Faculty Assembly Report – October 02, 2009 meeting
prepared by Catherine A. Rigsby, ECU Delegate
“There are real benefits to [shared]
governance.”
“I believe in [shared] governance; I
don’t always like it.”
“If [shared] governance really works,
the right people will get hired.”
Erskine Bowles, UNC President, in response to questions about faculty participation in administrative hiring and policy and decision making.
I. President Bowles Report
a. Budget
900 positions were abolished, systemwide, this year.
600 of those positions were filled.
More cuts will come. They will be mostly administrative. There will be a shift of temporary academic cuts to permanent administrative cuts.
We can do this and still protect the “academic core.”
But, we will have to make some deep (vertical) cuts. There will be mistakes . . .
b. 2009-2010 Action Plan – 5 main points
i. K-12 education – we have more, now we need better, K-12 teachers
ii. Access
1. review 4-year tuition plan
2. review enrollment growth formula
3. work on community college transfers
4. shift character of system – not just access, but also retention and graduation; money welcome to help, but no growth without meeting retention and graduation rates
5. expand DE
a 4 or 5 member faculty
group will look at how to do this; one of the results of their work will be the
appointment of a Director of
iii. Nimble, Efficient, and Responsive
1. ECU’s e-procurement system saved the university $1.5Million. Other campus will implement it soon.
2. A systemwide student health plan will be implemented
3. Payroll will be centralized on 9 campuses.
4. IT operations will be consolidated.
5. Grants and contracts will be standardized – possibly using the RAMSES system (already used by UNC-CH).
6. The Faculty Workload study will be reexamined.
iv. Focused Research – focused on UNCT areas
v. Global Competitiveness
1. Use the “down” market to attract new faculty.
2. Examine retreat rights. Bowles thinks our administrative retreat rights are way too generous.
II. Budget (Rob Nelson, VP Finance) – see Budget Exhibit 1, Budget Exhibit 2, and BOG presentation
For the first time ever, GA did not do across the board cuts. Instead, it gave campuses guideline for cuts based on weighted priorities.
Items weighted included the following: retention and 4 and 6 year graduation rates, DE, teaching productivity, SAT scores, CC transfers, nursing and other high impact/importance programs, space utilization, research efforts, student faculty ratios, student administration ratios, funding per student, endowments.
Only $3Billion of the UNC system $8Billion is from tax payers. Perhaps it is time we “use our own” money for some activities.
In making cuts, “administrative” was defined as any position with administrative responsibilities over 0.50FTE (academic administrators included). It was done as a line tem review, item by item.
Future: non-recurring cuts may be back in the June 1, 2010 budget. But, we have a 2% extra cut next year, so ~40% of the temporary cuts will become permanent. The goal is to make those mostly from the administrative side of things.
III. Legal Issue Related to Budget (Laura Luger, VP and General Counsel)
OSBM memorandums re “availability of funds” do not apply to university faculty in the same way they apply to other state employees. There is no need to put such clauses in any faculty contracts.
Also, tenured faculty have “property rights,” so using the availability of funds clause would be difficult to implement with tenured faculty.
IV. H1NI and Campus Safety (Brent Herron, VP)
a. The system is monitoring H1N1; getting weekly updates from campuses and working with campuses on preparedness issues.
b. Active “shooter drills” will beheld on some campuses in coming weeks. ECU’s drill is scheduled for the week of Oct 5.
V. Academic Programs and Planning (Alan Mabe, Interim Senior VP Academic Affairs)
a. Campus mission statements – all have been rewritten (see attachment)
b. Workload Study
The BOG seems to have calmed down about workloads – for the moment.
c. Academic Program and Planning and Mission Statements
The new program planning process will include a review boards for each proposal. Each campus will have an opportunity to appoint faculty members to participate in the review boards. The faculty member must be in the same discipline as the proposed program.
d. Peers
“Peers” will be reviewed this year
VI. Faculty Assembly Committees
· Research (Ken Wilson, chair)
Subcommittees have been formed to
(1) develop a proposal to create advisory group re institutional research at GA,
(2) become involved in GA’s research initiative related to technology transfer and economic development,
(3) make the case for the role of institutes and centers in supporting work related to UNC Tomorrow, and
(4) track ongoing implementation of UNC tomorrow as it may affect campus focus and responsibilities
· Governance & Faculty Development (Marianna Walker)
(1) The state health plans new smoker/obesity tracking will start this year (July for smokers; Dec for obesity. Concern was expressed about privacy rights, especially because the state health plan has, apparently, opted out of HIPA – meaning they can report “private” health information freely.
(2) The committee will be monitoring the state of shared governance within the system, preparing a white paper on shared governance, and working with individual campuses on this issue.
· Distance Education and Technology (Mark Sprague)
This committee will prepare a white papers on DE issues and requests faculty input. They will be looking to the campuses for data input. Their efforts will focus will focus on 4 issues:
(1) quality control,
(2) transformational issues – how willed change our university; tuition by the credit hour; etc.
(3) taxonomy – the definition of “online” and “DE”
(4) faculty issues – intellectual property rights, workload issues, etc.
· Communications & Advocacy (Hunt McKinnon)
(1) A new website for Faculty Assembly is in the works.
(2) Advocacy training/help will soon be available (for working with the legislature, etc.)
· Academic Tenure & Freedom
This committee plans the following activities for this academic year:
(1) review policies as adopted across the system
(2) develop/distribute best practices in implementation
(3) examine/monitor fixed-term-faculty vulnerability to budget cuts
(4) examine system wide policies for fixed-term-faculty titles
(5) review practices and develop/distribute a fixed-term-faculty evaluation model
· Academic Core (Planning & Budget (Catherine Rigsby, co-chair)
This committee’s focus will include (i) defining the “academic core,” (2) tracking related budget developments, and (3) monitoring damage/effects to the academic core related to budget cuts.
The committee has begun a data gathering process, will be reviewing GA data and comparing systemwide and campus-specific data with a view toward examining the impact to the academic core of budget decisions over the last 5 to 10 years.