Thursday, February 26, 2004
1:00-3:00 pm via video and audio conference
Draft Minutes
1. Call to order and
Roll Call
Present:
Lisa Sporleder, Chair; President of
the Statewide Administration Assembly
Rory O’Neill, Chair of the Staff Alliance
and President, UAF Staff Council
Pete Pinney, Chair of the Faculty
Alliance and President, UAF Faculty Senate
Cheryl Mann, Faculty Representative,
UAA Assembly
Trevor Fulton, Vice President, Union
of Students of UAA
Rita Fuller, President, UAS Staff
Council
Janet Dye, President, UAS Faculty
Senate
Joe Hayes, Executive Director, UAF
Alumni Association
Others:
Wendy Redman, Vice President for
University Relations
Pat
Ivey, Executive Officer, System Governance
Joe
Beedle, Vice President for Finance
Pete
Kelly, Director, Government Relations
2. Adopt agenda
MOTION:
“The
System Governance Council moves to adopt the agenda for the February 26, 2004
meeting. This action is effective
February 26, 2004.”
3. Approve
November 11, 2003 minutes
Postponed until next meeting.
4. Chair's
report
Lisa
Sporleder thanked everyone for the November 11 retreat. Everything went well. We received positive messages from the
president and his executive staff. Right now, we are becoming mired within the
legislative session and it doesn’t look quite as grim as it did at the very
onset. There has been a bill introduced
that would cover the PERS/TRS increases.
At one point, we didn’t think that was going to happen. The university received an increased in the
capital budget, not the operating budget and is doing better than a lot of
other agencies in the state. As
everyone continues their advocacy efforts, we must remember to be polite and
let the legislators know that we appreciate what they are doing for us.
5. Chancellor Search Status
Pete
Pinney reported that at UAF, there was a public forum on February 19 where we
listened to public comments and suggestions on what the university community
would like see in a chancellor. The intermediate
screening committee is meeting March 9. At that time the consultant will work
with the committee to look at the 17 applications plus the consultants ten or
12 that will be considered. The
committee intends to have the final candidates selected and on-campus
interviews concluded by the end of May.
The
UAF chancellor search web site is http://www.uaf.edu/chancellor/search/
Trevor
Fulton was the only UAA representative at this Council meeting and is not part
of the UAA chancellor search. The USUAA president is on the search
committee. Cheryl Mann reported that
the UAA chancellor search is further along than the UAF search and candidates
would be on campus next month. Wendy
Redman reported everyone is very excited about the quality of the candidate
pool. Three of the top five candidates are women.
The
UAA chancellor search web site is http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/chancellor/search/index.cfm.
6. Outcomes Measures
Joe
Beedle reported that Pat Pitney the Statewide Budget director is out of state
and Paul Jenny, the associate budget director has accepted a position as the
associate vice chancellor for budget at the University of California-Berkeley
at double the salary.
The
five initial measures have been forwarded to the Systemwide Academic Council
and are being forwarded to the president and the chancellors for consideration
and adoption by the Board of Regents.
Governance has engaged heavily in the process and Statewide Budget has
as a result received up to fifty suggestions for measures. The faculty in particular have been very
successful in having their voice heard that some qualitative measures, not just
quantitative measures, are required.
The
chancellors will be asked to communicate how they are going to accept and
transmit the first five measures to the campuses and departments and how the
campuses and departments are going to implement them.
Budget
and Institutional Research have a huge task to review the fifty or so that have
now been nominated and continue to engage governance and the technical groups
on the development of the next fifteen measures.
Governance
and just about everyone else prefers the title “performance measures” rather
than “outcomes measures” so from now on, the process will be known as
“performance measures”.
The
next fifteen measures will be delayed somewhat with Pitney traveling and with
Jenny’s departure. March 20 appears to
be the next threshold.
7. UA Institutional Accountability and
Sustainability Committee (ACAS)
Joe
Beedle reported that the first two-day meeting of ACAS begins February 27
through February 28. There are 22 ACAS
members from around the system. Pete
Pinney and Rory O’Neill are on the ACAS team.
Some are very concerned about what all this means and what kind of
homework they will need to do. For the
first meeting, the pressure has really been on the cross-MAU teams or CMTs and
their leads in preparing their documents to present to ACAS. The ACAS committee will have three-ring
binders of all the reports and won’t need to download everything from the web
site. There will be reports by CMT
leads throughout the two-day session.
