Approved 2-1-07
Meet and Confer
January 18, 2007
Admin: Roy Saigo, Michael Spitzer, Kristi Tornquist, Mitchell Rubinstein, Steve Ludwig, Mark Nook, Wanda Overland, Rex Veeder
Faculty: Annette Schoenberger, JoAnn Gasparino, Andrew Larkin, Bill Langen, Balsy Kasi, Bob Inkster, Jayantha Herath, Frances, Kayona, John Palmer, Jason Lindsey, Judy Kilborn, Polly Chappell – Note taker
Approval of Minutes
Minutes from December 7, 2006—approved.
Unfinished Business
Admin: I’d like to welcome everyone back to spring semester, and hope that it will be a productive one for us all.
1. Reassigned Time (FA) (05/04/06)
FA: We’ve put that on our website.
Admin: Can we take that off the agenda?
FA: Does it cover the whole year?
Admin: I think so. We can check with Patty.
FA: If someone sees that there is an error, who should they contact?
Admin: Probably my office.
2. Searches in Academic Affairs (Admin) and elsewhere (FA) (09/07/06)
Admin: There are about nine positions we are looking at. I have a different list than yours, or a slightly different order.
FA: This is a list I made from Senate. We can look and see which ones are missing. I even left the CETL on there. This is a synopsis of what we passed in Senate in December for what we want put on these committees. For the CETL Director, you have a copy of that already.
Admin: Yes.
Admin: I just want to report that Anne Zemek de Dominguez accepted a job in the city college of Las Vegas. Her first day there was January 15, 2007. So she is now there. We did an emergency appointment of Nancy Jessee as the Interim Special Assistant to the President, and we’re working on the process for lead investigator.
FA: Who’s going to finish up any investigations?
Admin: She will. I don’t think there are any in progress. I don’t think there are. We’re trying to identify a person to do intake, so that we keep the two positions separate. If we have to do an investigation somebody on staff or a private person will investigate. We’re in that process right now.
FA: We’ve had law suits that have sort of centered around having the Affirmative Action Officer be the investigator. We need to keep that in mind.
Admin: I didn’t say we’d use that person.
FA: I know. We need to keep that in mind.
Admin: Okay. It was really a quick thing and we want to keep you up to date.
FA: I went to Nancy Jessee’s workshop yesterday and she announced very specifically she is taking her lead investigator phone number into your office. What if somebody called who wanted to initiate 1B.1?
Admin: For now, there. We’re trying to keep that office open. And we’re going to try, either by appointment or somebody accepting the phone call, we want to keep those separate. So they don’t become merged. The next process, hopefully by the middle of next week, someone will be taking those in and reassigning them to someone to research. I think we were pretty clean on what Anne left behind and where we are. I don’t believe there are any ongoing investigations in progress. I’ll give you an update.
Admin: I have a number of others to identify that are in progress in addition to the ones on the list. There’s the Dean Search in Social Science, the AVP in Curriculum in Academic Affairs, Assistant VP for Faculty Relations in Academic Affairs. We’ve got the associate deans, the Honors Director, CETL covered. The Division of General Studies. Also an Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies.
FA: That’s on there, but we missed that one at the last Meet and Confer.
Admin: There’s also a search for Director for IR—Institutional Research.
FA: Did we put somebody on that committee already? That committee is already going.
Admin: Several I mentioned are already going.
FA: I just don’t want to accidentally ask people to do things that have been done.
Admin: I’ve requested a faculty member for a MSUAASF Search for Financial Aid Director, thinking there may be some interest on the part of faculty. And you thought we should talk about that at Meet and Confer?
FA: Yeah, what’s the make up of that committee?
Admin: I’ve asked Addie Turkowski to chair it. She’s a member of MSUAASF. I’ve asked MSUAASF to appoint two members. They get to appoint more than any other bargaining unit by their contract. I’ve asked AFSCME for a member and MAPE because part of the job involves working on the systems for Financial Aid, which is pretty important. I’m getting a representative from Business Office. And, although it’s not required for a MSUAASF search, I thought if there was faculty interest, I’d certainly like a faculty to serve. Frank Loncorich recently announced his retirement. I’d like to do the search while he’s still here.
FA: Can we agree on one or do we want to caucus?
FA: We have to see if anyone wants to.
FA: We can take it back to Senate.
FA: I want to send out an announcement.
Admin: Thank you. I’m also going to ask a student.
FA: The list is what Senate recommended. I’m sending out a request for volunteers. The latest it will go out is Tuesday.
Admin: Those compositions seem consistent with what we’ve done in the past.
Admin: There should be a Presidential Search in there too.
FA: We’ve been asking about that, but haven’t gotten any kind of response.
3. Orientation Task Force (Admin) (09/28/06)
Admin: We’re moving forward. We have subgroups developing their mission statements. There’s faculty involved in each subgroup. We’re meeting next week, and after that we’ll request more faculty to join the subgroups. We’ve had some MSUAASF already assigned to groups. It’s moving forward.
FA: We’ll expect there will be regular minutes. Please get those to me to send to Senate.
Admin: Yes. We’ll email those to you.
FA: I’m going to move this to progress reports.
4. 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) (11/2/06)
Admin: I have something for you on that. I need to verify certain details, however I’m not sure it’s completely accurate. I wanted to show you we have something. One of the issues is we didn’t have an organized procedure by which we kept records of each of the years of reviews, specifically the outcomes for each of those. We’ve combined reports. It’s important to verify to make sure it is accurate.
