October 2025

UCCS Faculty Representative Assembly Meeting

Friday September 12, 2025

Attendance: David Havlick (President), Emily Mooney (President Elect), Joel Tonyan (Past Chair), Kylie Rogalla (Secretary), Lynn Vidler, Jennifer Sobanet, Robin Parent, Roger Smith, David Moon, Laura Austin-Eurich, Jennifer Kling, David Weiss, Stefanie Ungstad, Suzanne Cook, Dylan Harris, Robert Mitchell, Monica Yoo, Joey Lee, Armin Moin, Rosely Conz, Douglas Risser, Suman Lakkakula, Rebecca Wood, Lisa Hollis-Brown, Karin Larkin, Brandon Vogt, James Ma, Evan Taparata, Carole Woodall, Brigitta de Pree,

Call to Order / Approval of Minutes

Motion to approve May 2025 Minutes

Moved by: David Moon

Seconded by: Monica Yoo

Motion passes

Reports of Visitors:

Roger Smith, Vice Chancellor for University Advancement, Communications, & Engagement

Our goal is to lift the mission of UCCS and we want to learn from you across the gambit. All the work that you do lifts the students and the mission of UCCS and is vital for what we do in our office.

Lynn Vidler, Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs

Welcome to the fall semester and the new academic year.
Enrollment Updates: Overall decline of 1.29%, with increases in graduate, transfer, and online students, and a decrease in freshmen. This is better than they projected 2% decrease that we were anticipating. Thank you everyone who added students off the waitlist and colleges who worked to make that happen. Retention rates are estimated at 69–70% which is up from 68% last year. Will not have revenue projections until September 15th but will share when we have that number.
- Question: With Boulder and CSU reporting record freshman numbers, do we know why ours is going down?
  - That is something that we are looking at. As of a few days ago we had over 100 who were registered and then fully dropped out. We are looking at why they left and Wendi is looking to communicate with those groups and figure out what happened. Some have answered with things such as finances, waitlisted, etc. We will be looking more into that.
- Question: have heard that the residential housing rate is also lower. Can you go over that?
  - Stephanie will be able to give a better answer. There is revenue generated from housing. We are not close to being full. We are also looking into this. Students are going to other housing options that are close to us. They are choosing to live in other areas but we are going to look and have a more in-depth look at why students aren't staying on campus.
Provost Office Structure: We are working on some the structure of our office and rolls within and will be communicating that soon. The biggest being Emily Skop joining us as the Interim Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs in charge of the Faculty Affairs Office. If you have questions about PRT, Mentoring, a Grievance, please feel free to reach out to Emily. She will be speaking at the next FA meeting to discuss what is happening in that office.
Academic Freedom: There is a group that is putting together some activities around Academic Freedom. I'm looking forward to these. We are excited to see what comes from this group. Academic Freedom is incredibly important and support your ability to teach and research in your areas of expertise.

Robin Parent, Vice Chancellor of Strategic Initiatives & Chief of Staff

Strategic Initiatives: There are Strategic Spotlight Series launching on September 24th. These spotlights will highlight the Success 20/30 Strategic Plan. There is a website will kickoff at this first spotlight. Throughout the rest of the year, we will have one hour opportunities to hear about one of the pillars that are connected to the strategic plan and highlight what is being done in those pillars.
UCCS Differentiator: Last year, we gathered feedback on what makes us different as a university. We are doing focus groups this month about that initial feedback and looking into it more. Would like to have our differentiator/s figured out by the end of this semesters.
Campus & Workplace Climate Survey: You will hear more about this from Leya later today but this is another big project that our team has been working on. Scheduled to launch next fall.
NSF's James Moore visit: Working with Hillary and the Office of Research to bring James Moore from the NSF to campus. We will have more information about that later this semester.
Federal Transition: Team is still meeting monthly about the changes that have been happening. This week we are watching the duration status for F & J Visa holders. University is working with the system for feedback on that. As an individual, you can also give your feedback. There was a Department of Ed about some resignations. Waiting to hear about guidance on our opportunities to give our feedback on these.

