Meeting of the Faculty Alliance

Wednesday, November 15, 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

Cathy Connor, Chair-elect, 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:

 

Nate Raymond  Sun Star

Kortnie Westfall, Sun Star

Gwen White, Director, SW Institutional Research

Paloma Harbour, Policy Analyst, SW Institutional Research

Debra Carter, SW Employee Communications Specialist

 

2.         Adopt agenda

 

“The Faculty Alliance moves to adopt the agenda for the November 15, 2006 meeting.  This action is effective November 15, 2006.”

 

3.         Approve minutes

 

            “The Faculty Alliance moves to approve the minutes of the September 20, 2006 meeting as amended.  This action is effective November 15, 2006.”

 

4.         Report from the Chair

 

Shirish Patil reported that he worked with Dave Veazey on student success and attended two meetings of the Systemwide Academic Council.  He is charged to work with Dave Veazey to develop a comprehensive student success plan.  The major part still to be resolved is where the funding goes.  Patil   would like to see the majority of the funding go to the MAUs for student success rather than using an RFP process.  Faculty Alliance and senates can direct the discussions.

 

5.         New Business

 

            5.1.      Student Success

 

                        5.1.1.   Summary of Discussions on October 18

 

Members agreed that it was very helpful for each of the universities to talk about their institutions in context and realize that their needs are different; then to hear from President Hamilton that the student success initiatives have been going on for a long time.  It is more useful to look at our own best practices within the university across the MAUs than to look at national models 

 

Patil said he reported on the retreat to the Board of Regents. Regents appreciated the Alliance efforts in this regard and said anything they can do for Alliance in this regard, they would. Jeff Stepp, Sarah Kirk and another ESL faculty also testified. 

 

5.1.2    Draft Plan of Action

 

            See item 4 above.

 

5.1.3    Motion in Support of Additional State-Funded Needs Based Financial Aid

 

President Hamilton thanked the Faculty Alliance at the System Governance Council meeting, saying he was pleased that staff are working with faculty on student success (by inviting Jeff Stepp).  Kerri Morris said that being aware of what both sides are doing was very beneficial and that crucial aspects of the student success picture lay within the Student Services Council.  Patil will also be working very closely with Sven Gilkey, ASUAF president and chair of the System Governance Council on this issue.

 

Sven Gilkey also addressed the Board of Regents on November 1 about the need for more needs based financial aide and that the Coalition of Student Leaders had taken this up as its top priority for the 2007 legislative session. The Alliance passed the following motion in support of the Coalition.

 

MOTION- passed unanimously

 

“The Faculty Alliance supports the Coalition of Student Leaders and the UA Board of Regents in their efforts to secure additional state-funded needs-based financial aid in partial fulfillment of Goal 1 of the UA Strategic Plan 2009 in order to enhance efforts in student recruitment and retention.  This action is effective November 15, 2006.”

 

The question of locking in tuition as an entering freshman is still under discussion within Saichi Oba’s task force.  Steve Hamilton is on that task force for the Alliance.  The task force is looking at the Hope model in Georgia and student graduation rate is a factor.    The task force deadline for reporting is March, 2007  Bogdan Hoanca said quite a few students work 20 hours per week and having a very heavy course load and is concerned that the impact of freshmen taking too many credits to secure tuition rate in future years might be negative 

 

5.1.4    Activate Banner Placement Module-Good Idea or Not?

 

Pete Pinney forwarded additional information after the retreat.  UAS discussed this, and will be ready to make a decision on December 1.  Kerry will forward it to the UAB but is pessimistic about its success.  UAF trying to get Steve Smith to come to next faculty senate meeting and discuss this Rory O’Neill from OIT said the decision t activate the Banner placement module should rest in Admissions or at least at the MAUs and then IT will come in to program it.  The earliest it could happen is end of this academic year or next fall.