FA: So maybe next time we’ll have something.
5. CETL Director position (Admin) (12/7/06)
FA: That got merged with number two.
Admin: That’s what I thought. So that can come off.
6. Board of Trustee’s Award for Teaching Excellence (Admin) (12/7/06)
Admin: We talked at last Meet and Confer and described what that is all about.
FA: I think Senate agreed to who would be on that. I’m in the process of trying to get those people together. Who’s going to convene that meeting?
Admin: I’m trying to remember now who the administrators are.
FA: I don’t think you gave me any names yet.
Admin: How about if I send you an email when I gather all the names and you can send yours to me?
Admin: Okay.
FA: I think most of the names are on the Senate consent agenda.
7. Designate International Student Services Committee to investigate international student enrollment issues (FA) (12/7/06)
Admin: We met a couple times. We’re working on two problems within one committee. One is the issue of getting international students registered and also some of our transfer registration issues that came up during the past year. The group working on this includes members from the Center for International Studies, the Advising Center, Steve Klepetar, and also the associate deans. We also have Records and Registration. The group has just moved through this spring’s International Student and Advising registration period, and worked out a process for that, about a month in advance so we didn’t end up with students coming and thinking they had a schedule but not being able to get the classes. They were all put into classes before they came to campus. And then their schedules were massaged depending on their ESL requirements. We’re going to meet weekly throughout the semester to make sure we build something for fall that’s going to work with these students. We’re also looking at the transfer student issues. Most of those center around advising the students.
FA: There are also issues with the prerequisite checking. That’s a big deal.
Admin: Both international students and transfer students. The checking of the prerequisites will get easier for those instate transfer students. But the out-of-state students are always going to be a little bit of problem. We know that people need those prerequisite checks done by the departments. That’s where a lot of trouble occurs with international students over the summer. Someone will apply in May, get accepted, and now we need to know what classes we can get them into in the fall. We do have some trouble getting a hold of people who can appropriately evaluate those. We’re going to be trying to work through those kinds of issues as well.
FA: You maybe want to talk to the faculty before the end of the year.
Admin: Steve Klepetar is working on this. If the Academic Affairs committee wants to get involved, that would be helpful. We can do that. Especially for transfer issues. I think the international student issues entail a little more administrative issues than sort of transcript issues that show up. We’ve got the associate deans working with the departments to get the transcripts out and evaluated. They are in touch with these departments.
FA: One problem I’ve had with advising international and transfer students has to do with finding out what the content of the course is. I don’t know how to solve that.
Admin: One thing that came up in this committee is to get the Center for International Studies to work with these students and to have them bring a syllabus from that class. As a Physics Chair that would have helped me out tremendously, being able to evaluate which course was taken.
FA: The goal is to get them into a class they will pass.
Admin: Yes.
FA: I was just curious, who’s in that group? Anyone from ESL?
Admin: Yes. Both Julie Condon and Choon.
FA: Can you send us the list of names and I can publish it so people can contact those people?
Admin: Didn’t we have problems last year from students in Korea where they were assigned courses and they were so able to use the computer system that they screwed us up because they were reassigning themselves different courses?
Admin: We have had some trouble with international students and transfer students. One of the problems that we’ve run into, and it’s international students, transfer students, and new-entering first-year students, setting a schedule up, getting it built for them, and then they make changes. That’s okay, but oftentimes they’re getting into classes they shouldn’t be in, sometimes because we haven’t checked the prerequisites yet and sometimes their English competency is such that they won’t be able to handle that material. We’ve had some people back out of courses they shouldn’t have. We’re working on turning on a registration lock on ESL courses.
Admin: The President of Wuusuk University, they consider themselves the Harvard of Korea. I think it’s the other way. He promised me, “I’m going to send you our very best students.”
FA: I hade two of them in the fall.
Admin: Were they okay?
FA: They were excellent.
Admin: He made a promise to me and in Asia that is face. We need to look at this.
Admin: This is one of those groups that we need to keep going, at least the core of it, forever. Because we’re always going to have small transfer issues, international student issues. We’re always going to have small registration advising problems. This group has people from each of the colleges on it that can get the word back for input to fix these problems.
Admin: We met with the international students, and they have very low student support. They have so much social pressure. They go through depression and all kinds of other nasty things. We talked about the support systems here.
FA: The other issue that came up with this had to do with Sodexho.
Admin: That’s later on the agenda. Can we take seven off the agenda?
FA: If I get the list of names, we can take it off.
8. Request for report on Initiative Budget Spending (FA) (12/7/06)
Admin: Here is a list. They are virtually all done except for a few in progress.
FA: What does done mean?
Admin: That means that the money has been spent on the item as described.
FA: I’ll give this to John. He’ll give it to the Budget Committee, this request came from them. That may stay on there depending on what the Budget Committee comes up with.
New Business
1. Continuation of the Zmora agreement (FA) (1/18/07)
FA: I have something to pass out.
FA: This is the Faculty position adopted early September. We took the court settlement and the pertinent clauses and rewrote them in this format.
Admin: I looked this over and there are some parts that are significantly different. We haven’t had a chance to discuss it yet. But I will want to come back, with changes most likely.
FA: So I’ll put this on unfinished business.
