Minutes of the Faculty Senate
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Southern Illinois University
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Meeting convened at 1:03 p.m. by Terry Clark, President.
ROLL CALL
Members present: Philip Anton, Connie J. Baker, George E. Boulukos, Joe Cheatwood (Buffy Ellsworth proxy), Rita Cheng
Members absent without Proxy: Belle Woodward, John Nicklow
Visitors and guests: Jim Garvey (Vice Chancellor of Research), James Allen (Associate Provost for Academic Programs), Judy Marshall and Dr. John Warwick
MINUTES
Motion was made to approve the minutes from the
REPORTS
1.Terry Clark this was done when I was out of the room, before the recorder was turned
on.
2.Chancellor Rita Cheng reported: a) SIU had its largest open house in recent memory on Friday, Nov. 8th, it is a signal of great interest in SIU for the fall of 2014, thank you to all who participated; b) New building is living up to expectations, makes a strong positive impact on the prospective students and their families; c) Applications are up 9% over this time last year and are involved in planning for the scholarship weekend, first weekend of February,
anticipating a large group of scholars and their families; d) New building updates: by end of the week all inhabitants will be moved in, 4th floor will be finished moving in by end of the week; e) renovation projects are moving forward, 6th and 7th floors of the Library are expected to be completed by January, Pulliam Hall project for Art & Design is moving forward and social work faculty should be able to move in, along with Art & Design in August of 2014, then Quigley basement will be remodeled for Architecture and their studios; f) The Woody Hall project will get going soon, heating and cooling, electrical, window repair and cosmetic work will be done over the next year; Classroom projects and lab projects are all going according to schedule; g)
Chancellor’s Planning & Budget Committee continues to meet, Judy Marshall and Dean
Warwick are here to talk about the model and answer questions the senate had about that; the CPBC is also monitoring progress on our strategic plan, Matt Baughman will be meeting with the Executive Committee of the Senate, as well as a lot of other constituency groups to hear input on appropriate metrics that can be used to monitor progress on all 6 chapters of the strategic plan; h) Overall faculty numbers remain strong, 40 tenure track positions have been approved for hiring for next year; faculty to student ratios have barely changed, with drops in both faculty and students the ratios have therefore been maintained, anticipating growth in freshman and sophomores for next year because of work that is being done on intake; i) More than 100 courses, many
computer viruses, we’ve had a minimal impact here, 25 of 35 attempts were blocked by central
IT staff and are helping those that are affected; l) celebrated a $1.3 million dollar gift to support students with disabilities that wish to major in the STEM fields; received the Above and Beyond award from the department of defense for work with veterans and active military and we were notified that we were given the Best for Vets Award by Military Time; m) we have been notified that we received a $300,000 NSF grant in Computer Science for Research on smart grids; governor announced last week that SIU will be getting a technical assistance grant bolster for students entering the STEM fields and there is a new agreement with the Hungarian American Commission for education exchange group beginning in
3. Carl Flowers, Graduate Council. Council met for its November meeting. The Grad Council has passed two new resolutions, one for a new unit of instruction in CASA for a masters in Radiological Sciences and changing the way that Tuition Waivers are awarded. The council had a first reading on resolution on the Computing Affairs Research Advisory Committee, and the second reading and the decision to table the resolution on the reorganization COEHS. The RME was not tabled just the resolution. There was a lot of discussion, and a special meeting where the grad council heard from students and faculty of the college, and their concerns of the RME. There were
R. Stocking asked Dr. Flowers for clarification on the COEHS RME, was there something else going on in regards to going back to the new programs committee? Flowers replied that the motion was to table the resolution, council member Anz suggested that since it was a hot button item that everyone needed to consider taking a step back and to table any action on the resolution at that meeting and possibly bring it back up at next month’s meeting.
B. Thibeault responded – so the resolution was not sent back to COEHS. Flowers said it has not been sent back to the college.
