Meet and Confer Notes – Approved 1/18/07
December 7, 2006
Administration: Roy Saigo, Michael Spitzer, Rex Veeder, Kristi Tornquist, Mark Nook, Mitchell Rubinstein, Steve Ludwig, Larry Chambers, Wanda Overland, David DeGroote, Patty Dyslin (note taker)
Faculty: Annette Schoenberger, JoAnn Gasparino, John Palmer, Andrew Larkin, Bill Langen, Jayantha Herath, Jason Lindsey, Frances Kayena, Bob Inkster, Balsy, Kasi
Approval of Minutes:
Minutes for October 19, 2006 – approved
Minutes for November 2, 2006 – approved
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
1. Reassigned Time (FA – 05/04/2006)
FA: I think we’re waiting for that.
AD: Here it is
FA: Can you send me an electronic copy?
AD: Yes.
FA: Is this for three years?
AD: Four years – this year and the prior three.
FA: Okay.
2. Searches in Academic Affairs – Associate Dean in COB, Admin searches, and elsewhere (FA – 09/07/2006)
FA: I think I gave you names for – I sent you an e-mail with names for curriculum and faculty relations….
AD: Right. I have a report on some other searches we need to do in addition to the Associate Dean in the College of Business. We’re going to need to do a search for the associate dean in the College of Education, for a permanent associate dean there. We’re going to need to do a search for a Director of Honors since the current director will be retiring and not continuing in that capacity. We need to do, and we have it listed further down, a search for the Director for the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, Undergraduate Studies…
AD: Associate Dean.
FA: I thought you had someone.
AD: That was an interim position.
AD: I need to let folks know that the – and I sent out an e-mail, but I think most of you were in a pre-meeting – that the Associate V.P. for International Studies position has not been filled and I’ve asked Margaret Vos to continue as an interim in that position.
FA: Are they still searching?
AD: The search didn’t yield a candidate for the program.
FA: So we have to start that over again?
AD: Yes. We’ll start that over, but I’m not exactly sure when we would start it over again.
FA: Okay.
AD: We’re going to wait a while. I’ve asked Margaret to serve through the remainder of the academic year at least, and possibly into next Fall.
FA: Could you give an idea of why you think it might have failed.
AD: There were some issues with some of the candidates that led us not to make an offer.
FA: Let’s say the quality of the candidates wasn’t high enough. Do you have some idea why we didn’t get highly qualified candidates?
AD: I thought we got fairly qualified candidates; they just weren’t a good fit.
FA: Okay.
AD: There was one candidate who seemed to be much stronger than the others, but there were some issues that emerged during some reference checking. Let’s leave it at that.
FA: So Margaret will finish this year.
AD: Yes. I think it might make sense to wait until we have the next president in place to do that search.
FA: Okay. So it will be next Fall?
AD: Yes.
FA: The assistant dean in the College of Science and Engineering told me that he is retiring July 30th.
AD: That’s correct. I forgot to put that one on my list. That’s the associate dean….
FA: Is there anything happening in the College of Business?
AD: Yes, that’s on the list – it’s on the agenda.
FA: Okay. So we’ve got College of Business, College of Education, College of Science and Engineering, Director of Honors, Undergraduate Studies, and CETL.
AD: And you said Social Sciences was underway, right?
AD: Yes. I sent out a notice to the chairs in that college. I’m not sure that it’s been received yet.
FA: These are ones we need to do search committees for.
AD: Right.
FA: Michael, I’d like to point out that I’m from that college and there’s quite a bit of anxiety among the faculty about.…
AD: I know. I understand. By tomorrow there will be an announcement.
FA: Okay.
(meeting went off the record)
FA: We’ll come back to you with what we think the committees ought to report. Do we have a standard committee for this?
AD: For the associate dean positions, there have usually been committees within the colleges.
FA: Okay.
AD: It’s been three or four people and one administrator.
AD: On the Undergraduate Studies, we’re not a college, we’re pretty open on that. I don’t want it to be huge, but if you want six, I don’t have a problem working with six.
FA: Okay. We’ll probably talk about at Executive Committee. What I’m worried about is…
AD: The number of people.
FA: Yes. That and if it has to go to Senate, I’m not sure we can actually get anything done until the beginning of Spring. I guess that will have to be okay.
AD: We probably won’t be able to start those searches before that point in any event.
FA: We’ve started looking for the people for the CETL.
AD: Okay.
3. Orientation Task Force (Admin – 09/28/2006)
FA: I think I sent you those names – Mark Jaede, Fred Hill and Balsi Kasi? I think they’ve met a couple times already.
AD: Three times now. We met today.
FA: Is there anything happening there?
AD: There is one thing I can update you on. Today we elected co-chairs – one faculty member and one administrator. The co-chairs are myself and Mark Jaede from the faculty. We are planning to create some sub-groups as was pointed out in the original request for the committee. The original request was, I think, for five committees, maybe six. We’re going to put those together. They’re not committees though, they’re information groups. Sub-groups are going to be handled by members of the committee and we’re going to open it up for anyone who wants to give us information for the development of policy and programs – policy in particular. Anything we’re going to make a recommendation on how things will work in orientation will come from the elected taskforce. They won’t come from the sub-groups, though information can move up through those sub-groups. We will put some calls out to specific people. One of the groups we have to have is an operations group. We need to know about move-in. So we’ve got to have someone from Public Safety there. We’ve got to have somebody there from Residential Life that knows about housing. We’re going to tap Steve, he doesn’t know it yet, but we’re going to ask him to come in too. We’ve got some of these areas where we’re going to need some special people to come in. We will also open them up to everybody. There will be a call. Anybody who wants to work on these can have input. We’ll run it that way – which is the way we set it up in the original request.
FA: Can you read that to me?
