Draft Minutes

Thursday, November 15, 2001

1:00-3:00 pm by videoconference

Fairbanks location: Butrovich Building – Conference Room 212B

Anchorage location: University Lake Building Video Conference Room

Juneau location: Egan Library Video Conference Room

1. Call to order and roll call

Derek Miller called the meeting to order at 1:05 pm.

Members Present

Kerry Digou, President, Statewide Administration Assembly

David Parks, Vice President, for Mike Dingman, President, Union of Students of UAA

Mark Graves, President, for Katrina Hotch, Vice President, United Students of UAS-Juneau

Kevin Krein, Representative, UAS Faculty Council

Norm Swazo, President, UAF Faculty Senate

Scott McCrea, President, UAF Staff Council

Derek Miller, President, Associated Students of UAF

Deborah Narang; 1^st Vice President, UAA Faculty Senate

Jennifer Reinhart, President, Kachemak Bay Branch Student Association

Robert Sewell, President, UAS Staff Council

David Woodley, President, UAA Assembly

Ex-officio Members Present

John Joeright, Coordinator, UAS Alumni Association

Ex-officio Members Absent

Cindy Branley, Executive Director, UAF Alumni Association

Daryl Royce, President, UAA Alumni Association

Guests Present

Mark Hamilton, President of the University of Alaska

Pat Ivey, UA System Governance

Brian Brubaker, UA System Governance

2. Adopt agenda

MOTION: Moved by Graves, seconded by Swazo, passed without objection

“The University of Alaska System Governance Council hereby adopts the agenda for its November 15, 2001, meeting. This action is effective November 15, 2001.”

3. Approve minutes of the August 9, 2001 meeting

Debbie Narang pointed out that she is not the Vice President of the UAA Assembly as noted in the minutes of the August 9, 2001, meeting. That person who holds that position is Hilary Davies.

MOTION: Moved by McCrea, seconded by Swazo, passed without objection

“The University of Alaska System Governance Council hereby approves the minutes of its August 9, 2001, meeting. This action is effective November 15, 2001.”

4. Elect System Governance Council Chair

The floor was opened for nominations for the position of Chair of the University of Alaska System Governance Council for FY2002.

Norm Swazo nominated Scott McCrea. Scott McCrea declined the nomination. Norm Swazo nominated Derek Miller. Derek Miller accepted the nomination. Scott McCrea moved and Kerry Digou seconded that the nominations be closed. There was no objection to closing nominations. Norm Swazo moved that Derek Miller be elected by acclimation and there were no objections. Derek Miller was elected as chair.

6. Ways to recognize faculty and staff, students and alumni

Pat Ivey said that President Hamilton has recently requested information about awards and other ways that faculty, staff, students and alumni are recognized.

Pat Ivey said that President Hamilton is planning to establish a distinguished scholars award. He has been concerned about how UA faculty stacks up competitively in the pool of national awards. The question has been: How do we get our people in line for national recognition? In large part, deans have to be relied upon to submit nominations. So there needs to be greater awareness and willingness on the part of deans to some extent. Apparently, some universities and university systems have offices that coordinate award applications.

Usibelli Distinguished Teaching, Research and Service Awards

http://www.uaf.edu/univrel/awards/faculty/

Norm Swazo said that there are various awards at UAF which carry with them certificates of recognition. There are also distinguished teaching, research, and service awards for faculty at UAF.

Wiegert, Boswell and Tilly Awards

Pat Ivey pointed out that there are some student awards given at graduation. These include the Joel Wiegert Award for the outstanding graduating senior man; the Marion Frances Boswell Award for the outstanding graduating senior woman; and the Gray Tilly Memorial Award, given to a graduating senior whose education was interrupted because of family responsibilities.

Edith Bullock Prize

http://www.alaska.edu/uafound/process_policy/bullock.html

The question was asked, who determines the winner of the Edith Bullock Prize? Pat Ivey said that the chair of the Faculty Alliance generally sits on the selection committee for that prize. Robert Sewell said that others who sit on the selection committee for that award include members of the UA Foundation Board of Trustees. Norm Swazo said that he understands that there has been a consistent drop in quantity of nominations for the Bullock Prize. We need to be proactive in making sure that folks are nominated and that nominations do move forward. Pat Ivey pointed out that the Bullock Prize is also open to staff and community members as well as faculty.

