Academic Senate Minutes
Wednesday, August 31, 2005, 7:00 p.m.
(Approved)
Call to Order
The meeting was called to order by Chairperson Lane Crothers.
Roll Call
Secretary Paul Borg called the roll and declared a quorum.
Approval of Minutes of May 11, 2005
Motion
XXXVII-4: By Senator Burk, seconded by Senator
Schnepper, to approve the Senate minutes of May 11, 2005. The minutes, with a
revision to the Provost’s comments (30,166 3,166) regarding
the number of students at ISU (freshman class), were unanimously approved.
IBHE-FAC Report
Professor Curt White, IBHE-FAC Representative: Last time, I believe I described what the Faculty Advisory Council was and how it unites state universities, private universities and community colleges in the state. Under the leadership of Alan Karnes from Southern last year and really the previous years, FAC has become very much a kind of advocacy group. The two primary subjects that we spent most of our time on attempting to advocate for were budgets for the public universities and, once it became know that this was a problem, justice for faculty pension plans.
Most of our meetings were with political representatives, either from the Senate or the House, in the districts in which we met. Basically, we used that time to talk to them about the importance of the budget, the damage that was being done to universities because the State was not adequately funding public higher education and the threat to the wellbeing of faculty because of the threats to the pension system.
At the May 20th meeting of FAC here and the June 24th meeting of FAC at Lincoln Land College in Springfield, we continued those conversations about the budget and about the pension problems. Those issues were resolved, for last year at least. The budget will be a perennial issue, I think. I don’t think the pension issue is going to be a big issue this year, except and so far as we get an opportunity to talk to democratic representatives. There will be only partial pay by the State into the pension systems, both for this fiscal year and for the next fiscal year, which means the return to a chronic under funding. I was very happy that Tom Fowles sent around that issue of the SURS Advocate so that you could see even from SURS’ point of view that they take the threat very seriously.
Wayne Evans from Bradley will be the chair this year. Even though Wayne is from a private university, his heart is with the publics, so he will continue to be a good advocate for the public universities in the position as the chair. What I have done in this report is created a kind of op-ed piece. I was thinking a lot about the issues and trying to do my own kind of political read on what it all means. The conclusion that I came to, which I have shared with you in this report, is that upstate democrats basically balance the budget and final securities on the backs of downstate democrats. That is an editorial or political conclusion that I have reached. The problem I think for all of us is knowing how to respond to and how to keep such attacks from happening in the future. I think that that is a very difficult problem. I think that we are seen politically as basically powerless. It is anticipated that we will squeak every now and then, but that they don’t have to take us very seriously. I would be very surprised if we have seen the last of these political efforts to save the pension system.
I think that in the future we are going to see even more difficult kinds of decisions made both by politicians and within universities where it will seem even to us as if we have to chose between the current wellbeing of the institution in the form of our budget versus the long-term wellbeing of our pension plans. I don’t know exactly where we can turn. Unions are certainly one possibility; but I think that individual unions for individual universities is probably not going to be an effective response either.
Chairperson's Remarks
Senator Crothers: I want to remind you of the specific dates and places of the upcoming Senate meetings. It is important to note that not all of the meetings are going to be the Old Main Room. In your internal committee packets, you should have all received beginning year memos from the Executive Committee. These are intended to help prioritize issues. You will soon receive all of the documents related to the issues in your priority memo.
Some of the memos may seem to be unduly directive and/or harshly worded. That is quite deliberate because there are policies and procedures that we haven’t looked at for years that we should have looked at years ago. The idea is to say that this is very much a high priority and this needs to be cleared. If you need clarification, I encourage committee chairs to contact me. You will also be getting a list of administrators who will be working with your committees. They are there as resources for you. If you keep good communication with them, they can also help clarify certain issues. I do have one additional committee assignment—Eric Estep will be assigned to Administrative Affairs.
I do hope that the President will make some comment about the decision made over the summer to cancel the VP for University Advancement search and appoint an interim despite the fact that the Senate did initiate the process last year. He discussed it with me during the summer; I was not surprised by it, but I am simply saying that I think that the Senate is owed an explanation.
I do hope that if anyone who has objections or responses to my e-mail to the lieutenant governor that they will share them with me. I do know that at least one student attended that event (press conference).
