Faculty Senate Meeting Minutes

November 14, 2000

SC 117

3:00 - 4:30 p.m.

Report from President Romesburg:

President Romesburg told the senate that as a result of last week's election, there will be different representation in the House and Senate in this state. Brad Winn is the Representative-Elect from Utah County. John Valentine is the new majority whip from Orem. President Romesburg thinks that there may be a change in the relationship between the Senate and the Governor as a result.

It looks as though the Regents will be recommending an increase in tuition of 4% across the board. This is required by the Legislature to make up for approximately 25% of the compensation package. It's written into the Appropriations Bill. The Regents are then going to try to convince the Legislature to allow for differential tuition increases above 4% if institutions can justify those. UVSC will need to make a strong case for further tuition increases. President Romesburg said there won't be much use for making a case for an increase if we don't get to keep the funds. If we get to keep the funds, then we will probably work toward an additional increase in tuition. It will not be the 25% increase originally discussed.

President Romesburg felt that the Regents will strongly urge or require UVSC's involvement with the Consortium of SUU, Dixie, Snow and CEU for benefits. However, he feels that this affiliation won't benefit us as it will the other colleges.

Information Items:

Report from Ron Hammond on the Executive Committee's activities:

Ron reported that he and Grant Richards recently went to a Board of Regents meeting in Ogden for the Utah Council of Faculty Senate Leaders, and they will be going again to the University of Utah's meeting in early December. Also, last Monday, LeeAnn, Sandy, Grant and Ron went to the University of Utah's Senate Meeting. Ron showed a portion of a videotape he made from that meeting so the Faculty Senate could see how they run their meetings with close to 100 Senators. Grant reported that the University of Utah is worse off than we are in terms of their benefit package because they have had a 36% increase in usage.

Ron mentioned that he had been elected Vice-Chair of the Utah Council of Faculty Senate Leaders. This is a group that is just getting its feet on the ground. They had a meeting with Mike Peterson, the Commissioner of Academic Affairs. They are planning to meet again with him the first week of December to strategize a way to get a better salary increase for faculty across the state.

Strategic Planning:

Ron mentioned that the strategic planning committees have been pretty time intensive. There are about 28 full-time faculty that are on the committees, and it is a proportional representation of faculty. Ron stated that he felt that these interim reports for the nine committees represent a sound collective work from the campus community. These ideas presented to us today have come through the most legitimate channels possible on campus. Ratification of the draft for Strategic Planning will be in January.

Mark Spencer, who is coordinating the strategic planning efforts on campus, introduced Ian Wilson, Chair of the Mission & Core Values Committee and Karl Worthington, chair of the Enrollment/Growth Management Committee.

Mission & Core Values: Ian Wilson said they would like the Senators to take back ideas to their faculty and then email any suggestions to him or Elaine Englehart by mid-December so these ideas can be incorporated. He reported that they've gone as far as they can as a committee, and now need ideas from others. Their committee started to identify items that they felt ought to go into the mission statement and then incorporated them. Some of the key points of the mission statement include: 1) UVSC is a four year institution, 2) UVSC fosters academic excellence, 3) UVSC has open admission, 4) UVSC will offer advanced professional preparation, 5) UVSC encourages academic freedom and community values, 6) UVSC supports an excellent Learning Enrichment Center, and, 7) UVSC is a school that doesn't just train people but embraces life-long learning.

Ron wondered if the core values should be included in the UVSC catalogue. The committee is recommending that a task force be established to develop a plan of action to help guide the college toward university status and also investigate institutions that have successfully established additional centers. We may need to look at the possibility of additional centers when numbers reach a "critical" stage.

Enrollment Management: Karl Worthington indicated that UVSC will remain "open enrollment." UVSC will increase their efforts to retain more students to completion of their educational goals. This committee would like to have more internet and television interactive courses. They are looking at space expansion and additions and maximizing space usage now. They want to improve recruiting and advising efforts. UVSC would like to offer better services to students. A number of the programs being turned in by departments are at the maximum number of hours allowed by Regent guidelines. He suggested if we would work at moving programs to a minimum number of hours (bachelor degree programs would then be 120 hours, two classes fewer), it would help to allow for a lot more available rooms on campus and accommodate more courses.

Mark Spencer indicated that two more committee chairs will report in our December Senate meeting-Quality of Instruction & Communication.

Brad Winn, who is overseeing the Strategic Planning efforts, thanked the Senators for taking time in their meeting to listen to the Strategic Planning issues and emphasized the importance of getting feedback from faculty. Information on this can be found on the Faculty Senate web site under College Info-Strategic Planning.

Need for a new member of the budget committee:

Laurie Wood will look at the alternate on that committee and ask her to be a regular member.

Constitutional Revision, Continuity & Substance:

Ernie Carey reported that his committee has the old and new constitution and are now reviewing them to find any inconsistencies.

Constitutional Revision, Representation Issue:

Ron asked the senators to restrict their questions to those of clarification since this is not meant to be a debate item for this meeting. The senators are to listen carefully to the plans that will be presented and then take them back to their faculty for discussion.

Three Plans:

David Manning, Lynn Turnquist & Brian Birch, and Joe Strange each provided handouts for senators to refer to during the discussion of each plan. David Manning said two major questions drove the debate: should representation be by department or by school? Should there be a ceiling (ie. 40 or so) on numbers of senators or unlimited numbers? He went on to explain his plan, which incorporates three variables: representation by School, representation by department, and representation by population. Forrest Williams asked if the calculations had changed from David's original plan. He replied that they had not. John Balden asked who would determine who will represent the school. David said that the School would. He encouraged senator responsibilities rotating from department to department.

Next, Lynn & Brian presented their joint plan, which they said focuses on percent of contract faculty within a School and the committee decides how to select senators. The cap would be set at 40 and reapportionment would occur every three years. Forrest asked if one department gains a senator, under this plan would that mean that a smaller department would have to lose a senator. Lynn answered that could happen every third year. K.D. Taylor asked if it was theoretically possible, if the schools increase in numbers and one school stays relatively small, that one school could not have representation. She also asked if this is a representation of faculty at large. Brian replied that this could happen but that this plan is supposed to be a truer representation of faculty.

Joe presented his plan as a "middle ground" between the two plans: senators at large as a means of representing smaller faculty groups, proportional representation for larger departments, a cap of 40, and reapportionment every three years. Several questions were raised regarding this plan that indicated it would need further exploration.

Karl Worthington pointed out that the School of HAAS will be dividing in the near future.

Karin Davidson asked if the faculty at large will be voting on the constitution and bylaws to ratify them, and Ron answered affirmatively.

Grant, as chair of the Representation Committee, told the senators to give him their feedback within the next week, and then the committee will meet again and discuss the feedback and bring back the revised plans to debate in the next senate meeting in December. His committee hopes to cut it down to two options for that meeting. The vote will be in a senate meeting in January.

Adjournment of Meeting: The meeting was adjourned at 4:30 p.m.