CSUDH Academic Senate Meeting

CSUDH Academic Senate Meeting

Loker Student Union

September 8, 1999

Approved with corrections 9/22/99

Voting Members Present: Afrookhteh, Amouzegar, Brulois, Britt, Butler, Charnofsky, Christie, Dominguez, Dowling, Feuer, Furusawa, Ganezer, Goders, Gray-Shellberg, Hare, Henschel, Johnson, Kaplan, LaCorte, Lee, Long, Lyons, Malamud, McDermott, McEnerney, McNulty, O=Connor, Robles, Smith, Stricker, Sturm, Vanterpool, Watson, Whitmore, D. Williams

Voting Members Absent: Billes, De La Camp, Heuschkel, Kowalski, Lalas, Little, Maciel, McGee-Bracken, Press, Whetmore, Dick Williams

Non-Voting Ex-Officio Members Present: Bates, Bowman, Coleman, Lindsay, Parham, Stricker, Webb, Whittemore

Guests: Jennifer Franklin, James Harris, Karen Jean Hunt, Marilyn Garber, Thomas Landefeld, Gary Levine, Kent Porter, Fatima Rivas

Chair Vanterpool called the meeting to order at 2:35 p.m.

Open Forum

Senator Charnofsky reported that the Cafe Dominguez, the faculty, staff and student dining area in the Student Union, will be open in a few days.

1. Approval of the Agenda M/S/P

Approval of the Minutes for May 12, 1999. M/S/P

Confirmation of Officers of Senate Executive M/S/P

Committee for 1999-2000

Julia Britt, Vice Chair

Miguel Dominguez, Parliamentarian

Lyle Smith, Secretary

Cynthia McDermott, Chair EPC

Leonard Lee, Chair FPC

Hal Charnofsky, Statewide Senate

Dick Williams, Statewide Senate

(Charnofsky and Williams were not confirmed because they are members of the Executive Committee by virtue of being members of the statewide Senate.)

Parliamentarian=s Report

The Senate needs to identify faculty for the following committee assignments:

1) UCC for 1999-2000; 2) PRP for 1999-2000 (must be from SOM);

3) Loker Student Union Board; 4) Student Grade Appeals Board for 1999-2000 (3 faculty);

5) Search Committee for Vice President Development position.

Special Report: George Pardon, VP Administration and Finance

Vice President Pardon reported on physical plant activities underway or completed, including the following: painting of building exteriors; replacement of chalk boards in LCH, NSM, SBS, an activity complicated by the need to remove some asbestos; gym repairs; irrigation project; exterior fence project; improvement of security in the library; and central plant project to improve air conditioning. In addition, the campus will have a video board sign at the corner of Avalon and Victoria. The Chancellor=s Office provided $2,000,000 for these projects.

Pardon also reported that the Information Technology Building will go out to bid around December 1st and that, when construction begins, Parking Lots 3A and 3 will be impacted. To alleviate potential parking problems, a new lot is being constructed west of Lot 3. Pardon reminded us our parking fees were recently raised to help build the new lot and then to renovate the other lots.

He also reported that the CAMS building has gone out to bid. Money for this project has come from fund raising and matching funds from Proposition 1A. Construction will begin in November. CSUDH will own the building and lease it for thirty years to LBUSD, the district responsible for the high school. Pardon also said that CAMS in the near future will have its own food service facility located near SAC 3.

The Extended Education building is scheduled to be completed by this December.

The university will form a committee to recommend names for the various campus roads. Pardon noted that Central Avenue will soon be paved to border the east end of campus. That will mean a new access to the campus.

Senator Malamud asked about mediated classrooms. Pardon said $8,000,000 has been set aside to upgrade our campus telecommunications infrastructure. After that, we will need to do fund raising to get the hardware to put in mediated classrooms. Vice President Castro said that Title 3 moneys should be pursued.

Senator Charnofsky noted the continued lack of desk top podiums in classrooms. Pardon said that we buy them and they disappear. He will, however, order some more. Senator Feuer expressed her appreciation at all the improvements that have been made. The campus truly has a different, more pleasing appearance.

6. First Reading Items: (it was M/S/P to discuss b before a)

b. EXEC 99-12 (W*): Resolution on Implementation of the Faculty Merit Increase (FMI) and Service Salary Step Increase (SSI) Program for Unit 3 Faculty Employees.

FPC Chair Lee introduced this resolution, noting that PSSIs have been flushed and that we now have FMIs and FARs to add to our vocabulary. The attached document draws upon contract language and, where appropriate, suggests an implementation strategy for CSUDH. Lee presented the three levels of review (department, dean, president) and the appeals process. Kent Porter contributed to the conversation, as did a number of senators. There was a fair amount of confusion on the following issues:

1) What exactly is an FTEF in this process? Answer: nobody knows for sure, but the campus will shortly need to figure this out. Porter suggested one way of counting that gave departments one FTEF for each full-time faculty member, and then additional partial FTEF for part-time faculty. This system of counting means that FTEF is NOT the same as department workload. However, VP Castro felt that further discussion in Academic Affairs is needed. Once a total FTEF is arrived at, then that number will be divided into the salary pot, and a dollar amount per FTEF will be determined and allocated to departments or equivalent units.

