Meeting of the Faculty Alliance

Friday, May 12, 2006, by audio and video conference, 3:00-4:30pm

 

Draft Minutes

 

 

1.          Call to order and roll call

 

            Voting Members:

 

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

            Paul Layer, President, UAS Faculty Senate

            Greg Protasel, President, UAA Faculty Senate

            Shirish Patil, President-elect, UAS Faculty Senate

            Kerri Morris, 1st Vice President, UAA Faculty Senate

            Shirish Patil, President, UAF Faculty Senate

            Tim Hinterberger, Chair, UAA Faculty Senate Graduate Affairs Board

            Jon Genetti, President-Elect, UAF Faculty Senate

 

            Others:

 

            Pat Ivey, Executive Officer, System Governance

            Deb Narang, 2nd Vice President, UAA Faculty Senate

            Ted Kassier, Senior Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs  

            Dave Veazey, Assistant Vice President, Academic Affairs

           

2.         Adopt Agenda

 

            MOTION:  passed without objection

 

“The Faculty Alliance moves to adopt the agenda for the May 12, 2006 meeting.  This action is effective May 12, 2006.”

 

3.         Report from the Chair

            http://gov.alaska.edu/Faculty/Chair's%20report_May12.pdf

 

Lynn Shepherd attended the UA Foundation Board of Trustees meeting which is

the last time faculty may get a chance to participate.  The Foundation is being restructured and the faculty seat has been cut.  The thrust of the Foundation is becoming more development oriented.

 

Shepherd met with Gwen White who won’t be doing the performance based budgeting until fall.  There is no hurry because the electronic faculty workload project is moving slowly.   Shepherd and Paul Layer met with President Hamilton and raised concerns about some of the ETT and DESB items which he concurred were legitimate concerns. 

 

President Hamilton is also concerned that more than half the faculty across the system have been hired in the last for years.  He asked how this would affect promotion and tenure, i.e., would huge numbers of faculty be promoted and tenured at the same time. 

 

Shirish Patil responded that faculty salaries are lower here than many other places and this effects UA ability to recruit and hire, particularly in engineering at UAA and UAF.   Kassier said that this is particularly a problem in engineering at UAA and UAF. 

 

The Alliance also needs to look at tenure and promotion practices according to Kassier.  Nearly every faculty who goes for promotion and tenure gets it at UA.  Kassier has never been at an institution other than UA that does that.

 

4.         New Business

 

            4.1       Developmental Education Task Force

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

 

A group of developmental education English and Math faculty have gotten together about the lack of student preparation and what the university can do about it, in order to better assist students to come to UA unprepared.  Veazey had previously distributed a report about this to the Alliance.  The first step is mandatory student assessment and placement.  Once that is done, there needs to be a more focused effort in advising after assessment.  Literature calls this “intrusive advising,” forcing students to be explicit in what they want to do.  This is mandatory testing for degree seeking students.  Patil asked what we do about non degree seeking students.  Non degree seeking or declared students may be taking inappropriate courses and are not held to the same standard as degree seeking students.  Veazey’s thought was as soon as the student declares a major, mandatory testing is required.  If a student takes courses that do not apply to the major, a student must either take the appropriate courses or test out of them.  Layer said there has to be common testing standards.  There may not be the same testing tools used but the standards have to be the same.

 

Kerri Morris expressed concern that advising was critical but at the same time not very much money is being put toward advising, nor was credit being given in workload agreements.  One of the reasons students are failing is that they take too many courses and many times the wrong kinds of courses as a result of not having enough appropriate advising.

 

There has to be money, time and commitment from UA for developmental education and time and money for faculty advising.  The motion passed by UAF Faculty Senate had the caveat that money should be provided. 

 

Veazey asked that formal action should come out of the Faculty Alliance on this and he needs the Alliance action to free up resources to do it and is particularly critical in rural areas.  The task force report should be completed by the end of next week.  The Alliance asked for a copy.

 

            4.2       Election of 2006-2007 Alliance Chair

 

Shirish Patil was nominated by Ted Hinterberger, seconded by Kerri Morris and was elected chair of the Alliance for 2006-2007 by acclamation.

