Meeting of the Faculty Alliance

Wednesday, December 13, 2006, 8:00am-9:30am by audioconference

 

Draft Minutes


1.          Call to order and roll call     

 

            Members present:

 

Shirish Patil, Chair; President, UAF Faculty Senate

Kerry Morris, President, UAA Faculty Senate

Chuck Craig, President, UAS Faculty Senate

Bogdan Hoanca, 1st Vice President, UAA Faculty Senate

Jon Genetti, President-elect, UAF Faculty Senate

Tim Hinterberger, Chair, UAA Graduate Affairs Board

 

Pat Ivey, Executive Officer

 

Others present:

 

Ted Kassier, Senior Associate Vice President, Academic Affairs

Paloma Harbour, Policy Analyst, Statewide Budget and Institutional Research

Gwen White, Director, Statewide Institutional Research

Saichi Oba, Assistant Vice President, Student and Enrollment Services

 

2.         Adopt Agenda

 

MOTION:  passed without objection

 

“The Faculty Alliance moves to adopt the agenda for the December 13, 2006 meeting.  This action is effective December 13, 2006.”

 

3.         Approve November 15, 2006 minutes

 

            MOTION: passed without objection

 

 “The Faculty Alliance moves to postpone approval of the November 15, 2006 minutes until the next Faculty Alliance meeting.  This action is effective December 13, 2006.”

 

4.         Report from the Chair

 

At the December 6-7, 2006 Board of Regents meeting,  regents approved the Susan Butcher Leadership Institute at UAF, a Certificate in Civic Engagement at UAA, a Bachelor of Emergency Management at UAF, a Graduate Certificate in Special Education and a Master of Education in Special Education at UAS. The Coalition of Student Leaders provided testimony from Coalition on needs based financial aid and the Faculty Alliance will continue to follow that as well as the new guaranteed tuition task force.  The Board of Regents supports BIOS and cut the ribbon on BiRD building. 

 

The UAF and Statewide human resources offices will merge, the idea being that there be no layoffs.   A person will be hired from outside the university as a neutral party to facilitate the transition.  There apparently are no plans to merge UAA and UAS human resources departments with Statewide/UAF. 

 

Regarding the guaranteed task force, Steve Hamilton was appointed by the Alliance but has not yet been contacted by Saichi Oba for a meeting.  The Alliance is concerned about student success, i.e., if freshmen enter into guaranteed tuition program and register for too many credits to lock in  the rate, how does that fit with student success when students are not college ready and taking too many courses.  Other ideas included a tuition rebate  if students graduate in four years, or a return to the consolidated tuition rate, where students pay by the credit up to a certain number of credits and then regardless of how many credits are added to that number (12-15), the amount remains the same.. This was also discussed at Student Services Council and there seems to be a lot of caution.  SAC really hasn’t discussed this issue much and is aware of the difficulties in instituting such a program.

 

DESB has been disbanded and ETT reconstituted with Karen Perdue and Saichi Oba co-chairing.

                                                                       

5.         New Business

 

5.1       Student Success – Shirish Patil                                                

 

Dave Veazey and Shirish Patil haven’t had time to get together on the strategic plan for student success, but plan to bring it to the Alliance prior to implementation.  President Hamilton funded George Kuh to come to Alaska in mid August.  Veazey is still looking at Dave Conley to come to the Alliance in January or February. 

 

5.2       Academic Planning – Ted Kassier                                            

 

Ted Kassier said SAC has finally gotten some strategic plans in engineering from UAF and UAA, pretty generally inadequate with regard to specificity in targets and goals.  The UAF plan is a little stronger than UAAs. Other shortcoming in the engineering plan is failure to define workforce development and overall plan for that.  In education, the focus area is limited in ESL which to this point has been neglected and very much needed to be fleshed out.  Kassier plans to add ESL into foreign languages study portion.  Kassier also developed generic outlines for academic planning that helps participants take the necessary steps and has SACs support for the outline.  The outline will be also be shared with the Alliance.

