin) (05/04/06)
AD: We should really call this a taskforce. It’s not a permanent committee that we’re looking at there.
FA: I gave you the names. I talked to Lisa Foss today and gave her the names. Do you want me to announce them here?
AD: Yes. Let’s read them into the record.
FA: John Palmer, College of Education; Paula Tompkins, College of Fine Arts and Humanities; David Robinson, College of Science and Engineering; Steve Frank, College of Social Sciences.
AD: There is no one from Professional Services?
FA: There is no one from Professional Services and no one from the College of Business.
AD: Okay. We can take that off the agenda?
FA: Right.
9. Reassigned Time (FA) (05/04/06)
AD: You had asked for a listing of faculty and reassigned time for this year and last year. I don’t have that ready yet. I should have it in two weeks. You also requested a list of adjuncts and what they’re teaching. I have that and can give it to you now.
FA: Can you send me an electronic copy?
AD: I think…. Can we provide and electronic copy?
AD: Yes. We can provide an electronic copy. We don’t have what’s being taught.
FA: Will you?
AD: We don’t have what’s being taught in our database. We have all the other information.
AD: We have the departments. We don’t have the courses.
FA: Okay.
AD: I think this also includes summer, does it not?
AD: Yes.
AD: Okay?
FA: Sure. So we’re going to leave that on the agenda.
AD: Yes.
10: Global Initiative (Admin) (05/04/06)
AD: President Saigo talked about that last time and we were wondering if you had any responses or feedback in relation to that topic. The focus on global initiatives for the university and efforts to move forward. There’s something later on the agenda that will address some of the same points. If you want, we could wait until then.
FA: One of the things that… I actually talked to Mark Nook about this,. When we’re out recruiting international students and making agreements with other institutions, we need to inform the departments involved sooner than the day before classes start.
AD: Mark and I had a discussion not long ago in which we talked about calling together a group that would include faculty to talk about the whole process of admission and registration for international students in particular. We haven’t done as good a job with that as we could. We know when students are coming here. When we send them an I-20, not all of them do arrive, but the bulk of the students who get an I-20 do enroll at the university.
FA: What is an I-20?
AD: That’s the visa that they need to get into the U.S. Without that, they can’t come. With that, probably 85-90% of them do arrive. We get information about those students and we can compile that information. We have several weeks at the minimum because it takes that long for them to get the I-20 and then make travel arrangements. We can gather that information and distribute it to the appropriate people on campus so they know, or have a general idea at least, of who ‘s coming, and how many of them are coming to the different programs. If they’re transfer students or graduate students, we know that pretty explicitly. If not, if they’re freshmen, then we can deal with that through the advising center and we can do a far better job of enrolling those students appropriately. We will develop a set of practices and policies for how to do that during this next semester.
FA: There’s also an issue with the TOEFL. There’s been some confusion among the graduate students about information surrounding the >>>> scores and when people are required to take the English as a second language. The information is all there on the web site. It’s just that it’s not easy to understand so we’ve asked our Graduate Committee to work with the Graduate Dean and try to get that taken care of and we would also ask that you would do that.
AD: Yes.
FA: Back perhaps six years ago when we did strategic planning, one aspect of that was social justice and diversity and one line of inquiry was the international students on campus. I was in fact working on that. I met with all of the groups that had clubs on campus – international groups. The thing that came up again and again was the need for more sensitivity to food restrictions by cultures, by religions, and so forth. Aramark, according to the reports I saw, did a very good job and in short responded to that. The international students reported back to me as well. We’ve had a changeover now. Is the new operation similarly sensitive to those kinds of campus-wide needs?
AD: I think regarding those needs, particularly in Garvey, they are being more responsive. They separated a grill for meat and vegetarian. There was an issue of the grill being used for hamburger and then used to fry a veggie burger. They’ve added sauté stations and expanded the vegan options. They’ve expanded the spice and condiment selections for students – international students who have often found our food to be a little bland. We expect in Atwood, we’re pretty limited right now, but as we complete the work in the Market area downstairs, that there will be some expanded options too – fresh fruits and things that are separate and not all mixed together so there would be more vegetarian options. It was part of the request we had. We will be working in partnership with Sodexho to provide for the dietary needs of our students. Garvey will undergo additional remodeling next summer to further accommodate our needs. I think we will find them to be responsive and I have found them, so far, to be doing a good job.
FA: If you want to get some feedback on how they’re doing on that, can I just suggest that you contact the secretary for International Studies. I’m just amazed at their handle on the students there. I bet you in very short order they can gather a representative group to provide you with feedback.
AD: Like a focus group.
FA: Something like that. This does not come from any complaints. This is by way of a heads-up.
AD: I think it’s good advice. I appreciate it.
FA: What I’m going to say – there are several aspects of this global initiative. One is the international studies aspect where we have the international students on the one hand and on the other we have our own international programs where we’re sending students to other countries and there have been a lot of good improvements there. Another area is the curriculum and instruction part – I don’t know if this is considered part of the global initiative.
AD: It should be.
FA: We’ve been doing a lot of work on an international relations program. We’re trying to structure it as an autonomous program of its own with strong connections to the area studies programs so I think this is also part of the direction we’re going in. We’re making some good progress.
AD: I’ve observed that too and it’s been pleasant to see – and good. I think we’re moving in the right direction there and will continue to do so.
FA: I think that an initiative like this is something that none of us can really find fault with. But we are in the trenches and we have pretty good notions of how difficult implementation of some of these things can be. So we are in support of it, but we can’t just say this is going to happen without providing support to faculty and staff who are actually down there working on these kinds of thing.
AD: The other exciting thing – I just went over for a short time to Dar’s retirement party in the College of Education and saw so many people. Five or six individuals, faculty members, were telling me about the trips they were on and are planning. It just blew me away. I had no idea the depth and the extension – the broadness – of the experiences that we have to offer. Last night we were with KARE11 and there was a woman who was recognized from Wisconsin who had collected money to help the tsunami victims in Sri Lanka. I mentioned that we have two faculty members and they knew the names right away. It’s just amazing how this expands into this world. I mentioned that we have a lot of international students – I won’t go into that. Anyway, we are being recognized. It’s becoming more visible everyday. Michael and I are both finding these relationships that we never knew of before. It’s a good thing.
