Absent: U. Albrecht, C. W. Alderman, J. Bannon, R. Bartlett, R. Brinker, S. Brinson, T. Brower, R. Burleson, J. Gluhman, B. Hames, D. Hendrix, G. Hill, D. Himelrick, J. Hung, R. Jaeger, R. Kunkel, F. Lawing, D. Lustig, H. Maraman, R. Middleton, R. Mirarchi, V. Morgan, R. Muntifering, L. Myers, J. Neidigh, D. Norris, R. Perritt, C. Price, J. T. Regan, D. Rouse, S. Schneller, D. Shannon, C. Skelton, T. Smith, A. R. Tarrer, H. Thomas, H. Tippur, T. Tyson, G. M. Watkins, M. West, D. Wilson

Absent (Substitute): L. Benefeld (J. Owens), B. Burkhalter (J. Golson), A. Dunlop (R. Rygiel), R. Perritt (L. Gerber), S. Shapiro (P. Lewis), L. Waters (R.A. Voitle)

A. President William Muse

Muse talked about several items that had been discussed at the June 6th Board of Trustees meeting. At the meeting, Executive Vice President Don Large presented to the Board the proposed guidelines for the 1999-2000 budget. The guidelines are consistent with the goals and priorities. They provide for a 5% salary increase pool to bring our compensation closer to the regional averages. They provide for an increase of 1 million dollars in deferred maintenance spending to move us nearer to the level that is recommended. They provide for a 3% increase in our departmental operating budget. It sets aside a million dollars for the enhancement of our priority academic programs. Dr. Large will be distributing guidelines to the deans and other administrators within the next week or so in order for them to be used in their budgetary planning.

Also discussed at the meeting - as a settlement to some longstanding litigation, the University agreed to purchase the Auburn University Hotel and Conference Center. This option emerged from the extended negotiation as an alternative for consideration. Outside consultants including Price Waterhouse Cooper were employed to evaluate the business and financial dimensions to determine a fair market price for the property and to determine whether the combined hotel and conference center could be operated profitably. The analysis was that the decision to purchase the Hotel and Conference Center made sense financially. Being able to combine the Hotel and Conference Center should be more efficient and should enable us to serve our customers more effectively. The proposed purchase price is $16.5 million. Auburn would assume $11 million in outstanding debt and would buy out the current ownership for $5.5 million. The funds that will be used for the purchase will come from monies that are currently invested in a quasi endowment. We look at this as a good investment.

Connor Bailey, Steering Committee, asked President Muse what goes on at the Board executive committee meetings that occur before the open board meetings and how they relate to the Sunshine Law that we have in the state of Alabama.

Muse said that there are several permitted issues for discussion at an executive session. These include anything that involves litigation or any issue that involves the character of an individual.

Ed Morrison (Anatomy and Physiology) asked about the status of the tuition waiver proposal that was presented by the Welfare Committee a couple of months ago.

Muse said that the proposal is being reviewed by the Insurance and Benefits Committee. When he receives the proposal from the committee he will take it before the Board. As of now, he does not have the proposal.

B. Senate Chair: Dr. Jo Heath

Heath introduced the new SGA president Andrew Nix.

The electronic volunteer form for committees is now available on the Senate Web page.

Heath said we have almost reached our goal for membership to the Higher Education Partnership.

The Provost search has been narrowed to six individuals. References and candidates are being called this week. Finalists should be chosen by next week.

Also, Mary Baker is currently looking into the issue of equity in terms of age.

An Adhoc committee to study faculty grievance procedures has formed. Members are

G. Mullen (Entomology) -Chair,

R. Drakeford (4H Specialist),

J. Gravois (Library),

N. Hartsfield (Art),

J. Heilman (Liberal Arts)

A. In-state Tuition Fellowships for Graduate Assistants

On behalf of former Senator Jim Hansen (History), Heath read aloud a proposed resolution for In-state Tuition Fellowships for Graduate Assistants.

Heath moved that the Senate adopt the resolution. S. Tuzun (Plant Pathology) seconded the motion.

The Senate adopted the resolution by voice vote.

