Meeting of the
University of Alaska
System Governance Council
Tuesday, September 27, 1994
Beginning at 2:00pm
via videoconference
Minutes
1. Call to order and roll call
Voting members:
Donna Chantry, Chair; President, UAS Staff Council
John Dede, President, UAA Assembly
Jack Dalton, President, Union of Students of UAA
Colin Read, President, UAF Faculty Senate
Richard Hacker, President, UAS Faculty Senate
Scott Trible, President, United Students of UAS-Juneau
Kate Wattum, President, Statewide Administration Assembly
Absent, excused:
Gil Banes, Representative, UAA Faculty Senate
Mike Mayberry, Past President, UAF Staff Council
Joe Hayes, President, Associated Students of UAF
Others present:
Kim Welborn, UAS Staff Council
Brian Robers, Vice President for Finance
'Nanne Myers, Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs
Wendy Redmen, Vice President, University Relations
Alyson Algee, Statewide Budget Director
2. Adopt agenda
The agenda was adopted without objection.
3. Approve minutes
MOTION Passed without objection
"The System Governance Council moves to approve the minutes for the
August 24, 1994 meeting. This action is effective September 27, 1994."
4. Program Assessment Update
According to 'Nanne Myers, the basic preparation took longer than was
initially planned but it is all coming together. The "University Overview
and Analysis of Instruction" data book just published is the first of a series
of three. Two more are coming: a) the administrative and student service
functions which will come next and b) research and public service.
The data inventory has been established. The chancellors, the president
and the Systemwide Academic Council on Monday and are in the final
process of checking the C list. This group generally did not implement
most of the governance recommendations because plates were already
pretty full. Those that were implemented were because campuses and
administration were in agreement.
INTERCAMPUS ISSUES
The intercampus issues seem to be evolving as a process that will be
parallel to the campus assessment processes and probably on a timeline
that will vary for each intercampus issue.
The intercampus issues have been divided for discussion into several
groups.
-->FOR BOARD ACTION IN DECEMBER
These are practices for which a more standardized approach might result
in more resources, and include:
* Academic administrative structure
* Faculty workload expectations
* 12-month appointments for faculty
* Buy-out of release time for faculty to do research or university
service
* Compensation practices for sabbatical leave
* Summer session practices (UAF makes money on summer sessions
and perhaps can show the others how.)
* Compensation for temporary faculty
* Faculty compensation for extra service assignments
These will probably be scheduled for Board of Regents action in December.
LONGER TERM ISSUES
Those intercampus issues scheduled for longer discussion include
academic programs. At least during program assessment, and probably
beyond that, thefaculty for these programs across the MAUs need to
converse to be sure 1) that the recommendations coming up on each
campus are not at odds with each other and 2) to see if more continuing
coordination could be effected beyond assessment.
ACADEMIC PROGRAMS
The academic programs identified as intercampus issues include
* Engineering
* Education
* Business
* The MPA program
* Foreign languages
* Fisheries and Ocean Sciences
* Marine Biology
* Education for the military
* Music
* Social work
During program assessment, there may arise more intercampus issues for
which there will be common interest to discuss.
STUDENT AFFAIRS ISSUES
* State Room Scholarships
* Financial aid
* Comprehensive advisement
* Recruitment
The student affairs issues might move forward fairly quickly, especially the
state room scholarships because the university may want to get something
together for the legislature; and the other three in relation to BANNER (new
computing system) implementation.
* Career services
* Health services
* Student medical services
* Intercollegiate athletics
COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKS
* Academic computing
* Administrative computing
ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES
* Purchasing
* Payroll
* Personnel
* Financial systems
* Space planning, construction and utilization
SYSTEM GOVERNANCE RECOMMENDATIONS
* Faculty development
* Staff development
* Supervisor training
* All governance, including the Board of Regents
* Noncredit courses
* Outreach and public service
Supervisor training is already going forward. About $100,000 has been
dedicated for that. All the others are good and will be in the discussions it
was not known whether or not they would be taken up specifically as
intercampus issues.
