Meeting of the Faculty Alliance

Wednesday, September 20, 2006, 8:00am-9:30am

by audioconference

 

Draft Minutes

1.          Call to order and roll call                                                                    

 

Shirish Patil, Chair of the Alliance and President, UAF Faculty Senate

Chuck Craig, Chair, UAS Faculty Senate

Jon Genetti, President-Elect, UAF Faculty Senate

Tim Hinterberger, Representative, UAA Faculty Senate Graduate Affairs Board

Bogdan Hoanca, 1st Vice President, UAA Faculty Senate

Paul Layer, Past President, UAF Faculty Senate

Kerri Morris, President, UAA Faculty Senate

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

 

Pat Ivey, Executive Officer

 

Others:

 

Ted Kassier, Senior Associate Vice President, Academic Affairs

Gwen White, Director, SW Institutional Research

Paloma Harbour, Policy Analyst, SW Institutional Research

Debra Carter, SW Employee Communications Specialist

 

2.         Adopt Agenda  

 

            MOTION: passed without objection

 

“The Faculty Alliance moves to adopt the agenda for the September 20, 2006 meeting.  This action is effective September 20, 2006.”

 

3.         Approve August 25, 2006 minutes

            http://gov.alaska.edu/faculty/minutes/2006/08-25.html

                http://gov.alaska.edu/faculty/minutes/2006/08-25.pdf

 

            MOTION:  passed without objection

 

“The Faculty Alliance moves to approve the minutes of the August 25, 2006 meeting.  This action is effective August 25, 2006.”

 


4.         Report from the Chair - Shirish Patil  

 

The October 18 retreat with President Hamilton will go forward as planned and will include an invited speaker to brainstorm on student success, workforce readiness, etc.  President Hamilton will participate in the discussion and will also present the university budget scenario.  President Hamilton is hosting dinner at his house in the evening.  At UAF, there are several committees working on student success issues.  Those working groups have already begun to meet and consist of faculty, staff, students and community people dealing with different focus areas. I have volunteered to work with the group that will deal with “High Achieving High School Students”.  Dana Thomas, Assistant Provost at UAF leads the effort.  I have invited Dana to join us for the Alliance retreat and help lead the discussions. I would like to get representatives from the UAA and UAS faculty senates who would would join us and participate in these discussions.  Yesterday, I received the final draft of the Spellings Commission report that has been provided to Secretary Spellings.  Ted Kassier has condensed the report recommendations to five pages.  Please take time to review these recommendations as they will affect higher education across the country, including UA.  Regarding the university budget, I saw that projections on TRS contributions are expected to exceed 50 percent for FY08, which is quite alarming.  There could be lots of changes in Juneau, depending on who becomes governor and how the State of Alaska will answer many of these unsolved issues.  Ted.  Kassier said the escalation in retirement contributions could be extremely burdensome for the university, especially with regard to grants and funded research in that personnel costs will go up significantly, which may mean renegotiation with the funding agencies.  This will be brought to Buck Sharpton’s attention, as it certainly will impact faculty ability to compete for research grants and awards.   Gwen White said the Board of Regents will be discussing the new numbers. 

I hope faculty across the campuses responded to the RFP for developmental math and English. The deadline was September 15. 

                                               

5.         New Business

 

5.1        Student Success                                                                      

                        http://www.alaska.edu/bor/2009Plan/2009Plan.xml

 

            5.1.1     K-12 Outreach

 

Working groups have been established or are being established at the MAUs and Alliance directions will come about as a result of the retreat on October 18.        

 

            5.1.2     Advising

 

UAS is quite concerned that there was quite a bit of money – about $700,000 – is being placed in the budget for student success and not very much for advising at the program level and marketing programs.  At UAS, there are two full-time advisors in the student resource center in Juneau and one each at the other campuses, but they are not close enough to the program level to be as effective as needed.  UAS needs money so that staff that are close to the faculty can be trained up to do some of the advising and could also be looking at release time for faculty to do more advising.  At UAA, advising is part of the teaching component of the CBA for United Academics.  At UAS, however, advising is considered as an add-on.  Problem continues that advising is considered an add on as a service component and that’s not what it is. In many instances, faculty workloads far exceed the 30 units; however, that does not stop faculty from performing their tripartite responsibilities.  At UAS, there is no workload number attached to advising.  The notion of course is that course release can work on a workload agreement but campuses that are impacted for teaching in the classroom will be that much further behind.  The labor-management committee on workload should be resuscitated and made to work on this.  The common start date begins for UAF the spring semester of 2007, the day after Martin Luther King day, and this adds two days to the faculty contract which, by some faculty, has been viewed as a reduction in pay.