10. Initiative Funding (Admin) (05/04/06)
AD: I think what we’ll do is combine this item with the item that was left off the agenda that should have been on the agenda under new business about budget advisory group.
AD: We had some discussion last year about a budget advisory group. We had a discussion at our last meeting last year about, at the time I think we called it incentive. We want to talk about the broader context of our budget, not as an isolated event, but in the broader context because everything is, some might say, at the expense of something else. We’re still looking at that as something that we want to consider as we discuss what to do in fiscal year 2008 budget. We want to bring together a university-wide budget committee. When we discussed the make-up, I think it was 5 faculty members and we suggested 6 so you could have the conventional representation. Our plan is to send a letter tomorrow requesting 6 members officially for that group. We had a discussion about it.
FA: We need to know the make-up of the whole group.
AD: I’ll give it to you again. I think we gave it to you…
FA: We haven’t agreed to six. You did not give it to us. So there’s no point in requesting six names if we haven’t agreed to it. We have to take it to Senate.
AD: I will provide you with the entire composition of the group. I believe we discussed it last fall because we changed it. I’m happy to do that and have you take it to Senate. That’s great. It would be a university-wide committee with representation from the several bargaining units and also from students and the administration. We had a discussion about it. There was a convocation presentation developed about the budget outlook, the status of ’06 and ’07 – finishing ‘06 and start ’07 – and our hope is to put together our plan for ’08 in a process that is inclusive and open. It’s a lot of work to do as we go to ’08 because we have to set up procedures that are different and share the information broadly across campus. I will get that material to you along with the charge for the committee which we shared at convocation. That was also sent to Annette, although we’ll have it up on the website, the little presentation that gave in a nutshell…
FA: Just send me the web address.
AD: Okay. Then we would like to proceed from there. Of course, we always plan budgets in the context of what they may be doing at MnSCU with the formula or what may be happening in the legislature. What we’re proposing to do, I remember a discussion I had with the faculty budget committee and I think John was one of the advocates, is that we can put together a budget that represents our base, - our standard of operation – and then go from there as we have tuition set and see how the appropriation works. It’s our expectation that initiative funding would be one element within our budget. That was the issue I wanted to bring today.
FA: The budget committee of the IFO met. The minutes of that meeting did not get discussed by our executive committee. There is concern about the size of the group that you propose. It’s too big and perhaps, too bureaucratic – that is, too formal in structure. The example, in my judgment, the best functioning group we have on campus for planning, reflecting on, and collegial activities is the TLTR. With the TLTR there’s really a very minimal formal structure. There are co-chairs. One that comes from the Administration side and then the other comes from the Faculty Associations Technology and Pedagogy Resources Committee. So our Budget Committee did talk about the possibility of having a streamlined university-wide budget group that would operate essentially as a duplicate of TLTR where there really isn’t a membership composition, there are co-chairs and activities go forward.
AD: I think the TLTR is a good model. It’s proven to be a good model. I would be interested to hear in that case a little more formal reaction. I do think that the budget has a little broader interest among employees than perhaps TLTR. While it needs to be a little more formal than TLTR perhaps there is room to streamline. I also particularly like that TLTR publishes when it will meet, and invites all to come. Minutes are out there for people to look at. It’s not just some result that shows up three months later, like it or not. At least people can see that there is a process occurring and if there is something of interest, they can attend. I’ll get the material to Annette. We do want to move forward to a discussion rather that discussing how to have the discussion. I appreciate that, John.
FA: Thank you Steve.
AD: Any other comments?
FA: I will take this to Senate.
AD: Okay.
New Business:
1. IPESL Funds (Admin) (09/07/06)
AD: There are two parts to this initiative. One has to do with funds that are allocated to each university for professional development. As you know, the contract calls for $400,000 to go to the seven state universities for professional development money apart from the amount that goes to individual faculty through a separate descriptor – I’ll put it that way. For St. Cloud State University, that $400,000 turns out to be $103,840. That’s our share of the $400,000. The second element, or the first element of this initiative is to add another $500,000 to that $400,000. Our share of that $500,000 would be $129,800. So together, that’s about $230,000 and change. We need to point out that the $129,800 only comes to us after it has been spent, and only after the full amount of the $103,840 has been spent. So we don’t get an extra penny if we don’t spend the money. It’s important that people be aware of this and that applications be made for that additional professional development money. In the past what we’ve done with the $103,840 pool has been to have that money allocated on the basis of recommendations made by a committee – one committee that deals with short-term research projects and the other that deals with long-term research projects. I think in the case that we’re dealing with now, we should focus more on professional development activities for faculty in general. The proviso in the initiative as it’s described is that it be used to promote excellence in student learning in our state universities. We can expand what’s available to faculty through that additional funding so long as we spend all of the other money first. The second part of this has to do with a call for proposals that will address specific initiatives in a couple of disciplines. Focus on improvement in student learning in reading, writing, math, science and/or critical thinking, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches. There’s a separate pool of money for this.
FA: What are you looking at?
AD: I’m looking at the most recent letter – May 31, 2006 – the same one you have. And our share of the amount of money that has been allocated is $315,437. That money is available based on faculty initiated projects and it has to be used, I think, for compensation. We need to submit a package of all of those together with an over-arching memorandum from the President to Linda Baer’s office in order to qualify for those funds. That has to be submitted by October 31st. We are required by October 1st, for the President to notify the faculty of the procedures for applying, funding, and reporting on these projects. We will have a statement that will go out to all the faculty with that information, but we need to meet and confer first on those practices and policies, and how we’re going to select from among the proposals that we receive from the various faculty. Any comments or questions so far?
FA: Michael, do you know if we’ve spent all of the money in the past?
AD: No, we have not.
FA: I didn’t think that was the case. This will require, at least for that first part, that we have to figure out how to spend the $103…
AD: That money has to be spent this fiscal year or else we don’t get it. What we need to do to make sure it gets spent is over-commit a little bit. I knew Steve was going to take a deep breath at that one, but there always some people who get ill or can’t complete their assignment or can’t spend all the money. If we want to spend it all, we have to commit to spending more than what the absolute allocation is. At least for that initial piece.