 

4.3       Approval of 2006-2007 Calendar

            http://gov.alaska.edu/Faculty/calendar/default.html

 

            The next meeting of the Alliance will be August 25, 2006 from

            9:00-10:30am. The Alliance will approve a calendar at the August 25 meeting. Pat Ivey will check everyone’s schedules and present a draft.

 

5.         Old Business

 

            5.1       Electronic faculty workload

                        www.alaska.edu/swacad/efar

 

Time line for implementation has been moved from March to August 2008.  The workload project cannot be a sterile process. There needs to be lots of faculty interaction.

 

            5.2       VPAA Position

                        http://gov.alaska.edu/Faculty/Draft2_VPAA_Spring2006.pdf

 

Last year, the implication was that the current incumbent would stay on until a new vice president is hired.  President Hamilton has asked what the Alliance wanted to see in a new VPAA Layer said the president is interested in keeping the research function combined with academic affairs in the position.  Kassier said workforce development needs to be added to the job description.

 

                        Alliance recommendations:

 

1.                  Use a search firm.

2.                  Appoint a search committee

3.                  Need an ironclad guarantee that Dorman will be stepping down when the new VPAA is selected and comes on board

4.                  Shouldn’t be hiring if the incumbent is staying.

5.                  A search committee should have at least two faculty senate representatives from each MAU.

 

Layer proposed that a meeting with president be scheduled on the issue in the next couple of weeks.   

 

5.3       Tuition Adjustments

 

The UAA and UAF Faculty Senates did not discuss tuition adjustments.  The Alliance does not have a position on it.

 

            5.5       Academic Program Planning

 

A new web page on academic program planning has been added to the swacad web site so faculty can go there and look at that.  Faculty need to assist in selecting topics for next year.  The health area is far ahead of every other category. Engineering was set back by Richard Williams’ health problems.  Kassier met with Carol Cuomo on areas of possible collaboration.  There is also the National Security Language initiative put forth by President Bush that needs to be worked on.

 

6.         Reports

 

            6.1       Systemwide Academic Council

 

Kerri Morris said SAC met on Tuesday.  Faculty workload was discussed, super tuition and developmental education. A differential tuition task force has been established to determine whether or not there should continue to be differential tuition.  Kassier did a report on super tuition for the Board of Regents agenda.

 

6.2       Business Council

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

 

Paul Layer said he needed more information on the term “enterprise architecture” from Steve Smith.  Beth Behner mentioned a consultant would be hired to look at administrative (executive) compensation starting with the president’s salary.  There was also talk at the Board of Trustee’s meeting  about the legislature putting back something for WAMI.

 

6.3       Human Resources Council

 

There was no discussion.

 

            6.4       Retirement Committee

            http://gov.alaska.edu/Faculty/fidelity_service_review_2005.pdf

 

Abel Bult-Ito found some things in the report personally valuable to him.  Faculty aren’t taking an active role in their investments and this is worrisome.  Beth Behner was asked for an analysis of investments. Shepherd said pages 39-43 and 49-50 have some relevant data.

 

6.5       ETT/DESB

 

There was no discussion under this item.

 

6.7       Instructional Technology Council

 

There was once again a discussion about whether IT Services should be policing faculty and student web sites.  The answer was definitely no.

 

6.8       Research Advisory Council

 

Tim Hinterberger attended the RAC meeting on May 2.  The Maddox report compared UA’s research performance with other universities focusing almost entirely in Fairbanks where 90 percent of the research is done.  International Polar year is getting underway and 15 post-docs were provided $50,000/year plus moving expenses.  Dorman talked about percentage of allocation for research (8 percent of GF budget).

 

7.         Senate Reports

 

            Senate reports were not given in the interest of time.

 

8.         Agenda items for next meeting August 25, 2006.

 

Agenda items should be submitted to Pat Ivey and Shirish Patil 10 days in advance of the August 25 meeting.  Alliance members discussed the possibility of meeting on site.

 

9.         Comments

 

There were no additional comments.

 

10.       Adjourn - The meeting was adjourned at 4:40pm.