April 25, 2007 Minutes

Chair Stone, Senators Bond, Davidson, Feakes, Hazlewood, Hindson, Homeyer, James, McCall, McKinney, Meeks, Montodon, Shah, Sorensen, Wilson, Winek

Guests:

President Trauth, Provost Moore, AVPAA Bourgeois, AVPEM Heintz, Dr. Skerpan-Wheeler, Dr. Brennan, Dr. Conroy

Meeting called to order at 4:00.

University Research Committee:

The Senate received a report from the Chair of the University Research Committee, Dr. Elizabeth Skerpan-Wheeler.  The committee is recommending that unspent funds be rolled over to the next year’s cycle; bonus points be reduced from 10 to 5 points awarded to first-year tenure-track applicants; the committee title University Research Committee should remain as is, but the college committees should be called College Research Enhancement Committees (CREC) to avoid confusion; intercollegiate proposals should be reviewed by the CREC of the college of the PI listed first on the proposal; evaluation sheets should be revised to reflect the major categories indicated in the program guidelines; and a 150-200 word abstract should be part of the application and be included on the application page.  There were also several suggested changes to the Research Enhancement Program Guidelines.  The Senate suspended its rules so that the recommendation could come to a vote at this meeting.  A motion to approve the recommendations was passed.

PAAG:

Football Program:  Committees are currently studying the feasibility of moving the football program to Division I-A. The President circulated a fact list regarding the potential move, its requirements, and benefits which include enlarging the stadium, raising more money for scholarships and the possibility of creating a new conference.

Crisis Management: The President’s office is currently reviewing all policies and procedures for crisis management.  There are currently written agreements in place with the San Marcos Police Department and the Hays County Sheriff’s Department.  Also, the campus communications system is good, but there are possibly some new products that would advance the system.  There will be continuous adaptation and review of the program since all potential threats must be taken seriously.

M&O Allocation Model:  There was a brief discussion of the new M&O allocation model that the Senate has endorsed.

Senate Survey of Faculty Perceptions of Administrators:  The Chair of the Senate indicated that the survey would be released today and that some of the statements in the comment section made the Senate uncomfortable, but after discussion, it was decided to leave the comments as they were to avoid a possible charge of censorship.  When asked if the survey had any impact on the President’s perception of the administration, she indicated that she considered all of the information seriously.  The Provost mentioned that he is still uncomfortable with publishing the comments indicating the comments were on the verge of voyeurism.  Discussion centered on whether comments should be released or not and whether the Provost’s office would release the comments from his survey on department chairs.

Tenure/Promotion Data:  The Provost circulated results of tenure/promotion cycles for 2004-2005, 2005-2006 and 2006-2007.  There was some discussion, but the data is to be considered confidential information.

Has CUPA Helped:  According to the Provost, we are now get the first or second choice on faculty hires except for a few very competitive fields. Salaries for new hires are at or above the CUPA median. Training for faculty search committees has helped, although there are still a few problems, usually with job descriptions.  Once a position is allocated, personnel and search committees should then write a specific job description.  The second form has the official description.

Funding for New Faculty Positions:  There is always concern with what the Legislature will and there is also the concern about what the Chancellor may do with what the Legislature does.  One problem with funding is that replacement chairs take up money for faculty positions.  The best of all worlds will be to get a tuition increase plus some incentive funding.  A question was raised as to what is happening with respect to staff in funding for new positions.

Installation of New Senators:

New Senators are:

Dr. J. Nathan Bond, Curr & Inst

Dr. Karen Brown, Social Work

Dr. Shirley Ogletree, Psych

Dr. Jameen Shah, CIS & QMST

Dr. Steven Wilson, English

New Senate Officers:

Dr. Bill Stone, Chair

Dr. Debra Feakes, Vice Chair

Summer Schedule for Senate Meetings:

The Senate will meet from 4-6 the last Wednesday in June and July.

Avent Room:

There was some discussion regarding the designation of a title for the Senate office honoring former Professor Henrietta Avent, an avid advocate for faculty governance, as part of the celebration of the 50-th anniversary of Academic Governance on our campus.  A motion was passed to have the name, “Avent Room”, travel with the home of the Senate.

University Curriculum Committee:

Dr. Mike Boone, EAPS, and Dr. Ted Hindson, Political Science, were reappointed to the UCC.

Dr. Jameen Shah, CIS & QMST, was named to replace Dr. Cecilia Temponi, Management.