Minutes

Faculty Senate

November 12, 2000

12:00 - 1:30 p.m.

The minutes of the October 13, 2000 Senate meeting were approved.

President Sadler reported on the most recent meeting of the Board of Trustees

A new building plan map is available and notes the proposed sites for the new Fine Arts Building (with parking facility), the College of law (also with parking facility), the Chambers Center and a new residence hall.

The merit pool includes a 4.5% merit increase.

Some of the pool will be used to increase certain staff positions that are currently paid below market value.

This special pool will not be reallocated to athletic salaries

The Senate Executive Committee has asked for an accounting for these special expenditures.

Departmental increases will be 3.25%.

Questions raised by Senators included discussion the Universitys failure to keep pace with the national increase in cost of living (3.85%). It was also noted that there seems to be little careful planning for faculty and staff salaries.

The proposed intellectual property policy was not presented to the Board of Trustees at this most recent meeting.

Negotiations regarding policy guidelines for DUXL continue, and faculty and Senate suggestions are still being considered. This discussion is ongoing and a new draft will be presented to the Board of Trustees in January.

The Senate discussed and endorsed a plan to call a General Faculty Meeting in January to review the policy.

It has been suggested that commencement be split into Graduate and Undergraduate events and be moved into the Magness Arena. This is in response to the growing length of the ceremony and the inadequacy of Penrose lawn as a venue.

Provost Zaranka reported on several University initiatives

The University will convene a University Planning Committee with a mandate to engage in long-range planning for the University as a whole. The hope is to keep the group small (under 20 members) while still addressing the need for representation of constituencies. The boundaries for the committee are not yet identified. The committee should plan at a broad level and not be seen as interfering with established policy groups. The outstanding question is how powerful should this committee be?

The Provost thanked Drs Reichart and Chapman for their work in reformatting the APT document.

The Provost noted the switch to Blackboard as the extended learning software. It is a great improvement over WebCT. Some 200 University courses use Blackboard as support for instruction. There remains an ongoing shortage of personnel to support web-based instruction.

Committee Reports

The Academic Planning Report was given by Dean Saitta.

The faculty research funds have been awarded. All applicants were funded, and some $18,000 was awarded. The committee will make some revisions to the RFP for future rounds of funding.

There are now 9 members of the Extended Learning Task Force. This groups hopes to contribute to a conscious and adaptive strategy for developing extended learning opportunities.

The committee renews its call for faculties to comment on their assessment of permanent faculty needs: What should the faculty of the future look like?

Leon Giles reported that the Financial Planning Committee will meet with Gil Brown, of the Provosts Office.

Dennis Barrett, for NCR, reported the need to conduct an election for the open Senator at Large seat. Cynthia Fiss was elected to this position.

The Personnel Committee reported on a new proposed Tuition Waiver Benefit plan. This would increase the number of credits from 5 to 6 each quarter and allow faculty and staff to bank credits up to 12 quarter hours. The cost to the University is being assessed.

Robert Stencel of Student Relations reported that students were unhappy to be disinvited to convocation this year. There is a request to fund a Night Ride Van, and concerns about demolition of several safety phones are being investigated.

Ken Stafford of UTS discussed long range plans for the Universitys modem pool.

The model pool approach to providing Internet access presents two concerns: security issues and University liability. There have been increasing denial of service incidents in which the Universitys security has been breached.

The pool costs some $70,000 a year to maintain. This is in addition to personnel costs.

Modem traffic has increased by 800% in the last few months. Given the need for an increase in the modem pool to meet University needs, this approach is not cost effective.

UTS will recommend several free internet access companies. UTS staff are pilot testing some of these services now.

Such a change would not affect on-campus computing.

UTS is not recommending that the modem pool be immediately discontinued, but would like to phase the pool out within the next 12 months.

Comments by Senators included concerns about additional costs for staff and students and a request to consider a slower phase-out plan.

A motion to adjourn was approved.

Respectfully Submitted 1/3/01

Cathryn C. Potter

Secretary, Faculty Senate

With the assistance of

Suzette Reuschel