Meet and Confer Notes – Final Approved 11-2-06

October 5, 2006

 

Administration:  President Saigo, Provost Spitzer, Mitch Rubenstein, Anne Zemek de Dominguez, Steve Ludwig, Mark Nook, Kristi Tornquist

 

Faculty:  Annette Schoenberger, John Palmer, Andrew Larkin, Fred Hill, Balsy Kasi, JoAnn Gasparino, Jayantha, Steve Hornstein

 

Approval of Minutes:

 

Minutes from September 28, 2006 – pending

 

Unfinished Business:

 

1.      Template on Teaching Schedule/Contact Hours (FA – 10/20/2005)

 

AD:  We want to have more discussion at Academic Affairs Council about that so we’ll bring it back. 

 

2.      Reassigned Time (FA – 05/04/2006)

 

AD:  We did a little research on this and what I’ve learned is that Jackie used to prepare these and send them over to the Faculty Association and never even told me that she was doing it.  When Jackie was no longer here, we didn’t have a history that this had to get done.  That’s why it hasn’t been sent out.  We’re working on that now and will have it to you soon.

 

FA:  Okay.

 

AD:  Any questions or comments on that?

 

FA:  So, we’re missing two years of that?

 

AD:  We’ll do this year and the last two years – three years.  We’ll have three years.

 

FA:  Okay.

 

3.      Searches in Academic Affairs (Admin.) and elsewhere (FA – 9/7/2006)

 

AD:  You wanted job descriptions for those two positions that we talked about.  Here are those job descriptions.

 

FA:  I’ll take these to Senate.

 

AD:  Okay.

 

FA:  I sent out requests for volunteers to serve on those committees and I should have somebody by October 25th.

 

AD:  Okay.

 

FA:  I also have had people asking me about applying for these jobs.  Should they contact your office for information?

 

AD:  Sure.  To fill you in on another one of the searches, the chair of the search committee is working to schedule on-campus interviews for the finalists for the Associate Vice President for International Studies.

 

FA:  When do you expect to fill that position?

 

AD:  We’re expecting candidates in the middle to end of October, depending on their availability.  One of them is out of the country.  I would think we should have those interviews completed by the end of the month.  We’ll have to have some feedback from the committee and recommendations and talk to the candidates, and depending on what their timetables are, if we can get the position filled by the beginning of the calendar year, that would be ideal.  They may have commitments and obligations we’re not yet aware of and the date might have to be dependent on when they become available.

 

FA:  Okay.

 

AD:  The goal is to fill it as soon as we can.

 

FA:  Thank you.

 

4.      Announce, Discuss and Bulletin Boards (FA – 09/07/2006)

 

FA:  It’s my understanding that our TPR committee has something they’re bringing forward in their minutes that they hope to have the Senate act on it Monday.  Not Monday, Tuesday of next week.

 

FA:  We haven’t seen it yet and we don’t know if we’ll get to it on Tuesday.

 

AD:  I thought maybe I’d just give some clarification because the unofficial note coming out on this said some things that weren’t quite clear to me.  I’d like to spend a couple of minutes explaining this.  This was not an Administrative initiative.  I want it to be clear that this came, in part, out of conversations that Judy Kilborn had had with us about addressing the list-serve complications.  Last year, TLTR was asked to look at a policy, which they did.  I want to be clear that it wasn’t a policy that the Administration had proposed.  It was a draft policy that came out of TLTR that was going to both the Administration and Faculty to review.  I think that when we’re comfortable on both sides, it would go to other bargaining units as well.  Steve hasn’t taken it to them yet.  I just wanted to make sure that that was clear.

 

FA:  Has what the TPR done gone back to the TLTR yet?

 

AD:  No.

 

FA:  We might have some….

 

AD:  The one thing that Doug asked as co-chair last year, because he usually takes it to TPR, because the student policy went to FA repeatedly, he asked that the Administration review it and the things that changed a lot with that policy was what the offices were.  There are some offices that send out student e-mail.  They asked to have the administration look at that and clean that up so that it didn’t have to go back and forth to the Faculty so often.  So the Administration did look at that and clarify those parts.  The Administration has looked at the policy and they’re comfortable with it.  I didn’t want it to be implied that this is an Administrative policy coming forward.

 

FA:  Okay.  If we’re lucky, we’ll have something by the 19th.  If not, we’ll go from there.

 

AD:  Okay.

 

5.      Task force for International Programs (Admin – 09/07/2006)

 

AD:  We talked about this and talked about writing a charge.  I haven’t had enough time to get to that yet.

 

FA:  Okay.  I was going to talk to the International Studies Committee and tell them to get with the… Andy, do you remember who that was.

 

FA:  The appropriate Administrator.