AD: Sure. I’ll go through the whole thing. “Given the large number of departments and programs both needed and interested in this endeavor, the taskforce will consist of a relatively small coordinating committee that works with departments, centers and programs to coordinate the overall design and implementation of the new student orientation and transition program. The coordinating committee will be composed of two students, three faculty, three MSUAASF, and two administrators.” Those are all in place except for the students. “The taskforce will establish sub-committees to provide leadership in design and implementation of the program components, specifically, the sub-committees will design program strategies to achieve the identified program outcomes. The committee charge includes providing leadership and overall implementation of the plan with assistance from the taskforce and members of the university committee. Each sub-committee will be chaired or co-chaired by a taskforce member. The taskforce will develop a charge for each sub-committee, outlining each subcommittee’s responsibility and tasks. Specific faculty and staff members to serve on sub-committees based on expertise and experience. At present, five subcommittees have been identified. These are: Academic Engagement; Campus Cultural Engagement; Social Engagement; Marketing; and Operations. Others may be developed. Sub-committees should be large enough to facilitate the completion of the responsibilities and tasks. The participants on the various sub-committees will depend on the expertise needed and shall consist of students, faculty, staff, and administrators, with representatives from across the campus community including: Administrative Affairs; Academic Affairs; and Student Life and Development.”
FA: Okay. We need to know what the specific expertise is that those individuals need. It needs to be more than just a single sentence.
AD: Those will be coming out of the charges that the taskforce is supposed to develop for each of those. They’ll be there.
FA: If you have specific people in mind, we need to know who they are because if we have members who can do that, then we’ll do members.
AD: In addition to that, it’s going to be open so that anyone can attend these and have input. So if other people want to be in, and I feel they have the expertise, they’ll be there.
FA: They won’t be representing the Faculty Association.
AD: No.
FA: We need to know what that is. If you want to invite someone, we need to know who they are. We may have a member who has the same or better expertise.
AD: Okay.
4. One-Time Professional Development Funds (FA – 10/19/2006)
FA: That announcement went out on Monday and it came from the committee. I’ve forgotten the name of that committee.
AD: The Joint Committee?
FA: The Joint Committee.
AD: Can I get a copy of that announcement?
FA: It went out on Announce. If you walk across the hall to Sponsored Programs, they’re actually the ones who sent it out. They ought to be able to find it for you.
AD: Okay. I haven’t had time to read the Announce messages.
FA: That’s how I got it.
AD: Okay.
FA: We ran into someone on that committee today and apparently they have gotten quite a few recommendations. So they’re gathering them. I don’t know when they intend to meet and tell us what they want to do. I thought it was pretty soon. I don’t think they’re waiting until January, but I don’ know. They have all the research grants to do in the Spring.
AD: Okay.
5. University-wide On-Line Committee for Policies and Procedures (Admin – 12/07/2006)
FA: The Senate has approved the formation of a committee that would be composed of one member from the Faculty Association Graduate Council, one from the Faculty Association Curriculum Committee, one from the Technology and Pedagogy Committee, and one from the Academic Affairs Committee, with one also selected from the Executive Committee and one from Senate to work on achieving the task that was identified in the Burgeson memo.
AD: Do we have the names of those folks?
FA: That just happened…
FA: It happened at Senate on Tuesday.
AD: Okay.
FA: I’ve been in Budget Committee meetings since then so I haven’t got the announcement out yet. I suspect it will be early in January, or in January, when we find out who those people are.
AD: The Senate representative would be a Senator at large?
FA: Some Senator at large.
AD: Okay. Thank you.
6. Request Summary data for all peer reviewed faculty: Initial Hire Date, Rank, Date of any prior promotions and/or denials and outcome of peer review (FA – 11/02/2006)
FA: How’s that going?
AD: We don’t have all of that in a single place so I’ve got to pull that information together. We’re in the process of gathering the material and I will get it to you as soon as it’s complete.
FA: Okay.
7. General Education Assessment Recommendations (FA – 11/02/2006)
FA: I think last time we gave you – the General Education Assessment made some recommendations. I don’t recall what they are.
AD: There were a number of recommendations. One of which, I think, you have later on the agenda.
FA: Okay.
AD: If I remember correctly. There is one about the Assessment Director being on the Assessment Steering Committee.
FA: I think this was about creating Assessment Directors in the colleges…
AD: Yes, there were various – I think there were geckos and other things. (laughter)
FA: Yes.
AD: The difficulty with it is that it called for more reassigned time and/or extra duties days then I think we can support. And while I think that there could be some money available for some extra duty days for people writing specific assessment reports, I don’t think we could do an across-the-board reassignment or extra duty days for every departmental and gen ed category. We can try to fund some of those based on what people propose to do as an assessment activity over a period of time.
FA: When will you know what exactly you can do?
AD: I’d like to see what people are going to propose to do and try to fund as much as we could, rather than …. We’ll do it that way.
FA: Okay.
FA: Have you cost it out? You say we don’t have enough resources. Have you costed out what the full impact of the recommendation would be.
AD: I haven’t exactly. I think it was something like every departmental assessment coordinator would get reassigned time. That would be approximately 45 courses reassigned just for that alone. I don’t remember the exact details of the recommendation, but it was something along those lines, plus extra duty days for report writing. That’s a lot of FTE.
FA: What do we tell the General Ed Committee?
AD: I think that we have to assume that the departments are doing their on-going assessment and I don’t think we need to have every department do a full assessment report every year. We need to figure out a rotation and a frequency and then we can fund some of those each year rather than funding everything over and over again, year after year after year.
FA: Is this a task we’re going to give to the General Ed Assessment Director to figure out – if we ever get one?
AD: Part of this had to do with the general education assessment, but the other part of it had to do with regular program assessment as well. It wasn’t just general education assessment. It was every major.
FA: We have assessment directors in the colleges right?
AD: Right. And there are assessment teams or groups for each program. The assessment directors from the colleges are supposed to coordinate and assist with those processes. But this proposal called for these other individuals as well. I think it’s useful to have somebody in each department that’s charged with coordinating. Some of the activity that, or some of the required work, let me put it that way, that the people in the gen ed group felt would be necessitated as a result of the kind of collection and entry of data, is a big chunk of what it is they felt that people needed to get time to do. We’re also in the process of working with a software development project that would enable that to happen much more efficiently and with a lot less effort on the part of the department so that it wouldn’t require the amount of work that would otherwise be required if they had to do all of this data entry and analysis on their own. We’re trying to put together, through the Office of Institutional Effectiveness, a process and a web-based software activity that would enable people to manage data in ways that they would no longer have to do manually. That will relieve a fair portion of the work. Does that make sense?
FA: Yes, sort of. I’m trying to figure out what the next step is.
AD: I’m glad to meet with the folks who put that proposal together and talk with them and come up with some plan about how to proceed.
