The University of Southern Mississippi

The University of Southern Mississippi

Faculty Senate Special Meeting

January 28, 2005

Cook Library

2:30 p.m.

1.0 Call to Order – Meeting was called to order at 2:35

2.0 Forum Speaker:

Dr. Exline came to the faculty senate meeting to answer any questions the senate had about SACS Probation and the Strategic Plan.

Dr. Exline gave an update on planning, the probation issue and then reaffirmation. She stated that the University Planning Council really does exist and will be meeting on February 8^th. Dr. Exline has been reviewing all the feedback being sent to her from everyone and she will share that with the planning committee. She has talked to the SACS consultant and has reviewed with her everything - the whole planning story – everything that happened – the misunderstanding, the lack of input, everything. The consultant suggested that we have a town hall meeting. At the suggestion of others, one will also be scheduled on the coast. Maybe both can be scheduled for February. The planning council will then look at that information [from the town hall meetings] as well. Dr. Exline said the feedback that she has seen has been very good and she believes that from this information, she expects that the mission and goals will change. She said that she knows that there is a problem with trust right now but that she is sincere in her efforts and she does expect that as a result of input, the goals will change.

Q: A senator stated that her biggest concern was that the goals were set in stone.

A: They are not set in stone. There has been a lot of suggestions about the text. The consultant said we should expand the environmental assessment part. Dr. Exline then said that she had a lot of that data in her office and that they were going to be working on it. So the plan will look a little bit different.

Q: A senator suggested that the SACS committees need to revisit the plans for the Gulf Coast adopted by the IHL Board in 1999 and sworn to in federal court and in the MS Supreme Court, even though that plan does not seem to be particularly well thought of by the present administration. It’s never been repealed and we’re not executing it.

A: Okay.

Q: Is the draft plan we’re looking at right now the first draft?

A: “First, I didn’t write that. Brad wrote that.”

Q: And that’s the first draft?

A: “As far as I know. The part where I picked up on is how to develop the goals and objectives or the tactics underneath it. But all that text was developed by Brad, again, with some review by the University Planning Council.”

Q: Where are the notes from the focus groups?

A: “I’ve been trying to find them myself.”

Q: The reason I asked that is because a year before the focus groups met, Dr. Thames laid out those same goals [those listed in the Strategic Plan] at a faculty senate meeting (Sept. 13, 2002).

A: “Those same goals?”

Q: Yes. So I was wondering who told you - those documents that you started with had a title already on it – Strategic Plan? And those goals were in that document?

A: “No, no. That’s where it transitioned from the University Planning Committee to the Executive Cabinet which is now what it is called per our consultant. We took all that material and tried to transfer it into goals. But it surprises me because there was some controversies and discussions that they were the same. But I’ll look at that.”

Q: The goals came into the document when it went to the Executive Cabinet.

A: “All the input went into discussion at the retreat. Our format was to look at the environment – I put up a lot of comparison data – IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System) comparison data and things like that and then we had straw man goals to look at. And they were changed a lot. And then we developed tactics. That’s what we did at the retreat.”

Q: “I’m confused about what you said that the document that’s posted as 04/07 was written by Brad...”

A: “And the committee...”

Q: “Because what I saw that the committee put together (because I made some copies of what they defined as their vision, their priorities or goals), they don’t look anything like those 5 that are posted.”

A: “Many of the goals and priorities that were discussed by the committee were translated into values and things. And I told you at the earlier meeting that the mission statement didn’t fly.”

Q: “Which mission statement?”

A: “That the committee recommended.”

Q: “Looking in the document, I think what would have been the University Planning Committee, when it went to the Executive Committee is when everything changed. Because I think the direction they were going was not at all what came out. And what I think were comments of faculty, the 120 that participated in Brad’s session, don’t jive with, as far as I can tell, very well with the 5 that are currently posted.”

A: “I know everyone is distressed and they want to keep talking about the past but that’s just not my job. I have to move forward. And I’m trying to set up this Planning Council and process all this input, that’s why we asked everyone to have meetings, why I asked them to take minutes, why were going to have town hall meetings and why we have the Planning Council meeting, to look at all this stuff. And I’ve asked for a commitment from the cabinet members that we are going to make some changes and I have that commitment based on the input. All I can do is move forward. I don’t have time to dwell on the past. Except not to repeat the mistakes. That’s my only commitment – not to repeat the mistakes.”

