Draft Minutes

 

Thursday, May 16, 2002

1:00-3:00 pm via video and audio conference

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 1:15 pm.  The meeting moved forward as a discussion since quorum was not present until later in the meeting.

 

Members Present

 

Derek Miller, Chair; President, ASUAF

Godwin Chukwu, President, UAF Faculty Senate

David Woodley, President, UAA Assembly

Robert Sewell, President, UAS Staff Council

Kerry Digou, President, Statewide Administration Assembly

Kevin Krein, President, UAS Faculty Council

 

Members Absent

 

Scott McCrea, President, UAF Staff Council

David Parks, President, USUAA

Debbie Narang, Vice President, UAA Assembly

Katrina Hotch, Vice President, USUAS-J

Jennifer Reinhardt, President, Kachemak Bay Student Association

Cindy Branley, ex-officio, UAFAA

Joe Joeright, ex-officio, UASAA

Suzette Mashburn, ex-officio, UAAAA

 

Guests Present

 

Mark Hamilton, University of Alaska President

Britt Arnesen, Coalition of Student Leaders

Pat Ivey, System Governance

Brian Brubaker, System Governance

 

3.         Approve Minutes

 

David Woodley said that both he and Debbie Narang were both present at the last meeting.  He would like the minutes to reflect this.

 

MOTION: Moved by Digou, seconded by Krein, passed without objection

 

“The System Governance Council of the University of Alaska approves the minutes of its February 14, 2002, meeting as amended.  This action is effective May 16, 2002.”

 

4.         Chair's Report

 

Derek Miller said that the Staff Alliance passed a resolution regarding the republican majority's refusal to consider confirmations for regents.  He would be interested in hearing the discussion on it from the Council and perhaps endorsing the motion.

 

Godwin Chukwu asked as a new member about the mission and purpose of the System Governance Council.  Pat Ivey explained that the Council was an important vehicle of discussion and coordination among various governance groups.  Pat Ivey said that this resolution regarding the regent appointments was within the purview of the Council.

 

5.         Workshop with President Hamilton

 

President Hamilton greeted the members of the Council and proceeded to make comments about various issues facing the university.

 

FY2003 Budget Situation

 

President Hamilton said that the budget situation fills him with foreboding.  We came so close to zero funding that it is hard to understand why.  Senator Pete Kelly (R-Fairbanks) found a source of funding and put dibs on it for the university.

 

When the $8 million came back to conference committee, members of the house who normally are university advocates said no.  24 out of 40 house members would be willing to give the university the $16.9 million.  But at the end, these advocates were arguing that the university should go to zero because of the long range fiscal plan votes.

 

President Hamilton thinks that next year will be very, very tough.  The new governor will have to take on the fiscal plan in their first days of office.  Doing that in concert with a budget that has more expenditures will be very unlikely.

 

Staff and Faculty Positions - Recruitment and Allocation

 

How can the university affect the expenditure pattern of the money it did get?  The university has been in an expenditure mode for a long time.  The number one goal has been to expand the faculty.  If you are building a university from scratch, the first thing you do is get staff, then faculty, then students.  Our university was sort of doing the same thing but it could not lead with staff, it had to lead the asking for new revenues by requesting more faculty.

 

The university really has gone on a spending spree.  It has funded 84 faculty and hired 200.  It has funded 45 or 50 staff positions and hired 300.  So far so good.  Now the university absolutely has to morph within that structure.  The university has all of the staff and faculty it will need; the question is, are they in the right spots?  Is this where these individuals are needed?  The university currently has the largest number of staff and faculty it has ever had and the university doesn't have anywhere near the highest number of students it has ever had.  This appears to be a little bit of a luxury.

 

The university needs to get the number of students that will allow it to operate efficiently and take advantage of the available staff and faculty skills.  How this can be done is a question that will take a lot of attention from provosts and deans.  The university has open faculty lines every year that dwarf the number it has gotten in the initiative process all along.  Even now, the university is seeking candidates for greater than 80 vacancies.

 

FY2003 Budget Increases

 

President Hamilton said that the university has about an $8 million budget increase, another $400,000 increase specifically for nursing, and additional funding from SB127.  This constitutes the second largest budget increase the university has received in the last four years. 

 

Employee Health Care Cost Increases

 

President Hamilton said that health care cost overruns are a big problem.  The university will have an increase in its staff benefit rate of more than $5 million this year.  That bill has to be paid.  In two years, health care has gone from costing $16 million to $25.7 million.  What are we going to do about this?