 

FA:  You were going to tell me who the appropriate Administrator was.

 

AD:  To work on…

 

FA:  To work on these issues.  Part of it is, we already have a committee that does this kind of stuff…

 

AD:  Right.

 

FA:  …but I forgot, but I will do that.

 

AD:  Okay.

 

FA:  We need to tell our committee to contact somebody in the Administration.  Who would we contact?

 

AD:  Probably Margaret Vos first, although she’s not in the U.S. at the moment.

 

FA:  Why is Margaret Vos traveling all over the place when that position is going to be filled in January with somebody else?

 

AD:  We had booked a recruiting trip for a staff member in that office and the staff member subsequently resigned.

 

FA:  So she’s actually doing recruiting now.

 

AD:  She’s doing recruiting.

 

FA:  Okay.

 

AD:  It’s such a long trip that they had to divide it up.  She took the front end and another staff member is taking the other end because they can’t afford that much time away.

 

AD:  If it would convene before then, I would be glad to talk to them as well and I will work on a charge also.

 

FA:  Okay.

 

6.      Budget Advisory Group (Admin. – 09/07/2006)

 

AD:  I can address that.  We took your advice, essentially.  I did have Meet and Confer with Council 5 yesterday.  We would still run it similar to TLTR with the publication of agendas and minutes and notice to campus of open meetings, but because of the nature of  the requirement of consultation across campus, a designated person from each of the major bargaining units and the students, as the contact person selected by that group so that for certain, we go to the leadership of each of those groups with the notice and the information.  That’s what we plan to do.  My intent would be to have for you, Monday or Tuesday of next week, a little broader definition of the charge and some of the tasks I expect for this group to be on-going, but some are peculiar to getting started up the first time, I think.

 

FA:  I think that the TLTR model is sort of like a co-chair, with someone from Administration and…

 

AD:  Yes.

 

FA:  The point person on that… John, are you the chair of that committee?

 

FA:  I’m chair of the Budget Committee.

 

FA:  John Palmer would be our…

 

AD:  I’m fine with that.  The co-chair model is also fine.  We’ll work together.

 

FA:  Yes.  Work with John and copy me on the e-mails.  I won’t be criticizing them, I will just know that something happening.  If I don't see things…  So you’ve asked the other groups on campus to give you someone to be…

 

AD:  Not yet.  Sometimes I don’t know when we’re at the end of consulting when it’s among all these groups…

 

FA:  Okay.

 

AD:  The largest other bargaining unit, and the one most engaged, seems to be AFSCME.  AFSCME and MSUUASF.  I’m sure this is going to be okay.  I haven’t gone back to them, or formally to MSUAASF yet, but I feel a certain press of time too.  I think this is going to get us moving.  I think there’s going to be, among other things, workgroups of people with expertise to report back to this group about these three issues:  1) a discussion of variable tuition; 2) a discussion of base – what is meant by base funding;  and 3) a model.  There’s a lot of intersection between strategic planning, accountability, and assessment in this model, and that would eventually be brought to this committee and to Meet and Confer for review.  I think it’s going to work out, and of course, I’m anxious to get going.  After the board meeting this month, we’ll begin to have information on where the Office of the Chancellor and the Board seem to be heading on budgeting requests.  That will be helpful information too.  That’s the news.

 

FA:  Anything else?

 

AD:  Questions or comments?

 

AD:  My last suggestion is that maybe this Budget Advisory Group be moved to where this initiative fund is and that’s folded into it and that be on your progress report.  That seems appropriate to me and that’s my suggestion.

 

FA:  Should we move this to Progress Reports?

 

AD:  Yes.

 

7.      General Ed Assessment Committee and Assessment Pilots (Admin/FA – 9/28/2006)

 

AD:  I think you mentioned that you gave out a call for volunteers on that.

 

FA:  Right.  That’s another one where I’m getting people also wanting to volunteer to become the Gen Ed Assessment Director.

 

AD:  That’s wonderful.

 

FA:  Can I direct them…

 

AD:  To my office, please.

 

FA:  Okay.  In fact, I think I’ve had more people that I think are applying for the job…

 

AD:  Then you have volunteers for the committee?

 

FA:  Then I have volunteers for the committee. (laughter)

 

AD:  That’s a nice switch over what happened the last time around.

 

FA:  Well, I may be dreaming too.  (more laughter)  Did you get the word about the Assessment Pilots too?

 

AD:  Yes.

 

FA:  Okay.  But you have to have a director before we can do the pilots, is that it?

 

AD:  No.  Those are not dependent on each other.

 

FA:  Okay.

 

8.      Orientation Task Force (Admin – 09/28/2006)

 

AD:  We’re just waiting for names.

