2. Approval of the Agenda for the Present Meeting

FACULTYCOUNCIL

October 13, 2016

MINUTES

Present:

Thomas R. Baechle,Michael A. Belshan, Charles B. Braymen, A. Barron Breland, Laura C. Bruce, Murray J. Casey, D. Roselyn Cerutis, Thomas F. Coffey, Elizabeth F. Cooke, Lydia R. Cooper, C. Timothy Dickel, Kristen Drescher, William M. Duckworth, Fidel Fajardo-Acosta, Kimberly A. Galt, Gary K. Leak, Brian W. Loggie, Sandor Lovas, George W. McNary, Edward A. Morse, Kelly K. Nystrom, Victor A. Padrón, Thomas E. Pisarri, Meghan R. Potthoff, M. Ross Romero, S.J., Lori B. Rubarth, Jeanne A. Schuler, Stephen Sieberson, Kristina A. Simeone, Ronald A. Simkins, Cindy S. Slone, D. David Smith, Vivian Zhuang

Excused:

Samuel C. Augustine (proxy, Jos V.M. Welie), William R. Hamilton (proxy, Bartholomew E. Clark), Erika L. Kirby (proxy, Samantha Senda-Cook), Kalyana C. Nandipati (proxy, Marlen K. Wilken), Jeanne A. Schuler (proxy, Ngwarsungu Chiwengo), Janet E. Seger (proxy, David L. Sidebottom), Michaela M. White (proxy, Patrick Borchers)

Absent:

Naser Z. Alsharif, Juan Asensio, Casey D. Beran, Hardeep K. Chehal, Thomas P. Berry, Annie E. Knierim, Barbara J. O’Kane, Larry Siref, Michel Wagner, Deniz Yilmazer-Hanke

1. Call to Order:

Prof. Edward A. Morse called the meeting to order at 3:30 p.m., by offering a reflection.

2. Approval of the Agenda for the Present Meeting:

Prof. Morse asked for permission to rearrange the agenda to accommodate the guests who might arrive at times that would not be mesh well with the agenda. With no objections to the distributed agenda or to the proviso, the agenda was adopted by general consent.

3. Approval of the Minutes of the Faculty Council Meeting of September 22, 2016:

Prof. Morse asked if there were any corrections to the minutes as distributed. There were none offered. There being no objection, the minutes were adopted by general consent.

4. Review of the Minutes of the Academic Council Meeting of August 25, 2016:

There were no minutes available.

5. Review of the Minutes of the Academic Administrators’ Council:

There were no minutes available.

6. Nomination of Members for the Search Committee for Vice President for Finance:

Prof. Morse said that there is a profile of the expectations for a candidate for the position of Vice President for Finance posted on the web; he read some excerpts from this profile. He then announced the procedures for voting: nominates would be made from the floor; if there were more than two nominations, election by secret ballot would occur; the two nominees receiving the highest number of votes would be considered to be the nominees of the Faculty Council, and their names are to be put forward as the Faculty Council's nominees at the next meeting of the Academic Council, where the actual election will occur. The nominations were opened and the following members of the faculty were nominated: Dr. Vasant Raval, Dr. Meghan R. Potthoff, Dr. Kimberly A, Galt, Prof. George W. McNary and Dr. Bartholomew E. Clark. It was moved and seconded to close nominations; there being no objection, the motion to close nominations passed by general consent. Dr. Thomas F. Coffey and Dr. Marlene K. Wilken distributed ballots. Dr. Stephen C. Sieberson and Fr. M. Ross Romero, S.J. collected and counted the ballots. The result of the voting was in favor of Dr. Galt and Dr. Raval; their names will be presented to the Academic Council on October 27 for the election.

7. Report on the President’s Council:

Since no meeting of the President's Council was held, there was no report.

8. CUMC/HI Update:

Dr. Brian W. Loggie, who had agreed to chair the Committee, read aloud the motion that had formed the Committee:

that we form a committee comprised of representatives from the medical school as well as members from other areas of health sciences that are affected by the relationship with CHI, for the purpose of identifying issues and concerns relating to teaching, research, and service, and to make proposals to address them.

