Meeting of the Faculty Alliance

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

11:30am - 1:00pm by audio conference

 

Draft Minutes

 

1.          Call to Order and Roll Call

 

            Members present:

 

Tim Hinterberger, Chair, 2004-2005 President, UAA Faculty Senate

Abel Bult Ito, 2004-2005 Past-President, UAF Faculty Senate

Paul Layer 2005-2005 President, UAF Faculty Senate

Jocelyn Krebs, 2004-2005 Chair, UAA Faculty Senate Graduate Affairs Board

Greg Protasel, 2005-2006 President, UAA Faculty Senate

Gary Holton, 2004-2005 Representative, UAF Faculty Senate

Ginny Mulle, 2004-2005 President, UAS Faculty Senate

Lynn Shepherd, 2005-2006 President, UAS Faculty Senate

 

         Others present:

 

Pat Ivey, Executive Officer, System Governance

Roberta Stell, Provost, UAS

Dave Veazey, Assistant Vice President, Academic Affairs

Mike Sfraga, Assistant Vice President, Student Enrollment and Management

                                                           

2.         Adopt Agenda

 

MOTION: passed as amended without objection

 

“The Faculty Alliance moves to adopt the agenda for the May 10, 2005 meeting as amended to include an update on the Distance Education Steering Committee under ‘Other Old Business.’  This action is effective May 10, 2005.”

 

3          Approve April 19, 2005 minutes

 

            MOTION:  passed without objection

 

“The Faculty Alliance moves to approve the April 29, 2005 minutes.  This action is effective May 10, 2005.”           

 

 

4.         Chair’s Report

 

Tim Hinterberger reported that the position of Vice President for Academic Affairs has been offered but not yet accepted.  The final candidate is coming to Alaska for another visit.  Abel Bult-Ito wanted an explanation of why Craig Dorman is continuing because the faculty liaison was cut because of the VPAA recruitment and no new positions will would be created.  Protasel concurred as did Mulle and Shepherd. 

 

RESOLUTION:  passed without objection

"Whereas, the faculty liaison position was eliminated in order to use the funding to recruit and fill the Vice President for Academic Affairs position on a permanent basis, and

Whereas, the permanent Vice President for Academic Affairs has been selected and is assumed to be appointed in the near future, and
 

Whereas, funding is apparently now available to retain the interim Vice President
for Academic Affairs for special projects instead of reinstating the Faculty Liaison position;

Therefore be it resolved, that the Faculty Alliance strongly recommends
that the Faculty Liaison position be re-established as soon as possible.

 

This action is effective May 10, 2005.”

 

RATIONALE:

 

The Faculty Alliance is being called upon appropriately to participate in academic governance at a greater level of involvement at the system level
while maintaining senate positions and full teaching loads, with no day-to-day
faculty voice through the faculty liaison at the executive level. The faculty liaison
traditionally participates in routine SAC, executive staff, and other required system meetings, and keeps the Alliance members and senates informed so they are adequately briefed and prepared to respond in an informed, efficient and timely manner.

 

5.         Senate Reports

 

UAS – The UAS Faculty Senate elected a new president-elect.  He is tenured associate professor Chuck Craig.

 

UAF; Paul Layer reported that the UAF recommends a common start week and aligning the drop/add and withdrawal dates which are more important. Abel Bult-Ito  was awarded the Usibelli Award for Service. 

 

UAA:  The UAA Faculty Senate met last Friday.  Greg Protasel is now president of the senate. Karey Morris in the English Department is the new 1st Vice President. The Senate is beginning review on tenure and promotion practices.  Provost  Kassier is having heart surgery over the summer.  .  Protasel said faculty are concerned about harassment of faculty by students. This arose from an incident where female faculty have been harassed in the classroom and think they have it under control and the student complains higher resulting in action being taken by legal counsel and faculty was subjected to extremely intimidating questioning.  The concern is that policies are not complete and may not be appropriate and if they are, may not be applied in a consistent or logical manner.  One issue is how the university responds to the student and the other is how the student complaint triggers action and the kinds of action the complain triggers.

