Academic Senate

Summary

Monday, October 23, 2006

3:15 – 5:00 p.m.

SCOB 210

Present: Acereda, Allen, Allison, Alvarado, Blasingame, Blasko, Brock, Broman, Bruhn, Burg, Burstein, Capaldi, Cobas, Colbourn, Comfort, Crozier, Cruz-Torres, deLusé , Doty, Duerden, Espinosa, Fabricus, Fromme, García-Fernández, Gelb, Gonzalez-Santin, Gustavsson, Hajicek, Harlan, Haynes, Ismeurt, Johnson, Keim, Kihl, Kingston, Konomos, Kopta, LaFaro, Margolis, Maris, Mathur, Mattson, McNamara, McPhee, Mitchell, Moorhead, Mossman, Rez, Roen, Rose, Schaeffer, Schultz, Smas, Strom, Sushka, Tsakalis, Valenti, Vandermeer, Verdini, Vernon, White, Zatz

Substitutes: Liz Simonhoff and Samantha Winter for Ross Meyer

Guests: Patricia Arredondo (Retention Update)

1. Call to ORDER.

Senate President Duane Roen called the meeting to order at 3:16 p.m.

2. APPROVAL OF PREVIOUS MINUTES (September 25, 2006).

The Senate Summary of September 25, 2006 is archived on the Senate Web page. If there are corrections please address them to and cc: .

3. ANNOUNCEMENTS AND COMMUNICATIONS.

3.A Senate President's Report (Duane Roen):

Before I do my report, John Brock is here, and I want to ask him to report from the Polytechnic campus, if there are no objections, and also his report from the University Academic Council. He has an appointment off campus and needs to leave shortly. There were no objections.

Polytechnic Campus Senate' Report (John Brock):

I have four items from the Polytechnic campus: November 3 there will be a ten-year anniversary celebration for the campus, and also that same day we will do a groundbreaking on three new classroom office buildings. The festivities start at about 5:00 p.m. and run until 8:00 p.m.

Our enrollment is up by over 20%, and we are running out of space, quickly.

The third thing is that our Senate committees are now populated. We have a Committee on Committees. We are ready to go to work.

We have a meeting this Friday and we will be considering the sensitive course statement, and the adoption of an Academic Professional Promotion and Tenure process.

University Academic Council Report (John Brock).

The UAC is composed of the Senate leadership from the three (now four) campuses that we have. It was originally set up to be a consultative group, not to resolve disputes. But we know that we need a mechanism within the university to join together on university-wide issues, and to resolve disputes where there are differing views on those issues. We are looking at some models of a university senate and how to populate that body. This is the item that the University Academic Council will be taking up in another week or two. We need to look at two or three different ways that we can accomplish this for the Downtown/Tempe Senate, the Polytechnic Senate, and the West Senate.

We also separately bring a resolution to you today (your Senate Resolution #10) to allow the Polytechnic Senators to withdraw from the Tempe Campus Senate. We have formed our own Senate now.

President Roen: Does anyone have any questions about that resolution? Hearing none, I will go on with the remainder of my report.

1. Senate Name

I do not have this on the agenda but Edwin Gonzalez-Santin pointed this out to me earlier that we have been referring to this campus as the "Tempe Campus Senate" and until today, at least, Polytechnic was still part of this campus' Senate. However, for at least the foreseeable future, the Downtown Phoenix campus is also going to be part of this Senate--So, we should refer to this body correctly as the Tempe/Downtown Phoenix Campus Senate--should I forget to do that, please remind me. I will do the same with you.

2. Request from Brett Perozzi, Director of MU.

My next item comes as a request from Brett Perozzi for faculty to serve on two committees—(1) the Beverage Pouring Rights Committee and (2) the Dining Services Committee. The Beverage Pouring Rights Committee will look to see what beverages can be served anywhere, on any campus, at ASU. If you have an interest in that topic, please let Brett know. That committee will start its work around November 1, and should have its work done no later than January 30. They will meet two or three times. There will be two vendors, primarily Coke and Pepsi, who will be considered for this challenge. The Dining Services Committee will review proposals from those who want to serve any food, anywhere on the Tempe campus only. They will meet several times from November 1 to March 15, and this committee may include some travel to other universities. So, if I were on that committee, I might suggest that we go to the University of Hawaii and check out their dining services! They think that up to three vendors will bid for that contract. If you are interested or have colleagues who are interested, please email .

We have a guest today: Patricia Arredondo, Associate VP and Senior Advisor on Academic Initiatives, who will give us a retention update.

3. Guest: Patricia Arredondo (Retention Update).

There are handouts up at the top on the tables, so, please take one as you leave today. There are actually three handouts. What I am handing out is a table of five or six pages that demonstrates the results of academic collaborations between all twelve departments within Student Affairs. All of those units have been and continue to be more engaged in promoting different types of co-curricular activities, but more importantly, when it comes to the academic support side, collaborating with units to provide tutorials on particular trainings, such as the topic of health promotion and others. Just as one example, we have a partnership with the Department of Kinesiology over at Campus Recreation Center. This is a small sampling of some of the efforts that are underway that we have been collaborating on through Student Affairs, with the academic units.

