August 25, 2015
Meeting Agenda
Faculty Senate Meeting Agenda
Regular Meeting No.1 of the 62nd Session: Faculty Senate Chambers
All members of the General Faculty are encouraged to attend August 25, 2015, at 3:00 p.m.
1. Call to Order - Jeannette Moore, Chair of the Faculty
2. Introductory remarks
All senators and Vernice Stevenson introduce themselves b. Guests introduce themselves
3. Announcements
See the back of the agenda each week for announcements
4. Approval of the Minutes, Regular Meeting N13 of the 61st Session, April 21, 2014
Darby Orcutt, Secretary of the Faculty
5. Chancellor's Remarks and Q/A - Randy Woodson, Chancellor
6. Provost's Remarks and Q/A - Warwick Arden, Provost
7. Old and New Business
Status of resolutions passed in the previous year -
Jeannette Moore
Resolution for a University Standing Committee on Lectures and Speakers (to create it); Resolution on Board of Governors Teaching Award (recommending that non-tenure
track faculty be eligible);
Resolution on Funding Library Collections (recommending increased funding for
collections and databases);
Resolution on Funding Library Services (recommending restoring library staff to levels adequate to allow D.H. Hill and Hunt libraries to function at past levels)
Flowchart of Faculty Governance in the UNC System -
Jeannette Moore
See the last link at:
http://www.ncsu.edu/faculty_senate/
Katharine E. Stewart, Professor & Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs
Advice from Senators for Dr. Stewart to be considering in terms of Faculty Affairs and
Faculty Development as she takes on the role (started the position June 2015)
8. Input from senators on Topics to Discuss (ballot)
Jeannette Moore and Darby Orcutt
9. Issues of concern
Two from summer 2015 have been sent to committee (see back of this agenda)
IOC 1507a - Phones & Internet Cost Hikes to Departments (Resources & Environment) IOC 1508a - Faculty Governance of Curricula and Courses (Academic Policy)
Others (if any)
10.
Adjourn to Senate reception at the Chancellor's house (The Point) - Starts at 5:30
NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY Faculty Senate Calendar and Announcements August 25, 2015
CALENDAR
8/27/2015 3:00 pm Thursday:
Executive Committee in 2320 D.H. Hill
- Jeannette Moore, Chair
9/1/2015
Committee meetings:
ACADEMIC POLICY COMMITTEE -
Sarah Ash and Alton Banks, Co-Chairs
3:00 pm in 210 Dabney on Tuesday, 9/1/2015
- IOC 1411b: Grade distributions for sections of a course
- b. IOC 1411c: Faculty involvement in process of degree consolidation c. IOC 1508a: Faculty Governance of Curricula and Courses
GOVERNANCE AND PERSONNEL POLICY COMMITTEE -
Lloyd Fleisher and Paul Williams, Co-Chairs
3:00 pm in 2320 D.H. Hill on Tuesday, 9/1/2015
- Faculty Grievance & Non-Reappointment Working Group
- b. Faculty Senate representation: Do faculty who are now in University College remain in the
General Constituency, or will University College have Faculty Senate reps?
RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE -
Richard Bernhard and Marguerite Moore, Co-Chairs
3:00 pm in 2108 D.H. Hill (East Wing) on Tuesday, 9/1/2015 a. IOC 1410a: Grant administrative delays
- b. IOC 1507a: Phones & Internet Cost Hikes to Departments
9/8/2015 Faculty Senate Meeting at 3:00 pm in 2320 D.H. Hill -
Jeannette Moore, Chair
ANNOUNCEMENTS
1. Faculty are invited to receive guided tours of two spaces: the new Talley Student Union and the Carol Johnson Poole Golf Cou Tours or other events geared toward faculty can be arranged by contacting Jennifer Gilmore, Director of Marketing and Communication for NC State University, at
jhgilmor@ncsu.edu .
2. The new NC State Courses and Curricula website states the importance of faculty in shared governance:
http://oucc.dasa.ncsu.edu/courseleaf-2/ Executive Summary
Minutes of the Faculty Senate Executive Summary
August 25, 2015
- Call to Order
Chair Moore, called the first meeting of the sixty-second session of the NC State Faculty Senate
to order at 3 p.m.
- Introductory Remarks
Chair Moore asked everyone to introduce themselves and to include their college and which term
they are serving on the Senate.
- Announcements
Chair Moore stated that there would be announcements at each Senate meeting and they will be posted on the back of each week’s agenda.
Chair Moore pointed out that the new NC State courses and curricula web site really highlights faculty governance.
Chair Moore announced that the committees meet on the Tuesdays after the Faculty Senate meetings and the locations are listed in the packet of information at everyone’s place. The next committee meeting will be one week from today. She introduced the co-chairs for each committee.
Chair Moore stated that most of the 2014 issues that are listed under the committees are almost completely resolved and the committees just need to meet and tidy those up and move on to the new issues.
- Approval of the Minutes, Meeting No. 13, April 21, 2015
Secretary Orcutt moved approval of the minutes for regular meeting number 13 of the 61st
session of the NC State Faculty Senate.
The minutes were approved with corrections.
- Chancellor’s Remarks and Q&A
Chancellor Woodson stated that the students are back and we have a freshmen class of around
4,250 and that is by design. He reported that about 21,000 students competed for entry into NC State and we have just under 3,000 new graduate students.
The freshman class has an all-time high of 17% out-of-state, which puts us almost at the 18% cap. Of those 17% are from out of state, more than 300 are from outside of the US, so we have a strong freshman international contingency as well.