2. Resolving Grievances and the designee (FA) (1/18/07)
FA: One of the things we’ve noticed, at step one we have a designee who has worked on a grievance. We work on a resolution. The designee writes the resolution up. The resolution requires a dean to do something or someone to do something. And that person says, “no, I’m not going to do it.” And that’s the end of it. It doesn’t happen. So, we thought we had an agreement. We’ve been told that that practice almost verges on an unfair labor practice. Basically, we’re operating in good faith. You can use a designee. That’s fine. That means the designee sort of speaks with the President’s voice or the Provost’s voice. And, yet it seems that all that really happens is it doesn’t help at all.
Admin: I’m not aware of a situation where a dean has refused to do what a designee has specified. Can you give us a specific example?
FA: It happened this fall. In the COE there were some dates that certain things were supposed to occur. Those dates were in November. They still have not occurred.
Admin: Is that correct, Rex?
Admin: There was one where the process for departmental decisions and the requirement for departments and everybody to have written, so I sent an addendum.
FA: I didn’t know you could do an addendum?
Admin: I was told by the dean and the chair that they had come up with an agreement to complete the process by the end of the semester. And I had asked for a calendar. The difference between the calendar and them saying it’s going to be done by the end of the semester, I wasn’t satisfied with that. So I wrote back and said I wanted a whole calendar.
FA: It was supposed to be done in November. And we don’t have it. And I got an email from the dean saying it’s not going to happen, we’re not going to do it. And I think you were copied on that email.
Admin: I think that the understanding at that time was that the dean had misread the requirements and thought that all the procedures had to be written down and voted upon and agreed upon by the department by that date. And that wasn’t the requirement in the grievance. That was a misunderstanding.
FA: So we still don’t have a calendar.
Admin: We do not have it written down.
FA: When are we going to get it?
Admin: Well, I’m expecting it. I asked for it two weeks after the beginning.
FA: So what if we don’t have it two weeks after the beginning of classes? We didn’t get it by the date in November. What happens if we don’t get it?
Admin: That’s another question.
Admin: We’ll take care of that, and we’ll get back to you.
FA: There were some other ones that occurred a year ago.
FA: Yes. In the COE.
FA: Where I think there were three issues.
FA: One of the issues was with using non-faculty to supervise student teachers. That’s still going on. There were several others. There was a meeting I attended with Steve Hornstein and Provost Spitzer and at that time, Interim Dean Steffens. And there was an agreement that three things were going to occur. You and I met with Steve Hornstein in early January and there were still three things that needed to be done. And just today you and I talked about having a meeting with the Provost. I responded that I think it’s going to be about year from the last time we met. Somehow what appears to occur is we lose track of whether or not that which was to occur actually occurs.
FA: I’m also disturbed by a practice that says we can have a grievance saying something, and then if a dean decides not to do it or doesn’t understand than we can have an addendum that seems to indicate the dean’s interpretation of this is okay.
Admin: I don’t think that’s quite what Rex said.
FA: That’s what I heard. It may not be what you said, but it’s what I heard.
Admin: What the dean said that she couldn’t do was something that wasn’t what she was asked to do. But she said she couldn’t do or wouldn’t do was have the whole thing done before the beginning of the semester. That wasn’t what the grievance settlement directed her to do. What the grievance settlement directed her to do was to establish a schedule by which that would be done, not that it would be done. And she misunderstood that.
FA: But we still don’t have a schedule.
Admin: I understand that.
FA: And there was another one in another college with an addendum that I just got today.
Admin: Well, I think Rex, Michael, and John should get together. There is a remedy, and there is a agreement and I signed it and it should be done. Semantics, calendar, doesn’t cut any ice with me. So, the three of you guys get together to agree on something and get it done. I think arguing today about what was the occasion and what was the interpretation… if this is something that should be done, let’s get it done right.
FA: Thank you.
3. 1B.1 complaints and disability services and pedagogy (FA) (1/18/07)
FA: Probably Roy’s comments and announcement at the beginning of the meeting may change this a little bit. But I don’t think it eliminates the need or the desirability for the conversation that we would like to have. In her workshop yesterday, Nancy made a comment that she would welcome the opportunity for discussion, questions, suggestions, ways to make the process more clean and helpful. That’s the spirit which we bring this item. There have been some occasions faculty felt they had acted in particular which 1B.1 has intersected with Student Disabilities Services and issues of accommodation. But that is probably not exclusive. We’ve had reports from faculty who felt abused in that process and subjected to a process where they didn’t get to state their own case, felt humiliated. We’d like to explore ways make this more humane.
Admin: Are you talking about 1B.1 issues? Disability issues? Or both?
FA: A disabled student makes a 1B.1 complaint based on their disability.
Admin: Because the student feels there has not been reasonable accommodation made on behalf of the student?
FA: That would be one possibility. Another would be a student has felt that the faculty member has somehow violated confidentiality around the student’s disability in trying to make that accommodation.
Admin: That situation is very complicated. That’s hard to determine.
FA: This may require some conversation with the office of Student Disability Services.
Admin: It seems to me what we need to do is perhaps establish a small group to look into this. It’s hard to respond to the kind of general statements without being able to address the specific cases. That’s at the heart of what the issue might be. Maybe we should have a small group created to look into the specifics and come back to the larger group with analysis and response.
FA: I did volunteer to design some training that would be associated with providing accommodations for disability students. But I did it under the condition that I’d be given a set of expectation for outcomes for the training.
FA: Didn’t they agree to that?
Admin: Who is they?
FA: It was Owen.
FA: It was a discussion around one of these complaints.
