Approved Faculty Senate Minutes
Monday, March 3, 2008
SU 313 4:00 – 5:45 p.m.
Attending:,
Al Case, Anne Chambers, Prakash Chenjeri,
Terry DeHay, Dan DeNeui,
Linda Hilligoss, Julie Kochanek,
Maggie McClellan, Jean Maxwell, Greg Miller, Emily Miller-Francisco, , Mada Morgan, Michael Parker, Greg Pleva,
Dan Rubenson, Alena Ruggerio, Kay Sagmiller, Ellen Seim, Matt Stillman, Jody
Watters, Dan Wilson, Kemble Yates.
Student rep: Brian Fox
Absent: Cody Bustamante, Laura O’Bryon
Visitors: Jon Eldridge, Paul Steinle,
Josie Wilson, Sherry Ettlich, Barbara Winkler
1. Approval of minutes from 02-18-08
Motion to approve made by
Abstaining: Pleva, Morgan, Rubenson, Parker, DeNeui, Sagmiller, Case, Stillman
2. Announcements
DeHay:
Morgan: Women’s Basketball game is tonight. Also, I will be contacting Department Chairs to set up short meetings on the afternoon of March 13th or 14th re: getting more courses approved for University Studies. Please expect calls from me.
Sagmiller: CTLA Art Show is now up in Hannon Library third floor gallery. Pictures by Dennis Dunleavy of 24 randomly-selected faculty engaged in teaching. Powerful and moving.
Chenjeri: In May,
3.
Comments from President Cullinan
We had a great Wine and Cheese Faculty Event last Friday. Thanks to Weisingers for their donations. Hope to host a similar event in spring. Nice to see people informally.
This coming Saturday is International Women’s Day. Please take part.
Mark your calendars for the Global Conference on April 11th, put
on by the
The OUS Board will meet in
I leave next Monday for my visit to Guanajuato: looking forward to a fascinating few days there.
4. Comments from Provost Battistella
Encourage participation in the SOAR event in May, and suggest building this into your syllabi if you can. Event will open with a keynote speaker and will provide many opportunities for presenting research and creative work. It will end with a reception that we will use to honor student scholarship and achievement across campus.
President Cullinan went to meet with the NWCCU Accrediting body last Friday. We did so well, it seems, that they are now changing the way of doing accreditations, to make them more challenging! (He distributed a handout on the Commission’s New Accreditation Model) They want us to put processes into place that will provide ongoing assessment of academic and other efforts based on our strategic plan, and report to them yearly. The optimistic view is that this model is not simply more work, but rather a holistic, forward-looking and dynamic process that won’t be crammed into two years. Re-accreditation will now be on a seven year cycle.
I commend Mada Morgan’s meetings with Chairs on March13-14 to add General Education courses. They will be a good gift for the new provost.
I remind you of the faculty telephoning sessions coming up. Our admission decisions have been made, and now it’s time to turn them into yields. Your help in phoning is valued.
5. AC Report
from Dan Rubenson
We discussed some upcoming Senate election issues,
especially regarding what is known and not known about future Senate
composition. Also scheduling and logistical issues regarding the SOAR event,
specifically how to encourage student participation without negatively
impacting classes. We also discussed
traffic safety issues on
6. Student Senate Report from Brian Fox
Elections Committee is forming with
our election cycle soon to begin. We are
planning to patch the Bylaws to get through one more year before making
revisions. The Student Fee Committee is hearing funding
appeals. We are working on Siskiyou
safety issues with the city’s Traffic Safety Board.
7. Action Item
Proposal to Send Constitutional Amendments to SOU Faculty for a Vote
--Kemble Yates
Miller: You’ll recall that we discussed at our last meeting the two amendments that the Constitution Committee has proposed and what action Senate next needs to take.
Yates (Chair of Constitution Committee): Hope you have read the motion. We are in the horns of a dilemma, needing to bring our Bylaws and Constitution into alignment. Secondly, we need to make a decision about what the Senate should be so that we can conduct elections for next year. With elections coming up imminently, we have a short timeline. Changes to the Constitution are the prerogative of the faculty as a whole, while changes to the Bylaws are a Senate decision. The Constitution Committee has offered a motion that includes two amendments. We would like to see the Senate endorse the first amendment, take no position on the second one, and put them both out to an all-faculty vote. Motion is as follows:
March 3, 2008
Motion
(from the Constitution Committee): The
Faculty Senate proposes the following two constitutional amendments be voted
upon by the faculty of Southern Oregon University. The Senate as a
body endorses the first amendment, and takes no official position either
for or against the second amendment.
