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April 24, 1996 Minutes


Present: Bible, Caverly, Ford, Glassman, Horne, Hunter, Kurtz,
Middlebrook, Parkin-Speer, Pascoe, Sawey, Stedman, Swinney, Weller, and
Winek.

Guests: Pres. Supple, VPF&SS Nance; Profs. Rebecca Bell-Metereau
(English), Gene Bourgeois (History), Susan Day (Sociology), Kim Folse
(Sociology), Jon McGee (Anthropology); Margaret Vaverek (Library liaison);
Stewart Driscoll (San Marcos Daily Record), Adolph Trudeau (The File); Mike
Moore, and Sandra Akridge.


CONTENTS:

39 RESEARCH COMMITTEE REPORT (Prof. Kim Folse)
88 LIBRARIANS' PAY AND STATUS (Prof. Ford)
11 CERTIFICATION OF ELECTION RETURNS
02 SENATE MINUTES OF 4/17/96
89 THE AUDIT (Guests: pres. Supple, and VPF&SS Nance)

The meeting was called to order at 4:00 p.m., Chair Swinney
presiding.

39 RESEARCH COMMITTEE REPORT (Prof. Kim Folse)

Prof. Folse thanked the Senate for her appointment to chair this
Committee and for the hard work of the Committee--Profs. Angirasa (Applied
Arts & Tech.), Mandeville (Education), Shah (Business), Harkins (Health
prof., Penn (Fine Art & Comm.), and Ogden (Science). There were two rounds
of applicants in this cycle: (1) Those funded for Summer 1996 and (2)
those funded for 1997.

Of the 43 proposals submitted for 1996, 21 were funded (49%) for a
total of $85,449. Those which were not funded fell into four basic
categories: (1) Those which were fundable but were not high enough in
ranking before funds ran out, (2) Those which had weak methodology
explanations, (3) Those which did not document significance of research and
(4) Those which needed but did not include IRB approval. [Note: "Any
research involving human subjects must be approved by Human Subjects Review
Committee, chaired by the Director of Research and Sponsored Programs,
before applying for an REP grant."]

Round two REG's for Summer 1997 included 27 proposals of which 14
(52%) were recommended for $79,457.

In order to have no monies left over due to not funding what could
be worthy grants, the Committee suggests that: (1) Call for proposals
letters be disseminated university-wide the first week in May and again the
first of the Fall semester, to encourage faculty to plan ahead, and that
everyone on the Committee and Senate and its liaisons spread reminders
early; (2) That the REP Committee hold two Informational and Q & A Sessions
in early Fall on different schedules so that faculty will have the
opportunity to learn guidelines, etc. For example, Prof. Rick Archer can
share info on human subjects. Successful proposal recipients could, with
their permission, share their proposals to mentor others.

A question was raised on how political the nature of distribution
of grants was. [Note: Looking at the statistics by school provided by the
Committee there seems to be no discernible difference. General and
specific reasons for rejection were given for each proposal.]

The Senate approved the report and thanked the Committee.

88 LIBRARIANS' PAY AND STATUS (Prof. Ford)

In March 1995 the Senate Subcommittee on Librarians' Pay and Status
(composed of Senators Bible, Ford, Horne, and Sawey and Librarians Bruner,
Dalton, Kilman, Spooner, and Vaverek) submitted a 60-page report calling
for several areas of attention in two general categories: (1) the low pay
compared to sister-schools in Texas, the Southwest, and national rates and
(2) nonmonetary factors, in particular, the need for a more open
communication and democratic (TQM) approach to decision making. The report
compared SWT to Texas' and other public schools on various policies (e.g.
workload, librarian to SCH ratios, "academic status," etc.), as well as
pay. Also included was a survey of career-ladder and administrative
librarian opinion on various issues. It appeared these factors of pay and
nonmonetary conditions contribute to our high career-ladder
(non-administrative) librarian turnover.

In March 1996 the Subcommittee sent a survey to all 22 of the
professional librarians asking them to report their perceptions of progress
in the past year on areas covered in the 1995 report and to make
suggestions. Nine responses were received for a 41 percent return rate.
The Subcommittee summarized the responses (which were rather similar in
content) and endorsed respondents' suggestions. The suggestions included
specific ways to improve the career-ladder pay plan and obtain a more open
communications system. All respondents were pleased with the increase in
Librarian I and II pay during the last year, the quality team formation and
training, and thanked the Senate for doing the original report and and
follow-up.

The Senate approved the 7-page report with 11 ayes, 2 nays, and an
abstention. The report has been forwarded to Pres. Supple, VPAA Gratz, Assoc.
VP Tangum, LRC Director Mears for their "thoughtful and prompt attention."

11 CERTIFICATION OF ELECTION RETURNS

Profs. Chuck Pascoe and Ron Sawey were re-elected from Fine Arts
and Science. New senators from Liberal Arts are Profs. Eugene Bourgeois,
Jon McGee, and Theron Stimmel. Profs. Joan Hays and Grant Simpson were
elected from Education.

The election results were approved.

02 SENATE MINUTES OF 4/17/96

The minutes were accepted with corrections.