Senator Borg, after having been Senate Secretary for three years and also having been Senate Chair in the past, has taken the position of Director of the School of Art. Therefore, he will be giving up the Senate Secretary position. At the next meeting, we will elect a new Secretary. I want to take special note of Senator Borg’s service; he will be staying on the Senate. Finally, all of you received a parking pass in your packets. It is good only on Senate nights.
Student Government Association President's Remarks
Senator Garrison: I would like to welcome the two new student senators. They are both returning Academic Senators, former Student Body President/student senator Ryan Meister and former student senator Enrique Rebolledo. The SGA has had a busy summer. We have started revamping the structure internally of how we run. At the next meeting, hopefully, we will approve a new structure for the executive staff as well as for the Assembly. We hope that that will make us more effective and give our senators a little more autonomy on actions that they hope to carry out. If you saw the Pantagraph yesterday or the day before, you may have seen an article about a petition that the Student Government is starting to pass around. It deals with re-sign dates and joint leases. If anyone has any questions about that, you can ask me after the meeting or in the question section. SGA also took a retreat this weekend. I think it has given our senators a good preparation for the year.
Administrators’ Remarks
· President Al Bowman
President Bowman: I want to thank all of you for agreeing to participate in the Academic Senate this year. The campus has a long, rich history of shared governance and this body is one that the administration pays close attention to. There are no surprises in the FY06 budget. State funding for public higher ed is actually less today in inflation-adjusted dollars than it was in 1991. Funding for capital projects is down. It is not very comforting, but most of the Midwestern states have reduced state support for higher ed since 2002. The good news is that the Illinois economy is expanding and although we have not closed the gap with the rest of the nation, we are still beginning to make progress. The ISU context is a little different. Our FY06 budget is $277 million and that is an increase over 05 of $7.9 million. That increase does not reflect additional state revenue; our state support is still $80.4 million and then off the top comes $3 million in health insurance premiums. But with the tuition increases, with the increase in fundraising and increases in grants and contracts, we end up with a larger pot than we had a year ago.
We have had a very good month in fundraising as we come to the end of August. I appointed Dr. Ashby as the interim VP for Advancement in June. She is off to an incredibly strong start. In just this month alone, we have raised $1.5 million in private gifts. She has reorganized University Advancement. I have authorized the hiring of a major gift officer, who will work full-time in Chicago out of our Michigan Avenue office. I believe that there is a lot of potential there with all of the alumni and major companies in the Chicago area. The original plan back in the spring was to start a search and I thought that that was a good idea. On further reflection and looking at all of the irons that we had in the fire and the initiatives that were underway, it seemed to me that we would lose some momentum by stopping and doing a search, bringing in someone and giving them time to come up to speed. Dr. Ashby has been at ISU for more than a decade. She has been one of our strongest fundraisers. Her college has done very well. I expect to see great things out of her operation.
We also, as you know, hired a new Athletic Director, Sheahon Zenger, and he began also this summer. When he started, there were several vacant positions in Athletics that we put on hold so that he could come in and assemble his own team. One of the people that he has brought in as a senior associate director is Randy Welniak from Fresno, CA. He is a very strong staff member, the kind of individual who could step in and be the Athletic Director tomorrow if he had to. They have already had a very effective summer in terms of lining up additional revenue for not only this year, but in the upcoming years. I am very optimistic that we have assembled a very good team in Athletics.
In our federal initiatives and grant activity, we continue to have record numbers of grant applications and the revenue from grant and contract activity has increased, even though the state side of that equation has gone down. Part of the reason for that is that faculty and staff have done a good job putting together competitive proposals. Gary McGinnis and his staff have been very effective in working with our lobbying firm in Washington and also working with various federal agencies. Also, we have cultivated pretty strong relationships with members of congress and members of the Illinois legislature. This summer, we announced some wind energy funding, $1 million, that we hope will come through in a bill that has been sponsored by Jerry Weller. It is not an earmark and we anticipate that most of that funding will be in place. On the capital side, Dr. Bragg will fill you in on the details, but we literally have millions of dollars in construction projects underway. The Schroeder project is nearing completion. The residence hall upgrades are well underway with another tower being closed on west campus for renovation. A sure sign of progress is that the last asphalt sidewalk on campus was removed this summer. It was a special moment for me because it was the sidewalk that I used to get to CVA to teach my first Gen Ed course in 1978.