Jeff Green, Interim Vice Chancellor for Administration & Finance - Presented by Jennifer Sobanet

Jeff wasn't able to attend but Jennifer gave update. Jeff Green comes to us from the city/county and is an extraordinary administrator and an excellent financial strategist.
Budget: We are still getting exact number from our enrollment decline which will effect our budget this year. We are also dealing with the mid-year state budget reductions which will be about $400k-$500k. We were also cut by half for both cybersecurity and rural health scholarships. Those scholarships have already been given to our students and so we will be dipping into our reserves to cover those scholarships so that those students don't loose that funding. Will be going over this in more detail at UBAC.

Jennifer Sobanet, Chancellor

There is a new compensation policy (Policy 11.F: Restrictions on Certain Salary Adjustments) that has been proposed and you are able to give your feedback on that policy on the Regent Laws and Policies Review website and encourage you to comment. It will go back to the governance committee in October and could be voted on in November.
- This policy is very different from the work that our HR has been doing for our campus. That is the information that HR has been gathering from faculty and staff. That way they can determine compensation bands and where everyone falls in them. The ultimate goal is to figure out how we can get funds and have a strategy that will meet the needs of our faculty and staff. We have been developing off of the original philosophy that is currently established at the regent level and this policy is very different from what we have been working from. We would need to readjust what has been done based on this new policy.
Federal Transition: Over the summer, we have spent a lot of time advocating for CU campuses both at the state level and the federal level. I have spent time in Washington working with our southern Colorado delegation. They have been helpful and are important to UCCS. I take what we are hearing in the Federal Transition Work Group and talk with them about that information. Sometimes when you don't hear about something, it is being worked on in the background. We make very strategic moves of when we are speaking out publicly and when we can go directly to our delegates about an issue. The summer has been filled with this work at the federal and state level. As you experience things, I need to know about them so that I can relay that information to our legislators. If you have local, state, or federal officials or top brass military on campus (talking to classes, guest speakers, etc) please let us know by contacting my office through Elizabeth Wyatt so that we know who is on campus. We have reporting requirements and protocols to follow. We want them to be on campus and want to insure that we are following protocol.

Reports of Officers:

Report of the Chair – David Havlick

There are some vacant position on committees. Please review the email that I sent out prior to this email to see those vacancies
Salary Equity Process: Been meeting with Angela Bender. She has a plan and will have her visit next month.
Policy 11.F: It is not clear if this will have enough support to go anywhere. Our system Personnel & Benefits committee have been evaluating this. Encourage you to review. They expressed purpose is to make it more equitable but there seems to be some compression concerns. Please go take a look and see what you think.
Faculty Experience Survey: As I understand it really is an effort to gather information to then advance our salaries experience in a positive direction. This is something that staff is also doing. Please go through and take this if you can. There has been some issues with getting a response back that your information is not correct. That stems from if there is a letter offer attached to that appointment or not. This is something that we will bring up with HR to make sure that they are getting accurate information.
Academic Freedom: Just want to continue to bring this up and encourage other to bring it up often.
Communication: Please let me know how you are feeling. What you are excited about; what you are concerned about; That way I will be able to represent the UCCS faculty to the best of my ability.

Report of the Chair-Elect – Emily Mooney

Hello everyone - looking forward to learning this year and being your Chair next year.

Report of the Past-Chair – Joel Tonyan

If you are interested in joining the Signal Group - email me at my personal email.
There will be some Academic Freedom forums/events. I will be sending out a call to the group last year and if you are interested in joining that, please let me know.