 

Faculty are on a different health care plan that the two plans that serve staff.  The faculty & union staff plan costs $935/year per individual.  The non-represented staff plan costs $185/year per individual.  Next year looks like there could be another $5 million increase.  The cost increases are being caused by huge uses and huge bills.  There are things that can be done to keep costs down.  They include not buying brand-name drugs or getting drugs by mail-order.  Ultimately these things will be informed by individual choice.

 

When the administration goes to the legislature and says it needs $9 million for salary increases and another $5 million for health care cost overruns, before they get to starting in on initiative funding, what is the response going to be?  Basically not good.

 

Regent Appointments

 

President Hamilton said that he knows that the Staff Alliance took action on this.  He encourages folks not to spend a whole lot of angst on this.  He is frustrated.  There are reasons that the university will have to pursue this a little farther.  The General Obligation Bond will be needed and another piece in the capital budget for the UAS Juneau recreation center and UAA University Center.  The legislature said that you may choose to bond these yourselves and we will pick up the payments.  This is a good deal for the university, assuming they don't renege on the promise to pay the freight.  The problem is that in order to enter into a bond agreement, the university has to have a duly constituted board.  Do we have a duly constituted board with only 8 members?  Do those who just left mean that they continue to serve?  Does the university go get the other ones back?  It is essentially impossible to get the student regent back because of the way they are qualified.  The answer to all these questions is that we don't know.

 

The Bond Council will make a big deal about this.  If we don't have a duly constituted board to approve the bonds, then they are in jeopardy and we have to go out and find out what to do about this.

 

External Review of Academic Affairs

 

A big issue out there is whether or not the university has to have an academic Vice President.  He is absolutely agnostic on this.  The last time the university was going to hire one, the System Academic Council (SAC; Provosts) talked everyone out of it.  The review team sees value in having an academic VP.  We'll see where the university goes on that.

 

President Hamilton asked, do we want to spend another $300,000 on a Vice President for Academic Affairs?  Godwin Chukwu said that the Faculty Alliance will be bringing forward comments to the BOR on this question and on the academic external review. 

 

President Hamilton said that he was really pleased with the external reviews.  In some sense these are the accreditation reviews for the administration at statewide.

 

External Review of Student Services

 

Student Services have been a lost piece from all the time the university spent in the desert in the 1990’s and the university has not yet reconstituted student services to anywhere near our formal level.  The university has staff and faculty hired but has not reconstituted the mechanisms to get all the students in.  The university has to work hard to understand what it will have to do to find all of the students.  The university knows why students do come here; so why do they decide not to come?  The University of Alaska is dead last in the nation in terms of attracting students, which is really disappointing in light of how much it has improved in the last four years.  The university has increased the number of high school graduates coming in by 50%, increased the number of the top 10% of high school graduates by 400%, and doubled the number headed Outside that stay here instead.

 

Student Satisfaction Survey Results

 

President Hamilton said that the latest results of the student satisfaction survey are really good.  There are some wonderful numbers on this.  The university staff went up in every single category.  The university doesn't offer as wide a spectrum of courses as students want.  The University of Alaska offers half of what Hawaii does, for example, and 2/3 of what Wyoming does.  The University of Alaska has such a terrible participation rate that what it really has is about 1/2 to 1/3 of the student population that peer state institutions have.  Can the University of Alaska really offer this quantity of programs with only this size of a student body?

 

The university will have to look around and say, does it really make sense to have a course where there are only four students anymore?  The university should have caught up pretty significantly on course sequencing problems, since it now has more professors who can offer more classes more frequently than before.

 

The Fall 2001 Student Satisfaction Survey can be found online at:

 

http://info.alaska.edu/oir/surveys/surveys.htm

 

Master Planning/ Strategic Plan

 

President Hamilton said that he would like to visit with the Council in the fall about information he has regarding master planning to see if we notice any disconnects about it.  The administration is looking for holes and for major disconnects in the planning process.  It is hard to do that from the individual alliance perspectives, but if you have all three pieces constituencies together (as you do in the Council) you can more easily see what is unworkable and what isn't.  If it is in the university’s best interest to increase its enrollment with the people available - the part time students and GER kinds of students – then what does that mean?  The state has only a very few high school graduates coming out every year.  The university can go out after the non-traditional prospective students for enrollment growth potential.  Are there any modifications that the university can make for part time students?  At UAF, 1/3 of graduate students are part time.  Every where else, 2/3 or more of students are part time.  The university has a part time phenomenon at the bachelor and graduate levels that overlaps the voc/tech, GER scenarios that are the traditional places for nontraditional, part time students.