Explanation/Rationale:
The
first amendment incorporates the newly created faculty rank of “Senior
Instructor” as a recognized faculty rank in the SOU Constitution. This
rank is already incorporated in the Bylaws (Section 5) and in the APSOU
collective bargaining agreement.
The
second amendment, if passed, would continue the tradition of including some
administrators on the Faculty Senate – a practice which has been ongoing for
more than ten years. When the university reorganized unclassified
positions outside the teaching faculty (formerly “administrative faculty”) in
2005-06, these administrators no longer held “faculty rank” and no longer met
the longstanding constitutional definition of “faculty,” and thus became
ineligible to serve of Faculty Senate. In order for administrators to
continue serving on the Faculty Senate, the Constitution would need to be
amended to allow this.
If this motion at Senate passes today, the Senate Chair will call an
all-Faculty meeting to discuss the two proposed amendments in keeping with
Article 6, Section II of the SOU Constitution. Then, according to Article
6, Section III of the SOU Constitution, the faculty will vote on the two
amendments.
Whether
or not the second amendment passes, the Bylaws (Section 1) must be updated soon
to accommodate the new
Yates moved that this motion be put to a vote. Seconded by Chambers
Discussion:
Yates: IF we vote approval, Miller will then call an all-faculty meeting. The faculty (in its limited sense: teaching faculty) will have an opportunity to debate this motion, and then the Elections Committee will conduct an election on the Constitutional amendment.
Miller: The all-faculty meeting would be scheduled for next Monday, March 10th at 4pm. (the AC session would be moved to accommodate). A system for voting on-line has been set up and will be ready to go as soon as the Faculty Meeting happens. Stanek has prepared a list of faculty eligible to vote.
Yates: Constitution requires that a week’s notice be given for such a meeting. If the Senate votes its approval today, the required announcement can be sent out this evening.
Morgan: Will this notice go out to the faculty with any contextual information? Without this, I doubt someone would understand what was at stake.
Miller: I hope the faculty are following this issue via the Senate minutes. However, we could include the rationale as an attachment.
McClellan: Could you or others present contextual information at the faculty meeting too, since verbal information can be more helpful than just written documents.
Yates: Yes, but we need to be sure that all sides are heard. We could have several speakers presenting arguments for and against, and then open mikes for additional comments.
Miller: Yes, let’s use this organization.
Vote: All in favor. None opposed, no abstentions. Miller will send out faculty email after Senate meeting.
Discussion Items
Revised Section 4.000 of the Faculty Bylaws: Presentaion by
Sherry Ettlich
Ettlich: You all should have received the following supporting documents: revised Section 4, a version indicating line-by-line changes, a summary listing key changes, a note from Women’s Studies re: importance of retaining Director title, and a copy of OAR defining Unclassified Service positions. I’m assuming you have read these. Are there questions? Perhaps we can focus on the key change summary list.
Morgan: Change of calendar days to university days: meaning?
Ettlich: This change was made across all university documents. Basically, the clock is not ticking when the university is not in session. University days include the 5 weekdays of each term and finals weeks. What is included during summer is also specified. This assures that all can be here and participate, rather than having an important decision slipped through while most people are on break.
Chambers: Wonder about the wording in 4.130 of “should not be aligned” rather than simply “are not aligned.”
Ettlich: We were trying to emphasize that there is an actual rationale for something being a stand-alone department, rather than just to say that it happens to be one. Saying “are not...” opens up the possibility for any program to claim that position.
Morgan: University Seminar might move in future from direct reporting to the Provost. Would “should be” be too restrictive to allow that without having to change the Bylaws? It’s important to maintain this potential flexibility to make a future move.
Ettlich: The programs listed were thought to be so interdisciplinary that they could not fit into one particular department.
Morgan: University Seminar is a program within University Studies, but each of these could also be thought of as separate entities.