New Items

Prof. Parkin-Speer proposed the following:

Whereas, Ev Swinney has done an exemplary job as President of the
Faculty Senate for so many years,
Whereas, he has represented the faculty with integrity and reason,
being calm and thoughtful,
Be it resolved that the Thirty-Seventh Faculty Senate of Southwest
Texas State University thank Professor Ev Swinney for his work in making the
University a place of discussion and conciliation, a better place to learn
and teach.

The Senate unanimously endorsed this proclamation.

89 THE AUDIT (Guests: Pres. Supple, and VPF&SS Nance)

Pres. Supple indicated that the issues brought up by the audit were
ones which need to be examined, but he disagreed with some of the details.
(1) Athletics is now under the purview of VPSA Studer, who will sign off
on non-regular expenses, e.g. travel, hiring, etc. This should have been
done sooner, and was considered some years ago, but at the time VPSA Studer
was involved with problems in residential housing and admissions. Now that
these have been dealt with--and SWT was number one in the State for getting
out student aid packages--he can take on new duties.

In the area of how much should students and the University spend to
support athletics, a Task Force is looking at the "bigger picture." First
they will find out what students want to pay and what alums, faculty, staff
want. Currently students pay $7.55 per SCH, which is in the middle of the
other two schools in the State in our Division. The Task Force will also
be looking at what schools outside the State are spending. Chair Swinney
asked if Athletics began to take a "center-stage" position about the time
we went into the new division under Pres. Hardesty, apparently with
TV-revenue dollar signs in our eyes. Response: Possibly, but Athletics is
also important for recruiting students. Apparently just hearing about a
school through sports is advertising; whether students attend games after
their arrival is another matter. Our current AD search is critical.

(2) Regarding Aquarena Springs purchase and operation, he said the
Regents were involved in all negotiations. The lower appraisal cited by
the auditors was on a current "business income" basis and did not take into
account other factors (the same with Clear Springs), such as water rights,
educational uses, environmental protection, etc. The real estate
appraisals, such as the $8.9 million appraisal obtained by SWT, included
such things as the worth of the property to a developer. In answer to the
question of why we didn't go ahead and let PFM purchase the property, Pres.
Supple said that we were considering it when the State stepped in to offer
to back the $7 million purchase with tax-free bonds.

(3) Prof. Sawey asked if there were likely to be sanctions from
our athletics division, what will this do to the capital campaign, and are
administrators in danger?. Answer: First, a positive factor is the speed
with which Ted McKinnon handled the latest Athletics problem. "It isn't
likely they will shut us down." Second, while SWT's image had been
improving, the current audit situation has been an embarrassment. The local
community is more interested in this than the outside, so the capital
campaign is not likely to be much affected. Third, with regard to
administrators in jeopardy, Pres. Supple said that in individual
conversations with Regents they seemed supportive. The attitude seems to
be, "Spell out the issues, fix it, and get on with it." Pres. Supple gave
as an example, Regent Tom Miller (Beaumont) drove down to see Aquarena
Springs recently and indicated we had made the right decision.

(4) The plan is to work with the Systems Office staff, State
Auditor's Office, and Board to address each issue thoroughly, have a
timeline, a definite person in charge of each area, and procedures for
oversight in place. The assistant State auditor will be working closely
with us on this.

Tapes were also made of the hearings last Friday and each of the
new allegations and innuendos will be investigated. The Pres. said he was
surprised ("shocked") at the attacks. He was prepared to try to explain
losing money, but was taken-aback by questions regarding the
appropriateness of the purchases (including hints that anyone involved in
buying property was somehow gaining from it). In response to the question
of possible "hidden agendas" involved in making such accusations, Pres.
Supple said he couldn't say what the motivations were for Rep. Ogden
(College Station) and Rep. Gallegos (Alpine) or the "stronger words" used
by the auditor than were in the Audit. He will be discussing this with
Rep. Ogden next week, and presumably the others also. Board members who
were involved with the University's purchases have been notified of these
hints at possible wrongdoing and they are trying to figure it out. "It's
difficult to address issues you don't know about."

Prof. Kurtz asked if all this proposed oversight by the System,
Board, and State was related to the recently proposed centralization
changes in the Regents' Rules to have all the System universities' policies
be approved by its legal counsel. The Pres. said he was asking for this
temporary oversight on areas covered by the audit, "so that they can see we
are monitoring properly."

Related to Athletics (but not the audit), Prof. Horne asked again
about different admissions standards for athletes and nonathletes. Pres.
Supple said that many years ago Jerry Clayton started recruiting inner-city
youth, working closely with them to meet academic standards in regular
classes, and we have been doing this since. However, we also have
procedures for admitting nonathletes with disadvantaged backgrounds.

COMING MEETINGS:

Tues. April 30th, PAAG meeting will include members of the 37th and
38th Senates. Alkek 105 at 4:00 p.m.

Wed., May 1st, the 37th Senate will meet at 3:00 p.m. to finish
business still on the table. At about 4:30 the 38th Senate will convene to
elect officers and begin business.

Meeting adjourned at 6:10 p.m.


Ramona Ford
Secretary