Faculty Association Meet and Confer
6 October 2005
3:00 p.m., CSU 204
(Faculty Chair/Administration Agenda)
NOTES
Attendance:
Faculty: Stephen Bohnenblust, Paul Hustoles, recorder, Wayne Allen, Don
Descy, Jim Grabowska, Gwen Griffin, Jean Haar, Georgia Holmes, Sonja
Meiers, Anne O’Meara, Jim Petersen, Theresa Salerno, Daardi Sizemore,
Richard Swanson
Management: Richard Davenport, Scott Olson, Mark Johnson, Pat
Swatfager-Haney, Rosemary Kinne (for Dean Trauger), Lori Lamb, John
Winkworth
FA President Bohnenblust called the meeting to order at 3:06 p.m.
1. Information Items—
a. Reorder/Additions: Human Resources Director
Lori Lamb: add 2h. Commencement.
b. FA President’s Report: FA President
Bohnenblust: Our recommendation is to increase the University
writing intensive class requirement from one class to two. It
looks like that is very doable within our current structure. The
faculty would like to formally bring this forward as our
recommendation. We are in agreement with the Summer Session Guidelines,
thank you for bringing this to us in a timely manner. We
forwarded our recommendations to Rob McGinn regarding the Smoking
Policy and we understand that there is a new draft. We look
forward to this policy being implemented.
c. MSU President’s Report: President Davenport:
We had an excellent Homecoming weekend except, of course, for the
non-student who died. We had a wonderful football game. I
feel sorry for the new football coach. He has a good team. Family
Weekend happened. There may be some issues that we might want to
talk about in the future. We had two very successful Foundation
Board meetings this past week. This will be an aggressive
campaign. We are just waiting for a dollar amount. We are
forecasting a new College of Business building and we have in the queue
with MnSCU a new science building. I want to congratulate Vice
President Swatfager-Haney and Vice President Trauger for obtaining the
$40 million for four new four-story student housing buildings tied
together. Those would be the equivalent of one Gage Tower.
We will be coming back in the spring to do the second half, which would
allow us to bring down both towers. The timeline could be two
years but, more realistically, three. There are other structures
being discussed like a parking structure. We will talk about this
throughout the year. Vice President Olson and Dean Frey and many
others put in a lot of work on the Centers of Excellence
proposal. We could get funded if politics is not the main
factor. Two searches to note: one for Vice President
Trauger’s replacement. We also had a failed search for the
Special Assistant to the President for Communications. We will
modify that and get that started very quickly. Human Resources
Director Lamb: Can we ask for a nomination from the FA within the
next ten days (for the Vice President search)? President
Davenport: We are going to an outside search firm to help
expedite this. On November 11-20, 2005, I will be with the
Governor in China. Let me know if any of you have contacts that you
want us to see if we can work into the itinerary. I am looking to
establish some partnerships and exchanges. Sam Roy, a
Foundation Board member, will also be joining us.
d. VPAA’s Report: Vice President Olson
distributed the list of Unclassified Administrative Position
Openings. Human Resources Director Lamb: We will add the
senior Athletic Associate Director position, formerly held by Susan
Reinders. Vice President Olson: We are grateful to the FA
for the feedback regarding the writing intensive proposal. There
will be a lot more proposals coming. Vice President Olson showed
a Fulbright Scholarship poster featuring the picture of an MSU student
on it. Vice President Olson: Thank you for your
participation in the memorial service for our three students.
Remember that the HLC visit is coming. Our mission is to promote
learning. Our vision is “Beyond possibility.” Our dates are
February 6-8, 2006. The draft report through chapter nine is on
the website. HLC Co-Chair Larsson is open to any and all comments
but they must come soon.
2. Discussion Items—
a. MnSCU Legislative Relations: President
Davenport: We are the highest ranked proposal for Trafton.
