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> Notes — 5/6/04
Faculty
Association Meet and Confer
6 May 2004
2:00 p.m., CSU 285
(Faculty Chair)
NOTES
Attendance:
Faculty: Stephen Bohnenblust, chair, Roger Severns, Paul J. Hustoles,
recorder, Don Descy, Jim Kapoun, Barbara Keating, Donald Larsson, Gregg
Marg, Sonja Meiers, Richard Swanson, Mary Visser
Management: Richard Davenport, Scott Olson, Lori Lamb, Diane Solinger,
Dean Trauger, John Winkworth
Guests: Warren Sandmann, Terrence Flaherty, Marcia Danielson, Ernie
Grieshaber, Gwen Griffin and Brenda Flannery were present for parts of
the meeting
The meeting was called to order by FA President Bohnenblust at 2:07 p.m.
1. Information Items--
a. Reorder/Additions: Jumped to 2e (see below).
b. FA President’s Report: FA President Bohnenblust:
We were very appreciative of the fact that the Children’s House faculty
will retain their status. Also the Faculty Association has
donated $2,500 to CETL. This is a first for us. We are
going to have a LGBT Coordinator on campus and we were very pleased to
hear that.
c. MSU President’s Report: President Davenport: MSU
has been in the news a lot lately. I have asked Human Resources
Director Lamb to put together an aggressive plan to give administrators
media training. Regarding the question of censorship (regarding
the firing of one employee), that was done without the approval of the
immediate supervisor. I believe there is an attempt to reinstate
both employees. Vice President Trauger: I have had
discussions with Myron Metcalf and Randall Harder. The Sports
Information Director needs to work with them to find out if there was a
journalistic conflict. We have to make sure that when we hire
someone new, there won’t be that conflict. President
Davenport: As long as I am President, we will have no
censorship. I welcome sit-ins, especially when they are well
organized. As for the ROTC sit-in, we want them to follow the
rules. The state bonding issue is a little shaky right now.
There is some brinkmanship going on. We are hopeful that
everything isn’t stalled. I have been on the phone trying to urge
legislators to not block this. We will find out today or
tomorrow. FA: Is Metcalf or Harder in a union? Vice
President Trauger: No, they are students. President
Davenport: Title IX compliance report - we have notified all of
the appropriate offices. We have been assigned an internal
auditor from MnSCU to help us. I wanted to open our records and
see if our student participation numbers are accurate. An auditor
can look back and interview both coaches and students. We have to
be above board and share our information openly. There was a
mistake, that’s for sure, and we are working hard to correct
that. FA: We can barely keep track of students in our
classes so we have some sympathy on this issue. President
Davenport: We will strive for consistency. Vice President
Olson: On drop dates and withdrawals, Interim Vice President
Solinger is looking at ways to tighten this up. MnSCU is also
studying these issues.
d. VPAA’S Report: Vice President Olson: Priority
funding for the task forces went out. Stewart Ross has said that
the response to the mini-grants has been overwhelming - we have over 60
applications so far. The last time we met, we were about 6%
behind in admissions. Now we are only at 4% behind, compared to
last year. We are way ahead of two years ago. We will meet
our 2,200-2,300 target. There could be as many as 60% more
students of color this fall. This is looking very good. I
continue to consult with FA President Bohnenblust and FA Vice President
Severns for the Interim Dean of Social and Behavioral Sciences
vacancy. We have about six candidates that have been
nominated. I hope to have an announcement by next week. FA
Vice President Severns: How about the Extended Learning Dean
position? Vice President Olson: We have a verbal
acceptance; the contract went out on Tuesday. We should have that
very soon. We got our top choice for our Graduate Dean and for
our Extended Learning Dean.
