September 23, 2014

Executive Summary

1. Call to Order

Chair Zonderman called the third meeting of the sixty-first session of the NC State Faculty Senate to order at 3 p.m.

2. Remarks and Announcements

Chair Zonderman shared an announcement he received from Chair-Elect Moore about a lecture that will be given by Nobel Laureate and Distinguished alumnus Dr. Rajendra Kumar Pachauri on Monday, September 29 at 2 p.m. in The Talley Student Union, Mountains and Piedmont Ballroom. Chair Zonderman asked the senators to share any lectures, symposiums, or talks that have broad appeal and go beyond the interest of one department, program or discipline with the Senate, and he will be happy to promote them. He stated that the Governance Committee is looking into a proposal from the Senate to get these announcements out to the campus community.

3. Approval of the Minutes, Meetings No. 2, September 9, 2014

A motion passed to approve the minutes as corrected

4. Remarks from Chancellor Woodson

5. Presentation: Allocation Methods for Academic Funds

Ginger Burks, Director of Cost Analysis, reported that they have spent a lot of time in the task force discussing how the budgets come to be, talking about how the UNC System enrollment funding model works, and looking at ways that the budget has developed over time. The goal of this specific part of resource management has been given back to the budget research task force. Ginger stated that they issued an idea in the strategic research management process a year ago. She acknowledged that state revenues are declining and state funding to the university is not going to be increasing any time soon. Burks stated that we need to look at how we can be more strategic with the resources that we have and where across campus are there options for that. She said they spent two or three months having those ideas come in, had a series of meetings on the topic and have been going to different groups talking and getting ideas.

6. Old/New Business

First Year Convocation Chair Zonderman stated that he attended a meeting where they were debriefing on the First Year Convocation. They discussed moving the reception to after the convocation rather than early in the afternoon. Chair Zonderman asked the senators to send him feedback on their thoughts about that decision. Honorary Degrees Chair Zonderman urged the faculty to nominate people for Honorary Degrees. He stated that the Board of Trustees wants to award Honorary Degrees to men and women of national and international statue. Chair Zonderman stated that the committee on Honorary Degrees doesn’t have explicit rules on self- nominations, so he asked the Senate for feedback on whether there should be rules against it. The senators provided feedback and most felt that self-nominations should be rejected. Communication between Faculty Senate and Board of Trustees Chair Zonderman raised the issue of trying to find ways to increase dialog between the Faculty Senate and Board of Trustees. He wants to know if the Senate is interested in pursuing the idea of developing an informal mechanism for some senators and some members of the trustees to talk directly with each other. The senators provided feedback and agreed that there should be more engagement from the faculty with the Board of Trustees.

7. Adjourn

A motion passed to adjourn the meeting at 4:46 p.m.

Meeting Minutes

Present:

Chair Zonderman, Secretary Daley, Chair- Elect Moore, Parliamentarian Fath; Senators Aday, Ash, Auerbach, Banks, Baumer, Bird, Borden, Bullock, Byrnes, Cubbage, Davidian, Fleisher, Fuentes, Gunter, Heitmann, Holden, Krause, Levy, Lunardi, Nfah-Abbenyi, Orcutt, Scearce, Smith, Sotillo, Spontak, Williams

Excused:

Provost Arden; Senators Allaire, Bartlett, Bernhard, Brady, Moore

Absent:

Senators Devetsikiotis, Edwards, Steer G

uests:

Randy Woodson, Chancellor; Ginger Burks, Director of Cost Analysis; Betsy Brown, vice Provost for Faculty Affairs

1. Call to Order

Chair Zonderman called the third meeting of the sixty-first session of the NC State Faculty Senate to order at 3 p.m.

2. Remarks and Announcements

Chair Zonderman shared an announcement that he received from Chair-Elect Moore about a lecture that will be given by Nobel Laureate and Distinguished alumnus Dr. Rajendra Kumar Pachauri on Monday, September 29 at 2 p.m. in The Talley Student Union, Mountains and Piedmont Ballroom. Chair Zonderman asked the senators to share any lectures, symposiums, or talks that have broad appeal and go beyond the interest of one department or program or discipline with the Senate, and he will be happy to promote it. He stated that the Governance Committee is looking into a proposal from the Senate to get these announcements out to the campus community.