University Professor and Distinguished Professor Ranks

Norm Swazo said that the Faculty Alliance discussed university professor and distinguished professor ranks. These are two faculty ranks already designated by the Board of Regents. There is a desire that what remuneration and what rewards would accompany that rank be more clearly known.

The Make Students Count Award

http://gov.alaska.edu/staff/studentscount/

Robert Sewell said that staff at UAS have been enthusiastic about the Make Students Count Award. One problem with this is that there are 2,700 staff statewide and only 4 award winners each year. It may be possible to increase the number of awards from 3 or 4 to six or eight per year by creating one for classified and one for exempt employees at each MAU.

Scott McCrea asked about how difficult it is to get nominations. Pat Ivey said that we receive 18-24 nominations per year total for the Make Students Count Award. Pat Ivey said that the Staff Alliance could make a motion to ask the President to extend the award to add APT and Classified Categories for MAUs.

Job Classification System

Robert Sewell mentioned that there are different grades within the job families being created by the ongoing job classification project. Movement within these different grades will indicate when staff master the skills and knowledge necessary for promotion and salary increase. These grade changes could also include some recognition of staff for their achievements.

Outstanding Distance Educator Award

http://gov.alaska.edu/Faculty/distance-educator-award/

Pat Ivey pointed out that the president established a new award last year, the Outstanding Distance Educator Award.

Recognition of Alumni

Robert Sewell said that he feels that there is not enough recognition of alumni. We seem to miss a lot of opportunity with alumni in terms of mentorship’s, job seeking, and so forth. Scott McCrea said that the UAF Alumni Association does do alumni recognition. He said that UAF has published in the past slick brochures which recognize contributions to the university from certain alumni (see http://www.uaf.edu/univrel/celebrating/index.html)

Collecting Award Information

Norm Swazo said that perhaps we could collect information about what awards are available at each MAU. It would also contain deadlines and eligibility information. A comprehensive basic dataset would be helpful. Norm Swazo said that it would be nice to have the names of past award winners as well.

David Woodley agreed that was a great idea. He would like to know also what the purposes of some of the awards are, who are receiving them, who administers the award, and so forth.

Derek Miller asked the members what was the best way of doing this. David Woodley said that he would be willing to collect information and bring it to the retreat on December 8, 2001. Pat Ivey asked members to email their information so that it could be compiled for the agenda. She asked that members send their list by December 1.

7. Building support for the university

Robert Sewell said that he thinks we as the whole university community have greatly enhanced the visibility, pride and morale of the university. He feels that UAS is being looked at in a much more favorable light than five years ago. How do we add on and build our momentum?

Norm Swazo asked UAA and UAS representatives if they have the equivalent of UAF’s town gown night. Norm Swazo said that it is a night where university faculty, staff, administrators, and others get together with business leaders and leaders in the larger community. It allows the university community to meet with the larger public. Scott McCrea said the event is sponsored by the Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce. About 5-10 presentations a year at the Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce have something to do with the university. Fairbanks is fortunate because a lot of people see their community as being a college town.

Norm Swazo asked again if Anchorage or Juneau have an equivalent event? John Joeright said that UAS has an event called Tuxedo Junction. It has been very successful in the past few years. There is also a beer and wine tasting event in the fall. There is an auction for the alumni which is usually successful.

David Woodley said that UAA doesn’t have anything quite so direct and concentrated as what was described. Just this year, UAA had its second annual homecoming and its first formal ball. It was a community event and an attempt to get community leaders into a fun atmosphere with the university. David Woodley said that he would really like to hear more about these sorts of things that happen elsewhere, because he thinks there are some really good ideas.

Scott McCrea said that events can be formal or not. The UAF Staff Council put together an event last year called UAF Day at the Southside Community Center in Fairbanks. This is an area in town that doesn’t have quite as much university interaction. It was a successful event. The turnout wasn’t what was hoped for, but it was good exposure and a nice gesture.