2. Discussion Items--
a. MnSCU/Legislative Relations: No report.
b. Budget: Vice President Trauger: On Monday,
President Davenport and I were in St. Paul to discuss the allocation
model. There were a number of proposals that were put
forth. After eight years and thousands of dollars to work on
this, there were three new proposals that just popped out. One
challenge is always what year to pick as the base year. For
example, with 1997 (paper distributed), it looks like the state
universities are the winners. There are also problems with Metro
and out-state colleges. Metro institutions have grown
significantly in the last few years. Where this will end up I
don’t know. President Davenport: This is going back to the
TAC committee that works on this. Vice President Trauger:
I’m not sure if the IFO is involved at the state level. FA
President Bohnenblust: Yes, we have been. We are very
concerned about this and we are also concerned with what we call
“mission creep,” as the two-year colleges do more and more of what the
four years have traditionally done. Vice President Trauger:
In 1999 we lobbied very hard to get a special appropriation because of
our historic underfunding. If you plug that in, then our numbers
would be quite a bit higher. We receive below the MnSCU average
for FTE students. The state universities are still well below our
peer institutions if we look outside of MnSCU. FA President
Bohnenblust: We will continue to keep the pressure on.
President Davenport: One recommendation that came forth was to
separate the budgets and not put us into the average allocation
model. The current model is very difficult to track. That
suggestion came up twice. The other thing is that if you look at
the community metro colleges much of their infrastructure comes out of
the system office, and therefore the faculty per FTE is deflated and
totally accurate.
c. Recurring Items (if needed): None.
1. Administrative searches: Human Resources Director
Lamb: We hope to have an announcement by next week for the
Director of Research and Sponsored Programs. There is on-going
concern about finding the right person for Director of the Career
Development Center.
2. Higher Learning Commission: Don Larsson: The
Higher Learning Commission Task Force had its final meeting of the year
last week. Our actual campus visit dates have been set as 6-8
February 2006. That means that next year will be the easy year
for us. Our new administrative co-chair is Dean Joan Roca.
During the summer, we will be drafting a self-study plan so that we can
launch our activities in the fall. We’ll want to kick off a
massive public relations campaign for the campus and the steering
committee will be gathering information in the five criteria
areas. I want to thank Vice President Olson and Assistant Vice
President Sandmann for their continued support. Vice President
Olson: And thanks to Don Larsson for his leadership.
d. Course Equivalency Process: Assistant Vice President
Sandmann passed around a series of proposals that have already been
discussed in UCAP. There are three major issues. Issue
#1: Once a course comes in as a transfer course, the content
department determines whether it is an equivalent course. If it
isn’t a match, the student has to get a substitution/waiver form.
However, once that decision is made, it will go into an equivalency
guide and other students will not have to fill out a form. All
subsequent requests will be covered. FA: Does this happen
forever? Assistant Vice President Sandmann: It will be
reviewed every year. FA Vice President Severns: The only
thing that concerns me is, what happens if the sending institution
changes curricula? Assistant Vice President Sandmann:
That’s why we would review these each year. FA Vice President
Severns: Will we actually look at a course outline from the
sending institution? FA Secretary Hustoles: Can we do this
as non-precedent setting? Assistant Vice President
Sandmann: You can change waivers. FA Secretary
Hustoles: So we would use the waiver section rather than the
substitution section? Assistant Vice President Sandmann:
Yes. FA President Bohnenblust: UCAP has approved
this? Assistant Vice President Sandmann: This has been
approved. Vice President Olson: We have had a real
challenge with transfer students. If we have something that is
standardized, it would be more helpful. Assistant Vice President
Sandmann: This will be fed into the DARS system. Issue
#2: The Registrar’s Office wants to get out of the business of
determining equivalency. Issue #3: The Registrar’s Office
wants to move away from paper substitution/waiver forms and do this
on-line. They will start piloting this in the fall.
FA: What about “writing intensive” equivalencies? Assistant
Vice President Sandmann: That would be up to the Gen Ed
Committee. FA: The English Department cannot be the
determiner of whether something is writing intensive or not.