We do know that legislators will be challenging the size of the project
because it is the biggest request ever.
b. Budget: Assistant Vice President
Kinne: We need to send in our tuition numbers soon. FA
President Bohnenblust: How does the budget look for new faculty
positions for FY 07? Vice President Olson: The Deans have
discussed this with their Chairs this week and will report to me next
week. There are some things from the Strategic Task Forces that also
have to be discussed. President Davenport: The students had
some success regarding the cap on tuition. They have announced that
they will push for a cap pegged to the inflation rate. Vice
President Olson: Which is a wrong thing to peg it to because we
are so labor intensive.
c. Free Speech Proposal: FA President
Bohnenblust: We have a proposal to break the deadlock that we are
in. We recommend that the campus remain a free speech zone but
that we would designate a couple of areas that groups could
reserve. Vice President Olson: Is this coming as a written
proposal? FA President Bohnenblust: This is our
position. I can take it from our notes from our FA Executive
Committee meeting to give to you. President Davenport: My
concerns all along have been safety and security issues. We need
to have the maximum free speech without interrupting our business. I
think the idea of designating areas to reserve is workable. We
might have to spend some time talking about outdoor and indoor
policies. There are some MnSCU policies that we have to
check. Human Resources Director Lamb: This is heading in
the right direction. We will need to bring this to the other Meet
and Confers. We need a process. FA President Bohnenblust:
This is more of an idea than a proposal. Human Resource Director
Lamb: We are happy to hear that the FA has come up with a
compromise. We just need a process to evaluate it.
President Davenport: Maybe we could get something in
writing. FA Secretary Hustoles will insert the motion into the
minutes: The FA Executive Committee moved “to declare this a free
speech campus with designated areas that may be reserved in advance.”
d. List of Existing Contracts and New Contract
Routing Sheet: FA President Bohnenblust: We are concerned about
contracts with curricular implications. The specific contract we
were thinking about was the one for Aviation. The vast majority
of contracts are routine. Any that deal with curriculum need some
process (form distributed). FA: Is there some reason why
the Curriculum Committee does not sign off on this? FA President
Bohnenblust: If it’s only affecting a department, why would the
committee want to see this? Vice President Olson: There are
hundreds of contracts that could clog up the Curriculum Sub Meet.
Ninety-five percent of these are non-controversial. This was an attempt
to make sure that, if we are in agreement, it will go through the
system. If not, this form will trigger this kicking back to the
appropriate Sub Meet. President Davenport: I’m very much in
favor of this for obvious reasons. (A summary listing of over 500
contracts was distributed.) Human Resources Director Lamb:
Maybe there needs to be some more discussion about how this form
applies to which contracts. President Davenport: We have to be
careful about time. If there is an RFP, we have to make sure that
we start early enough to resolve any issues. Human Resources
Director Lamb: When does this form happen? FA President
Bohnenblust: When we have a final copy of the contract.
Vice President Olson: We are open to any suggestions from the
FA. How much oversight do you want and when do you want
it? FA: If the department and the Dean agree, why should we
care? It’s when there is a disagreement that this would need to
come into play. FA President Bohnenblust: We need to go
back to the drawing board for two things: 1. The sheer volume of
contracts; and; 2. The identification of contracts that could be
an issue. Vice President Olson: Aviation has been identified as
an issue. Human Resources Director Lamb: The timing is a
third thing. If you do this after the contract is done, it may be
a little late to stop it. You need to consider that. FA
President Bohnenblust: I wouldn’t think that would be a factor if
the faculty are already involved with the contract negotiations.