Norm Swazo said that he is an alumnus of three institutions and gets requests for all sorts of giving campaigns. Have the UA alumni created ongoing giving campaigns, perhaps with competitions between graduating classes or something similar? You could try and increase the amounts of donations by promoting competition between classes.

At this point, President Hamilton joined the meeting. He said that he just recently attended the UA Foundation meeting. A similar idea for competition between graduating classes was suggested by Sharon Gagnon at that meeting. President Hamilton said that the consensus was to look into that and it wasn’t enthusiastically embraced. Part of the concern was that even our more typical students don’t necessarily identify their cohort as being their graduation class. This is because graduation times can take four, five, six, seven or more years. The concern is that there is very little continuity of class assignment and cohort. This means that it is harder to stimulate this kind of class competition.

President Hamilton said that to hear the same idea twice in a few days tells him this needs to be looked into. He said that he will check with the Foundation to see who is charged with investigating this idea.

5. President Hamilton

Student Recruitment

President Hamilton said that he has been thinking carefully about the student recruitment situation. He asked each MAU to create an enrollment projection for him out to the year 2009. He said the response to that request was disappointing.

In all three campuses, the response was limited to traditional first time freshmen. In all cases, the projections reflected remarkably small increases. So small to the degree that if they are correct, then there are significant problems. Why in the world would we commit so much money to recruitment and retention? Secondly, it could be concluded that we already have all the faculty we will need from now through the end of the decade.

Apparently the planned increase in expenditures on recruitment and retention exceeds the tuition revenue anticipated from the resulting increases in enrollment.

80% of student headcount and 60% of credit hours are generated by those students who are not traditional first time freshmen. There seems to be no recruitment and retention plans afoot, no energies, no facilities and no programs that were projected towards that particular group.

We have about 10,000 full time students. No more than 3,000 of these can be accounted for by the annual high school graduation cohort. In fact, the number 3,000 only arrives if you add a fifth year of matriculation. If you have only so many H.S. graduates and only so many of them who go to college, and then we only capture so many who are college bound, the numbers are small.

What will happen at the end of the decade? There will be around 8,000 high school graduates. If 50% go to college (nationally the number is 61%), and we capture 60% of those (nationally the average is 80%), then we end up capturing 6,000 students.

If we were able to capture double the number of first time freshmen (6,000) we might end up loosing some of those who are not first time freshman. There are transfer students, a significant number of military dependents, and so forth.

For recruitment and retention to look only at the 3,000 first time freshmen is a concern. This could be a fatal focus.

Going from 3,000 to 6,000 first time freshmen would only add three students for each faculty member, when we already have one of the best faculty-student ratios around.

It is easier to conceive of recruitment campaigns aimed at high school graduates. High school graduates are a wonderful place to recruit for students. President Hamilton said that it takes a $1 billion budget and 12,000 member staff to recruit from all the high schools in the United States. He knows because he is the former head of recruiting for the U.S. Army.

When you see campuses focus in on these first time freshmen, we have to ask again what is the purpose here? What is the purpose of the campus? This is marginally different than the mission statement. Are we providing service to Alaska in all its forms? There’s a big niche to fill, a responsibility, in the community campus mission.

One of the qualities of a non-traditional student is that these individuals are repetitive students – life long learners. They require postsecondary education for an ever changing variety of jobs. The do not necessarily require a baccalaureate degree.

President Hamilton said that he doesn’t believe that it was a coincidence that the bottom dropped out in support for the university after the community college merger in 1987. The accusation was that the university was walking away from and turning their back on the community college mission.

President Hamilton concluded that doubling the number of first time freshmen is a wonderful plan, it is necessary, but it is not sufficient.

The Alaska 20/20 Conference

President Hamilton said that he is flattered to be giving the keynote address at the Alaska 20/20 conference, a conference on the future of Alaska sponsored by the Alaska Humanities Forum. His speech won’t focus directly on the University of Alaska. Frankly, he will encourage people to be a bit rejuvenated in their approach. Lately, whatever you suggest as a vision for Alaska’s future, chances are that someone will say that’s been tried and folks will be reluctant.