8. Request for Summer Special Projects from Summer 2006 ( FA – 11/02/2006)
FA: This one is done.
AD: Okay. It’s on the agenda, I just want it recorded that you received the material.
FA: Yes, I have that material.
9. Center for Regulatory Affairs Admin – last Spring)
FA: Our Graduate Committee is favorably disposed, but they have a couple of questions. Just let me toss them both out and then you can…. How are the adjuncts going to be supervised? And, our folks are a little bit stunned by the tuition that you anticipate the candidates will be prepared to pay. We recall the presentation that was made and that these are very handsome jobs once the person graduates and all, so there’s that incentive. Do you have any other data to hang the anticipation that people will be prepared to pay these extraordinary tuition costs?
AD: Yes. Maybe we could start with the programs that are currently in existence and the costs that are associated with those. Johns Hopkins – the cost is $765 per credit. At Long Island - $917 per credit. At Temple, which is the oldest of these programs, established about 30 years ago - $700 per credit for in-state Pennsylvania students and $928 per credit for non-residents.
FA: We’re asking for $1,000.
AD: The program that I’m most associated with because I met with the director and have had some communications with is the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Their tuition is $1,692 per credit and they currently have 80 students in the program. We have surveyed about 75 current working professionals in the area, primarily in the Twin Cities. They have shown about 1/3 interest in the program and about 1/3 interest in taking specific courses. Each of them have indicated that their companies have somewhere in the realm of between $6,000-10,000 a year tuition reimbursement, and the industry representatives have been extremely positive about the possibility of this program.
FA: That’s in the context of having seen your proposed tuition.
AD: We’ve vetted the curriculum. We’ve visited with Medtronic, Boston Scientific, St. Jude, 3M, and Vascular Solutions with the specific question – are these the kinds of skills and competencies you need in your employees – and they responded very positively to what we’ve been telling them.
FA: How will the adjuncts be supervised?
AD: There will be a program director. That position will be half-time instruction and half-time directing the program, supervising the adjuncts, making sure the courses are delivered on time, developing cohorts. That would be the only faculty member that would be associated with this program on a permanent basis.
FA: Contractually, we’re not supposed to supervise.
AD: I guess it’s a question of what you mean by supervision. I was thinking about making sure that the adjuncts are aligned with their expertise in the courses. Maybe less supervision and more making sure that the proper talent is in the proper room at the right time; making sure the students know where enrollment is; managing students and faculty in terms of the technology – D2L access and those kinds of things. Supervision, since it would be an academic center for Regulatory Affairs and Services, would be housed in the College of Science and Engineering. If we’re looking at ordinary supervision of the faculty, then I guess it would be the Dean of the College of Science and Engineering.
FA: David, we’ve been having on-going discussions on campus with regard to budget. Quite clearly, this is a market-driven tuition that we’re looking at. What’s your expectation of where the excess revenue would go?
AD: In the original proposal that was provided and brought to this group. The excess revenue was split between the college and the university at a fifty percent rate. (Dean DeGroote distributed a handout to the group.)
FA: Thank you. We’ve been having these discussions. This is a practical example of the use of market tuition. That’s not to say I agree with the 50/50 split. That’s not my decision. It’s simply to say that we at least have a model of something that’s been talked about.
AD: That’s his proposal.
AD: John, just remember, I’m just a dean. (laughter)
FA: I understand, and I’m just a faculty member (laughter)
FA: Thank you, that’s helpful.
FA: Are you going to start this in the Spring?
AD: No. If you look at the little diagram at the bottom of the first page, that is a timetable. We’re seeking approval of the curriculum on campus and then it will have to go to the Office of the Chancellor. Assuming that all of that goes well….
FA: So the curriculum hasn’t gone through the curriculum committee?
AD: It is currently in UCC.
AD: It went through the Graduate Committee.
FA: So it’s not through curriculum yet. Once it does that it has to go to the Office of the Chancellor.
AD: I think we have our ducks pretty much in a row on the paperwork for the Office of the Chancellor.
AD: What we’re dealing with here is establishing the Center.
FA: We’ve got to have curriculum…
AD: Yes. But once the curriculum is approved and the Center is approved…
FA: So you expect to start it in the Fall?
AD: Yes. That would be the goal.
FA: I notice that it says “full-time equivalent of one faculty” but you said half-time. Or is that the fractional adjuncts that are included?
AD: No. Mitch was talking to me. That number should actually be 2.75. It’s 1 IFO faculty member and then 1.75 FYE equivalents of adjuncts annually.
FA: They’re also IFO.
AD: Not probationary.
FA: Yes.
AD: But that one position has a fifty percent responsibility for managing the program and fifty percent instructional duties.
FA: Now I’m really confused.
FA: David, did you give us the title of it? Is that person a chair?
AD: I refer to that person as the Director of Regulatory Affairs.
FA: So what department will they be in?
AD: The department will be based on the credentials of the individual who’s selected.
FA: You haven’t got anyone…
AD: Nobody’s been hired.
AD: We can’t hire anyone until we have a program.
FA: So who’s proposing the curriculum?
AD: Ben Baliga in conjunction with a number of specialists in the area.
FA: They don’t work for the university?
AD: Ben is proposing the curriculum. He is developing it in consultation with external experts.
AD: Right.
FA: He’s not going to be the person who does this?
AD: He is the interim Director, but we already pay him.
FA: What?
AD: He’s already on staff. It’s just a component of his duties. He’s listed as the Interim Director of the Academic Center for Regulatory Affairs and Services.
FA: Is that it? Do we want to ask anything else?
AD: Thanks David.
NEW BUSINESS
1. CETL Director Position (Admin – 12/07/2006)
FA: We already talked about the CETL Director.
AD: Right.
2. General Education Assessment Director on the Assessment Steering Committee (FA – 12/07/2006)
FA: We’ve talked about this as well.
FA: Senate approved the recommendation of the Assessment Steering Committee to put the General Education Assessment Director on that committee. There are two questions. Has anyone applied for the position and what is the reassigned time?
AD: I don’t think we’ve gotten any applications yet. Patty, have we…
AD: No.
AD: No. And I think the reassigned time that was, I believe, half-time.
FA: What happens if nobody applies?
AD: Then we’ll start recruiting applicants and gently twisting arms.