Q: “Well, the big mistake seems to have been that what was started by that group didn’t ever get finished. And then they met 4 times and that was it.”

A: “Well, some people went off and did some things on their own. That’s all I can tell you. And I’m just not going to talk about people in the past anymore. They’re not here anymore. I’m not going to talk about them.”

Q: “What is our current timeline now for completing this?”
A: “What I’ve asked is to have all the input by the end of January and then we have the first meeting of the Planning Council scheduled in February. I’m going to try to get the 2 town hall meetings scheduled within the month of February. And I know that Will [Watson] said that he would help me with that for the coast. And then the Planning Council will have to meet again after that and revisit. So I’m hoping the recommendations will be able to go out in March for people to look at again.”

Q: I think this might be an evaluation form for all the College of Science and Technology, I’m not sure (an evaluation form was handed out to all senators and Dr. Exline.) It is a summary evaluation form that will be filled out by all faculty in the College of Science and Technology (is my understanding.) I think that one, or at least another reason why there’s skepticism about the status of the Strategic Plan is that on one part of this evaluation, now apparently for every faculty in the College of Science and Technology, it says ‘2005 Objectives Supporting Strategic Plan.” The evaluators, chairs, deans, provost, expect our evaluations to be tied to the 2005 objectives supporting the strategic plan.

A: Is that the College of Science and Tech plan? Because I’ve seen that.

Q: It may be. But that plan ties to the administration one.

A: Well, I’ve seen a plan from Science and Tech. I can only tell you what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to take all this input and come up with a more participative process and adapt the plan accordingly based on that input.

Q: How can an evaluation be tied to something if it’s only a draft? How can it support the strategic plan if one doesn’t exist yet? That’s bothersome.

A: Its always been a draft. If someone took that on and did something else with it, I can’t help that. It’s a draft.

Q: [A CoST senator] I haven’t seen the form, but you know our college has its own strategic plan. Don’t you think that it refers to the college plan?

A: Yes I’m thinking that Rex had his plan done before we even had our retreat.

Q: Yes, but the college plan ties to the university plan and I’m thinking also that some of the goals of the university plan are in the college plan.

A: I don’t know. I’ll look into it. I know that when I was interim dean we all developed plans for our colleges. I know the College of Health had a plan.

Q: But college plans are generally not independent of the university plan.

A: Yes, but we knew that the university plan was evolving. So we went ahead and did one for our college instead of being without college plans.

Q: Dave B – I usually try to check out things first so I asked a couple of chairs ‘What’s the strategic plan here?’ since I’m not a chairperson. They said ‘I don’t know what strategic plan we’re talking about there.’

A: I’m happy to look into it. It did not initiate from the planning office.

Q: A faculty member had raised the issue about staff and student input into the strategic plan. I’m not sure if the town hall fashion is the type of forum where you would get staff and student input that’s probably needed for this plan. Did the old focus groups included staff and students and would those summaries be useful or is there some other way that student and staff input can be given?

A: I’ve been talking with the Student Government Association and trying to get students on committees and encourage other organizations to give their input. So maybe I need to do that for staff council as well? I was hoping the unit meetings would include staff.

Q: Well sometimes I’ve heard that at the PC the faculty tend to monopolize that – so if that’s the case, I think that the same thing might happen at a town meeting. So I think it might be good to have a meeting just dedicated to talking to staff persons.

A: Okay.