3. Approval of the Minutes, Meetings No. 2, September 9, 2014

A motion passed to approve the minutes as corrected

4. Remarks from Chancellor Woodson

Chancellor Woodson acknowledged that Dean Solomon from the College of Sciences has announced his intent to step down at the end of the academic year. He said Dean Solomon has been a leader here for thirty years and deserves a lot of praise and congratulations. The Provost will announce a search committee for the Dean of the College of Sciences. Chancellor Woodson announced that the official census has been done, and we have a large freshmen class. The freshmen class is about 4,400 students, and our target was 4,250 students. He explained that the number is up because more students said yes to the offer of admission than our model would typically predict which was particularly true in the College of Engineering. Chancellor Woodson stated that, in spite of the above average freshmen class, the quality of the freshmen class is at an all-time high. Transfer students are up as well, which is our goal. Chancellor Woodson stated that enrollments in the colleges of Education across the system are down dramatically, and for NC State it’s almost fifty percent. Four years ago the freshmen class in Education was 175 and this year it is seventy-two students. Not only are we enrolling fewer students in education but those graduating at increasing rates are leaving the state of North Carolina. Chancellor Woodson said at UNC Greensboro where one of its largest colleges is the College of Education, it is hard for them to mask those enrollment changes with other growth areas of the university. Their enrollment is down considerably, and it has impacted their budget dramatically. Chancellor Woodson stated that the Board of Trustees has embraced and adopted and is pushing hard for NC State to continue to move toward top tier status of public institutions. He said we are moving in very positive directions as a result of the strategic plan. The fact is that we are not growing our enrollment at a time when we couldn’t afford to if we wanted to. However, our overall ranking has increased to 95th from 101, and we are 44^th among all publics. We continue to be seen as one of the top ten best values in higher education. We are in the top ten with graduates that graduate with the least debt among public institutions. We are among the top twenty of universities most favored by returning veterans. Chancellor Woodson announced that in the last week or so, NC State has dedicated a new club house at the golf course. In addition, it is an academic space. It is home for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Turf Management Program with a classroom, home for the College of Natural Resources professional golf management program with a class room, and it also is a varsity home for men and women golf teams. Chancellor Woodson reported that the budget conditions haven’t improved. The only thing that has changed is that the last thing Mr. Art Pope, Budget Director, did before he left was send a memo to all the state agencies telling them to cut their budgets an additional 2% and to identify by line the areas that we were going to cut. The good news is that the Chancellors pushed back on GA when they asked them to do that, and GA said yes the universities can do that. He said as soon as you put something in writing you have a firestorm on your hands. If this is just an exercise trying to point out to the General Assembly what these cuts will do to the university, we would prefer to do it a different way and not inappropriately and not without reason exercise certain groups within the university. For NC State that is about $9 million dollars across all of our budget lines about $7.5 million within the academic budget and the remainder within the College of Agriculture and Life Science. Chancellor Woodson said we will see what the tuition plan is this year, and how much we make up. The good news is that enrollment growth funding is going to be really dramatic for last year because fall numbers for the PhD program are the highest they have ever been. He credited Vice Provost Larick and Provost Arden for working hard to get funds out to make sure that NC State is recruiting graduate students. He stated that the masters and PhD enrollment for the fall is very robust. QUESTIONS How well is the funding formula that you just mentioned linked to funds that come to the colleges and programs? Chancellor Woodson stated that in recent years it has been a challenge because every other source of money has been cut dramatically. While we may have had some enrollment growth funding (sometimes we’d get it, sometimes we didn’t), it was always coupled with dramatic budget cuts. The Legislature funds us to grow our enrollment, but cuts the budget that pays the faculty and staff. It has been a challenge in terms of where, in a normal year, state budgets are flat or slightly growing, and then enrollment growth funding is truly new funding and can be