AD: There is an option for later allocation.
FA: We had a note, an e-mail from Diana, that said it had to be encumbered by July 1st which meant that it could be spent in the Fall. That’s a different thing than what you’re saying right now.
AD: That was my understanding of what the directions were. Now encumbering them by the end of the fiscal year would mean that usually, it has to be spent by September 1st – not into the fall.
FA: That needs to be made more clear.
AD: We’ll go back and do that. There is a preference that an encumbrance not be a surrogate for a carry-forward. I’ll verify what the language is and if there are any dates that make it clear as to what spent means.
FA: Michael, I’ve served on the committees that review both long and short-term faculty improvement grants and I’ve also served on the committee that awards the research portion that we allocate. At the time, I thought that any unspent monies for long and short-term faculty improvement grants get rolled forward into the following fiscal year. Which meant that the faculty who worked on those committees, their practices were such that they weren’t really driven to spend all of the money in any given year. They tried to be rigorous in reviewing the proposals and if a proposal didn’t meet a minimum threshold, they didn’t award the money.
AD: Right.
FA: Now, what we’ve got is a circumstance where that past practice which was wise, I believe it was wise during that era, actually works against us if we want to access the additional $129,000. We’ve got to figure out a way to change our practices that faculty apply for and receive these improvement dollars to maximize that opportunity.
AD: We need to encourage more faculty to apply and I think expand some what, the categories for which they are eligible while this pot of money is available.
AD: Do we have a mechanism, John? We’re all busy. I remember as a faculty member I’d come back from my national meeting in August and I’d be really excited, but then I’m carrying 18 contact hours, and then here’s an opportunity and so from the department level, how do we support - Michael, and Ed and others – how do we support Andy coming back from an international econ conference and here’s an opportunity, he’s got great ideas, but you’re teaching a full load, you don’t have assistants to help. We can’t just say “You all do this.” How do we put a mechanism in place. Who’s in charge? Who’s going to help? How are we going to get this done?
FA: The reason I asked the follows-up questions about the money is that this is a case where all of us need to get the word out that if we don’t change what has been historic practices, we will lose the opportunity to benefit from the $129,000. That means the faculty committee that goes through this process of making recommendations needs to know early on.
AD: I suggest two things. The almost $104,000, that pool of money I would suggest, would be allocated the way we generally do for long-term and short-term research grants. The additional money, which is about $130,000 can be available for other kinds of professional development activities other that the long and short-term research projects. That’s one of the ways to expand how that funding can become available to more faculty in more ways.
FA: Let me propose something else. You were going from a circumstance where the problem was one of triage – not enough money for all of the proposals – to one of not enough proposals for all of the money. That entails two problems. One, past practice which is part of peoples’ mentality, is getting faculty to apply/to submit proposals. Why don’t you look at the application itself, being radically streamlined, which in itself communicates: look, the threshold is different this time. We’ve got a different problem, we’ve got to spend this money, we’re streamlining the process, look how short the form is. As you can see, many of the questions are of the yes/no type. So that the process itself communicates: the problem is to spend the money, please help us spend the money.
FA: Do we need to caucus on this?
(Faculty adjourned to caucus.)
FA: Here’s what we’d like to see happen with that additional money that’s going to Article 19. We would like the Provost to meet with Debra Japp who chairs the Faculty Research Grants Committee and Marla Kanengieter-Wildeson who chairs the Professional Improvement Committee and tell them what you think is going on and they will talk to their committees and they will come back with something that has to happen. Because those committees determine how that money is sent out and they make recommendations to the faculty so we couldn’t here, decide what those committees are going to do. So what they have to do is know what they need to do and then they’ll make a decision on how to do it because we can’t do that.
AD: I’m trying to understand that point.
FA: Those committees essentially run themselves and they make a recommendation. They have a notion of how they want to allocate that money. They figure it out and then they go to the Senate and say “This is how we’re going to do it.” We don’t tell that committee what to do. The committee tells us what it’s going to do.
AD: You still have to approve their proposals…
FA: We approve their proposals but for the most part, we have approved what they have been doing so far. If it’s going to change, the fastest way to do that is for you to talk to the chairs of those committees directly, get with them and talk about what their concerns are and what has to happen, then they’ll come back to us with what they intend to do.
AD: Can that happen very quickly?
FA: If you talk to them quickly.
AD: I’ll be glad to talk to them – quickly. Now, let’s turn to the other portion of this.
FA: Bill …
FA: So, we think a form needs to be slapped together real fast.
AD: Which one are you talking about?
FA: The $350,000.
FA: Annette tells me that part of that form is on the MnSCU site so we can grab that and add something, hopefully pretty short, and put the description of what kind of information is going to be required for the proposals to be considered.
AD: There are guidelines for that that are available and the guidelines are fairly explicit in terms of what kinds of projects they can be, what needs to be included. They have to be based on documented evidence of a student learning challenge or need to be addressed. They can only be expended for competitive compensation. There have to be clearly specified methods of assessment. So there are those characteristics and we have to have this in, as I said before, by October 31st after we announce what these procedures are to the campus as a whole – which we need to do very quickly.
FA: Who do we think should be on the group that puts this together?
FA: I have a suggestion on that. Why don’t we just have one committee. Why don’t we have six faculty and two administrators unless you folks have some agenda. Do you have some special thrust that you’d like for the projects, or some special theme besides what you just laid out?
AD: No.
FA: Then let’s go with six faculty and two administrators. It’s a waste of your management and our sense is that as the year evolves, you’re going to have better things to do. This looks like a situation where probably all of the decisions are going to be unanimous and if they aren’t, the split’s not going to be administration/faculty, it’s going to be questions of judgment.
AD: I guess I had thought that a committee with six administrators and 6 faculty would be fine and I thought that was a very workable approach. If there were competition, if there were far more applications than there was money, that individuals from a given college would not participate in the vote, whether they be dean or faculty member.
FA: This is all going to be very fast-track.
AD: I know.
