The University
of Southern Mississippi
Faculty Senate Meeting
February 15, 2002
Cook Library 123
2:00 p.m.
Members Present: College of the Arts: K. Davis, D. Douglas, S. Nielsen. College of Business: D. Duhon, College of Education & Psychology: S. Alber, J. Olmi, J. Palmer, J. Rachal. College of Health & Human Sciences: M. Forster, S. Hubble, M. Nettles. College of Int’l & Continuing Education: M. Miller. College of Liberal Arts: D. Cabana, R. Esparragoza-Scott, A. Kaul, J. Meyer, B. Scarborough, A. Wallace. College of Nursing: E. Harrison, K. Masters. College of Marine Sciences: J. Lytle. College of Science and Technology: P. Butko, D. Beckett, J. Miller, D. Dunn, M. Hall, M. Henry, C. Hoyle, G. Rayborn University Libraries: T. Graham, S. Laughlin. USM-Gulf Coast: D. Alford, Ka. Davis, S. Naghshpour, J.P. Smith.
Members Represented by Proxy: College of Business: T. Green (D. Duhon). College of Liberal Arts: A. Chasteen (M. Miller), M. Dearmey (B. Scarborough), S. Oshrin (A. Kaul). College of Nursing: K. Masters (E. Harrison). College of Science and Technology: P. Butko (D. Beckett).
Members Absent: College of Education & Psychology: E. Lundin. College of Science & Technology: B. Coates.
1.0 Call to Order 2:02 pm
2.0 Forum Speaker: Greg Pierce, Associate Registrar; Dr. Bucky Wesley, Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management/Dean of Admissions [Comments frequently shifted between speakers in an informal interview style. The following report will refer to Dr. Wesley and Mr. Pierce as “Speakers” and pronouns are changed to “we” to make the report more readable.]
Speakers: We are not here to defend PeopleSoft, rather our goal is to insure that we work with you to improve the process. As issues have arisen, we have worked quickly to correct problems. Several questions have been forwarded to us and we would like to respond. Can SOAR be modified? We believe that we can put in help links that will focus on particular problems. While entering grades on SOAR, why did I keep getting put off the system with error messages? The error message is a mystery. Maybe it has to do with clearing the cache. Who benefits from shifting the responsibility of entering grades to the faculty? In the past 49-50% of grades were turned in by Monday at 8:00. With SOAR entry, 90% were submitted by Monday morning.
S. Naghshpour: The grades being in by Monday morning is not necessarily an advantage to faculty. The scan sheets cost very little. The faculty is taking the costs to the new system through added work.
Speakers: This is a user maintained system and that is a shift which requires more of the user. I cannot argue that point.
P. Smith: The percentage of input by Monday may not really work in the future because we [faculty] scrambled to do this ahead in anticipation of crashing.
Speakers: I hope that in the future you will think about it as potentially crashing [to keep up this rate of completion].
M. Hall: I had so many problems that I kept calling and finally an expert came over and she took thorough notes about how these things should not be happening. We kept cleaning the cache and getting messages that the time had expired. She said that she would get back to me in December and I have heard nothing.
Speakers: We are working regularly to address these issues so it won’t come back up. I would suggest that you come to my office (Pierce) and I would have done it for you. There have been several adjustments to the system such as increasing processing time. We have changed the subsystems and are altering our platform. We are currently using the NT4 and are clearing access. We don’t know what will happen when we enter grades next time. We encourage you to call the help desk. Hopefully the changes will improve this process. We are learning as well.
K. Davis: I sent that long “diabolical” letter from my colleague stating all the problems they experienced. We have met with you already to address our special needs. We need the ability to customize the system.
Speakers: Within the school of music we need to move around within the academic unit outside of the small add-drop time limitations. Those students making changes outside the normal time frame can now be moved with a “CHANGE” command rather than a drop. This will avoid the charges. If we customized it and never had to make changes it would be different. However, we are getting upgrades and at each upgrade we would have to go in and change each individual adaptation.
K. Davis: Adding chamber music after the first 10 class days is a problem.
Speakers: Yes. After the 10th class day we must require special permission to add according to university policy.
K. Davis: Another thing. Students are getting kicked out of the system while trying to register.
Speakers: We think that these problems for the student are connection problems. We have been increasing access. Sometimes home computers have their own cache sites and these three problems are being attacked at the different levels.