Outlook for the University of Alaska to 2009 / Tasks – Conditions – Standards

President Hamilton said that when most groups sit down and ask “what should they do?” They generally write down a list of tasks that are very easy and obvious.

The significant piece of the equations is what are the conditions? What is going to happen between now and 2009 that will affect our ability to get to where we want to be? If we all ask each other about the tasks, we’ll all get about the same list. If we ask about conditions, we will absolutely not come out with the same list.

When President Hamilton asked Wendy Redman, the Vice President for University Relations, she mentioned future conditions such as the elections, redistricting impacts, and who is up for election. These were conditions she talked about that will have some impact on the university’s future.

When President Hamilton asked Joe Beedle, the Vice President for Finance, about conditions, he replied that there will be $2.5 million acres of native land offered for sale or reverted to the state in the next ten years. His advice was not to plan on supplementing the university’s budget on additional lands given to the university, because there will be a large surplus in the supply of land for sale.

When President Hamilton asked Jamo Parrish, he indicated that there will be at least a $1 billion settlement of the Exxon Valdez disaster. Should we be talking to folks who might receive the benefit of that settlement, and ask them if they want to help their local campuses?

What do we know about faculty between now and then? Someone who’s studied state history will have a very different idea than someone in another place.

Ultimately the art of planning for the university’s future is in managing the conditions, not deciding the tasks. Mitigate, eliminate, or avoid conditions that exist or are likely to come about. The magic is not in what people spend 90% of their time in (managing their tasks). You get much better return on managing conditions.

Status of the BP and Phillips Petroleum Gifts

President Hamilton said that the large gifts from BP and Phillips Petroleum are a business deal, not charity. It is the encumbrance of that money that concerns him. It is amazing how quickly you can encumber $2.5 million forever. When you hire a person, you have just tied up their pay and benefits for potentially a quarter of a century. He said that he has tried to keep the money donated by the companies out of arenas that are appropriate realms of state funding. Instead, the gifts have been spent for visiting professors, kick starts of programs that take one-time money, and so forth.

One project the gifts funded failed. This project was $1 million to take the Toolik Lake power plant facilities to natural gas. The users of the facility killed the idea because the project would threaten their status as a regulated utility. And right in the middle of the project there was a diesel spill at Toolik.

Budget

President Hamilton said that the Lena Point facility for the UAF School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences (SFOS) is an exciting capital project without a champion. UAS can’t champion it because it’s a UAF department. UAF can’t champion it because it is located in Juneau.

There is planning money requested for two new science facilities, one in Anchorage and one in Fairbanks. The one in Fairbanks would also house the supercomputer. We have the faculty and capabilities to do a great deal more research than we are and the reason it doesn’t necessarily happen is a lack of facilities. New facilities will give us a continuing ability to do indirect cost recoveries.

In Anchorage there is a need for teaching labs and science classrooms in connection with expanded Allied Health Programs.

These will be very, very big projects and we are asking for the planning money this year.

Questions for President Hamilton

Robert Sewell asked if President Hamilton could identify how we can better serve nontraditional students.

President Hamilton said that one example was apparent. What are some of the atmospherics? If you’re a nontraditional student, you’re probably less excited about dining facilities and dorm spaces. You’d be interested in student lounges, vitally interested in parking, and tremendously interested in flexibility of schedules. You perhaps are less interested in a degree and much more interested in a fairly immediate utility.

The potential is that TVC would get new turf and better parking. There is still the question and possibility of acquiring the University Center in Anchorage. That location provides significant parking.

The downtown center in Juneau, the Bill Ray Center, is important. Any talk about moving students out to Auke Bay has to be looked at very hard. If you sell the Billy Ray Center and build a new student dining facility, you may have traded something very important for a non-traditional student and gotten something not very important at all in return.

Our campuses will always gravitate towards to the traditional student. So we absolutely have to work on being responsive to non-traditional student needs.

Scott McCrea said that he would encourage anyone involved in recruiting to look at Adult Students Today, a book that talks about recruiting non-traditional students.