Chancellor Woodson announced that funds for the “Our Three Winners” scholarships from the three students who tragically lost their lives, total just under $300,000 and two students in each college (Science, Design, and Management) have been awarded those scholarships.
Chancellor Woodson announced that the College of Humanities and Social Sciences received its largest grant in history at almost $400,000 for John Wall and his colleagues David Hill in the College of Design for the St. Paul Cathedral project that many of you visited in the Hunt Library.
Chancellor Woodson announced that Alan Rebar will be joining us soon as the new Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation and Economic Development. He stated that there is an ongoing search for the Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration and he is very encouraged by the Provost leading that search.
The
Princeton Review just came out and NC State received a lot of kudos for affordability. In fact,
Forbes Magazine this week announced its top 25 list of public research universities that are best buys and best return on investments and NC State was one of those along with Carolina.
Chancellor Woodson noted that Student Health Services continues to get a lot of accolades and was ranked as the 9th best delivery system in the country for a university campus.
Chancellor Woodson stated that Talley Student Center is open and it is providing very exciting gathering space for students, families, and returning alumni, and it is now again the home of critical offices like the LGBT, Women Center, Multicultural Student affairs, student government, etc., so take advantage of the food in Talley.
Chancellor Woodson announced that the first table service restaurant that we have had in some time, which is Bistro 1887, will be opening in September on main campus. The ALOFT hotel down on Hillsborough Street is also about to open.
Chancellor Woodson announced that Marc Hoit was featured along with a number of others this week in the
Triangle Business Journal. He won along with a number of other folk, Leadership of the year award for his work here at NC State.
Chancellor Woodson reported that for the second year in a row, NC State is above $300 million in sponsored research.
Chancellor Woodson reported that the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences received more than $60 million in gifts and commitments last year, so their team is doing a terrific job.
Chancellor Woodson stated that to date, tentatively our campaign target is $1.5 billion when it concludes in 2021 and as of June 30th we were at $723 million toward that campaign goal
Chancellor Woodson reported that the College of Veterinary Medicine had another great year at
$33 million highlighted by the Randall B. Terry gift for endowed chairs, student scholarships, and research.
- Remarks from the Provost
Comments from Provost Arden
Provost Arden reported that the Chancellor’s faculty excellence hires are almost completed. He stated that they have completed 40-41 hires on the first twelve clusters. They have announced another eight clusters and are looking for another 30 hires, so lots of work to do on this and several other elements of the strategic plan this year.
Provost Arden announced that Dr. Katherine Stewart is the new Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs. She comes to the university from General Administration. Dr. Alan Rebar is joining us as the Vice Chancellor for Research. Bill Ditto will be joining us next month as the new Dean of Sciences. He is coming from the University of Hawaii, where he is the Dean of Sciences. Bill is also a physicist and is involved in Biomedical Engineering. He started the Biomedical Engineering programs at Georgia Tech and Florida and he has a great track record.
Provost Arden reported that the search is going very well for the Vice Chancellor of Finance and Administration. The search for Dean of Education and for the Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity will kick off in the next few weeks.
Provost Arden stated that searches have also kicked off for the deans of the College of Management and the College of Textiles. They are well underway and we hope to be doing campus interviews by the end of the year for both of those searches as well as for the Vice Chancellor of Finance. He noted that it’s going to be a very busy year especially for personnel within the university.
Provost Arden introduced Kelly Wick as his new assistant in the Provost’s office.
- Old/New Business
Chair Moore reported on the status of resolutions passed in the previous year
Flowchart of Faculty Governance in the UNC System
Chair Moore stated that she worked with Past Chair Zonderman and Vice Provost Katherine Stewart to come up with a flowchart that would explain where all the rules are coming from and what it is that the faculty will have to deal with. See the last link at:
http://www.ncsu.edu/faculty_senate/
Faculty Assembly
Chair Moore stated that there are representatives from each of the institutions that serve on the Faculty Assembly and meet on a regular basis including representatives from our Faculty Senate. We have several who are senators and we have several faculty members who are not on the
Senate who attend the Faculty Assembly. The Faculty Assembly is where we talk about concerns on our campuses.
- Remarks from Katherine Stewart, Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs
Vice Provost Stewart stated that she sees a lot of buckets that she would like to be working in, but the two biggest ones are faculty policy and faculty development. She said she believes Faculty Affairs should be serving all of the faculty and that means faculty at all stages of their careers, in all of the departments and all of the colleges, faculty in all aspects of their work and any aspect in what they do.
Vice Provost Stewart stated that she would like to hear from the faculty and would like to know: What should she be spending her time on? What should she be concerned about? What does it mean to the faculty for her office to be supportive of them?
- Input from senators on Topics to Discuss (ballot)
Ballots were handed out to the senators to rank their top five topics to discuss in the Senate this academic year. The results will be revealed at the next meeting.
- Issues of Concern
Two from summer 2015 have been sent to committee.
IOC 1507a - Phones & Internet Cost Hikes to Departments (Resources & Environment) IOC 1508a - Faculty Governance of Curricula and Courses (Academic Policy)
Chair Moore reported that she received another issue of concern on Thursday about the loss of
faculty and staff parking in the North Hall parking lot.
- Adjourn
A motion passed to adjourn the meeting at 4:40 p.m.