A. Guidelines for Establishing and Filling Positions in the Clinician Title Series: Dr. Christine Curtis

Curtis first explained how the Clinician Career ladder came about. Last year, it became apparent to P. Parks, Special Advisor, President's Office, that Auburn needed a Clinician Career ladder. The committee used the Research Career ladder (that was recently approved by the Senate, its leadership and President Muse), as a model. The main differences between research and clinical are the work that is done and the evaluation criteria. Although structure of the two ladders is similar, the evaluation criteria and the work that is evaluated are specified.

Curtis served as a facilitator for this issue. She is not a clinician and is therefore not an authority on the position. She noted that she would have to defer questions on specifics to the deans of the schools and colleges that have clinicians. The colleges involved include the College of Veterinary Medicine, College of Liberal Arts -Psychology and Communications Disorders. The College of Education has the potential and also the School of Nursing and the School of Pharmacy.

The current plan to move people into the ladder grants a time period for current clinicians during which they can choose whether they want to go into the ladder. It is not mandatory. All new non-tenure track positions, however, will be in the Clinican ladder.

In the non-tenure track career ladder for both the research and clinican positions, we have included collegiality as an important aspect of promotion because we feel that it is important for faculty in the non-tenure track to work collegiately with faculty in the department. One of the things that the Senate introduced to the research career ladder that has now been carried over to the clinician career ladder is that non-tenure track faculty in these ladders have the right to vote on the hiring of other faculty in the department. They have the right to vote on promotions but not tenure.

Different positions within the ladder will be one-year contracts. They will be renewable if funds are available. Those at the associate level or above have the protection from dismissal without cause.

S. Tuzun made a motion that the Senate adopt the guidelines for the Clinician Career Ladder. B. Keith (Nutrition and Food Sciences) seconded the motion.

The motion carried by voice vote.

A. Budget Advisory Committee: Executive President Don Large

These guidelines were presented to and accepted by the Board. These are a proposed action, now we begin to build a budget. A detailed budget will hopefully be presented at the August 20 Board meeting. The last page was not part of the Budget guidelines presentation. It was part of the Tuition request presentation. It shows that we are quite challenged in trying to be as comprehensive as we would like to be in comparison to the institutions that we consider our peers. It is hard to match program for program to some institutions that are $3,000 more per student than Auburn. This is the budget of the general funds of the main campus, not of auxillaries.

B. Faculty Salaries Committee: Dr. Larry Gerber

Some months ago, Gerber said that he discussed with the University Senate a proposal concerning pay for the transition Summer 2000. At that time, he asked for feedback, concerns or comments on the issue. Gerber said he did not receive any negative comments.

The basic principle of the guidelines is that people will be paid at the same hourly rate as they would in the previous summer. They will be working for only two months as opposed to the normal three months so there will have to be adjustments in terms of what would be considered a full load for that summer.

Gerber made a motion to adopt these guidelines for pay during Summer 2000.

S. Malone (Curriculum and Teaching) asked for a definition of a full load.

Gerber said that it was his understanding that across colleges and even within colleges there is not a consistent definition of what a full load is.

Malone also asked if she is teaching two courses in Summer 2000 would she be getting the same amount of money in the Summer 2000 as she would for other summers.

Gerber said that during Summer 2000, you would have to teach more hours per week to be the equivalent of what had been full load before because it will be compressed in an eight week schedule.

Gerber said that if you are teaching a course that typically would have met for thirty hours, it would have been spread out over ten weeks (three hours per week). Now, those thirty hours will have to fit into an eight-week schedule so at any given week you will be meeting for more than three hours.

Gerber said that this policy applies to nine-month faculty.

H. Rotfeld (Marketing and Transportation) asked if pay will be the same per credit hour as it would in a normal summer.

Gerber said yes, but you will be in the classroom more hours per week than you would in a normal summer quarter.

The Senate carried the motion to adopt the guidelines for pay during Summer 2000.

Next, Gerber made a presentation regarding issues related to equity and market adjustment.

In June, the Senate adopted general guidelines with regard to salary issues. The issue of equity, that was included in that recommendation, was a product of quite a few years of continuing University Senate and University Faculty Salaries Committee discussions that there should be an established tool on an ongoing basis to deal with inequities. In part, and Gerber thinks that the Salaries Committee would be in complete agreement with Dr. Muse, if there are demonstrable and legal liabilities relating to inequities that concern gender, race or age, the Salaries Committee would in no way be opposed to have money to address those situations.