Question was asked of Dr. Flowers – “You said that you are tabling it at the November meeting but it may come back at the December meeting, what would you do at that time?” Flowers replied, “it can be voted on and it can end up being revised, or voted up or down, or be revised at the meeting and voted on at the meeting as well, those are the options.”
G. Boulukos asked what could be revised the resolution or the RME? Flowers reiterated that the resolution can be revised between now and the meeting in December.
T. Clark added that in the meetings he has attended, no one seems to be against change per say, but everyone is alarmed at the decline in enrollment and the issue that he heard, is that the way the RME is worded and it is not the change but the justification for the change is the issue. The Executive Council also talked about how the proposed change impacts or will impact the decline in enrollment and that is what they want to see.
Flowers added that the resolution was tabled and there were varied comments concerning the wording of the RME, but the vote to table was on the resolution itself.
EXECUTIVE COUNCIL
Jim Maclean reported that Terry Clark attended the Grad Council in his absence. Maclean attended the Chancellor’s Planning and Budget Committee meeting. J. Maclean wanted to plug the event he discussed at the last senate meeting. The Illinois Symposium on Reproductive Sciences was held a few days after the last senate meeting, it was a great success. Attending colleagues were all very pleased with the show that SIUC put on. In the Poster competition there were five awards that were given, Buck Hales from Physiology, a PhD student in his lab won first place and then two masters student from the same department received second and third, and one of Maclean’s undergrads got sixth place. Job was very well done – and thank you for the generous support from the Chancellor and the university.
COMMITTEE ON COMMITTEES
L. White reported that appointments were made to two Review Committees:
BA in Linguistics:
(2) Sarah Lewison, Radio TV Digital Media
(1) Elaine Jurkowski, Social work
BA in Social Science Education
(2)Roudy Hildreth, Political Science
(3)Chifeng Dai, Economics
BUDGET COMMITTEE – George Boulukos, Chair
G. Boulukos remarked that we have two guests today at the end of the agenda that will be explaining the 70/30 model and issues that we were talking about at the last meeting. A number of documents were attached to the agenda for review from the committee. The committee had a number of questions about the 70/30 model, so to save some time, he will save his discussion until the end of the guests’ presentation.
UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION POLICY COMMITTEE
Bruce Devantier reported that he had outlined what he wanted to talk about, but he was expecting the vote of the Executive Council to have already been reported on, so he did not include any information on what the committee had presented to the Executive Council in draft form. The council has decided that we will make arrangements for a meeting with the dean of the College of Education and Human Services, and to outline the concerns of the committee concerning the form of the RME. He replied that there was a deadline set and that this is not to be an unending time frame for response. Devantier proceeded to read his notes. Four members attended the Graduate Council Special Meeting to try to identify and clarify some important issues. The Executive Council felt there were enough important issues with the RME that did not allow it to be brought forward at this meeting. Executive Council has directed the chair to meet with the Dean of COEHS in an attempt to address the issues identified. In addition to this we have new business that has been stacking up. An RME from July, a Specialization Addition in Parent Training in Psychology, has been floating around in cyber space and had not been acted upon. There is also an RME on Abolitions of Specializations in Hospitality Tourism Administration in College of Ag and an RME on the addition of Minor in Art Education in Art in the College of Liberal Arts. Finally there is a resubmission of an RME to eliminate the B.A. in Design. The Faculty Senate approved this last spring, but it was withdrawn when it was determined that Article 9 had not been followed.
M. Komarraju asked “What was the goal of the meeting between the Dean of the college and the chair of the UEPC?” Bruce turned that over to the Executive Council for answer.
T. Clark remarked for Executive Council: there was a rather brisk discussion at the last Faculty Senate Executive Council meeting and we voted not to send it back to the dean but to take a look at it again and see if we can improve the language on the justification. We felt that the justification was not the right one, it was leading with cost reduction, and the real story in the College of Education is enrollment decline. The RME as it is didn’t reflect that.