 

University of Alaska Tuition

 

In the fall, President Hamilton said that he may want to talk about the value of a tuition increase across the system, only at the three major campuses or individually by discipline.  He said that it is time for a tuition increase and the university will have to do it.  He said that the University of Alaska is the cheapest university in the country and this could actually be hurting our university’s reputation.  People ask, what can they have at the University of Alaska that is of any value if that's all they charge to go there?

 

President Hamilton said that the university needs to better advertise the value of a college education.  The difference between your earning power as a baccalaureate student and that of a high school graduate is like this:  for those people who go to a public university, in their best year of their earning power, the difference in pay would be enough to cover the cost of their entire college experience - just the change in pay for one year.  That's pretty significant value.  One of things required of the university when it raises tuition is to provide scholarships.  You have to look people in the eye and demonstrate that you've done everything you can to raise scholarships.  Our scholarships across the system have been increasing tremendously.

 

Comment on Recruitment Strategy Implementation

 

Godwin Chukwu said that President Hamilton has made some good comments on how to increase enrollment.  He said the university needs to face the problem of implementation strategies.  The problem encountered with money for engineering was implementation.  The BOR cannot implement, each individual MAU cannot implement, nor can President Hamilton.  He suggests meeting with the President's staff to organize a workshop with high school teachers and students and keynote speakers and do road mapping to decide how to implement recruitment strategies.

 

Professor Chukwu said that we can stay and talk about good ideas for recruiting new students, but we need to get high school teachers involved.  That has to be road mapped with strategies of implementation and a timeline of implementation.

 

It was pointed out that UAF is dead last in the nation on the retention of students.  And the prevailing attitude there seems to be, "I think we're doing okay."  Why do people seem to be satisfied with that?

 

6.         Approve Calendar for 2002-2003

 

Derek Miller asked for comments about the schedule.  Should the onsite retreat be rescheduled for September instead of November?

 

MOTION:  Moved by Digou, seconded by Sewell, passed without objection

 

“The System Governance Council of the University of Alaska approves the 2002-2003 calendar, acknowledging that dates and times (including that of the fall 2001 onsite meeting) are subject to change.  This action is effective May 16, 2002.”

 

·        Thursday, September 26, 2002, 1:00-3:00pm via videoconference

·        Thursday, November 14, 2002, retreat, on-site, Fairbanks

·        Thursday, February 13, 2003, 1:00-3:00pm via videoconference

·        Thursday, May 15, 2003, 1:00-3:00pm via videoconference

 

7.         System governance group reports

 

7.1.      Coalition of Student Leaders

 

Derek Miller said that the Coalition of Student Leaders discussed a $1 student fee and also their full funding campaign.  They will meet again on June 8, 2002.

 

7.2.      Faculty Alliance

 

There were no members present from the Faculty Alliance.  Brenden Kelly from Juneau was elected as the new chair and his term of office begins on July 1, 2002.

 

7.3.      Staff Alliance

 

Robert Sewell said that the Staff Alliance had quite a long meeting today and President Hamilton was their guest.  The Staff Alliance has continued to pursue issues regarding compensation, UA advocacy, staff development, and communication improvements.  Most of their time continues to focus on compensation.  The Staff Alliance hopes to have another 1.5% increase to the salary grid for FY2003.

 

The classification of exempt and non-exempt jobs by SWOHR is ongoing and the Staff Alliance has been an advocate for speedy resolution of that.  Some remaining issues are regarding how the salary grid is related to the placement of various jobs and regarding career planning.  The Staff Alliance has started to hear more about healthcare costs.  They don't really have an action item on that yet and are not yet sure what they are supposed to do about that. 

 

Regarding advocacy, the Staff Alliance did their annual cookie brigade again.  It is an entree to go meet with legislators and have appointments with them.  The Staff Alliance is considering inviting the Make Students Count Award Winners to be ex-officio members of the Alliance and also including them in their legislative advocacy efforts again in future years.

 

Brian Brubaker pointed out that Britt Arnesen helped with and deserved kudos for making appointments for the Staff Alliance Cookie Brigade, which included student leader participants from USUAA and USUAS-J.  There is a photos page of the Staff Alliance Retreat at http://gov.alaska.edu/Staff/photos/2002-04-09/index.htm.