J. Olmi: I was excited about the possibilities when I entered grades. I think that my advising will be improved when we have more access to student records. However, I wish I had credit on my transcripts for all the time learning PeopleSoft . The cheat sheets that my secretary gave me are better than the training.
Speakers: We are willing to take our show on the road at your request. Please let us know what we can do to improve. We probably oversold PeopleSoft. We thought it was going to be easy…
D. Beckett: No one at the help desk could
tell me about entering grades. The cheat sheets work better than training.
It doesn’t work to call the help desk when they are not trained. A lady in
the registrar’s office was very helpful. I found out that you have to say it
is OK and then go back and save. If you save first, you get an error message.
This is in the wrong order. Finally, with all these sections listed, I couldn’t
get to all my grades. At the bottom of the page you should have a button that
says go to the next page. It is not there where it is easily seen. I was surprised
at how well it worked. But these little problems should be fixed. Maybe a
faculty member could talk you through it so that things make sense intuitively.
J. Rachal: Greg, you helped me register to audit a class. Thank you. Could
you simplify this? If you hadn’t gotten me in that course, I would not have
taken it. For student registration, I think that there is a “flag” that has
to be removed. When the flag is removed, the student can go and register for
anything they want. They can redo their schedule. The student has to sign
a paper—I like paper—to say what they are going to take.
Speakers: The “eligible to enroll” flag has caused most of our problems. The Dean’s Council wants this because they want students to be required to attend advising.
S. Hubble: That was also true in the past. Once they were advised, students could get on STARS and do whatever they wanted.
J. Rachal: How does the technology benefit us?
Speakers: We can look at a central time and place then half of my staff would be at one location for registration, but you can see how that would also present problems.
S. Naghshpour: I am not attacking you, but to the best of our knowledge there are 700-800 faculty. We have lost 37% of our faculty. You train faculty and then they are gone. If you add up the cost of training faculty to enter grades, the same amount could be used to hire several staff members who are already trained.
Speakers: We do offer the proxy method for entering grades.
S. Naghshpour: The university can waste faculty time, but the university does not want to pay someone to do this work.
Speakers: We are certainly willing to look at other ways to do this. We could get an interface with a scantron and we are willing to look at any options. We are not here to defend the system. If you do not want faculty to enter grades, then we will do it another way.
S. Nielsen: It would help if every faculty member had computers. It was my old computer that was the problem. It was not my cache.
Speakers: We agree with you. Some could not print. This is not right.
M. Miller: It turns out that there was a switch that was not set in my computer. Do you keep these problems and assess what the problems were. Do you log complaints and go back and address each specific situation?
Speakers: This is a good suggestion. We need to log the problems and see what the patterns are. This should be done. The changes we have made are a result of the problems that were reported. We need to know how well we are doing at solving these problems.
D. Dunn: When will we have the next upgrades. We can’t modify things if there is another major change facing us.
Speakers: PeopleSoft 8.0 is the next upgrade and we have to be on it by August, 2003. There are some universities who are organizing to put off the upgrade. We are preparing for another upgrade and it will be a lot of work. I’d love to stop it right here. But that is what is coming up.
J. Palmer: How about PACE sheet vs. the Smart Sheet. The PACE sheet was a single piece of paper that assesses exactly where the student is in relationship to graduation. The Smart Sheet is very long.
Speakers: The short Smart Sheet is three pages long. There is a long version. I don’t know that there is any way to change it. We tried to set up the Smart Sheet like the PACE sheet. We are not finished with it, but at this point there is no other alternative. That is where we are right now.
M. Henry: I had a good experience. There are clearly some problems that I did not have. I appreciate what you have done to help.
M. Hall: I don’t want you to think that I am attacking you. I went to the registrar and took the training class and I used the help desk. I come from a world where the patient does not tell the doctor how to fix it. For me, everything that I have been doing with the computer outside of word processing has not been going well. For advising, we were flying blind. The information that we get now does not show us what the students has done at the community college. The students cannot be relied upon to provide this information.
Speakers: The transfer credit should show up on the Smart Sheet. The transcript does not give the transfer credit. We are looking at a summary which says that there is a total number of transfer credits.
M. Hall: The summer information could not be found.
Speakers: We are in a transition. Summer is in Bull and fall is in PeopleSoft. That is for students who are currently enrolled. Several of the deans have requested that transcripts be made available. The transcripts with transfer work should now be available through the dean’s offices.
