Meeting of the Faculty Alliance

Friday, April 28, 3:00pm-4:30pm by audio conference

 

Draft Minutes

1.          Call to order and roll call

 

            Voting Members:

 

            Lynn Shepherd, Chair of the Alliance and Chair of the UAS Faculty Senate

            Chuck Craig, Chair-elect, UAS Faculty Senate

            Tim Hinterberger, Chair, UAA Faculty Senate Graduate Affairs Board

            Paul Layer, President, UAF Faculty Senate

            Shirish Patil, President-elect, UAF Faculty Senate

            Abel Bult-Ito, Past President, UAF Faculty Senate

            Kerri Morris, 1st Vice President, UAA Faculty Senate

 

            Others:

 

            Pat Ivey, Executive Officer, System Governance

Beth Behner, Associate Vice President, Human Resources

Saichi Oba, Assistant Vice President, Student Services and Enrollment Management


2.         Adopt Agenda

 

MOTION:  passed without objection

 

“The Faculty Alliance moves to adopt the agenda for the April 28, 2006 meeting as amended to add DESB and ETT under ‘Old Business”.  This action is effective April 28, 2006.”


 3.        Approve March 31, 2006 Minutes

http://gov.alaska.edu/Faculty/2006-03-31facmins.pdf

 

MOTION: passed without objection

 

“The Faculty Alliance moves to approve the March 31, 2006 minutes as amended to accept the track changes.  This action is effective April 28, 2006.”

 

4.         Old Business

 

4.1        Electronic Faculty Workload project

 

Paul Layer reported that presentations were held on the three campuses.  The project kept evolving as the days went on. Several questions surfaced that need to be addressed, i.e., numerical value or workload units for teaching, research, service, paper publication etc., and what happens if the numerical value exceeds 30 workload units.  There is currently no consistency on how these aspects are valued at the departmental level. 

 

Beth Behner worked on the project as a task force member.  She said the intent in the initial phase.  A faculty member would list the intended work and then if there was a change, that would be taken care of in the review process between the dean and faculty member.  Regarding workload, if the dean says there cannot be an overload, the faculty member will have to work that out.

 

There is a lot of work still to be done on the workload project in the areas of subcategories for unique workload assignments, consistent numerical values, overloads, fairness, and security.  It is expected there will be a long period of beta testing.  

 

Behner said she expected the task force would be meeting over the summer.  Shepherd expects a written report from Greg Protasel. Tim Hinterberger said he would be available to be the alternate Alliance task force representative over the summer.

           

4.2       Other old business

 

            4.1        Distance Education Steering Board (DESB)

                        http://www.distance.uaf.edu/steeringboard

 

Lynn Shepherd did send an email to Karen Perdue and Curt Madison about Alliance participation on the DESB working groups.  She has not received a direct reply.  Madison conveyed data to the chancellors that meetings took place and data was available on the web site.  Shepherd urged members to click on meetings tab for Madison’s cover letter. and under the minutes, item 8 and 10 are especially important. Item 8 is Metrics for Distance Education and it says that Institutional Research is creating measures for distance education, that the document is in progress and is posted on the website.  Shepherd has not found it on the website thus far.  Under item 10, it says that DESB is organizing resources for faculty development needs and there is a working group working on this.  Attention was also directed to the minutes and agenda and report from DESB.  At the end of the report, three working groups are identified.  One of them is to design an 800 number for information for students who don’t know where to go to get distance ed courses.  Is this an advising system or a support person at the end of the line, and should it even be funded?  Since the Alliance has not been invited to join the working groups and Shepherd hopes to get an answer from Curt Madison as soon as possible.   Shepherd has sent requests but has not received a reply.  There are recommendations for a statewide technical support group and a working group to have three more IT sessions about teaching at a distance.  Evidently, these sessions will be in May and June but apparently no communication to faculty.

 

Layer asked what the Alliance role was.  Shepherd said she wanted Alliance participation in the working groups where ideas are developed so there is communication from the bottom up.  At a minimum, Alliance members should be continually looking at the web site, questioning the online database idea, and communicating to their respective faculties on a regular basis.

 

Shepherd would rather be proactive than reactive but this is hard to do because the Alliance is not directly involved.  Shepherd recommended an equal number of faculty from each MAU to each work groups.

 

5.         New Business

 

5.1        Assessment of Alliance representation on SW Councils

 

Alliance representation on most statewide administrative councils appears to be going reasonably well, except in the areas of the ETT and DESB, very critical councils where the Alliance has had to rely on other faculty representatives for information which remains spotty, at best.  Bult-Ito recommended that the Alliance chair write the heads of the councils thanking them for endorsing Alliance participation.

             

5.2       VPAA position description                                      

            http://gov.alaska.edu/Faculty/Draft_VPAA_Spring2006.pdf

 

After the August 2005 meeting of the Board of Regents, the Alliance revised the draft position description used in the previous search; then heard that Dr. Dorman had been appointed permanent VPAAR.  The current revised version is attached.  Before Shepherd meets with President Hamilton on May 8, she needs to know whether or not the Alliance wants to move forward. Last August, the Alliance was promised that the search for a new vice president for academic affairs and research would be reopened after a year. This may or may not be the case any longer, so clarification needs to be obtained from President Hamilton before proceeding.  If the president responds that a new search will be undertaken and advises how he sees the position structured, Hinterberger strongly recommended obtaining a search firm before forming a search committee.  Shepherd said she welcomed being  accompanied by additional Alliance members when she meets with President Hamilton on Tuesday, May 9.

