February 2006

FEBRUARY 10, 2006

Attendance: Jenenne Nelson, Tom Napierkowski, Bob Durham, Sue Byerley, Heather Albanesi, Livia Gilstrap, Ron Fitz, Tamra Wilson, Valerie Brodar, Scott Butterfield, Michael Brunn, Charlie Wang, Rick Peterson, Tom Zwirlein, Christina Jimenez, Margaret Beranek, Ann Hickey, Steve Platt, Ceil Malek.

Call to Order / Approval of Minutes:

Motion to approve the minutes from December 2005 by Jenenne Nelson

Seconded by Ann Hickey

Motion passed unanimously.

President’s Report (attached)
The Non-tenure track faculty task force has been assembled and Tom Napierkowski will chair task force. They have been charged to identify issues relevant to NTTF that require the attention of the Assembly, propose actions that address these issues, and report recommendations to the Assembly in spring 2007.

Student government has asked faculty to announce student elections in their classrooms.  The elections will take place April 18-20th.
The president will send an e-mail to the faculty list in April reminding them to make an announcement in their courses. Details about the election will be included.

The Teaching Excellence Committee will be up for review in spring 2007; not in spring 2006 as stated in the agenda under New Business for this meeting.

Vice President’s Report
There will soon be a call for Faculty Assembly elections. Tom Napierkowski encourages all of us  to talk up the elections in your respective colleges and get people to run for an office or as representative from their college. These positions are not appointed, they are filled by election. If you would like to be part of the elections committee, please contact Tom. There was a suggestion to change the by-laws so that elected  representatives would serve for a two year rather than a one year period.

Past President’s Report

Jenenne thanked Ben Martz and his team who did such a nice job on developing the electronic scholarly report.

The Presidential Search Committee is getting ready to set up some interviews in March.

Tenure Review process: the internal audit committee has made its recommendations and is now writing up their report.  Price-Waterhouse (external auditor) is behind since their contract was signed late, but they expect to finish up in April.

Reports From Standing Committees:

EPUS

EPUS is going to begin reviewing a procedure to add an options/track to existing graduate programs and then bring it to the Assembly.

Will also discuss policy for promoting faculty diversity. Christina Jimenez of the the Faculty Minority Affairs Committee will come to the meeting to help answer many questions.

The vision statement appended to presidents report is something we are also looking at. EPUS has looked at the document and believes it needs more discussion.  Also there were some questions and recommendations. Bob Durham  will also attend the next meeting talk with the committee. Please send thoughts/recommendations about the statement to EPUS. Its not the vision statement itself that needs to be discussed but the implementation of it.

EPUS has looked at the Program discontinuance policy and feels that it is a very strong policy. The are awaiting the policy that discusses cooperative academic programs that the deans are now putting together. Concerns were expressed about how existing programs are going to be  be funded. Since 2001 money has been pulled out of colleges and departments. Money should be put back into bread and butter programs before we begin expanding the curriculum.

Finance No Report

Personnel and Benefits report attached
Jenenne Nelson made a presentation to the committee on the Base Salary Incentive plan.  The committee discussed the BSI and put together a draft (attached) containing their thoughts and concerns on the program.  This report along with reports from other committees that have been asked to look at the BSI plan will be sent to the Chancellor, VCAA and VCAF.

P & B has also been discussing the salary compression issue. Compression for tenure track faculty should be treated as a separate issue from the salary issues of non-tenure track faculty. Steve Chambers reported that it would take $1.1M to bring tenure track salaries up to the mean of our peers. He is working on similar numbers for NTTF faculty. We need to stop the practice of hiring new people at below market values, because by doing so we perpetuate the problem. The committee is looking at setting minimum salaries for new hires.

The only way we can fix the compression problem is by having more money in the compensation pool. If in a given year the pool has a certain percentage for salary increases then we need to add more to address the compression issue. for compression.

Faculty Minority Affairs Committee (attached)

FMAC is using two national platforms to create dialogues on diversity across the campus, and the community. The first one is Freedom's Song which is rolling out next week. It includes an eight week lecture series beginning  February 23rd. More information at: www.freedomsong.net Fliers should be out by next week. The second initiative is the White Privilege Conference which UCCS will be hosting in spring 2007, There will be a planning meeting on March 10th when Dr. Eddie Moore, the director of the conference, will be here to present his concept for the conference.

We are having  conversations with faculty at PPCC to talk about student retention particularly among minority students. We are also addressing issues about campus culture, and campus diversity.

We are also working on supporting international students to help them to get access to the support services they need on campus. The chancellor has committed to creating a part-time staff position to help these students.  Also there is an effort underway to create more opportunities for UCCS students to study abroad.

Faculty Assembly is going to buy a table for the Cinco de Mayo banquet on May 5th.

We want to get more faculty involvement on campus with student events.

Women’s Committee no report

Academic Computing (attached)

Non Tenured Track Faculty

The committee will be meeting next Friday. We are setting our priorities now as to what we need to be focused on.

Research Council no report
Jenenne reported that the committee has not been able to discuss the BSI , but a meeting will be called shortly.

Library Committee no report

Teaching Excellence Committee

The committee discussed the BSI plan. They felt the plan would provide more hands on knowledge and experience for the classroom. On the other hand, they are concerned that the plan might result in more part time faculty. Might be a need to monitor the effect of it.

Discussion on BSI
Several  Concerns that were raised including the following:

• What about salary incentives for faculty who are more interested in teaching?

• How would it effect folks who choose not to participate? Will there less effort to address base salary issues?

• If we are going to implement this plan we don't want to create two classes of faculty or different classes of activity?

The issue was raised that many people do not seem to have a conceptual understanding of the BSI would work in their colleges. Jenenne Nelson emphasized that BSI plan is supposed to serve more as a structure or an umbrella policy so the departments or colleges could design their own programs with their own specificity.

After the draft goes through the Research Council we will look at the draft again.

Sustainability Committee no report

Athletic Department no report

OLD BUSINESS

NEW BUSINESS

Announcements and Information

Adjournment:

Motion to adjourn the Faculty Assembly Meeting

Motion passed unanimously.

Meeting adjourned at 1:55 pm.