Minutes for November 30, 2009

The Faculty Senate of Eastern Kentucky University met on Monday, November 30, 2009, in the South Room of the Keen Johnson Building. Senator Ware called the fourth meeting of the academic year to order at approximately 3:30 p.m.

The following members of the Senate were absent:

^*Indicates prior notification of absence to the Faculty Senate Secretary

^ ALT John Bowes attended for J. Lowry
^ ALT Socorro Zaragoza attended for A. Poffenberger

Visitors to the Senate: Linda Frost, Honors Program; Shannon Means, EVP; Robert Mitchell, Psychology; Debbie Newsom, Financial Affairs; Jerry Pogatshnik, Graduate Education & Research; and Sherry Robinson, Provost Office

APPROVAL OF MINUTES:
The November 2, 2009 were approved as written.

REPORT FROM THE PRESIDENT: Senator Whitlock

The Provost Search Committee has been selected. Senator Taylor has agreed to serve as chair of the committee. Millie Leach, a retired administrative assistant, has agreed to serve as administrative support, and a temporary office has been established in the Student Services Building. The committee will meet for the first time on December 4th.

The state has requested that all state agencies, with the exception of colleges, universities, and the public school systems, prepare a report to show the impact of a 6% current year budget cut which may be requested to address the $166 million shortfall for the current fiscal year. While the institutions have been spared, some of the areas included in the cut may still have an impact on education, such as transportation and the Council on Postsecondary Education's operation budget.

The Doctor of Nursing Practice will professionally replace the Family Nurse Practitioner masters level across the country by sometime in 2015. In order for the comprehensive institutions in Kentucky to offer that, some modifications must be made to the current statute. In answer to this, CPE has prepared a draft which attempts to 1) write the amendment in a way to allow for future modifications without a major overall and 2) include language which clearly states that medicine, law, and dentistry are not included. However, CPE has also included the term "engineering" into the proposed language. So the proposed amendment has become extremely complex and may prove problematic. What may happen is that an amendment may be fashioned to address only the Doctor of Nursing Practice and then a broader amendment may be written for the 2011 session.

Provost Vice and President Whitlock are scheduled to meet next Monday with the Vice President of the SACS Commission on Colleges to learn of the Commission's action on EKU's substantive change visit and evaluation. That's the final step to receive SACS level V status which will make it possible for EKU to offer up to three doctoral programs.

Senator Vice will provide more indepth details in the Provost report, but there is much legislative frustration over transfer issues. The legislature thought they fixed the issue ten years ago; and if every institution had taken the previous legislative mandate as seriously as this institution did, the problem remaining would be very small. This issue is of great concern to COSFL and so it's incumbent on us to get this in the most reasonable form that it can be.

Another piece of legislation that definitely has the attention of the university presidents is the time to degree. The proposed legislation is pushing toward having 120-semester-credit-hour baccalaureate programs which will hopefully result in more people graduating in four years. However, there are a number of issues that can affect time to degree. Some of those include:

1. Number of students requiring remediation
2. Allowing students to drop classes through the mid-point of the semester
3. Public policy changes made to Pell Grants in recent years which has forced students to work more hours or borrow more money in order to pursue their education.

One additional note, this piece of legislation also states that by 2014 the Boards of Regents of the Trustees are supposed to include student success toward time to degree in the evaluation of the university president.

Senator Whitlock recently attended the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) meeting where he had the opportunity to see three excellent presentations.

1. Arne Duncan - conversation about administration priorities as they relate to public higher education including an idea for tracking teachers who are having the most impact on their students and then tracking those teachers back to their respective colleges of education to see which colleges are having the greatest impact.
2. Joshua Cooper Ramo, author of "The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us and What We Can Do About It"
3. Alan November of November Learning, Inc. (Novemberlearning.com)

NEW BUSINESS:

Report on Budget. Karen Neubauer, Executive Director of Budgeting, was in attendance to give a brief presentation on Eastern's budgeting process. The full presentation can be found on their website at www.financialaffairs.eku.edu/budget.

This year to aid in the budgeting process a portal called "Go Forward" was created to outline the budgeting process. The portal can be accessed at www.financialaffairs.eku.edu/budget/goforward/.

Faculty Development Fund. Senator Johnson moved approval of the Faculty Development Fund motion listed below, seconded by Senator Taylor.

"The annual Faculty Development funds, which have been delegated to departments from Academic Affairs, should be delegated to individual full time teaching faculty members and should roll over from year to year for individual faculty members for a total of not more than three years. If none of the money has been spent by the individual faculty member by the end of the third year, or if the faculty member spends only a portion of the faculty development funds, the maximum amount left in the individual faculty member's account should not exceed a total of three consecutive years of rollover. The money which would have been delegated to the individual faculty member for faculty development would remain in the department's Faculty Development account."

Senator Johnson noted that the committee plans to develop guidelines for the use of the faculty development funds, and those should be ready to share with the Senate by the April meeting.

Senator Potter moved to amend the motion to "full time teaching and research faculty", seconded by Senator Shordike. Motion failed for lack of support.

Senator Frisbie moved to postpone discussion to the January meeting to allow the committee time to review Faculty Handbook language and address the issue of teaching and research, seconded by Senator Day. Motion carried.