FA: The more people you get on a committee, the more cumbersome it becomes and then people not being able to be in two places at the same time, unnecessarily takes them away from other stuff they may be doing. Frankly, it might be work-intensive, but isn’t controversy controversy-intensive? Is it or am I missing something?
AD: I don’t think it will be. This is something the President has to develop an over-arching picture of what it is we want to do and how it all fits together. There are certain parameters that the faculty may not be fully aware of. I’m not saying this to say that faculty can’t judge quality.
FA: So are they guessing? We need to be aware of them.
AD: We will try to make them aware of them and the specifics of this are pretty clear about what sorts of things go and don’t go. So basically, it’s a matter of selecting the best ones.
FA: I don’t know, Michael. As I was thinking about this it struck me that one of two situations pertain. Either in addition to the criteria laid out in the MnSCU document, this campus has specific goals – in which case, we may or may not agree with you and we’re going to argue about how many people from each side should be on the committee. It makes sense because there are interests to be watched out for. Second case, you’re good with the criteria that are laid out and aside from that, let’s just pick the best ones that meet these criteria. In which case, there is very little reason for conflict aside from the different judgments that people have not as faculty members, but as human beings and members of the academic community.
AD: I agree with that part. I don’t see this as interest-based in the way that you’re describing it. I really don’t. I see us trying to come up with the best proposals possible for the university and I don’t think it makes a difference if the person’s a faculty member or an administrator, I think they can make and exercise valid judgments about what makes sense. We may have different priorities and different ways of looking at things, and that’s normal. I don’t see that in any way detracting from what we come up with as a group.
FA: Yes. But we’re more numerous than you. You need this done really quickly. We can get you six people pretty promptly and we will use up all of the volunteers from your side, people you would assign, on topics that we think are more proper interest-driven. I don’t know, if this is not a terrain where the interests are going to collide.
AD: I don’t anticipate that it will be.
FA: Then let’s go with six and two. Everybody’s going to be listening to everybody’s’ opinion
anyway. It’s not going to be one of those deals where we vote solidly for faculty and you vote solidly as many administrators as you have and that’s how the vote goes down. I mean, it’s not that kind of a deal is it?
AD: I think I want us to caucus.
(Administration adjourned to caucus)
AD: I think what we’d like to do is follow the same process that we followed with a number of other kinds of situations such as the long-term and short-term research projects. Have a committee of six faculty, or however many faculty you want, and submit your recommendations to my office.
FA: So no administrators at all?
AD: No administrators.
FA: Oh, that will be interesting.
FA: But you’re going to collect?
AD: The applications will come to my office. We’ll give them to the committee, the committee can make recommendations, and then we’ll act on those recommendations, or not, as we have in the past. We hope that if there’s an issue that comes up with regard to the numbers of representatives, you’ll remember our collegiality about this (laughter)
FA: We need to form a committee to work with Richard to get the grant application process going.
AD: That’s for the other…
FA: No, no. Even this has to have a process where people make announcements and…
AD: We need to send out a call for proposals to all of the Faculty and let them know what the deadline is, basically, what’s in Linda Baer’s memorandum, and ask them to submit their proposals to my office. You let me know who the members of the committee are and we’ll give the stuff to the committee for their recommendations.
FA: The announcement would come from your office?
AD: My office or the President.
FA: So you guys will do that?
AD: Yes,
FA: We’ll just form a committee that will review them?
AD: Right?
FA: Does that work?
FA: Yes. That’s great. Whatever expedites the whole thing. Personally, I think it’s really important that if you have some focus or some agenda, or some goal that goes beyond the stark words on a page, and you said something, Michael, earlier that just kind of triggered that suspicion in my mind.
AD: No.
FA: Okay, maybe I misunderstood. Wonderful. I’m just saying, in fairness to the people who are applying, and to make sure this whole thing goes through very quickly, let’s just put everything on the table really clearly.
AD: Yes.
FA: And then it will sail through.
AD: It’s all on the table. The only thing we want to look at are those categories that are specified in that document.
FA: So your office and the President’s office is going to work with Richard to get out the announcement?
AD: I don’t know if we’ll work with Richard, but we’ll get out the announcement.
FA: You’ll get out the announcement and the form and we will get a faculty committee who will review and rank the proposals.
AD: Yes.
FA: Okay. After they rank them, you’ll decide which ones get sent? Is that the…
AD: Yes.
FA: Okay.
2. Applied Doctorates (FA) (09/07/06)
FA: What we’d like is a report on where this institution is in doing those. One of the things I noticed is that in the minutes of the last Senate meeting we essentially approved the courses, but we withheld the proposal which I accidentally actually signed and sent to you.
AD: I know.
FA: The problem is, there are questions about how the budgeting is going to work for these. There are also questions about how many proposals we’re sending forward and where that’s at. There are concerns that if these programs are primarily for people who are from the MnSCU institutions, that even though we are charging extra tuition, we aren’t actually going to get any. So that while the promise is that these programs will pay for themselves, they won’t pay for themselves and so they will end up being out of hide for the faculty and the institutions that offer them.
AD: Can I respond to that?
FA: Yes, all of them I suspect.
AD: Okay.
FA: We’d like a response…
AD: I’ll respond to all parts of your comment as best I can. We are going to be submitting one proposal. That’s all that MnSCU will entertain from us at this time and all that the Higher Learning Commission will accept from us as an initial entry into doctoral education. It’s been very clear from both MnSCU and the Higher Learning Commission that if we want any kind of positive response to an application to offer an applied doctorate we better not send more than one. We do have folks have working in a couple of different areas. We have the proposal that you referred to as an Educational Administration proposal. We have some folks working on a Higher Ed proposal as well. What I would love to see, and I am trying to get some faculty cooperation involved in the process, is to have those as two tracks of a single degree program. One of the things that MnSCU is looking for is evidence of a high quality and innovative, non-duplicative kind of program. I think that particularly in the last several years, there’s been an enormous amount of interest in the lack of cooperation between public education and higher education and the ways in which they are not aligned appropriately. Having a focus that connects K-12 with higher education would provide a level of uniqueness to this degree and timeliness to this degree that is not present in most Ed.D.s. The faculty have been having some discussions about their level of willingness to do that. With regard to the funding, we clarified from conversations with folks at MnSCU that faculty and employees at the two-year colleges would not be eligible for tuition waiver for this program. Faculty at universities would be. One of the ways we would address that would be to focus on some combination of tuition and fees that would total what the full tuition equivalency would be so that there would be basically a discount for university employees, but they would still pay a portion of the cost for those courses. That’s where our thinking on this goes in order to maintain the self-sufficiency of the program. I think I covered all of the points.
