Minutes for October 5, 2009

Senator Vice moved approval of items #1, #2, and #3, seconded by Senator May. Motion carried.

GENERAL & STANDING COMMITTEE REPORTS

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE REPORT: Senator Ware

Senator Ware announced that Linda Fossen, the new AVP for Enrollment, will speak at the November or December Senate meeting to discuss the faculty's role as far as input and involvement in the retention and student success process.

Senator Ware expressed her appreciation to Senator Brooke Bentley for agreeing to be the Senate's representative on the University Residency Appeals Committee.

The "Faculty First" event was successful. The Paddy Wagon has agreed to host the event again for the first Thursday of November. A notice will be sent out prior to the event. There may be a different venue for December’s gathering.

Senator Ware thanked the members on the Committee on Committees for their hard work to solicit names for the Provost Search Committee.

REPORT FROM FACULTY REGENT: Senator Frisbie

The Board met on September 19th for a regular quarterly meeting.

Three new members were welcomed into the Board: Nancy Collins from Hazard, David Slone from Fort Mitchell and Afsi Siahkoohi, SGA president. Officers were also elected, except for the chair's election, which will be held in January. Gary Abney was re-elected as the vice-chair and Steven Fulkerson will serve again as secretary of the Board.

The Board heard a joint update from Vice President Moberly and from Joanne Ewalt about the Strategic Planning Council and Financial Planning Council activities. Vice President Newsom gave a financial update, which indicated that the University is in good financial shape with a 6.4 million dollar fund balance.

The following action items were approved:

1. Seventeen curriculum changes (some of which came through the Senate)
2. The establishment of CRAFT, the Center for Renewable and Alternative Fuel Technology
3. The Senate's new standing committee, the Committee on Academic Quality
4. The drop/add fee, which was instituted last spring, was rescinded. The University will re-visit the drop/add situation and perhaps come back with a recommendation to the Board later
5. Non-student housing fees were reduced back to the levels used last year.

The Board will meet again in January.

REPORT FROM COSFL: Senator McKenney

COSFL met on October 2, 2009.

Nancy McKenney gave a report on the October 1st CPE meeting. This was a special meeting to allow Council members to discuss the CPE’s 2010-2012 "Operating and Capital Budget Recommendation." It was emphasized by CPE President Robert King that the development of this budget, which is actually an "appropriations request" that will go to the Kentucky General Assembly in January 2010, is a collaborative process involving numerous meetings with presidents and chief budget officers of the state universities and KCTCS.

The CPE’s appropriations request is broken down into 3 categories: 1)Institutional Operating Funds ; 2) Capital Investments; and 3) Agency Operating.

The university presidents, their chief budget officers, and the CPE agreed to certain "Points of Consensus" in this process as follows:

1. The operating and capital request will be simple and abbreviated and will include two parts--Base Funding and Capital Investments
2. Each part of the request will directly advance the goals of the Kentucky Postsecondary Education Improvement Act of 1997 (known as House Bill 1).
3. No redistribution among institutions of existing institutional General Fund base appropriations should occur.
4. General Fund appropriations to institutions should continue to be lump sum with necessary accountability requirements

Also as part of this process, each university and KCTCS submitted at 2-page "Strategic Initiative Summary" describing plans for any additional funds, if available, for higher education in the next biennium.

As the faculty representative, Nancy McKenney raised a concern that only one university had listed an improvement goal to increase faculty. The CPE President indicated that graduation and retention should be the primary goals and praised UK’s document, which uses the catch phrase "War on Attrition."

COSFL President Peggy Pittman-Munke recently attended a meeting of the Governor’s Higher Education Work Group (HEWG). She indicated that the Work Group has taken stability of funding for higher education "off the table," and are instead emphasizing the issues of transfer and financial aid.

The remainder of meeting was spent focusing on issues and concerns that members feel should be addressed in COSFL’s recommendations to the Higher Education Work Group. The HEWG is supposed to issue its final report on November 1st, so it will be necessary for COSFL to work rapidly in order to have input into the Work Group’s report.

The next meeting will be Saturday, November 21st at 10:00 a.m.

PROVOST REPORT: Senator Vice

Although the numbers are not official until October 15, the preliminary report to CPE indicates that the retention rate for Fall 2008 to Fall 2009 is 68.5 percent. This rate will be the highest retention rate EKU has seen in a decade.

