February 2023

February 2023

February 2023

UCCS Faculty Representative Assembly Meeting

Friday February 10, 2023

Attendance: Venkat Reddy, Carlos Garcia, Minette Church, Monica Yoo, Karin Larkin, David Moon, Melissa Benton, Matthew Jabaily, Kristi McCann, Lynn Gates, Cortny Stark, Jian (James) Ma, Jena Mccollum, Kate Quintana, Robin Kempf, Dylan Harris, Aaron Corcoran, Elisa Thompson, Lei Zhang, Larry Eames, Claire Rau, Erica Allgood, Esther Lamidi, Gordon Stringer, Craig Bubeck, David Anderson, Haleh Abghari, Farida Khan, Suzanne Cook, Ilaheva Tuaone, Laura Eurich, Kathy Prue-Owens, Christine Biermann, Assma Sawani, Darshika Perera, Curtis Turner, Scott VanNess, David Weiss, Richard Ashmore, Susan Taylor, Maddie Gaddis, Alexander Archuleta, Katherine Cliff, Kimberly Mariotti, Debbie Jones, Christopher Bairn, Solveig Olsen, Suman Lakkukula, Christina Jimenez, Alexis Harper, Yvonne Wu, Emily Mooney, Robert Sackett, Cheri Orr, Irina Kopteva, Shannon Michaux, Evan Taparata,  Colin Wren, Camilla Troudt, Jessi Smith, Emily Skop

Call to Order / Approval of Minutes:

Motion to approve the minutes from October 14, 2022 meeting by Laura Eurich

Seconded by Larry Eames

Motion passed with 27 in favor, 0 opposed and 1 abstentions

Reports of Visitors:

Venkat Reddy, Chancellor: 
The Chancellor reported virtually from the Board of Regents meeting. He recognized the two new Distinguished Professors from the UCCS campus: Profs: Dorothea Olkowski and Carlos Paz de Araujo and announced reception for 2020 and 2022 Distinguished Professors on February 23rd. Angela Davis will be visiting the campus on April 18th the event sold out in two weeks. Campus awards celebration will be held April 18th as well. UCCS has signed a partnership agreement with Pueblo Community College to allow engineering students there to finish an Associate’s degree then complete their Bachelor’s degrees as UCCS in mechanical engineering. Students would then return to Pueblo to complete internships with affiliated businesses in the community. They also provided space for the pre-collegiate program there. The Facilities Master Planning process is underway, you will be hearing more about that shortly.

We have three new Regents, this could have some impacts to the system and the campuses. Dean Kelli Klebe is stepping down from her role as dean of the Graduate School to return to the faculty this fall. Thank you Kelli for everything you have done! You have done a tremendous job as an administrator. Search updates: VCAF is ongoing and continues to be a challenge. Dean search for the College of Business has kicked off chaired by Dean George Reed. They are hoping to have a new dean in place by July 1st. Thank you to Interim Dean Thomas Aicher for supporting the college in the meantime. VC for Facilities and Planning search continues under Dean Rayburn. Angela Bender has joined the team as Assistant Vice Chancellor for Human Resources. She has already attended a Regent’s meeting and participated in a DEI Faculty/Staff retention and recruitment roundtable. Jenny Russell has started as the new IR director.

The athletics department has decided to discontinue the Golf Program, which will impact 16 players in total. The department was acting proactively to address budget shortfalls. All 16 students will given the opportunity to continue their scholarships through next academic year but the program will discontinue in Fall 2023.

In Regents meeting discussed three budget scenarios, Carlos Garcia will provide more information in his update.

Kudos to Nancy Marchand-Martella and Suzanne Scott on their work on the Budget Redesign Task Force. See the updates and website devoted to that work on the Provost website.

Offered clarification on the confusion regarding the 3% merit pool raises for this year and how they were different from the one-time 3% adjustment to salaries from last year. This year followed Regent policy on merit increases and were tied to annual evaluations as opposed to last year’s 3% one-time across the board cost of living adjustment by the Regents. That was an exception.