FA: Michael, it sounded very much like the direction that you’ve described is how the partnership with the University of Minnesota worked relative to the Ed.D.
AD: With the tuition?
FA: Well, the funding, and the fact that it was a multiple track. That the cohorts that were here, represented about 50% from various higher education entities and about 50% from the K-12 school systems. So what you described at one time, we’ve had two cohorts of students that received an E.dD. that was collaborative between here and the U.
AD: I think the criterion that Michael is talking about of being innovative, John, on the surface it sounds like a pretty flat question. But as we look to the future, and I can’t see any further than all of us, but I’m guessing that there’s going to be a John Palmer out there whose going to be in Maple Grove, who’s going to come here for a weekend, make take an on-line course, may take a course from Anoka Ramsey, and maybe even a Saturday course from St. Thomas. I think that one innovation, whatever that will be is different than what we’ve had in the past of having >>> over a certain period of time to get your degree. The best ideas are going to come from you all and I agree, Bill, when we’re talking about the research and the curriculum and things. We need to think about the environment of the state. This state is aging quickly. The only way we’re making up the population would be the immigrants that are coming here. So that’s a change. In-location individuals who can’t move, single parents, with children and so on. As you guys are there and you have the grassroots and we live all around the 100 mile radius of this place, how do you envision that innovation to have two or three different tracks to get these students to where they need to be? St. Thomas is coming back a little bit. We had breakfast this morning in the Cities and this one fellow is a marketer and he’s starting to go back. Then another fellow who’s son, I met him at a Chamber thing two days ago, he’s on the board of St. Thomas. His son had gone to Winona and outgrew that and so he’s a senior here and enjoys the challenge of St. Cloud State. As we look as these things, what St. Thomas is going to do, how do we make up those differences with the General College at the University of Minnesota being dropped, the entry-level for teaching and all? So lots of different things are happening that’s going to allow us to use our strength to fortify us because enrolments of the high school graduating classes are shrinking. Unfortunately there’s a woman named Judith Bailey, whom I’ve talked about in the past in this group. She went to Northern Michigan to Western Michigan and she just got fired because her enrollments went down. And you know just like St. Cloud State, your enrollments decide the budget that we set aside to allocate the resources. If we don’t hit those by 200, here, it’s $1,400,000. Not only did she not hit her enrollment, that then created this lack of money and they were in the hole. As we look to the future, I’m convinced that we can’t continue doing the same kind of thing and saying “You all come” you 18 year olds. The least served population are 29 year olds. How do we deal with that? I think that Michael and his Academic Affairs Council and you all, through Strategic Planning will help us start serving those people. That’s what St. Thomas has been doing. Now they’re starting to instill a requirement of their religious base and that’s going to slow them down some. It’s going to be an interesting mix with the University dropping the General College and St. Thomas putting in new requirements. It kind of provides us an opportunity, if we’re smart, to do what we need to do.
AD: Any other comments on this or questions?
FA: We’ll probably be back to ask some more. Have you talked to the faculty involved in this? Are they aware of what you just told us?
AD: Yes, as far as I know.
FA: Okay.
AD: We had a conversation about it at the last UCC meeting – through the good graces of the members who invited Mitch and Dennis and me to the last UCC meeting.
3. Searches in Academic Affairs (Admin) (09/07/06)
AD: There are three that I would point to. One that started in the spring semester, is for the Associate Vice President for International Studies. The search committee for that position went through the list of candidates. They selected semi-finalists for the position and were waiting to get back to campus to do telephone interviews then to determine which candidates to bring to campus as finalists. That should occur fairly shortly. There are two other positions in my office, the Associate Vice President for Curriculum and the Assistant Vice President for Faculty Relations. Those are currently occupied by interim folk and I would like to do searches this year to fill those positions with 3-year renewable terms – internal searches with 3 year renewable terms. This would give individuals on campus an opportunity if they’re interested in some sort of administrative work.
FA: Are the current incumbents eligible?
AD: Yes.
FA: Is this for somebody from the faculty or anyone?
AD: It would in all likelihood be a faculty person who had relevant experience.
FA: Okay. So they would become reassigned to administration for 3 years.
AD: Correct.
FA: Which would mean that they would lose one year of seniority?
AD: Yes. Possibly more.
FA: Yes, if they get reappointed. Are these positions open to people who haven’t been tenured yet?
AD: I’d have to look at the job descriptions. I’m not sure.
FA: There’s an issue. If they stay in the position for 12 years and when they go back to the department and they haven’t been able to do any research because they’ve been doing this other work. Where does that put them?
FA: To make it also very clear. If you take a 4-year person and put them in your office during their fifth year, what would they do during that 5th year. Would they apply for tenure within a department – those types of questions – or even promotion, which is more likely, how would you deal with that?
AD: It think in the case that we’re talking about, that person wouldn’t… I would think that it would make sense that if it’s a faculty member, that the person be tenured first. It makes sense for lots of reasons.
FA: Right. And how about promotion? If you had an Associate Professor, how would we deal with that?
AD: I think that the person would have to go back to the faculty and be in the faculty to come up for promotion.
FA: We need to see the job descriptions.
FA: Did you say 3 years Michael?
AD: Three year terms.
FA: How many positions?
AD: Two.
FA: There were three he talked about.
AD: Right. One was the International Studies which is different than the two in my office. There was a third. There’s a person who is on leave from that position. There’s another Assistant Vice President position. The incumbent is Joe Opatz who is on leave for the year. I have reassigned Christine Imbra half-time to do projects in the office to deal with some of those activities. She’s 51% faculty. While that leave is continuing, and I don’t know how long it will be, we’ll probably maintain something along those lines.
FA: Are there any other jobs that have interims in them that we’re currently thinking about filling?