FA: Do you think you’re going to be able to get anyone to do this?
AD: I think so. I’m not sure, but I think so.
FA: You might want to send the announcement out again. There are a lot of people who are not on Announce. If that’s all you’re doing for these things you might consider taking out an ad in the Chronicle, or….
AD: One thing I can do is ask the deans to send them out to their faculty lists.
FA: I think my dean does this. It could be that it’s not getting distributed very well.
AD: We had a group of individuals, faculty and administrators, who attended the first workshop session of the assessment academy that we were admitted into through the Higher Learning Commission. I think there were four or five people. Mitch, you were there…
AD: Yes.
AD: How many folks?
AD: We had a team of five.
AD: I know that the university assessment director, the gen ed committee chair, who else?
AD: The assessment director, and two members of the assessment committee – faculty members. One from Fine Arts and Humanities, another from Social Sciences, then two administrators.
AD: It could be that one of those individuals might become interested in this position with minor cajoling.
3. Board of Trustee’s Award for Teaching Excellence (Admin – 12/07/2006)
FA: The Senate agreed to participate and we should have some members for the committee pretty soon, or at least by the beginning of Spring term.
AD: Okay.
FA: I think we put the proviso on that they have to be from different colleges. That makes it harder because they have to solicit membership from committees.
AD: Okay.
FA: I wonder if you could give us some idea of the academic credentials of these people who will be looking at our really superlative colleagues.
FA: At the state level?
FA: Right.
AD: I don’t know who’s going to be doing it. Do you mean at the Office of the Chancellor level?
FA: Right.
FA: It’s kind of a natural question.
AD: They haven’t told us yet. I think that this can become an important St. Cloud State University activity in that we are entitled to have more nominees than there are going to be receiving the award. I think we should celebrate our nominees on this campus and recognize them regardless of what happens at the chancellor’s level.
FA: Yes.
AD: So that the members of our committee will be the ones with the stellar credentials who are going to be doing the evaluation.
FA: I couldn’t agree more with you. I have to confess some skepticism. My run-ins with MnSCU folks, and I confess that it’s a very select group that I run into, have a very summary idea… I wouldn’t want them sitting in on my academic performance. Let’s put it that way. That’s probably all I should say. I just think that…
AD: I don’t think it will be anyone from labor relations… (laughter)
FA: Good. (more laughter) Thank you.
4. FYE Advisory Board Expansion (FA – 12/07/2006)
FA: The Senate approved the expansion of the advisory board to add ex-officio, non-voting members from Records and Registration, the Advising Center, Residential Life, Admissions, Multicultural Student Services, and the FYE Director.
AD: Was this requested?
AD: I think the advisory board initiated this.
FA: Yes.
AD: There was information they weren’t able to get their hands on without those people in the room.
AD: Thank you.
FA: Also, the terms for all members will be three years, staggered.
AD: When you say members, that would be the faculty.
FA: Let’s say those six. That’s all I know for sure.
AD: Okay.
FA: They meant the faculty. You’ll need to ask them if they meant to include the other people.
AD: It has to include the faculty, plus these others are MSUAASF members.
FA: We can’t stagger…
FA: I think wherever possible, they want those people to be staggered.
AD: Okay.
FA: I’m part of the advisory board and I think we wanted longer terms for continuity there.
FA: The original terms for those people was three years staggered.
AD: That’s what I remember for the Faculty Advisory Board.
FA: I think the idea was to extend the term lengths to the additional people wherever possible. You’re right, the FYE director wouldn’t be, but some of those others could be.
AD: Okay.
5. Clarification of the use of I and IP grades (Admin – 12/07/2006)
AD: What I really want to remind folks about is the issue of identifying the last recorded day of attendance for students in classes when the grades are submitted so that we can avoid the kind of difficulty with federal financial aid issues that we like to avoid. Remind faculty when they submit their grades, if there is a student who hasn’t attended, try to identify the last recorded day of attendance, or the last day that the faculty member has of the student’s attendance in the class and put that on the grade sheet.
FA: We get a piece of paper that tells us what we’re supposed to put on the grade sheet. Is that information on there?
FA: No.
AD: There’s another sheet coming out now as we approach the time to grade, from records, that explains the FN. There’s also instructions when you click on your class list that encourages you fill in last date of attendance. Last date of attendance is an issue if you don’t give them a passing grade. If you give them the FN for non-attendance, I believe you’re forced to give the last date of attendance.
AD: Right.
FA: Steve said most of what I was thinking. There are two ways of submitting grades: one’s paper and one’s through the web-site. They’re a little bit different. The paper one doesn’t have a way of putting in the last date of attendance unless you’re coming up with a new one.
AD: Now you’ve gone over my head. I’ve never seen either. I’ve just read the instructions. I don’t know what the paper one looks like.
FA: You probably ought to go over to records and ask to see because the paper one doesn’t…
AD: I don’t want to get involved in the grading process. I really want to stand back and let Records and Academic Affairs and the Faculty do grades. All I want in the end is students who didn’t attend, find out they didn’t, and for students to get grades if they did. How you all do it…
AD: I will check the paper grade sheet. Since I’ve never filled out a grade sheet…
FA: I will tell you, I’ve been in the Records office when someone is turning in a paper grade sheet and they tried to find out what they should do about putting that last date of attendance on there and the person was less than helpful. You do need to investigate.
AD: Yes. We will do that.
AD: They work for Michael so…
AD: I will do that. I will tell them to be cooperative.
FA: I think that one other issue is: if you go on-line to report last date of attendance, at some point in the semester, it will no longer allow you to submit last date of attendance.
FA: Right.
FA: So if it’s the end of the year and you’re filing grades, there’s a certain cut-off point when you can no longer click on that link and report LDA. It cuts off at some point. If you want to report a grade at that point, you have to indicate F or FF.
AD: You may not recognize the last date of attendance until you’ve completed the term.
FA: We’re trying to tell you that it may not work the way you think it ought to work. We need you to check into that because you’re giving us instructions…
AD: No, Records and Registration is giving you instructions.
FA: No, no. You’re sitting here saying you have to know that information and we’re telling you it may not work the way you think it does because you’ve never tried it.
AD: Because we don’t give grades…
FA: Right. We know that.
