Representative Faculty Senate Minutes, February 19, 2013
Attendance:
Representative senators and officers: 28
Ex-officio: 1
Faculty, administrators and guests: 9
Total attendance: 38
1. Call to Order:
The meeting was called to order at 1:50pm.
2. Vice-President’s Report:
Mark Rahdert, Vice-President of Faculty Senate gave a brief report on committees. He reported that we have a need of candidates and appointments to several committees including three very important committees: Personnel Committee, UTPAC, and EPPC. He encouraged senators to ask colleagues to serve and reminded them that the nomination period for elected committees is over at the end of this month.
Steve Newman (CLA), Chair of the Faculty Senate Steering Committee Nominating Committee was asked to report on the Nominating Committee’s slate of candidates for Faculty Senate Offices for 2013-2014. The slate presented is:
— Mark Rahdert (Law), President
— Tricia Jones (COE), Vice-President
— Paul LaFollette (CST), Secretary
He indicated that after Feb 25th you can offer your own nominations, but we are no longer taking nominations from the floor. He encouraged interested faculty to go to the Faculty Senate website. For self-nominations you need to have 6 faculty senators writing in support of your nomination. If there are questions faculty are encouraged to contact Steve Newman or Cheryl Mack.
3. President’s Report:
Joan Shapiro, President of the Faculty Senate, introduced Steve Newman as the new editor of The Faculty Herald. She welcomed him and thanked him for his service in this role. She also mentioned that a new issue of the Faculty Herald had just been distributed. Joan also explained that there are two students doing filming at today’s session. They are focusing on pictures of Dai and are not recording any audio.
4. Guest: Jodi Levine-Laufgraben, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Institutional Advancement.
Jodi came to share exciting news about Banner Updates that will be in effect for summer and fall registration. These updates concern wait-listing and washing out.
Banner can now wait-list for courses. The Law School has been using wait-listing as a pilot so we now have a better understanding that wait-listing is a key tool for academic planning and scheduling. We will have wait-listing beginning in March for Summer Session and it will be available for every course. The capacity is 100 on waitlists. Students can see capacity and number waitlisted but not where they are specifically on the waitlist. If you are waitlisted and you are first on the list you are notified and have 72 hours to decide whether to take the opening or not (72 hours allow for students who need advisor signature to register, hence over the weekend).
This system doesn’t allow for section shopping – you can only be wait-listed for a course you don’t have. They can be on as many waitlists as they wish. This system eliminates the ability of an individual instructor to override enrollment limits and let a student in a course.
Washing Out: The Wednesday before start of semester, a student who has not paid for their courses are washed out. This was the #1 problem for financial aid offices and caused a great deal of stress and tension for students. We will no longer have washouts. Instead, students will be asked to sign an agreement that if they register for a course and cannot pay in full beginning of semester they will be put into a payment plan but will not be washed out of the course.
Jodi invited FSSC members to contact her if they have questions: jodih@temple.edu.
There were several questions on these developments (responses from Jodi are summarized in parentheses):
—Will instructors see waitlists? (Individual colleges are probably making this decision for their group. She wants to check on this).
— Will we be able to pick priority of waitlist? (Initially it was going to be first-come, first-serve. They have decided to do waitlist manipulation; working with associate deans and schedulers to see how they want to do this and who will be responsible at the school or college to control this).
— Is wait-listing by CRN rather than course level? (True, but wait-listing is for course access not section access. They can’t section shop.)
5. Guest: Provost Dai, Dialogue with Dai:
Joan Shapiro introduced Provost Dai who had recently been appointed as Provost for Temple University. She gave a general summary of Provost Dai’s credentials which attest to his excellence as a scholar and academic and his diverse interests and accomplishments outside the academy. Among the accomplishments she noted were:
— He is a scholar of Molecular and surface sciences.
— He has a great record of sponsored research.
— He plans to continue his research even as he serves as Provost.
— He has a truly impressive record of publications.
— He has received numerous awards and is a Fellow of several academic societies.
— He is also a Renaissance man – a former conductor of Philadelphia Chinese Musical Voices Choir.
Provost Dai welcomed the student representatives visiting to do videography of Provost Dai during the session.