B. Devantier added that he as Chair has been directed by the Executive Council to meet with the dean and T. Clark has agreed to join him in meetings with the Dean to try to outline what might be done to address the concerns, and with the end result requesting revisions within a limited timeframe for response.
T. Clark added that they would still like to have the RME on the floor at the next Senate meeting in December. All along it has been stressed that there is a need for better justification.
C. Flowers asked if the RME is revised to incorporate the new things just mentioned, then does the process start all over concerning getting additional faculty input, etc. Jim Allen remarked that changes to the RME that are not structural such as spelling errors, etc., the need to reprocess an RME would stop us cold so as a general rule we usually proceed in a friendly way by the constituencies as they passed through and decide which way they want to go.
R. Stocking remarked that Article 9 doesn’t outline that document has to be an RME; it’s called the proposed plan. The proposed plan is supposed to go to the faculty and affected units, have a feedback process, have minutes kept and part of the package that goes to the units for that whole process in Article 9 is the cover letter, which there is a cover letter on the RME, the cover letter is to have the reasons for the proposed plan. If the RME itself was changed, or the justification that is in that cover letter is changed, it would be in accordance with the letter and the spirit of Article 9 to have the entire package go back to the affected unit.
T. Clark responded that the most consistent criticism of the RME didn’t have to do with the substance, not even to do with the process but to do with the justification. You see it again, and again and again. Stocking added that there is nothing in the RME that mentions enrollment, it’s not in the justification and it is also not in the proposed plan, so how can you change the cover letter and the justification without having something in the plan that actually reflects the justification. Clark added that is why it was not brought to the floor, there was a discussion at Executive Council somewhat along these lines, so all these things will be taken under advisement, we may need to talk to legal counsel on how best to proceed with regards to Article 9 and so forth.
L. White recalls his recollection of the Executive Council meeting was not to have the dean change any part of the RME but wanted more clarification of the justifications of the RME. There was no discussion about changing the RME.
P. Anton commented - based on J. Allen’s comment, seems like if we are going to change the justification that seems like more of a major issue that should go back to the affected units, that is the way he interpreted it. Seems like this is more than misspellings and grammatical errors.
B. Devantier wanted to add that the committee members put in a lot of time and wanted to thank them.
G. Boulukos questioned whether this has happened before, is this unprecedented? The answer was no, there have been similar situations such as MCMA’s reorganization.
FACULTY STATUS AND WELFARE COMMITTEES
E. Heist reported that he is one of the
Hurlburt,
GOVERNANCE COMMITTEE
B. Thibeault reported thanks to Rhonda, the committee has received two very large lists of faculty, one is of the entire faculty and the other is of voting faculty. The committee is in the process of comparing the lists, finding out what the difference is and trying to figure out how to include the faculty that want to be included and should be included. R. Cheng asked if there are categories of people that are left out? Brooke responded that the way the operating papers are written, Voting Faculty are defined as those who are assigned to academic units that grant tenure and such as some Non Tenure Track faculty, such as in the College of Education, the faculty who teach the student teachers and oversee their field, they are not included. They are going to analyze the data and see who is excluded.
G. Boulukos asked if there is any news on the JRB Task Force? B. Thibeault said that as far as she knows the final person has been seated. The senate voted to create the Task Force and Brooke was unclear who the Task Force reports to. The Faculty Senate charged the governance committee last year – so they are charged with the task.
OLD BUSINESS - None.
NEW BUSINESS
T. Clark said he was approached by the NAACP banquet organizers and they asked if we would send out a notice on the faculty senate listserv. T. Clark asked for objections and there were none. G. Boulukos mentioned that they might want to contact the chancellor’s office that puts out the campus wide announcements by email. Cheng added that everyone on campus is getting notices on Monday and Thursday now, so that we can declutter your mailboxes. You can expect to get campus announcements there and departments are encouraged to use it as well, for good news and events, and so on – contact Rae Goldsmith for this.