Assistant Vice President Sandmann: We don’t substitute too many
classes for this because there is no way for us to determine the
writing component.
e. Mentoring Proposal: FA President Bohnenblust: This
proposal has been through the FA Executive Committee. It looks
like this is good to go in the fall. The only issue is, are you
comfortable with that $24,000 budget? Vice President Olson:
There was some concern about Library representation. FA President
Bohnenblust: We did discuss this and there was no exclusion of
Library faculty. So we are good to get this started? Vice
President Olson: Correct.
f. Policy Review: FA President Bohnenblust: We are
concerned with the Workplace Environment Policy. We want to act
civilly towards each other, but language alone might not lead to
discipline. We would like to rework this policy to separate those
things that would require discipline vs. those that are not
punishable. We don’t want to censor. Human Resources
Director Lamb: If you have some specifics, we could bring that
back to the committee, which includes faculty members. FA:
I talked to several administrators and asked them the same questions,
but you gave different answers. That’s all right but this is a
broader issue than we might think. FA President
Bohnenblust: We don’t want to interfere with freedom of
speech. Human Resources Director Lamb: But we want to make
sure that people can get their work done. FA VP Severns: There is
more work to be done on this. Human Resources Director
Lamb: I would prefer that we work on this soon, so that we can
get this going in the fall. President Davenport: There is a
lot to be gained to get this in place. I give an immense amount
of credit to the IFO in helping us work together. There are so
many issues that we have resolved internally. Let’s take care of
our issues in a fair and just manner. Human Resources Director
Lamb: We can work during the summer and bring this back to Meet
and Confer in the fall.
g. Campus Demonstrations: FA President Bohnenblust:
We are concerned about the potential for more demonstrations and
recognizing the long-term issues for students being arrested.
Assistant Vice President Solinger: Recently we have had a couple
of demonstrations. Two weeks ago we had six individuals who came
to ROTC for a sit-in. They had not gone through the
policies. Human Resources got an e-mail asking what to do.
It was recommended that they call Security. Security arrived and
explained to the demonstrators the policy regarding a protest or
demonstration. We have a designated area for
demonstrations. There can be an exception. The students
basically cut the officer off. They were told if they didn’t
disperse that Mankato Public Safety would be called. Four decided
to leave; two decided to stay and were arrested. One was a
student; one was not. Last week, the GLBT group went to get the
form, asked for an exception and got it. They protested up on the
third floor. It was very civil and we had a good
discussion. Last year we had a group that was concerned about a
visiting team’s mascot. Security accommodated them. At St.
Cloud there was an altercation. FA President Bohnenblust:
The gist of our concern is that the police be called in only when it is
absolutely necessary. FA: Wouldn’t it have been better not
to call the police? Couldn’t we have just talked to them?
We now have a student with an arrest record. Interim Vice
President Solinger: We didn’t move too quickly. President
Davenport: I would just say that the academy is one of the last
places where everyone can make their voices heard. I don’t think
in any way do we want to weaken that position. Anything that will
limit a student's right to speak out is going to be questioned.
But I do think there needs to be some rules of engagement. There
are times where we can cajole students. There are ways you can
talk them out of being arrested. Sometimes they want to be
arrested. FA Vice President Severns: We had a discussion in
our Executive Meeting. As we get closer to the election, there
might be more demonstrations. It may behoove us to make sure that
next year’s class is very aware of the policy. President
Davenport: We do have ROTC on this campus and it is a
department. We need to be considerate of the role they play on
our campus, even if we don’t agree with government policies.
Interim Vice President Solinger: They weren’t protesting ROTC,
they were protesting the war in Iraq. Human Resources Director
Lamb: We also have to give our employees a safe place to
work. I got a question: “What about employee rights?”
h. Task Force/Committee Reports None.
1. Graduate Education: Dean Flaherty (passed out a status
report): We feel we have made significant progress.
Objective 1 has been addressed. Objective 2 and 6: We are
looking at programs that are no longer viable. Thirteen have been
(or will be) closed within the past two years. Objective 4 has
also made progress. We are hoping to be a paperless office by the
end of next year. Check
http://www2.mnsu.edu/grauduate/gradedtaskforce/index.htm for full
information.
