Minutes of the Meeting of the Full Faculty
January 27, 2010
Recorded by Marcia Noe, Faculty Secretary
Call to Order/Approval of Minutes
The meeting was called to order by First Vice-President Irene Loomis (Mathematics), acting in the absence of President Pedro Campa, at 3:30 p.m.The minutes of the September meeting were approved as corrected. Fanning/Rice
Point of Information
Pedro Campa sends his greetings, is doing well after his heart surgery, and plans to be back in the classroom in a matter of weeks. He thanks the faculty for their support and good wishes.
Elections
Victoria Steinberg was elected President by acclamation.
Marcia Noe was re-elected Faculty Secretary by acclamation.
Susan North was elected to the at-large seat for the assistant professor rank.
Lyn Miles and Richard Metzger were elected to the at-large seats for the full professor rank.
Doctor of Nursing Practice Proposal
Dr. Kay Lindgren (Director of Nursing) reported on the Doctor of Nursing Practice proposal before the faculty vote: Nursing programs across the county are moving toward this change. There is now so much more information for nurses to know that courses are being added and this additional knowledge is reflected in the development of a more advanced degree. This degree is a clinical degree, a transition from the Master of Science in Nursing. People who already have an MS in Nursing will be the first to get this degree. Currently at UTC we offer a family nurse practitioner MS and a nurse anesthesia MS: already mastered people will be able to come in and take the core Doctor of Nursing Practice courses and b e awarded the DNP. The DNP essentially includes the current masters essentials courses so that when we finally offer the DNP as a post-baccalaureate degree in nursing it will be a seamless process because we meticulously reviewed the current MS curriculum and added what we needed to add. The community wants this degree
Question: Will previous MS graduates in Nursing be able to retroactively get this degree?
Answer: Yes, initially this will be a post-master’s degree so people who now have an advanced practice degree can articulate with our DNP program. Motion passed. 102 Aye No 0 Abstentions 0 Nelson/Carver
Report from the Faculty Senate
The Academic Program Review Committee is now finalizing recommendations and the final report is in the minutes, posted on the Faculty Senate website. The QEP Committee is revamping the General Education guidelines with Dr. Steinberg. Lots of curriculum proposals have been approved. The Records Office sent the final exam schedule to the Senate. The Senate Executive Committee is going to look a t the impact of the new legislation on higher education (The Complete College Act) recently passed by the Tennessee Legislature.
Report from the Chancellor
The Chancellor expressed his best wishes for the recovery of Pedro and said that he looks forward to working with Victoria Steinberg. He congratulated the faculty on another successful semester; we served over 10,000 students and our spring enrollment headcount is 9,694 compared to last spring’s 8,997. Faculty work is critical as we prepare for implementation of the new legislation, which will use retention and graduate rates, rather than enrollment numbers, to determine the level of state funding we will get. The formula is being written as we speak. Dr. Oldham is now in a meeting with campus executives about the new legislation. The first-year report on the Strategic Plan will be arriving soon, thanks to Charles Nelson and Karen Adsit. By the end of the academic year, we may be able to see a report on the second year of the plan, thanks to the faculty and our staff colleagues. Of course the economy and financial matters weigh heavily on everything we do and our are biggest challenge. We sometimes forget to acknowledge the private giving and philanthropy which our campus enjoys, which is phenomenal for a campus of our size, and the size of our endowment is unusually large among our peers. We have outperformed the market in terms of private giving and are well ahead of the target in terms of our capital campaign. The target is $56 million dollars and we will surpass that. We maintain a balanced budget even though we had a 6% reduction in our state appropriations for the 2009-1010 academic year, thanks to our enrollment growth. When enrollment is no longer weighted as heavily, how will we fare if we grow as much as we have been growing? An additional 6% or 2.8 million dollars of state appropriations has been recommended for the budget that begins July 1 2010. Once again we are asking the faculty through their departments and visions to figure out what we will do once the stimulus money is gone. The Executive Team will meet to determine what kind of process to use to achieve this additional 6% reduction.
We were able to give a small equity and market driven raise to some employees, 79 of whom were faculty. It was not popular with the UT System office, but it was critically important to keep faith with the faculty, since we are trying to do something in terms of a raise every year. We have about 9 million dollars of federal stimulus fund this year and next to fund non-tenure track faculty, computers, microscopes , supplies, etc. The state building commission has approved facilities improvements in Development House and MaClellan gym, the math mall, theatre improvements to the fine arts building, exterior door replacements across campus, lighting upgrades; these improvement expenses total $1, 295,000.