 

The advising is the issue, however, not the workload.  If you can’t adequately advise students, you can’t get them into the programs and retain them.  The workloads are not being constructed properly to account for advising and that affects students adversely.  Paloma Harbour said that if there was a map of what courses should be taken in what sequence, which would certainly help the advising process.  Paloma Harbour said peer advisors and grad student advisors are also very important   Kerry Morris said that in each program there should be a faculty advisor, staff advisor and a peer advisor. 

 

The senates should be looking at advising and put enough pressure on the MAU administration to make advising a priority.

 

            5.1.3     Performance Measures                                               

http://www.alaska.edu/swbudget/pm//mauWP/2005whitepapers/RetentionWhitepaper.pdf

 

The MAUs are doing their own which will be combined and used in what is presented to the state.  Gwenn will rely on what the MAUs develop instead of the white paper.  Gwen didn’t think there will be significant changes from the white paper.  The revised paper will be out in late October.

 

The definition and measures have not changed.  System performance in retention is pretty much flat, down slightly in retention across the board in first time, full time freshman who graduate.  Establishing Pre-majors could enhance the retention rate.

 

5.2        STARS Report                                                            

                        http://gov.alaska.edu/faculty/2006-06-01.STARSreport.pdf

 

            This was in information item. No action is required.

 

5.3        Request for Proposals: Developmental Math and English

                http://gov.alaska.edu/faculty/2006-08-25.RFP-devedmathenglish.pdf

 

See Chair report above for comments.   

 

5.4        Mandatory Assessment Testing

 

            This item was placed on the agenda for the next Alliance meeting.

 

5.5        PBB on Outreach Activities – Status

 

Gwen White will be contacting the people identified last March very soon so that the PBB measures can come out in the fall.  Paloma Harbour identified the PBB group members and advised that the original outreach document is on the web.  Quite a bit of work was done by the UAS Faculty Senate that Paloma will use that as part of the discussions.

The original work is posted out on the website.

 

It would be nice to begin gathering data in fy08 but really need to take time to get it right.

 

5.6        Academic Planning – Ted Kassier

            http://www.alaska.edu/swacad/planning/

 

Ted Kassier reported that Academic planning activities are ongoing in engineering, health, education, health and international.  Engineering is moving forward with the introduction to an integrated plan and the others are developing action plans to be integrated with each other.  Individual issues such as workforce development from certificate through doctoral are also on the table.  There was a meeting last week of principals in all the health areas.  In education, the progress is less visible-- now getting in contact with ESL faculty, huge need there and one of the ways to bring education people together.  Ditto languages, need coordinating statewide.  Regarding business programs, were going to get started over the summer but delayed until now. Five areas of integrated academic planning are enginnering, business, health, education and international.  There is an academic planning button on the academic web site.  Could put up health and engineering documents but have not done so yet.  Still waiting on the WAMI report which is imminent.  Now that the engineering integrated plan is in place, where are the funds and when will they be released?  Craig Dorman has the funds and is very aware that the College of Engineering and Mines is very dependent on those funds.

 

5.7        Spellings Commission Update – Ted Kassier

            http://www.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/hiedfuture/index.html

                http://gov.alaska.edu/faculty/2006-09-20.abridged-spellings.pdf

 

Ted Kassier reported the Spellings commission finally did hand in the report to Spellings yesterday.  The report has grown to 51 pages.  The growth in length is due mostly to formatting and entities that provided input and testimony.  There is no substantive change from the August 9 report.  Kassier distributed a five page abstract of the report yesterday. The abstract contains solely extracts from the report so it may be quoted with impunity.  The report only looks at increased tuition without looking at corresponding increase or lack thereof of median family income growth.  The criticism of accreditation in this report is that it is a secret process based on input and not readily available for input or review by the public.  The testing notion is very much on the table and used by many, in particular the Texas system. The report is strong on supporting minority students, greater internationalization of education and immigration, but a significant impediment to research.  Almost all of the issues raised are issues the university has been trying to do something about.  Secretary Spellings will give her remarks on it to the National Press Club on Tuesday which will be broadcast on NPR at 8am on Tuesday.

 

This will be a really hot issue the legislature will bring up and President Hamilton will be called upon to respond to it.  It came up at the deans’ workshop and provosts’ councils around the system.  We need to go through these six recommendations and develop a document that shows the university’s position on these issues and what we are doing about it.  Unless interest has died down by then, legislators will ask about this. Kassier will talk to Wendy, Craig Dorman and get everyone ready for the questions.

 

Beyond the Spellings address, the November elections could change Congress and the state legislature, and the receptivity to actions could change.  The question is does the Alliance want to get involved? 

 

Kassier recommended that the Alliance  and senates take some lead on this and establish its interest and role..  The Alliance should at least have a white paper on the issues on what faculty can do.

           

5.5        Other New Business

 

            There was no other new business.

