Faculty Senate Meeting Minutes
February 12, 2014, 3:10 P.M. Skaggs Building, Room 169

Call to Order
Chair Lodmell called the meeting to order at 3:10 p.m.
The Interim Registrar Joe Hickman called roll.
Members Present: B. Allred, L. Ametsbichler, J. Banville,A. Becker, T. Beed A. Belcourt, B. Borrie, M. Bowman, S. Bradford, M. Brooke, J. Bunch, J. Carter, A. Chatterjee, T. Crowford, J. DeBoer, M. DeGrandpre, H. Eggert, D. Erickson, L. Frey, E. Gagliardi, S. Galipeau, S. Gordon, L. Gray, M. Horejsi, L. Hart-Paulson, L. Howell, U. Kamp, H. Kim, A. Kinney, C. Kirkpatrick, C. Knight, A. Larson,B. Larson, G. Larson, B. Layton, S. Lodmell, P.Lukacs, D. MacDonald,M. Mayor, M. McGirl, S. Richter, D. Schuldberg, J. Sears, S. Shen, D. Shepherd, D. Sherman, A. Sondag, S. Stan, K. Swift, A. Szalda-Petree, E. Uchimoto, N. Vonessen, A. Ware, K. Wu,K. Zoellner
Members Excused:J. Bardsley, L. Gillison,W. Holben, K. Harris,S. Hines,R. LaPier,J. Laskin,J. Montauban, C. Palmer, M. Raymond

Members Absent: J. Cavanaugh, J. Glendening, M. Hamon, M. Kia, N. McCrady, K. McKay, S. Tillerman
Ex-Officio Present: Provost Brown, VP Whittenburg, Interim Associate Provost Lindsay

Guests:
Deputy Commissioner Neil Moisey

Minutes:The minutes from December 4th were approved.

Communications:

Deputy Commissioner Neil Moisey
The Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education (OCHE) would like system input at an earlier stage for level II curriculum proposals. Deputy Commissioner Neil Moisey explained the draft policy. There is lots of involvement of faculty during the development stage of the proposal from the proposing institution, but little involvement of faculty at other campuses. The Board of Regents has a fiscal responsibility to the state to avoid duplication and encourage sharing of campus resources. OCHE recognizes that the expertise lies with the faculty, but there needs to be communication between campuses to collaborate rather than compete. Currently campuses are required to submit three year program plans to signal intent. These plans notify the Board and are available on the website but are not circulated widely for consideration. The draft policy clarifies that the roll of the Chief Academic Officer (CAO) is the conduit to the faculty at the various campuses. All campuses need to be aware of new proposals that could have an impact on them.

Proposals for new programs or centers also need to involve review by the system’sVice Presidents of Research because academics and research are closely related. The policy is intended to honor the individual processes on campuses and include system- wide consideration that is more efficient and timely. This should provide for more collaboration and flesh out competitive pressures before a lot of time is put into fully developing proposals.
Step 1, 2 and 3 make sure there is system-wide communication of new program’s or center’s intent. So that everyone is aware of what is being considered. The new requirement includes the submission of a two-page notice of intent to OCHE. It explains the nature of the program and how it fits within the institutions’ mission. The notice of intent is reviewed by OCHE for completion, approved, and then posted to the website and shared with the CAOs. This is the step that is currently missing. It involves feedback (opportunities for collaboration or duplication concerns). The CAOs share proposals with faculty at this step to allow feedback. The CAOs meet monthly to discuss.

Deputy Commissioner Moisey asked for questions. He is presenting to the Senate to get input. The policy should assure that everyone’s interest is valued. The policy does not include revisions to the timeline currently under consideration. These include accepting level 1 proposals on an ongoing basis, separate from Board of Regents meetings. The guidelines will go to the Board of Regents for vote in May. Comments should be sent as soon as possible.
Chair Lodmell informed the Senate of the items in the draft that are different than the current practice. Sharing information about pending proposals system wide is a good thing. However, in the draft guidelines there will be scrutiny of the two page synopsis by CIOs and MUS leadership. The approval vote at this stage is dramatically different than the current practice.
The intent is not to say yes or no to the proposal at this stage, but rather to make recommendations and identify collaborative opportunities or duplication concerns so they get worked out before a lot of time and energy has been spent on the proposal. Proposals should have agreement and collaboration system-wide before they reach the Board of Regents for final approval.

The draft guidelines are being proposed because there have been past conflicts related to competition. It is better to have faculty discussions to work out any issues long before the proposal is voted on at the Board of Regents meeting.