Dr. Loggie said that there are few things set in stone on the new relationship between Creighton University Medical Center (CUMC) and Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI). He asked for a sense of the body on which issues are most in need of being addressed by the committee. He said that one manner of proceeding for the committee could be for the Committee to accept issues and report back to the Council on the Committee's recommendation or action. He said that there is a growing isolation of the School of Medicine (SOM) from the rest of the campus; this is becoming an important issue that needs to be addressed. In this regard, an overriding issue is how to bring the SOM back into greater contact with the other areas of the University. A question was raised about how autonomy in research and teaching could be assured; it was noted that there are a number of budgetary issues that remain to be settled; it has been estimated that for some of these issues it will not be possible to address them until November. In fact, a principal issue is a lack of resolution of the issues that have emerged from previous discussions. Of the items that have been brought forward, only the move of CUMC from St. Joseph's Hospital to CHIBerganHospital has really been decided. Other issues that remain unaddressed or insufficiently addressed include attracting scholars to programs that are in flux, understanding the status of particular programs within the SOM, and dealing with various issues surrounding information technology, among others. Dr. Loggie asked for a mandate or at least some direction from the Council for the Committee. An issue was raised about finding placement at facilities for training students, since there have to be enough health-care providers willing to be shadowed by the students in a clinical setting. The question of the Provost model was raised; the model of a single chief academic officer may not be realistic, given the vast scope and variety of disciplines at Creighton; the problems will probably only get larger when there is geographical distance between the medical campus and the rest of the University; there is really no other institution with the complexity and variety that Creighton has with one single chief academic officer. It was noted that the culture at Bergan has to be open to an academic endeavor; there needs to be a process to meld the former purely clinical site to a new role as a combined clinical-academic site. It has not been made clear that CHI takes into account the entire range of stakeholders involved in the academic-clinical endeavor; there is both a moral and a practical obligation to change the model of a former clinical operation to a combined clinical-academic setting. There has been a reluctance to pay attention to messages from the faculty members over time; various resolutions and recommendations from the Faculty Council have not been heeded. There is a lack of valuing properly the high-quality services rendered by those involved in academic medicine. There are some large issues of culture, and there is a difficulty getting this new partnership going on a solid footing; it was suggested that there are also a lot of small but important issues that must be addressed, and tackling the smaller issues might be a good starting point. The Committee could start with grassroots issues; by tackling these successfully, the successful track record could draw attention to the value of faculty input on the larger ones yet to be addressed. A question was raised about who was undertaking the task of informing CHI of the issues that need to be addressed; it was asserted that the degree to which this is being done is generally unknown; some efforts have been made, but the degree of success of such efforts is unknown.

9. Committee Reports

Prof. Catherine M. Brooks, Secretary of the University Committee on Rank and Tenure, presented the report that was submitted by Dr. Laura C. Barritt, Chair of the Committee. Prof. Brooks said that there were two attachments: the first contained the report proper and showed the results of last year’s case deliberations; this constitutes the main report, but it contains a typographical error in the results matrix that will need to be corrected; the second attachment contains a list of recommendations on best practice for the submission of dossiers. The question of how mission would be addressed in a candidate’s rank-and-tenure dossier was raised, particularly as to how this might be addressed in the section of the Faculty Handbook on the rank-and-tenure process for evaluation of a candidate for the granting of tenure or promotion in rank. A rather long proposal was presented to the Committee by a representative for the Partners in Mission Committee that contained language intertwined in various sections of the current Faculty Handbook wording. The Committee formulated its own shorter and self-contained version of how to incorporate mission. Subsequently, the Committee on Faculty Handbook and University Statutes designated a task force to meet with Fr. Richard J. Hauser to discuss the two approaches. Some small changes were suggested to the approach of the Committee on Rank and Tenure, and with these tweaks both the task force and Fr. Hauser were satisfied. The proposals will be sent back to the Partners in Mission Committee for discussion. One or more proposals will probably be brought forward to the Council in the near future. There was also a suggestion made to the Partners in Mission committee that a document or documents apart from the Handbook could be written that would be sent to Colleges and Schools and even to external reviewers, giving greater detail about the mission. A question was raised about how detailed a statement on mission one might make; it was suggested that the types of examples one would expect might be assembled to demonstrate ways in which the mission has been demonstrated to date by others. It was noted that there is a presentation available for new hires, but it is not certain to what degree this has been or can be implemented. It was also noted that a high-quality training presentation could be put on line to help on this; training on mission could be integrated into the overall training for hiring and/or rank and tenure considerations. It was suggested that this might be developed, but it may be unlikely that watching videos from an institution about mission would be high on the list of things to do for those applying for academic jobs. It was observed that there is a workshop presented for preparing for rank and tenure consideration in April, and that the hiring and the rank-and-tenure processes should be kept separate. It was reported that there still seems to be a misunderstanding about the two external reviewers; there are cases where some candidates are being asked to name the external reviewers, when it is the Dean who was supposed to ask for independent reviewers; in any case, the names chosen must be given to the candidate for feedback. It was suggested that some Deans may be asking the candidate to provide the names of the reviewers, because they are not familiar with the wide range of narrow disciplines and sub-disciplines of the various candidates in their area; it was noted that this is quite different from what was originally intended by the provision for independent external review. It was reported that sometimes the Dean does not have a feel for the small specialized areas within the College or School. A question was raised about situations in which there is a clear conflict between the feedback of the candidate-chosen reviewers and the non-candidate-chosen reviewers; and a question was raised about the possibility of choosing external reviewers as a tool with which to whack the candidate over the head. It was suggested that the candidates should present their view of how they are carrying out the mission, and the reaction should be to this statement rather than having original ideas on the mission provided by the reviewers.