FA: I said that I would be willing to put together a D2L based training program associated with these issues. But I could not do that unless I had a set of what were expected outcomes. My understanding was that I would get this. This was several months ago. Not that I want more work, but it seems to me that that is part of this picture that is there. Faculty do the best they can. They act in good faith. If we don’t have a way to assist faculty in gaining additional knowledge or practices, we’re not going to make progress. It becomes then a “gotcha” arrangement rather than one that says, “how are we going to work together to advance instruction?”
Admin: Did Owen have a workshop in the last two days on accommodations?
FA: No.
Admin: I can talk to Owen. It might be good to have a faculty workshop in the fall.
FA: It turns into one of those “when did you stop beating your wife?” sort of things. They’re accused of doing something they didn’t do. And then they’re told here are the things you have to do in order to not be punished for something you feel you didn’t do.
Admin: We need to know if the faculty member has spoken with Owen about what the reasonable accommodations were to be with the student in the given circumstance and if the faculty member has agreed to do that or not. And if not, why not? If that’s what happens, then the student goes to complain about being treated in a discriminatory way, because this accommodation wasn’t provided that’s the loop that you’re dealing with. So, the key is identifying the reasonable accommodation and having the faculty member and the student on the same page regarding that so that they can go forward. Sometimes there are very intractable issues related to these, and they can be very difficult to resolve. But there should be a way to do that.
FA: I want to go back to your earlier suggestion that we have a smaller group. That’s what we came up with. In the fall we invited Nancy to the Executive Committee to talk about this. That didn’t come off. So what we would like is four of us to talk with Nancy.
Admin: But if we’re talking about disability issues, Nancy alone is not enough.
FA: We want to start with her. We want to do this step by step, and get a complete understanding of what the situation is. Then we can figure out the next step.
Admin: It would seem to me that if you’re dealing with disability issues, you’d want to start with disability issues. That’s what leads to the discrimination complaint when it is not resolved.
FA: Our problem is that Disability Services is being used in lieu of a punishment of faculty members. Because the faculty member is being charged with 1B.1. And so the member is offered the opportunity to take training from Disability Services. This is part of the humiliation and the guilt that is imposed on the faculty member. And it also doesn’t promote the faculty member’s ability to deal with the problem because the faculty member doesn’t think that they’ve created a problem. This is not a conflict with Nancy Jessee. We’re trying to invite her in to a cordial meeting with us to discuss the entirety of the issue. And then go onto the next step, if it has to deal with Disability Services.
FA: I think there is something you just got through saying that is going to be one of the keys to a successful outcome. And that is that some of these problems are truly intractable. Certain disciplines make really bad fits with certain handicaps. I certainly wasn’t trained in how to accommodate certain handicaps in teaching irregular French verbs. It’s not hard to imagine that there could be some monstrous problem given some handicaps. In many of the disciplines, as you have said, are being presented intractable. So if both sides begin the conversation with that realization then we’re rational and we’re clever.
Admin: There’s a history of legal decisions involving these kinds of issues where students have brought lawsuits regarding specific disabilities and the accommodations that are required that it would be helpful for people to become a little bit more familiar with, perhaps. But generally speaking one of the things that a court would look at in this kind of a situation would be what the expected outcomes are of the academic program. And if the student has a disability which prevents the student from being able to accomplish those outcomes, then providing the reasonable accommodation is something that you don’t have to do. If you say, for example, that I want to major in math but I have Math Dyslexia and I want to be exempted from having to take math in my math major, that would not be a reasonable accommodation.
FA: This leads us into one of the things that a faculty member did report: they were essentially being told this kid has a disability that prevents him from doing math. You can’t require him to do math, but you have to let him pass the math class. It was in a different context. So now we’re talking about Disability Services getting into pedagogical issues. It’s fine if there’s an understanding and you can do some accommodating. But to be told by someone who’s not an expert in this field, “you can’t do that, you have to figure out some other way to do it.”
Admin: That’s why I think it’s important to have the conversation in which Owen is present because I can’t imagine that he would have said that.
Admin: Can I get us off center and have Wanda, John, Bob, and Owen get together and outline the parameters of what we’re trying to discuss and come back to us all to discuss this?
FA: Do we want to caucus? I think we need to have Nancy in that group as well.
Admin: That’s fine.
FA: I apologize; I had class until 3:20. This is an example I have. One student I have is an alternate---
FA: We’re not going in the right direction. We’re going off toward disability. The problem is not disability. The faculty are addressing disability. The problem is they are being punished for a student’s perception, which may or may not be true. We need to talk to 1B.1. That’s where we need to start.
FA: Roy has revised his suggestion to add Nancy.
FA: The problem is not the Disability Services.
Admin: If the student is bringing a discrimination complaint based on disability, how can you say it’s not related to Disability Services?
FA: We’re trying to resolve this problem.
Admin: Where is the root of this problem?
FA: The root is in the classroom. And the faculty member is trying to accommodate the student. And a student doesn’t see that as accommodation, and takes it up as a 1B.1 issue. And then it goes downhill.
Admin: It seems to me that if the student is in that situation and has talked with Owen, that the faculty member and Owen tell the student this is a reasonable accommodation. And that’s where it ends.
FA: This student talks with 1B.1. And once anybody goes to 1B.1, the lead investigator has to open it up as a probable case.
Admin: She has to look into whether or not it is a case. And if she were to talk to Owen and was told this is a reasonable accommodation that was provided and the student has rejected it, then there’s no case.