applied. Our first priority is seats and sections and making sure that we don’t compromise our students’ ability to get into critical classes that they need for graduation. For us our second highest priority has always been promotional increments for our faculty. In spite of not being able to give raises, we have year in and year out been able to give promotion increases. The third priority is the library. That is where a fair amount of enrollment growth funding has gone in the past. With the salary increase that we are going to have I still hear concern by departments across campus that in reference to the cuts all they have left are seats and sections to eliminate. Is there more pushback that way? Chancellor Woodson stated that they buffered as much as they could centrally. They covered the entire $10 million budget reduction centrally and 25% of the raise pool centrally. It is all a reallocation, so we have two choices. The first is don’t give raises -- in which case all the EPA non faculty and faculty would be treated differently than the other staff at NC State and treated differently than most of the other universities. We are in the business of reallocation now, with budgets going down every year we have to decide within units, within colleges, within divisions, what are the priorities. Centrally for us, the priority is recruiting or retaining talent and we have a lot of particularly young faculty that have been here for five years that are making less than their colleagues that were hired this year and we have to start to deal with that. Chancellor Woodson said if we really believe what I have consistently heard from this body, what I have consistently heard from my direct reports is that you can’t be a world class university without talent. We can’t keep the talent if we don’t begin to address the inequities that exist within the system. There are challenges all across our campus. What the Legislature did is basically said that the academic mission is not important because they gave raises to a lot of the staff, who are critical to our university, but they said that the EPA non faculty and faculty are not. You all figure it out? Senator Williams noted that it was like the penny tip. If you don’t leave a tip they think you might have forgotten. The $5 million dollars was the penny tip. They said to faculty that we have such contempt for you, here is a penny. Senator Borden suggested that there is another way to interpret that. There are some individuals who feel like we are not focusing enough of our attention on teaching as a group and therefore we don’t need as many of us to be doing what we are doing. We could teach more classes, each of us, and then we could have some money for raises because there wouldn’t need to be so many of us. “I do believe from the things that I have read that that is exactly what some of them believe. “ Chancellor Woodson stated that he thinks they truly believe that we have more means at our disposal to support our faculty and staff than other state agencies, including K-12 teachers, which is true. We have other revenues. He said every argument that he uses downtown, he knows there is not much money. The state revenue picture is a business. In light of the revenue scene, the best we can hope for in what we have to fight for is institutional autonomy over our funds. Give us the right to use our resources in the highest and best way. They did and now we have to and it is painful. They are giving us the authority we have been asking for and that is why the work of Ginger Burks and this body and others thinking about how do we deploy our resources in the most impactful way to keep NC State h3. Senator Krause stated that she is concerned about the current CODA system. In Engineering, with this bigger freshmen class, she thinks CODA works well for the majority of students but if you are on a non-traditional path, if you didn’t come in with AP credits, a lot of those kids are getting lost in the crowd. As this class is bigger and departments are struggling and not growing, not wanting to take extra students, she doesn’t see how it is going to function very well. Chancellor Woodson stated that as an institution we have to keep working hard to figure out institutional transfer. Until we can figure out how to deal with students always, even if it is the best student imaginable, they are going to change their mind. How we deal with that is going to determine whether we are successful in graduating students. We have a large number of students that leave this institution academically eligible, but they can’t get where they need to go to graduate here at NC State. What happened is that the students that use to apply to NC State are not applying now because they weren’t getting in. We are dealing with new models of admission based on a cohort of students we didn’t previously have a lot of experience with. We assumed that they would turn us down at a higher rate because they had more options, and it turns out that they didn’t.