 

6.         Old Business

 

6.1        VPAA Search

 

The search committee will meet with Betty Hasler tonight in Anchorage. Kerri Morris and Jocelyn Krebs will be there from UAA.

                                                                       

6.2        Board of Regents Meeting

                                http://www.alaska.edu/bor/agendas/2006/060921agenda.html

 

Kerri will represent the Alliance at the Board of Regents meeting.  Her comments will be ones of thanks and about the Alliance role in student success.

 

6.3        Draft Operating and Capital Budget  

            http://www.alaska.edu/swbudget/budget_planning/budget_docs/BOR_first_review.pdf

 

            This was an information item.  No action was required.

 

6.3        Other old business

 

            There was no other old business.

 

7.         Reports

 

            7.1        Systemwide Academic Council 

                        http://www.alaska.edu/swacad/sac.htm - see especially “SAC Info”

                                Academic Planning

                                http://www.alaska.edu/swacad/planning/

                                Meetings

                                http://www.alaska.edu/swacad/files/minutes/SACminutes8-15-06.pdf

 

SAC meets today in Anchorage at 10am and Bogden Hoanca will attend.   Discussed the operating review.  Saichi Oba will report to the Board of Regents on tuition and the senior tuition rate. The Coalition of Student Leaders is concerned about the rate at which tuition is increasing and insists that needs-based financial aid should be a state responsibility and not part of the tuition increase. 

                                               

            7.2        Business Council

 

http://gov.alaska.edu/faculty/2006-08-16.bc-agenda.html 

http://gov.alaska.edu/faculty/2006-08-16.ACAS-projects.pdf

http://www.alaska.edu/swoir/publications/missionsmeasures/mmindex.xml 

 http://www.alaska.edu/swbudget/pm/details.xml

 

There was no report on the Business Council.                                                                  

 

            7.3        Human Resources Council

 

There was no report from the Human Resources Council.

 

7.4        Retirement Committee           

                        http://gov.alaska.edu/faculty/2006-06-29.Retirement-Committee.pdf

 

There was no report from the Retirement Committee.

                                               

            7.5        ETT/DESB

                            Home page DESB: http://www.distance.uaf.edu/steeringboard

                                Home page ETT http://www.distance.uaf.edu/ett/

                                Organization Chart of May 9, 2006 http://www.alaska.edu/swacad/planning/

                                Memo from Lynn Shepherd

                                http://gov.alaska.edu/faculty/2006-08-19.Shepherd-ETT-DESB.pdf

ETT Work Plan
http://www.distance.uaf.edu/ett/?page_id=6
DESB Working Group on Technical Support
http://www.distance.uaf.edu/steeringboard/docs/DE-Help-report.pdf
DESB Working Group on Advising Help Desk
http://www.distance.uaf.edu/steeringboard/docs/DistanceDatabaseOverview.pdf
Course Quality rubric
http://distance.uaf.edu/archives/research/subresearch/course-quality.php

Alaska Distance Education Consortum

(especially the AK20 Advisory Committee draft report)

http://www.akdec.org/

 

There was no report from ETT/DESB.

                                                                       

            7.6        Student Services Council

 

Kerri Morris said she hasn’t received anything in a long time and assumes that the Student Services Council has not met in a while.  

                                   

            7.7        Instructional Technology Council

 

Jon Genetti reported that ITC is starting a full roll-out of My UA. My UA leaders are investigating pod-casting so faculty can post lectures and students can buy them.  A policy is being developed for how long to retain backup records.

                                   

            7.8        Research Advisory Council

 

RAC last met on August 31 but no Alliance member was able to attend.

                                               

8.         Senate Reports, UAA, UAF, UAS

 

The UAA Senate adopted a new evaluation tool the IDEA instrument for student evaluation of instruction.

 

At the UAF Senate meeting, Provost Reichardt reported on the eight recommendations in the accreditation report. These are posted on the provost’s web site. Chancellor Jones and the Senate confirmed changes on classified research i.e., a classified research committee.  There are eight working groups to deal with baccalaureate admission standards rolling out fall 2008.

 

The UAS Faculty Senate passed an on-line evaluation form starting in the next month or so. UAF is looking at UAS standards of teaching and learning to see if there is anything UAF can adopt.  See http://www.uas.alaska.edu/FacultySenate/Faculty%20Senate/SOTLMatrix.pdf

 

9.         Agenda Items for October 18, 2006 meeting

 

            The October 18, 2006 event will consist of the president’s retreat on student success and outreach.

           

 

10.        Comments

 

Craig Dorman has directed Kassier to be the liaison to the Alliance. The WAMI conference is on the 18th which might impact Tim Hinterberger’s ability to attend the October 18 retreat. Kerri Morris asked when the faculty workload agreement became the faculty activity report.

 

11.        Adjournment

 

            The meeting was adjourned at 9:37am.