 

The Community Service Outreach Program, a kind of a volunteer leave program, is being proposed.  It would allow university employees to volunteer with various nonprofit organizations on the university's nickel.  The Staff Alliance hopes to have some resolution of this by the end of June 2002.

 

The third category of staff development concerns individual career power training and planning.  There is one also for supervisors called career coaching.  The Staff Alliance wants to see these trainings used and promulgated.  It has only been a small, tiny market penetration of a few hundred people out of 2700 so far.

 

The Staff Alliance has done a few things regarding communication.  They are stumbling towards doing an electronic newsletter.  And now, all of their formal actions are posted on the Staff Alliance website.

 

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

 

Pat Ivey said that we would put formal actions online for the other groups as well.  Robert Sewell said that he liked the formal actions listing.

 

Elections in the different local staff governance groups have largely been accomplished and the Staff Alliance will soon have a mix of new members.  The Staff Alliance will hopefully have an onsite retreat in August 2002.

 

8.         Local governance reports

 

8.1               UAA

 

David Woodley said that he will once again be the president of the UAA Assembly and UAA staff member for the UA System Governance Council in 2002-2003.  David Parks is the new president of USUAA.  Cheryl Wright was re-elected president of the UAA Classified Council.  John Moon was elected president of the UAA APT Council.

 

The University Center is a former mall and theater about 2 miles off campus.  Currently there is a plan to relocate core student services to the University Center and this caused a great deal of concern and reservation among all of the governance bodies on campus.  All the governance bodies on campus have endorsed resolutions opposing the proposed move.  This has been a divisive issue between governance groups and the UAA administration.

 

8.2.      UAF

 

Godwin Chukwu reported that the UAF Faculty Senate formed an interim, ad-hoc committee to discuss research policy.  Ted DeLaca will chair it and hopefully they will have a report by September 2002.

 

Derek Miller said that Scott McCrea, the president of the UAF Staff Council, has helped sponsor several forums on discrimination.  ASUAF Vice President Antwaun Carrouthers, the Associate Dean of Student Services Don Foley, and the UAF Office of Multicultural Affairs were involved on the panel in these forums.  The Chancellor and Dean of Students were also there.  There are things happening on the campus that a lot of people were not even aware of.  There weren't a lot of students at these forums. ASUAF will continue to support the discrimination forums and hopes to play a bigger role in putting them on next year.

 

Derek Miller said that ASUAF was able to incorporate expanded services at the Tanana Valley Campus into their budget with coffee and tutors down there.  ASUAF is increasing the services that student government can provide to TVC.  ASUAF is doing a one year pilot to start KUAC-TV, a closed circuit student run television station.  ASUAF Student Government will play a major role in making this happen.

 

8.3.      UAS

 

Kevin Krein said that the UAS Faculty Council has changed now to the UAS Faculty Senate.  Brendan Kelly is expected to chair that body next year.  A president-elect will be elected at the first meeting of the next academic year.

 

The addition to the Egan Library is almost done.  The addition contains another 16 classrooms and other general space.  The UAS campus community remains hopeful that funding will remain on track for the gigantic new recreation center being proposed in partnership with the national guard.

 

8.4.      SW

 

Kerry Digou said that John Mitchell will be the new SAA President.  Melissa Hill will be the new Vice President and Lisa Sporleder will be the new Secretary.  He said that the air intake is being changed for the better in the Butrovich Building where many statewide employees work.

 

9.         Agenda items for next meeting

 

General Election Outlook

 

At the meeting previous to the next statewide general election, it may be a good idea to hear about the state's fiscal problems as a whole and candidate stances on the issue.

 

Pat Ivey said that we will be putting together materials on how and where governance officers can participate in the election process.  One of the big things will be to work on voter registration, voter education and getting out the vote.

 

Candidate Survey

 

Pat Ivey said that there will be a candidate survey conducted this summer under the auspices of the System Governance Council.  She will be seeking feedback on this survey.  There have been times where we surveyed both primary and general election candidates; lately, it has been conducted only with the general election candidates.

 

10.        Comments & Other Items of Concern

 

Resolution Objecting to the Actions of the Republican Majority

 

In and around the day the second session of the 22nd Alaska State Legislature was set to adjourn, the republican majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate refused to hold votes to confirm several appointments in joint sessions for that purpose.  Appointees to the Board of Regents they refused to confirm included Mark Begich of Anchorage, Marlene Johnson of Juneau, and Joe Hardenbrook, the student regent from Fairbanks.  Each of these nominees had been serving in the capacity as regents for almost a year.