FA: It’s more complicated than that.
Admin: There are other issues that have been coming up from other aspects of what the Disability office will do or not do.
FA: The problems isn’t with the Disability office, the problem is the 1B.1 infliction on the faculty member.
Admin: I understand.
FA: We need to talk with 1B.1.
FA: This student in mechanical engineering wanted to take a test in the Disability Services center. He took the class with me before he took this class with another instructor. He’d like to take it with me to improve his grade. He said, “well, I know you, so I can take it here and find out how well I do.” I have a lot of random quizzes and he mentioned to me, “I’ll find out if I want to take it here, find out how I do. Then figure out if I don’t do well I’ll take it in Disability Services.” I tried to make the pedagogy issues here. Tried to talk the student into taking the random quizzes---
FA: The student thinks he has the option of whether his scores on quizzes count.
FA: I hesitate on what to say to him. How much do I want to accommodate him, and will I be in trouble since this is a personal relationship? Will I be in trouble?
Admin: It’s the student’s option which way, if he has that as an accommodation recommended by Disability Services.
FA: These two things really intersect. It came to us as a 1B.1. I suggest we add Andy to the group to make sure it doesn’t lose its focus. That would be six of us.
Admin: I’m willing to schedule the meeting.
FA: I think we need to say what we’re not saying. It is a 1B.1 issue. And whether the faculty member is guilty or not guilty or has done something wrong or hasn’t done something wrong…. The cases I’m hearing the faculty member has not done something significantly wrong but it goes to 1B.1. And if we’re talking about behavior of the lead investigator, the 1B.1 officer, toward the faculty member it’s treatment. It’s making this person feel like they’re an inmate in a prison and there’s an assumption of guilt. And they’re feeling bad when they really haven’t done something that terribly wrong. What we’re talking about is treatment by this person of the faculty member. Nancy Jessee has stuff she has to follow. She has to follow up. It’s the manner in how faculty are being treated. They suddenly feel they’re under attack and having to go through training and sign forms. And they feel like they’re in trouble when perhaps it doesn’t have to play out that way. That’s what I’m hearing. And we can nit pick on certain cases. We don’t have to do that. It’s about the treatment of this person. Her behavior toward faculty. And making faculty feel like they’ve done something terribly wrong when there’s not a finding of fact. It hasn’t got to the point yet.
FA: I would like to say emphatically that I have worked closely with Nancy. I have immense respect for her sensitivity in delicate cases, nevertheless faculty still come away feeling beat up. That discomfort is inevitable, absolutely unavoidable if you become the subject of an investigation. Nobody’s going to be comfortable. But my sense is that Nancy would absolutely welcome conversations to lessen that.
Admin: I agree. So are we set on this?
FA: I want to reiterate that. Nancy does not make people feel bad. It’s the system. As soon as people get that notification, that’s when it starts for them.
FA: I think there’s some distress on this campus that you didn’t pick someone else to be your new assistant. Given our choice we would have Nancy stay in that job.
Admin: Thank you.
FA: I think that’s very true.
Admin: I think this will be helpful.
4. Center for International Studies: What are the fees used for $100 administrative fee, $22 student ID, $125 Emergency Fund, $75 application fee. (FA) (1.18/07)
Admin: I’d like to talk about four and five together. The Interim Associate VP for International Studies, I thought would be back yesterday from a trip to Chile. But they were detained for six or nine hours in the airport in Dallas because of weather there, and they didn’t get back in time. I haven’t had a chance to talk to her. I’d like to defer this until our next meeting.
FA: We need to ask the questions.
FA: We’ll do both items together like you suggested. Let’s begin with the fifth one. We’re formally requesting an external review and an audit of this center. This request is the outgrowth of faculty concern and perception that there’s very little clarity within that center, the raising of funds, and then uses of funds within that center. That uncertainty and perhaps negative feelings about it are really counter productive. We’d also like to discuss the funding policies from the perspective that they tend to drive the selection of both faculty and regions where we’ll have the programs, toward certain faculty in certain areas, and make other whole regions of the whole world and faculty virtually off limits. In particular, the requirement for a certain number of students must be achieved, minimum enrollment, rather than a more flexible approach towards funding the program, for example a sliding fee, is problematic.
Admin: What do you mean by sliding fee?
FA: Depending on how many students we get, the fee will be in this range.
Admin: And the fewer the students, the higher the fee?
FA: Yes. Obviously. Because for the program to be self-funding it must raise these funds. So if we had 10 students, you’re each going to have to pay this much. If we have 20, this much.
FA: We still don’t know what self-funding means.
Admin: The goal is to have the programs be self-funding. The fees cover the expenses of the trip. The salary for the faculty member comes from the tuition based on the number of students. You’re not suggesting a sliding tuition as well?
FA: We can do that.
FA: To follow up, the current situation in CIS is that if the faculty organized a class or trip in the summer or intersession. Currently the faculty member plans the trip, creates it, comes up with how much the airfare will be, they often try and figure out where the people will stay, they do all the planning. They come up with the budget. The students have to pay to go on the trip. They then go to CIS and usually CIS tell them well, for this trip to be listed, for it to run as an actual class at SCSU, you need to recruit 12 or 16 students, etc. Now part of the figure clearly is based on paying the faculty member’s salary. And this ties in with what Bill was mentioning about the kind of faculty that can really put a trip together. Under the current model it’s much easier for someone relatively new to recruit the base number of students because their salary is not as high. The other issue for some faculty is what else is this going to cover? Because from their perspective they’re organizing the whole thing. The students are paying their own way and airfare and so forth. So what is the other cost CIS is putting in? And ultimately it’s having kind of a problematic effect because the kind of courses or trips you can recruit 12 or 16 students for easily tend to be trips to fairly developed places and places known for tourism. CIS has a lot of trips that go to Western Europe, Australia, developed places like that. And if a faculty member is trying to take a smaller group to an underdeveloped region or for some kind of pedagogical reason, we feel that it’s unrealistic to even try.
