Faculty Senate Meeting
October 21, 2008 at 11:30 a.m.
Minutes
Attendees: See attached sign-in Sheet.
Don Ulin started the meeting by thanking Dean Hardin for providing a budget for lunch. Don also thanked the faculty for their cooperation during a semester that has brought record enrollment and record class sizes.
Faculty Senate President Announcements: The Faculty Senate is streaming forward with the Tenure Committee starting reviews for tenure cases and tenure-stream renewals. Educational Policies Committee (EPC) is in full swing. Many of the faculty have been involved in the strategic planning process. Don Ulin thanked Dr. Livingston Alexander for providing faculty more of an opportunity to be involved in this planning process than there was in the last one. There has been continued work on scholarly issues. Don will be attending a meeting in Oakland next week to meet with other campus Senate Presidents.
President Alexander Announcements: Thanked and acknowledged faculty success and university success. Dr. Alexander commented that Pitt-Bradford has a strong faculty this year and a very busy year ahead.
Budget: Dr. Alexander announced notification of another budget cut in the Rural Education budget line. With this additional cut, Pitt-Bradford’s fiscal year 2008 budget has been reduced by $242,000. Prior to today, Pitt-Bradford had received a 1.2% cut under the compensation line which amounted to a $146,500 reduction. This means that in fiscal year 2009 Pitt-Bradford will need to compensate for $362,414.
These cuts should not affect existing positions assuming that nothing more happens to the budget. Currently the cuts are being absorbed by delaying the Web Programmer and Hospitality Management positions.
Faculty Salaries: Recently Dr. Alexander shared with Faculty Senate Council a comparison of the average salaries from other regional campuses. This will be available to faculty upon approval of the October 7, 2008 Faculty Senate Council meeting minutes. Pitt-Bradford has a long way to go, but he encourages faculty to reach for the average of the IIB institutions (information distributed to faculty via email before this meeting). He wants to make sure that the Assistant Professor salary levels stay with the averages.
Student/Faculty Ratio: Pitt-Bradford will begin to see a new student/faculty ratio number of 18/1. Prior to this, student ratios of 13/1 and 14/1 have been used in marketing. This ratio was calculated using temporary faculty. The new ratio eliminates temporary faculty and will help to better justify positions and will help in terms of obtaining financial resources from the university.
Awards for Teaching scholarship, Creativity, and Service: Dr. Alexander would like to see the faculty endorse three new awards for Teaching Scholarship, Creativity, and Service. For example, the awards could be $500 cash awards. To create these awards a committee of faculty would need to be assembled to review nominations and selections. The award could be at the beginning of the semester or at Convocation. This award could replace the Chairs award or become separate awards. Ideas are welcome.
Strategic Plan: Dr. Alexander thanked faculty for participation in the strategic plan. The next step will entail streamlining ideas to come up with proposed major strategic directions for the next five years. The vision statement will need revised along with the major strategic directions. On December 15, 2008 a campus meeting will occur to announce the proposed strategic directions and proposed new vision statement. Faculty and staff should provide any feedback at this meeting. After this meeting the next step is to submit proposals for initiatives that will support the major strategic directions.
Dean Hardin Announcements: The general education assessment is moving ahead. James Baldwin is helping with this process. Program specific matrices are also being reviewed.
Faculty Recruitment: Positions requested are in Oakland and awaiting approval.
PBC: The Planning and Budget Committee are reviewing the current Strategic Plan. The current focus is on incomplete initiatives. Interviews will occur to assess the status and future of incomplete initiatives. In addition, recommendations for next fiscal year’s plan are being considered.
Budgets: Dean Hardin stressed to faculty to work with chairs to be sure budgets are kept within limits.
Disability Resource Center: The Disability Resource Center test-monitoring form is now online. Pitt-Bradford is seeing more students with disabilities on campus; please refer students as necessary to the Disability Resource Center.
Items of Business:
Approval of Minutes: A motion was made by John Slimick to approve the minutes of the August 20, 2008 Full Faculty Senate Meeting. ‘Biodun Ogundayo seconded the motion. Motion to approve minutes passed.
Next Full Faculty Senate Meeting: December 2, 2008, 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. in the Mukaiyama University Room
Greensburg’s Faculty Salary Benchmarking proposal: The Greensburg faculty have proposed that both Bradford and Johnstown endorse the following set of proposals:
1. Accept that the three regional campuses will be treated as a single aggregated unit for benchmarking purposes (something the Provost insists upon).
2. Endorse the list of AAUP-IIB Private-Independent and Public institutions. This includes 128 institutions (church schools are omitted). These are 87 private and 41 public institutions from 17 states and DC (from the Middle Atlantic, East North Central, and South Atlantic regions), and represents 16,753 faculty across the ranks.
3. This list includes several of the Penn State regionals, which will be included for benchmarking as individual campuses (the Provost has aggregated them in the past).
4. Use IPEDS as the data source for the annual updating of the list.
5. Report our relationship to the medians and the means (unweighted and weighted averages) across all full-time academic ranks.
The documents pertaining to this issue were recently emailed to all faculty. Senate Council has discussed the proposal and decided that more information is necessary to move forward with this issue. Don Ulin will be attending a meeting with the other Senate Presidents next week and hopes to get more clarification about the purpose of treating the three campuses as an aggregate unit. Some additional questions that faculty wanted answered were:
Ø How does our current benchmarking system compare to this new benchmarking system?
Ø Does aggregating the three regionals mean creating a common benchmark for salary or delivering a common salary?
Ø To what extent will the three regional campuses be treated alike for salary distribution?
Ø Will there be a loss of focus on individual low salaries?
Dr. Alexander explained that the Provost wants this because the number of faculty at some ranks on some campuses is too low to be statistically useful. He stated that average Pitt-Bradford salaries at each rank will still be reported.. Dr. Alexander also explained that he is not anticipating money from the Provost to make up for salary differences. The decision to increase the faculty budget by $140,000 last year was made here in Bradford.
Don wants to target other ways to document faculty salary needs by collecting information on the loss of faculty and prospective faculty to other institutions. If the regionals can show that they are losing faculty to schools with higher salaries, then those schools are the ones that we need to be compared to.
Plagiarism, cheating, and academic integrity: Helene Lawson has been working with student government, Faculty Senate Council and the Academic Integrity Board to come up with a method to document academic integrity incidents. The current proposal includes an incident form that both the student and the faculty member fill out and is filed in the Academic Dean’s office. This record could only be accessed when incidents occur, and upon a second or third offense the Dean would be responsible to take appropriate action. The record would disappear when the student graduates. A preliminary copy of the form is attached. Concerns regarding the legalities of the form were voiced. Recommendations were made to have University Council review the final form.
Sam Fohr made a motion to proceed with the development of a set of procedures and a form for submitting cases of academic dishonesty to the dean. These would be reviewed at the next Full Senate Meeting. Steve Robar seconded the motion. Motion passed.
A motion to adjourn was made by John Slimick and seconded by Tammy Haley. The meeting adjourned at 1:00 p.m.
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Full Faculty Senate Meeting -October 21, 2008 Submitted by: Kimberly M. Hanold