Meeting Minutes
Present:
Chair Moore, Past Chair Zonderman, Secretary Orcutt, Parliamentarian Lubischer;
Provost Arden; Senators Ange-van Heugten, Ash, Auerbach, Banks, Barlett, Bernhard, Bullock, Bykova, Byrnes, Cubbage, Davidian, Devetsikiotis, Fath, Fleisher, Gunter, Hergeth, Huffmann, Kathariou, McKoy, Pearce, Perros, Porter, Sannes, Scearce, Smith, Sotillo, Spontak, Steer, Williams
Excused:
Senator: Bird
Absent:
Senators: Argyropoulos, Laffitte, Silverberg, Moore
Guests:
P.J. Teal, Chancellor’s Office, Randy Woodson, Chancellor; Katherine Stewart, Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs; Roy Baroff, NC State Faculty Ombuds; Marc Hoit, OIT; Duane Larick, Provost’s Office
-
Call to Order
Chair Moore, called the first meeting of the sixty-second session of the NC State Faculty Senate
to order at 3 p.m.
Introductory Remarks
Chair Moore asked everyone to introduce themselves and to include their college and which term
they are serving on the Senate.
Announcements
Chair Moore stated that there would be announcements at each Senate meeting. The
announcements are going to be posted on the back of each week’s agenda.
Chair Moore pointed out that the new NC State courses and curricula website really highlights faculty governance.
Chair Moore announced that there are also announcements of what the committees are going to be covering when they meet. The committees meet on the Tuesdays after the Faculty Senate meetings and the locations are listed in the packet of information at everyone’s place. The next committee meeting will be one week from today. She introduced the co-chairs for each committee.
Chair Moore explained the items under each committee.
Academic Policy Committee:
IOC-1411B – IOC is an issue of concern, on something that came to the Senate as an issues of concern. Some of these originated in the Senate but many have come from faculty outside of the Senate. The first two digits of the number is the year. The second two digits are the month and the letter indicates whether it was the first, second or third of that month, so 1411B was 2014
November and it was the second one that month.
Chair Moore stated that the 2014 issues that are listed under the committee, most of them are almost completely resolved and the committees just need to meet and tidy those up and move on to the new issues. There are meetings next week for that.
Approval of the Minutes, Meeting No. 13, April 21, 2015
Secretary Orcutt moved approval of the minutes for regular meeting number 13 of the 61st
session of the NC State Faculty Senate.
One senator asked for clarification of the Provost’s remarks. He stated that there is a statement that says “Last academic year we had 79 faculty leaving the university for one reason or another. About 19 of those were retirements which left 60 faculty to replace.” When I read that the inference was that we didn’t have to replace any of those people who retired.
Provost Arden stated that the bottom line is that we had 79 faculty leave the university with 19 leaving for retirement and 60 left for other reasons, most commonly they were recruited by other institutions, so what that meant is that we had 60 that had left for other reasons to replace and
still other retirements that we are working on as well. Many of those retirements are actually phased retirements. So, while they are counted as individuals, but haven’t left the university because their retired positions are not fully viable to recruit into yet. Of the 60 positions for people who did leave I think we recruited about 55 of those from census to census. These numbers go from faculty census day to faculty census day, so we could recruit another 10 people before next week and it wouldn’t show up in those numbers. And on top of that there have been a lot of individual others who recruited faculty census last year and then we have additional interdisciplinary hires as well.
Senator Cubbage stated that his criteria regarding PTR were stated as a motion, and seconded. The correction was made.
Senator Cubbage also requested that the full list of options and vote tally be listed in the
Executive Summary of the minutes.
Senator Cubbage stated that he recalls hearing that the Provost did not want to be involved in the final decision of the process.
Chair Moore stated that that was not in the transcript.
Provost Arden stated that he clearly expressed an opinion which he has said repeatedly that he
wasn’t seeking authority over the final dispensation of what exactly was stated in the discussion.
Provost Arden said he would be more than happy to get into a discussion of what he recalls having said at the time and what he will still say.
Senator Cubbage stated that he doesn’t think his motion was substituted for by Past Chair Zonderman, that Past Chair Zonderman said let’s try some different alternatives here and that we forgot his motion and it was never voted on, it was just on the table, which again is not a big deal unless of course the motion said that we should retain faculty as the final arbiter of the PTR and we did not have a chance to vote on that motion which is a very significant motion.
Past Chair Zonderman stated that he thought that it was incorporated into the four options. Senator Cubbage stated that having faculty as the final arbiters of PTR is a yes or no and a very
different question.
Past Chair Zonderman stated that if you want to suspend the agenda, since it’s all coming up now
we can deal with that.
Chair Moore stated, what we are doing now is approving the minutes and if there are any corrections that need to be made.
Senator Cubbage expressed a desire to come back and address this later, and that he does not believe it is correct to say that it was suspended or superseded, it just fell off.
Chair Moore stated, what it said in the original minutes was not that it was substituted, but that you agreed to go on to the new one. We agreed to go on to the new motion, which incorporated what you had in there. It was not substituted, it was worked into the new one. We will make that more clear.
The minutes were approved with corrections.
[Secretary’s note: In an email of 4/21/15, 8:49 PM, addressed from Senator Cubbage to then- Secretary Daley and passed to Secretary Orcutt after this meeting, Senator Cubbage wrote that he wanted to be clear that his motion was “amended / substituted / or withdrawn” and that he was fine with the replacement of his motion with the new motion and recommendation. Therefore,
the final minutes of 4/21/15 reflect Senator Cubbage’s agreement to the substitution of his motion.]
Chancellor’s Remarks and Q&A
Chancellor Woodson stated that the students are back and we have a freshmen class again of
around 4,250 and that is by design. You will recall we had a peak of around 4,750 and that was moving the direction of the university in a difficult position where we didn’t have the funds to teach all of those students and graduation and retention rates were going down. So we have been for the last three or four years holding steady at 4,250 students.
Chancellor Woodson reported that about 21,000 students competed for entry into NC State and we have just under 3,000 new graduate students.