2. Distance Learning: Dean Flaherty (passed out a status
report): Check
http://www2.mnsu.edu/grauduate/dltf/index.htm for full
information. Again, we are making good progress. Closure
for accreditation should be in September. A major task will be an
enrollment management document for next fall. We have given some
funds to nine on-line programs and they have all exceeded in our
expectations. One of the things we realized right away is that we
needed to provide more development opportunities. Another group
has worked on intellectual property and we expect closure this
fall. Students and faculty support services have taken a lot more
time than we expected, but we will have something in place by the
fall. Sustainable funding has been achieved. Finally, we
recommend that we stay together through December to assist the new
dean. FA: We have read that as many as half of the number
of students who start an on-line course don’t finish it. Are you
going to watch for this? Dean Flaherty: There is much
literature on this. First we are going to make sure that the
students are really ready for on-line sources. President
Davenport: I understood that MnSCU put forth a blanket proposal
for approval for accreditation. Dean Flaherty: They are the
proxy, we are in the queue. President Davenport: Was there
a discussion of a new College of Extended Learning? Dean
Flaherty: We did not discuss this.
3. Undergraduate Excellence: Assistant Vice President
Sandmann (passed out a status report): We got a later start than
all of the other task forces. Check
http://www.mnsu.edu/acadaf/pdfs/EUAENotes/EUAEPrelimReport.pdf for full
information. It is there for everyone to review our preliminary
report and we ask for your feedback. There are four
subgroups: Academic Standards; Climate of Academic Excellence;
General Education; and Majors and Minors. We hope to have a final
report by the end of the fall semester. We also received some of
the strategic funding money and we have already awarded
mini-grants. President Davenport: Is there discussion about
addressing rigor in the classroom? Assistant Vice President
Sandmann: Yes, that is included in Academic Standards.
4. Marketing: Marsha Danielson: We started with
research and we have found that we don’t have a very defined
brand. We really tried to articulate what our brand is, defining
who we are. We looked at taking the Modern University concept and
then came up with several key concepts. We did an internal test
launch of these. We heard that we were close, but not
there. We need to talk more about the personalized attention that
faculty give to students. We then tried to lay this over the
value statements, and we put out a survey to all faculty and staff last
week. We have over a 20% response rate so far. We don’t
have it all tabulated yet, but the one thing that came through very
clear is that personalized service and a dedicated faculty and staff
are coming to the forefront. This will help us to refine the
message. We will advertise in magazines and on billboards.
We are going to take a more proactive approach. Rather than churn
out over 500 press releases for us to be everything to everybody, we
will ask more help from the campus to give us more of a focus.
Our new media director will establish relationships with all
media. We will find stories to prove our values. We will
hand these to the media on a platter. Our identified experts will
also help with this. We are going to have media training for our
key spokespersons. With our new portal system, we can separate
our external and internal audiences. The Wall of Distinction will
be in the new addition in the Student Union. It will answer the
questions about what you do with an MSU degree. We will make the
display so that it can rotate.
5. International Programs: Brenda Flannery (report
distributed): We have only been together a short time. We
needed to become a major information gathering group.
International education is all over the place. We looked at a lot
of other universities. We need to have an International hub,
which could serve as one-stop shopping for our students. We have
very few students who now study abroad. We have 600 International
students who pretty much know where to go. We need one reporting
entity. Vice President Olson: I didn’t mention before that
International student admits are down 25% in one year because of the
Patriot Act. Brenda Flannery: Students are going to more
welcoming countries. The Task Force would like to have a
continuing role to play. This report was just completed this
morning. President Davenport: Did you consider having this
entity report to Student Affairs? Brenda Flannery: We found
that in most other schools it reports to Academic Affairs, because
these issues are academic issues. When we looked at Best
Practices institutions, we found no examples in Student Affairs.
FA: A lot of us faculty view International education as defining
a modern university. It is very clear that we are way behind with
this. Brenda Flannery: Many universities seem to be using
these things as a strategic priority. Vice President Olson:
Harvard is now requiring every student to study abroad. FA:
Some of us are concerned that students can’t afford this. More
students are working. We need to work on making study abroad more
affordable. Brenda Flannery: We need to work with
University Advancement in making more funds available. FA:
Was there any discussion about how this could relate to distance
education? Brenda Flannery: We did have quite a few
conversations about this, but we didn’t want to put this under distance
education to make sure that the focus is always on International.