 

6.         Guest Comments     

 

There were no guest comments.

                                               

7.         Systemwide Academic Council and Academic Affairs    

 

8.         Old Business

 

8.1        Credit Hour Requirements for Degree and Certificate Programs                                 

Credit Hour Requirements for Degree and Certificate Programs

http://gov.alaska.edu/faculty/2005-03-08.credithourrequirements.pdf

Post-Baccalaureate Certificate-Regents Summary Form

http://gov.alaska.edu/faculty/2005-03-08.postbac-cert-summary.pdf

 

UAA was the first to develop the proposal and Fairbanks and Juneau are fine with it and will probably offer programs for approval in the fall.  The UAF Graduate Academic Committee was fine with it.  Protasel asked for clarification on range of credits, minimum of 24 and may go up to 60 credits.  Licensure is about 45 credits. The President has authority to waive minimum or maximum credit hours. Protasel thought it was ill-advised to give the president the authority.  The current language gives the president a lot of authority.  The new language gives president the authority upon recommendation by the appropriate chancellor. This is also the case in some baccalaureate degrees where requirements exceed the 132.   If the post bacc certificate exceeds 60, then president the President can have the authority.  Abel proposed removing the word “minimum”

 

MOTION: passed as amended without objection

 

“The Faculty Alliance moves  to approve the credit hour requirements for degree and certificate programs with the amendment ¨to remove the word ‘minimum’ from the sentence beginning, ‘The President may make.exceptions’.  This action is effective May 10, 2005.”

 

8.2       Acceptable Academic Degrees

http://gov.alaska.edu/faculty/2005-04-19.acceptable-degrees.html               

 

MOTION:  passed as amended without objection

 

“The Faculty Alliance moves to accept the acceptable academic degree proposal as amended to insert ‘appropriate’ between ‘The’ and ‘Provost’ in item 7 and to change actability to acceptability in item 11, with the recommendation that it be adopted as university regulation.  This action is effective May 10, 2005.”

 

            Revised proposed regulation:

 

1.         An academic degree acceptable to the University of Alaska (UA) is one that has been issued by a degree-granting institution identified by UA Anchorage (UAA), UA Fairbanks (UAF or UA Southeast (UAS) either generally or with respect to a specific degree as actable, or one that has been accredited by an accrediting agency identified as acceptable to UA.

 

2.         Only accrediting agencies that have been approved by the U.S. Department of Education, or which have been deemed acceptable by this policy or by the UAA, UAF or UAS Chancellor or Provost are acceptable to UA.

 

3.         UA identifies as acceptable degree-granting institutions those that are accredited by an acceptable accrediting agency or those which are listed in the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers International Registry of degree-granting institutions.

 

4.         The holder of a degree or credits issued by an institution that is not identified as acceptable as set forth above may seek identification of the degree or credits as acceptable by providing a transcript and an evaluation made by either

 

(a)        the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, or

 

(b)        the World Education Services that states the degree in question is in fact equivalent to a degree granted by an accredited U.S. institution.  A copy of this transcript evaluation should be filed with the individual’s Dean.  Unless and until the Provost or the Chancellor determines in writing that the degree or credits are acceptable, they will not be considered acceptable for use within UAA, UAF, or UAS provided, however, that unless otherwise directed by the Chancellor or Provost, a Dean may determine in writing that the degree or credits are acceptable solely for use within the academic unit of the Dean.

 

5.         Only academic degrees and credits earned from acceptable degree-granting institutions may be used for the purposes of identification, credit transfer, hiring, promotion, or tenure at UA.

 

6.         UA employees and students who possess academic degrees that do not qualify as acceptable to UA are forbidden to indicated that they possess such degrees in any official UA context, including—but not limited to—UA classes, UA syllabi, UA web sites, and at meetings where they are identified as UA employees or UA students; provided, however, that they may state that they hold the degree if they also qualify the statement with a statement that the degree is not acceptable to UA.  “Indicating” one possesses a degree includes—but is not limited to—using the title “Dr.” or other degree-related title before one’s name or listing the degree abbreviation (e.g., B.S., M.S., PhD) after one’s name.