 

5.1.5    Integrated Funding Plan for Student Success

 

Shirish Patil has a draft and as soon as he has it complete, will forward it to Alliance for comment.  The UAF Faculty Senate passed mandatory placement last year.  UAA has had mandatory placement for years but there are a couple of instances in math where professors don’t go by that.  Mandatory in English and most of Math but a few outliers won’t agree, citing infringement on academic freedom.  This gets back to the question of whether Banner is the gatekeeper or is the professor the gatekeeper?  IT has said that if the placement module is going to be turned on, then there has to be concurrence by the MAUs.  The Alliance can move towards standardized testing tools and scores across the MAUs. 

 

5.1.7     Next Student Success Retreat – January, 2007;

                        - Date, Location, Participants, Funding, Coordination

 

Dave Veazey is working on obtaining a Student Success expert for a retreat with the Alliance in late January.  It is likely the location would be Anchorage.  If Conley comes here, spend a half day with Alliance, half day with president’s cabinet, SAC and legislators.

 

Kerry Morris said that the Student Services Council should be invited because they have helpful insights.

 

Cathy Connor said integrating advising into faculty workloads is very important.  If they are going to be serious about student success, that has to be included in workload and is a signal that student success is important. Workload agreements dictate 40 hours per week but something as central to the university as advising must be included in the workload and accounted for in the core time.  It needs to be included as a unit in the workload. A grievance has been filed in Anchorage because a dean crossed advising off from a faculty member’s workload.

 

5.1.8    Other Student Success Topics

 

There were no other student success topics.

 

5.2       Other New Business

 

There was no other new business.

 

6.         Old Business

 

            6.1       VPAA Search

 

Betty Hasler met with VPAA search committee. Sixty candidates were initially contacted with only two positive responses.  Since the task force last met, Hasler has received 5-7 more positive responses.  Next meeting is December 11 or 12.  The ad for the position was in the Chronicle.  It is not know how many responses were received from the ad. Hasler has encouraged the UA faculty to submit nominations if they know of any potential strong candidates.  Any candidates should have a strong classroom experience.  The intent is to fill position by end of academic year, provided a suitable candidate is found.

 

            6.2       Performance Measures

 

Gwen White did a system analysis which is currently under review by provosts, chancellors and the president.  There is a preliminary system analysis on the web but know that some of the data will change.  White hopes to have the final approved document within two-three weeks. Under review along with this are the president’s proposed assessment of 04-06 performance and future performance measures. White will send missions and measures link with all three MAUs rolled together.  Pat Pitney is working with Senator Dyson’s office on performance measures and how to make the process less painful within the MAUs.  Institutional Research and Budget staff are meeting with MAU counterparts on how we can streamline the reporting process.  She said that performance based budgeting as we know it will be more codified. She hopes to cut out the pieces the university is no longer required to provide that may not be valuable externally. It is expected that Senator Dyson will say keep the same five performance measures plus add graduation rates.  Institutional research and budget will keep on working on outreach activities measures but that will not be legislatively mandated.

 

On the same note, Secretary Spelling wants to hold a yardstick to colleges, and create a central database. There is an official federally defined way to measure retention but that probably does not exactly work for us.  UA wants to add it as a measure and add federal definition but the federal definition only covers 15 percent of the UA students.  No one has a really good way to track transfer students because of FERPA but we do our best to approximate.  The university will develop its own criteria for success for Alaska students.  However, if the Spellings Commission ties this to money, we should use the federal measures.  Whatever happens here will have to get through the new Congress.  There have been articles about the failure of graduation rates to truly track student success. 

 

Regarding working with Senator Dyson’s staff on measures we can live with, things look very positive.  Ideally, we will clean up processes and make everyone’s life easier.   Dyson introduced legislation last year that not successful and will reintroduce modified legislation this next session.  The Alliance would like to be provided with language as it is developed.

 

6.3       Performance Measures – Outreach Activities

 

Paloma Harbour has three people from UAS and one from UAF so far on her task force.  She hopes to have a meet and greet meeting of the group the last week November, hopefully November 27 in afternoon.  Harbour needs UAA representatives.  Nancy Andes at UAA has been contacted but has not responded.  Michele Hebert is the UAF representative. 