FA Vice President Severns: I commend the committee for all of
their hard work in such a short amount of time. Regarding
affordability, there are programs out there that might be able to be
expanded. FA: I understand the value of those tour types of
things, but we need to look at the full semesters abroad.
6. Gender Equity: Ernie Grieshaber (report
distributed): FA President Bohnenblust created this committee
because there was a challenge that we discovered in the salary equity
committee. We completed the tasks listed on page one. Some
of the findings? The success rate for women is the same as men
for the past ten years. There did not seem to be any
problem. Then we looked at individuals who didn’t go up for
promotion. We looked at individuals who were in one rank for ten
years or longer. We identified 79 faculty in that category (42
female, 37 male). We then sent a survey to all and 37
responded. We categorized replies under a number of
headings: Improper Standards; Misinformation; Dread of Process;
and No Encouragement and Support. Vice President Olson:
Some of these go back quite a ways. Some of these individuals
have now actually been promoted. When they say “my Dean,” this
could have been a Dean of 25 years ago. Recommendations of the
committee: 1. Hold regularly scheduled workshops; 2.
Establish a mentoring system; 3. Organize campus discussion on
what fulfills Criterion 2 (scholarly and creative activity) and how
these criteria are weighted; and 4. Encourage the FA to consider
the formation of a Promotion and Tenure Committee. FA: I am
really interested in how these are integrating with other task
forces. We used to have what we called the APT Committee, but we
were told by the state IFO office to discontinue it because we could
not legally do the kind of peer review found at many
institutions. What we did do was to meet with the Vice President
for Academic Affairs and serve as an advocate for the file. We
would clarify. Vice President Olson: More of an advocacy
than an evaluative role? FA: Yes. But the state IFO
told us we were opening ourselves up to lawsuits. FA:
Earlier, we did play an evaluative role, then it became advocacy.
We were keeping the Vice Presidents honest. FA Vice President
Severns: On page 14, I noticed that the library had a lot fewer
people. Ernie Grieshaber: Yes, there were just fewer people
to analyze. If we do more with this data, I would like a clear
objective. Human Resources Director Lamb: We had a specific
question and we answered it. FA Vice President Severns: Did
any questions come up in working on this? Human Resources
Director Lamb: If there is more to be done, let us know. We
could not find that there was a gender or minority issue here.
Gwen Griffin: The most important thing is that we found there is
not a problem with gender. We did find that there is considerable
“dread” regarding the whole process. FA President
Bohnenblust: Thanks to the committee. We will consider that
this committee has completed its task.
i. Executive Director of University Assessment: FA
President Bohnenblust: We had a couple of things to
discuss. Duties 1 and 2 seem redundant. Is this an internal
or external search? Also, we were concerned with the relationship
of this position with our Program Review and Assessment
Committee. Assistant Vice President Sandmann: This would be
the lead assessment officer who would collaborate with the person in
Student Affairs. The initial person will be an internal candidate
(three-year appointment) but, after that, we would hold a national
search. The Program Review and Assessment Committee has approved
this and looks forward to working with that person. FA:
This position would replace Pellet? Assistant Vice President
Sandmann: Yes.
3. Other Items--
FA President Bohnenblust: I would like to thank members of the
Meet and Confer team. I thing we have had a very productive year
and have made significant progress. I especially appreciated the
speed with which Academic Affairs gets things done. It’s
refreshing to have both speed and quality at the same time.
President Davenport: I concur. I think everything has
really gone smoothly this year. We have had open and frank
discussions and that is the best way to move forward. I
appreciate how the University has embraced the strategic
initiatives. I have approved a $500,000 fund to put some of these
plans into effect. We have moved forward as a team in the spirit
of shared governance.
The meeting ended at 4:11 p.m.
_______________________________
_____________________________
John M. Winkworth
Paul J. Hustoles
Reviewer for Management
Reviewer for Faculty
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