The freshman class has an all-time high of 17% out-of-state, so we are almost at that 18% cap, which many of you who were here in this body early in my tenure will recall that I said that is
the number we need to shoot for, not because we get the money because we don’t, but because it is important for the university to have the diversity and frankly the reputation that comes with competing for students from all over the globe. Of those 17% from out of state, more than 300 are from outside of the US, so we have a h3 freshman international contingency as well. We are about as far as we can push that I think, but the message is getting out.
Chancellor Woodson announced that we are now up to just under 300 thousand dollars for the “Our Three Winners” scholarship and we have advanced a little bit of money to make sure that we are able to award those scholarships, so we have two students in each college (Science, Design, and Management) that have been awarded the scholarship from the three students, who tragically lost their lives, so that is a positive thing for NC State.
Chancellor Woodson announced that the College of Humanities and Social Sciences received its largest grant in history at almost $400,000 for John Wall and his colleagues David Hill in the College of Design for the St. Paul Cathedral project that many of you visited in the Hunt Library. This now will allow the construction of the 3D model of the pulpit, St. John Cathedral and this is a great example of humanities and digital humanities. He stated that one of our new faculty members in the biomedical engineering department won the MIT technology review “Best Innovation for People under 35 years of age”. This is for work on a novel drug delivery system
to treat diabetes and cancer.
Chancellor Woodson announced that Alan Rebar will be here soon as the new Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation and Economic Development. He stated that there is an ongoing search for the Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration and he is very encouraged by the Provost leading that search. There is considerable interest in the position from various parts of the country and that is good.
The
Princeton Review just came out and NC State received a lot of kudos for affordability. In fact,
Forbes Magazine this week announced its top 25 list of public research universities that are best buys and best return on investments and NC State was one of those along with Carolina.
Chancellor Woodson noted that Student Health Services continues to get a lot of accolades and was ranked as the 9th best delivery system in the country for a university campus. We broke into the top 25 list for the first time of the most engaged alumni network of all universities in the country. Some things that you might not know about is that we are getting a lot of recognition for our food services to students, particularly as it relates to health and wellness. This year we won the
Food Management magazine Innovative Food Service of the Year award. We got a lot
of attention largely because of Lisa Everhart’s leadership. We are one of the best universities for gluten free meals to students. We have done a great job, elevating students’ knowledge about food nutrition, and about health and consequences of bad diets.
Talley Student Center is open and it is doing exactly what we hoped it would do, which is providing very exciting gathering space for students, families, and returning alumni and it is now again the home of critical offices like the LGBT, Women Center, Multicultural Student affairs, student government, etc., so take advantage of the food in Talley.
Chancellor Woodson announced that the first table service restaurant that we have had in some time, which is Bistro 1887, will be opening in September on main campus. The ALOFT hotel down on Hillsborough Street is also about to open.
Chancellor Woodson announced that Marc Hoit was featured along with a number of others this week in the
Triangle Business Journal. He won along with a number of other folk, Leadership of the year award for his work here at NC State.
Chancellor Woodson reported that for the second year in a row, NC State is above $300 million in sponsored research. He noted that we are at $307 million this year and last year we were at
$307.5 million, so we are at about the same level we were last year.
Chancellor Woodson stated that in terms of the campaign that we are in the nucleus phase of, we will be launching public in another year and a half. He reported that to date, this past year until June 30th we had $208 million in new gifts and commitments. The good thing is more than 50% of that was to endowment. The cash in the door was $119 million and of that $38 million of the cash received last year went to endowment. As of June 30th our endowment was at $989 million. We entered the year at almost $1 billion.
Chancellor Woodson reported that the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences received more than $60 million in gifts and commitments last year, so their team is doing a terrific job.
Chancellor Woodson stated that to date, tentatively our campaign target is $1.5 billion when it concludes in 2021 and as of June 30th we were at $723 million toward that campaign goal. If we launch the campaign officially that will be in November 2016 and our hope is to get above $900 million before that launch, but the development staff is pushing hard for us to launch at $1 billion in 2016 and then we would have $500 million to raise through 2021.
The College of Veterinary Medicine had another great year at $33 million highlighted by the
Randall B Terry gift for endowed chairs, student scholarships and research.
Questions and Answers
Senator Cubbage –I’m a little concerned with the new PTR proposals transferring final decision making on PTR from faculty to administrative decisions. The fact –our jobs here are to create new innovations that surely will upset the status quo and the transfer of the decisions from the faculty who are creating innovations into administrators who were supposed to reflect Jones Street. So I’m curious what your position is here, I know we have some mandates for that, but I think we are going to have to be on our mandate, and sort of what is your view of where we are.
Chancellor: I’ll start with the fact that we don’t have an obligation to reflect Jones Street and I didn’t spend any time on PTR. The Provost has been closest to this, so I will defer to him if this is the time you want to get into this. As you know we are adhering to a new policy of the Board of Governors that requires the involvement of the department head and dean.
Chancellor Woodson stated that it is hard for him to imagine a scenario where the faculty, dean, department head, and Provost are all at odds about post tenure review and I think the last thing we want to do as a university is create a bureaucracy that is another promotion process. And at the end of the day we all have, the faculty have the right to grieve any decision by any administrative officer of the university. So that process is still in place.
Chancellor Woodson stated that with regard to the budget, we are in a second continuing resolution that ends August 31st. We don’t have a budget at this point. The good news is that we are in line for one of our best budgets probably in six years at least in terms of not getting cuts. There will be cuts, but it won’t be as draconian as in the past. Secondly in both the House and
the Senate we are in for full funding for enrollment growth, which is significant for NC State because of the growth in our graduate programs and full funding of operations, which is not significant for us because we don’t have a lot of new state buildings. What is significant for us is the House had us in their budget for two buildings through a bonding and that would be a major building to house Civil, Construction, and Environment Engineering and Industrial and Systems Engineering and the Dean’s office in that blank space that will largely get engineering moved other than Nuclear Engineering.