Battistella: I think of them as two different programs, not as parts of the same one. University Studies is defined as a specific curriculum.
Miller: These are just offered as examples. Wording is not intended to mandate
Ettlich: The current structure of the college is very broad, so perhaps this could be a problem? Should we delete “or college?”
Ruggerio: I am trying to understand the significance of the page with OARs. Section 4.320 says that program directors may be faculty members or unclassified administrators. How can we reconcile this with the OARs?
Ettlich: Here we have Directors with some Dean-like sign-off responsibilities, but other responsibilities that are more Chair-like. Women’s Studies could have a Director if it were a stand alone program. OAR does not say you cannot appoint a faculty member to be Director in a stand alone department. Normally, a Director is not faculty but this is possible, as it fits our situation.
Chenjeri: Across the
Ettlich: Our President and Provost are both faculty and administrators. Appointment is administrative, rank based on faculty credentials. Many administrators do teach too.
Rubenson: Why do we need to make the distinctions in terms of titles? I wonder why different titles need to be applied, based on reporting lines. We are, as you pointed out, an institution where some Directors are faculty members, some are not. Why are we creating a new layer of distinction not needed for SOU?
Yates: We wanted to be consistent in language. The retrenchment plan reduced the administrative release time allocated to units.
Dan: Release time is a different issue. Here we are talking about labeling. The issue of whether a program cuts across the institution or not is squishy, hard to pin down. Can argue about what’s broad and what’s narrow. Some would say WS cuts across the institution, others that it’s more narrow.
Josie Wilson: This has to do with who gets compensated for release time too, both in summer and the rest of the year. There are budgetary and contractual implications to sort out.
Ruggerio: There are several layers of consistency here: within SOU, also within disciplines. We lose something when we force consistency across the institution when it conflicts with expectations within the discipline.
DeHay: Using By laws to deal with budget issues is problematic. Why should we change position names for budgetary reasons?
Ettlich: We were also trying to differentiate the respective duties. Program Directors historically have had a lot of authority over the program, similar to that of Chairs. If a program is then placed within a department for the sake of administrative efficiency, and substantially less release time is then mandated for its Director, responsibilities should be reduced. Need to find a way to deal with that.
DeHay: It would be more honest to deal with that issue directly, rather than changing position titles but asking you to do the same work. Shakespeare Studies, Womens Studies: don’t we want them to grow?
Ettlich: The responsibilities of Director and Coordinator are very different. The wording of responsibilities shows a significant reduction in expectations. Have to make duties fit with the release time granted, or else make a change. Fulfilling that position must be feasible.
Rubenson: Separate issues are being confounded regarding the definitions of Coordinators and Directors. One is what we want from people in their work, the other is how they should be labeled. Need to keep these separate. Sometimes titles matter for external reasons, regardless of what the situation is on this campus. We might disadvantage people because of our administrative need to fit them into boxes. I see this not only in WS, but also in other areas of campus outside my department. We should be smart enough to disentangle issues of titles/labels from issues of workload/responsibility.
Ettlich: If we called everyone by the same title, then how can we clarify their respective responsibilities?
Rubenson: We can craft language flexible enough to do this.
Ettlich: Could we just define Coordinator and Director generally, without specifying whether each is stand-alone or within a department?
Rubenson: But do all Directors and Coordinators have to have the same job description?
Battistella: Separating titular issues from responsibilities makes sense. All our programs should be university-wide in scope. I don’t think some should be insular, some campus-wide. I have two worries: don’t want to reinvent previous structure within our new structure. We need to make duties fit within the structure and scope of the university, but provide safeguards to prevent overworking.
Ettlich: I’m putting on my AP:SOU cap now. More administrative work is being pushed down to departments, to make administrative savings. Coordinators are now doing what Chairs did in the past. This increase in expectations will continue unless controls are there.
Dan: If this is a workload issue, it should be addressed in the collective bargaining agreement, not in the Bylaws.
Ettlich: Bylaws are the only place to address this at present.
Yates: The more we try to define administrative people within the faculty bargaining unit, the more we’ll find we don’t want them there, creating a backlash.
Battistella: Bylaws are the place for defining work roles, in my view
Rubenson: Kemble, I know what you are saying, but there are many of us are in the bargaining unit as faculty who are doing things under a different label (e.g. my being Department Chair).