US News and World Report rankings came out about a week ago and we improved in four subcategories: freshmen retention, ACT range, six-year graduation rate, percentage of classes with less than 20 students. This summer, the Board approved a couple of new programs—a new doctoral degree in audiology, a baccalaureate degree in Business Information Systems and also some off-campus programming in nursing and math. We also, this past year, added minors in areas like African Studies, Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies. The President’s State of University Address is scheduled for September 13 at 2:00 p.m. in the Center for the Performing Arts. Next Thursday, September 8, we are planning a rally on the quad for the victims of the hurricane in Louisiana and Mississippi. More details on that will follow. This is not unexpected; we have had inquiries from a growing number of students about transferring to ISU—students from Illinois who were admitted to ISU, but who chose to go one of the schools in one of the states that has been affected by the hurricane. Some of those students are interested in coming back, even though their freshman year has not started there yet. The Governor has asked public universities to do what they can and we have been in contact with those students. We will make arrangements for those students who were admitted originally to begin their studies with us in the spring. With the fall semester well underway, it would probably be well into the third week of classes before those students would arrive on campus and it just seems to make sense to have them wait and begin in the spring.
· Provost John Presley
Provost Presley: We had a number of institutional achievements last year. We had an equally impression number of individual achievements on the part of faculty and students. We have another fine class of freshmen and transfer students. Their academic profile is almost precisely the same as last year’s. We have an equally fine class of new faculty and staff. The year will be marked by some new initiatives from my office. We are going to have an increased emphasis on faculty and chair and director development, making some seminars and learning experiences available there. We will have some initiatives about advising. Today, I received the final copy of the report from the Advising Task Force from last year. It is a very good, well-detailed report and we will start immediately putting some of those recommendations into action. We will be bringing some new proposals to the Senate committees for academic policies that will have to do with advising, major selection and internal transfer.
· Vice President of Student Affairs Helen Mamarchev
Dr. Mamarchev: We have had a really great transition into this academic year. It was really fun to see all of the new students with all of their things on the big move-in day. We have had a very high participation rate in all of the Passages events, most notably, the picnic that we moved from Thursday to Friday. I think the planners anticipated about 1,200 students coming through and we actually ended up with over 2,200. This past weekend, we had our first weekend of events here in the Bone Student Center. Over 1,300 students attended those, including our first ever “Phone Party” in the ballroom. I hope that you will take the opportunity to walk around the Bone Student Center. Over the summer we continued to focus our efforts on putting the student back into the Student Center. You will see some new seating areas and lounge areas. The number one question that I am getting asked is ‘when is Burger King going to open?’ We are hoping to open during the week of September 19th. It has been very exciting to reopen Wilkins Hall. It is full; two-thirds of the occupants are returning students. We also have a new lifestyle floor. It is for service and leadership and is on Wilkins 4; they are very busy with their activities. The renovation of Haney Hall is well underway. The asbestos removal went better than we expected and so we hope to reopen that residence hall next fall. We did identify a few students whose families are located in the hurricane area and have been in communication with them to see if there is any assistance that we can provide. It is also important to note that we have had several students who have been called up by their National Guard unit and they left today for Louisiana to work for the hurricane disaster relief.
· Vice President of Finance and Planning Stephen Bragg
Dr. Bragg: The cooling degree days, the measure of the demand for cooling, was 47% higher this year than last year, all in the months of June and July. That translates into a utility bill that was about 24% higher for the months of May, June and July. We are on track this year to spend about $1.3 to 1.5 million more just to heat and cool the University, which is on a base of about $10 million. Luckily, our planning efforts and our efforts to improve the utility infrastructure have allowed us to build that budget. We have level appropriations from the State this year as compared to last year. I would like to underscore what Professor White said. This is built upon a very tenuous set of assumptions. It is built on two years of under funding all of the retirement systems, including the university retirement systems. It is also built on some very ambitious and heroic assumptions about borrowing that the State did in the previous year. All of these have the effect of increasing the liabilities in the coming year, all of which without a significant increase in revenue means that we are going to be under continued pressure and continued stress for state appropriations in the coming year. It puts a premium on planning and developing other revenue sources. We look forward in Finance and Planning to working closely with the ISU Foundation to develop some new partnerships and with the private sector to develop new opportunities for programs and for our facilities on campus.