He indicated that his intention was to discuss his goals as Provost. He summarized his goals as: (1) finding sufficient resources to accomplish the mission of access to excellence, (2) delivering the best education we can, and (3) supporting to the fullest extent the scholarly activity of our faculty.
He began by asking, “What are the strategies to accomplish these goals and what are the challenges we face?” He began by addressing the challenges. His comments indicated the following:
— student enrollment (we are seeing decreasing pressures due to demographic changes – 15-20% decreases; community colleges seeing 10-20% drop in enrollment)
— pressure on tuition and student debt increasing.(we can no longer just raise tuition).
— pressure of stability of state funding (PA state appropriations are currently 12% of Temple’s operating budget).
— pressure of health enterprise (do we have control over these TUHS costs?)
— in a globalized world how do we help our country maintain its prosperity?
— are we delivering the kinds of education to our students to make and keep them competitive with the rest of the world?
— Temple should not follow the lead of elite institutions; we should create a new education paradigm.
Provost Dai then moved to a discussion of strategies that he believes we should implement to address these challenges. His comments included the following thoughts:
— improve our ranking (this is not just a matter of playing with numbers; we need to control the perception of the university in the larger public)
— Temple-made campaign only means something to Temple folks unless we increase our rankings. We have increased the investment in scholarships to attract the top students to come and move the SAT levels to the higher end.
— We still have ability to invest; we need to conduct a strategic investment in terms of hiring new, top-quality, research faculty.
— Investing in research and scholarly effort
— In terms of students – merit scholarships (applications 1300 or higher is up 6% and those indicating they will come are up 50%).
— Investing in student services; counseling, internships.
— We need international students. To maintain a USNWR ranking some schools don’t allow international students but this is changing.
There were questions and answers in this Dialogue with Dai (Provost’s Dai’s responses and comments to faculty comments and questions are presented in parentheses:
-Jeffrey Solow (Boyer) – How do we disentangle these things? President Theobald’s scorecard for costs of universities was in the press this week. Our scoreboard costs are $19,000 and Penn’s is $20,000. (We have been pursuing a wrong tuition policy; Penn charges $40,000 and then they move $15,000 to financial aid; they redistribute the funds. We haven’t done that.). (Highest student debt comes from specialty areas like music and arts).
-Howard Spodek (CLA) –Observation – there is a huge difference in Temple’s population is physical presentation of the campus. Physical facilities are important. What about that? (Right now we are in the process of significantly upgrading the Temple campus and physical facilities that attract and retain students).
-Jim Korsh (CST) – Thank you for a serious discussion on some of these issues. But on the idea of rankings; rankings are the worst idea. We should consider an alternative plan. Value for dollar should be stressed. We should combine with other institutions.
-Chip Jungreis (TUSM) – The Temple Made campaign has merit. We don’t advertise it enough.
-Art Hochner (FSBM) – Congratulations on your appointment as Provost. Thanks for opening up the conversation. What is role of faculty and faculty senate and shared governance in achieving the goals you have set? (Faculty governance is important, faculty should be more involved).
-Tricia Jones (COE) – There is concern that pursuing rankings may make it difficult to honor our Conwellian mission. How can we reconcile these potentially competing goals? (We are not giving up on our Conwellian mission. We will continue to support that. For example, the 0% tuition increases helps us be accessible to students from all sectors. And, one of the best ways to make it easier for any student to come to Temple is to reduce student debt. One model we may want to look at is the University of Pittsburgh model.)
-Paul LaFollette (CST): If increasing SAT scores is one goal, how do we attend to the needs of students that don’t have the high SAT scores? (We have too many students with very low SATs. Even the best students from School District of Philadelphia have average SATs of around 850. He discussed different models with Provost Lisa. We need to find a way to accept SDP students; perhaps by admitting them without reporting SAT scores but with GPA and class ranking).
-Mark Rahdert (Law): Rankings have distorted the structure for Higher Education in Law. Rankings encourage institutions to look at numbers and how to manipulate numbers. (We improve ranking by improving our quality -- THAT IS THE CRITICAL POINT).