 

5.3       Tuition adjustments                                                

            http://gov.alaska.edu/Faculty/TuitionNoticeSpring2006FINAL_041404-1.pdf

 

Saichi Oba thanked the Alliance for their time. Oba said that the base rate increase the president intends to achieve is 7 percent.  Any additional increase approved by the Board of Regents goes for needs based financial aid.  Layer said it means that students are being asked to subsidize other students.  Oba said it was being done at the University of Arizona system.  The Board of Regents will determine the rate increase in September. 

 

Oba has met with each student government on this issue.  The general sense of those meetings was that there was no opposition to the increase, although since then, the Union of Students of UAA has come out in opposition.  Later, ASUAF pressed President Hamilton to look at all college costs, not just tuition, citing the student fee increase for the UAF student recreation center.  Paul Layer will accompany Shepherd to the meeting.

 

5.4       Other New Business

 

There was no other new business.

 

6.         Report from the Chair                                                         

            http://gov.alaska.edu/Faculty/Chair's-report_Apr28.pdf

 

Regarding GERs, UAS will work on concerns expressed by Paul Layer.

Paul Layer received a lengthy hard copy report from Tim Hinterberger and how UAA handles general education requirements. UAF was not aware of the changes. 

Hinterberger will share that report with Shepherd. The UAS Faculty Senate will discuss the UAA report and UAF concerns in upcoming meetings. 

 

Ted Kassier has posted several documents on academic planning.  See http://www.alaska.edu/swacad/planning/.  Shepherd plans to touch bases with Institutional Research on the metrics on May 9.

 

7.         Reports

 

            7.1        Systemwide Academic Council

                        http://www.alaska.edu/swacad/sac.htm

 

                        There was a SAC meeting on April 25.  See

http://www.alaska.edu/swacad/files/agendas/SACagenda4-25-06.pdf for the agenda and http://www.alaska.edu/swacad/files/minutes/SACminutes4-25-06.pdf for the minutes.

 

Kerri Morris said she found out the afternoon before the meeting that the meeting was being held but was not able to attend.

 

            7.2       Business Council (rescheduled for May 8)

 

                        There was no report on the Business Council.

                                               

            7.3       Human Resources Council

                       

 

            7.4       Retirement Committee                                           

                        http://gov.alaska.edu/Faculty/Chair's-report_Apr28.pdf

 

Mike Humphrey sent out some very useful web links. He indicated that the Mercer report lacked some essential information.  He intends to schedule another meeting.  Emeriti is the organization consulted about VEBA.  Mercer is the consultant on switching for moving from the defined benefit to the defined contribution plan.  Shepherd said TIAA-CREF offers a retirement medical account that is approved by IRS. 

 

Abel said Fidelity gave a presentation and there are a host of employees who have placed their money in very low return plans.  Behner said that there is currently no financial advice located on the HR web but does allow vendors to have presentations on campus. 

 

There was some concern expressed about the tax exempt status of UA employee retirement accounts given new legislation just passed.  Behner said that was not a problem. 

 

Alliance members will advise senates to let their faculty know that significant numbers of employees are contributing to retirement accounts that are grossly underperforming, and that they might want to revisit their decisions.

 

            7.5       Board of Regents                                                                             

                        http://gov.alaska.edu/Faculty/BORReport11-13AprilByBult-Ito.pdf

 

President Hamilton is trying to get a statement on academic freedom through this year, to include the 1940 statement on academic freedom.  Bult-Ito said it looks promising.

 

            7.6       Student Services Council

 

                        There was no report.

           

            7.7       Instructional Technology Council             

                        http://gov.alaska.edu/Faculty/ITCmtg_2006Apr6-1.pdf

 

Shepherd drew Alliance attention to the Internet2  ssue.  She hopes to get a summary report to distribute to senates and faculty over the summer so they can write grants. 

 

Bult-Ito said he received an email that security at Bethel had been breached and he was advised that he needed to check bank accounts and credit companies.  The message also stated that the university would not send any more messages about it. It was unclear whether or not social security information had been taken.

 

            7.8       Research Advisory Council 

 

                        RAC meets next week.  Tim Hinterberger will attend for Paul Layer.

 

                                   

8.         Senate Reports, UAA, UAF, UAS                           

            http://gov.alaska.edu/Faculty/UAS-Senate-report_Apr06.pdf

 

The UAF Faculty Senate will be voting on changing grading policy to include pluses and minuses.  They are trying to get some certificates approved in construction trades and management.

 

The UAA provost was appointed.  He is Mike Driscoll from Portland State University.

 

Paul Layer is chairing the search committee for UAF provost Paul Reichardt’s replacement.  He is retiring next summer.  Hinterberger recommended a search firm and contact that UAA used for their provost search.  UAF is currently hiring a vice chancellor for research and a vice chancellor for administration.

 

The UAS Faculty Senate report is on the web as show above.

 

9.         Agenda Items for Next Meeting, May 12, 2006, 3:00-4:30pm

 

            Agenda items include

            *          Introduction of New Members

            *          Election of Chair

            *          Approve 2006-2007 Calendar

 

10.        Comments

 

Pat Ivey is working remotely from Denver and will back for the Alliance meeting on May 12.  Bult-Ito, said Pete Pinney, the past chair of the Faculty Alliance, received the Usibelli Award.

 

11.        Adjourn

 

            The meeting was adjourned at 4:35pm.