Facilities are a bright spot. We are still on track to reopen the second wing of Schroeder Hall this coming Christmas break. That will mean that that project has come in a year ahead of schedule; we are very pleased with the quality of work. We are proceeding with design and engineering work on the Stevenson-Turner project, which is primarily a life-health-safety infrastructure improvement. There will be some design modifications, but primarily to the infrastructure. The monies have been appropriated for that project, but the construction funds have not yet been released by the Capital Development Board. We are hoping to hear about that in the near future, along with some capital renewal funds that will allow us to proceed with building some new zoned chillers that will increase the efficiency of cooling the campus. We will be presenting later this fall a conceptual plan for the development of the Gregory Street properties, otherwise know as the University Farms. We have about 260 to 270 acres of prime land that we have the opportunity and great fortune to develop. We want to make sure that we do this in a very careful, thoughtful and planned way. We will be bringing to the Senate and to other shared governance groups for discussion some conceptual plans for land use, as well as ideas about how to improve our parking opportunities on campus.
We have three new staff in my division. J.C. Craybill is our new Director of Environmental Health and Safety. Greg Alt, who has been the Acting Comptroller, was made permanent this last spring. Ron Kelley, the former head of our ROTC here and Acting Director of the Office of Energy Management, also was made permanent.
Internal Committee Chairpersons for 2005-06
Academic Affairs Committee: Paul Borg
Administrative Affairs and Budget Committee: Peter Smith
Faculty Affairs Committee: Chris DeSantis
Planning and Finance Committee: Martha Burk
Rules Committee: Dan Holland
Honorary Degree Selection Process (President Bowman)
The President distributed ballots for the recommendation of the endorsement or non-endorsement of the Honorary Degree Committee Nominee. The committee looked at a number of potential honorary degree candidates and decided to put forward one name. Ballots were marked, collected and returned to the President.
Advisory Item:
07.12.05.01 Transfer Student Admission Proposal From Academic Services and Enrollment Management
Senator Crothers: Within the Senate’s parlance, there are three types of items: Information, Action and Advisory Items. Information Items are items about which senators ask questions during the information session and become Action Items which are formally voted on. Advisory Items are things that the Senate community is being apprised of and has the opportunity to register concerns about. The Transfer Student Admission Proposal was an issue that came to me and was forwarded to the Executive Committee. The committee agreed that this is more a matter of an editorial rather than substantive change. The revision is to the definition of hours for full-time students. The full-time load has been changed from 12 to 15 hours. Are there any concerns or questions for the Provost regarding this Transfer Policy?
Senator Alferink: I think that this is a good move, so I am pleased to see the change. I do have one question and it has to do with the comparability of how we treat transfer students and native freshmen. Is the same material requested from students who are native freshmen and who have completed 24 hours at a community college before they attend their first day of classes here?
Provost Presley: That student would be a transfer student.
Senator Alferink: They are classified in the catalog as a native freshman. They would be dual enrolled in a community college during their junior and senior years of high school.
Provost Presley: I am not sure.
Senator Crothers: Is that a question, Senator Alferink, that you would appreciate an answer to in the future?
Senator Alferink: I think it would just be good to have comparability in the policy for students who come in with the same number of hours. So, it would be useful to know that.
Senator Crothers: I suggest that Steve Adams would be able to articulate that for us. Does anyone think that this is a policy that should have gone to Academic Affairs?
There were no further comments on the policy.
Communications:
06.10.06.01 Proposed Pension Legislation
Senator Crothers: We are fortunate to be able to invite to the table Mr. Tom Fowles, who is our benefits specialist at ISU. The summary memo that you received is from Tammy Carlson, which lead to the forwarding of the SURS Advocate memo. We wanted to use this as an opportunity for discussion of concerns about what was done to the pension system. Probably the only thing that surprised me was the transfer of authority to set the interest rate from SURS itself to the Comptroller’s Office. That has not inherently been a problem, has it?
Mr. Fowles: Not really because the legislation said that the State Comptroller would determine the rate of interest in the same way that SURS would determine it.