The unofficial retention rate for transfer students from Fall 2008 to Fall 2009 has dropped slightly less than 1 percent to 70.2 percent. The transfer retention rate was 71.1 percent at this point for Fall 2008 new transfer students.

Since its inception in late November 2007, Project Graduate has assisted 32 EKU adult students with degree completion. In addition over 70 new adult students are registered for fall, with 23 more adults on target to graduate in December. Approximately $23,000 in adult learner scholarships and work study have been awarded to Project Graduate participants through Lumina funds received from the CPE in support of Project Graduate efforts.

Project Graduate, a Council on Postsecondary Education initiative, is designed to bring back adults with 90 or more hours for degree completion. To date over 400 adults at EKU have inquired about degree completion. The Project provides a variety of services from the initial inquiry through course registration, working to make a seamless process for the student. EKU Project Graduate liaison Lisa Cox credits this success to the behind-the-scenes collaborations with the offices of Admissions, the Registrar, and Financial Aid, and Academic Specialists in the various colleges.

As the year progresses, faculty will be hearing more about Senate Bill 1. College readiness (developmental education) is a key component of the Bill.

As shown in the following table, EKU retained 74 percent of the first-time students who had no developmental needs compared to the overall retention rate of 68.5 percent.

Developmental Needs	None	1	2	3	4	5	6	Total
Retained	1189 (74%)	243 (58%)	148 (59%)	77 (58%)	39 (59%)	8 (44%)	4 (50%)	1708 (68.5%)
Not Retained	412 (26%)	177 (42%)	101 (41%)	56 (42%)	27 (41%)	10 (56%)	4 (50%)	787 (31.5%)
Total by No. of Dev.	1601	420	249	133	66	18	8	2495
NOTE: of the 2,495 first-time students entering EKU in Fall 2008, 1,601 (64 percent) entered without developmental needs. Of the 894 (36 percent) first-time students entering in Fall 2008 with at least one developmental course need, 519 (58 percent) were retained to Fall 2009. Source: Dr. Sue Cain, Director of EKU's Office of Developmental Education and Academic Testing

EKU is fortunate to have Dr. Sue Cain heading CPE’s collaboration efforts with KDE and the universities. Dr. Gary Kuhnhenn is representing EKU at the statewide readiness meetings. There are also a number of EKU education faculty and content specialists participating in the state meetings.

The enrollment report as of October 2, 2009, compared to October 2 data last year shows that:

• Total enrollment is up 2.3% to 16,267
• Undergraduate enrollment is up 1.9% to 13,996
• Graduate enrollment is up 4.6% to 2,271
• New Freshmen enrollment is up 6% to 2,663
• New Transfer enrollment is up 6% to 1,257
• New Graduate Student enrollment is up 3% to 501
• Black Student enrollment is up 11% to 861
• Total credit hours are up 3.9% to 198,943
• Corbin credit hours are down 8% to 8,761
• Danville credit hours are down 5% to 4,566
• Manchester credit hours are down 5% to 2,351
• Online credit hours are up 54% to 16,254

     Source: EKU’s Office of Institutional Research

The Student Success Advisory Council is currently reviewing two procedures that potentially affect student success: (1) university withdrawal procedure and (2) change-of-major process.

Both issues will be brought to the Faculty Senate for review and discussion.

With the support of the University's administration, the deans are devoting considerable discussion this fall to the topic of distance education. Although the number of EKU’s online credit hours is up for Fall 2009, a comprehensive plan still needs to be developed.

In addition to the discussions involving distance education, the Council of Deans' agenda for October will also include (a) the budget preparation process, including setting course fees and (b) reports on the colleges' definitions of student success.

Faculty Senators are invited to eat lunch with the Provost on Wednesday, October 7, 11:30 a.m.– 1:00 p.m. in the Faculty Dining Room, Powell Cafeteria. Please sign in at the register.

REPORT FROM FINANCIAL PLANNING COUNCIL: Senator Ware

Senator Ware reported that the Council has met and continues to discuss funding priorities for the University. Senator Ware noted that while funding may not be available to address faculty and staff salaries, the Council still continues to discuss the issue at length.

STANDING COMMITTEE REPORTS: