Secretary Orcutt heard a motion and second for approval of the minutes for regular meeting number 2 of the 62nd session of the NC State Faculty Senate.

The minutes were approved.

5. Chancellor’s Comments and Q/A

Chancellor Woodson gave an update on the budget.

Chancellor Woodson reported that the General Assembly passed a budget for this year and it is about a $17 million cut to the operating budget of the university system, which translates to about $3.2 million cut for NC State, the lowest cut in six years. He said on the positive side we received for the first time in five years, full enrollment growth funding. The university system received $49 million and NC State will benefit from that enrollment growth funding.

Chancellor Woodson stated that there are no raises for State employees, but that a $750 bonus is to be given in December to all state employees. The BOG at their last meeting delegated authority to UNC GA for the possible raise policy for EPA, so the administration will be discussing how much money they have and whether raises are a possibility for EPA staff.

Chancellor Woodson stated that the problem for us in the budget is in the second year of the biennium which doesn’t get a lot of attention because the General Assembly never follow the second year of the budget. They always rewrite the budget. The second year of the budget is a significant cut to the university system of somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 million. So that is something we have to work hard on next year.

Chancellor Woodson stated that the other draconian cut in the second year in our opinion is a cut to all advancement activities and a limitation to no more than $1 million from any one campus for fund raising, so you can’t spend state money on fundraising, which is fine if you have a $2.7M endowment and can underwrite advancement with the endowment. We will eventually get there. We have been weaning ourselves off of state funding for development for several years now, but we cannot get to a million dollars. Our total advancement operation across the entire university is around $15 million, which include all colleges, every unit, and about 45% of that is state funding. The percentage has been going down each year and as the endowment grows, we charge the endowment 100 basis points (1%) to underwrite development activities. So currently our endowment is around $985 million and that equals to about $9 million that we are about to get from endowment to support development. If we were at 2.6 billion we would have $26 million to spend on development, so we are a ways off. He said NC State raises more money per dollar invested than any school in the system, so he is hopeful we will be able to reverse this, but in the meantime we will work hard to make sure that doesn’t happen in the second year.

Chancellor Woodson stated that today the Senate and the House are trying to resolve their differences in the bond initiative, which is good news for the university system. The Senate is passing this afternoon a bond initiative that would have just under a billion dollars of 2 billion for the university system for new projects. NC State is in the Senate’s version for our

engineering oval project, which is a critical engineering building. He stated that they would move industrial and systems engineering and civil engineering and the dean’s office over to this new building, which will be the blank space between Engineering I and the Hunt Library. What is in the House version that is not in the Senate version is a big project for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, a Plant Sciences building, which is critical for that college, so that is in the House version, but not in the Senate version. We are hoping that they will come to conference this week, that the House version will prevail, and we will be the only university in the system with two capital projects. He said at the very least Engineering will be there.

The other good news relative to Plant Sciences that the Senate did is they used another bill called the self-liquidating bill, this is a bill that has all of the borrowing approval that universities use to build projects that are paid through fees, such as dormitories. The Talley Student Center was one of these where you have a revenue stream associated with the project that allows the university to pay it back instead of the state and that is called self-liquidating bonds.

Chancellor Woodson stated that the Senate put in the self-liquidating bond bill, a provision that allows us to continue to plan for the Plant Sciences building along with allocation of some money. If the General Assembly passes the authority to plan a facility it is rare that it doesn’t get built, so we are confident that we are going to come out of the session either with two projects on the bond initiative or one funded for planning. Remember, the bond initiative is something that has to be voted on by the people of North Carolina and that’s another difference between the Senate and the House. The Senate has the vote occurring in November 2016 and the House has it occurring in March 2016, which is when we have the consolidated primaries for the presidential elections. Assuming the bond passes as currently written with one or two of our projects in it, we will spend the better part of the next year making sure that everyone in North Carolina knows why this is a good investment.

The Chancellor reported that in addition to our billion dollars for UNC there is about $500 million for a program that cities in rural communities would solicit grants for infrastructure projects like sewers. He said that is what gets rural communities bought in and the other thing that gets communities across the state bought in are community colleges at around $500 million. So, $500 for infrastructure, sewers, water projects and the other $500 million for community colleges and about $1 billion for higher education.

Question: Is the new engineering building cost shared with money from the university?

The Chancellor’s response was yes. We are raising $60 million, so it is a $154 million project and 50% is bonded by the state and 50% is bonded by the university, paid for by private donors and what we call a performance contract.

Chancellor Woodson stated that the infrastructure associated with the project is an expansion of the heating and cooling capacity on Centennial Campus, so we are able to save money because we can put in more efficient systems and as we save money on utilities we use that savings to pay back the bond. He stated that $60 million is privately funded, so we have raised about one half so far without the state having endorsed the project. We have a lot of people interested in

investing in this project. They weren’t willing to until they knew the state was going to fund it, and then $17 million from the performance contract of the infrastructure part.

Chancellor Woodson stated that NC State is the only university in the system that has authority to do performance contracts. He explained that we did the co-generation facility two years ago where you take waste steam and generate electricity, which saves a lot of money and that money is being used to pay back the bonds that were taken out to put the infrastructure in place.

Chancellor Woodson announced that US News and World Report has come out again and NC State is improving in the rankings at 89th among national universities and 37th among publics, which is up from 43rd last year. Also some things we should take pride in is we continue to be on the best value list in higher education and we are also in the top 25 of public universities with the least debt of graduating seniors.

Chancellor Woodson stated that President Obama and the Department of Education have been working hard on a college score board over the last year. The theory behind it is that it gives consumers accurate information about the cost of attending various universities, the payback on that investment, and other aspects of attending the university. The bottom line is that the universities were not excited about this because of the accuracy of the data. One of the things that the public seems to be insisting on getting is return on investment and the only way to truly get that is to understand what people make when they leave the university and that data is hard to come by. The US government gets it by looking at unemployment insurance payments by states. The problem is that there are companies that our graduates go to work for and they live in North Carolina, but the company pays unemployment insurance in New York because they work for IBM or they pay unemployment insurance in California because they work for Cisco, so their salaries aren’t captured in this data. Regardless of that, the data was good for NC State relative to many of our peers. In fact, among large universities, those with at least 15,000 graduates, we rank in the top 25 of 22 disciplines and we were in the top ten in all science and engineering disciplines among public universities for return on investment. We were number one in post graduate earnings for engineers in the southeast region. He noted that Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech are both in that region. We are way below average for tuition, way above average for graduation rate, and way above average for starting salaries.

Chancellor Woodson announced that Vice Chancellor Leffler will be retiring soon, this is his last week. He has been a great colleague and a great leader at this university.

Chancellor Woodson announced that NC State has a few additions to the Board of Trustees. They are Chip Andrews, Raleigh Business Leader; Ann Goodnight, co-founder of SAS, Stan Kelly, recently retired President for the southeast region of Wells Fargo; Dwayne Washington, an outstanding athlete at NC State and a high school football coach, and our Student Body President.

Chancellor Woodson reported that there have been a number dean retirements, so we have a busy year. The Provost is busy with four searches for the colleges of Design, Education, Management, and Textiles.

6. Old and New Business

Second reading of Proposed Resolution on Post Tenure Review

Discussion

Senator Cubbage stated that the process was insufficient and did not give the faculty adequate time for reflection and consultation, and indeed the substance, which essentially transferred into a final decision for PTR from the faculty committee to an administrative committee, is a bad decision.

He reviewed some highlights in the handout that he passed out:

Excessive PTR Revision

Senator Cubbage stated that the thesis is that the PTR revision was more than what was required and attachment A has the letter from Provost Arden when he was acting Interim Senior Vice President of the UNC System with the subject: Post-Tenure Review Policy Implementation. It raises a substantive issue when it says “Deans must provide an evaluative review in addition to that by the department chair, which is interpreting the UNC Policy manual 400.3.3 that says both the department chair, unit head and the dean must conduct an evaluative review and the Provost must certify the aspect is in compliance, so those do not say that the dean, department head or the Provost have to have the final decision. So, our new rule goes far beyond what is required by the UNC system and in fact, by the memo from Warwick Arden at that time.

Unnecessary Administrative Control

Senator Cubbage stated, basically we have transferred final approval of SMEs to the Provost and the Provost more often than not will refer to the deans who he hired who he believes will transfer the PTRs from faculty committees to the administration.

Lack of Faculty Consultation

Senator Cubbage stated that Chair Moore ent out information to show that there has been some conversation and probably about half of that conversation saying that this is the end of tenure as we know it and the other half is David responding to my comments. The Senate did consider this, essentially to oppose the change to the Provost making the final decision. The resolution as you go from faculty governance from basically the UNC system is a much more extended faculty consultation than emails between the Chair of the Senate and the outline, so I think we need to have a much more effective consultation to have this meet the UNC standards of shared governance.

Grievance as a Diversion

Senator Cubbage: Throughout this process, every meeting we attended in the Personnel Policy Committee and at least one meeting where we talked about it as a Senate, the reason for this transfer from faculty to the administration was that faculty may be subject to a grievance, but we all know that the process for a grievance was extremely excruciating and from 2003 to 2014 faculty committees for PTR by my estimate, about 1500 PTR cases and there were no grievances and no faculty member will grieve against another faculty member because we can’t hire or fire or grieve against an administrator who can actually make that personnel decision. We did have 60 deficient persons and I know of four in my department who retired just so they could avoid

going through post tenure review, so clearly having faculty as the main focus here has been acceptable, and there is no reason to say that grievance is the cause to avoid faculty decision making, and in fact, grievance has not been very successful.

The bigger picture here is about tenure. What is tenure? Really the idea is to be change makers and to challenge the status quo and find new information that inherently will overthrow the status quo. Some here say this is called creative destruction. Basically our job is to find new information that will threaten vested interests, to find and imagine new activities, to see them and to really have critical thinking that tenure really provides an opportunity for.

Senator Cubbage stated that if you aren’t creative and if you aren’t talented and productive, you may be charming and I think there will be great incentives to have charm be a very important criteria as you move forward in these tenure decisions. The department head will make the first call and the dean will make the second call. You have a committee, but really the department head will say yes or no. I served as a department head for a short period of time and I’m sure I was fair and judicious in all cases but I have known heads who were not, so I think that having this every five years, having a head making that decision and a dean making that decision will be really much less focused on merit.

Peer Institutions

Senator Cubbage: None of our peer institutions have any administrative final decisions in post tenure review. Some actually have no post tenure review. There may be some, but we should look at that before we jump off the cliff. There are plenty of precedents for faculty committees. As we pointed out we get faculty PTR committees and really faculty PTR decisions have been made for seventeen years and there are no known grievances, so really there is no precedent for the administration making the final decision in PTR, they do make it in RPT but that is a different story.

The other end is let’s try it and see how it works. It will become clear slowly, we won’t recognize really what are the pernicious effects of this and it won’t be possible. When it becomes in, we know that if this rule is instituted it will stay and let’s just see how it works is not going to be a satisfactory answer. We should have a resolution as faculty that to not have it tried now, not be the pioneers in the US in administrative decisions on post tenure review.

We Represent the Faculty

Senator Cubbage: We should not be rubberstamping these draconian decisions despite whatever excuses may be made. No offense for our committee but if we spend the rest of our time discussing parking and phone bills we are not going to be a strongly representative Senate. PTR is the most important decision we will make as a Senate and it really does relate to our core foundation values. Pedagogy and extension are crucial and there will be huge pressures for us to conform on climate change. My colleagues in DENR cannot mention the word global-warmingor climate change. We do not need that pressure unless it was forced on us.

Senator Pearce stated that he is sympathetic with the main thrust of what Senator Cubbage said, but he is not sure whether the past is a good indication of the future.

Senator Porter stated that he is curious what status this policy is in.

Chair Moore stated that it started in summer of 2014 and there were numerous times when it came to the Senate and to the PPC and the deadline to submit it was the end of May.

Senator Fleisher stated that as a clarification the Board of Governors dictated that there would be three independent decisions made by the college committee, department head, and by the dean. The problem that arose is what happens if there is a disagreement between the college and the dean or a dean and department head. Who makes the final decision? He stated that he believes they received an email from the Provost saying that he would make the final decision and that is where the problem arises now. Do we go along with that? Do we recommend that that is okay or do we say no, the college committee should make the final decision? The Office of Legal Affairs said that would be a mistake because it would put the faculty committee in the position of being sued. Do we recommend that the college committee be the final decider or the Provost be the final decider? This was discussed during a meeting of the Governance and Personnel Policy Committees and the consensus was that it was for all intents and purposes a done deal.

Senator: From my perspective one question that I had relative to paragraph number 7 is that there really is no other precedent at other similar size schools as NC State, so I’m trying to understand why this new policy is being implemented.

Chair Moore stated that the Board of Governors makes policies that all the institutions in the UNC system must comply with. The BOG issued this policy and then all of the campuses had to come up with regulations to be in compliance with the new policy. This was a mandate from the Board of Governors.

Senator: I’m a bit confused. This has been submitted but now we are discussing it again.

Chair Moore stated that any Senator can submit a resolution. Normally the resolutions come from the committee after it has been discussed.

Senator: So are we going to withdraw this submission or change it.

Chair Moore responded, no.

Senator Cubbage stated that the request is to go back and rewrite that regulation.

Senator Williams stated that the resolution basically requests that we have a policy different from the other sixteen institutions.

Senator Cubbage disagreed. He pointed to the memo from Provost Arden that states the deans must provide an evaluative review.

Senator: What are the other institutions doing?

Senator Cubbage stated that he asked that question and no one would tell him.

Senator Laffitte stated that he feels like a mandate from the BOG requires you to either fight a battle or go up against them, so he will not vote for it because he doesn’t want to fight a battle that can’t be won.

Senator Fleisher called the question.

Chair Moore reminded the Senators that they will be voting on the actual resolution that is presented.

A hand vote was taken and the results were 10 in favor, 12 opposed, and 3 abstentions. The motion did not carry.

Sen.Issue4: Broader review of shared governance at NCSU

Past Chair Zonderman thanked Betsy Brown for working with him on the draft. He stated that it memorializes what they hoped are some best practices. He thinks the administration has worked fairly well with the Faculty Senate. He said his feeling was to get this on paper because we now have a new successor to Betsy and some day we will have a new Chancellor and Provost. This does not have the force of policy, but it is good to have something in writing to say this is how we think as a body to do things right with administration on reviewing policy.

Appendix B: Draft working document for Best Practices in Shared Governance

Chair Moore stated that this document has been reviewed by the Executive Committee, so she asked for input from the senators.

Senator Fleisher commented that he thinks the document is very well written.

Senator Cubbage suggested these additions (italicized):

The preamble should say that this document complements the UNC system Faculty Assembly University of North Carolina standards of shared governance.

At the end of Paragraph three he would like to add: Open and transparent communication and information sharing provides sound public administration bases for reviewing and revising policies; identifying the best alternatives to achieve academic objectives; and build trust among administration, faculty, and staff.

4)Drafts of new or revised policies and regulations sent to the Chair should include a cover sheet (as described in the PRR Template to which REG01.25.05 refers) including a rationale and a list of theproposed changes and the campus administrators, offices or governance bodies to which the drafts have been or will be sent for review, approval, or information.

5)Information and historical data regarding the reasons for the policies should be provided with the proposals, and requests by Senate committee members or Senators for more information should be responded to promptly.

Chair Moore wanted to know if Senator Cubbages’s suggestion is to overrule the committee structure and rather than having the majority opinion of the committee be represented you are saying that any of the 35 senators could then request any information.

Senator Cubbage – Is that our current policy, that only the chairs can request information?

Chair Moore stated that is how we operate. When we are in a committee we have discussions, so it is vetted. The discussion goes through the process of being vetted and then the majority opinions of those is how the committee moves forward. That is how committees work.

Senator Argyropoulos stated that a senator may have an issue where he or she wants to find out specific information, how can he or she voice their opinion?

Chair Moore stated that we have been very open and transparent so you can see what has been discussed in committees. All of the committees are promptly posting their minutes so you can see what has been discussed, so any senator can send comments to the co-chairs of that committee or have discussions with the co-chairs. Once it has been vetted in the committee the issues do come to the Senate if the committee deems them to be important enough to come to the Senate. Some of the issues are resolved or are able to be taken care of.

Senator Argyropoulos stated that he would love to see the data. How long do we have to ask to get this data? Which committee do I have to lobby?

Chair Moore stated that if the Senate has a reason for needing the data then it can be requested. What would be the reason for needing the data?

Senator Cubbage stated that his reason is we now have a new post tenure review rule that says your only recourse if you are dismissed is to make a grievance.

Chair Moore noted that we are talking about post tenure review. The consequences if you are found to not be meeting expectation is that you have to work out a document for how you are going to work through that with your department to make progress. There is nothing about dismissal in there.

Senator Cubbage stated that your ultimate recourse if you are not satisfied with the outcome is you can file a grievance. Saying that this is a recourse is fallacious. The word on the street is that one person at this university has won a grievance once.

Chair Moore asked how that is relevant to anything.

Senator Cubbage stated that grievance is our final recourse if we do not meet SME’s and now we know nothing about the process.

Senator Williams stated that grievances are protected by Personnel. We say let’s get this data, while this data is not easy to get and the people that are being asked to get it are being asked by hundreds of other people to gather data as well. We have been having our budget cut for how many years now? We don’t have the resources to ask for everything that we would like to have.

Chair Moore pointed out to Senator Argyropoulos that we (senators) do have the ability to interact with committees that we are not on.

Senator Pearce inquired about grievance information being provided for the last five years. He stated that he has been here 30 years and the thing that strikes him about this university is it is awfully hard to get anything out of the administration on anything, on endowments, what they are doing, budgets, etc. There is no transparency at this university, it is a joke. This is totally a top down university. The decisions are made up there and then filtered down. For example, a big thing that affects my life was this decision to go to cluster hires. Was that debated in the Senate?

The response was no.