The other big project that is exciting for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences is a new Plant Sciences complex on Centennial Campus. Both of those projects are in the House version. We have received very positive feedback from the Senate that they are favorably inclined toward both projects, so we will see how the Senate comes out with the bond package. It will likely be a bond package that requires the vote of the people, which will likely be in November 2016, which will be a big election year. The critical thing for us is if we are in that bond package we would like for the General Assembly to indicate h3 support by planning money in the budget, because we are raising 50% of these funds privately.
Chancellor Woodson said word today is that the General Assembly is likely to pass another continuing resolution through September 14th, so I don’t think we are going to have a budget by Labor Day. Good news for us is continuing resolutions haven’t been draconian in the sense that they haven’t limited our ability to do our work. We hope that continues and we don’t lose the ability to manage the university, because the General Assembly is struggling to manage the budget.
Senator Bykova—Question about faculty retention. I know that we do a lot about junior faculty retention, but what about senior faculty. The second question concerns internal research funding,
whether we have any chance to get internal research funding like fellowships, scholarships, and grants.
Chancellor Woodson stated that internal research funding is without a doubt limited and it’s very limited because all of the money is limited and we are working hard to replace 79 faculty, so there is limited opportunity for internal research funding. We put some resources in the innovation fund to try to help faculty move innovations beyond the laboratory to market and that is paying off for us, but certainly the Vice Chancellor for Research has some internal funds that
are used for research stimulating, but it is pretty limited at this point and time. And retention, my experience has been its mostly senior faculty that we are working to retain.
Provost Arden stated that retention is a big issue, not just for us but other universities in the system as well. We work very hard with retention and we spend a lot on retention and it’s both younger faculty and senior faculty. The Chancellor works very hard to secure the authority from the Board of Governors for preemptive retentions. What I’m seeing over the years is that there is a separation between the success rates for preemptive retentions and the non-preemptive retentions meaning that when we started this a few years back they were both in 70% in terms of success rates, now the latest data shows that preemptive retention, if we can get to an individual while they are being courted, before they have a letter in hand, our success rate is about 90 percent and if we wait until they have the letter in hand it drops to about 50 percent, so we try to be proactive wherever we can. We are working very hard and quite frankly we are spending a
lot of money on this. “I think we have to really think correctly about other limits to what we are
going to spend on retention, particularly going forward.”
Provost Arden stated that this also plays into merit programs on an annual basis. We worked very hard to come up with a 3% merit program last year. We are going to think hard about this again this year. We don’t want there to be increasing separation between our average faculty salaries and those of our peers because that enhances the rate of which faculty are approved and the amount of money that we have to spend on retention, so there are a lot of factors here and we are working very hard at it and as an institution, unfortunately we are spending quite a bit on it at the moment.
Chancellor Woodson stated that on the fellowship side, every year throughout this difficult fiscal environment we may do investments in the graduate student support plan, so we have tried hard to keep that source of money available to faculty, but the reality is we are well behind our peers in having fellowship funds. We have very few endowed fellowships in the university, so one
priority that he makes when he talks to donors is try to get them interested in supporting graduate education. That is a pretty tough sale because most people that have an affection for the university draw that affection from their undergraduate experience here, but there are some that have significant resources that can help us.
Past Chair Zonderman commented that if there is some way to rethink university faculty scholars program or the distinguished professors program to put some money on more senior full professors who have distinguished careers left, rather than just the full within the first year or
two or three after promotion, because that’s often what he sees as a challenge, is retaining full professors even further into their careers and who are continuing to make distinguished contributions.
Have you heard anything about the flexibility we had last year to do at least internal salary exercises?
Chancellor Woodson responded yes. The hardship is that those exercises created pain. He said on the one hand he is advocating constantly to the General Assembly to give us complete flexibility with our budget, plus manage resources. In a system that has historically waited on the state to give us money before we did anything, that is a hard cultural barrier to overcome. We are used to “well if the state give us money for raises, we give raises, and if they don’t, we don’t” and we are falling behind. Other states are investing now and you have read all the politics, they are talking about a table for the state. If you don’t know what the table is, the tax bill of rights basically says if there is increased revenue they cut taxes. If there is increased revenue there is a reason. There are more people paying taxes and there are more people that have needs, so I hope that doesn’t go anywhere because that would be unfortunate.
Chancellor Woodson stated that he wants the flexibility, but the state needs to make critical investments and we are being pushed. We are one of the most affordable systems in the country, but those people on Jones Street are justified in my opinion in saying they still support us
because we get more money per student from the state than all but two other states. We have other restrictions that make it complicated. We don’t get the out of state tuition, for example. If you look around the country, out of state enrollment is almost 55% of the total enrollment of the undergraduates at Purdue and it used to be 25 percent. We don’t have some of the levels that other places enjoy, but we do enjoy h3 state appropriations.
Senator Fleisher stated that he heard on the news that there would be a 2% increase for state employees, is that correct?
Chancellor Woodson stated that the House had in their budget a 2% increase for all state employees including the university. The Senate had none. There is about a $400 million difference that they have to resolve and if they are looking for an easy way to not make hard decisions about individual parts of the budget, that’s an easy one. He said that he is fearful that could happen, but as David said we do have the flexibility and the Provost mentioned too that we are contemplating how to manage this just like we did last year. We certainly gave better raises last year than we had money for from the state and that was painful for some colleges.