President Hamilton mentioned that when you target newspaper advertisements for your campus to a bunch of 18 year olds, that advertisement is of no value. 18 year olds do not read the newspaper, but non-traditional students are far more likely to read the newspaper. This fact contradicts and gets confused with the advice received from consultants and others.

Kevin Krein asked if there is a large market out there in non-traditional students that isn’t being captured. President Hamilton said yes, absolutely. For example, there are probably a dozen or so widely distributed college programs at military bases. A soldier may not have heard of the University of Alaska but has absolutely heard of Wayland Baptist University or Central Texas University. Every time UA goes head to head with those other schools at the bases, we kill the competition.

Going to specific users makes a lot of difference. The goodwill associated with the Alaska Process Industry Career Consortium established two years ago was worth several million dollars to the university. These jobs are $65-75,000 starting salaries. The programs show responsiveness to the state. And the programs graduate a good number of qualified students. It is good for the university to be responsive like that. It makes it far more likely that we can get support for a master’s in social work, aviation, or anything else. These students come back and their experience here is valuable.

What you see is not a complete vector from standard academic programs down to voc-tech. There is at least as strong a movement in the other direction. This is because once upon a time voc-tech things were associated with stable communities. You didn’t need a degree if you could establish knowledge and experience. Mechanics were an example. Now people are moving so fast and changing professions so fast that a degree is an important key that confers mobility.

Industry was the first to respond to the requirement for continuing education. This is because the rate of change and of innovation has gotten so fast in the last few years. Internally industries have turned enormous amounts of money to training. At one point, Anderson Consulting had a larger training budget than the budget of Pennsylvania State University.

A degree confers mobility and is needed. Industry can’t confer degrees. Universities that reach this need in the middle which give accredited, quality instruction that can confer certificates of sorts will be winners. These kinds of certificates that are something below an associate’s degree will proliferate.

Industries don’t do well with curriculum. They don’t keep training records very well. There is some difference between a training record and a transcript. It is hard for them to translate to the next piece of professional development. Industrial and government agency training is a big market. Those who do it well will have a bunch of customers.

The only metric you can’t run from is enrollment.

Norm Swazo said that he was interested in the comments on how to focus on part-time students and recruitment. His reflections as a department chair in philosophy are that it is hard to find a local lecturer pool to respond to particular needs. The question raised is how do we look at faculty appointments in terms of the university’s response to the community college mission, especially regarding teaching and instruction. Do we need adjunct faculty who are full time? How do we use adjunct faculty with regards to these cohorts of students?

What is our response to student demand at the military bases? Norm Swazo said that he once taught a course at Fort Riley in Kansas. He said that his current department does not offer any courses at military bases. We’ve not paid attention to that and considered that opportunity.

Robert Sewell said that he agrees with Norm Swazo’s observations. There are significant questions about staffing patterns for non-traditional time slots. It was pointed out that UAS doesn’t even offer a single general education requirement in the summer, not even in lab sciences. Many students would welcome general education requirements in the summer. It was asserted that explanations of why we don’t do this don’t ring true.

President Hamilton said that a critical mass of faculty is lacking there. Faculty has to ask themselves if they want to trade the time for additional remuneration. Often the answer is I don’t want to work 12 months even though you want to pay me 12 months, because of lifestyle preferences. President Hamilton said that that the University of California Riverside discovered there is a significant number of students that didn’t choose to leave between semesters during Christmas. There were enough folks who remained between semesters to be able to offer intersession courses. They were well attended. It was a different construct, but that could be an option for the University of Alaska.

President Hamilton noted that at the UAF and UAA main campuses, more academic classes can be offered in the summer. A finance camp or debate camp could blow the doors off. When prospective students came to UAF for a particular summer camp program, they were asked how many of them considered going to college at UAF. At the beginning of the camp, 3 out of 27 said they considered it. At the end of the course, 24 out of 27 had.

The UAA nursing program is going to step forward with summer offerings for the first time. This has to do with the tremendous constraint in the need for qualified clinical visits.