M. Komarraju reported from the Presidential Search Advisory Committee. She wanted to encourage the faculty senate to share any information with her that they feel is important in a search for president, and any accomplishments they would like to see undertaken during the first year as president.
M. Dolan brought up the concern about the IT Tech fee and the amount of money being spent for computers and that a $900 Dell computer might be a perfectly good tool for 80% of the faculty or more, but there is other faculty that it is just inefficient. Technical fields, MCMA and others – require Macs. They are faced with outdated computers and for the administration to say that they get the same allowance as that Dell computer and whatever is leftover has to be made up by the school. The school just doesn’t have the money, it’s just not there. The IT Fee the way it is structured seems to be treating this as though it’s a benefit where everybody has to get the same benefit, but it is not the matter of benefit, it is providing people with the tools they need to do their job. Dolan made the analogy of a mechanic working on a carburetor might get by with a $900 toolbox, but a mechanic working on electronic diagnostics might need a more elaborate and more expensive toolbox. Right now Dolan expressed concern that he has students bringing in projects that he can’t open on his computer; he can’t work with the students, because his computer cannot accept a free update of software. This is a disservice to the students. Dolan added he doesn’t know what the solution is but as far as Macs go – there is nothing planned as to how Macs are going to be ordered. Devantier remarked that it might
be nice to see some transparency as to how the numbers were arrived at and how much it is actually costing to deliver. It appears that no one can make a judgment without knowing how the numbers were generated. Dolan added he could buy his own computer and asked if the $900 could be used to supplement the purchase. H. Motyl added that they have the discussion in Radio/TV – what would happen to the $900 if they were to buy their own computers. Cheng remarked that she didn’t have all the details but it was her understanding that the $900 would be available for use on whatever the department might need, ex. Microscope in science or camera in TV, etc. the $900 would be the base and the discipline would be required to come up with the difference. This is a conversation for the IT Director and he could certainly provide the transparency. At this point the units are being charged about 50% of the cost of IT services. Ed Heist added that his reading of the IT Plan was that the $900 does apply to whatever computer you buy, and other equipment has to come out of overhead or grants, etc. Heist also remarked that the IT Fee is available to make sure that every faculty member has a computer and a number of graduate student computers, it doesn’t apply to research tools. In conclusion, T. Clark said Faculty Senate would invite Crain back when the Provost is in attendance to shed some light on the issue.
INVITED GUESTS:
T. Clark remarked that at the last Faculty Senate meeting there was a heated but friendly discussion on the 70/30 model and left more confused than when the conversation started. So Dean Warwick and Judy Marshall were invited to explain the model. Judy Marshall gave a little background on the enrollment factor idea. The idea of basing the budget adjustment on enrollment numbers dates back to June of 2010. In fall of 2010, at the CPBC meeting, the Chancellor asked for volunteers to serve on a subcommittee that would develop some budget decision rules. At that point it was thought that the tuition revenue in 2011 would increase and the idea was to incentivize colleges to increase their enrollment and to be rewarded if that occurred. The committee looked at several different parameters, with the thought that there would be new revenue to the university, the early model that was proposed was 50% based on credit hour growth, 20% to colleges that had increased retention, and 30% of new revenues would be retained central. That model was never used because tuition revenues did not increase enough by 2011. In FY12 it was discussed in the fall, and it was indicated we might have some new revenues. So the committee again discussed the distribution of new tuition revenue on some type of a factor, and again we did not have an increase and the model was not used. In June of 2012, Chancellor requested that the committee look at budgeting models linking to performance funding at the same time the state appropriations were based on some performance factors they had developed. It was determined that FY13 was not going to have an increase in tuition revenues, but indeed was likely to have a shortfall. The committee was focusing on weighted factors, looking at new student head