Committee Reports

Committee on Educational Policy and University Standards
Committee on Personnel & Benefits
Faculty Advisory Committee on the Budget
Committee on Disability
Committee on Misconduct in Research, Scholarship & Creative Activities
Committee on Research
Educational Policy & University Standards Committee
Faculty Assembly Committee on Teaching
Faculty Assembly Grievance Committee
- Website is now live.
- Additional representatives, especially tenured faculty, are needed at the system level.
Faculty Assembly Women's Committee
Faculty Equity & Inclusion Committee
Instructional, Research, & Clinical Faculty Committee
- There will be a happy hour at the Public house on September 19th
Intercollegiate Athletics
PRIDE
Sustainability Council Proposal

Representative Reports

No Reports

Unfinished Business

No unfinished business

New Business

Employee Welcome Committee: Matthew Beckwith - UCCS Staff Council
1. Matthew wasn't able to join but he sent a call to ask for faculty to join the New Employee Welcome Committee. It is a minimal amount of time. Currently there are only staff and wanted to have some faculty to join to welcome the faculty.
2. If you are interested, please reach out to David.
Campus & Workplace Climate Survey - Leah Schneider, Office of Strategic Initiatives
1. The University of Colorado and UCCS are committed to fostering a culture of care. In 2021, CU launched the Campus Workplace & Climate Survey (CWC). The purpose of the survey is to gather information from UCCS students, staff, and faculty about their academic, workplace, and residential environments and allows UCCS to have a more representative look at the extent to which undergraduate, graduate, faculty and staff feel respected, supported, and valued. If you are a student and staff/faculty, you will receive the link twice. You are able to take whichever survey you would like or both if you choose. The question come from administration as well as from people in each of these communities. Survey should take from 20-30 minutes. The survey is anonymous and there are no open ended questions that could be used to identify participants. Will be open from Oct. 22nd - Nov 12th. We are making this as easy as possible to take this survey. We will also be tabling and giving out goodies to those who have taken the survey. It is important to us how you are feeling on campus and will inform us about things that will be done on campus in the future. If both faculty and staff reach 50% response rates, then CU System will donate $1000 to Clyde's Cupboard. If students reach 25% response rate, they will donate an additional $1000. At the end of the survey you will also opt in to be considered for a prize drawing. Some of the prizes include parking permits, bookstore gift cards, and more! We will know who has done the survey but we will not know who submitted which survey.
Higher Learning Commission (HLC) Accreditation - David Moon
1. Fist off, the information that was gathered in 2021's CWC Survey will be considered with this accreditation as they will be looking to see if we are evaluating ourselves and responding.
  While other accreditations are programmatic, the HLC is campus wide and gives us financial aid through the Department of Education and gives us access to title 3 grants (which are not research grants).
  This accreditation happen every 10 years and UCCS will have our HLC accreditation in April 2027. HLC will want us to demonstrate that it happened. We can give a policy and they want to know if it was followed and how it worked. The review team comes for a day and a half. They will have meeting with people across campus and one of the things they will ask about is about governance. You can say what governance looks like on campus. This will be our opportunity to help the reviewers understand what we have
  We have a steering committee that the Provost and others that are involved. Big working group is evidence collectors. They will get the request and will figure out who to ask for the evidence. The better our evidence, the better the assurance argument will be and the better that the HLC team will be prepared when they get onto campus.
Program Discontinuous Policy - David Weiss
1. This policy was last reviewed 20 years ago. At this point we are looking for feedback from FA on this policy. New version has a lot of new things about voting on programs, provides more definitions on what programs are, and more transparent about the committee deliberations. This also goes over tenure faculty reassignments/terminations. All in coordination with the APS. The Deans have to approve, EPUS has to approve, and legal has to review before it will be signed by the Provost or Chancellor. Your role is to look at it for a month and vote on it the following month.
2. We have been told that minors could not be included to be approved. Just before this meeting, this has changed. Therefore, we will likely not be voting on this policy this semester.
  1. Question: Since minors are going to be considered, can we also discuss certificates in this policy?
  2. Request: Can we have a summary of the changes in these policies moving forward? Maybe a red-lined version of the policies and the summary of the changes?
  3. Comment: Since it will be reviewed again, can we add in about the APS that IRC should be given a year's notice of a program discontinuance.

Motion to Adjourn

Karin Larkin motioned to end the meeting; Joel Tonyan seconded; passed.

Next meeting: Friday, October 10, 2025, 12:00-2:00 pm in Hyflex Format; TBD or MS Teams