J. Olmi: Why can’t faculty get that information.
Speakers: We have asked the deans to identify a person who can have access to full transcript information.
J. Olmi: The person who does this is not always available to do this task. That is a problem when you have a student in your office.
K. Davis: One of my colleagues was able to access SOAR from home but was not able to do it a second time.
Speakers: We do not know why that problem exists. This is an important issue. Notice that we shut down for maintenance at 2-3 in the morning. We don’t know why people get the message “Shut down for maintenance. Try later,” at other times of the day. This must be a connection issue. We wanted to have experts come and find out what the problem is…
K. Davis: Students should be able to sign up directly with me without going through some one else when they need music instruction. With students that are already established in music, there should be less trouble. With new students, I would like to eliminate a middle person.
Speakers: This is only possible if we allow full access after the 10th day of classes. That would violate a university policy. Credit hours are assessed at the 10th day. We could seamlessly register people all semester, but that is probably not what we should do. We need your input and it is important to the system. I hope that we are sitting here in a year saying that the system has improved.
S. Hubble: Thank you so much for coming. We appreciate the information you’ve provided.
3.0 Approval of Agenda. Moved to Approve Agenda, D. Cabana. Seconded, E. Harrison. PASSED.
4.0 Approval of Minutes for January 18 Meeting. B. Scarborough asked for the following corrections under transportation report: In the fourth sentence: “We are could change Kelly lot,” “We are considering reserved parking.” Minutes were Approved with changes.
5.0 Officer’s Reports
5.1 President’s Report: Susan Hubble
The budget will be finalized soon. We are hoping for bridge money—we don’t know much right now. Lucas wants to see McHenry’s recommendation regarding the targeted programs that were identified. United Way—send in contributions if you have not yet done so. USM is short of the annual goal. In the Dean’s Council there was an announcement about the Founder’s society—gift annuities are available . If you want to participate, the donor can get higher yields than is generally available. There are now new travel policies and you can get these on the USM website. It is now permissible to use several travel agencies. There is the possibility of getting a waiver of travel agency service if you can show a savings of at least $25—you could make your own reservations on-line, for example.
President search: The faculty members on the search committee have asked for more time for faculty members to meet with the candidates without the press present. It was suggested that we should let the press in for a portion of the meeting, then ask them to leave. We want to have more information provided about how campus governance committees are selected. There is a pamphlet which lists committee membership which is disseminated by Ginn and the Provost will find out just how these committees are selected. We told Provost Griffin that we wanted input on how committees are structured--particularly the sabbatical committee. Dr. Griffin said that the sabbatical committee just gives an approval or rejection for each applicant. We pointed out that there needs to be more feedback to the applicants and faculty should have representation to help structure the feedback process.
There is concern about why the report on targeted programs has not been readily available. The Provost assured us that the report would be put on reserve or distributed to interested faculty members. Dr. Griffin will ask President Lucas about how to make it accessible.
I will be asked to help Dr. Griffin in structuring the visits for the Presidential search. Please give me input that I can relay to him.
The news from Jackson: Lee Jarrel Davis introduced a bill which called for 4% raises for faculty each year beginning 2004. The fill is dead now. He hopes that this will “plant the seed” for future action in the legislature. He would also like to meet with UFSA. Perhaps we could recommend a stairstep raise plan.
There is good news if you haven’t heard already. Summer is pay is increasing substantially. Each step gets a different amount. [Handout: Raise amount per rank—Professor, $2,000; Associate, $1750; Assistant, $1250; Instructor, $1000]
J. Olmi: Is that also coming out of current money?
S. Hubble: Commensurate adjustments have been allocated to the units.
J. Palmer: I think I heard that it is a one-shot deal.
S. Hubble: With the change in Presidents, there may be something to this. We need to start on that to make sure that is not taken away in the future.
D. Beckett: When was this announcement made?
S. Hubble: This week.
D. Beckett: Summer research awards were all at the Assistant Professor level. Those letters were sent out already. Will the awards be changed to account for this?
D. Duhon: We submitted this plan some time ago.
J. Rachal: Where is this coming from?
S. Hubble: There is going to be a tuition raise. This is based on enrollment last year. I would like to say that I was excited. I am going back to teaching and I will benefit from this. I wonder whether staff will get any increase? I would like to see how we could share the wealth with the staff. It would seem to be a good time to band together to help out the staff. If you have any ideas let me know.
