UH HILO FACULTY CONGRESS
MINUTES FOR MEETING OF SEPTEMBER 17, 2007
3:00 pm - 5:00 pm, K-127
Members Present: Michael Bitter, Jason Cabral, Ramon Figeroa-Centeno, Alohalani Houseman, Kerri Inglis, Reni Ivanova, Jim Juvik, Barbara Leonard, Chuck Malenfant, Bruce Matthews, Cam Muir, Mark Panek, Jennifer Richardson, Sabry Shehata, Regina Titunik
UHHSA Member: Georgia Pinsky
Others Present: Philip Castille, Marcia Sakai, Randy Hirakawa, Noelie Rodriguez
Meeting called to order at 3:03 pm by Congress Chair Barbara Leonard
1. Approval of the minutes of the 8/31/07 meeting
Approved by acclamation
2. Report from Congress Chair Barbara Leonard:
The Board of Regents and President McLain will be coming to Hilo next week. The BOR meets Thursday, 9/27 and Friday, 9/28 at 9:30 a.m. and will be discussing UARC and the supplementary budget proposal, among other things. The meeting is open to the public and UHH faculty, who will have the opportunity to address the BOR at the beginning of the Board meeting on Thursday.
President McClain will be in the cafeteria’s private dining room on Wednesday, 9/26, from 4:30 to 6:00 to answer faculty questions submitted to him by the UH Hilo Faculty Congress.
The Congress then spent time reviewing and amending the list of prepared questions that had come in so far.
Motion: After some disagreement over the wording of question #7, Jim Juvik moved to accept the question “as written.” Motion passed unanimously.
Motion: Ramon Figeroa moved to delete questions 11-13, regarding potential upcoming faculty retirements. Motion passed unanimously.
Other amendments were made, as indicated on the list of questions, without motions. The edited list can be found on the Faculty Congress website.
3. Vice Chancellor of Administrative Affairs Debra Fitzimons addressed the Congress regarding the budget. She asked for input on the “Budget Status Report” she has posted on the VCAA website to improve transparency and communication. She then went over with the Congress, line by line, the Supplemental Budget for FY 2008-09. The VCAA delivered promises to be “open and transparent” regarding such things as UHH campus wide funding priorities, and suggested forming a campus wide budget committee so that faculty could be more involved in the budgeting process. She is working to initiate a business process review with the goal of streamlining how things such as travel reimbursements are handled, and to address concerns with security, availability of space, and with human resources processes. The question of salary savings and merit raises arose from discussion of the budget. Specifically, Barbara Leonard asked, “Could salary savings be used for merit raises?” After acknowledging the complexity of what is done with salary savings—if indeed a savings occurs—Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs Philip Castille answered, “If that was the priority, yes.” CAS Dean Randy Hirokawa explained that CAS salary savings mostly goes to fund EBSCORE hires. VCAA Fitzimmons suggested that for the next biennium, a campus wide study be conducted on salary issues to provide her with more information regarding faculty salary equity issues, and that she have a reserve, or holding, to enable her to respond with more flexibility to deal with faculty salary adjustment issues and other issues that arise. She stated that this year all the money had been allocated to VCs and Deans, and that she did not hold any money in reserve. She also mentioned that it was difficult to track where the salary savings are going at the VC and Dean levels. Barbara Leonard invited the VCAA to the next Faculty Congress meeting to discuss ongoing UHH construction projects, and other issues, in greater detail.
4. Academic Policy Committee
Motion: Michal Bitter moved to approve the membership for the Academic Policy Committee: Michael Bitter (Chair), Jerry Calton (COBE), Michael Shintaku (CANFNR), Barbara Heintz (OSA), Jene Michaud (Natural Sciences), Pila Wilson (CHL), Cam Muir (Natural Sciences), Doug Mikkelson (Social Sciences), Wayne Miyamoto (Humanities), and Vice Chancellor Philip Castille.
The motion passed unanimously.
Motion: Michael Bitter moved to ensure that 2% of the annual salary base is set aside for faculty salary adjustments, adopting the resolution that passed in the CAS Senate.
The motion passed unanimously.
5. Regina Titunik, General Education.
The General Education committee is looking into satisfying WASC requirements, addressing the issue of rigor in Gen Ed courses. The committee is looking at writing, critical thinking, reading, and calculating as shared responsibilities (rather than the responsibility of single departments) that should be reinforced in all Gen Ed courses. The committee is meeting with departments and faculty senates, and considering ways to give incentives to teach Gen Ed, such as having TPRCs recognize the teaching of a Gen Ed course as a service contribution.
Old Business:
6. The VC Academic Affairs office requested approval of proposed changes to the document "Contract Renewal, Promotion, Tenure for Teaching Faculty," found on the VCAA’s website. Propose referring this issue to the Academic Policy Committee for clarification and recommendation.
Motion: Michael Bitter moved to delete “strongly recommended” from pg. 23, and delete “Question 20” and “Question 21” from the Table on pg. 4.2.
These changes were suggested because “strongly recommending” teaching evaluations be included in the dossier is inconsistent with our UHPA contract, and suggesting that the means, norms and n of Questions 20 and 21 are no longer relevant because we are now using a new teaching evaluation form.
The motion passed unanimously.
7. Brendan Hennessey discussed concerns regarding the question as to who has access to aggregated student teaching evaluation results.
Motion: Georgia Pinsky moved to have the aggregated results, at the Division or College level, be made public.
The motion passed unanimously.
8. UARC.
Motion: Georgia Pinsky moved that the Congress support the position that more discussion is needed before the BOR votes on the UARC proposal.
This is essentially the position of the motion from the “Save UH / Stop UARC” group posted on the Faculty Congress website. UHHSA Faculty Advisor Jennifer Richardson noted that UHHSA passed a resolution, 5-1-1, urging “the Administration of the University of Hawai ii to abandon its plans for a University Affiliated Research Center and is requested to instead develop a policy to prohibit classified military research that involves weapons or other life-threatening systems.”
Noelie Rodriguez announced that the HCC Senate voted unanimously to accept the UHM Faculty Senate’s position that until there is more faculty involvement in the UARC issue, the faculty will not support it.
The motion passed unanimously.
5:24. Meeting adjourned.
Respectfully submitted September 25th by Mark Panek, 2007-08 UHH Faculty Congress Secretary.