It will be important that the right faculty members are aware of the proposals. The notice of intent will be available on the website and the CAOs will be notified. Campuses will need to create internal mechanisms to assure faculty are notified. Communication is the key component. Moisey is asking for input with how to make this happen. One suggestion was to have the CAO document which departments were notified.

Please send your comments to the Senate leadership to incorporate into the final draft. It will be shared with the Senate before it goes to the Board of Regents. Moisey wants to make sure all parties are involved in developing the guidelines.

President Engstrom

The University was founded 122 years ago today. The Charter Day Awards Ceremony and reception will begin in the UC ball room at 5:30 p.m.
Legislative update
We are a third of the way through the Legislative Session. Things are going well. The Education Appropriation Subcommittee passed to the full Appropriations Committee all the University items intact. HB 2, the main funding bill for higher education, includes a number of objectives including present law adjustment (the calculated cost of doing the same level of business as this year next year), a total of $44 million. Keeping this intact is a key step in the process and is credited to the hard work of many people. Bill Johnston, UM’s lobbyist in particular is appreciated.

There is a $15 million research Initiative included in HB 2 to help bolster economic development. This is what the Governor and the Legislature wanted. It was passed out of Committee as well.
The full present law adjustment has the same tuition freeze condition as last year. This applies to resident tuition only. There is also a performance based funding caveat for money that the system would not receive without the condition.
Chair Lodmell, President Engstrom, Kevin Krebsbach, Associate Director of Facility Services, and a few students spent time with the governor lobbying for the long-range building plan (HB 5). The biggest priority is the $10 million renovation of the Clapp Building. This is still working through the process. All and all it is turning out to be a good session with quality communication. The Legislators have congratulated the Montana University System onaccountability and transparency. There is still a long way to go to get to the ending fund balance and revenue projections.

Rafter Book Plan
Rafter is back on campus talking about a book plan. The basic idea is that students pay a fee as part of their tuition bill that covers course materials. This is a way to ensure that students have materials. It would be more cost effective for the average student. The University now needs to see the actual proposal. A committeechaired by Associate Provost Lindsay has been put together to work on this. It should be ready in a couple of weeks for vetting across campus. The President is not advocating that UM adopt a book plan. He only wishes that we consider it as an alternative approach. ASUM and the Faculty Senate would need to approve the proposal before the administration takes any action. Rafter will be on campus for an open forum at 10:00 AM tomorrow in GBB 201. .

Questions / Comments:
Options in the plan may include tablets, lap tops or fact packs.
It might be helpful for the Committee to come up with a number of proposals that would be reflective of some participation (inclusive of certain units) rather than a blanket approach.
According to Rafter there needs to be a certain scale in order to pass on the cost savings.

Provost Brown
Search updates
As soon as the Provost hears back from OCHE, he will enter into negotiations for the Registrar position.
The search for the Missoula College Dean is progressing to skype interviews to reduce the candidate pool.
The search for the Honors College Dean is in the early stage of accepting applications.
Scheduling
The administration is curious whether there might be sentiment or strong objections to starting classes and meetings on the hour. This would adhere to the commonly accepted schedule of most of the world and could synchronize starting times. Courses would be the same increment of time, ending at 10 minutes till the hour for transition time. There is not a proposal at this time,

Winterbreak
A winterbreak option was put together for consideration and feedback. It takes advantage of most of the points brought up in discussions. Spring semester would start and end one week earlier. The primary focus of winterbreak will be courses not typically offered. The other emphasis will be on research and creative activity. Under this model special courses that involve traveling will have the option to make use of the week of December 26th. From year to year the start of the fall semester would be adjusted so that there is a minimum of one week between the end of fall semester and December 25th. Commencement should not be scheduled on the same day as MSU. The details of how the semester will be bundled have not been worked out. The Provost Office is happy to take feedback on the proposal.

Questions/comments:
Spring break would still be coordinated with K-12.
Any changes to summer session will need to consider the schedules of teachers looking to take continuing educationcredits.

Travel to Europe from December 26th through January 1st is problematic because most businesses are closed.

Traditional 3 credit courses will not be the emphasis of winterbreak, but they can still be offered.