AD: That’s your job (laughter)
FA: I now realize there’s a lot of confusion on this. I think we’d like some kind of a report. Maybe we ought to talk about it a little bit more before the next Meet and Confer whether or not to give grades if a student has stopped coming. We need to look into all that sort of thing.
AD: If a student has not been attending your class, we need to be able to indicate that or else it’s going to cost the university large sums of money – which we don’t have.
FA: It sounds like a simple “yes” or “no” but it isn’t. There all kinds of circumstances that go with it such as illness, or called over to Iraq, or something like that, or, they just disappear.
AD: Right. If that student, whether for illness, being called up to Iraq, or just disappearing, does not attend class but is receiving federal financial aid, we know that or we need to return the money.
FA: The federal financial aid rules don’t really care what the reason is.
AD: Right.
AD: For the purpose of a student leaving, that’s what the FN is for. If you never saw them, the F is for non-attendance, they’re still on your roster, and they did not withdraw. That’s why we added that FN grade for non attendance. They didn’t do any work and you don’t have any expectation that they will. The grades do go to the students, or attempt to go to the students, so they can say “Well, gee, something happened. I thought I dropped.”
6. Designate International Student Services Committee to Investigate International Student Enrollment Issues (FA – 12/07/2006)
FA: Actually, there are two issues there because they came to Senate with another one. One of them is they would like, and I think they’re asking the Center for International Studies to investigate international student enrollment issues. Apparently, there are problems when the international students get here of being able to get a schedule of classes. The Advising Center had worked out a system where if the students worked with them, they were able to get them enrolled before the classes filled up. That didn’t happen this Fall, for whatever reason, so they want…
AD: There was a glitch this Fall.
FA: Right. They want some kind of a report that says what happened, why it happened, and how we’re going to take care of it.
AD: One of the things we’re going to do, because when we send out I-20s to students, they go out weeks before the semester begins so that the students can make arrangements to travel, get their visas, and take care of any other business they need to take care of before they can come here. We can identify what those students’ intended majors are and make sure that we have seats for those students in the disciplines that they have identified that they’re going to be enrolling in.
FA: So you’re going to start working with the departments?
AD: We’re going to start working with the departments and with CIS to keep those kinds of records.
FA: I think that this committee… The students brought this up to the committee so I think that someone needs to go to the committee and talk to them about what’s happening. That’s a real concern for those students.
AD: It’s a real concern and…
FA: I think there were students in exchange programs who got here and nobody knew those programs existed.
AD: I can do that. We’ve put together a group that’s working on this very issue that involves Steve Klepetar in the Advising Center, people from Records and Registration, and all the associate deans.
FA: This committee needs to be told about what’s going on.
AD: Yes.
AD: Does someone from International Studies meet with this committee?
FA: Yes. They have a representative on it.
AD: I think the director is on the committee.
AD: So we can have the director report to the committee on this issue.
FA: Right.
AD: Sarah Spier is in this group I’m working with. She’s one of the people who’s really involved in helping new students make the transition to our campus and getting their academics set up and things like that.
FA: Sending faculty an e-mail asking them to take extras students is just not the way to do this.
AD: That’s not the way we want to do it.
FA: The next one is that they would like the Center for International Studies to look into issues with Sodexho. At Senate it was reported that at a meeting they had with some of the students, they gave us three examples of problems that were reported by the students. One of them is that the students were being asked to attest to receiving training that they had not received, they were asked to work in excess of twenty hours a week and they were being called “hungry foreigners.”
AD: I heard about some of these. With regard to the latter issue and certain other possible behaviors that might be regarded as discriminatory, I’ve already asked Nancy Jessee to look into those and investigate to see if any of the international students were treated inappropriately by Sodexho. I do know as well that there was a meeting yesterday, I think it was, and I’ll ask Steve to comment on that, between Sodexho and members of that committee and students. Correct?
AD: Yes. I requested a meeting before Thanksgiving with the senior vice president from Sodexho and the regional manager to talk about issues we have on campus and these were among the issues. They came on campus, met with several people, including Margaret Vos, and got kind of a first blush of some of these same issues. The one about the twenty hours, they’d been aware of. I brought that back to them four weeks ago and they had resolved that. It wasn’t entirely them requesting. It was students wanting to work more than twenty hours and not Sodexho encouraging or whatever. It ended up being two students who worked significantly in excess of twenty hours. There were others who worked maybe a tenth of an hour more or a quarter of an hour more because of punching in and punching out. Yesterday, they came and met with this committee. The meeting was about an hour-and-one-half to two hours long. It was a constructive meeting and one thing they were able to specifically respond to was this time worked. They’ve changed how they schedule students. They schedule them at 18 or 19 hours so that if they do punch in or punch out, they don’t go over the 20 hours. They’ve told the students, they have a system if by chance they would go over, they employ about 250 international students on campus. It’s a significant number of folks working part-time. They’ll have letters that go out to a student if they go over the 20 hours informing them that they have a certain responsibility in this too because sometimes they substitute for each other or check-in early or check-out late or whatever. But they’re making every effort. They’ve also set the time clock so that you can’t come in early or you can’t take someone else’s shift without the approval of a supervisor so that you can be allowed to check-in. I think they’ve taken some positive steps to resolve the issue of the 20 hours and was certainly well-received by the committee. There were some other issues brought up that they’re working through. I was pleased with their engagement and their responsiveness. We have an unusually large number of students relative to our size that work for food service on this campus and it fits with the number of international students being atypical of institutions of our type. The limit of them only being able to work on campus, makes food services, which has the most hours and the ability to work over break, and a lot of opportunity there. The provision for the 20 hours for international students and for domestic students is in the contract with Sodexho as is payment of our student…
AD: That’s also the maximum number of hours an international student can work.
AD: From INS rules, it’s the maximum a student can work. There are certain financial aid rules about how much you can work and it’s a policy of the university that we don’t want students working more than 20 hours on campus because they’re here to go to school. They’re not here to work.
FA: So essentially, no student can work more than 20 hours a week on campus.
AD: During the academic term. It also has tax implications, at least for domestic students, because you have to start paying social security, both the employer and the employee, when you go over 20 hours. It has some greater costs to it.
FA: Another question was that some students had been asked to certify that they’d received training that they really hadn’t. Did that question arise?