count at 30%, credit hours at 50%, and 20% on graduation rates. The idea was to use 10 day numbers compared to the previous fall. Tuition decrease in FY13 was about $3.8 million. In October the committee submitted different scenarios to the Budget and Planning committee, and the committee recommended that we focus on headcount and credit hour generation at a 70/30 split, 70% on credit hour generation and 30% on new student headcount, new freshmen and transfers. That model was applied in FY13 to a total budget reduction of a little over $1.1 million. In January of 2013, the subcommittee started discussion on the FY14 budget planning. The committee discussed using the same method as was used in FY13, units paid for their own salary increases; they would develop mitigating factors to reduce the overall reduction. They wanted it known early on that the same 70/30 model would be used, so that deans could plan for that and wouldn’t be surprised. At the September 13 meeting, Dean Warwick presented the scenarios which he will explain. At the full meeting in October 13, the committee brought forth the actual numbers that were going to be used for this fall. (See Attachment A) Dean Warwick explained that there were 3 different sheets to the spreadsheet, and the 3rd sheet was passed around. The first two sheets summarized what this model looked like for FY13. Warwick was not on the committee for FY13, he joined for FY14 planning. The model from FY13 worked, it distributed the shortfall of $1.1 million in a reasonable manner. There were no huge negatives or positives. It then came time to use the same model for FY14; they were going to use same approach and same spreadsheet simply populated with new data. The output from that application of the model looked like COEHS down side would be a loss of $9 million. The upside
– the College of Engineering would have been up almost $2 million. The subcommittee immediately looked at that and said that can’t stand. It was the same model and it had the right data in the spreadsheet. On the handout (Attachment A) Warwick asked everybody to circle the number 8 in the third column of first section under Change. The number 8 becomes a very important number. The fourth column is percentages, a percentage of what? In the FY13 model, the number instead of 8 it was a big number like 600 something. So the calculation that was made was all a percentage of the number that was circled – 8, not 600 something, so when they tried to apply the old model, everything in the 4th column, percent of change is getting divided by a very small number, and gets even smaller. As that number goes smaller, like to 1, the percentages explode. Number 8 was causing the numerical explosion of the winners and losers, and driving the spread to have massively big winners and massively big losers. So what the subcommittee decided to do, they wanted to remain true to the notion that they would use the same model and the same data. The things that changed – 1) how do we calculate these percentages, simplest fix was instead of calculating the percentage as the percentage of the net, recalculated them based on the percent of the total (3,929) and 2) the other change was normalizing the scores – the sum of the two weighted scores for each college, then divided by the sum of the averages. Some are positive and some are negative. A positive number means that there will be a reduction and if you have a negative number that will be an addition to the college, and then weighted scores are used to divide out the $800,000 shortfall. There was no question that the old model couldn’t stand, the debate was how could they make the fewest changes to method, keep the same data and have something that would be reasonable. That is all the changes made in FY14, 2 changes, one the way the percentages were calculated and the way that the normalized score was calculated.
J. Maclean asked if they considered a
J. Legier asked why
A. Imre asked about grad students? J. Marshall answered that the Grad Students are included in credit hours but not in head count. Imre asked why grad students were left out of the distribution plan. Cheng explained the student were not bringing in revenue and the undergraduate enrollment was tanking and they had to put a model together for 2011 that would incentivize growth at the undergraduate level because that’s where the revenue is going to come from to support the graduate education. Cheng added that the headcount piece here is something that the entire planning and budget committee has discussed. The undergraduate enrollment, tuition revenue is driven by credit hours, not head count. Credit hours has a direct link to revenue, however if you just have a credit hour model without other types of input, you will see early on in a growth model, COLA and Science getting all of the money because they have the bulk of the core.