J. Rachal: Is the part-time summer teaching proportional to this scale?
S. Hubble: I would think so. That is how it has been done in the past. MJ McMahon will become the Executive Vice President of Northern Arizona University. We will certainly miss you.
M. J. McMahon: In such a short time I have learned much from you. I really appreciate your willingness to serve on committees. I have not seen this high level of commitment in higher education at other places. “Thank you all for extending you warm southern hospitality and making my stay in Hattiesburg a memorable one.” [Reprinted from written statement.”
5.2 President-Elect’s Report: Don Cabana. None.
5.3 Secretary’s Report: Darlys Alford. Remember that the Senate meets at GP in March.
5.4 Secretary-Elect’s Report: Toby Graham (See Proxy list above)
6.0 Committee Reports
6.1 Administrative and Faculty Evaluations: Elizabeth Harrison: Annual evaluations of administrators were completed recently. We were asked not to discuss the process until it had been completed. Some faculty members did not recognize that the questionnaire was the actual form to complete. This was a problem caused by sending a sample ballot last year. There were a multiple copies floating around campus. Dr. Johnson felt that the process was relatively successful. People still did not put the person’s name on the form. This problem was less than the past. There is no specific form for assistant deans or directors. Dr. Johnson is going to help us with that problem. We will continue to develop new questionnaires. Some of the comments were signed and that does not help with confidentiality.
A. Wallace: Address name tags should not be attached to the back of the questionnaires.
K. Davis: I was one who did not know that the forms were official. I thought that the copies would be made at the college level.
M. Forster: There were two different instructions: complete at a faculty meeting or send to JT Johnson.
E. Harrison: The directions said that those who couldn’t go to the meeting should send the forms directly to JT.
S. Neilsen: What is the point of having a meeting? Why not send them directly to JT?
E. Harrison: That occurred to me.
D. Duhon: There is a history here. There were low returns in the past so meetings were called to get more participation. I think that we should stay with the meetings.
J. Palmer: I agree that there is better participation in meetings. I think it should stay.
S. Hubble: Perhaps we should just fill out forms at faculty meetings and not distribute them generally. Faculty members could still bring written comments.
S. Neilsen: What happened with faculty members who already had these filled out, it negated the need for a meeting.
J. Lytle: There was concern about the forms lying around where the confidentiality not being protected.
6.2 Faculty Welfare: John Meyer: In a survey of 30 universities, we found that there was an average of 14.7 weeks in a semester before finals. USM has 16 weeks before finals. Many other universities had reading days before finals. There were also more breaks during the fall. Most classes are fewer minutes than USM 2400 contact minutes. We are going to proposed a new calendar for USM . On another issue, one faculty member reported a diagnosis of carpal tunnel syndrome. This will become more of an issue. Some of us are not paying attention to ergonomics. That is an awareness issue.
D. Beckett: Persons at the Payne Center asked me to ask the Faculty Senate about whether the university could shift the one course allowed to faculty members to their spouses when they do not enroll themselves.
J. Meyer: The Presidents have declared that it would cost money—also for portability [dependent tuition reduction applied to other Mississippi Universities].
S. Hubble: If it is confined to our campus, maybe it would be workable.
D. Beckett: Maybe it wouldn’t cost so much for this.
D. Duhon: What about four day a week classes?
J. Meyer: The IHL doesn’t respond to this well?
D. Alford: The coast has a four-day schedule right now.
J. Meyer: Space issues can be a problem.
D. Dunn: At the last spate of construction, we were maxed out with space issues.
P. Smith: When we were looking at scheduling we did see that we could come to a point of lack of space on the coast campus.
6.3 Government Relations: Jesse Palmer: You should have three pieces of paper. See handouts. We talked with about 25 senators and representatives. We especially targeted the budget committees. The legislators are now really alarmed about how bad things are with the IHL. In the past, they have said you should be glad to have a job. There is talk of using one-time money to help with our health benefit problems –that is paying for Medicaid. There was a joint meeting with Medicaid, K-12, and Higher Ed committees who are getting together to advocate for a large block appropriation that would eliminate these groups from completing for the same limited amount of money. Tim Ford listened to our appeal and we were probably the only lobbying group to meet with him that day. The handouts about loss of faculty and salary comparisons to SREB were informative for legislators.