From the very beginning, the Salaries Committee has never thought that equity was purely a legal problem. The Committee and the Senate were also considering imbalances and unequal distribution of funds in an institution where salaries in general are pretty low.

Last year, the Martin Formula was used. The formula takes regional averages by discipline and by rank so that for example the regional average for a full professor in management is slightly over $100,000. The regional average for a full professor in art is only $58,000. The Martin Formula recognizes that there are very wide differences in regional averages in different disciplines and rank. The formula also tries to make an adjustment for years in rank. Somebody who has just been promoted to associate professor level for instance, you wouldn't expect that person to have the same relationship to the average for that rank as somebody who has been an associate professor for eight or nine years.

Last year, the method that was used was taking the Martin Formula and calculating what percentage of expected salary every member of the faculty had achieved. There were people in the 60th percentile and some, but not many, were at 65-66%. And there were some above 100% of the formula. What we did last year was that those people who were below 76.4% of the Martin Formula were identified as candidates for equity adjustments unless their department head or dean determined that there were good reasons for the salary level that person was at.

There were some criticisms about the method used last year, specifically its lack of flexibility. But there was also a lot or praise for having something that addressed some of the issues of long term compression in the university and on the whole, provided a fairly objective means of trying to identify people who were way below the minimum.

The Salaries Committee has tried to modify last year's procedure, but still basically uses the principle that the Martin Formula helps to identify people that are below the expected average salaries.

Gerber thinks it is a pretty clear policy and he also thinks that it is pretty consistent with ten years of ongoing activity by the University Senate to address equity beyond legal obligations.

The Salaries Committee recognizes that you cannot have every department in every college at exactly the same rate, but there should be limits to the disparity between pay.

C. Retention Committee: Dr. Paula Backsheider

The University Retention Committee's responsibility is to monitor retention of the undergraduate student, recommend retention initiatives and work with the appropriate deans of students who have failed to establish this.

We serve as an early warning system, alerting everyone to evidence that may indicate undesirable trends.

Over the years that Retention Committee has existed we have made efforts to identify risk factors and to recognize behaviors that put students at risk. Some risk factors have not proven to be good predictors of success and non-success of students. But understanding student behavior and the various learning environments and philosophies on campus have been extremely productive.

This year the committee selected as its emphasis testing the national data on the way finances, broadly defined, impact retention. Financing is the number one reason for attrition nationwide. These problems have a lot to do with credit card debt and Tiger Club card debt. A continuing study of transfer student retention, exploring and testing ways that GTAs can be used to contribute to the retention of undergraduates and an ongoing review of the balance between need and provision of academic support services. Over the past four years, we've seen a rather alarming shift from colleges and departments providing academic support services to the Student Success Center doing it. And yet, most colleges and departments don't contribute any economic support to the Center at all. The Center has been using budget savings that are probably running out. For the last few years, we have recommended that departments or groups that are benefiting from such services contribute to that source.

There were two highlight projects with funding from the President's office. We offered an American Intern Program and a Change the Culture Project. The purpose was to refine our understanding of why students succeed and why they fail. This generous support allowed us to test risk factors at Auburn and because of this, our data gathering has improved

Among the things we were able to look at for the first time were the impact of contact with faculty and graduate teaching assistants, of parental education, and of various kinds of economic situations.

Regarding success and non-success, the very first item under why students succeed is the ability to adapt, learning quickly that they need to study more and differently for different subjects and different teachers. This is different from what most people say about retention. They talk about how students need to work harder, study more, doing what they should have learned in high school. In fact, we found out that they don't have the skills that they need in college. They certainly don't see the difference between studying for chemistry or history or English. We found a number of students who were writing out flashcards for every single permutation of every math problem. Flashcards might work in history, but for math it is not the way to go.

We also found that some students are studying 10-15 hours a week studying in very ineffective ways for something like history and they had no contact with their teachers or Graduate Teaching Assistants.

For our Change the Culture project we did find a number of ways that faculty can be helpful, those are summarized in our report. Lack of note taking skills and weak reading skills were two areas where we had negative findings. For instance we recommended to people in the Change the Culture program to pick up the students notes and use that for their first quiz. You can imagine the results. For example, in one history class, a young woman couldn't spell Byzantium, so she began to take notes and wrote "In Byzantium…" and then there were five attempts to spell the word and then she skipped a space. Later, she gets to Byzantium again and the pattern repeats itself.