 

5.2       Other New Business

 

There was no other new business.

 

 

 

6.         Old Business

 

6.1       VPAA Search – Status – Shirish Patil

 

The senate presidents were on a conference call with Betty Hasler.  The search committee has received about nine or ten candidates and is moving seven or eight of those forward for videoconference interviewing.  

 

6.2       Performance Measures – Gwen White  

 

This item was placed on the January meeting agenda because everyone in budget and institutional research has been busy with budget issues.  The Governor’s budget is due out on Friday.

 

6.3       Performance Measures – Outreach Activities – Paloma Harbour        

 

Paloma had a meet and greet meeting of her performance measures group followed by a question and answer session and will have another meeting this Friday. The group will have a one month break and won’t meet again until January.  All three MAUs are represented in the group

           

6.4       Other Old Business

 

            There was no other old business.

 

7.         Reports

 

            7.1       Systemwide Academic Council – Patil, Hoanca                                   

                       

SAC had a 4 hour meeting last Tuesday.  Kassier reported that Beth Behner presented a set of draft recruitment regulations which TK rewrote to differentiate between faculty and staff hiring so that provosts approve faculty hire and salary, not human resources departments. The role of human resources is to make sure that files are in order and the process has been followed and the requisite paperwork and vacancy announcements et al, but the hiring of faculty and salary determination is vested in the provost. 

 

The Alliance placed the recruitment regulations on the agenda for the next Alliance meeting.

 

SAC has a fairly comprehensive set of Statewide/MAU responsibilities out for MAU review and response by January.  SAC also heard a community engagement report from Mike Driscoll. UAA has qualified for a community engagement classification from Carnegie.  Community campus directors meet in February.  There are only four or five community campuses that are minority-serving according to federal requirements for funding. 

 

Kassier also attended a NASULGC meeting with Steve Jones and Buck Sharpton and sent a written report to SAC and can share with Alliance as well. Kassier also attended the Gorsuch forum on education.

 

            7.2       Business Council         - Connor, Layer                                                 

 

There was no Business Council report.

 

            7.3       Human Resources Council – Hoanca, Hinterberger                               

 

The Human Resources Council met yesterday.  Evidently faculty on sabbatical out of the country even for a couple of weeks have salary implications i.e., country and local taxes.  Two most common countries for sabbaticals are Canada and Russia.  With Russia things are getting difficult.  If UA employee is working in Russia for more than 30 days, UA has to register as an employer in Russia.  Hoanca expressed surprise to learn there is no mechanism to determine who the hiring authority is.  The Council is trying to formalize that, in particular for faculty.  One of the changes is that the provost will approve the hiring and also the salary.

 

            7.4       Retirement Committee – Shepherd, Genetti, Hoanca                              

 

Retirement Committee is trying to codify and eliminate all the bad things that happened last summer with regard to PERS/TRS/ORP regulations.  President Hamilton told the ARM board to route all the money to TRS rather than the university which would keep our costs down. 

                       

            7.5       ETT/DESB and Guaranteed Tuition (Tuition Pledge) – Saichi Oba              

 

Saichi Oba reported that there is a substantial shift in how ETT will conduct its business.  Karen Perdue asked Craig Dorman to add Oba as co chair of ETT and ETT is redirecting the resources that used to go to UAF CDE.  Ramona MacAfee will manage the day to day operations of distance education.  She formerly headed up military programs.  Steve Hamilton has been charged with asking certain members of the DESB to form a faculty group to continue the engagement from the faculty side.  The ETT will continue.  The DESB will sunset Jan 1 2007 and Jan 20 is the sunset for the staffing of DESB through CDE.  Three focus areas of the reorganization are:

 

·                    24/7 technical help desk. ITC will hear a proposal tomorrow or January

·                    Taking students from the distance education gateway to the secured transactions system in Banner and make it seamless.  How do you give them the University of Phoenix shopping experience?