 

7.         The appropriate Provost, after approval of the UAA, UAF, or UAS Faculty Senate, is authorized to develop and revise lists of accrediting agencies and/or degree granting institutions that are acceptable and/or unacceptable to UAA, UAF, or UAS as necessary and appropriate to advance the business of UA.

 

8.         The policy on the Identification and Use of Invalid Academic Degrees is applicable only to UA employees hired and students enrolled after the effective date of approval of this policy by the Board of Regents; with the exception of those UA employees hired and students enrolled prior to the effective date of approval of this policy who have, in any way, misrepresented their credentials, records, or any other professional information to the university.

 

9.         This policy shall not be applied retroactively to any UA employee hired or student enrolled prior to the date of approval by the Board of Regents, except for the conditions specified in number (8) above.  Nor shall this policy be used as part of any UA employee or student evaluation in the event that an accredited institution from which an employee or student had graduated subsequently lost accreditation.

 

10.        All provisions stated in this policy for UA apply to the four Major Administrative Units (MAUs), i.e., UAA, UAF, UAS, and the UA Statewide Administration.

 

11.        Any special considerations made by the Chancellor or Provost of UAA, UAF, or UAS pertaining to the actability acceptability of a particular degree are not binding to the other MAUs.

 

8.3       Common Start Dates

                        UAA Motion, May 6, 2005

                http://gov.alaska.edu/faculty/2005-05-06.UAA-comonstartdate.html         

 

UAA passed a motion that any changes must be acted upon by the Alliance.  UAS looked at UAF and UAA motions and supported the UAF concept of a common start week.  UAA asked UAF and UAS to consider the UAA motion. Protasel asked for more data on efficiencies and cost savings and thought it was an administrative task.  Layer differed by . ssaying that setting the academic calendar was the purview of the faculty.  The Alliance can ask the administration to hold off for another year pending a careful analysis of the impacts.  The UAF College of Rural Alaska has a hard time starting before Labor Day because of subsistence issues. But the Fairbanks campus has a hard time starting after Labor Day because of grading and other issues. The Alliance then amended and approved the UAA Faculty Senate motion

 

MOTION:  passed without objection

 

“The Faculty Alliance urges the UA administration to dictate no changes to the individual universities’ academic calendars without the explicit involvement of the three universities.  We further urge the university administration to investigate both the pedagogical and financial impacts of potential changes to academic calendars, with a commitment to causing the least disruption to the greatest number of students. We request that a report of these investigations be provided to the Faculty Alliance. This action is effective May 10, 2005.”

 

Sfraga said that the background material gives an overview on why they were looking at a common start date hoping that all would key off the common start date and decrease the student confusion. Then later they would fix the other drop/add and withdrawal dates. The last iteration was a 14-week semester and 15-semester was submitted to SAC.  The provosts tasked Saichi Oba to find out how much time registrars and faculty needed to get grades in (about three days) and time it back to beginning of the semester. Saichi said that the staggered start term was also due to the technology the university employed. Years ago, the university believed that you could not have a common start date because the computer system would crash.  That is not a concern at this time.  The load to the system is not a reason tat the university could not move to a common start date. Sfraga did provide the provosts a matrix of dates and then counted out 14 or 15 weeks which is a mitigating factor.  The provosts only received the 15 week matrix.  This led to a start date of the last Monday in August.  Protasel said SAC started the discussion the wrong way; that they wanted a common start date because to do all of it was tantamount to the Normandy invasion and yet Saichi has presented SAC with a matrix with a common start date.  Process and technology are in place but the way in which we carry out the semester is different.  In Fairbanks, it really comes down to the missing days at Thanksgiving.  It is clear that there are a lot of different issues involved here.  Hinterberger asked the administration to consider preparing as long a document as necessary for consideration in the coming academic year.  Holton asked to look at unlinking the other dates from the common start date.  Saichi will do a memo to Craig and provosts and will provide the matrix and forward it to SAC and to the Alliance with SAC’s approval and will look to Craig to see how he wants to handle the situation.  The 50 minute/60 minute credit hour will be playing a major role.  This is only a fall problem.  Everyone starts on the same day in the spring but the community campuses start at different times. 