Dr. Exline handed out and explained a timeline for the SACS process. Its been reviewed with the consultant. The assessment report and plans were actually due to my (Dr. Exline’s) predecessor back in late June. We’ve put a firm deadline that you must get the documentation in by February 1. It seems crunched but it’s really not because they should have been in a long time ago. Then we have the University Assessment Committee that’s going to review the 04/05 plan. So as not to put a burden on everybody, Joy Hamilton, the consultant and I are going to review all the 03/04 plans and reports. Then we’re going to put all that together and in March follow up with the chairs on anything that needs to be changed in the documentation. So that’s our plan for getting our assessment done. The meeting I’m going to now is the chairs’ meeting, to talk to them about all of this. Now, because I haven’t been able to find a quantitative assessment of the core (lots of input, lots of discussion that I’m going to use), the consultant said we really have to do a pilot testing of the core. I’ve been working with Mary Lux on that. When Academic Council picks their instrument, whatever they want to use, our office is happy to take over. This is a pilot so we can all see what the testing process is like and if we want to continue it on an ongoing basis. Even though we are not done with the core, this is a pilot so we can all see what this is like. We will have to turn the information in as part of our probation report. We’ve checked with these vendors, how quickly they can turn it around and we think we can get everything back if we get going on this in and in May discuss the results with Academic Council to see what preliminary reactions are to the pilot. In June 05, the assessment reports for this academic year are due and we’ve instituted a procedure where the deans all have to sign off on these, they are not just coming to me they need to go to chairs, the deans and then to me. I’m committed to having it done by July 15^th – it’s due August 2^nd. The main thing we need to do is we’re going to adapt our form (I didn’t really want to do that – I wanted to wait to use it and change it after we got through all this) but she [consultant] said it’s really out of date and we need to change it. But we’re going to change it for the chairs so the chairs don’t have that burden. We’re going to go back and take the information and reformat it into a new form. Basically what they have to do to meet the distance learning [criteria] is if the student outcome says that they’re going to look at grades on a capstone course, they have to separate that analysis for any area where 25% or more of their degree coursework is completed on the coast. They have to apply that assessment to both campuses.

Q: The pilot testing is for courses in the core?

A: Yes

Q: What about distant learning classes that are not core classes?

A: You don’t need different outcome measures for distant learning versus traditional classes.

Q: Sometimes for an online course or a study abroad course the materials we use as evidence of the assessment is different ...

A: Whatever the learning objective is for the course...

Q: So like the syllabus and course evaluations, or papers - all of the above?

A: Exactly.

Q: We’re looking at Study Abroad totally separately too. Because there are some special issues with that too with instructors that are overseas and things like that.

Q: Will we evaluate programs as a dept?

A: Yes.

A: Or you as a professor.

Q: How will we know if the course is taught by somebody who doesn’t live in this country?

A: Well, that’s what we’ve been working on – that is an issue.

Q: That’s not as serious as what we need to do to get our documentation together. They are really interested in where you can get 25% or more of your degree more so than just one course.

Q: Like a hybrid program or an online degree program.

A: Right.

A: Where if a student can take most of their course, let’s say at Jackson County, and get their degree, than we would need to assess not only Hattiesburg but Jackson County. Most of the time right now that’s going to be the coast and Hattiesburg sometimes in nursing that means Meridian too. And the chairs all have that list. We’ve been writing those lists of per cent of course work by degrees when its completed so we can see exactly what we have to do.

Reaffirmation - Dr. Exline also handed out faculty qualifications out of the SACS Principles of Accreditation. She stated that the Compliance team is well organized. The committee is doing its audit and everything is on track. There is one thing that she pointed out. Anyone teaching an undergraduate course has to have a terminal degree or a Master’s degree in the teaching discipline (item d) or a Master’s with 18 graduate hours in the teaching discipline and at least 25% of the discipline course hours in the undergraduate major must be taught by faculty holding the terminal degree. The consultant said this spring we can do some justifications and get by, but for summer and fall we have to be squeaky clean and they only want to see probably less than 20 exceptions for the entire university that are justified by other criteria. At the graduate level they need to have the terminal degree or a very strong justification. We asked “What’s justification because what we had been setting up is to write a memo and attach it about the justification?” That’s not enough. We have to put up things that can be linked to on the web site, for instance, does that person have a national reputation, have they published, have they made presentations, maybe a letter from their employer explaining that they are well skilled in this area. We have to have something that documents why they should be allowed to teach the class when they don’t have a terminal degree. For a lot of people, this is hard. Adjuncts, everybody. For example, this past December Amal Khoury left the university because her husband moved his practice to Florida so we were scrambling like crazy to find an instructor for finance. So chairs are going to be under this pressure to hire adjuncts but we’ll have to be guided by this rule. The consultant said at one university (or maybe a community college) they had to remove 200 adjuncts from their list that weren’t qualified.