AD: Yes. Sodexho had training in the Summer for students because they didn’t get the contract until three days before they were to start service. Of course, many students weren’t around. There seems to be a couple of shades of how this was presented and I think it may have been presented by a particular person at the time of payment. They had the training materials in paper form and what they were asking them is to sign-off that they had read the material and understood it. It was at the time of payment and they were essentially withholding payment unless you agreed to it. So they had some overzealous managers, it sounded like, in attempting to get this signed. Subsequently, they offered the training at several other times. It was safety training and some of it was other kinds of things. They have resolved that. They have set up additional training to do at the beginning of the semester and they’ll get on a regular schedule of that. The practice of getting your check contingent upon signing something for any purpose other than receipt of check, was stopped. They made changes to make the training more available to students and useful to them.
FA: That’s especially called for in the case of international students. For us native speakers of English, even then you’d be a little bit uncomfortable, but if this is your second or third language and here’s your check here and here’s this document. It feels bad.
AD: It wasn’t the right way to go about it.
FA: Okay. Thank you.
FA: So you’ve already essentially started this.
AD: Yes. By a happy accident I guess.
FA: There will be follow-through on this?
AD: The ISSC also requested at the meeting that Sodexho have a representative to the committee because there aren’t just issues of employment, which are kind of top of mind right now, but food and input on food and types of food, and dietary restrictions or peculiar holidays that – they’re aware of Ramadan and eating after sunset and all – they think there’s a lot of benefit. It wasn’t voted on by the committee, but the folks from Sodexho said immediately that if they were wanted to participate, they would participate. I know they came to us, one of the international nights wanted to serve some fowl that met some processing requirements. The processing requirements excluded the bird from being Grade A or Premium as provided in our contract, because the process still allowed it to still have some pin feathers, which is prohibited if you’re going to be the highest grade. So they worked through that with the group to have the fowl that was appropriate to their culture and to their diet, and worked with us because it didn’t meet the letter of the contract. Sodexho did that on their own so they’ve done some things successfully and some things less successfully and they seem amenable to change.
7. Change in wording for the DGS Committee (FA – 12/07/2006)
“The committee was formed to ensure faculty input” to “The committee was formed to ensure faculty, staff and student input.”
FA: The DGS committee has as part of their charge to “ensure faculty input” and they want to change the wording to read “ensure faculty, staff and student input”
AD: That’s wonderful. We agree.
FA: I think that committee has lots of different people on it and that’s why they needed the change.
AD: We can take this one off.
FA: Yes.
8. Assessment of Prior Learning Application Form Approved (FA – 12/07/2006)
FA: We approved the Assessment of Prior Learning form at Senate.
AD: Great. Thank you. Can we take this one off?
FA: I guess.
9. New Bylaws for the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education ( FA – 12/07/2006)
FA: That’s the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education. Do they have a steering committee?
AD: It’s an advisory board.
FA: Their advisory board brought us a change – I don’t know if this is actually a change in the membership – but it’s sort of a codification of how they should operate.
AD: I’ve seen a version of this. I don’t have it with me. There are some elements of it that I would want changed.
FA: Okay. So you’ll come back to us.
AD: Yes.
FA: It turns out – the members told me that they’ve all been on there longer than their terms. There’s a new committee and I have three new members for that.
AD: Okay.
FA: I’ll send those to you.
AD: Okay.
FA: I can tell you who they are now. It’s Elizabeth Talbot, Daniel Wildeson, and Gretchen Tiberghien. We only got three volunteers so we have two from one college, which essentially, is not what that says, but the Senate said we should have at least three.
AD: Do we know if any of the other advisory boards on campus have bylaws?
FA: Some do, some don’t. Some have, I think the CETL, I don’t know if they call them bylaws, but they have a thing that lists their rules. I think that First Year Experience has some kind of document that talks about who’s on the committee.
AD: It doesn’t have a set of bylaws.
FA: I don’t know that they call it bylaws.
AD: It isn’t anything like this document. There’s a foundations document for First Year Experience, but it doesn’t really go into as much detail.
FA: It talks about who’s on it…
AD: Just who’s on it. That’s it.
FA: I thought it talked about terms as well.
AD: Yes. But like I said, that’s a membership issue and it doesn’t go beyond membership. I don’t know about the DGS. I don’t think it has any bylaws either.
FA: Does anyone know where the original documents for the creation of this Center are at and what they say. I think I asked Bernard. I think that would be helpful.
AD: Would you know that Rex?
AD: It would be on file in the Center. I seem to understand that’s where it’s at.
FA: Is there a way we can actually find those?
AD: I’ll talk to Bernard and…
AD: It might be in my office.
AD: We’ll look.
FA: That might be a useful thing to have for deciding. There may already be some kind of a set of rules about the make-up of that committee.
AD: Okay.
FA: Is that funded externally?
AD: Yes.
FA: So it may be a condition of the external funding.
AD: No.
FA: No? Okay.
AD: My sense of the history of this is that the advisory board has gone through a number of different transformations. At one time, it included community members. It was basically a sort of community outreach board that also involved some faculty members and administrators. This is another sort of revamping of it. I don’t believe there was an advisory board originally intended for the Center when it was originally created. That’s my sense of the history. I will find the documents.
FA: These named faculty members would be willing.
AD: The ones you named.
FA: Right. The ones I named. The other people all think that their terms will expire at the end of the semester. So this group of people is now the group people, that if you need faculty to work with you on this, that you should be working with.
AD: Okay.
FA: If those people don’t think they have resigned, then you should have them contact me and I will talk to them.
AD: I’ll let the director contact the board and let him see who’s on it and who isn’t.
FA: I understand he’s fixed-term, right?
AD: He’s what?
FA: He’s fixed-term.
AD: Yes.
FA: So he will need some assistance.
AD: I promise he will have assistance, but I don’t want to interfere with his relationship with the board.
FA: Right. I guess we’ll leave that on because we’re not really quite done with that one?
AD: Right.
FA: Okay.
10. Request for Report on Initiative Budget Spending (FA – 12/07/2006)
AD: You want to know which of these are done? I need to go through it. I haven’t done it yet, but I will.
FA: That’s what we’re asking. We invested these funds and we’re looking for a report on what got spent.
AD: You should have that at the next Meet and Confer. When is our next Meet and Confer?
FA: It’s January.
AD: You’ll have it at the next Meet and Confer, if not sooner.