Compared to colleagues at peer institutions, UTC has been protecting faculty lines during budget cuts as long as lines are currently filled. We have not furloughed or RIFFED any faculty member and will struggle mightily to prevent. We will protect human capital to the highest degree possible. Teaching, learning and instructional technology will be the highest priorities, along with the new mandates from our state. Another very important mandate is SACS re-accreditation, with the now required Quality Enhancement Plan. Dr. Adsit has prepared a compliance report showing to what extent we already meet the SADCS requirements. QEP will be drafted and circulated for your comments by August. Volunteers to become involved in the SACS review are still being accepted. We need to find additional alternative revenue streams. Grants and contracts are very important, as is private philanthropy, but we need to look at other ways to raise money and if the faculty has ideas about how to achieve additional revenues and reduce expenditures, please let us know. We are going to be asked more than ever to reach out and collaborate with other institutions of higher education; in addition, we are going to be encouraged to be sure that if we propose a degree program, we at least talk with other campuses and see if any synergy is possible to make possible a joint degree program. There is a Board of Trustees committee meeting on efficiency and effectiveness traveling the state, and the meeting was here recently. UTC was able to tell them that we have saved more tan 27 million dollars in energy usage since 1998 due mainly to automation of lighting, natural gas. We have a Physical Plant that is really focused on saving money for the campus and the state and on doing the rightt hing for the environment. We are working on a comprehensive greenhouse grant profile for this campus for the dual goals of reducing emissions and saving money. Our strategic goal is becoming the most sustainable campus in Tennessee. We will continue to seek faculty ideas on how to make this a reality.
No one can give us the minute details of what the new higher education bill means but the broad outlines are that we need to improve graduation rates in order to get more funding. A goal of 3% improvement per year in 6-year graduation rates is being discussed for our campus. UTC compares favorably with peer institutions with our mission but we are not satisfied with 40% + graduation rates. Faculty need to figure out what will be helpful in raising graduation rates; we will be looking at everything including admission standards. Articulation agreements with community colleges are front and center. Two-year graduates of community colleges will be required to be accepted at any four-year institution in Tennessee. We need to make our legislature understand how to make these agreements work and still maintain our academic integrity and degree value. Dr. Oldham is working hard on what it means to say that there will be no developmental or remedial courses taught at any four-year institution in the state. Roughly half of the entering freshman class at UTC now take at least one developmental course. If this law were in place last fall, 1200 students would have been required to leave this campus to take a developmental course at a community college. This is a daunting issue. We need to find out how to make this requirement work so that students aren’t shuffled back and forth needlessly. The bottom line is that guidelines, implementation rules, timetables are being written right now. As soon as possible the faculty will get anything UTC receives that is a definite plan or requirement from the state. It’s imperative that we stay involved in the discussion and b e clear when something is not feasible.
Comments and Questions
Question: Currently a full load is 12 hours. What would be the ramifications of considering a full load to be 15 hours?
Answer: I haven’t seen a 15-hour requirement but it wouldn’t surprise me if that is the direction in which we are headed. In North Carolina, if a student took more hours than the standard load, surcharges were added to the tuition. What if we have students who’ve taken 9 hours here and 3 hours at Chattanooga State? Are they full time and how do we let the state know for purposes of state funding.
Comment: Nursing has students who take courses at Chattanooga State and UTC and they get their Hope scholarships.
Question: In the paper it said that 35% of students have to take developmental courses.
Answer: About 39% for all student athletes, for the entire student body it’s closer to 50%.
Question: Does “peer group” mean other four-year schools in Tennessee or the THEC peer groups?
Answer: I meant the more general term for midsize public institutions across the country. We have a currently proposal sitting at THEC that they review our peer groups and we have requested that three peers be replaced with three more appropriate peers and it is still pending.
Comment: There are departments such as Art where 2 plus 2 doesn’t work; it’s a question of facilities, resources, and program integrity. So it’s good to hear that there is room for us to articulate where there might be exceptions to the general rule that a student with a two-year degree from any community colleg ecan come right in to UTC.
Answer: The people involved have to acknowledge that there are two partners and each must acknowledge what the other needs, and we need to insist that this be done. The paper reported that majors agreements are acknowledged as being totally separate from general education and are being hammered out discipline by discipline.
Comment: There are models out there for most programs: 60 hours of general education courses and 60 hours from the discipline. This is not something that Tennessee has created; it is being done in most states. The Oregon System gives students a certain amount of time to graduate and then they charge them out-of-state tuition if they don’t graduate within the prescribed time limit.
Question: Have you seen any preliminary figures on the physical impact on UTC of stopping remedial and developmental courses?
Answer: What we don’t know is how many of those students needing development courses will just go to the community college full time and we don’t know how much impact this requirement will have on our enrollment. We are working on this and have some estimates but there could be a 11/2 to 2 million dollar reduction annually for us
Question: Are we looking at raising admission standards? How do we reconcile raising graduation rates if we don’t raise admission standards?
Question: Are there ways to redescribe our curriculum so that what we now call a remedial class becomes a 2100-level course?
Answer: The question is: will this redescribed course count toward graduation.
Question: Can you explain what rationale was used to decide what computers were replaced in this go-round. Math only had three computers replaced and it is the largest department on campus.
Answer: I’ll ask for that information.
Question: We’re asked to accept people from two-year schools but can’t guarantee the quality of them, yet we need to increase enrollment and graduation rates: how do we make these issues work together?
Answer: The pressure would be against increasing enrollment.
Comment: Department heads and faculty are being introduced slowly to Banner and it’s a big animal and its going to mean a lot of changes for all of us. We hope it is gong to be a better system but it will be a challenge; take advantage of Banner training.
The meeting was adjourned at 4:30 p.m.