The second handout is an organizational chart based on the reorganization that took place in May of this year, where Student Affairs became part of what we call University Student Initiatives, and that shows you how enrollments are growing and how we report to Dr. Jim Rund. The third item contains just a few samples of letters, which were sent to parents reminding them that there are academic supports available to their students, and also a reminder to parents about the services we have in Counseling and Consultation. Duane was also kind enough to send an example letter to all of you here on the Senate, to distribute to your faculty and staff--because when it comes to retention all of us need to work together. That is my report, an FYI about all the work out of Student Affairs. If you have questions, I would be happy to entertain them. And, I also want to encourage you to sign up for one of the two campus MU committees that Duane mentioned.

4. Religious Holidays

There is a URL in the agenda today, and I encourage all of you to share this with your colleagues in your departments when you report out from the Senate meeting. Please encourage your departments to follow the guidelines for observing religious holidays at ASU. We have some students who raised concerns earlier this semester. This is a very important issue, to make sure that all of us are respecting the religious practices of our students.

Comment: I just want you to know that we have an Interfaith Advisory Council that includes students, and they talk about issues to promote student engagement in whatever faith they wish to observe. They are working on the development of a five-year calendar so we will be advised of these religious dates and holidays.

5. Parental Leave Policy

I have asked Marjorie Zatz to talk a little bit about the new Parental Leave policy. You should all have received a link to this policy--I ask you to read it and if you do have questions or comments, let me know. That brings us to the University Provost's Report.

3. B University Provost's Report and Forum (Betty Capaldi).

I am writing a paper on budgeting, using Management by Objectives, and that will be circulated to members of the Senate when it is ready.

I believe in these principles on budgeting for the university: (1) A university-wide budgeting system as opposed to people asking for money from the Provost. (2) Everyone should know what that system is and that it will be the same for everyone. (3) It should accomplish the goals of the University. (Povost Capaldi arrived in July at the University and is now working on the budget for the 07-08' fiscal year, but she was not involved in the current allocation for this year.)

In the budget this year money has been allocated to the deans (on paper) based on a lump-sum allocation. We did not approve line-by-line, or topic by topic. The deans have approval to hire, and they will be using management by objectives. We are telling the deans what we want them to do with the money; the deans then have to work with the chairs to determine how to spend that money and achieve the goals.

The President has three main goals: The first is academic excellence—how we want to be a top research university, educational university, nationally and internationally recognized for our programs, and each dean has that as a very important goal. Each dean has given us a list of their aspirational peers, who they would like to look like, and I have asked them to give me some measures that we can use to know that we are moving in the right direction. The measures should be based on quality, various indicators that each of us use for our programs, and we want to know what that looks like for each unit. This is not like learning measures; only a few measures are requested.

A second major goal for the deans is to try to improve retention and at the university level; we are taking various steps to help at our level to improve retention.

The third is to bring in outside resources that are self-supporting. Private fund raising will be started, and you will be hearing more about that.

The fourth goal is one that we have talked about—to improve the numbers for our graduate population. If you look at the profiles of major public research institutions in the US, they all have a higher enrollment percentage of graduate students than we do. Part of that is a different problem or challenge from what we have at ASU, because some places have master's degree programs that are an extension of the undergraduate education programs, or a combined program. The master’s degree can be a terminal degree or an entry degree or marketed as both. There is a market for that—teachers have a masters' degree in many disciplines, and then there are many disciplines that the master's degree is the entry-level degree, such as for psychology. I gave you these thoughts so that we can plan together to grow both our undergraduate and graduate student enrollment. We hope to grow the undergraduate programs and enrollments on all the other campuses as well as grow master’s programs on all campuses, and graduate students. We will grow Ph.D. enrollments in appropriate programs on all campuses. Each unit will be funded for "planned enrollment." We are not funding credit hours—the university is complex, and we want different kinds of enrollment growth in different places. But this will not make us a competitive enterprise from within. We are trying to all work to build an excellent university, and to recognize each other's contributions to that university. We are not going to be a university where every unit is supposed to be on its own. Some programs are very expensive—for example, engineering. We are trying to plan for quality; the reason that I am telling you this is that we have allocated (on paper) and said to each dean, here is your money. We did allocate enrollment growth funds, in a second round of allocations for this year because if we did not allocate some money now, how will you be able to conduct hiring?

I want to direct you to read a report by Jim Rund on the President's page on current student enrollment and forecasts of high school enrollment. (ppt. presentation) http://asu.edu/president/presentations/Profile_of_New_American_Univ_1006.ppt

It has forecast for growth on each campus, it has how much money we will get in financial aid, and these are things we all should familiarize ourselves with. Perhaps Jim Rund could be invited to attend a Senate meeting and explain these things better.

Q - Are the deans obligated to set up a parallel budgeting system to yours?

That is a good question. I have made that point to the deans—that they must develop a system that parallels the system rewards, for the same goals. We are, for example, guaranteeing seats in required classes for all undergraduates. So, as part of this budgeting exercise, we have some things we will fund, such as providing seats in these classes, because I do not want to micromanage people and we will not assign money for each seat. What people hear about things at all levels should be the same priorities.

Q - I have a question about your comment earlier about moving away from requesting funds from the Provost. If that is true, do you also suggest that deans do not use discretionary funding when allocating resources?

There are two pots of discretionary funding: the President has discretionary funds, and the Vice President for Research has discretionary funds. The deans may need to have some, because my feeling is that not all departments are good about holding back funding for unexpected needs. I do believe that administrators should have a new initiatives pot. If you do not have a lot of money, the seats are the primary objective, and then to build academic quality.