PROGRESS REPORTS
1. Taskforce on Diversity (a.k.a. Motion from Teacher Development) (FA –09/22/2005)
AD: Two reports. First of all, I indicated on November 2nd that the College of Education taskforce wasn’t meeting. I was incorrect. They were meeting without the administrators. That’s why I reported that, I hadn’t been meeting with them. Originally I was a part of that taskforce. They had determined at some point to meet without administrators and I don’t know for sure if that’s for an extended period of time or not. I understand their reasons and the dean and associate dean both understood. The administrators have stepped out at this point. At some point, the administrators, especially in the college, are going to need to be involved again because they’re part of the college and will need to be part of working through things. My understanding in talking with the facilitators is that they’re making very good progress in terms of coming up with a process that both works on policy and, for the lack of a better term, forms and approaches to reconciliation.
FA: So this is the College of Ed?
AD: This is the College of Ed taskforce. I’m happy to report that they’re actually meeting once every two weeks and making progress.
FA: Having attended the second meeting that occurred this semester, I would not have as optimistic a perspective as has been reported. They had one meeting. The outcome of that meeting was that there was a need to be sure that the departments were represented at future meetings. A call went out to be sure that the departments had representation. The second meeting, there was, I would say, a very poor attendance across the college. There is supposed to be two representatives from each of the departments in the college and we certainly didn’t have half of that in attendance. The impression I got was that there was no sense of urgency to come up to responses to what were currently going on; that their vision was two to three years down the road. That’s what I heard at the meeting that I attended. I will be at the meeting Monday of next week. I ended up being on the committee on a short-term basis. I won’t be on committee second semester.
FA: So the attendance is not…
AD: There’s two issues here I think. One is that we need probably, and I will consult with the facilitators. I mean, this is a joint administrative/faculty taskforce. I think need to consult with the facilitators about who is going to be participating, how’s it going in terms of that, and how they see the timeline working. I think one of the things that you brought up, John, was the issue of dealing with immediate issues in the college. Were you referring to the taskforce is not addressing immediate concerns?
FA: The length of time that had occurred between the meetings last school year and the first meeting this school year, and the lack of participation, full participation by the departments, resulted in a very slow start.
AD: We sort of reported that at the beginning.
FA: I don’t know to what degree there’ll be a greater engagement in the college in participating. I was disappointed. The person that recruited me to be the stand-in didn’t come to the meeting. There is supposed to be two from my department. I originally wasn’t one of the selected. I was recruited because we needed to do that – that’s what was called for – and my department colleague, who had been on the committee for some time didn’t come and there were departments that had no representation. If we looked at attendance as a measure of engagement, it concerns me. The nature of the discussion that occurred, I did not take away a sense of urgency. I get a sense in the college that there’s still a great deal of denial. We had a discussion pre-Meet and Confer. We’re not talking about administrator/faculty differential. We’re talking about the practices of the people that populate that college – both faculty and administration. Sometimes I think the focus can get confused to be: it’s about administrative practice or it’s about faculty practice. It’s about the practices. I’m glad we’re meeting.
AD: What would you recommend, John?
FA: If I had a simple answer I’d provide it. My answer would be that the college has to engage that taskforce; that it cannot be impressed strongly enough on the departments in the college to have full representation on the taskforce; that this is an important piece of work. I reported at the early Meet and Confer that there were some concerns at the very opening of the school year that some of these issues appeared to disappear from the radar. I know Michael, you took action to make sure that wasn’t occurring. I’m just saying that we need to have this high visibility. If that means the dean has to step in to say “I really expect that each department will have two fully participating members on the taskforce,” that would be a start. It would state that it’s important.
FA: One thing is, you’re looking at how to get people in there and also I’m looking at why are they not coming in. Certainly, a little over a year ago, there was a lot of concern in that college.
FA: There was discussion of that issue, Andy, among the people in attendance. One of the conclusions was, just by being in the room, you might turn out to be a target. Just by being in the room and participating, that may in fact create problems for those who were involved. Whether that’s real or not, it’s perceived by some, I’d say a majority. We’re talking about a very emotional setting. People were crying during the meeting because of the stress that’s associated with discussing these matters. That’s why I said, I have the sense that we need to have some urgent action.
FA: What is the perceived threat? You call it a target. What is that? I want a better understanding of who is threatening me. Why does somebody feel threatened?
FA: Having lived in that college for a long period of time, there is a fear of actions and abuse of power, both by faculty and by administration. When there is fear, people don’t like to stand up and be exposed to what they fear will happen. I would offer to you, that the presence of that among those who showed up is a reflection of the need to change the climate and the practices within the college.
AD: When this was established, it was supposed to be administration/faculty taskforce. Now it’s turned, in a way, into just a faculty group.
FA: That’s what I found out when I attended.
AD: One wonders why that changed.
FA: I came into the meeting to find that out. The dean was actually ready, willing, and able to be at the meeting. So too was the associate dean. There was some awkwardness at the start, to say “didn’t you get the message?” So it must have been decided recently. I expect that Rex can find out in talking to the co-facilitators how that came to be.
AD: We created this taskforce at Meet and Confer with a particular membership.
FA: Yes.
AD: And it changed.
FA: We did create it with that in mind to have both parties represented.
AD: It seems to me that we need to look into some elements of what’s happening and see what we can do to spark better cooperation/better participation and do what we can in that regard.
FA: What about the university?
AD: We’ve had another meeting. Some of the same problems are there. It’s not a matter of anybody fearing anything. It’s a matter of time. As I reported before, we have different people at the meeting at different meetings. Occasionally the same people will show up. One of the problems is getting it all tacked down so that the whole group gets together and continues. But we are meeting and continuing to talk. I think one reasonable goal is at the beginning of next semester, have enough people together so lay out the schedule and the structure of what’s going to be done in terms of the taskforce and what kind of investigations are going on. We have a sense of what the taskforce needs to do, but there are a lot of details to work out.
2. Upper Division Writing Requirement Status Report (FA – 03/02/2006)
AD: Progress is occurring.
FA: Okay. We do get a regular report from the Senate on that.
3. Academic Calendar (Admin – 09/07/2006)
(Mitch Rubenstein distributed draft copies of academic calendars for 2008-2009 and 2009-2010)
FA: Can you send me an electronic copy of this?