Vice President Olson: We are willing to work with you in any
way. FA: In Aviation, the proposal came in and it was too
late to change anything. You have to get ahead of the curve. Vice
President Olson: Are we trying to have a process for something
that happened that was unique, idiosyncratic and problematic? FA: The
tenor of that contract changed significantly between the RFP and the
actual contract. We need to be involved at the very
beginning. Assistant Vice President Kinne: We need to
review the RFP. Human Resources Director Lamb: That’s the
time when you will have a major impact. Assistant Vice President
Kinne: And then review the contract to see if it matches the RFP
or not. FA President Bohnenblust: We will review this in
our Executive Committee meeting.
e. Health and Wellness Strategic Priority: FA
President Bohnenblust: This is coming out of Student Affairs and
we don’t know who is going to chair this committee. We are
concerned in general. We were concerned about the “house calls”
that faculty were asked to make to student dorm rooms. We have
some concerns with this Task Force. FA: There is already a
Wellness Committee. We don’t want to have too many people for too
many things. President Davenport: I do think this is a
worthy strategic issue and priority. I put it out as a challenge
but I am very open as to how we do this. We just did a ribbon
cutting at the Recreation Center. Health seems like a
no-brainer. The logistics is a whole other issue. FA:
That is our concern. Vice President Johnson: We received a
lot of positive feedback from the campus community on this. FA
President Bohnenblust: Usually task forces are time
limited. When is this one done? Vice President
Swatfager-Haney: While Student Affairs is interested in this, it
has really been a campus initiative. The fact that I would have
oversight does not mean that it is only coming out of Student
Affairs. To head it, we were thinking of co-chairs, one being an
academic. We have been given a lot of encouragement to get this done as
soon as possible although February 2006 might be overly
ambitious. There are a variety of other committees that would be
in involved in this. Everything that you have mentioned has been
discussed. FA President Bohnenblust: Does that mean you
will come back with a revised document? Vice President
Swatfager-Haney: We haven’t received very much feedback. If you
could get that to us in writing or we could just use the notes of this
meeting. FA President Bohnenblust: We were concerned about
running parallel committees. Will people start acting on
recommendations from the preliminary proposal? We had that
challenge with the Distance Learning Task Force. Vice President
Swatfager-Haney: We do want to have a co-chair. We are
looking for recommendations for membership. FA President
Bohnenblust: Is this charge a work in progress? Vice
President Swatfager-Haney: We brought this to all of the Meet and
Confers. FA President Bohnenblust: I didn’t realize that
this was a draft.
f. Faculty Improvement Grant Process: FA
President Bohnenblust: We are out of money already.
Assistant Vice President Winkworth: At our first meeting of the
Sub Meet, we talked about process and resources. The faculty
representatives planned to bring something to the FA Executive
Committee but they didn’t have time. It should be at your next
meeting. It’s not exclusively about money but also about the
process. For a while there have been an insufficient number of
applications for the resources available. That has just changed this
past year. So we have to talk about how to handle the
applications. FA President Bohnenblust: We will look
forward to hearing from our own people.
g. Meet and Confer Web Page: Human Resources
Director Lamb: We have a new Meet and Confer webpage that will
link information from the various Meet and Confers (document
distributed). The person to copy is Aleksey Lazar when the
minutes are complete. The site is:
http://www.mnsu.edu/supersite/administration/meetconfer/.
h. Commencement: Human Resources Director
Lamb: There will be two commencements this fall. One at
9:00 a.m. for the Colleges of AH&N, A&H and SET. One at
noon for Business, SBS and Education. There will be three again
in the spring.
3. Other Items—
a. Dinner Tonight: Vice President Olson:
Tonight is the Promotion and Tenure dinner. FA President
Bohnenblust: President Davenport and Vice President Olson have
invited me as the FA representative. It is nice to see the good
things that happen on campus.
b. Season Tickets: FA Secretary Hustoles:
Season tickets still on sale for MSU Theatre until the close of Man of
La Mancha starring Music Department professor Kimm Julian in the
leading role. Vice President Swatfager-Haney: The theatre
students did such a good job at the Gala in the CSU this past Friday.
The Next Meet and Confer is on Thursday, 3 November 2005, at 3:00 p.m.
in CSU 204.
The meeting adjourned at 4:07 p.m.
John M. Winkworth
Paul Hustoles
_______________________________
_____________________________
John M. Winkworth
Paul J. Hustoles
Reviewer for Management Reviewer
for Faculty
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