·                    The RFP process where departments can submit proposals for modest amounts of money; Ramona leading effort.  faculty members work their proposals through their departments to SAC for approval. There is a total of $100,000 for this, with a maximum award of $10,000.  If inundated with great ideas then Ramona would look for alternative funding. At the very highest level, intent is funds for new distance education course development with program emphasis.

 

An ETT meeting is planned for January.  Oba is calling each member of the DESB talking about the transition and all the information will be presented to the Alliance.  Saichi hopes to be done by Friday.  ITEACH and IDESIGN will continue to be contracted through UAF CDE. Curt Madison’s effort in leading DESB has been commendable.

 

The Tuition Pledge (not Guaranteed) Task Force meets today at 11am. Steve Hamilton is the Alliance representative. Oba sent him the information. The task force guest today is Greg Ault from Illinois State.  Illinois State has been involved in guaranteed tuition rates for three years.  The task force will not meet again until January, but expects to have an interim report to president by the end of February and the final report by end of March.  Whether or not to pursue such a program will be determined by the president and executives.  Alternatives will also be discussed by the task force, such as the old consolidated tuition rate. Another alternative would be to give seniors within 15 credits of graduating a waiver.  Western Oregon is implementing a guaranteed tuition program.  Western Illinois has had this for some time. Student performance has to meet the minimums.  Course sequencing is a critical piece. University has to provide all the tools to graduate. Students have to graduate in four years.  Retention is better; graduation rates are better and shorter. As a result, schools with such programs don’t have to raise tuition as dramatically as in other schools.  Hoanca said the importance of accurate advising is critical to success.

 

            7.6       Student Services Council – Morris, Craig

 

Saichi Oba already mentioned most of what has occurred.  Morris sent a report just now.  The placement module activation is not supported by SSC because Banner will not let you use test scores (i.e., testing into a class). Additionally at UAA, Gary Rice is doing a study on prerequisites and how they effect on performance in courses for which they are prerequisites and is not sure prerequisites are serving the role for which they were intended.  The UAA Faculty Senate is not in favor of it; however, this is one of the things accreditation teams look at.  There are instances of students taking 3-4 courses 3-4 times, out of sequence and being allowed to do so.  This should not happen.  UAF is in favor of turning on the Banner switch for UAF in such a manner that it will not affect UAA or UAS.  UAF wants Banner to clean up the codes and help enforce UAF mandatory placement.

 

Morris said if she had rewards in pay and time and culture, advising could take care of a huge number of problems.  She is working with staff advisors to help meet the prerequisites.

           

            7.7       Instructional Technology Council – Genetti, Craig                   

 

ITT has not met since the last Alliance meeting, will meet tomorrow and will be reported upon at the next Alliance meeting.

           

            7.8       Research Advisory Council     - Layer, Hinterberger                 

 

Hinterberger advised that there was nothing worth reporting except comment from Craig Dorman that he will be retiring from the university soon as new VPAA is on board.

           

 

 

8.         Senate Reports, UAA, UAF, UAS                                                   

 

UAA – An all faculty assembly was held. The senate has per semester, had one on advising with staff and faculty advisors present.

 

UAF – is moving to plus and minus grades and impact of that on GPA calculations and graduation with honors.  Accreditation reports are in and generally good. Dana Thomas is heading up a UAF task force on student success and will have recommendations from eight working groups in January.

 

UAS – voted yes on  Banner placement module provided students taking prerequisites are automatically in related courses, and 2) faculty have the ability to override.

 

9.         Agenda Items for January 24, 2007 meeting

 

Agenda items will include Alliance meeting calendar adjustments if any for the spring semester.

 

10.        Comments

 

            There were no additional comments

 

11.        Adjourn

 

            The meeting was adjourned at 9:42am.