UH Hilo Faculty Congress

Minutes for February 26, 2010 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm, K-127

Members Present:

Norman Arancon, Kathleen Commendador, Sevki Erdogan, Emmeline dePillis, Ramon Figueroa-Centeno, Jean Ippolito, Kerri Inglis, Barbara Leonard, Seri Luangphinith, Yumiko Ohara, Hiapo K. Perreira, Yu Cheng Qin, Sabry Shehata, Elizabeth Stacy, Norman Stahl, Ghee Tan, La`akea Yoshida.

Members Not Present:

Brian Bays, Harald Barkhoff

Ex-Officio Members Present:

Dan Brown, Acting Vice Chancellor for Research, Philip Castille, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Debra Fitzsimons, Vice Chancellor for Administrative Affairs, Luoluo Hong, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, CAFNRM Dean Bill Steiner.

Other Guests Present:

Ken Morris, CoP; Student General Education rep, Jean Bezilla.

The meeting was called to order at 3:00 pm. Motion to approve minutes from 12/04/10 meeting passed by acclimation. http://www.uhh.hawaii.edu/uhh/congress/minutes.php

Note: The January 22, 2010 Faculty Congress Meeting was dedicated to a presentation from the Long Range Development Plan Committee, presented by Harry Yada and VCAA Debra Fitzsimons in conjunction with PBR HAWAII & Associates, Inc. and Design Partners, Inc. The presentation identified different master plans for the future development of the campus facilities and solicited feedback on the master plans. The link to the presentation is on the Congress website.

Report from Chair. Status of Chancellor Search Committee. The committee is meeting regularly and has reviewed the first list of applicants. The search will remain open to applicants until a decision has been made. Tentatively, four applicants will be invited to visit the campus in April, with a meeting with President Greenwood on Oahu following their Big Island interview. The President will make the final decision regarding the hire. Sabry Shehata asked why there was not a representative from his college on the search committee. Sevki Erdogan responded that an approved list of faculty nominated by Faculty Congress contained a representative from CAFNRM, but President Greenwood only selected four faculty on the list submitted (Sevki Erdogan, Chair of Faculty Congress, Barbara Leonard, Past Chair of Faculty Congress, Daniel Brown, Acting VC for Research, Ken Morris, Chair, CoP were selected.) President Greenwood indicated that making the search committee too large would make it difficult to meet, and that she was limiting the number of faculty representatives on the search committee.

Committee Reports:

General Education Committee: Report from Jean Ippolito, Chair. Approval of new members: Marilyn Brown, Secretary and Representative from CAS Social Sciences, Amy Saxton, Representative from the Library, and Jean Bezilla, Student Representative. Members were approved unanimously. Jean reported that she had attended the WASC Assessment Workshop on Oahu along with the Assessment Committee. She also reported that she updated the GE Website with the documents submitted to the VCAA in December 2009.

Assessment Committee: Report from Seri Luangphinith, Chair. After attending the WASC Assessment Workshop on Oahu, the committee developed rubrics for assessing the new general education curriculum which will go into effect Fall 2011. She shared a letter from the WASC team that indicated that our rubrics were being shared with other WASC colleges as being “best practices”. Kudos to our Assessment Committee!

Academic Policy Committee: Report from Ramon Figueroa-Centeno, Chair. Ramon reported that his committee is continuing to look at different policy issues, but has no recommendations for Congress at this time. One issue that has come up recently is to clarify the process by which a cross-disciplinary program (such as the proposed engineering program) is to be reviewed by faculty governance bodies. Barbara Leonard pointed out that in the past, cross-disciplinary programs such as the M.S. in Tropical Conservation Biology and Environmental Science, were reviewed by Faculty Congress since more than one college was involved.

Admissions Committee: Report from Emmeline de Pillis, Chair. Emmeline presented a summary of the admissions committee’s recommendations regarding UHH admission policy and retention and graduate rates. Her committee is recommending that students with a 3.3 GPA AND a SAT of 900 or higher be our threshold for automatic admission. Student with less than these benchmarks will be required to submit an essay along with their application which will be reviewed by the admission committee for an admissions decision. Those that are not admitted to UHH will be encouraged to apply for the 2+2 program starting at Hawaii CC. The presentation may be accessed in full on the Congress website.

a.  Budget Committee: Report from Barbara Leonard, Chair. Barbara attended the ACCFSC meeting Feb. 19 at UH Manoa, where Howard Todo, VP of Finance for UH, made a presentation regarding the UH budget. UH’s budget has been cut by $98 million this year, which is 21% less than last year. The legislature gave us $22 million American Recovery stimulus money, which means that we are still $76 million less than last year. The reduction in budget is currently being met by the negotiated labor cuts and the one-year payroll lag, and other budget cuts. Howard Todo pointed out that California met its budget crisis with a 32% increase in tuition. Our students only pay 30% of the cost of their education, on average. Over 70% of our budget is labor costs. Discussion followed, regarding the possibility of future tuition increases and possible other budget cuts. Howard Todo pointed out that we want education to be a priority in the state of Hawaii, and the recent address by President Greenwood to the legislature emphasized the importance of education to the State’s economy. The State of Hawaii is projected to have a $2 billion shortfall. We all need to work together to get continued funding from the legislature and the Governor. There was discussion regarding the $10 million deficit by the UH Manoa Athletics Department. Howard Todo said that some people give money to the university because of sports, but that this is hard to quantify since those contributions go into the foundation.

Curriculum Review Committee: Report from Sevki Erdogan, Chair. Course proposals and changes are continued to be reviewed by the committee.

Ø  Graduate Liaison Report: Report from Keri Inglis. The Chair of the graduate council, Dan Brown, has accepted a new position as interim VC of Research/Coordinator of Graduate Education. The TCBES program has been reviewed to change from “provisional” to “established” status. The graduate council’s assessment and recommendation is that the program be changed from “provisional” to “established” but the program struggles with inadequate resources (of special concern for the future of the program is the NPS EPSCOR funding which ended in Spring 2009). The CHUS program is under review and the graduate council will be voting on its status soon. Authorization To Plan (ATP) documents have also been submitted from:

·  Department of Nursing to develop a Post Baccalaureate Doctorate of Nursing Practice (DNP) with eligibility for certification as Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) and Advanced Transcultural Nursing (CTN) [Program Committee has reviewed ATP, but not yet discussed by graduate council]

·  College of Pharmacy to develop a Ph.D. program in Pharmaceutical Sciences [Program Committee has reviewed ATP, but not yet discussed by graduate council]

New Business: Presentation on proposed new engineering major by Dr. Ken Morris. The presentation may be accessed on the Congress website. There was discussion regarding the feasibility and source of resources for this new program. Planning money has already been awarded by the legislature.

Announcement: There will be a reception following the April 9, 2010 Faculty Congress meeting for the outgoing and incoming Faculty Congress members and ex-officio members, hosted by Chancellor Rose Tseng. Drinks and pupus will be served. Location TBA (UCB 127 or Imiloa) 5:00 – 6:30 pm.