Remarks from the Provost
Provost Arden began by addressing Senator Cubbage’s comments. He stated that he wanted to
be clear about a couple of things.
Provost Arden stated that the addition of the role of administrators or the theme of making sure there is administrative responsibility here at the post tenure review process comes from the Board of Governors on the new BOG policy. This was not part of last year’s BOG actions, but the prior year, and several of us, including myself and the Chancellor were at the meeting where this was discussed. We were at the Ed planning committee meeting and many of us around the
table expressed significant concern, because we felt that it was not really a necessary adjustment. He said he had previously given presentations to the BOG on NC State’s post tenure review program. We are doing exactly what the policy said we should be doing and he felt the policy was working very well. So, just to be clear the changes that are being brought about are not in any way because we (Provost and Chancellor) wanted them or the leadership of any other university wanted them. They are there because of the intent of the BOG and that is okay. Because of that new policy we are being asked to revise our own regulations with respect to post tenure review and the fundamental issue here as it resolved was that 1) to insert a role for department heads and deans, the BOG wanted a far more evaluative role where department heads and deans would play and then it emerged to what happens if the dean disagrees with the committee. He thinks the likelihood of that occurring on a regular basis or even a rare basis is
not high. We all respect the peer review process. The original intent of this policy was meant to be a peer review process, it was meant to be a positive process and not simply a negative process, but it is clear the intent of the policy of the BOG is to bring administrators into that role.
Provost Arden stated that when the meeting took place at the end of the last academic year, he made the statement and will make the statement again, that he as Provost is not seeking a role in that process. It is not something that he wants to get involved in. He is comfortable that it is a college level process. He is not seeking to be the final determinant on those evaluations. It is not something that he has wanted or sought from the outset. He said at the end of the day after discussions with Betsy Brown, prior Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, Past Chair Zonderman, Chair Moore, and some advice from legal counsel, it was evident that there is not a precedent within the system for a college committee to be the final determinant on a personnel issue such
as this. For example, if a college committee was the final determinant of post tenure review, and remember, all post tenure review says is whether someone is meeting expectations or not. If they are not meeting expectations there is a developmental plan or reevaluation, it’s not necessarily linked to an administrative disciplinary process, but in this particular case if a college committee was the final determinant of a negative post tenure review, then they would be the subjects of the grievance. The faculty member would then file a grievance against the committee, but we don’t have that precedent anywhere in the university right now and quite frankly, he would feel uncomfortable about putting faculty in that position and he is not sure that we would get many folks to serve on those committees under those circumstances, so despite the fact that none of
this was initiated by the Provost or the Chancellor’s office, he is not and was not seeking a role
in this process. He stated that he became convinced that was the best alternative at the end of the day that under the rare circumstance that the dean and the committee do not agree on the outcome, that the Provost is going to be the final decider. He doesn’t think that is atypical, that it is consistent with all other personnel policy the way it’s conducted. He thinks the likelihood that that will happen on a regular basis or even on an annual basis is extraordinarily low, so that’s
how that discussion evolved and he’s for this to be a more complete discussion at a later time.
Senator Auerbach stated that just to get a sense of the respective rarity of this, in the somewhat analogous case of promotion and tenure decisions, the faculty decision and the dean’s decision when they are not in alignment, how many times has that happened and what have you done?
Provost Arden stated that he would have to go back and review the data. He stated that he would like to give accurate data and he doesn’t know that that really is a great analogy, because in that system there are departmental voting faculty, there is a college committee, there is the dean’s opinion, and then eventually there is the Provost’s recommendation to the Chancellor, so it is not exactly the same and by the time it gets to him there are already four levels of opinions to wade into and if he has any questions and by definition, every potentially negative decision goes to a university committee for review and they wade in as well, so he has five levels of input to evaluate by the time he makes a determination. He said he would try and pull some data to give some indication. He thinks the determination will be sometime it’s in favor and sometimes it’s the other way.
Senator Cubbage asked, how many grievances have been brought and what has been the disposition of the faculty? He doesn’t think there have been many grievances from what he understands. He said it would be nice to know how serious a threat is this.
Provost—How serious of a threat that our deans cannot overrule a departmental committee on this?
Senator Cubbage stated that there is no precedent for a college committee to be the final decision in a personnel matter, but I think there is a precedent that every department makes these
decisions on PTR with the departmental PTR committee when they are making those decisions.
Provost stated those are not final decisions, but recommendations to the department head, to the college committee, to the dean, and then to university; that is not a final decision.
Cubbage—Department PTR committee makes a recommendation to the department head. Provost—that is not a final decision and what we are talking about here is the final decision.
Cubbage—Maybe we can model it after that, instead of it being the Provost’s final decision we
can model it after the college committee and have the same process..
Provost--No, somebody makes the final decision on promotion and tenure, I make the final decision.
Cubbage –so when the departmental committee makes the decision you are making the final decision?
Provost-If you look at promotion and tenure on a regular basis, those going up for promotion, you can have positive and negative votes at the department, department head level, and college level…most of the time they go in the same direction, but you can have times when you will have two in that direction and two in this direction and at the end of the day I make the decision.
Cubbage – but the PTR do not currently make the final decision?
Chair Moore - We have two issues here being discussed: post-tenure review, and promotion &
tenure...
Provost –at the moment I don’t make the decision, because I’m not involved in the process. The BOG are the ones that put department heads and deans fairly and squarely in the process, what happens if the dean disagrees with the department, that was the issue you brought up fairly and squarely in the process and the whole question and that is the issue that we are trying to resolve and that is the only reason that the Provost has been put into this situation.
Cubbage – I would like to look at this again and I hope we can.