Ruggerio: I honor the wish to protect people from an abusive workload and workload creep is clearly a trend, but I question whether this change of terminology is a protection. This year I’m serving as a Coordinator, a position that was previously a Director, but is now under a Chair. I’m doing most of what the Director did, yet am listed as Coordinator. But it’s not appropriate to put my workload onto the Chair’s shoulders. Dilemma: I’m doing a lot more than .11 release. Many people are still having to do what they did before their title was changed.
Ettlich: So WS may be best as a stand-alone program then?
Rubenson: It’s not just WS that’s problematic. There are others in this same situation.
Ettlich: I need suggestions: what are we to do?
DeHay: Why do we need the distinction?
Josie Wilson: What if responsibilities were attached to what the person does, not to the location of the program (i.e. in a department versus stand-alone)?
Hilligoss: This makes good sense. I am a Coordinator under a Chair and Dean. I struggle with looking at faculty evaluations in my workload. Depending on who was in this position, it could be inappropriate for the person to do this.
Ettlich: We don’t want a Chair to usurp responsibilities for disciplines they know nothing about. This is one reason a program Director may be assigned.
Battistella: The retrenchment plan reorganized responsibilities so that jobs are do-able within our current structure. No matter what we call a particular position, we have to make sure that jobs are feasible within the release time allotted. We should not just be assuming we’ll do all that we used to do when we had a larger administrative release time.
Rubenson: I’m wondering if it might make more sense to make a conjoined list of duties for both Coordinators and Directors, only some of which would be expected to apply to a particular position. For each specific title, negotiate administrative release time appropriately, recognizing some positions are more or less demanding than others. We can match titles and releases that fit, on a case-by-case basis.
Miller: Yes, I think this is a good idea. The CAS Bylaws team is worried about the inadequate release now being assigned when duties stay the same as before.
Ruggerio: We need to match duties and release, but this has not yet been done.
Ettlich: With the proposed Bylaws language, someone could file a grievance if there is inadequate administrative release to do the duties specified. Directors are appointed by the Provost. You’ll lose checks and balances if this is done on a case-by-case basis. You might as well just leave it blank.
DeHay: Rubenson’s idea of negotiating appropriate release time and specification of duties on a case-by-case basis with the Provost would provide something in writing. Each individual would have agreed with the specified job description.
Yates: But the larger context is still important to consider here.
Rubenson: We already do this: Chairs negotiate with Deans and not all have the same release time.
Sagmiller: What data do chairs use now to determine release time? What formula is there regarding number of faculty, students served, age of program? What criteria can be used to guide us generally? What is the current process?
Yates: Chair release is specified in the Bargaining Agreement. This is based on FTE of faculty under supervision.
Hilligoss: Education is negotiating work loads for coordinators now. Lots of compilation is going on. Up to this point, Coordinators have been loaded equally regardless of student numbers served.
Ettlich: I hold two Director positions which were each negotiated separately.
Barbara Winkler: Returning the discussion to the nation-wide context: the
Cullinan: At the national level, there is no national consensus regarding Director title. A myriad of forms exist out there. We need to do what is right for this institution.
Battistella: Even within our departments here at SOU, the title of Director is sometime,es used in a non-Director way. The Faculty/Staff directory does not even list all Director titles.
Parker: There is a lot of diversity in Directors on the SOU campus. I don’t have a clear idea of the distinction between Director and Coordinator workloads. It could be harder to be Coordinator of a large program than Director of a small one.
Ettlich: Historically at SOU, we’ve never had Directors w/in departments. Coordinator is the normal title for overseeing program within a department. Thus with reorganization, the Chairs became Coordinators, not Directors, since they were within a department.
Miller: Could the proposed wording be used to protect Coordinators re: their workload but, if a program came to exist outside a department, the title could then be re-negotiated with the Provost? If WS became a program outside a dept, could they negotiate with the administration re: release time, etc?
Rubenson: It is preferable to separate names/labels from the workload issue. What a particular position is called is one thing, and does not matter to me, but release time and work load is a completely separate issue.