FA: The faculty member figures out where the students are going to stay, they figure out what the airfare is going to be. They do all this work, then the student has to pay tuition plus an additional 15%, a little more than $300 goes to CIS. Exactly what is CIS doing for that money? This fall we had an example. We were at the meeting where the CIS nearly deep-sixed a trip because they weren’t around to take care of problem when the Records and Registration put the course in the wrong semester, so all the students lost their financial aid. And there was nobody in CIS even to take care of that. We had to have a meeting with the Provost and the Records and Registration and a huge group of people just to get somebody to listen to this problem. So, where is this money going?
Admin: That’s what we’ll respond to you at the next meeting.
Admin: And we don’t want to know that it’s been spent. We want to know where and what’s it actually been spent on.
Admin: We’ll talk about this. But what I suggest is that, first, to go back to CIS.
FA: We asked for that three years ago. They haven’t done it. That’s why it’s at Meet and Confer.
Admin: You’ll have something at the next Meet and Confer.
FA: I’m sorry if I sound pissed off but I am. I am outraged. I will not take this because I have meetings with the CIS people. I’ve made requests in writing. I have received nothing.
Admin: There’s a new person in there. And you will get the information.
Admin: I accept that. I don’t doubt it. I would like to get from CIS, I think with the force of the Meet and Confer issue and Michael and I committed to that, and I do think with the new person over there, I think we can do that. But all I’m suggesting is that can we find out, and then look at what might be the issues that might be appropriate for something like an audit, rather than say, go and audit that. We should have a better idea of what the money is spent on, the issues, and procedures, for what period of time. I think it’s a two-step process. I think there’s a third issue that is related, but it’s the one I’ve heard talked about here before, about how do you make a trip viable financially. I remember sometime ago a discussion about that, whether 20 was the magic number, 10, or whatever it was. But I think that’s another issue to talk about. It’s related, but it’s kind of a third issue.
Admin: I’d like to jump in and say that the two questions you raised are the exact questions I have. Linda Baer and I, we’re talking about system policies also, and I’ve questioned we have a villa in ____ and we’re losing money on that. We have an apartment in ____ where nobody’s used it. I want to reevaluate and make transparent where are we going to focus in this world? What is important? Some faculty and staff came back with Laos and Thailand. Is that where we want to focus? Is Korea where we want to focus? Costa Rica? Chile? Why are we selecting these places? I’m concerned that there are certain enclaves that have been going on and some are dying. How do we keep Alnwick moving 30 years from now? I had to fly there seven years ago because the new duke—they had two dukes, one died, the next one took over, he hired a guy named Rory who was the business manager—much different than what was done previously. They said palaces are for comfort and castles are for protection. It was pretty primitive. I was walking through a hall trying to go to the washing area. Someone else came through at 11:00 at night, it’s dank and dark and four-foot walls with rock, scared me to death. I said, “who are you?” He said, “I’m a friend of so-and-so. What are you doing here?” I said, “I’m President of St. Cloud State. I want to wash my clothes.” I don’t know what the insurance liability is. We came to those kinds of issues. What are we doing? What are we going to do about onsite? What are we going to do about living quarters? We did a survey and 40% of the faculty either have international experience or have taught abroad. We want to increase that. We need a systemic program that continues to grow.
FA: Much of what I want to say dovetails on what we’ve been saying about our emphasis for globalization. I think the need for transparency becomes greater. I think a lot of the reasons people are upset is we can’t see where the money is.
FA: The prosperous tours are going to win every single time, if we do that. And we’ll never get the trip that could be really strategically vital for the country. To Pakistan or Russia for that matter. So, you need to think about what are we about and the rest will follow.
Admin: Absolutely.
5. Center for International Studies: Request for External Review and Audit of the Center (FA) (1/18/07)
Discussed above, in item four.
Progress Reports
1. Taskforces on Diversity (a.k.a. Motion from Teacher Development) (FA) (9/22/05)
Admin: I’d just like to say for the COE Taskforce, Dr. Condon and Dr. LaCourt sent a report, sort of a discussion about the progress there. In that memo they will come in and discuss things with us, if so requested. I think if there are further questions about the progress in the college, that’s a good idea because they are the ones who are involved at this point. The other task force, there is a process now established. There are going to be meetings weekly for the interest groups that were mentioned in the original document brought forth by the FA and brought here to Meet and Confer. These invitations are going out for those weekly meetings next week. After all those groups have met in a sort of focus group environment, there will be a large meeting, a conference of the groups in early April. Then there will be a follow-up report to the Administration and the faculty.
2. Upper Division Writing Requirement Status Report (FA) (03/02/06)
Admin: No report.
3. Academic Calendar (Admin) (09/07/06)
Admin: You’ve all seen this but I’m passing them out.
FA: Senate hasn’t had a discussion about it. I know that one issue I was asked about was night classes. And that becomes particularly important because of what happened today.