Out of this hopefully will come also come a discussion of the placement of
displaced faculty and staff.
Richard Hacker asked what the various fora were in which the issues that
cross campus lines would be considered.
Myers responded that the fora would vary, the chancellors will probably
begin to discuss the academic and administrative structure and faculty
workload expectations first and these would go out for governance review.
For faculty appointments, release time, compensation practices, summer
sessions, compensation for temporary faculty, and for extra service
assignments, the Systemwide Academic Council is going to look at the
practices across the institutions, and depending on what they find, try to
draft regulations and put that out for review.
Hacker asked if there was any attempt to fit these reviews into the current
program assessment schedule or was this happening parallel to program
assessment and recommendations on these were not expect by the end of
October.
Rogers said this was true, with some exceptions. For example, the
Business Affairs Council is dealing with the personnel, payroll and
purchasing and is taking the recommendations the Resource Alternatives
Task Force developed, flushing those out and trying to bring some of those
toward implementation. Those probably can be completed or at least
decisions made on which recommendations to follow by December 1. The
academic program issues will probably extend into the second half of this
academic year.
Hacker said faculty want to be very much a part of any considerations of
academic matters or faculty affairs and up to this point haven't been.
Rogers responded that was why the time frames were extended on the
academic issues and expected that some of them would go into future
years as well.
Colin Read asked which governance nominations from the B to the C list
had been accepted. Read assumed that the there would be a dialogue
about the recommendations, not just acceptance or rejection of them by
administration and that if governance groups felt strongly about
something, that it would be a small token to accept them as valid concerns
that could be addressed in October. Myers said that the chancellors were
quite aware of the discussions of those that were happening on each
campus and felt comfortable that they knew what the issues were.
Rogers said the biggest problem the chancellors had was with the Staff
Alliance list which was the most extensive and would have placed a much
greater proportion of the programs onto the C list. While some on the Staff
Alliance list were addressed, others for valid reasons, the president and
chancellors decided not to place them on the list. Most of them the
chancellors had discussed with the local governance groups and there may
have been work done by the chancellors and local governance between the
time the issue first surfaced and when the president made his final
decisions on Monday.
Read asked which recommendations had been accepted. Myers responded
that the Faculty Alliance recommendations to move statewide legal services
and development and foundation to the C list were accepted. Read asked
about UAF police. Rogers reported UAF police did move to the C list.
Redman explained that the analysis took place at the chancellor level, so
that when the chancellors came together, they had fully considered all of
the recommendations that their governance groups had made. If a
chancellor accepted all the chancellors local governance group
recommendations, that's what was passed to the president.
Read said he was concerned about the number of issues that are not a part
of program assessment for which administration proposes to frame
regulations by the December Board of Regents meeting with regard to
faculty issues.
Myers said the time schedule for those issues are to have drafts to the
Faculty Alliance and faculty senates by October 10 and then have faculty
recommendations to administration by October 24, and then the
Systemwide Academic Council will provide its recommendations to the
president by November 1. The first two issues are academic administrative
structure and faculty workload expectations. Next week, the chancellors,
president and SAC meet to discuss those.
Myers said those issues expected to reach faculty governance by October
10 include 12-month appointments for faculty, buy-out of release time for
faculty, compensation practices for sabbatical leave, summer session
practices for faculty compensation and general fund support, the range of
compensation for temporary faculty, and faculty compensation for extra
service assignments. Rogers said three of those were issues originally
raised by the Resource Alternatives Task Force and the idea is to bring
these to resolution, so that for some issues, there has been ongoing
discussion.