Chair Moore stated that this option is one of the options that senators can choose on the ballot for further discussion. We are not going to resolve it today.
Comments from Provost Arden
We are in the middle year of our strategic plan. We are in the fifth year of a nine-year plan and while things are going extraordinarily well, I’m constantly reminded that we really have to stay focused, focus our resources and work hard to make sure that we meet our 2020 goals, so this is going to be a very important year. There are a lot of things on the table. The Chancellor’s faculty excellence hires are almost completed. We have completed 40-41 hires on the first twelve clusters. We have announced another eight clusters and we are looking for about another
30 hires, so lots of work to do on this and several other elements of the strategic plan this year.
This is also going to be a busy year for searches. I have just come off some very successful leadership searches. Katherine Stewart is our new Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs. We are delighted that she is here on campus. Dr. Alan Rebar is joining us as the Vice Chancellor for Research. Bill Ditto will be joining us next month as the new Dean of Sciences. He is coming to us from the University of Hawaii, where he is the Dean of Sciences. Bill is also a physicist and
is involved in Biomedical Engineering. He started the Biomedical Engineering programs at
Georgia Tech and Florida and he has a great track record.
Provost Arden introduced Kelly Wick as his new assistant in the Provost’s office.
Provost Arden stated that this year we have a lot of searches. We have a search for a new Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration to replace Charlie Leffler’s position. The search is going very well. We hope to have someone in place early next year. We have also kicked off searches for the deans of the College of Management and the College of Textiles. They are well underway and we hope to be doing campus interviews by the end of the year for both of those searches as well as for the Vice Chancellor of Finance.
We are going to kick off a search for the dean of education and also a search for the Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity in the next few weeks. It’s going to be a very busy year especially for personnel within the university.
Old/New Business
Chair Moore reported on the status of resolutions passed in the previous year
Resolution for a University Standing Committee on Lectures and Speakers—to create it
This was sent to the committee on committees and the committee on committees is very supportive of the concept. They would like more detail of how this would work with the Harrelson Committee so are asking what the next step will be, so this will be discussed in the next Executive Committee to see what the next step will be.
Resolution on Board of Governors Teaching Award (recommending that non-tenure track faculty be eligible)
This was sent to the Faculty Assembly, which has not met yet. Steve Leonard, Chair of the Faculty Assembly was supportive of the idea, so this is going to be discussed at the Faculty Assembly level.
Resolutions on Funding Libraries services (recommending restoring library staff to levels adequate to allow D.H. Hill and Hunt Libraries to function at past levels)
Vice Provost Susan Nutter’s report is that the Provost has made enrollment increase funds recurring, available to the Libraries beginning this year, 2015-16. As a result we have been able to resume 24 hour opening of the Hunt and Hill Libraries for five days a week and to increase the collections budget by $1 million annually. We are very appreciative of the support of the
Faculty Senate and faculty members.
Flowchart of Faculty Governance in the UNC System
Chair Moore stated that she worked with Past Chair Zonderman and Vice Provost Katherine
Stewart to come up with a flowchart that would explain where all the rules are coming from and
what is it that the faculty will have to deal with. See the last link at:
http://www.ncsu.edu/faculty_senate/
Chair Moore explained that the Board of Governors oversees all seventeen institutions in the UNC system and when the BOG makes a policy it applies to all of the institutions. There is a President of the UNC System who reports to the Board of Governors and for all of the institutions there are Chancellors who work with the UNC system. We have the Board of Trustees and they work with NC State University, but whenever the Board of Governors does create a policy all of the institutions are required to comply with it. So as we talk through all of
these policies and rules and regulations keep in mind where they come from and if it comes from the Board of Governors we are unable to change that. We have to work with those policies as we make changes to ours.
Faculty Assembly
There are representatives from each of the institutions that serve on the Faculty Assembly and meet on a regular basis and we do have representatives from our Faculty Senate who are on the Faculty Assembly from the Senate. We have several who are senators and we have several faculty members who are not on the Senate who attend the Faculty Assembly. That is where we talk about all of our concerns on our campuses.
Questions
Senator Williams stated that Vanderbilt did a study of cost of compliance and there was talk at
the Faculty Assembly that perhaps some of the schools in the North Carolina system would try to follow this model to do sort of the same kind of calculations.
Provost Arden stated that he has not seen that anyone has done that. Vanderbilt and some other schools have done it and they have shown that the cost of compliance is extraordinary and it is not getting less. In fact, in the last six months he has invested a lot more in the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity to expand our Title IX compliance and we are in the process of hiring a compliance manager who will be in the office of Legal Affairs to help coordinate all of
this. So he doesn’t see an indication that this is getting less, if anything he sees an indication that to figure out how to manage compliance and everything that is coming down from the Office of Civil Rights, the bottom line is it is still cheaper to be compliant.
Senator Auerbach stated that it would be useful to get data from us and other places to see if anyone has discovered a way to do it somewhat more cheaply. If they are all going to be 16% that is interesting, but if one of them is 12, it might be interesting to find out how they did that.
Remarks from Katherine Stewart, Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs
Dr. Stewart introduced herself and talked about her credentials.
Vice Provost Stewart stated that she got into administration primarily because as a faculty member she thought it was really important that faculty voices were heard in administrative decisions. She has been part of departments that worked really well and has been part of departments that don’t. She feels that departments work better when faculty are really engaged with them. She said part of her pleasure about being here is being in a land grant institution and thinking about what it means to be an engaged faculty member. She is delighted to be on campus.