 

FA:  We haven’t met.  They haven’t even agreed to have anyone on the task force yet.  Once they agree, then I can send out an announcement.  The earliest we could do that would probably be the 24th of October.

 

AD:  If there is any way that this could be speeded up…  The orientation won’t take place until August, however, information gets sent out to prospective students much earlier then that.  We want to be able to get the word out as soon as we can, having to do with the duration of the program, I don’t know when we’ll have information on cost, but we want to be able to get as much of the information out to next year’s incoming students as we can – as early as possible.

 

FA:  The 24th is really the earliest I can do that.  They have to agree to do it.  Once they agree, then I can put out an announcement.

 

AD:  Okay.

 

Progress Reports

 

1.      Taskforce on Diversity (a.k.a. Motion from Teacher Development) (FA – 9/22/05)

 

AD:  The Taskforce on Diversity has not met since last week.

 

FA:  Okay.

 

2.      Upper Division Writing Requirement Status Report (FA – 03/02/06)

 

AD:  They have their meeting at the same time as Meet and Confer so I haven’t been at the last two meetings.

 

FA:  Okay.  Could you ask them to do minutes and then send those minutes to me?

 

AD:  I think they do minutes.

 

FA:  Are they sending them to me?    Please ask them to do that, or tell me who is chairing the committee and I will ask them to do it myself.

 

AD:  It’s either Jim or Judy.

 

FA:  Judy Litterst?

 

AD:  Yes.

 

FA:  She also may be sending them. 

 

3.      Academic Calendar (Admin – 09/07/2006)

 

AD:  The task force on academic calendar had its first meeting yesterday afternoon.  We are hoping to have our work done by the end of this semester.

 

FA:  When do we have to have that published?

 

AD:  I’m guessing that we’d like to have it ideally by the end of this semester or realistically, early next semester.

 

AD:  We’re talking about the 2008-2009 calendar…

 

AD:  And 2009-2010.

 

4.      Global Initiative (Admin – 05/04/2006) and…

5.      Initiative Funding (Admin – 05/04/2006)

 

AD:  There’s no news to report on the Global Initiative or the initiative funding which will fall under the budget advisory group material.

 

6.      IPESL Funds (Admin – 09/07/2006)

 

AD:  Those proposals are due on Monday at 4:00 p.m.  We have a committee to review the proposals.  The committee is set to review the proposals and make recommendations.  We’re ready to go as soon as we hit the deadline.

 

FA:  Okay.  Have we gotten any?

 

AD:  I don’t know.  They would go to the Office of Sponsored Programs and most people will turn them in at 3:55 p.m. on Monday.

 

FA:  Anecdotally, I know there is quite a bit of interest in my college.  I know a bunch of people who are working on them.

 

AD:  I did hear that there are a couple that have been done or are on the way.  There will be a number of proposals

 

7.      Pandemic Planning (Admin – 09/07/2006)

 

AD:  I met with the Academic Affairs Committee at the summit on Tuesday afternoon and we reviewed some key provisions of academic affairs pandemic planning.  As the members reviewed it, they expressed some discomfort with those provisions – especially the cut-off days for ending the semester and deciding the grades.  I think there are some more conversations that have to occur in that regard.  I’ll be talking to Dave Sebberson about that.

 

FA:  So when will you and they have something figured out?

 

AD:  I haven’t gotten back to David about this yet, but it occurred to me that we could reconvene the Academic Administration Committee of the university-wide Pandemic Planning Committee and have the members of the Academic Affairs Committee attend a joint meeting with them and see what we can do.

 

FA:  Is there any reason we wouldn’t want them to do that?

 

AD:  On a slightly tangential topic to this one, there have been some requests from people to my office, and on announce, about what happens in the event that there is  an emergency on campus – particularly after the incident at Tech High School and some of the shootings at other schools.  People wanted to know what kind of plan do we have for this kind of situation.  We don’t do lockdowns at the university but, if somebody was shot or if there was some other bomb threat or something, do we have a plan?  2003 was the last time we updated the Crisis Plan.

 

AD:  Since 2003, there’s a Crisis Communication Plan.  It’s about communicating during and after an event – general events that one would consider a crisis.