Report from Council on Academic Affairs - Senator Vice

New Program

1. Animal Stuides (BS)

New Certificates

2. Certificate in Intelligence Studies (Undergraduate) - establish an Undergraduate, University-level certificate
3. Post-Baccalaureate Health Information Management (HIM) Certificate – reduce hours required to graduate from 128 to 120

Program Revision - Reducing Hours Required to Graduate

4. Computer Electronic Networking B.S. - decrease number of hours from 128 to 120 hours, revise program title and CIP code, revise courses within the program, reduce free elective hours to 5-6, reduce Major Requirement hours from 42 to 40.

Program Revisions

5. Honors Program - establish required courses for the program to be included in the program description/Catalog text
6. Occupational Science - revise and clarify progression and retention in the program
7. Moderate to Severe Disabilities Graduate Certificate - remove NSC 700 from MSD program and provide an option for students because the content is similar in SED 718 and OTS 715. Delete SED 240.
8. Minor in Computer Science - update minor with current course offerings
9. Minor in Interactive Media - update minor with current course offerings
10. Computer Science: Computer Security B.S. - change option title to better reflect course offerings
11. Computer Science: Interactive Multimedia B.S. - change option title to better reflect course offerings
12. Economics B.A. - add "or its equivalent" next to ECO 220 under Economics Core in current Catalog.
13. Marketing B.B.A./PGM Option - remove MGT 320, 330, and OHO 362G as requirement
14. Industrial Technology B.S. - revise program title, revise course prefixes INT to AEM within program, revise required courses within program core, drop credits from general electives, suspend the Industrial Distribution Option
15. Technology A.A.S. - revise course prefixes and course requirements in the program, reduce total number of hours in the Computer Electronics option from 44 to 39-40.

Program Suspension

16. Director of Special Education Alternate Certification
17. Special Education Learning and Behavior Disorders MAEd Alternative Certification

Senator Vice moved approval of item #1, seconded by Senator Wade. Motion carried.

Senator Vice moved approval of items #2 & #3, seconded by Senator Collins. Motion carried.

Senator Vice moved approval of items #4 through #15, seconded by Senator Taylor. Motion carried.

Senator Vice moved approval of items #16 and #17, seconded by Senator Borowski. Motion carried.

Senator Vice noted that there are at least two doctoral programs currently in the review process: 1) the Doctorate of Education in Educational Psychology and 2) the Occupational Therapy Doctorate.

GENERAL & STANDING COMMITTEE REPORTS

Academic Quality Committee. Senator Shordike reported that the committee met today to begin drafting a resolution to address concerns about pending legislation. The resolution should be ready to present at the January Senate meeting.

Budget Committee. Senator Johnson reported that the committee met on November 9 to work on the Faculty Development motion. Later, the committee plans to work on developing guidelines for the use of the Faculty Development Funds.

The committee is also continuing work on the following:

1. Ways to provide input to the Financial Planning Council and the Strategic Planning Council about budget matters.
2. The loss of faculty lines either cut or unfunded over the last 5-10 years.
3. Gathering information about position over the last 5-10 years.

Rights & Responsibilities Committee.  Senator J. Palmer reported that the committee is still in the process of reviewing the many policies and procedures that will constitute the new Faculty Handbook.

Rules Committee. Senator McKenney reported that the committee met on November 9th and 23rd to discuss the matter of term limits for faculty senators.

At the November 9th meeting, committee members shared the results of their informal survey of EKU's benchmarks and also of other Kentucky public universities. Nineteen benchmark schools and seven Kentucky schools were surveyed. Of this group of 26 institutions, it was found that at least 10 do have some type of term limit for their faculty senators.

Among Kentucky schools, UK, KSU, and WKU have term limits, and U of L, Morehead, Murray, and NKU do not have limits. In other words, with the inclusion of EKU, in Kentucky 50% of the public university senates have term limits.

The committee decided to distribute an e-mail survey to all EKU Senators asking them to poll the faculty in their departments. Because the results of the survey did not suggest any clear course of action, the Rules Committee does not plan to propose any change at this time.

Welfare Committee. Senator Ciocca reported that the committee met on November 23.

Several items were discussed, including the joint November 4th meeting with the University Benefits committee. Below are some of the main points from that meeting.

1. 65% employees completed online enrollment (788 assisted and 738 self enrolled). Positive feedback was received about the new dental plan. Only 2% employees waived the dental benefit due to being covered by spouses elsewhere. Dental cards will be ordered for all participants.
2. The participation on the Flex Spending Account (FSA) for health expenditures is still low at 30%. There needs to be more consumer education on the FSA plans. Besides the tax savings by the individual, the University as a whole would save on the FICA amount as well.
3. Express Scripts provides EKU's prescription benefits and they will be implementing a prescription home-delivering program, using emails and letters instead of phone calls. The Benefits Office will send out educational communications to employees prior to the start of the Select Home Delivery campaign. Implementation of Select Home Delivery will begin January 1, provided the Benefits office has educated employees up front about the program.
4. All 403b plans (supplemental retirement plans) must meet new compliance standards, similar to ERISA governed plans. All providers are compliant except two, American Funds and Prudential. Twenty-six employees currently participate in these plans and will be affected due to the new requirements. These employees will be notified that EKU can no longer do business with these funds, meaning they can no longer contribute new money into them, but can roll their funds over or choose a new supplemental retirement fund that is compliant.

In the Faculty Welfare meeting of November 23, the committee discussed the issue of faculty morale. Please send any ideas and suggestions on how to provide recognition and personal satisfaction to faculty with little or no cost to the Chair of the committee.

ADJOURNMENT:

Senator Vice moved to adjourn at approximately 5:15 p.m.

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