AD: Yes. (Mitch Rubenstein then explained the three calendar options to the group)
FA: when do we have to decide this?
AD: We need to have this relatively soon, but there’s no real….
FA: Probably by the end of Spring?
AD: Before then if we could.
FA: By the time I get this to faculty for their input, it’s going to be Spring before we can get back to you.
FA: Mitch, is the reason that Summer School has been moved forward a week to accommodate the common start date in August?
AD: Yes. One of the results of having the earlier start dates, especially the Summer start date, is there’s practically no time off during the year. Especially in the first one we looked at. There’s practically no time between – if you look at May – no time between the end of Spring semester and the beginning of the intercession on May 18th. That runs for three weeks then we go into the two five-week Summer sessions. Summer session ends, essentially, the week before faculty report for workshops and convocation. That doesn’t leave much time to get the dorms turned around. There’s very little time for maintenance to close down entire buildings, which they like to do in some circumstances. So it will present some difficulties. As long as the maintenance folks, for example, understand what they’re facing, they might be able to work around it.
FA: In the College of Ed there’s always been a concern about starting summer school before the K-12 systems are finished working. Most of the K-12 systems, because of the state statute that requires starting after Labor Day, tend to run into the second week of June.
AD: That issue came up. At least for now, St. Cloud District 742 will be done by the second week of June. I don’t know what will occur in the future.
FA: I’m not talking about students. I’m talking about employee duty days.
AD: Yes. We have a situation where MnSCU went in one direction for our colleges and universities and the State Legislature and Governor went in another direction for K-12 education in terms of academic calendars.
FA: If you send me this electronically, I can send it to all the faculty to get responses. We can start a discussion in Senate at the next meeting which is next week.
AD: The other thing I’ll try to do is make sure I have the duty days right and the options clearly labeled.
FA: My questions is about the moving of the faculty forum day from Wednesday to Tuesday. What’s your reasoning for that.
AD: Which one?
FA: For Spring semester. What I’m thinking is if we take out a Tuesday, we take out half a week and if we take out a Wednesday, we take out a third of a week. I’m wondering why you’re switching…
AD: There are already fewer Mondays. So if you took out a Wednesday, you’d reduce the Monday/Wednesday but not the Tuesday/Thursday.
AD: There are a couple of other reasons. One, one of the taskforce members observed that many science labs are Monday/Wednesday so by using Wednesday, you’re cutting into lab time. The other thing is that by having it on Wednesday, students are already beginning to celebrate during the week preparing for the weekend. I thought, and I don’t know how valid this is, if you put it on Tuesday, they’re more likely not to start celebrating. (laughter) I don’t know, we can have further discussion on this.
FA: Mitch, before they start picking it apart, I served on a taskforce to look at this calendar. We tried to do many of the things that you’ve achieved. I want to thank you. We have a Fall semester that does have a period of time off somewhere in the middle. You seem to have a balance between the M/W/F. And most importantly, the instructional times are much closer to equal than under the current plan. I know we can pick this apart but you and the committee that have worked on this need to be thanked.
AD: Thank you.
4. Global Initiative (Admin – 05/04/2006) and Taskforce for International Programs (Admin – 09/07/2006)
FA: We’lll skip that until next time.
5. IPESL Funds (Admin – 09/07/2006)
AD: We have received funding for the IPESL programs that were submitted to the Office of the Chancellor. That information went out on Announce so people should have had access to see the proposals which were funded and the amounts that were allocated to each one of them.
FA: Did they change the first reporting date to February?
AD: I don’t recall.
FA: Can you find out about that?
AD: Yes.
6. Pandemic Planning (Admin – 09/07/2006)
FA: We had a big discussion about that at the last IFO board meeting. The conclusion is, any kind of discussion that involves what happens if you close the school; that has to be negotiated. That’s a negotiations item so we’re not going to do too much more discussing of that on campus. That really gets to be about when we work and when we don’t work and that’s a negotiations item.
AD: What they’ve talked about with respect to bargaining units is – for good or for bad – is that the governor has the right to suspend the bargaining unit agreements in times of emergency. Their expectations were around that. That both in terms of classified staff, is primarily what they would talk about, but I would suspect it is a short extension on their part to include faculty. The governor has this power, I’m told.
FA: Well they need to deal with the State union on that.
AD: I don’t disagree. I just wanted to offer that nuance that I’d heard.
AD: Another point is about the question of closing semesters and issues related to grading and so forth. This is being taken up at the system level.
FA: They need to talk to the union about that.
AD: Right. Evidently, there will be a committee looking at Board policy regarding ending semesters or ending terms early. The last I heard, they’re looking at starting that in January.
FA: Did they bring that to Meet and Confer yet? Probably not. I’m going to take this off.
AD: Okay.
7. Budget Advisory Group (Admin – 09/07/2006)
FA: We’ve been to so many meetings that are tied to budget and subcommittees of budget that it becomes difficult to distinguish where it was the conversation occurred. That’s all good because there’s been a great deal of conversation. One of the subcommittees has reported its recommendations to the larger group. Another subcommittee, the one on budget assumptions, I expect will finish and have a report to give to the larger group before the end of the semester. Then there is emerging consensus that two other subcommittees need to meet together – that they are indeed one group.
AD: The base…
FA: The base budget and the budget modeling are really one and the same. I’m pleased and optimistic that we’ve moved forward to achieve the transparency we desire and the understandings we desire.
AD: There is a contingency kind of embedded in the tuition discussion that we’re awaiting a little interpretation from MnSCU before the larger group acts on it. It might send it back to a meeting or so to the other group.
FA: The message that I would convey to our colleagues is that this is a train that’s left the station and is building speed. If they’re not careful, it’s going to go right past their stop. I have a charge from somebody about getting this done.
AD: It’s been an interesting and useful process. Some things moved faster then I expected and other things are still on-schedule essentially. It’s been interesting.
8. Announce, Discuss and Bulletin Boards (FA – 09/07/2006)
FA: Did we talk about that last time?
AD: I received from you guys, the comments that Larry Roth had written down as well as the boldfaced items that you recommended to be included from the Senate as a whole is my understanding? We took that to TLTR. They’ve looked at it once. They’re going to look at it again tomorrow. I’ve taken it to Academic Affairs as well an