Ettlich: There was a lawsuit in the past over the use of Director/Coordinator title. One of the Coordinators in Business was listed as Director on business card and, when the individual was made to change title to Coordinator, claimed that had been demoted. SOU paid money on this lawsuit. Need a very firm line here to limit the number of Director titles and to be very specific about their expected duties.
Miller: Every program Coordinator would want to become Director. What’s to stop me from being the Biochemistry Director?
Ettlich: We don’t have a list of all the Coordinators across campus. There are lots of Coordinator titles out there.
Watters: Can we prepare a list, make them visible?
DeNeui: If the Director of a program reverts to Coordinator, would this produce a gain in FTE?
Ettlich: Yes, this is what the retrenchment did.
DeHay: But here again, retrenchment was used to change people’s position. This is a sensitive issue. Naming makes a difference.
Rubenson: History here is very murky: lots of different titles have come to exist for different historical reasons. In some cases, we seem to be adding insult to injury. Saving on administrative release has created the need for more work per release hour. OK, we have to work harder. But on top of this extra work, we’re taking away titles that have significant recognition outside SOU. I can understand cutting release if we have to. But title changes don’t save money, why do we have to do this?
Miller: Alena, you get .11 release now that WS is within the SSPC department. But would you do the same work for .11 release if WS became stand alone?
Ettlich: Chairs are facing the same issue. When departments were combined in retrenchment, many disciplines lost. Not just WS. Have to look at the issue from a broader perspective. Departments have claims here too.
Rubenson: The fiscal side of the retrenchment plan is not the same thing as its academic effects. We saw some of this with the graduate faculty list – people wanted to have their actual disciplinary specialty listed. I have no degree in SSPC, for example. We need to allow people to have ownership and integrity of title, separate from fiscal considerations.
Yates: We are aiming for consistency in the Bylaws. Names are important; they define things. Administrative faculty felt demoted when that rank was taken away from them. I’d like to see the distinctions we made here kept.
Ettlich: I don’t see an easy solution. We can leave the Bylaws silent on this, as in past, but the committee felt clarification would be helpful.
Battistella: To summarize, we have three issues:
1) how to use the Bylaws to be clearer on what people’s responsibilities/roles are within the university structure, in and out of departments, so that we can stick with the retrenchment plan and not have creeping duties
2) what names should we use to refer to various roles, and
3) do we want to clean up other nomenclature across campus, to do a sort of “business card” check on use of the title Director?
Pleva: To make a decision, we need more information on what is now being done.
DeNeui: Psychology now has a program Coordinator position with a sizable release. Would this change?
Josie Wilson: Clarification: Psychology department releases are back-filled (and paid for) by the department. Any department can choose to allocate more release than is specified; you just have to fund it. The Psychology Chair could allocate some of the department’s mandated administrative release to a Coordinator or could fund it through course fees or another income source.
Barbara Winkler: I have no desire for WS to gain more release time at the expense of other programs in SSPC. What I am wanting is NOT to add insult to injury by the title change, since the nationally recognized title is Director. Person hired after me cannot be expected to have the same level of education, connections and responsibility if only titled Coordinator.
Miller: With only 15 minutes remaining, we are not likely to get closure on this today. We have a full agenda on March 17th, but could put this decision forward to the April 7th meeting.
Sagmiller: Could we get more information from across campus on what these titles are, hours of release involved etc?
Ettlich: We could get information from Chairs on the Directors and Coordinators in their departments. I have a list of all campus directors: Armstrong, Winkler, West. Staniek is a Coordinator.
(Clarifying discussion ensued about specifics of individual appointments and possible future plans, plus how to move ahead).
Decision: Ask department chairs to quickly provide a list of program Coordinators and their release loadings.
MCClellan: I realize that there are differences between institutions, but wouldn’t having information from comparable institutions be helpful as a model? I volunteer to work on this.
Miller: We could use our list of comparator institutions and work on this together.
Sagmiller: Do we really need institutional consistency, or could we let each department do its own thing?
Miller: Looking for this information won’t be that hard. We can do it in next 2-4 weeks.
Ettlich: We’ve not considered any of our other changes!
Miller: Let’s table discussion on Bylaws Section 4 for two weeks.
Adjourned at 5:45 pm. Moved by Yates, seconded by DeNeui.