 

For more information, see “4 Boards' Nominees in Limbo; MONDAY NIGHT MASSACRE: Seats may be left to new governor,” by Ben Spiess, published in the Anchorage Daily News on Tuesday, May 14, 2002.

 

http://gov.alaska.edu/Staff/correspondence/2002-05-14-adn-nominees-in-limbo.pdf

 

Also see “Legislators Snub Board Nominees; APPOINTMENTS: GOP wants next governor to fill four boards,” by Maureen Clark of the Associated Press, published in the Anchorage Daily News on Wednesday, May 15, 2002.

 

http://gov.alaska.edu/Staff/correspondence/2002-05-15-adn-legislators-snub.pdf

 

The following letter to the editor was published in the Anchorage Daily News on May 17, 2002, and in the Fairbanks Daily News Miner on May 21, 2002.

 

UA Board of Regents appointees due the courtesy of Legislative vote

 

The Legislature made a mistake in voting to adjourn the joint session without first voting on the three appointees to the UA Board of Regents. The three regents were appointed one year ago this month. In the ensuing year, all three served with distinction. Joe Hardenbrook is an outstanding scholar. After sweeping to victory in the National College Bowl regionals, he led the University of Alaska team to the national competition, where it placed for the first time in memory.  Marlene Johnson has served as Sealaska Corp. board chair and a member of the Limited Entry Commission. She serves as chair of the Academic and Student Affairs Committee of the Board of Regents. Mark Begich was chair of the Anchorage Assembly and chair of Alaska's student loan program. He changed that program from one that lost money to one that makes a profit. All three regents deserve to be confirmed.

 

Whether they are confirmed or not, all three, as well as the appointees to the other boards, deserve the courtesy of a vote. Never before in the history of this state has the Legislature refused to vote on a block of appointees. If legislators believe, as I do, that public service is a citizen's responsibility, then those willing and qualified to serve deserve the respect of a vote.

 

-- Chancy Croft, chair

UA Board of Regents

Anchorage

 

Earlier that same day, the Staff Alliance passed the following resolution with five in favor, one opposed, and two abstentions.

 

RESOULTION OBJECTING TO THE ACTIONS OF THE REPUBLICAN MAJORITY OF THE 22nd ALASKA STATE LEGISLATURE

 

 

WHEREAS the 2002 regular session of the 22nd Alaska State Legislature was scheduled to adjourn at midnight on May 14, 2002; and

 

WHEREAS the legislature refused to consider Governor Knowles appointments of Joseph Hardenbrook, Mark Begich, and Marlene Johnson to the University of Alaska Board of Regents; and

 

WHEREAS the only reason given to this decision was that most members of the Republican majority felt that the appointments should be made by the next governor, despite the fact that the three Regents had done an outstanding job of serving on the board for one year already; and

 

WHEREAS the decision is an insult to those three individuals, all of whom are credible Alaskans willing to give up their own time to serve in what are extremely time-consuming and difficult positions; and

 

WHEREAS the decision is particularly insulting to the students of the University of Alaska, who voted to elect Joseph Hardenbrook as their representative to the Board of Regents and will now be without representation on the board until the next academic year begins and another election can be held; and

 

WHEREAS the University of Alaska Staff Alliance represents more than 2,400 employees of the University of Alaska, all of whom have a personal stake in issues that affect the university; now

 

BE IT RESOLVED that the University of Alaska Staff Alliance is outraged by the actions of a majority of the Republican majority of the 22nd Alaska State Legislature for refusing to vote on the appointments of the aforementioned regents, and

 

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that copies of this resolution be submitted to all members of the 22nd Alaska State Legislature as well as the media so that it is publicly known that their actions will not be tolerated by the employees of the University of Alaska.

 

Derek Miller said that it sounds like it may not be necessary to take action on the resolution objecting to the action of the republican majority. 

 

MOTION:  Woodley, Krein, passed with six in favor and none opposed

 

“The System Governance Council of the University of Alaska endorses the Staff Alliance’s Resolution Objecting to the Actions of the Republican Majority of the 22nd Alaska State Legislature.  This action is effective May 16, 2002.”

 

In Favor:

 

Derek Miller

Godwin Chukwu

Kerry Digou

Robert Sewell

Kevin Krein

David Woodley

Opposed:

 

None

 

 

Abstentions:

 

None

 

12.        Adjourn

 

The meeting was adjourned at 2:45 pm.