Carlos Garcia, Interim VC for Administration and Finance:

Being 2.9% down, but we're still down in in in in the financial picture, but we should be able to cover this this spring with a with campus reserves to shore up that gap. So on on presence initiative funds as you saw in the memo that the Chancellor sent out presence initial funds are safe. So those are will still be funded as per the plan. Some of them have different time periods of when they'll be funded but those are still good.
It's the ASP funds that were in question. So let me, let me get into a little bit of detail about the TSP funds. So we will be receiving what we have over the last two years of 23.6 million of the 26.5 million that was originally committed to us. So it's about a $3 million uh, gap. Uh. But let me cut, let me go over what that covers, what the $23.6 million covers. So 5.4 million of that will be going towards the engineering annex. 3.5 million covered the 3% January 2022 employee compensation that we received plus the 1% appreciation bonus. So that money has already been spent. 4.2 million was used to restore the health trust and this is something that all four campuses are doing during COVID, a lot of the health trust was utilized for health needs. There were a lot more people seeing the doctor again COVID related or mental health related etcetera. So instead of us being able to or having to increase our benefit percentage by double digits this year, next year we paid into the trust so that we have that money in there. So we used one time money to offset. Ongoing expenses, so that I think that was a good thing and that was 4.2 million. 4.9 million went for a student aid, student financial aid. $315,000 for a faculty development growth. $212,000 will be used for lactation spaces. And 2.5 million for doctoral stipends. And if you're doing the math, I'm off by a couple million. I left something off and I'll have to look at what I left off. But that in essence covers that, that $23.6 million. I left something off the list. I need to go see the list again and see where I left off.

The fiscal year 24 budget scenarios. As the Chancellor mentioned, there are three budget scenarios that we submitted to the to the Board of Regents. All of the scenarios include a .9% enrollment decline for the fall of 2023. So first scenario includes additional state funding for education of $69 million and that matches the governor's budget proposal. Of that 69 million UCCS share is 2.2 million. It also includes a 6% tuition increase for all categories of a tuition, 3.5% combined merit pool. 3% would be used for the merit pool and the half a percent we would hold back for compression adjustments that will be coming up throughout the year. So this results in a projected deficit for us of a 5.4 million. And some of this will maybe adjust it further depending on what we find out about the cyber security money. We're sort of trying to verify when the cyber security money ends and depending on that answer then it'll, it'll adjust that projected deficit. Scenario B, the new state funding for education is 100 million and this is what the JBC budget proposal is looking like right now. UCCS share of that would be 3.5 million in this scenario, we would have a 5% tuition increase for all categories, a 4% combined merit pool. So it would be 3 1/2 plus the half percent for market compression and EPA. The results of that is a projected deficit of 5.6 million for us. And again same, same, same conversation about what we do in the event that the cyber security money expires or does not expire in them in at the end of this fiscal year. And scenario C, the new state funding in scenario C would be 144 million. And this is what the higher education presidents of all governing boards are proposing. So 144 million is what covers the basic need for higher education in the state of Colorado. UCCS share if this scenario was to become reality is 5.3 million. This one we would go down to a 4% tuition increase in all categories. Compensation pool would be the same for 4% of which 3 1/2 would be the merit pool and half percent would be the ETA compression and market pool. Results of this projected deficit would be 4.8 million for UCCS and again adjusted if we find out different information on the on the Cyber Security funding. We won’t know the results of the funding decisions or tuition increases until April BOR meeting. Presented these to UBAC. There is no scenario where tuition does not increase.

Officer Reports:

Report of the President — Minette Church

Report of the President-Elect — Monica Yoo will be sending out a request for people to indicate if they're running or are interested in being on the slate for running for a faculty assembly office, or if people are interested in being a representative. Again, you're welcome to nominate others as well as yourself. The other thing I will be doing is checking in on committee openings as well as. So keep your eye out for those emails.

Report of the Past-President – David Moon—no report to date

Committee Reports

Educational Policy and University Standards (EPUS)—See Attached

Personnel & Benefits—No Report

Faculty Advisory Committee on the Budget—No Report

Faculty Equity and Inclusion Committee—No Report

Faculty Assembly Women’s Committee—See Attached

IRC Faculty—See below regarding Multi Year Contract update

Faculty Assembly Committee on Teaching—See Attached The Equity in Access to Course Materials proposal (sent via email) was presented to the Dean’s Council, to the FACT committee members, and to SGA who have all approved it. Chancellors Cabinet has also already vetted and approved. The committee has put together a team to iron out wrinkles and get feedback. General discussion on questions followed.

PRIDE—No Report

Misconduct in Research, Scholarship & Creative Activities—No  Report

Committee on Research-- No Report—Meeting 2/10

Intercollegiate Athletics—No Report

Sustainability— see attached
Committee on Disability—see attached

Representative Reports—Discussions at the system level EPUS regarding Policy 5060 and academic titles (not working titles) that do include a new track called Teaching Professor. This policy also includes a new title of Senior Lecturer for long-time lecturers. We will need to consider if UCCS faculty want to adopt these. Teaching Professor recognizes degree and equivalent qualifications.