 

FA:  It was communicated to…

 

AD:  It was sent to deans and vice presidents and people like that.  It includes phone numbers to call, home phones of folks – it’s an operational crisis communication plan, if you will.  We also have changed slightly, what used to be our snow closing note and try to consider that to be broader because there might be other reasons we close or act.  We have managed several types of crises in this context over the last few years:  the water issue that came up a few months ago.  We had a well-developed bomb threat policy because about 12 years ago we had a number of threats.  About five years ago we did have a person on campus with a firearm in one of our buildings and dealt with that.  It happened to be in the Summer, but we dealt with that.  We’ll publish what we have, the proper procedure for folks, it’s kind of an emergency procedure which was in our procedures manual, and I’ve also asked, in light of some of these recent shooting incidents, for Miles Heckendorn to review with other campuses, what their policies are because we’re not very similar to a high school or elementary school.  I’ve asked him to look at our procedures to see if there are some other things we should do.  We’ve also had drills on campus in the past, relative to gas leaks in residence halls and we did the one two years ago, if you’ll recall, it was a regional drill, predicated on a chlorine leak at Halenbeck.  We’ve done some drills; we’ve gone through some stuff with various kinds of hazards.  I’m sure whatever presents itself some day will be something different, but I think that we’re reasonably ready; we can become more prepared and we can communicate better with the campus.

 

AD:  I’ve given you a copy of the closing plan.  We can make that available electronically on the Web and combine it with these other documents that we have as we update them, distribute them through the deans to be distributed through the colleges so that people can see what those plans are.

 

FA:  So there will be a link that will go to a Web page that will have these documents on them?

 

AD:  The front page went out.

 

FA:  Yes, that came today.

 

AD:  The only thing we want to make sure of is that if there is a crisis, we may not have electronic access, so we would want not just Web availability.

 

FA:  Yes, but if someone says to me “Is there a plan?” if I can give them a Web link…

 

AD:  I understand.  We do need other places where this information is available.

 

FA:  You’re right.  You’re absolutely right.

 

AD:  We want to make it available to the departments and to the campus at large.

 

FA:  Can I pass this out at the Senate?

 

 AD:  In some of the procedures, there are a few things that you prefer not to publish.

 

FA:  There isn’t anything in here like that…

 

AD:  No.

 

FA:  Okay.

 

FA:  The concern I have, I teach responding to these kinds of events in my curriculum, is a problem after our offices close.  In other words, if you’re teaching a class in a building, that there is no place to receive notification.  About the only way it happens is if someone from maintenance or security arrives at your door.

 

AD:  Unfortunately, that’s true and that’s our direction.  That can be an uncomfortable thing, for classes particularly.

 

FA:  For night classes.

 

AD:  Yes.

 

AD:  We could use the phone systems in the electronic classrooms now.  That is another option.

 

FA:  We could have the voice from nowhere come in (laughter).

 

AD:  Or the phone could ring.  I don’t think we’d want the voice coming in.

 

AD:  People can make recommendations…

 

AD:  We still send people around the buildings.  In the event that someone is working in their office, they can be notified.  It’s not always us who makes the decision.  We get told we’re closed by the governor’s office or something.

 

FA:  That happened one time to me during a night class when it was snowing.  Nobody came and told us and so we left and there were no lights on campus and the parking lots had not been plowed.  This was about 12 years ago.  That’s the sort of thing that can happen so we were pretty much….

 

AD:  We don’t turn off the lights.

 

AD:  If there were no lights, there must have been a power outage.

 

FA:  I don’t know what the situation was.  It was sort of eerie because nobody had told us…  Night classes are really kind of interesting because you’re isolated and people don’t seem to be aware that you’re there.

 

AD:  I’ll confirm that with Jim Williams and have him take it back to his staff.  But that is the intent.  There is maintenance staff here in the evening almost all the time; and they can get assistance from Public Safety to do that too.

 

FA:  I don’t think people would mind being interrupted for something that important.

 

AD:  You would think that there would be some kind of a floor by floor description of which classes are in session.

 

AD:  Resource 25 can do that.

 

AD:  If it were only classes.  We have found they do move classes and we do go past the offices and such.

 

AD:  That would give us a start.

 

FA:  And knowing where people are – kids in labs.  I think they try.  I just think people need to be reminded.

 

AD:  I think that’s right.

 

8.      Presidents Search (FA – 09/28/2006)

 

(President Saigo left the meeting)

 

FA:  We did get a request from President Bradshaw at Metro State University for six people to represent the IFO bargaining unit from the campus so we’re in the process of doing that.  He tells me that …  I’ll get those names to him either late on the 10th or early on the 11th.  He tells me that the first meeting will either be the morning of the 16th or the morning of the 20th of October.  We’ll see what happens.  If you call his administrative assistant, she will talk to you about it if you want more information.

 

AD:  No.  You put this on the list.

 

AD:  They’ve contacted the president of AFSCME and Larry in HR for representation from administrators and Commissioners Plan.

 

AD:  Did they contact Jill about alumni?

 

AD:  And Jill about alumni, foundation, and community representatives.

 

AD:  Let the record show that we are adjourned in record time for this group.

 

Meeting adjourned at 3:41 p.m.