Council of University System Faculty
CUSF Meeting of April 16, 2004
Minutes
CUSF
Meeting – April 16, 2004
University
of Maryland University College
Present: Martha Siegel (Chair), John Organ (BSU),
Alcott Arthur (CSC), R. Michael Garner (SU), Dave Parker (SU), Patricia Alt (TU),
Douglas Pryor (TU), Jay Zimmerman (TU), Stephanie Gibson (UB), Lee
Richardson (UB), David Hardcastle (UM,B), Steve Jacobs (UM,B), Paul Thut (UM,B),
Zane Berge (UMBC), Frank Hanson (UMBC), Anthony Norcio (UMBC), John Collins (UMBI),
Rosemary Jagus (UMBI), Ray Morgan (UMCES), J. Court Stevenson (UMCES), Frank Alt
(UMCP), Vince Brannigan (UMCP), Denny Gulick (UMCP), William Stuart (UMCP), Bill
Chapin (UMES), Emmanuel Onyeozili (UMES), Jim Gelatt (UMUC), Adelaide Lagnese (UMUC),
Joyce Shirazi (UMUC), Joe Bryce (USM), Getrude Eaton (USM), Irv Goldstein (USM)
The
meeting was called to order by Vince Brannigan at ten o’clock.
Nick
Allen brought greetings from the UMUC campus which is celebrating the
twenty-fifth anniversary of its graduate programs.
The
March minutes were approved with minor corrections.
The
election of officers and other Executive Committee members for the 2004-2005
academic year was held in accordance with the Bylaws, resulting in the selection
of the officers listed below. (A
motion to reopen nominations for the at-large position was defeated).
Past
Chair: Martha Siegel (automatic);
Chair:
Lee Richardson (UB);
Vice
Chair: Vince Brannigan (UMCP);
Secretary:
Bill Chapin (UMES);
At-Large:
Patricia Alt (TU), David Parker (SU)
During
the Brief Reports of the Chair and Other Delegates, we learned
a. The
anticipated COLA for the coming year has been turned into a fixed payment $752
(which turns out to be 1.6% of $47,600.) There
is now general agreement from the campuses that the 2.5% designated for merit
will be used for faculty salaries (and not, for example, for recruitment), and
that faculty should have some input into the allocation process. There is, however, no clear consensus across the campus on
exactly what merit should mean in the current circumstances.
b.
Since the question of Faculty Workload is complicated by the fact that we
currently have a definition of course-load in terms of courses taught which
clearly reflects only a small part of what faculty do, a new multi-factor
multi-metric performance model may be in the works. Such models should be more representative of departmental and
campus success and avoid the current emphasis on individual faculty teaching
load. Any such model must deal with the varying roles of some of the factors:
reasonably high tenure rates help insure academic excellence, stability of
departments and expertise for curriculum development, but at the same time
reduce flexibility in hiring. Any such performance model is likely to compare
USM institutions with peer institutions, perhaps turning on ‘warning lights’
when an institution or department deviates too far from the norm, but the
selection of peers is another area in which there seems to be no clear
consensus.
c.
There seems to be general agreement that, given the success of the Student
Research Day this year, planning for that activity in Annapolis for Spring 2005
needs to begin early and carefully to take into account times and days when
legislators are likely to be available. Martha
Siegel agreed to lead this effort for the coming year.
d.
Planning for legislative action by CUSF requires that we start now and do not
let work die over the summer since, for example, the first cut of the budget
will be created in May. We will need to arm ourselves both with ‘facts’ and
‘stories’ about the individual educational work that we are doing and how
the budget changes affect this work. It would appear that there is a good chance
for a veto of the Frosh bill which would have exchanged limits on tuition
increases for more reliable state funding of the operating budgets (and perhaps
not such a good chance to over-ride that veto). See also Joe Bryce’s
commentary in the System Report below.
e. The
Board of Regents was holding its own meeting at the same time as ours on another
floor of the same building. When
Chair Siegel returned from giving her report at that meeting, she reported that
there was general satisfaction with the non-budgetary items passed by the
legislature. The passage of a
renewal of the current program approval process (this time with no sunset
provisions) will facilitate our development of new programs. The new flexibility
approved in the area of position control (faculty ‘lines’) will allow
departments to do such things as splitting highly-funded senior lines when a
retirement takes place and hiring instead two less expensive faculty members; we
must, however, be vigilant to assure that this does not become another vehicle
for weakening the tenure system. The BOR also presented their Faculty Awards
today, awards that were created several years ago at the instigation of CUSF.