Read responded that faculty governance had not been involved in the
discussions as yet, and said the discussions led him to believe that the
faculty serve in the position to sit on the sidelines and recommend, the
train is going, and if faculty don't get on with the prespecified timelines,
then the train will go right by them. Read responded that faculty were
expected to have extensive comment on these issues within two weeks and
that wasn't enough time and didn't work with the faculty senate meeting
schedules. Faculty issues always have to go through the appropriate
senate committees to be processed before coming to the senate floor. Read
said the issues cited were far-reaching.
Myers responded that the faculty workload has been discussed for one or
two years. Of the rest, there has been no covert discussion; these have not
been on the list for discussion over the summer; faculty have not been here
to discuss them. These are about to be launched. The idea is to look at
what the practices are, get together a draft and give it to governance.
Regarding the time schedule, Myers responded that everyone was having to
break their carefully laid plans to meet the schedule.
Read suggested that instead of the president and chancellors issuing a
mandate to faculty about a two week window of opportunity for comment,
a far more fruitful process would be to engage the faculty and the chief
academic officers and chancellors in mutual dialogue. Faculty don't feel
they are being heard. Faculty should be in the room when the timelines
are being formulated. Read said it was his understanding that
restructuring of the schools of engineering, education and business was
not a part of program assessment and that the faculty intended to ponder
that much longer than having something forwarded by the December 1
deadline.
Rogers responded that assessment of professional schools would extend
well beyond December 1. Myers added that professional school
assessment was beginning and was long term; that if the university is
looking to the long term, faculty would have to look to each other and rely
on each other for sharing resources.
Read was heartened by the notion of sharing resources and said that there
was a tremendous amount of faculty resources that the chancellors and
SAC could tap into. He didn't see the parallel review structure as being
very helpful; that an open dialogue engaging faculty and administration
would be far more useful; and that it was his understanding that
governance recommendations would have a lot more potency in moving
programs from the B to the C list.
Redman said many of the reviews would take place over the course of the
next year or two years, that there was no effort to exclude faculty, and that
faculty have to be involved.
Read suggested that the most fruitful way to proceed is to have faculty sit
with administration and decide what collectively they want to do with
academic programs. Read further explained that the October 10-October
24 time frame in which to respond was too tight. Redman concurred and
suggested that if faculty could get the materials by October 10 that they
might be able to appeal some leniency on the timeframe. Read preferred
that on October 10, a special meeting would be called of SAC and the
governance leaders together to discuss the issues to be considered over the
next month, following which SAC could be invited to attend senate
meetings for the deliberations, and then at the end of that process however
long or short, faculty and SAC could move forward collectively as faculty
and SAC with a list of issues they want to continue on with--not as a
parallel or concurrent process--but as one integrated process.
5. Results of Legislative/governor candidate survey and 1995
legislative agenda
6. Unity report on business affairs and the FY95 Operating and Capital
Budget
The Council has invited Brian Rogers to discuss the role and activities of
the Business Affairs Council, and the FY96 operating and capital budget.
7. Draft policies
The process the Board has adopted for policy review is to have an initial
proposal for revision presented to them prior to formal review and
recommendation by governance. Thus, the best time to receive the drafts
would be right after the Board meetings at which they were considered so
that any reaction from the Board could be incorporated in governance
deliberations. The initial drafts will be available when they are sent to the
Board, approximately two weeks prior to each meeting.
The drafts submitted to the Board of Regents for review September 29 and
30 include
02.09 Public Safety
04.10 Drug-free Workplace/Misconduct in Research
02.04, 02,07, 02.08 Policy Advisory Councils
02.06 Open Meetings and Public Information
05.10.01 Student Tuition and Fees for BOR adoption February
Policies scheduled for Board adoption September 29 and 30 include
10.01.04 Honorary degree Receipients and Meritorious service
Awards
04.06 Employee Relations
05.01 Budget Development
05.02 Accounting and Fiscal Reporting
8. Other items of concern
Next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, October 18, 1994, 2-4pm.
9. Comments
10. Adjourn - 3:15pm