AD: We have a number of interims we’ll do searches for in the spring – early January – February because people have been reassigned to other positions during the year.
AD: We hired, in the last day, a Director of Printing Services and a Safety Officer on campus.
FA: So you hired a safety officer…
AD: Today.
AD: I should say that we’ve hired a Director of Admissions and two Associate Directors of Admissions. I don’t know what the status is of the….
AD: Associate Director of Honors. It’s a MSUAASF position.
FA: I don’t understand that one. Is this in the Admissions Office?
AD: No. The Associate Director of Honors is in Honors and reports to the Honors Director.
FA: Who is the Director of Honors?
AD: David Boyer.
FA: David Boyer’s the Director.
AD: This MSUAASF position will report to him
FA: If an Associate applies for these jobs you’re talking about, they would have to go back to the Department to apply for their next promotion?
AD: They would have to go back into the Faculty after leaving that administrative job and return to the faculty and go through the promotion process at that point as whatever professional work that they accomplished can be evaluated by the Faculty.
FA: Thank you.
FA: I think that there have been some problems caused on this campus – I could name people, but I’m not going to – who have moved into administrative positions, even part-time administrative positions and then put their departments in really tough spots by applying for promotion. That’s the reason for the question.
AD: I understand.
FA: It really makes us look bad when we do that. Are we going to form search committees for those positions.
AD: Yes.
FA: And come back with a proposal…
AD: Yes.
FA: Also, we’d like to see the job descriptions. So at the next Meet and Confer we’ll get the search committees and the job descriptions.
AD: Okay.
4. Assessment of Prior Learning Application (Admin) (09/07/06)
AD: Mitch is going to talk about this briefly. There was also one for late withdrawal that I couldn’t find to distribute at our Pre-meet, but it’s there.
AD: This is a form that Sue Bayerl and I put together to implement a policy that the Faculty Senate approved last year on assessment of prior learning and that appears on the back of the sheet. Is there anyone who does not know what assessment of prior learning is?
FA: The question would be: does anyone know what it is? I don’t know what it is. I’d like it explained.
AD: Okay. Assessment of prior learning is a means by which we can assign credit to students without them having to take courses. We can give them credit for material that would be equivalent to a course that we offer. We have various means of doing that. One is through advanced placement. Another is having somebody test out in a course. This would be a way whereby a student would work with a faculty member to determine whether a not a student has mastered the material that would be the equivalent of a specific course that the university offers. A student would come to the faculty member and the faculty member would determine whether or not the prospective student or actual student would be worthwhile evaluating. If the faculty member thought it would be worthwhile, the student would then initiate this application and it would have to be approved by the Department, the Dean and then Academic Affairs for this evaluation to proceed. At that point, the faculty member would evaluate the student’s mastery of the material and determine whether or not the student would receive credit for that course. The method of evaluation would be determined by the faculty member.
AD: This policy was approved last spring by the Senate. Part of the policy says, under procedure 1, “The student completes an application for assessment of prior learning.” What we’re looking at is the form that would comprise the application.
FA: How are faculty compensated?
AD: It’s spelled out in the IFO contract.
FA: There’s language regarding compensation. We need to take this back to one of our committees and have them look at it.
AD: Okay.
FA: One thing I would suggest right away – actually 2 things – look at the curriculum approval form. Typically we have more than one signature from the department besides the faculty member concerned. So it would be a department chair’s signature, the faculty member doing it, and then a department signature that verifies that it went through the department. You need three signatures. The person doing the examination, the faculty chair, and someone who attests to the fact that the department has been consulted.
AD: So under Section A you’re saying that when the department chair signs off, the application can go forward.
FA: Yes. But the department chair…
AD: So this is a request by the student.
FA: Right.
AD: So in this case, the department chair is approving the request by the student for the assessment to proceed.
FA: Okay.
AD: Then C is approval by the Dean and then D is approval by the Office of Academic Affairs. Then at the very bottom you have the signature of… Under Roman numeral III there are two signatures again.
FA: That’s the place where we would like the third signature – for the department. Like for the curriculum committee. So you want a signature besides that. The other thing is I would leave more space for the description of methods to be used.
AD: I’m assuming that we’ll attach a sheet. We wanted to get this on one page.
FA: Okay.
AD: Steve.
FA: Following from what Annette is saying, I still have a problem in B with the approval by the department chairperson and wonder if that’s really the department’s approval for someone doing it, not that the department chair has authority to approve X faculty or Y faculty. It seems to me, that rests with the department. If you simply put department approval, the chair can sign off on it on behalf of the department with department’s approval but it’s not… It seems to me that it’s not just the chairperson alone. If there is one signature there, it’s for the department. It could be the chair of the curriculum committee, it could be the department chair. But it’s not the department chair’s place to make that decision for the department, I don’t think.
AD: On the other side of the page, number 3, it says: If the department chair believes the assessment is appropriate…”
FA: Okay. Then we approved that already.
AD: So we’re really talking about adding a signature of somebody else in the department under Roman numeral 3?
AD: Do you want to bring this back to the committee or do you want…
FA: We’re going to take it back to the committee.
AD: Let’s do that and go to the next item. Mitch, are we in the same place with that late withdrawal policy and the form? Is that the same situation?
AD: I don’t know where we are with that.
AD: We’ll come back to that one then.
5. Announce, Discuss and Bulletin Boards (FA) (09/07/06)
(President Saigo left the meeting to welcome international students)
FA: I’m not good at managing my e-mail account and I get flooded and overwhelmed and depressed and then I evade responsibility.
AD: I knew there was something wrong with you (laughter)
FA: I would have to change my habits. I thought the university could change more easily (more laughter) in the following way. Why can’t I just opt in at the beginning of the year? Why can’t I just be sent a checklist: which of the following announcements are relevant to you? Check them off. Do you want to get all the announcement of vacancies in AFSCME? Do you want to get all of the announcements of upcoming home athletic events? Yes – and so forth down the list. Then, no policing of that. If athletics sends you an announcement and says that it’s about a local athletic event – good enough. If it isn’t, and I get it, and it’s actually about five cats that have been born, I’ll flame the person. (laughter) I don’t expect anyone to do any more work than simply to list the categories that keep occurring and give me a chance to say “no thanks.”