Q: Don’t we have regular faculty, not adjuncts, who will be in trouble with the SACS principle “e” – “Faculty teaching graduate and post-baccalaureate course work: earned doctorate/terminal degree in the teaching discipline or a related discipline.”

A: I don’t understand.

Q: Isn’t there someone on the coast with a degree in science teaching in the business school? (Laughter)

A: Dr. Beckett explained that the senator was referring to Dr. Malone. Dr. Exline asked if Dr. Malone didn’t have a Master’s degree?

Q: Not in the discipline area.

A: The way we are auditing this is, first of all the compliance team is auditing it initially. The consultant is auditing it. Secondly, as far as the process for the future, Russ Willis is getting a committee of 2-3 faculty members to look through this after this after the chair and dean have signed off on it. If anyone wants to work on that committee...

Q: I’d like to voice a bit of concern about record keeping on the coast with adjuncts. Last fall, especially with the elimination of deans and chairs and all that, I think there may be a kind of a loop hole with regard to adjunct qualifications. As late of the fall semester, people were calling around trying to ascertain complete records on a well qualified adjunct, but the person taught for practically a whole semester and we did not have proper credentials.

A: It won’t happen anymore. We have a whole new process in place. When I went to the meeting in June, they said the 2 areas of vulnerability are Institutional Effectiveness and Faculty Qualifications. So we started looking at that this summer. That’s why a lot of stuff has come out about asking you to verify – Russ has been going through looking for transcripts and files. So that’s being worked on and now a new system is in place so that shouldn’t be happening anymore.

Dave B. thanked Dr. Exline for coming again.

3.0 Officer’s Report

3.1 Dave B. made a few short announcements. For starters, he asked that faculty recognize Jim Crockett who was recently honored as the “Outstanding Accounting Educator for 2005” by the MS Society of Certified Accountants. Senators gave Dr. Crockett a round of applause.

There was a draft called “Draft Policy and Procedure Statement on Non-tenure Track Research and Clinical Faculty and Post Doctoral Training Positions at the University of Southern Mississippi.” It had to do with faculty members who are in research or clinical positions (or artists in residence) which are not tenure track – what happens to those folks? What titles do they have? How are they considered for promotion? Is there an appeal process? Is there an annual evaluation? This came from Ed Jackson to me and I looked at it and had some fellow senators look at it and we made it a better document. Dave B. thanked everyone who looked at it particularly Don Redalje. The draft is now back to Ed Jackson and hopefully these faculty will have some kind of a process in place soon.

The letters of reprimand given to the coast faculty by the provost for expressing their opinions regarding the library situation have been removed (applause). A senator commented that, along with the sabbatical fiasco, that this was just another example of the amateur-type control of this administration. Everything they do they have to go back on. They don’t ask first they just make decisions. Another senator asked the two Gulf Coast senators if the restrictions on talking about the incident had been lifted. They said that no one has communicated anything like that to them. They received a one line email from the provost saying that the reprimand had been removed from the file. Dave B. stated that as far as he was concerned, we are still in the United States and people are entitled to express their opinions.

A senator commented that though he was glad that the reprimands had been removed, what has not been removed is the chilling effect that this kind of action has on junior and incoming faculty. The message has already been sent.

The Awards Committee has finished their initial work on things. The names of the awards were given and will be posted on the Faculty Senate web site.

Dave B. said that so many things come up so fast that it makes it hard to keep up with everything. He thought that maybe something that would help would be to create better communications. He has come up with 3 things to help better communications: 1) Bill P. and Dave B. are now having weekly meetings with the Provost; 2) In one of the Exec. Committee (EC) meetings with the president, the EC talked to Dr. Thames about the lack of faculty-faculty (not faculty administrators) members on the committees (particularly at the Gulf Coast). Dave B. suggested, and President Thames agreed, that two faculty-faculty members be included on all committees; 3) Dave B. asked about including the Faculty Senate President in the weekly Kitchen Cabinet meetings. [Eventually this was not approved.]

Bill P. commented that it was agreed that the two faculty members to be included on committees were to be faculty members with a constituency – one that they could go back and report to.

