NOTE: At times, issues of confidentiality may require that some items discussed in meetings be excluded from these minutes.

PRESENT: Bill Barnes, Richard Bennett, David Caudill, Tom Currin, Venu Dasigi, Ameen Farooq, Joel Fowler, Alan Gabrielli, Steven Hamrick, Andrew McMorran, Mike Murphy, Julie Newell, Mark Nunes, Jeff Orr, Nikki Palamiotis, Phil Patterson, Dawn Ramsey, Ronny Richardson, Khalid Siddiqi, John Sweigart, Zvi Szafran, Andy Wang, and Tim Zeigler

ABSENT: Russ Hunt, Nancy Reichert

Item 1: Updates

Searches – CSE has interviewed one candidate for the dean’s position and has three more scheduled. ETM has brought in two candidates and has four more scheduled. Faculty searches are also progressing well with many still ongoing and some filled. Dr. Szafran asked if any of the departments were encountering any problems with any of their searches. Andrew McMorran, Math Department, expressed concern that the pool of applicants for their lecturer position was not as strong as he had hoped. This started a discussion on the pros and cons of hiring lecturers. Comments from the Council included:

We need to look at the way we advertise for lecturers; perhaps focus locally instead of nationally.
The salary difference between a lecturer and assistant professor is not that much. Why not advertise for assistant professors or use one-year temps if we’re unsure about the budget.
Lecturers are generally willing to teach introductory courses and are very good at teaching. This is an excellent way to employ faculty who have sufficient credentials but no Ph.D. and who would perhaps not be eligible for tenure-track positions.
Part of the problem with receiving so few applications for the lecturer positions may be due to the late advertising we did this year. Dr. Szafran committed to advertising earlier in the future.
Faculty who accept lecturer positions may apply for tenure-track positions that later come open in their departments assuming they meet the qualifications.

Budget – no update – the State will decide on next year’s budget sometime in May. We may be able to roll forward up to 3% of tuition to next year. No news about whether there will be a tuition increase for the fall or not.
Lab Fees – Lab fees for spring have been distributed. Chairs should check their distribution and report any discrepancies to Dr. Szafran. Lab fees do not rollover and should be spent as soon as possible. Steve Hamrick is working to find a way to make sure that courses with lab fees get permanently coded.
Extra Funds – Due to increased enrollment, extra funds are available. Academic deans, Extended University, and engineering will each receive $20,000 to fund special projects.
Equity adjustments will be out soon for faculty at the assistant, associate, and full professor rank who are below equity.

Item 2. Departmental Issues

Dr. Szafran asked the Council to share any issues they may be having in their departments. Julie Newell expressed two concerns she is having. One is with Banner not showing the comments that are entered for a course. This is creating a problem now that we don’t have a print bulletin. In all cases, these comments are very important and give the students much needed information such as course topic, requirements for attending labs and conversation classes, campus location, e-core sections, on-line sections, etc. Students need this information to make informed decisions about which courses to take and what may be additionally required for any particular course. Changing the title to reflect topic, campus, etc. is one way to help but does not address all issues. Steve Hamrick is aware of this problem and is working to see if there is a way to correct this.

Dr. Newell’s second concern is that when the fall schedule is actually available and students are eligible to advance register, many of the faculty who do advising are not on campus to accommodate the students. Hamrick acknowledged that this is a problem but changing the timetable would create problems with checking for pre-requisites, etc.

Dr. Szafran briefly discussed some recommendations put forth from the Advising Taskforce for implementation this fall:

On-line courses for faculty to teach them how to be good advisors – should be going live approximately July 1.
Chairs will be responsible for making sure every student is assigned an advisor.
A number of institutions are requiring certain students to meet regularly with an advisor their first year and we may want to consider doing this also. This topic will be continued at the next ALC meeting.

Kelly has designed a tool in Banner to assign advisors which is very helpful except that students can’t see who their advisor is. Julie Newell developed a user guide and will share it with other chairs. It was also mentioned that the advisor assignment tool has been available but not being used until Julie asked.

Item 3. Lab Fees

Charlie Bachman presented a lab fee proposal for his department that would assess lab fees for all courses but at a lower rate. Dr. Szafran explained the current lab fee policy:

Lab fees are assessed at $40 per course with an $80 cap per student
Department chairs decided which courses would be assessed lab fees based on the lab being a closed lab with expendables.
Criteria were established, one of which was that expenses had to be associated with the lab and that lab fees collected must be used for those labs.

Some Council members were in favor of changing the current policy to one of assessing a lower fee on all labs and others were in favor of the current policy. Most agreed that removing the cap is a good idea. Dr. Szafran will also prepare a document explaining the options for the lab fees and this will be distributed in the near future. Joel Fowler suggested that there should be a statement of lab fee guiding principles and the Council agreed. This topic will continue and be voted on at the next ALC meeting.

Item 4. Budget

Dr. Szafran presented some ideas that had been suggested to empower chairs and deans to make personnel budget decisions and briefly discussed the process he uses now to make these decisions. The proposed system would empower deans and chairs to make decisions but would require division of funding earlier on. He also stated that whatever method we go forward with has to recognize that some departments are suffering from faculty deprivation and need to catch up even without growth.

To help facilitate decision-making, Mike Murphy has been charged with developing a proposal to allocate funds and faculty positions to the departments. The initial plan is for Mike to recreate the old “factor” method as a starting point and then create a new model with growth potential built in. This proposal should include ways to distribute funding for growth equitably to those departments that are growing and also to the supporting departments. Murphy asked the Council for input for this proposal. Joel Fowler suggested that chairs should prepare comprehensive budgets, including personnel, operating, lab fees, etc. Murphy suggested the use of part-time faculty to handle growth and if sustained move to temps and then to full time faculty. Depending on the trend of growth, consider carefully whether to fill positions due to retirements. It was also suggested that we must be careful not to implement something that may create institutional barriers and hinder inter-departmental collaboration.

Joel Fowler mentioned a methodology he developed when he was Assistant VPAA for determining the cost per student per program/discipline, etc. Dr. Szafran asked him to resurrect and share this information with the Council.

Item 5. New Business

Dr. Szafran announced that the B.A.S. passed on campus and that Dr. Rossbacher will be communicating with DTAE presidents soon. He also announced that Dr. Beheruz Sethna from the Board of Regents will be on campus in the near future and would like to meet with the academic leaders on campus. Dr. Szafran will notify the Council of the date and meeting time.

Mike Murphy announced and encouraged all to attend the workshop entitled "Leading Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas", 1-4pm, Thursday, April 12th, in the Student Center Ballroom.

Meeting adjourned at 4:20 PM.