5. Presentation: Allocation Methods for Academic Funds

Ginger Burks, Director of Cost Analysis, stated that they have been spending a lot of time in the task force discussing how our budgets come to be, talking about how the UNC System enrollment funding model works, and looking at the ways that our budget has developed over time. Burks stated that the goal of this specific part of resource management has been given back to the budget research task force. We have the strategic resource management process going on and we already have the budget research task force going on. You might remember that the budget restructuring task force started in the fall of 2012, really looking at a lot of these issues about how our budgets are arranged and specifically looking at how we make those allocations internally. Burks said we issued an idea in the strategic research management process a year ago. Obviously state revenues are declining and state funding to the university is not going to be increasing any time soon. We need to look at the ways that we do things. We need to look at how can we be more strategic with the resources that we do have, and where across campus do you see that there are options for that. We spent two or three months having those ideas come in, had a series of meetings on the topic, and have been going to different groups talking and getting ideas. Out of that came this idea of what is the real linkage of enrollment funding coming into the university and being allocated back out to the colleges and departments. That missing linkage keeps coming up over and over again. Now through strategic resource management the handoff has been made back to the budget restructuring task force to really take a look at this and see how we do it now and what models might come. People will say there are, at least, four methods or different types of funds for the delivery of credit hours and the delivery of instruction to our students. There are two methods under distance education in terms of an ongoing basis and the flexible access funding. There is also the summer enrollment funding which is quite different. The state of North Carolina doesn’t fund on campus summer term instruction for us. There was some relying on the tuition revenue so that the students could come for summer instruction, but that is going to be a different methodology on our part. Burks stated that the final one is the traditional term through our regular day to day on-campus instruction. That is one that overtime has become disaggregated, and we are not really tied very closely to that. There is allocations out of that flow of funding, but the idea is for the strategic research management and the budget resource task force to take a look at all four of those and try to see can we develop some more predictable models for us to tie in to in order to have that instruction. QUESTIONS Is there a way to make the DE money more consistent? Burks responded that one of their goals is to make the models more predictable in advance so that you know what you have to deliver. Does the weighted credit hour production system still exist? Is it a model that we either do use or aspire to? Is there a correlation between that and funding? Burks stated that for the first question, the UNC System uses something called the UNC system funding model for enrollment purposes. This is the “twelve cell matrix.” That formula is still the way that we at the university, through the system office and then to the state legislature, request funding for additional enrollment beyond what we are already budgeted to deliver. We have not, as a task force, made the linkage necessary that the internal allocation of funds back to colleges would necessarily be tied exactly to that model; that is something that we continue to look at. So this would definitely be a redistribution of resources if we were to follow this model in our total funding? Chair Zonderman stated that he has asked have we ever tried to apply that model to not just enrollment increase, but the total enrollment across campus by college and by department. He has been told that it showed us about 85% to where we should be as a campus. Burks stated that the interesting part is that everybody as their individual unit on campus thinks one should have exactly what I generate in a model. The model now shows that as a university we have about 85% of that funding available across campus. We have an obvious disconnect in terms of what we have gotten in enrollment funding, on one hand, and we have had reductions taken off at a much higher rate, on the other. That connection doesn’t exist in terms of our overall campus budget. Chancellor Woodson stated that since he has been here any enrollment funding that we get doesn’t offset budget cuts that we have had on the other side. What are the cost figures that they use based on? Burks stated that there is a Delaware study data base that we participate in along with a number of institutions across the nation. Participation has grown over time. The UNC System was fairly early in adopting a model that was based on that data. It has been reviewed, and those assessments have been updated only once in its history. They are always lagging behind. Chair Zonderman stated that he has heard from several department heads that their big concern is timing. Our task force is supposed to come up with a proposed model before we leave for the winter holidays. Will it have to be test run