A senator commented on how unfortunate it was that faculty had to feel that they had to insist on being included in committees.

A senator asked that discussion of the special meeting now begin.

Post-Tenure Review (PT) – Dave B. reviewed the recent events that have occurred concerning the Post-Tenure Review Policy. This past week, the PT Review Committee and Executive Committee met to polish up the PT Review Policy before it was to be reviewed by the deans and provost who were meeting at the end of the week to discuss it. The meeting of the deans and Provost and Dave B. and Bill P. was today. Dave B. and Bill P. went – Lee Gore was also there. Dave, Bill, and the deans discussed the policy for about an hour, and had a good discussion about it. After about an hour, Lee Gore suddenly spoke up and said that this stand-alone PT Review policy was not necessary and that this wasn’t what the Board really needed (even though the IHL Board and Dennis Ware specifically (staff from IHL) asked our university to do this and even specified exactly what was missing and what was needed.) Mr. Gore advised that the faculty handbook covered this and suggested that we should just change a few sentences in the handbook, and that the administration could then just write a letter to the board explaining that this was to be covered in the faculty handbook. Bill P. said that they argued the point that not everything the board wanted was in the faculty handbook – for instance, the triggering mechanism was missing; “deficiencies” and “unsatisfactory performance” was not defined. Mr. Gore suggested that no policy was needed – not the new one or the old one. Dave B. said that this (Mr. Gore’s view) wasn’t an administrative decision and that this seemed to surprise the deans and provost as well. Dave and Bill argued that the IHL specifically asked for a policy from all the schools. One outcome that will surely come of this is that the faculty handbook committee will now get underway (something that the EC has been trying to get going for awhile now.)

Q: A senator asked if Dave and Bill informed Mr. Gore that his suggestion was not acceptable to the faculty and faculty senate?

A: Yes.

Another senator said she found it ironic that after the first PT Review Policy was developed in 1999, she asked that it be included in the faculty handbook and nothing happened with it. Bill P. said that according to Gore, it is. He also said that Lee Gore should be brought into these policy discussions much earlier in the process. He expressed amazement that Mr. Gore sat there for an hour before saying anything. Dave B. said that Mr. Gore’s perspective is that this policy isn’t about termination of faculty even though that is exactly what the IHL said was missing. Both Bill and Dave mentioned that the Faculty Senate had no interest in terminating faculty but that they spent all this time and effort in response from a request from the Board. Dave B. described the meeting as surreal.

A senator commented that this policy was much more specific and much more explicit and that this policy should be included in the handbook not the other way around (that the handbook be used as the policy). He stated that the Faculty Senate should express its disappointment in this development and press to have this PT Review Policy accepted and placed into the new handbook.

Dave B. asked Myron H. what had happened in 2001 on the Faculty Handbook Committee in regards to placing the PT policy into the handbook? Myron explained that the committee had discussed it but that at that time it wasn’t considered policy yet. That was the argument that was given at the time. In reality, we apparently did have a policy in place that had been approved by the IHL. Myron urged the senate to take a strong point of view that this policy needs to be in the handbook and that it needs to be sent to the board.

Dave B. reiterated that he felt that the administration was just as surprised by Lee Gore’s assessment as Dave and Bill were. A senator stated that he would be surprised if the university’s attorney and the president hadn’t spoken about a topic like this.

Much discussion ensued. A senator made a motion that the senate send a letter to the administration asking that they accept this policy. The motion was seconded then amended. The motion: Senate recommends that the Post Tenure Review Policy be entered into the Faculty Handbook in its entirety and that the policy be sent to the IHL Board with a letter. Motion carried unanimously.

4.0 Discussion This meeting of the faculty senate was a specially called meeting to discuss “special issues” and possible actions to be taken by the senate. Dave B. read the senate By Laws regarding closed meetings. A motion was made and seconded to close the meeting and passed with a unanimous vote. Non-senate faculty were asked to stay. All others were asked to leave.

When the meeting was reopened, a motion was made to suspend the senate meeting until Wednesday (Feb. 2) during which time senators would discuss 2 possible motions with their faculty.

5.0 Meeting suspended until Wednesday February 2, 2005.