-Steve Newman (CLA): We have a situation of competing goods. There are tensions between 4 year graduation pass and bringing in international and/or urban students who take more support to finish well in 4 years.
6. Adjournment:
It was moved, seconded and unanimously approved to adjourn the meeting at 3:20pm.
Respectfully submitted,
Tricia S. Jones
Faculty Senate Secretary
University Faculty Senate Minutes December 7, 2012
Attendance:
Representative Senators and Officers: 40
Ex officio: 1
Faculty, Administrators and Guests: 16
Total Attendance: 57
1. Call to Order:
The meeting was called to order by Joan Shapiro, President of the Faculty Senate, at 1:45pm.
2. Approval of Minutes:
The minutes of the May 2012 University Faculty Senate Meeting were moved, seconded and unanimously approved.
3. Vice-President, Mark Rahdert’s Report:
Mark Rahdert made a report on the recently completed committee elections. There were several candidates for two of the three committees. Mark reported the winners of the elections for RPPC, UTPAC and EPPC. He extended thanks for those who were willing to stand as candidates. Unfortunately we did not receive any candidates for the open position on the University Sabbatical Committee. We are still looking for candidates for that committee and FSSC may appoint someone to fill the open position for the rest of the year.
4. President’s Report:
President Joan Shapiro gave her report and began by thanking the members of the FSSC, Cheryl Mack, and the previous two presidents of the Faculty Senate. Joan noted that the work of the FSSC takes time and effort and she is appreciative of the willingness of these faculty leaders and staff to give their efforts to support faculty governance. She also thanked Michael Jackson and Provost Dai for their support of the Outstanding Faculty Service Awards Brunch. She also reviewed the range of guests that had visited with the FSSC during the fall semester. We have created some subcommittees (restructuring committee for arts and communications, chilly classroom climate subcommittee). And, in our last Representative Faculty Senate meeting, we discussed the characteristics that we desire in the Provost and those were shared with Therese Dolan, who is chairing that committee.
5. Dialogue with Provost Dai:
Provost Dai addressed the Faculty Senate and reported on several important issues.
-It is a great pleasure to work with the Faculty Senate leadership to improve communication. Provost Dai invited Joan Shapiro and Mark Rahdert, as Faculty Senate leaders, to be honored at an upcoming Temple University game.
-He asked the faculty what he should be addressing during the next three months of his tenure.
-Jennifer Cromley (COE) noted concerns about general support for research. She suggested a poll of the faculty for perceived obstacles to submitting grant proposals and a restructuring of the OVPSR.
-Provost Dai responded that we do need better research support services. He mentioned that, as an active researcher, he knows firsthand the challenges being referred to. He understands that the difficulties vary from college to college and department to department. He gave a brief overview of recent history in terms of research support. President Hart elevated research office to senior Vice Presidential level and Larry Lemansky was hired to fill that position. He was charged with reaching out to foundations and government for pork barrel projects. However, that model of increasing funding depends on active industrial support for higher education research. Provost Dai noted that there is decreasing industrial support for research in the US and this has been a major loss of opportunity. He suggests that the key to increasing our external funding and our research rating is to hire faculty with research and funding potential and support current faculty doing research. His read of the current funding situation is that Temple should continue to hire research-oriented faculty and work to bolster infrastructures and resources to support their research activities. Provost Dai indicated that some colleges have done a good job of creating their own internal grant support services. Growing research faculty and supporting research faculty should be the primary task of the OVPSR. With the departure of Ken Blank, we have the opportunity to look at that office. He indicated he is not sure he can accomplish this in the next three months, but it should be on the list for the new Provost.
-An unidentified faculty member asked what is happening in terms of support for GenEd.
-Provost Dai answered that he wants to start a conversation with the faculty about the effectiveness of GenEd. This is the 5th year of implementation and the year of the program review. He feels we should conduct a review, not only on course generation and fiscal condition of GenEd, but also review the current design and model of GenEd. He thinks that the review should look at whether the current eight areas (e.g., Race and Diversity) are what is needed or whether the content can be learned in a different structure or format.
-Karen Turner (SMC) asked him to explain the new scholarships that are available.