10. Course Evaluations:

The President of the Creighton Students Union reported that this would need to be postponed because of the difficulty of finding students available on the eve of the fall break.

11. Change to Faculty Handbook and University Statutes:

A proposal was received from the Committee on Faculty Handbook and University Statutes relative to the number of the various categories of faculty members in the Faculty Handbook. It was moved and seconded to endorse the proposed change. It was noted that the University Statutes would also have to be changed to accommodate such a change to the Handbook. After discussion, the motion to endorse passed by unanimous voice vote.

12. Review of Policies by Faculty Council:

a. Policy Memo

This item was postponed until the November meeting.

b. Sexual Violence, Harassment, Discrimination, and Grievances Policy (2.1.25)

This item was postponed until the November meeting.

c. Mandatory Reporting Policy (2.1.26)

This item was postponed until the November meeting.

d. Travel

Dr. René L. Padilla was present to discuss the new travel policy (number 2.1.33) as well as other guidelines that are in place in the Office of Global Engagement. Dr. Padilla said that the purpose of the policy is to support the work of faculty as they engage in domestic and international travel and also to deal with the circumstances that put faculty and students at risk while on such travel. The students are the main focus of such endeavors, but there is also a need to help better the world. Among other things, the policy identifies practices that are required by law; for example, the Clery Act requires reporting about troubles that have been encountered, and the institution must take steps to avoid repeating situations that could put students at risk. There is a need to report various kinds of travel, whether for research, teaching, co-curricular travel, or student organizational travel; appropriate permissions must be obtained. A question was raised about what constitutes reportable travel; the response was that it must be over 75 miles from the campus; there is also a distinction made between domestic and international travel. Any international travel and any travel, whether domestic or international, of over 75 miles from campus must be appropriately documented. Travel that falls within these categories must be reported. There are various insurance issues that need to be addressed, and there are areas where these are not covered by some of the traditional policies; the University has acquired insurance that covers such issues as the repatriation of remains, loss of luggage and needed flight-change, among others. A question was raised about traveling to Pine Ridge and whether there was a need to report this; the response was "yes" if this included students, but probably "no" if it only involved faculty. A question was raised about long-standing travel arrangements that have already been fully vetted through risk management; the answer was that this must now be reported. It was suggested that the notification for these changes in policy has not trickled down to the faculty members in an orderly manner. Dr. Padilla said that the Deans were aware of this policy and had had an occasion to give feedback on it. It was suggested that this needs to be communicated directly to faculty members, as it sometimes does not, in fact, trickle down. A question was raised about what kind of lead time was necessary for approval of travel. Dr. Padilla said that it depends on what needs to be verified, and it could take up to a couple of weeks, especially if there are implications for medical insurance coverage. A question was raised about the various fall break service trips and whether they were all vetted. Dr. Padilla said that this was handled through the Vice Provost for Mission and Ministry that was involved in coordinating this. A question was raised about faculty involvement in the creation of travel policy 2.1.33. Dr. Padilla said that it was based on the work of a group that dealt with a wide range of issues in 2014 and some twenty-two people were involved, including Dr. David S. Vanderboegh from the Department of Modern Languages; he also said the Dr. Sharon R. Ishii-Jordan, who was Associate Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences was also a part of that group in 2014. A question was raised about the actual policy itself and who was involved in its composition. Dr. Padilla said that the policy itself drew on previous work and was done by Dr. Padilla (Director of the Office of Global Engagement), Ms. Allison Taylor (Office of Equity and Inclusion), Dr. Michelle K. Bogard (Vice Provost for Student Life) and Mr. Jim S. Jensen (General Counsel). A question was raised about where to direct concerns. Dr. Padilla said that issues could be brought to his attention.

13. Faculty Salaries

a. Progress toward Median

b. Summer Course Salaries

This item was not covered due to lack of time.

14. Provost Database