 

6.4       Other Old Business

 

            There was no other old business.

 

7.         Reports

 

            7.1       Systemwide Academic Council

 

SAC Reports from Patil went out to Alliance this morning.  SAC is looking at incentives for high school Alaska Scholars to come to the university college-ready.  The Alliance suggested allowing Alaska Scholars to begin using their scholarships for college courses in their senior year of high school.

 

MyUA went live last week.  Program approvals in emergency management will be going to regents.  The guaranteed tuition task force is in place and looking forward to task force recommendations. E-Live went very well. Richard Shointuch made a good presentation.

 

 Regarding the SAC/RAC meeting, the consensus was that academic planning should drive the building process.  Ordinarily, capital projects go straight to the Business Council and then to facilities committee who make decisions on what’s good for students without SAC being involved.  Having people who will use the space involved in planning is a big thing.  From a systemwide perspective, SAC needs to be involved for all facilities and RAC for research facilities.

 

7.2    Business Council

 

There have been two business council meetings since the last Alliance meeting.  The Business Council is going to review indirect cost recovery rates and decide in December and how to funnel money back to researchers.  Statewide is thinking of getting a statewide Chronicle on line subscription and getting rid of all the paper copies which are piling up all over the place.

 

7.3       Human Resources Council

 

The Human Resources Council met in Fairbanks.  Meeting notes were sent out yesterday evening.  There was a brief discussion of status of union talks.  HR said the two main faculty unions didn’t agree and parted ways but in senate meetings, faculty said that administration had placed roadblocks to merging.  The electronic workload agreement issue has dropped off the HR agenda and Hoanca was directed to Dave Veazey for further information.  Dave is looking at piloting the project at SFOS, Kenai and Sitka.  Beth Behner sent out the HR performance assessment and recommendations.

 

 

7.4       Retirement Committee

 

            Statewide prefers for the state to put the money directly into PERS and TRS instead of sending it to the university.  If it comes through the UA budget, the budget looks inflated, the TRS rates won’t go up and this affects the ORP rates, and would affect research grant rates.  Roughly half the faculty are on ORP1.

 

7.5       Student Services Council

 

            Kerri will send Pat the notes from the meeting.  SSC talked about the tuition task force in detail.  There was also a lot of discussion about FERPA.  The university might want to have some online training for FERPA especially for faculty and advisors about what information can be given out on the phone.  SSC discussed drops for non-payment. 

 

            7.6       IT Council

 

Curt Madison has been putting together a starter manual for students taking distance education courses for setting up accounts, getting into Blackboard etc.  The draft should be on the DESB web page. He is also putting out an RFP for security review, also looking at business practices.

 

            7.7       Research Advisory Council

 

                        The Research Advisory Council last met on its own in October.

 

8.         Senate Reports

 

The UAA Faculty Senate passed a motion to allow honors to be figured differently for purposes of publication.  Right now, 60 percent of honors students aren’t honored at graduation. 

 

UAF Faculty Senate spent substantial time on plus-minus grades. There are still some issues that need to be addressed. The Senate is also looking at how to view collegiate learning assessment.  Curt Madison talked about the transparency in distance education and gave an update on DESB.  How can we get input from faculty serving on DESB.  One way might be when chancellor appoints DESB members, the chancellor appoints in consultation with the senates.  Otherwise, the senates and the Alliance only find out DESB met after the fact. 

 

UAS Faculty Senate talked about Banner and placement issues, making sure committees are working; recapped Alliance activities; talked about student success, and talked about how UAS can get more funding for faculty to attend seminars and conferences.

 

 

9.         Agenda items for December 13, 2006 meeting

 

            Agenda items should be sent to Pat Ivey ten days in advance of the meeting.

 

10.       Comments

 

            There were no additional comments.

 

11.       Adjourn

 

            The meeting was adjourned at 9:37am.