2) How are faculty counted who teach in multiple programs? They are counted as full-time in their home department. Does that mean then that programs that Abuy@ full-time faculty will have a larger pot of money available for their part-time faculty? A part-time faculty member who teaches in two programs will prepare two separate FARs and be eligible for two FMIs.

3) What can the dean do in his/her evaluative role? Management says the dean can make adjustments within departments (i.e. shift dollars around) and between departments. The Union says the dean can only adjust within departments, not across departments. The contract is sufficiently ambiguous on this point that some sort of grievance will need to be filed to settle the issue.

Other bits of information that emerged: FARs can be single-spaced or double-spaced; the activity reports submitted last April will be returned to faculty via their dean; reports not going into Personnel Action Files will be kept in the Office of Faculty Affairs and returned to faculty in three years; and Porter promised to provide an accurate listing of faculty salaries for the years under consideration.

Given that October 1st is the deadline for submission of FARs, parliamentary rules were waived and EXEC 99-12 was M/S/P.

a. EXEC 99-11: Resolution on a University Mission Statement.

Robert Christie, as former member of MGD and as Senate liaison to ARC (Action Report Council), presented the mission statement and his commentary on it. Also included were the interim goals of GMD that were approved by President Carter last spring. As Christie noted, it is vitally important that the campus respond to WASC by clarifying its mission and endorsing interim goals while the newly formed University Planning Council develops a comprehensive strategic plan for the campus (a two year activity). Christie said that the mission presented was one developed by MGD, with the following changes: there are no references to distance learning and to teacher education (these items proved to be too controversial to include in a mission statement).

Senator Kaplan wondered about the logic of paragraph two: the various Aarts and sciences@ get repeated in the main clause, so are they then building upon themselves? Senator Henschel thought the participial phrase referred to general education and the main clause referred to majors. Senator Charnofsky asked whether a word like Ahigh@ should precede quality in paragraph 1.

c. EXEC 99-13: Resolution in Memory of William Armacost.

This resolution was deferred. Its author, Professor George Jennings, will be invited to the next Senate meeting to read the resolution.

7. Reports:

Chair Vanterpool thanked the Senate for his re-election and noted that the WASC process has provided the Senate a full agenda. It is important that faculty engage in shared governance for the betterment of the university. He made the following announcements:

1). FARs are due October 1st.

2). President Lyons has extended the Interim Student Grievance Policy to June 2000.

3). There will be a CSU Academic Conference at Asilomar on Nov. 3-5. Its topic: AManaging Change in the CSU: Learning from our Successes.@

4).Bob Dowling will be reporting on the Delphi review at the Oct. 13th Senate meeting.

5). Senate meetings will begin promptly at 2:20 with the Open Forum.

President Lyons thanked the Senate for allowing him a place on the agenda (not all faculty are as accommodating). He addressed four areas of concern:

1). Leadership. He is still sorting out what initiatives to undertake given the extraordinary activity last year of the interim president.

2). WASC. The process needs to be taken seriously and the campus needs to get clarification on what is expected. To that end a small group will be visiting with Ralph Wolff next week with the goal of preparing a letter of understanding between the campus and WASC.

3). Enrollment. The campus has not met its targeted 8,000 FTES. We are about 400 FTES short of that (which equals $2,500,000). Thus far the Trustees have not asked for a payback, but other campuses will be clamoring for more resources. We need to develop a genuine enrollment management plan that addresses student interests, academic quality, and various recruitment strategies. We need to grow as a campus; that is the only way in the CSU to generate new resources. Some faculty suggested that our enrollment downturn may be linked to rumors about accreditation. The president concurred and said his Cabinet was in the process of deciding how to handle WASC misinformation. One does not want to spread rumors by denying them.

4). Student Attendance and Student Aid. The federal government is cracking down on institutions that don=t keep accurate records of students who receive federal aid. Some students play the system: enroll at a university, get the grants and loans and then never step foot on campus. We need to find a way to keep track of our students without burdening the faculty with keeping daily attendance records.

Vice President Castro expressed his appreciation at being part of the Senate and part of the university.

Vice President Coleman said that she will soon be making a presentation to the Senate on plans for the university=s 40th anniversary in the year 2000.

Senator Charnofsky noted that Senator Williams was attending a CSU Academic Senate committee meeting on K-12 issues. Charnofsky serves on the Faculty Affairs Committee (whose meeting today was canceled), the Board of the Institute for Teaching and Learning, and the Commission on the Extended University.

EPC Chair McDermott identified the following as members of her committee: Dave Karber, Nada Mach, Cynthia Johnson, and David Maciel.

8. Second Open Forum

Senator LaCorte expressed concern that the faculty/staff parking area west of LCH has become essentially a staff parking lot, as all the spaces are filled by 9 a.m. He would like the Senate to investigate this problem and find a way to preserve some parking slots for faculty who arrive later in the day.

9. Adjournment. The meeting was adjourned at 5:00 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Lyle Smith, Secretary