through various scenarios? Burks stated that their goal would be to provide some, this is “what would happen if” scenarios that everyone can see. Chair Zonderman commented that the finance calendar and the academic calendar don’t align. He noted that departments have to get next fall’s schedule in the system by the end of January or early February because by March students are preregistering for fall 2015. If everything is sort of held in advance, we are going to have a massive train wreck on our hands. Burks stated that she has heard concerns about the timing. They can work on that at the task force, and she will make suggestions accordingly. We had problems tracking who officially gets credit for courses. I was wondering if there are ways we can assign or distribute credit among the different professors in departments. Burks stated that they have to keep a model that is reasonable enough for everyone to follow, but realizing that there may be tradeoffs with different departments, so the course owner is the current discussion point. We use that course ownership because that is the unit that is responsible for making sure that the course gets taught. They may need to share resources with another department whose faculty member is helping to teach that class. The senator disagreed and said the current model is the majority of the appointment. Burks stated that the current discussion is that they looked at instructor of record and they looked at course owner and they had more concerns about the instructor of record data. This came down to the more realistic methodology. In terms of course ownership what happens with cross listed courses? Burks stated that it goes back to which unit is responsible for making sure that the course is taught. Right now we have every option that you can think of, and this is going to probably force us to change some things in the way that we count. It is something that we need to think about. We spent quite a bit of time on it this year. There is going to probably have to be a decision in each unit about what makes sense. What we have come to look at is there are so many different variations of things that have come about in the last years that we as a task force cannot deal with each one of those individually. We are going to have to come up with a model and an allocation strategy that makes sense as a whole, realizing that it is not going to be perfect for every situation, but also realizing that adaptations are going to occur based on the new model. Chancellor Woodson added that he thinks the big problem with RCM and this approach to managing budgets is it disincents people from doing the right thing. We have to be very mindful of that. It is one of the reasons why I think a historic based budget allows the university to be more creative. Chair Zonderman stated that we don’t want to do anything to inhibit the progress we made toward inter- disciplinarity. If everything follows just as student credit hour we have to put in some rules. Senator Borden pointed out that we also have to be careful that if there does become the opportunity to receive resources to do something that we wouldn’t automatically prevent that either. Does summer school make sense any more with the growth of DE courses? Are we losing money on summer school? Burks responded that there are some other states that have actually put a new emphasis on summer and have offered the required classes that students needed to progress in. She stated that she thinks there might still be some opportunities with summer. As you are doing this planning is there also thought given to different schedules, different calendars, particularly with respect to summer school? Burks stated that it is not a part of this allocation review process. However that is another place where maybe return isn’t enough to incentivize for them to do those classes during the summer. That is an idea that came in through the resource management process, and it is in their listing of ideas and they are working through those in different phases. You mentioned the curriculum committees. Were you referring to the college curriculum committees and what did you mean about them understanding budgeting? Burks stated that it is not necessarily understanding budgeting. In most places that have gone through this type of budget modeling exercise they really look to those curriculum committees to help manage the process. Because those are the folks who can look at what is making sense from an academic perspective and a course perspective to help keep it academically rational, that is not just seeking the resources. It is not something that our task force would be equipped to manage. However, certainly keeping those groups informed, letting them know as we are developing these models, and what types of things they might see that are different from what they have seen in the past are. An inquiry was made on investigation or exploration of expansion of curriculum. Burks responded that, that is not something that the budget research task force would look at. They would just look at the allocation of funds. Those ideas along with the summer term and other options for generating more instruction hours did come into the resource management group and they are going to be looking at them. Some of the discussion was maybe we need to solve the budget linkage first and then some of those other things may follow because it is very difficult to plan around some of those.