At this point President Hamilton left the meeting.

8. Other items of concern

Sexual Orientation Clause for the UA Nondiscrimination Statement

Norm Swazo asked other Council members a question about their motivation and inclination regarding addressing the question of including a sexual orientation clause in the university’s nondiscrimination statement.

Robert Sewell said that the UAS Staff Council has taken that question up. It will be an agenda item in their early spring meeting.

David Woodley said that the UAA APT Council has considered it and supported it. The UAA Classified Council is in the process of considering the issue and will likely take action in favor in December 2001. Deborah Narang said that the UAA Faculty Senate has not been discussing that issue at all.

Kevin Krein said that in writing the nondiscrimination policy for UAS Outdoor Programs, sexual orientation was included. Personally he believes it is a good idea to support gay and lesbian students and workers at the university. Kevin Krein said that he talked with Mark Neumayr at the UA General Counsel’s Office and was puzzled by his reluctance to advise including sexual orientation in the policy for UAS Outdoor Programs.

Scott McCrea said that a motion on the issue at the UAF Staff Council was put on hold until the spring 2002 semester. He said that he and Larry Ledlow, the Vice President of the UAF Staff Council, had a meeting with President Hamilton. Scott McCrea said that President Hamilton told him that this could have serious (with emphasis) repercussions on the UA budget. He said that it would be disastrous. Wendy Redman also felt this way.

Scott McCrea said that President Hamilton’s reaction posed an interesting dilemma to him. Should he advise the UAF Staff Council to go forward with this issue, which he considers to be morally right, at the potential expense of harming the university budget request?

Scott McCrea pointed out that this clause was proposed to the Board of Regents in 1993 and did not pass at that time. He said that it would be good to get President Hamilton’s response to this question at the Council’s retreat.

Jennifer Reinhardt said that at the Coalition of Student Leaders Retreat on October 19, 2001, President Hamilton said that the University of Alaska has a liberal history of providing benefits to same sex partners. He mentioned that some of those benefits could be lost if the legislature decided to attack them.

Robert Sewell said that the UAS campus has a tolerant and amicable social environment. Things seem to go in an open, relaxed manner.

Pragmatically, he has heard that the inclusion of same-sex partnerships for health care benefits might be put in jeopardy.

Derek Miller suggested that we get as much input as possible from our campuses and look at it again in the future.

Council Retreat Issues and Goals

Pat Ivey said that there are a number of issues to bring to the table at the retreat. They include the comprehensive award list, sexual orientation clause, and a preview/rundown of the legislative session are items for the meeting. President Hamilton will visit the group for much of the day.

Use of adjunct professors in fulfilling a community college mission is a possible topic for discussion. Conditions that could impact the University of Alaska between now and 2009 are a topic for discussion.

Pat Ivey encouraged members to come to the table with some concrete ideas and a list of questions for President Hamilton.

Pat Ivey suggested that dialogue questions can be sent to the group at council@alaska.edu, or questions can go to her directly at pat.ivey@alaska.edu.

9. Comments

Certificates for Nontraditional Students

Brian Brubaker said that he has a personal example that illustrates President Hamilton’s point about the need for the university to offer nontraditional students certificates and credentials that have a fairly immediate utility. He said he has taken a large number of accounting classes from UAF worth 21-24 credits. Normally this would be sufficient for a second bachelor’s degree, but since accounting is only offered as a B.B.A., he would have to take 24 additional credits in business fundamental courses to get a second bachelor’s. As a result, he has no credential to reflect the additional work and would like to see a certificate of proficiency or certificates of completion in Accounting. Norm Swazo said that he would look into that specific question.

Robert Sewell said that he thinks there is a way for certificates to help on the way for a longer term goal. He said that there is a certificate for an Accounting Technician at UAS. Also, there is an Associate of Applied Business Accounting degree. Both could serve as milestones on the path toward a B.B.A. in Accounting.

Scott McCrea said that there have been some changes at Tanana Valley Campus that might make the move for TVC students to the four-year accounting degree program more seamless.

10. Adjourn

The meeting was adjourned at 3:00 pm.