New Business

Unfinished Business

  1. Motion 1: vote on the Faculty Governance policy (200-15) revision (Tabled)

New Business

New Academic Calendar updates—Susan Taylor is currently serving in the office of the Provost for Undergraduate Education and Academic Planning. This is different from the Academic Year Policy that is currently undergoing revision. Goal is to align fall and spring and align UCCS calendar with local school districts. Plan for fall semester includes adding classes bak in on the Tuesday after Labor Day then have no classes on the Monday and Tuesday of Thanksgiving week to have a full week off. This would result in one Monday class short BOTH Fall and Spring semesters and full weeks for Spring Break and Thanksgiving week. They worked with the registrar in terms of with this work with CHD requirements for contact hours, it will not negatively impact financial aid or PA funded students. They noted that having two days off at Labor Day seemed counter-productive to student and class momentum. They also made sure that there was equity in the short eight-week blocks. So, in short for everyone who teaches Mondays, there would be 1 fewer day for BOTH fall and spring in this proposal. If want to implement this for fall would need a decision from Campus governance groups by April 2st at the latest in order to operationalize. See attached document.

Yvonne Wu and Solveig Olsen proposed an alternative that includes a two-day fall break in October, having students the Tuesday after Labor Day and then keeping Thanksgiving break as it currently stands with classes on Monday and Tuesday of that week and Wednesday-Friday off.

Policy revision update on IRC Multi-Year Contracts (200-022) Laura Eurich—EPUS approved the Multi-Year Contract Policy and procedural documents. This will simplify the process and the renewal process. Chairs and Deans will make the decisions related to multi-year contracts for their colleges. This policy will come up for a vote at the March meeting.

Policy revision on Post-tenure Review (200-016) (Attached)—David Weiss—this policy was revised to better reflect what we currently do. The policy asks for and executive statement, FCQs, Digital Measures and the choice for a professional plan. The revision simplifies and aligns with the new APS 1022. Tenured faculty will be required to submit every 5 years. EPUS has reviewed and approved with changes. Question regarding whether MUST use FCQs or can broaden the language to align with the Regent’s policy (which is broader) to simply require some measure of student evaluations of teaching in the instance that a unit or college adopts a different measure as is allowed in Regent policy. Agreed that we should broaden that language. This policy will come up for vote in March meeting

Discussion Item: Lecturer feedback on issues around governance representation, communication, and workload and compensation was a lively discussion. There were MANY examples of inadequate pay in comparison to other institutions both in the CU system and in the Community College system. Pikes Peak Community College pays more per 3-credit hour class AND pays for their parking! Inadequate pay is a huge issue with some of our lecturers having to rely on food stamps to survive and have housing insecurity. There is an issue with lack of stability in that some units (like math) have a BIG discrepancy in their need between Fall and Spring semesters leaving lecturers with fewer options in Spring. Additionally, some lecturers do service but get no credit OR compensation. They should receive compensation for service including running independent study/internship classes or other service. Noted that TAs teaching the same sections get more overall compensation than lecturers. There was also a discussion on the inequity in lecturer pay across colleges here on campus. The main issues that arose based on feedback include:

  • inadequate pay
  • lack of raises (no raises in over 8 years)
  • lack of benefits (even for lecturers working half-time or more)
  • lack of access for parking (the current fee structure does not benefit lecturers who teach more than 2 days a week)
  • lack of stability and security
  • class cancellations at the last minute AFTER they had put in hours preparing the class for which they get NO compensation (which is unacceptable)
  • lack of respect
  • feelings of invisibility and lack of communication with lecturers (should include bios on webpages at very least)
  • request reasonable (or free) access to campus resources like the rec center (is there a sliding scale for fees?).

This is a big problem in that 21% of credit hours across campus in 2021 were delivered by lecturers. The campus relies on them more and more. In 2021, 70% of classes (maybe credit hours) were taught by IRC and Lecturers combined. We should do better! Some suggestions included creating List Serv for lecturers to deliver information, providing compensation for prep work for cancelled classes, providing stipends for service work, discussion on creating Task Force to look into solutions for these issues (again lecturers would need to be compensated for this work).

Move to Adjourn: David Moon

Second: Melissa Benton

Unanimously passed

Time: 2:02 pm

NEXT MEETING Dwire 114 March 10, 2023 12:00-2:00