G. Boulukos thanked the guests for their information. In the budget committee questions, one of them was where do the enrollment figures for the units come from and are they calculated the same each year and what about the
C. Flowers asked about students that were first year in 2013 and decide to go into COEHS next year they would get credit there. Marshall replied “no, because they would not be new students, but the credit hours would count.” This is one of the flaws and she suggests just
basing it on credit hours. Warwick added that the committee is discussing that fact and don’t know that the same exact model will be used next year. Chancellor has charged the group with looking for different modifications to the model and to simplify the model.
B. Thibeault questioned if total credit hours are just for new students? Because in one college there was a drop in credit hours but a rise in head count. The rise in head count was new students only.
R. Stocking wanted to know if there are studies that show budgetary incentivizing actually works to increase enrollment? She added that there seems like there should be some sort of narrative rationale for that kind of budgetary decision making especially when it hurts the college and departments. What is going to be the rationale for increasing new students? Marshall replied the simplest way to manage the budget is across the board cuts. There have been studies done on the models. This is just one method of granting more funding to areas that are growing and in order to do that is to appropriate it from somewhere. Cheng added that she hopes that there are more incentive conversations going on throughout campus. The state appropriations are not forthcoming, graduate students need to be supported, the support of research is at an almost crisis level and we need to grow our undergraduate enrollment.
P. Anton added that the Kinesiology department over the last 5 or 6 years has continually grown up through this year. Last year when the budget cut came through, the numbers given forced them to cut a staff member. They feel like they have done a lot to bring students in, what would be the incentive at this time to continue to grow when their department is up but the college as a whole is down. They aren’t getting additional staff to cover additional students.
P. Anton wondered if that gets considered in the process of penalty and reward. Dean Warwick remarked from a deans prospective, he doesn’t get any direction as to how to award the monies from his college, and to come up with the cuts. He assured in his college, he is looking at a whole variety of performance metrics to decide which departments are going to get the most precious new resources and faculty positions, and he is not doing this across the board. So every college has the discretion to make those strategic choices.
T. Clark asked how long the College of Education and Human Services can keep getting hit like it has been and still exist. Cheng replied that she has not seen the RME to have any details or opinions, but costs and enrollment are so incredibly linked. The money that comes into the college or university is so tied to enrollment. Public universities used to have a lot of support from the state and tuition was as important but it is critically important now. There will need to be some steps taken including enrollment and costs structures so that they can be balanced. Clark also added that the $522,000 and the $1 million from last year, two years of huge debts, over 1,000 students lost. The $522,000 was mitigated so some of the colleges didn’t get the money they should have and G. Boulukos explained that the mitigation happened before the money was sent to the colleges and the formula applied. Clark added but it still had an impact on the other schools. Chancellor agreed. Dean Warwick added that if they had only used credit hours this year that the hit on Education would not have been so bad, if you look at the numbers they would do a little better. The other point he wanted to make was that every year the baseline is reset, so for a college like education and once they start to turn the corner it would be an instantaneous positive feedback. This model actually benefits the College of Education, instead of being averaged over
C. Flowers being from a department that is doing good and he is concerned that they are cutting staff, NTT, no OTS funds, so they are so far down in this hole and wondered if it could be considered to allow the college to give back part of the amount this year. To keep the spiral from going further. How do those issues get addressed? Marshall answered that she does understand that it is too much to bear in one year but the University as a whole doesn’t incur what we need to collect then we are operating with a structural deficit and the Chancellor inherited one of those. So every year the university is starting in the hole, and we’ve had some pretty big reductions in past years. It could possibly be worked out but generally they are not asking for anything new. A lot of expenses are creeping up. The university has to pay their bills. Cheng added that they have discussed with the units that their strategy for this year
doesn’t have to be the long term strategy, so most units are using Distant Ed resources to offset this as they think long term.
Susan Wills, Business Manager at COEHS, asked J. Marshall, with the
Cheng added that the Planning and Budget committee meets for many, many months before they actually have a formality of making a decision so they will insure that they have the timing so that things can come back here for discussion.
ADJOURNMENT
The meeting adjourned at 3:05 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Mark J. Dolan, Secretary
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