- Provost Dai reported that in the last 3 months the Provost’s office has led new initiatives aimed at the class coming in fall of 2013. They created five scholarship categories. Any students with SATs of 1150 or higher will receive a scholarship of $3,000. For increasing increments of 50 there are additional scholarship packages. For students with SAT of 1250 they will receive 80% scholarship and one summer stipend. For students with higher than a 1400 SAT score Temple offers a full scholarship plus additional financial incentives in terms of three summer stipends to attract more merit scholars. A consultant firm ran a simulation that this scholarship package should have an increase of 50% for students in the 1400+ range. This will also impact financial aid necessary and tuition. Overall, this will cost us approximately $5million, but this will increase our University rankings and gain the benefits of that in terms of donations.
-Art Hochner (FSBM) asked if he can give us indications of what might be coming out in the next Governor’s budget.
- The Provost commented that this is worrisome and it looks that the upcoming budget may be less positive than last year’s. The best estimate is we can best hope for a flat funding from state this year.
-Art asked whether he can give information about applications next year.
-The Provost said we are currently 7% behind the undergraduate applications from last year and noted this is similar to the experience of other institutions in the area. He did not have information for graduate enrollment.
-Art mentioned that he encourages the Provost to encourage Deans to have multiyear contracts for NTTs.
-The Provost mentioned that SMC has been moving in this direction and he is encouraging other deans to take a similar direction.
Joan Shapiro thanked Provost Dai for his valuable comments.
6. Guests: Frank Friedman (CST) and Eleanor Myers (School of Law) on Institutional Integrity Task Force Report:
Frank Friedman (CST), member of the Task Force on the Freeh Report, gave an overview of the committee process and recommendations and an update of where the process stands. He also referred people to the attachment that describes the process of convening and conducting the task force and a list of things that the university has already done to enact recommendations made. He emphasized that the members of the task force represented a diverse group of administrators. He complimented the range and expertise of the task force members. There are also references to the Freeh report in the documents and he encouraged faculty to read the recommendations of the task force. He hopes the Faculty Senate and the FSSC will work to help make sure the recommendations are enacted. Eleanor Myers summarized the recommendations that came out of the task force. The recommendations fall into three categories: (1) the role of minors on campus – keep a general inventory of activities that involve bringing minors on campus and Cleary Act recommendations to insure the safety of minors and expand training to consider sexual assault; (2) communication to and from the Board – met with the Board to encourage more communication flow between the Board and the university community; (3) the connection to athletics – that Temple continue to monitor the work coming out of the NCAA and the Big Ten on Integrity Guidelines. The task force urged the board to remain up to date on those issues and to make sure Temple was acting in conformity with those issues.
-Greg Urwin (CLA) said he sees the major issue to be the ability of a university of this size to police itself. It’s easy to fall into a tribal mindset where the norm becomes not mentioning things that might hurt our image. We also have to break out of “shoot the messenger” syndrome that happens in some colleges.
-Eleanor highlighted a recommendation that pertains to these comments. One recommendation was that there should be an Office of University Integrity -- a centralized place that reviews programs in the university that require clearances and have background training – and an office that provides support to people who want to make complaints and support whistleblowing. Frank added it is not just the treatment of minors here, but the broader treatment of everyone here at Temple – that everyone be treated more ethically and with integrity – we need some function that helps faculty share information that suggests actions and problems that need to be addressed. He is not sure the need for this is shared by the top administration of the university and feels strongly that we need to keep the pressure on.
7. Recognition:
President Joan Shapiro began with acknowledgement of David Waldstreicher, the out-going editor of the Faculty Herald. Joan mentioned that David is a Professor of History and a prominent scholar and has brought his eclectic interests to inform the Faculty Herald in a wonderful way. She also acknowledged Steve Newman, the incoming editor of the Faculty Herald. Several people shared their recognition for David’s efforts and others who have worked to support the Faculty Herald.
Joan Shapiro asked for retiring faculty to come to the front to be acknowledged for their service to the university and to the Faculty Senate.
8. Adjournment:
It was moved, seconded and unanimously supported to adjourn the meeting at 3:04pm.
Respectfully submitted,
Tricia S. Jones
Faculty Senate Secretary
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