Senator Crothers: Do you know why they wanted the change then?
Senator Bragg: It started as a proposal that came out of the governor’s office to transfer the authority to a member of the governor’s cabinet. The members of the General Assembly were uncomfortable with a specific proposal from the governor’s office, so subsequent legislation transferred it to the Comptroller’s Office. The legislation reads that they have to use the same procedures, rules and factors in calculating that rate of interest.
Senator Crothers: Are we steps away from changing the responsibility of the comptroller from being a fiduciary one to a more politically responsive one?
Senator Bragg: The one thing that was not mentioned in the Advocate article that was in the legislation was the authorization to create yet another pension commission that takes the place of the old Pension Laws Commission. That commission, to the best of my knowledge, is meeting as we speak. They are supposed to report back to the governor by November 1st of this year on a whole range of issues, including some of the questions that have been raised about the constitutional base of current benefits. So, it all depends on how aggressive and assertive the commission is in looking at some of the current benefits and proposing changes to those.
Senator Mwilambwe: What was the problem with the way it was done before with the SURS Board of Trustees? I am not sure of the reason for the change.
Senator Bragg: There were members of the governor’s cabinet who think that the effective rate of interest is too high and is essentially costing the state a lot more money to fund the pension systems.
Senator Crothers: As you participated in the new faculty/staff orientation, did you have any sense of whether people liked the elimination of the Money Purchase Formula? Were they aware of the changes in benefits?
Mr. Fowles: I don’t think that anyone said anything specifically about that. It was a little difficult trying to explain to them their new choices. I think that it is going to force more people over to the self-managed plan because the money purchase that we all have is a very generous plan. So, to get the same type of rate of return, people are going to probably see that it is in their best interest long term to go with the self-managed plan.
Senator Crothers: That generally was the choice that people made this year?
Mr. Fowles: I have not seen the results. They don’t make their choice with me; they send their ballot in to SURS. It would depend upon each person’s individual situation—their age, expected length of service, if they are looking for a lump sum payout or a monthly benefits, etc.
Senator Bragg: Are you able to talk a little bit about the implications of the limiting of the 6% salary increase?
Mr. Fowles: It is not really a limitation.
Senator Bragg: It’s the source of funds—who pays for it.
Mr. Fowles: If in a person’s last year of work here, they receive a 12% increase, the new legislation says that the pensioner will receive the full benefit of that 12%, but they will calculate it two ways: once with a 6% increase and once with a 12% increase and the difference in benefit will be billed to the University. So, the individual will see no decrease in benefit.
Senator Crothers: Thereby, likely limiting the University’s willingness to raise pay.
Senator Burk: Does that increase mean only raises or is it also for promotional increases?
Mr. Fowles: Everything.
Senator Crothers: Do you have an estimate of what the two years of under
funding will cost in the long run, that is, how much it will cost to make up for
those two years?
Senator Bragg: The combination of eliminating the Money Purchase Plan and making universities pick up the tab for increases above 6% is offset by the increased out-year-costs of short funding the pension system for two years. I believe in the long run it ends up costing the State of Illinois about $250 million between now and the year 2045. The State Retirement System has to achieve 90% of its unfunded liability by 2045. The State short changed that this year, but the law is written so that it has to be back on track and has to make all of that up by the year 2011. So, what happens, starting in 2008 through 2011, you will see the required increased funding for SURS going up about $100 million per year. That has to come from somewhere and the fear is that it will come out of operations appropriations for higher education.
Senator Crothers: Alternatively, if you were governor and you talk about having increased higher education funding by $300 million this year, the vast majority of that never went to a student or a campus; it went to the pension plan. Obviously, we will be monitoring this very closely.
07.01.05.01 Advance Notice of Possibility of Surveillance Equipment Installation
Senator Crothers: Annually, the President sends out this surveillance memo which says that we might use surveillance equipment. I don’t know if the President is willing to acknowledge any times or places in the past that we have used it.
President Bowman: We have used it in the past, but there are no locations that I can disclose.
07.14.05.01
Sports Schedules - Hard copies available upon
request; schedules can be viewed on line at:
http://goredbirds.collegesports.com
(Select “Women’s Sports” or “Men’s Sports” to view
schedules.)
Adjournment