AD: Over the course of the last few years there have been numerous conversations with Faculty and in TLTR to have a policy for employees that mirrors the student policy. So that’s what we’ve been working on. That draft has gone to TPR, they were going to look at it right away in the fall. That I think is going to serve close to the same purpose as what you’re talking about in that only messages that are intended for all faculty and staff – all employees – would have that broad distribution. All other messages would be an opt-in thing and in particular we’re looking at bulletin boards for the cats and the whatever, and then sub=lists of employees would be set up for those other types of messages. That was the intent of what we were hearing from the faculty previously and we have it kind of all ready to go once this policy gets reviewed and gets through the channels.
FA: We read it, but it wasn’t really clear that that is what is going to happen. It seemed when we read it that there were going to be 3 things. One of them would be an announce, so I’d get all the AFSCME stuff. The other one was that there was going to be a discuss and then there were going to be bulletin boards. It wasn’t clear. What you’re saying now…
AD: It’s possible to take what we now call announce and have sub-groups so that there would be one set of announcements that, for example, could go to all faculty and only faculty. And there would be another set that could go to other staff and there would be a third that would go to both groups depending on the nature of the announcement. We would, under that circumstance, want the listing for the faculty to be an official means of communication so that faculty couldn’t opt out from that one and say “I didn’t get that information.” That’s the way we would communicate official information.
FA: Then you have to make sure that everybody has a computer in their office.
AD: If there are Faculty who don’t have that, we need to know.
AD: Yes, we do, because we spent a lot of money last year on getting up-to-date equipment for people - $200,000 plus. So if your folks don’t have it, we need to know.
FA: That doesn’t seem that controversial. It seems to me we crossed that bridge already when we agreed to e-mail as an official form of communication.
AD: We only agreed to that for students. We haven’t agreed to that for faculty and staff. That’s what we’re looking to do now.
FA: I think faculty asked for it.
AD: You did.
FA: We want it under the circumstances that we don’t have to get all that extraneous material.
AD: Then there would be another distribution list, like Announce, whether we call it that or not, where if you’re not interested in it, don’t sign on and you won’t get any of it.
AD: That’s one of the details we have to work out. The way the student’s e-mail works right now, there is a way to post to all students and there are only certain offices that may do it. They have to go through some training where we make them practice and look at examples of what kind of messages to send out. We make them think through this. We won’t turn them on until they have a good grasp that they can’t send out cat notifications and that stuff. What goes out to students is very restrictive. I bet that at most, they get 2-3 postings a month. It’s very, very minimal. If we want to have a discuss still operating, we can do that and that would be an opt-in. The intent was, at least previously what I was hearing from the faculty, all the other kinds of announcement postings like cats and cars and rentals and everything else, would go on a bulletin board. We’ve got permission now from MnSCU to do an electronic bulletin board. They weren’t that enamored with the concept until I reminded them that we have them in the hallways for paper so it’s silly to block one and not the other. We do have that and people can go check the bulletin board instead of having junk reaming at them.
FA: Subject to discussions between the appropriate groups, that sounds like a satisfactory, at least it meets my personal concerns. This official means of communication thread to this discussion. One of our concerns in that is that really important, contractually important, communication where missing a deadline involves penalties for people – is it your intent to use e-mail for those kinds of communication?
AD: I would think yes.
FA: We’re probably going to be resistant.
AD: We’ll have to talk about it. There may be some things we want to do more than one way.
FA: Things that require signatures. We don’t know how… We also have this problem where you can’t even figure out where my office is. It’s just astonishes me that you can’t figure out that the Faculty Association is in the North Office Center. Some things you send to faculty are very important and you don’t even send them registered mail and they go to the wrong place. We’ve had grievance things that have been sent to faculty, to their campus mailboxes after school is out. That’s a wonderful way to orchestrate missing those 30 day deadlines. That’s what it looks like to us. Last spring there were some really important ones that got sent to the wrong…
AD: I think we’re off the topic.
FA: No, it is on topic. We’re talking about sending out official stuff.
AD: I know that from my perspective, if there’s stuff that needs to be sent during the summer, it’s been sent to mailboxes and home addresses. Not just one. We try to catch people in whatever way we can.
FA: Well, not everyone does that.
FA: I teach computers all the time so I’m not sitting in front of the computer like a slot machine looking for how many messages I got. In the summer I’m off. Maybe I left the country. If something very important comes only through e-mail, I’m, not going to go everywhere looking for a computer. That’s not practical. I know I get convocation information sent to my home. That’s great. E-mail cannot be the only form of official communications – especially the important ones.
AD: In the same way that we did the training for the student e-mail, this seems like it would be an important component of the training. It’s really ludicrous to send something on e-mail when people aren’t around. Hopefully people are using wisdom in their choices. Obviously, they don’t always do that.
FA: I think a part of our discussion last year on this item was – and it doesn’t seem to have shown up in the current document – was that we didn’t want personnel materials, whether they be contracts or discipline materials, or any of those kinds of things happening via e-mail. We still believe that those things need to be certified mail, hard copy, or however they go. Maybe it was assumed in this document, but it’s not stated clearly. Yes, we want e-mail to be an official communication, but those kinds of personnel things need to be hard copy.
AD: I would think that that’s what we would do. We’re not talking about stuff that’s sent to individuals.
FA: Okay.
AD: But the policy does though. The thing that we do talk about there is that you should never send anything, and I quote “regarding sensitive or confidential matters.” I think we probably thought that took into account personnel matters. It doesn’t hurt to make that clear.
FA: Michael’s statement just now, that it’s not going to be about individuals, that clears up the whole thing.
AD: That’s the way I would see it but I may be wrong about that. I haven’t been part of those discussions.
AD: This is a confusing thing with the student policy too. But general policy says: e-mail is now an official means of communication. That’s what the general policy says. The faculty may send to students: don’t forget this assignment it’s due this date. They have now been officially notified of that. In the same way, we’re saying we’re going to do that with employees. The whole spin-off part of that is how we get notification out to everybody. That’s the Announce and Discuss business that sits on the side of it. It gets kind of confused. The policy, in effect says this is official now. If you get communication this way, you’re responsible for it. But there are certain types that it’s not appropriate to use e-mail for and we’ve tried to specify it, but didn’t clearly state those items.