Interim Dean Liz Putnam and Associate Vice President Dawn Ressel - Performance based funding
The charge of the Workgroup was to come up with a workable model that will allow the system to observe the spirit of the legislative wish to distribute present-law-adjustments according to a performance model. Mistakes were made in the short term. Rather than use the same metrics for all campuses, the campuses were divided into three groups: the two flagships together, the four year colleges, and then the two year schools.
The spreadsheet for the flagship institutions was projected as an example. The Flagship institution uses the undergraduate degrees and certificates, retention rates, graduate degrees and certificates and research expenditures as metrics. There will be open forums later this month to allow faculty to weigh-in regarding the weighting of the elements. The weighting of graduate degrees was reduced from the original model because many of the programs have enrollment caps. Research expenditures were also reduced because there is not a consistent way to measure scholarly activity across campus. This metric does not consider books published, performances, media creations, or journalistic awards.
There has to be consistent, reliable, reproducible, verifiable data to put into the models. The metrics were approved by the Board of Regents last spring, but the weighting has not been finalized. Each of the measures is compared to the average of the last three years. The model gives campuses credit for the trying to meet their goal. The goal in the model is that we will have a 1% increase every year. All of the metrics are indexed to add up to 1000 points. If the 1000 point goal is met the campus would get 100% of its funding. If the campus comes within 2 standard deviations of 5 years of data the campus would get a percentage of funding. Real data from previous years has been put into the model.

The model is available on the website for faculty to explore and enter various weighting and performance scenarios. There are a lot of moving pieces that can impact the results. The purpose is to satisfy the intent of the legislators by measuring performance that is quantifiable but minimizes the damages to all the campuses. The Committee wanted to make sure that campuses had the opportunity to earn back money that was lost in the previous year. However, because of the way the law is written money cannot be carried over from year to year. So the committee is requesting that any residual funds be put into accounts for scholarships.
Questions /Comments

The model seems to promote failure if increases by percentage. It should have a target number and a plateau.

One of the ways this is addressed is by indexing everything to 1000 points. So a retention rate of 70% would be 700 points, so a 1% increase is actually a smaller percent increase that the number. At some point the model will reach a limit. But the limit will be much farther off using this model than under the old method. Campuses have to beat the three–year –average by 1%.
The model does not apply to the entire state appropriation; it only applies to a certain percent of the present-law-adjustment (last year it was 5%, the Governor is recommending 10% this year). Campuses are only measured against themselves. There is a certain fixed number that each campus is eligible to receive.
It is concerning that the Metrics only measure throughput not quality. The issue is how do you measure quality so that it is consistent across the system.
This could be an opportunity to communicate what our performance is to the Legislature, even if it cannot be easily measured. This was a concern when designing the metrics. The metrics use data that is readily available. There is a condition that the metrics will be reviewed every biennium, so that we can start strategizing about ways to collect information on quality.
President Engstrom: Whenever we have the opportunity to talk about the effectiveness of our higher education system it requires both quantitative and qualitative information. So when the University presented to the Education Appropriations Subcommittee we brought in students to talk about their experiences, the quality of their education, and stories about what they have been able to accomplish as a result. It is very difficult to capture the quality issue with a metric so it is important to add a human element to the discussion along with the data.
Performance based funding is also driven partly by the practices across the country. The PowerPoint linked to the agenda provides some of this background.
The retention metric is of some concern given that it largely includes factors out of our control, such as the economy. Scholarly activity and the creation of new knowledge is something that should be included in the metric. The reason this is not included now is because it has not been tracked. There will likely be an argument to include this for the next biennium when we have data. But we will need to decide soon so that data can be gathered.

Professor Andrew Ware – Academic Alignment and Innovation Program
The Committee has reviewed almost all the programs. It is waiting on two survey responses. The Committee has identified additional programs that were missed and is making a short list of programs that are most challenged by enrollment and most ready for growth. There will be outreach to those programs to find out what is needed to strengthen or make growth possible. There will be two open forums. The first is next Thursday at 3:00 p.m. in the UC Theatre. The other is on Wednesday, March 4th at 3:00 p.m. The idea is to get more conversation and take input. The general theme is what portfolio of programs will help UM thrive. What is the optimal balance between providing support for current programs and investing in new programs? How do we do a better job of communicating the value of a liberal arts education in the 21st Century to parents, students and each other?

ASUM Vice President Sean McQuillan
ASUM took a handful of representatives from Missoula on a legislative tour of some building projects at UM in December with the help of Bill Johnston and Kevin Krebsbach. They were shown the ground being moved at the Missoula College location, the Student Athletic Academic Center, the Gilkey Center, and then inside the Clapp Building. ASUM also has a lobbyist in Helena. He is an international student, Harry Haocheng Wangfrom China. He is doing a great job along with Mike Hopkins who is the Montana Associated Students lobbyist. ASUM is following HB 5 and the research initiative.
ASUM has a number of fees on the upcoming ballot, $2.00 for child care (of which $1.50 will go towards building a new infant care center) and $1.00 for research and creative scholarship which would go to a ASUM committee to be awarded for graduate and undergraduate student research and travel.