Admin: We’ll make a point with the evening classes in the future of listing them separately in the calendar.
FA: In the academic calendar?
Admin: Yes.
FA: Everywhere it appears?
Admin: That I can’t promise. Every official place that we can.
FA: So it will just be part of the document? The issue with these, what are we doing with night classes? This technique we have tacking on 10 minutes doesn’t work if you plan out 15 lessons because you add on five minutes of lesson two to the first lesson, the second lesson is the rest of lesson two and ten minutes of lesson three… So you can’t do that. People would like to see the same number of Wednesday night classes as the same number of Monday classes with no difference.
Admin: We need to look at that. We need to calculate that for night classes. There is another issue with 2009. We need some feedback from faculty.
Admin: Under each option we are locked into starting dates for 2008-2009. The Chancellor has set those. We were making some assumptions about what the Chancellor’s office would do for 2009-2010, and now they’re coming back and saying we have some flexibility here. They’re undertaking a survey. They’ve asked us to respond by the 24th. So we have some time. I wanted to use this opportunity to get some feedback. What they’re saying is for fall semester generally we’re looking at the Monday before Labor Day as the starting date. But we also want to look at options of the second Monday before Labor Day. The good news is by starting on the 24th we actually get the number of instructional days that we’ve listed here. If we started later on the 31st then we’d be cutting out five instructional days and we’d have to go back and re-look at cutting out the fall break on October 22nd and 23rd.
FA: So they’re saying we might not start until the 31st?
Admin: Right. That’s what they want to ask us. And so, my inclination would be to say no, start on the 24th. And for subsequent years, they are looking for 2012-13.
Admin: They established a rule of thumb to start the Monday before Labor Day—
FA: But they forgot that Labor moves around! Sorry.
Admin: They realized that.
Admin: We want to start at a reasonable date before the Christmas holiday. That’s for fall semester. Spring semester we’re looking at the Monday before Martin Luther King Day, which is what we have in this particular calendar. It’s January 11th, or what other day might you be interested in? The three options we have here start the Monday before Martin Luther King Day. The difference is in Option 2 and Option 3, we essentially would hold class on President’s Day and in Option 2 we would not have a Faculty Forum Day in the middle of the semester. Option 3 we would have the Faculty Forum Day, which would leave us with essentially five workshops: four at the beginning of the semester, one Faculty Forum Day.
FA: How do they figure out when Martin Luther King Day is?
Admin: Third Monday of January.
FA: I will say that my students and faculty that I know appreciate the Forum day because it’s a day that you can go ahhhh!
Admin: Didn’t you say that the faculty on the task force preferred Option 2 or 3?
Admin: 2 or 3. Option 2 is no Faculty Forum Day and classes on President’s Day. Option 3 is a Faculty Forum Day, but not classes on President’s Day. I also point out that Options 2 and 3 also include four workshop days before the start of the semester.
FA: Are you asking for the faculty to give a recommendation on the starting day?
Admin: We’re assuming that the Chancellor would impose a starting day as Monday before Martin Luther King Day for spring semester.
FA: But for fall you assumed…
Admin: The Monday before Labor Day and then we inadvertently do the right thing by scheduling it two weeks before.
Admin: We need to give our vote to the Office of the Chancellor on that start date by next week. So whatever feedback you can provide us.
FA: We’re going to talk about it in Senate. I don’t make any promises about what might or might not happen there.
Admin: We have no promises the Office of the Chancellor will choose a starting date we want. We might be the only ones saying, please start it on the Monday before Martin Luther King Day. And they might say, well the majority of institutions say we want to start on the Wednesday before Martin Luther King Day.
Admin: Right. But if we want to have any influence we need to get at least our vote in.
FA: It seems to me that in the absence of a recommendation from Senate, that what you have here in your recommendation is the nearest thing that we have for what should come from this institution. Does that make sense? Wasn’t this committee that made these recommendations, it had representatives from faculty and Administration, and lots of people who knew lots of things. To me if we can’t have something from Senate then use this as a guideline. In Senate we’ll have a problem. We just do when we’re talking about papers with tiny little numbers like this. And to go into this added problem of Labor Day and Martin Luther King Day.
Admin: I think what we want is five class days before the first of September. That’s good. We’ll need to respond.
4. Global Initiative (Admin) (05/04/06) and Task force for International Programs (Admin) (09/07/06)
Admin: No report.
5. IPESL Funds (Admin) (09/07/06)
FA: That would be PIF-II We don’t have anything yet, because I didn’t get that. Are you asking about PIF-II, right?
Admin: Yes.
FA: The committee has acted on it. And I expect to get their minutes on Monday morning. And you will get a copy of them as well on Monday when I get them. I have actually pushed that group. The Professional Development Committee and the Research Grants Committee they did special summer projects, they are doing this, they are doing research grants. They are actually meeting on Friday on another bunch of grants they are being asked to evaluate. That committee works very hard.
Admin: I don’t doubt that.
FA: Expect that Monday.
6. Budget Advisory Group (Admin) (09/07/06)
Admin: We’ve been meeting regularly with subgroups. It’s a tall order what we’re trying to put together in one year. People are invited to attend. We publish the notes and agendas. Right now the advisory group itself should come to terms with the recommendation on budgeting principles and shortly will have some additional information coming from the subgroups. We had a subgroup on tuition to do an investigation and sent that back to them for further review. It’s opened up a lot of things. It’s coming together. John and I co-chair and that’s worked out well.