Stewart stated that she sees a lot of buckets that she would like to be working in but the two biggest ones are faculty policy and faculty development. She said she believes Faculty Affairs should be serving all of the faculty and that means faculty at all stages of their careers, in all of the departments and all of the colleges, faculty in all aspects of their work and any aspect in what they do.
Vice Provost Stewart stated that she would like to hear from the faculty. What should she be spending her time on? What should she be concerned about? What does it mean to the faculty for her office to be supportive of them?
Senator - The Office of Institution and Diversity also has a person who oversees faculty diversity. What do you envision your relationship with that individual to be?
Stewart – Marcia Gumpertz is in that role right now and she and I have been working together on a couple of different projects. We have worked on some workshops for department heads for search committees around hiring. We are also working together to develop the climate workshops. Marcia and I have a lot in common in terms of the way we think about equity issues in the faculty. I’m really looking forward to being creative with her about where we are doing
the things we need to be doing and what else we could be doing and where it would make the most impact. As with many institutions we are not doing as well as we would like to do in many areas with regard to faculty equity and so that is something that is pretty high on my radar and I’m looking forward to working with Marcia on that.
Senator Williams stated that he and Senator Banks were on that RPT taskforce that revised the RPT process and he heard something here today that is disturbing, that the university RPT committee now only considers problem cases, right?
Provost Arden responded, not exactly, there are randomly selected cases from every college. There are two groups, randomly selected cases and anything that has a risk of being negative, anything that the dean or Provost thinks is negative, they will automatically send it to the committee. Every year that committee produces a report that he responds to in writing. It has been a positive process for constant improvement and refinement of the promotion and tenure process.
Senator Cubbage-The committee only uses the process, it doesn’t make any substantive
decisions?
Provost Arden stated that the committee is not charged with making any evaluative review. There are four other levels. The committee’s principal role is to make sure that nothing was missed and that everything was done appropriately and to make recommendations for further improvement of the process.
Senator Bykova – The question is about the sabbatical system that we have. I’m talking about a system of sabbatical where the faculty are encouraged to take a leave and encouraged not to stay put here on campus but try to go elsewhere, just to learn about some different systems, educational systems, spend this half year elsewhere to be exposed to another culture or
language. It might sound odd but I can tell you that I spent two summers in Europe and this is how institutions of higher education work. They encourage their faculty to go elsewhere, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, etc., and learn something new. So, in terms of our faculty development it takes much more than just to stay here being involved with our activity and dealing with our research.
Stewart stated that she is really happy to explore the question of how sabbatical and scholarly leave is handled in different colleges. One of the things that she is acutely aware of on a campus like this is how to think about policy in a way that allows a lot of freedom for departments and colleges that operate very differently in terms of faculty life and the way that faculty career arcs kind of happen. We don’t want to build a policy that inadvertently creates challenges for colleges and for faculty career arcs that in other colleges are absolutely a good idea. She stated
that she would love to sit down with faculty and talk about what is working well, how it works in different colleges and how might different proposals play out in different colleges and what are the physical implications about colleges as well.
Senator Steer - Sometimes I feel like a frog in a puddle of water that is being slowly heated up. Over the last ten years we have had quite a significant shift in administrative responsibilities to faculty and it kind of affects all of the faculty. I look at the research side and the teaching side and we don’t have any mechanism for somebody in administration to look at things from where the faculty sits, so I think that affects all of us.
Stewart stated that as someone who spent an enormous amount of time wrangling with the NIH and IRB on her grants, she often felt like she was spending more time doing administrative paperwork rather than science. It’s incredibly frustrating to feel like that’s just constantly happening and it is a combination of the compliance, the different reports that the Feds or the State want and the challenges they are thinking about how to fund the challenges of the department. One of the things that we struggle with is this question of if the work has to get done, do we hire staff to do the work or do we push it back on faculty. If we are hiring staff to do the work there is less money to hire new faculty. It’s not an easy thing to wrangle with, but
she thinks you have to wrangle with it. She said at one point she felt that she filled out forms for a living and wondered when she stopped being a scientist and started filling out forms for a living.
She stated that she thinks they should talk about what faculty life looks like and where do you see this being a hindrance to your ability to take on the big three.
Senator – Just a quick question from a non-tenure track faculty. Are there any specific objectives that you have to support that group of people?
Stewart’s response was, yes, she started her career as a non-tenure track faculty member. She stated that one of the things she is hardened by is the things that she thinks State does well with regard to non-tenure track faculty in terms of some of their policies around that. We absolutely have to be thinking about what it means to be supporting non-tenure track faculty, not only in terms of the work they are doing with us now but what it means to build a career path for the non-tenure track faculty at NC State. A lot of faculty choose to be non-tenure earning for various personal and professional reasons. Other faculty at some point may want to move between tracks but the idea should be that we are all faculty at NC State and we should be
thinking about what it means to do our jobs in a way that builds our own career arc and our own professional development. So, yes, one of the things that is on my agenda is really taking a hard look at what do we do to support the career arc of every faculty member here at NC State.
Chair Moore announced that Brian Sischo, Vice Chancellor for Advancement, will be at the next
Senate meeting to talk about the new faculty giving campaign.
Input from senators on Topics to Discuss (ballot)
Ballots were handed out to the senators to rank their top five topics to discuss in the Senate this year. The results will be revealed at the next meeting.
Issues of Concern
Two from summer 2015 have been sent to committee.
IOC 1507a - Phones & Internet Cost Hikes to Departments (Resources & Environment) IOC 1508a - Faculty Governance of Curricula and Courses (Academic Policy)
Chair Moore reported that she received another issue of concern on Thursday about the loss of
faculty and staff parking in the North Hall parking lot.
Adjourn
A motion passed to adjourn the meeting at 4:40 p.m.