 

The Alliance looks forward to a comprehensive report from Sfraga.

 

8.4       Electronic Faculty Workload

Electronic Faculty Workload Charter (UAS Senate Revisions)

http://gov.alaska.edu/faculty/2005-05-06.uas-facultyworkload.htm

Electronic Faculty Workload Charter (original)                                        

http://gov.alaska.edu/faculty/2004-12-17.e-workload-charter.pdf

                                Electronic Faculty Workload and Activity Reporting

                http://gov.alaska.edu/faculty/2005-02-24-facultyworkloadmemo.pdf

 

MOTION: passed without objection

 

“The Faculty Alliance moves to accept the UAA Faculty Workload System Project Charter as amended by the UAS Faculty Senate May 6, 2005 as a working document subject to review and revision as needed,  and subject to the oversight of the Faculty Alliance.  This action is effective May 10, 2005.”

 

            8.5       Transcription of Certificates of Completion

                        http://gov.alaska.edu/faculty/2005-04-08.cert-completion-report.pdf

 

Dave Veazey will get a final copy to Pat Ivey for distribution to the Alliance for consideration by the Alliance and the senates in the fall.  The university currently offers certificates of completion but it doesn’t meet accreditation standards because it doesn’t require approval by the president and the Board, and faculty review and is not valued in the transcript.  Veazey wanted to implement this over the summer but the Alliance wants to see the final version first.  The terminology is also extremely confusing in what is a certificate of completion and nod not and what is a certificate program.  If we are looking at this whole issue we need to look at the confusion and standardize the names of the programs (these are community/technical college kinds of programs for job advancement).

 

Work on the administrative details over the summer pending the final report.  This came from the community campus directors who aren’t getting credit for what they do and these programs are mostly at the community campuses.  The Alliance has no problem with Veazey working over the summer on the technical stuff.  Veazey will get the final report to the Alliance over the summer.

 

            8.6       Other old business

 

                        8.6.1     Distance Education Steering Committee Report

 

This item was placed on the agenda for discussion at the next meeting.

 

9.         New Business

 

            9.1        Elect Chair

           

Hinterberger nominated Lyn Shepherd as chair of the Alliance.  Lynn Shepherd was elected by unanimous consent.

 

            9.2       Approve 2005-2006 calendars         

                        http://gov.alaska.edu/faculty/calendar/fy07default.html

 

MOTION: passed without objection

 

“The Faculty Alliance moves to adopt the 2005-2006 meeting calendar as presented, subject to revision based on member availability.

Monday, June 20, 2005, 7:30pm - 9:30pm by audio conference Friday, August 26, 2005 , 11:30am-1:00pm by video conference Tuesday, September 20, 2005, 11:30am-1:00pm
Tuesday, October 18, 2005, 11:30am-1:00pm
Tuesday, November 15, 2005, 11:30am-1:00pm
Tuesday, December 13, 2005, 11:30am-1:00pm
Tuesday, January 17, 2006, 11:30am - 1:00pm
Tuesday, February 21, 2006, 11:30am - 1:00pm
Tuesday, March 21, 2006, 11:30am - 1:00pm
Tuesday, April 18, 2006, 11:30am - 1:00pm
Tuesday , May 9, 2006, 11:30am - 1:00pm

This action is effective May 10, 2005

 

            9.3       Other New Business           

 

9.3.1    RESOLUTION OF APPRECIATION

 

The Faculty Alliance issued a resolution of appreciation for Tim Hinterberger for his leadership as Alliance chair this past year.

 

10.        Agenda Items for Next Meeting

 

            Agenda items are due ten days in advance of each meeting.

 

11.        Comments

 

Abel Bult-Ito thanked Dave Veazey and Mike Sfraga for their assistance.

 

Sfraga said each university got a bunch of Federal funds for the TRIO grants all focused on first year experience, student retention and advising, aside from what the community campuses get in minority grants.

 

12.        Adjourn

 

            The meeting was adjourned at approximately 12:52pm.