The presentations will be accessible from Juneau Egan Library, from
Anchorage UC 145 and in the Board of Regents Conference Room in Butrovich, and
the audioconference link is also published.
The
web site is http://www.alaska.edu/acas/
ACAS
is looking at 12 areas of system operations and support and not at academic
programming.
8. Naming Policy
The
draft naming policy was discussed. The
Council wanted the draft retain the ability to name public roads and public
places after indigenous cultures within Alaska and to retain the ability to
name buildings and parts thereof for academic contribution. There is a conflict between Section E and
the following section in that the former states that the name will remain for
the life of a building and the latter talks about renaming things.
The
Council chair was asked to write a memo to the president outlining some of the
concerns expressed today. Other members
were asked to forward concerns from their groups to Sporleder.
9. Legislative Outlook
Pete
Kelly reported that the outlook is a little more realistic. There is an appropriations bill that came
out of the House HESS Committee that includes the $8.8 million for PERS and
TERS increases. There is some real
desire in the legislature to deal with this problem. The legislature is also beginning to say they are going to “fix
education” meaning K-16. Though the
university operating budget was passed out of the House Finance subcommittee to
the full Finance Committee flat-funded, our actual operating budget increases
are in the capital budget at the present time.
The capital budget will be heard next Wednesday in Senate Finance.
There
is some talk also of the House passing some of the Governor’s revenue
measures.
Other
university-interest bills include one on intellectual property a House Bill
that is in the Senate. This bill allows
the president to negotiate with employees regarding business opportunities that
can be generated from the intellectual property that employees may develop.
There
is also a bill that deals with practicum placement and the liability that might
be associated with it.
Kelly
has had nothing but positive feedback on President Hamilton’s speech to the
House and Senate Finance Committees. He
talked to a couple of legislators who have not been big supporters of the
university in the past. One of them was
generally very favorable on what the president said. The other one said that the president had definitely gotten their
attention.
The
regents were in Juneau last week and that went very well. The students were in
town over the weekend and the first part of this week and overall the students
did a really good job. Ian Hebert, Thom
Walker and Mark Graves deserve a lot of credit for this.
Freshmen
legislators, mostly from Anchorage, do not yet have much of an allegiance to
the university, but hopefully, this will improve over time.
10. President Hamilton
Fifty-five
percent of Alaska’s college-bound students now attend the University of Alaska
for the first time in the history of the state or the territory. The good news is that is a tremendous
dividend to the State of Alaska and to Alaskan employers who won’t have to rent
talent from out of state because most of the in-state students stay here.
Detractors
might say the increase is because of the Alaska Scholar’s program but the
Scholars account for less than one-fourth of the increase.
Detractors
might say that the graduates can’t find jobs in Alaska. However, 100 per cent
of the engineering, project management, allied health, nurses, and APEC
graduates are employed in Alaska at graduation and 100 percent of the teaching
graduates can find a job in the State of Alaska if they really want one.
This
has come about because of the investments made by the state five, four and
three years ago. For the last two
years, the state has not made an investment in the university and this becomes
a very difficult position for the university to deal with.
Our
job is to provide a university that this year will cost 5 percent more than
last year in order to maintain status quo.
Two years ago, we were $1.5 million short of receiving the full 5
percent and last year we were $6 million short, so we are trying to make up
$7.5 million while we were getting in those last two years 2,000 additional
students. More students means it costs
more to run the institution.
We
are looking all over this university for cost savings that we will need even if
we get additional funds this year.
If
the legislature takes care of the PERS/TRS increases, that will be a very good
thing. The bill currently under
consideration is for three years. This
means that the university would receive $8.8 million per year for three years.
The
president hopes the university will receive the $8.8 million for PERS/TRS
increases and the 5 percent additional funds the governor requested for the
university.
We
are living the year of minus $7.5 million.
With the increase in enrollment and tuition, we have an artificial
hiatus until the shortage really hits us so we need to be careful and make sure
the proposed legislative increases for PERS/TRS and the governor’s request are
applied to the base budget instead of being one-time funding as they stand now.
President
Hamilton spent some time discussing ideas for state efficiencies, including
stopping double inflation proofing the Permanent Fund. He concluded that legislators are bending
over backwards to include the university in their discussion of budget
increases.
President
Hamilton said the additional executives and staff hired in the president’s
office are generally funded by restricted funds. The dollar amount increases are correct but are mostly restricted
funds and if he got rid of all those staff and executives, he couldn’t do
anything else with the money. There has been hired in statewide sixteen people
over 5.5 years with an increase systemwide of 4,000 students, 260 new faculty
and almost 600 new staff, part of which are the 16. He encouraged everyone to treat each other with respect and
dignity.