7. Announce, Discuss and Bulletin Boards (FA) (09/07/06)
Admin: I have what Faculty Senate forwarded. I have Larry Roth’s other comments. And I have some revisions that Tom Hergert did to approach the tone issue. So I need to incorporate those things in a clean document.
FA: Great.
FA: So, what aspect is that?
Admin: Email for employees. Information for employees.
FA: So, what about the other aspect of opt out? Allowing employees to sign up for certain kinds of announcements?
Admin: The expectation is that then official announcements could go on that. All employees would have to receive the official announcements. Then the discussion occurring in TLTR is that “Discuss” would continue as a discussion list and “Announce” would evaporate and we would have a bulletin board to post dogs and cars. And so those would be the various venues to receive information. And it’s an option to look at those bulletin boards. Although you can have reminders or pop-ups.
FA: So it wouldn’t really be a menu of options that I’d like to opt-in to this, this, and this. Please don’t send me announcements? It would be the following bulletin boards are available, go to this.
Admin: Right. That’s what we’ve been working on.
FA: Can’t you, with some of those, do things where something new is posted you get a little thing that says there’s something new to look at?
Admin: There’s all sorts of things. It’s just how elaborate the bulletin board system is.
FA: That’s what people are asking for. I want to know when something new has been put in this category.
Admin: It’s my understanding that we can do that. They have something almost ready to go. I haven’t looked at it. They just told me it’s ready to go. If there’s some people who want to see what they’re working on, that would be terrific.
FA: My interest is high. How high would my commitment have to be?
Admin: Would you like a 30-minute commitment or 30 hours? Tell me.
FA: We’ll talk about this afterwards.
8. Doctoral Programs (FA) (10/19/06)
Admin: We submitted a proposal for the Higher Ed Applied Doctorate. We got some questions back from the MnSCU folk. Responses have been submitted to them to those questions. And we’re awaiting word from MnSCU as to their determination on the proposals, prior to being able to submit that to the Higher Learning Commission.
FA: Have
they given you a time limit?
Admin: No. It should be soon.
9. Orientation Task Force (Admin) (09/28/06)
Admin: This is PIF-II. We touched on this already.
10. One-Time Professional Development Funds (FA) (10/19/06)
FA: No report.
11. General Education Assessment Recommendations (FA) (11/2/06)
FA: I think we gave you that and you were going to respond to it.
Admin: We did. We talked about it last Meet and Confer.
FA: I don’t remember what we decided to do. So let’s skip over this until next time.
12. University Wide Committee for Online Policies and Procedures (Admin) (12/7/06)
Admin: We talked about membership for a group to work on that.
FA: That’s the one I think I’m going to have from people after Senate on Tuesday. I know John Palmer is one already. John Theis is one already. There’s another person whose name I looked up last night but then forgot again. Is there a John Rapp? Might be him.
Admin: Might be John Rapp?
FA: I will get them to you after Tuesday.
13. General Education Assessment Recommendations (FA) (11/2/06)
FA: No report.
14. New By Laws for the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education (FA) (12/7/06)
Admin: You had provided me with a draft of those. Have we had new membership appointed to that advisory committee? I thought there were some new people recently appointed? Is that correct John?
FA: Yes there were.
FA: Do you want me to look those up and send them to you? I thought I sent them to somebody.
Admin: I thought that we should ask the group as it’s newly constituted to review that document and maybe make some changes before we consider it.
FA: Okay, so how about if I send you those names and then we will someone look at it?
Admin: Okay.
FA: I can do that. I thought that I sent them to somebody.
15. International Students Services Committee, Center for International Students and international student Enrollment Issues and Problems with Sodexho (FA) (12/7/06)
FA: We talked about the enrollment issues. But it’s the problems with Sodexho that I have to say something about.
Admin: I thought we talked about those too.
FA: Well, International Students Service Committee met with Sodexho and they are not entirely satisfied, but they believe that Sodexho is working on this.
Admin: Well, they invited Sodexho to be among the members of their committee.
FA: Right.
Admin: And Sodexho is doing some training: both our CARE training and their corporate training that they have about some things. I think what I’d like to do is give them some time this semester, and go back and revisit the committee myself.
FA: Do you want to take this off of here?
Admin: Anything we can take off this paper, I’m in favor of.
Admin: Who’s committee is this?
FA: This is a joint committee. It has people from all over.
Admin: So do you know who I can talk to?
FA: I think Margaret Vos might be on the committee.
Admin: Margaret would be the one who convenes it?
FA: I don’t remember who chairs it.
Admin: I’ll start with Margaret, and she’ll get me on the right course.
FA: Yeah.
Admin: I just wanted to welcome everyone back. 2007 will be a happy new year. I remember a faculty member telling me, “do you realize this is the first Meet and Confer of the semester of your last semester as President of St. Cloud State?” It sounds pretty terminal. I will tell you, seven years have gone extremely rapidly. The progress we have made in our relationship has been fantastic. In the past I felt like shooting myself as I left. Now I feel like having a glass of wine. And I’m going to. But it’s been a good ride. Things are moving well. Michael will call our meetings, and I’ll be in and out. So, I want to thank you for the collegial collaborative behavior that we’ve all expressed. I like the way that we’re moving on, solving problems. And there’s been compromise and support for the best interest of the institution. So, thank you very much.
Meeting adjourned 5:00 p.m.
Submitted by Polly Chappell, Faculty Association Administrative Assistant