FA: Michael, if your answer is: the official communication would be communication that affects all of the members of the bargaining unit. The concern that was initially expressed I don’t think is there. The concern is that some people play games and e-mail is even easier to play games with. If you know how to change the way in which it appears and was date stamped. Having had disputed a grievance of whether or not an envelope actually was slid under my door at 4:00 p.m. on the last day of school of the semester. That was a matter of dispute. The problem is that if it’s going to affect an individual, that ought to be handled in the highest level of professional correspondence. If I’m not mistaken, e-mail is not the highest level of professional correspondence. I heard you say…
AD: That’s my take on it. Just because you use e-mail as an official means of communication, doesn’t mean you can’t use the phone or snail-mail at the same time.
AD: I understand what’s being said. I had some reticence about e-mail as an official means of communication personally. Some had reticence about no longer getting their pay advice in the mail and have it become electronic. Our opinion of that may be one thing, but the fact is, the Office of the Chancellor and the State of Minnesota are moving that way. We’re talking about timesheets for AFSCME and all to be electronic. Leave slips move that way rather than having this paper that’s transferred from office to office. Promotions or the step increases that go with them. For a couple of years they have been conducting this as a trial. So the official communication is not going to be quite as restrictive as the discussion of: well it will only be broadcast to everyone. It’s going to be peculiar to the individual on occasion, although we’re reticent about that and in some cases prefer different mailing that has postmarks or whatever, I think we better be cognizant of the fact that some folks outside of us are going to be pushing us in a way that might be different than we prefer. That’s my only comment on that.
FA: I think all the more so, I wasn’t aware of this evolution, So all the more reason to take the course that you’ve outlined so that the volume of mail that we get is not so crushing that an important, I mean first level priority communication, is buried in there to the person who is opening the e-mail. You lead off with five inquiries from students. You have five more minutes and you miss this one buried in there and you delete the whole thing that looks like AFSCME and cat and so forth – there goes the communication and now you’re screwed. What I understand you saying Michael, is that we’re going to operate on the principle of: we’re all human beings and there’s many slips between the cup and the lip and you’ll update us as the policy….
AD: It’s actually in your hands right now so you’ll get to …
AD: It will come to the Senate. We’re running out of time but there are a couple of items I think we need to get to maybe very briefly.
6. Pandemic Planning (Admin) (09/07/06)
AD: Pandemic planning doesn’t sound like something we need to discuss at Meet and Confer necessarily, although I think we do. One of the considerations we’ve been addressing with the pandemic planning is that we may have to make some modifications to some academic policies in the event that we have an interrupted or cancelled semester. We talked about some of those at the various committees that met and made some comments about those at the convocation week but we do want the appropriate committees to look at some of those matters in relation to: what happens if we cancel the semester, or people are ill; what do we do about withdrawals and deadline dates; how do we handle grades – depending on when in the semester, if it becomes necessary to cancel a semester, at what point do we conclude that the semester is complete – even though we haven’t run through the full fifteen weeks. At what point do we cancel the semester and start over as if it never happened? We need some input on those kinds of decisions. You can decide what committee it should go to.
FA: We don’t even know what the list of…
AD: We can send you a list of the items we have thought of. You may think of others.
FA: If we can get that.
AD: We can do that.
7. Academic Calendar (Admin) (9/7/06)
AD: As I think you know, MnSCU has adopted a policy of a uniform start date for all universities. We were exempted for that for 2007 but not for 2008.
FA: Calendar.
AD: Yes. The academic calendar. We’re going to have to start at the same time as everybody else.
FA: Which is?
AD: It’s going to be one week earlier. The Monday before Labor Day.
FA: That’s for Fall ’07.
AD: No. Fall ‘08
FA: How about the spring semester start?
AD: I think that’s also specified.
FA: Is there any specification about ending the term?
AD: No.
AD: Only start dates.
FA: Except that at the state-wide Meet and Confer one of the chancellor’s minions did say that he wanted us to go to a uniform end date.
AD: An earlier start date gives us a lot more flexibility, especially with, the fall semester schedule, and there are things that faculty have requested that we could incorporate into a calendar now, that we weren’t able to do before. For example, a fall semester break. Perhaps some kind of professional development day during the semester rather than the week before. We have an opportunity to make some significant changes to the way we handle the calendar so we need a committee to begin to look at that so that we can develop the new calendar.
FA: Didn’t we last spring make a taskforce on the calendar?
AD: Yes. We have a taskforce and we’re in the process…
FA: So we already have this?
AD: Yes. We have all but two names.
FA: And we sent you the names, right?
AD: Yes. We need the names for two more constituencies on campus and then I hope to convene the group soon.
FA: Okay.
FA: It’s interesting that we went from pandemic to the calendar. The pandemic is a crisis that we can’t control that’s going to happen. The calendar is a crisis that was created by the Office of the Chancellor and the Board. But we should have a plan for when the systems crash. Because they will crash.
FA: When the ISRS crashes.
FA: When the ISRS crashes, when D2L crashes. Maybe what we should do is have a period of time when we have a hiatus from class to allow for recovery.
FA: This may sound like it’s in jest, but the reality is, that the systems that we have, it’s absolutely ludicrous that we’ve created a crisis where no crisis needed to be. We have to build capacity where no building of capacity will be.
FA: It’s not anything that anyone on this campus can do anything about.
FA: We can have a plan to respond to the crisis.
FA: Right. That is something the calendar people need to think about.
FA: If they’ve got us starting a week earlier, he said we need a “fix-it” week. We could start the week before Labor Day, then take the week of Labor Day off. (laughter)
FA: What does the administration think of the possibility that it’s going to crash? Do they think it’s going to crash?
AD: I have pushed them hard on this at MnSCU. They’re saying that they’re investing so everything will be fine.
FA: Actually, we’re investing to the tune of $600,000.
AD: Chargeback. That’s not just for that, though.
AD: We don’t know if the systems going to hold up or not. I think as Annette said, it’s not our call. We are adjourned.
Meeting adjourned 5:07 p.m.