When
asked if the university was moving toward formula funding, the president said
no. It’s been tried in other states but
not very successfully in his opinion.
Regarding
the university’s land grant status, almost without exception, the people who
are pushing an increase to the university’s lands are the university’s
friends. But the lands won’t come fast
enough in a large enough chunk and won’t produce enough fast enough after we
get them to do any good for a long time.
If UA had land in proportion to all the other states, we would have
about 5.4 million acres of land and if it were all unrestricted and could
produce an adequate income (ANWR or NPR), it would give UA something that could
approximately a sustainment level endowment over time. The likelihood of getting 5.4 million acres
of unrestricted use land is practically nil.
The land is so horribly picked over that there is practically nothing
left of any use.
Regarding
community support for the university, chambers of commerce and rotary clubs and
other community groups have to reflect in their list of legislative priorities
what their community needs are and the university is usually about number three
of even the educational priorities as a result. After you get by Fairbanks, that kind of community support for
the university above those levels just doesn’t happen, even though the
communities in which UA has campuses is very highly thought of. The key to community support is to get
individuals to do it rather than trying to get the community groups to do it.
11. System Governance reports
11.1 Faculty Alliance
Pete
Pinney reported that the Faculty Alliance meets tomorrow at 11:30am. The Alliance passed a resolution relating to
retaining the faculty liaison position.
The Alliance got a memo from the President the next day saying that the
position was being eliminated. The
Alliance concern is that if the academic liaison position goes away, the input
from the faculty is being marginalized and shared governance is in jeopardy
because of it.
Another
thing we want to look at is how to look at line items in the budget. Statewide budget has gone up $1 million in
the last year, $20 million in the last five years as opposed to academic
programming which has not kept pace with that level of increase.
The UAF Faculty Senate has reviewed the UAF
budget and noted that some increases in admin costs such as shifting costs for
the nano technology center to the dean’s office accounted for some of the
increase to the UAF administrative budget.
11.2 Staff Alliance
The
Staff Alliance is working with Jim Johnsen on most of the Staff Alliance
issues. University regulations are
being promulgated by the Staff Alliance regarding governance itself. We are trying to shore up the mechanism by
which the university respects and protects governance. Throughout the governance system on the
staff side, there is always an enormous amount of tension about having time to
do what you are asked to do when you volunteer for governance.
A
number of members are involved with HR on the development of communications,
elements and financing of the UA Choice Plan.
The underlying concern is just the way the modifications to the health
plan are cast in terms of saving money for the university. We really haven’t changed our administrative
costs with Blue Cross, but it really comes down to the employer contribution on
a per capita basis towards the plan.
The
Staff Alliance has decided to invite at least one rural governance staff from
the each MAU to join the Alliance at their annual legislative retreat in
Juneau. Staff Councils may send
additional representatives at their own expense.
The
UA Staff Compensation Task Force kicks off tomorrow afternoon and will have
about five two-hour meetings with Jim Johnsen’s office. There are about 20-plus staff participating
from across the UA system. The task of
the task force is to inform decision-makers and voice concerns.
11.3 Coalition of Student Leaders
Trevor
Fulton said the Student Legislative Conference in Juneau and the legislative
campaign
the first part of the week went very well.
The Coalition is discussing the idea of instituting a systemwide
governance fee to cover the costs of the Coalition. As it exists right now, the Coalition has a minimal amount of
general funds but has to ask the student governments for donations every year
to mount the legislative campaign. That
is a very time-consuming process.
Anyone who wants to see the photos from the Coalition activities this
week may access them at http://gov.alaska.edu/.
11.4 Alumni associations
The
alumni retreat was held the end of January in Anchorage. Directors and board
members from UAF, UAA and UAS attended. We had Mary Rutherford from statewide
development and the president. We talked about how the three alumni
associations could work together with the university and each other to
strengthen alumni relations. We have
one of the lowest alumni giving ratios in the entire nation. The university has received a lot of heat about
that from the legislature last year, so a strong emphasis is being placed upon
getting alumni more involved in alumni giving.
Hayes was in Juneau with the students and other alumni leaders at UAA
and UAS.
UAF
will be doing a planned giving drive the second week of March.
15. Adjourn
- The meeting was adjourned at
3:02pm