There seemed to be enough pleasure with the results that the BOR might
consider increasing the dollar amounts of the awards.
Joe
Bryce told us that we would probably know the fate of bills that the Governor
might veto shortly before Memorial Day. He
suggested letting the Chancellor continue discussions with the Governor about
this (and about the question of the USM operating budget for the following
fiscal year) for the next couple of weeks before we considered taking any action
on our own in this area. There are some signs of another year of ‘flat’
university operating budgets in the Governor’s proposed budget for the
following fiscal year. Joe Bryce reiterated satisfaction at our success in
getting the legislature to approve procurement autonomy for endowments and
trusts, continuation of the current program approval process with no sunset
provisions, and greater freedom in position control.
Irv
Goldstein brought us up to date on work on Effectiveness and Efficiency.
He reported that here is a group is working on institutional
collaboration as a way to attain E & E, and another group considering
on-line learning from the same point of view, while he himself is working with a
third group on academic E & E.
Recognizing
that whatever efficiencies are created must assure the continuance and
strengthening of academic quality, this latter group is studying both what we
have done successfully to attain E & E (so that we can make it better known)
and also which efforts carried on at one school might be effective at another
(e.g., arranging student advising so as to assure graduation without the
excessive accumulation of credits while still supporting stronger students who
are completing double majors, providing summer on-line courses to help students
keep to schedule, combining remedial and beginning regular mathematics
instruction so that students do not spend an extra semester doing remedial
mathematics only, the Virginia Tech Math Emporium, UMUC cooperation with the
community colleges to allow student to earn UM degrees in their home
communities.). Reports of successful work on the various campuses can be
directed to Chair Siegel. CUSF requested that faculty representation be added
the current E & E committee.
It is
clear that demographic trends will bring the USM tens of thousands of additional
students by the end of the next ten years, something that we cannot handle with
current resources and with the current student distribution across the campuses. There will be a BOR-organized enrollment management workshop
this summer to address these issues. CUSF
also requested that a faculty representative be appointed to the group
organizing the enrollment management workshop so that the faculty voice will be
clearly present when the workshop is conducted this summer.
Under Old
Business,
a.
We reconsidered The Document for System Appeals to the Chancellor and the
Board. Chancellor Kirwan had expressed some concern about having the entire
Senate on each campus as the body hearing these appeals.
Martha Siegel presented a revision that would have an elected faculty
appeals committee on each campus carry out the actual hearings.
We also made modifications to assure that the shared governance
‘anti-retaliation’ rules applied here and to assure that individual
candidates disagreeing with the decisions of the campus bodies let the CUSF
Chair know of their decision to appeal to the Chancellor.
A motion to approve the modified document passed.
Chair Siegel will distribute a word-smithed version to us as soon as one
is available.
b.
A new version of the ART Policy document, this time as a letter of
clarification to be attached to the current policy, was presented. A motion to
approve the modified document passed after clarifying adjustments to the
wording. Chair Siegel will send
this document on to the AAAC and will distribute the version with the adjusted
wording to CUSF members.
c.
The question of equity in retirement benefits seems to become murkier and
more complex each time we revisit it. Questions of unequal spousal benefits
between the systems, the absence of a ‘sick days’ bank for faculty,
differing contributions both by faculty members and the
university to the different retirement systems make it clear that some
method of providing full disclosure in this area when faculty are first hired
and of providing some way of delaying ‘one-way’ choices in this area at a
time when faculty do not fully understand the consequences of their decision are
essential to assure any sort of fairness. Frank
Alt will have detailed documents on this matter for us shortly.
d.
Further investigation makes it less clear how much we should become
involved in questions of Community College Tenure.
The community colleges send us many students, so that we want to be sure
that they have a strong faculty core, but the ultimate decisions in this area
must reflect the particular circumstances of each community college. This may be a matter that we can learn more about when we
organize a meeting community college representatives
and CUSF representatives. Since Chancellor Kirwan seems to have excellent
relations with the community college presidents, he may be another good source
of information for us.
We
discussed several calendar matters, including the participation of Senate Chairs
at our May 12th meeting
at UB, the nature of the June 15th
(perhaps 14th) meeting at UMES, and the necessity of
establishing a calendar of meetings for the next academic year as soon as
possible. All these matters were
referred to the Executive Committee.
The
meeting was adjourned at about two o’clock.