6. Old/New Business

First Year Convocation Chair Zonderman stated that he attended a meeting where they were debriefing on the First Year Convocation. They are discussing moving the reception to after the convocation rather than early in the afternoon. He asked the faculty to send him feedback on their thoughts. Honorary Degrees Chair Zonderman made a plea to faculty to nominate people for Honorary Degrees. He stated that the Board of Trustees wants to award Honorary Degrees to men and women of national and international statue. Chair Zonderman noted that the committee on Honorary Degrees doesn’t have explicit rules on self- nominations. He asked the Senate for feedback on whether there should be rules against self-nominations. Feedback on Honorary Degrees Senator: I am not sure if there should be a specific rule because the two years that I served on the committee we basically ignored self- nominations. We were talking a few years back about being able to nominate state politicians. We had a practice of not doing that, but Chapel Hill was. The representatives from downtown had given Chapel Hill an advantage over NC State. Has that changed? Chair Zonderman stated that the rule states that nominees can’t be a member of the Board of Governors or a sitting trustee. Senator: Several senators agreed with the senator that self-nominations should be ignored or rejected. Senator: Self- nominations are a lot of work. They should be tied in with an explicit statement. Senator: Sometimes when you disallow self-nominations you end up with self- nomination by proxy. It becomes a lot harder to determine which, are actually self-nominations when they have gotten someone else to do it. You can end up investing more time investigating than if you just know that it’s a self-nomination. Senator: A senator stated that she served on the committee and the rule states that the nominee has to have some connection to the state of North Carolina. Senator: I nominated someone who is completely unaffiliated with North Carolina and he received the Honorary Degree. You can actually broaden that statement and that view considerably. Chair Zonderman stated that the rules are on the website for anyone who would like to do a nomination. Senator: A senator commented that most of the people that are dominating the front pages are either athletes or politicians so he would not want to “X” out that group. We are looking for someone who has received a Nobel Prize and is affiliated some way with NC State. I think those people by and large are already recognized. I wouldn’t mind seeing musicians considered. Senator: A senator noted that the rules on the Honorary Degree website states that “individuals may or may not have an existing association with the state and or the university.” Communication between Faculty Senate and Board of Trustees Chair Zonderman raised the issue of trying to find ways to increase dialog between the Faculty Senate and Board of Trustees. He wants to know if the Senate is interested in pursuing the idea of developing an informal mechanism for some senators and some members of the trustees to talk directly with each other. Chair Zonderman stated that when Hans Kellner was chair he asked for a non- voting faculty member to sit on the University Affairs Committee and was turned down. Senator: Do you know historically why we have not been able to participate? Chair Zonderman stated that the argument that he has been given about a formal seat is that it is in the actual law that codifies the board and that would require a Legislative change. A Senator stated that he thinks it is worth pursuing. Senator: How can it be positioned as advancing the interest of the university to have faculty participate in that way? Chair Zonderman stated that it seems to be a no brainer that faculty and trustees should talk to each other even if it is an informal once a semester conversation. Senator: If there is no other way of having a chat with the BOT, we can invite two of them to come here which gives us a possibility of talking with them without jumping over a lot of hoops. Senator agreed. Senator: What do other systems do? Chair Zonderman stated that at some UNC system schools the Chair of the Faculty have almost no contact with the Chair of the board. If you look at other systems around the country some have full voting members, some have ex officios, some have more. Chair Zonderman stated that he is always listened to in the meeting. They don’t often ask him questions in the meeting, but after the meeting they will ask him good questions. It is not a bad relationship. The good news is that the Chancellor and Board of Trustees have a very good relationship. Senator: It would be better that each year someone from the Board of Trustees address the Faculty Senate. Senator: Even if nothing new is said every year, it sets the tone. Even if it’s the same chair some of the senators weren’t here last year, so they didn’t hear from that person. Senator: There are university officials that sit on foundation boards. He thinks it would be a ruse to say that a faculty member can’t sit on the board. He supports more engagement from the faculty at those levels. Senator: Does the Senate have a relationship with the Student Body President? Chair Zonderman stated that the current Student Body President along with University Police and the University Counsel will be at the next meeting to talk about safety. Chair Zonderman stated that he prefers to invite groups when they are working with the Faculty on an issue. Senator: Do the Executive Committees from Chapel Hill and NC State still meet once doing the semester? Chair Zonderman stated that he had lunch with the Chair of the Faculty from Chapel Hill and they discussed ways to bring our governance groups together at least in conversation. He said of the grief that has been visited on Chapel Hill’s campus, in the end it does us as the partner Research University no good if Chapel Hill gets bashed. As Bruce Cairns put it well when he said by the time they are done with us, they will then turn to you. We want to think about ways to work with them because we do have a lot of common interests. Senator Williams noted that with the resolution on Dean Solomon, which he supports, we have an issue that Senator Borden raised last year that there are others who may deserve recognition too. Maybe we should get into the habit of doing this for more people, so that any faculty member who has been here for a while and distinguishes themselves and retires, that maybe we ought to automatically give them a certificate rather than it be this sort of hit or miss. Chair-Elect Moore noted that in the case that Senator Borden raised, the Senate didn’t have an opportunity to discuss it since it was raised in the meeting that day and was a total surprise. Senator Borden agreed and stated that Dean Solomon’s case rises to the level of something special and something should be done. Chair Zonderman said it is not uncommon for the Senate to do resolutions marking “significant retirements.” My sense is that we think the retirement of Dean Solomon merits that. Paul’s point is well taken and we want to use this when it is appropriate.

7. Adjourn

A motion passed to adjourn the meeting at 4:46 p.m.

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Executive Summary Meeting Minutes

Office of the Faculty Senate

September 23, 2014

Executive Summary

1. Call to Order

2. Remarks and Announcements

3. Approval of the Minutes, Meetings No. 2, September 9, 2014

4. Remarks from Chancellor Woodson

5. Presentation: Allocation Methods for Academic Funds

6. Old/New Business

7. Adjourn

Meeting Minutes

Present:

Excused:

Absent:

uests:

1. Call to Order

2. Remarks and Announcements

3. Approval of the Minutes, Meetings No. 2, September 9, 2014

4. Remarks from Chancellor Woodson

5. Presentation: Allocation Methods for Academic Funds

6. Old/New Business

7. Adjourn

NC STATE UNIVERSITY