Senator Pearce stated that that to him is a classic example of a top down decision and it has a big effect on his life and his department with no faculty input in general, is that the case?

Senator Fleisher stated that there was a task force in which faculty served on, but to his knowledge it was never discussed in the Senate.

Senator Pearce asked why not, wasn’t that a very important decision for the development of the university in the next few years?

Senator Fleisher asked for a show of hands of anyone who has served on a grievance panel. He stated that it was a nightmarish experience for him. He knows of two situations in his college where there were negative post tenure reviews and in both cases they chose to retire. What would have happened had they grieved? He doesn’t know. He stated that the whole process is dirty and time consuming, because it is not pleasant and he doesn’t want to do it again.

Chair Moore requested that the Senate get back to discussing the shared governance document.

Senator Cubbage stated that the point is that we are making policies now without information. It would be better if we had open and transparent information. We are making a complete change in the culture of NC State University with zero information.

Senator Porter stated that perhaps the faculty could have a future discussion about what kind of data the Senate needs, what numbers we would like to see each year.

Senator Williams stated that grievance is a necessary procedure if you intend to sue. A lot of people grieve because they want to sue, so what the resolution of a grievance is, isn’t really the final outcome.

You have to track this all the way through.

Senator Cubbage suggested adding to the document: The Faculty Senate also shall have adequate notice and time to discuss and consider new PRRs and alternatives as necessary and suggest changes and improvements.

Status of Senate Issues voted on in the first meeting of the year; see Appendix A

Chair Moore stated that the Executive Committee members have assigned more issues to committees, but they are going to hold off on assigning the last ones because the committees already have a long list of items that they are working on.

New Business

Comments on Dr. Charles Carlton, former Chair of the Faculty Senate

Secretary Orcutt offered comments to honor the memory of Dr. Charles Carlton, former Chair of the Faculty Senate who passed away on July 25, 2015 in Cambridge, UK:

I wanted to say just a few words about Dr. Charles Carlton, former Chair of the Faculty Senate at NC State, who recently passed away. Among other things, Dr. Carlton was in many ways responsible for establishing our current Chair of the Faculty position, as it was during his term as Chair of the Faculty Senate in 1993-1994 that he pushed through a major constitutional change establishing the title of "Chair of the Faculty" and the process of the Chair being elected for atwo-year term by an at-large vote of the NC State Faculty. Colleagues who served on the Faculty Senate with him remember his joviality, his quick wit, and his big personality.

Joining the History Department at NC State in 1969, tenured in 1975, and promoted to Full Professor in 1981, Dr. Carlton was a well-regarded British historian whom his colleagues describe as an "incessant researcher." He produced numerous articles and nearly a dozen books - not the least of which a volume on the royal mistresses that he shamelessly produced in order to help fund his two daughters' college educations. Beloved by students, faculty, friends, and family, Charles was a delight to know - and I'll add, a lot of fun to play racquetball with as well. He will be missed by the NC State community, but had many lasting positive impacts on the university.

Location choices for the October 20 Fall General Faculty Meeting; preference

Chair Moore noted that there are two potential locations for the GF meeting and they are the auditorium around the corner from the Senate chambers or 126 Witherspoon. There were no rooms available in the Student Center.

The preference was to have the General Faculty meeting in the auditorium.

Proposed Regulation on Drug Testing NC State University Employees.

Questions for the Chair to send to David Rainer in advance can be sent to Jeannette_moore@ncsu.edu.

7. Issues of concern

Senator Cubbage would like to know if PTR can be discussed at the Fall Faculty meeting.

Chair Moore stated that the agenda for the meeting will be set on October 5th.

Senator Argyropoulos stated that he would like to get some statistics on grievances that faculty are filing and how things have progressed year to year.

Past Chair Zonderman noted that during his two years as Chair of the Faculty there were no formal grievances filed. He stated that there is a task force looking at the grievance process. He has been urging changes for the past two years including taking the Chair of the Faculty out of the loop.

Chair Moore stated that she thinks it is important that grievances come to the Chair of the Faculty so that faculty feel comfortable bringing those to her rather than bringing a grievance to an administrator. She is

willing to maintain that rule. Once a grievance is received the next step is if the person decides to proceed after going through mediation is to turn that over to the Chair of the grievance committee.

Vice Provost Larick stated that they have not been asked for this information, but if asked he thinks they can find the number of RPT decisions that were made in a given year, the number that was positive and the number that was negative.

Senator Smith McKoy suggested that the office of OIED might be able to provide this information. She thinks it would be helpful to ask just to see what happens.

8. Adjourn

A motion passed to adjourn at 4:40 p.m.