J. Olmi: In comments by Jack Gordon and Sen. Hollis, there seemed to be an indignant response to the statement that Higher Ed is in trouble. I don’t know about you, but we are trying to bring people in at a higher salary than those who have been here for three years.
P. Smith: We used your department as an example. They are in a box right now.
J. Olmi: Provide me with a plan. I have not heard anything at this point. Even if it is not possible immediately, we need to hear that there is a plan.
M. Forster: What we need is a long-range commitment in our lobbying. We can’t go on Mardi Gras once a year and hope to have an effective influence.
B. Scarborough: We don’t have a very strong lobbying effort and we need to work on that. Our local legislators are not very helpful .
G. Rayborn: I think that MS State has a better representation in Jackson. We need to bring this up with the new president. The numbers of faculty leaving on the handout does not match the President’s report.
M. Forster: These numbers include retirements.
D. Dunn: Lucas was talking about line-item budget positions.
M. Hall: Was there another 32 cut permanently.
D. Dunn: The first year we lost 32 and then 19.
M. Hall: We were told that the positions were frozen.
M. Henry: There is no money behind 50 total positions. Until there is money put behind them, it is like creating a new position.
D. Beckett: That was the purpose of talking over breakfast with legislators. This should be enlarged as a strategy.
S. Hubble: That was one of the reasons Davis was willing to meet with UFSA
D. Cabana: Ole Miss and MS State make their voices heard. We could work to get alumni on board to be a louder voice with the legislature. The faculty are part of the bureaucracy, and the alumni might have more impact than our voices have. I would like to see the Alumni Association more active—direct more of efforts toward lobbying. The legislature is a multi-year body. It takes concerted effort to get the arguments consistent over the years. It would be good to have some of the fervor for athletics aimed at more general issues.
P. Smith: The problem is that you have to influence the committee processes. We have four people from Hattiesburg and South MS that are on that joint legislative budget committee. They have to be courted and become firebrands for us.
M. Miller: We have spent a lot of money on lobbyists and if they are not doing their jobs, then the President should know.
J. Palmer: There is no full-time lobbyist. This is a problem.
K. Davis: You said last meeting there might be a 16 % budget cut.
S. Hubble: Each day I hear a different number.
J. Palmer: It looks like there is a plan in the general fund where the projected cut is 11%.
M. Henry: We are more dependent on the IHL appropriation than MS State or Ole Miss.
D. Duhon: I have friends at MS State and Ole Miss who are also suffering. We are dying here. In a couple of years, accreditations will be in major question.
6.4 Transportation: Bill Scarborough: Zone 4 north of Bond Hall has been underused. Security covered up Zone 4 signs and everyone can park there. The reason they are not taking the signs down is that the population changes in the summer. We approved a new policy for Zone 5. All administrators and staff will get permits in Forrest County Hall. Those with 15 or more years of service and who work in that area will be grandfathered in, but this will stop February, 2002.
7.0 Old Business: None.
8.0 New Business:
8.1 Distribution of FS meeting summaries: Susan Hubble: It was suggested that information about the Faculty Senate be posted on the USM Mail to give the general faculty and staff information about important resolutions that are passed in the Senate immediately after meetings. Currently, the Faculty Senate Agenda is not posted to the campus on the Website until after the approval of the minutes—this is fully one month after the action was taken.
8.2 Setting Faculty Senate yearly agenda: Mark Miller: There is so much going on every year, I proposed that we adopt one major project for Faculty Senate each year. It should be something that is in tangible terms and we will be able to measure real progress. We would know that we had accomplished this session. A couple of examples are: 1) shifting technology resources under the Provost’s control, 2) academic calendar change, 3) absolutely concrete budget for the university put on the USM website, 4) maintain a mandatory 1% increase in graduate assistant budgets to declare the importance of research. I would suggest that this be done with input from the highest administrators.
D. Cabana: I am comfortable with it. We are influenced by unexpected events. We have had to engage in crisis management. It would be good if we kept it focused on one or two items. We have to decide what banners we want to carry as a Faculty Senate.
S. Hubble: Should we set the agenda in the summer or fall?
M. Henry: I think that the budget should be much more transparent. We might want to work with Lucas and have something done on this before the new President comes aboard.
M. Forster: I think we should think about it more.
D. Duhon: If the President is not on board, it may not be feasible.
M. Miller: Joint planning would be good.
S. Hubble: If there is no more discussion, the meeting is adjourned.
Adjourn: 4:40 p.m.