Minutes for May 6, 2024

The Faculty Senate of Eastern Kentucky University met on Monday, May 6, 2024 in the Perkins Building Quads. Chair Kay called the eighth meeting of the academic year to order at approximately 3:30 p.m.

The following members were absent:

K. Abdelhay*	M. Bane	P. Calie
V. Chandra*^	V. Collins	F. Hasan*
M. Henton	M. Howell*^	J. Keller*
A. Lawson*^	E. Massey	J. Mayer*
J. McCardle	J. Palmer	K. Parsons
C. Perry*	M. Pierce*^	J. Plutt
C. Streetman

^* Indicates prior notification of absence
^ALT Ka-Wing Wong attended for V. Chandra
^ALT Randall Swain attended for M. Howell
^ALT Kristen Campbell attended for A. Lawson
^ALT Amy Braccia attended for M. Pierce

APPROVAL OF MINUTES:

Senator McGuffin moved to approve the April 1, 2024 minutes as written, seconded by Senator Jones.  Motion carried. (YES = 42 votes | NO = 0 votes | ABSTAIN = 0 votes) (See also: Individual Votes).

REPORT FROM THE PRESIDENT:  David McFaddin

As we conclude another academic year, let us reflect back on all of the accomplishments of our faculty over the past year. EKU has been recognized this year as the following:

• Among America’s Best Colleges by The Wall Street Journal
• No. 30 of America’s Best Employers in Kentucky by Forbes
• A Best Bang for the Buck College by Washington Monthly
• Among the most transfer-friendly colleges in the nation by Phi Theta Kappa
• No. 2 nationally in the Military Friendly® Schools review, and No. 2 as a Military Friendly® Spouse School
• No. 1 in Kentucky and No. 4 in the Appalachian Region by Best for Vets
• Among Best Online Homeland Security Degrees by Forbes

Legislative Update
EKU tracked 260 bills during the 2024 legislative session. In addition to the state budget and higher education bills, we tracked PreK-12 issues, health insurance requirements, professional licensure reforms, philanthropic regulations, school facility/building requirements/construction mandates, sports-related issues and bills addressing workforce shortage training/certifications/incentives, etc. Of the bills tracked by EKU, 50 passed.

Two bills impacting EKU passed after the Veto Period on the last day of the session and were subsequently signed by Governor Beshear.

Senate Bill 191 made several changes to the Performance Funding Model, including a redirection of 3% of the overall pool to low-income students and first-generation college students. This change means the low-income metric now totals 9.5% of the overall pool. The 3% metric will be unweighted, removing the existing premium for R1 institutions. EKU will continue to advocate during the interim and during the 2025 legislative session for all metrics to be unweighted in the Performance Funding Model. The 2024-2025 Performance Funding award for EKU is $4,769,400.

Senate Joint Resolution 170 appropriates $2M to CPE to contract studies for potential post baccalaureate programs at Regional Comprehensive Universities. The resolution includes specific language to study the proposed Doctor of Osteopathic Medical program at EKU. The study is due to the Legislative Research Commission on December 1, 2024. We expect a bill to be filed in January 2025 that would allow EKU to move forward with the D.O. program.

The finalized state budget includes the following appropriations for EKU:

• Asset Preservation - $25,910,000 annually (No Match Required)
• Model Lab Phase II Construction- $59.1M (year 1)
• EKU Aviation Program - $12.5M annually
• Fire/tornado insurance - $3,125,500 annually
• Inflationary cost support - $2,866,200 annually.
• Corbin Scholar House Childcare Center construction - $5M
• Model Lab Mandated Program - $4,571,900 annually
• EKU Manchester Endowed Scholarship Fund - $270,000
• Pension Cost (KERS) Subsidy - $6,236,800 (year 1) & $5,345,800 (year 2)
• Debt Service - $3,424,500 (year 1) and $7,894,000 (year 2)
• Performance Funding: Pool up $29.2M to $105M in FY25 & $115M in FY26
• General Fund appropriation: $60,842,300 annually

Giving Day
This year we surpassed our Giving Day goal of 2,324 donors. Congratulations to the College of Health Sciences for receiving the most donations, followed by the College of Letters, Arts, and Social Sciences and the College of Business. Thanks to Vice President Mary Beth Neiser and her team for their hard work. The final calculations for Giving Day resulted in more than 2,400 donors and over $700,000 in funds raised. Below is a breakdown by our various Academic Areas:

• College of Health Sciences: Over $125,000 and more than 300 donors
• CLASS: Over $129,000 and more than 200 donors
• College of Business-Over $116,000 and approximately 200 donors
• College of Education and Applied Human Sciences-Over $38,000 and more than 100 donors
• College of Justice, Safety, and Military Science-Over $10,000 and approximately 100 donors
• College of STEM-Over $119,000 and more than 60 donors
• EKU Libraries-Over $4,000 and more than 50 donors

Spring 2024 Commencement
As you know, the ceremony will look a little different this spring. Faculty should arrive one hour prior to each ceremony on Friday, May 10, 2024, at the Faculty Robing Area in the South Hall of Alltech Arena at the Kentucky Horse Park, 4089 Iron Works Pkwy, Lexington, Kentucky 40511. Parking is available in the Graduate/Faculty Lot.

This year we will celebrate 2,217 graduates.

• 47 Associate degrees
• 1552 Bachelor’s degrees
• 213 Certificates
• 377 Master’s degrees
• 14 Post-master’s certificates
• 14 Doctoral degrees

Ceremony times are as follows:

• 9:00am: College of Justice, Safety, and Military Science and College of Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics
• 1:30pm: College of Education and Applied Human Sciences and the College of Health Sciences
• 6:00pm: College of Letters, Arts, and Social Sciences and the College of Business

President's Excellence Awards
The 2024 President’s Excellence Awards ceremony was held last week. The winners and finalists of each award are listed below.

Emerging Leader Award
Winner: Jasmine Nettles – Housing and Residence Life
Finalists: Lauren Keeler – Office of University Counsel; Nicholas Moore – Communications and Brand Management

Excellence in Community and Belonging
Winner: Allison McCann – Campus Recreation
Finalists: Laurel Addison – Slate; Karen Edwards – Model Laboratory School

Excellence in Engagement and Hospitality
Winner: Carrie Foster – University Development
Finalists: Heather Brent – Student Success; Dr. Kelly Cogar – Center for Student Accessibility Services

Excellence in Innovation
Winner: Dr. Matt Schumacher – Student Success
Finalists: David Fifer – College of Justice, Safety, and Military Science; Tiffany Hampton – Slate

Excellence in Leadership
Winner: Dr. Bryan Makinen – Facilities and Safety
Finalists: Dr. Brooke Hillard – College of Health Sciences; Jeremy Steele – Information Technology; Johnna Thomas – University Development

Our milestone employees were also honored for having reached their 25th and 30th years of service at EKU.

FY25 Budget Preview
There have been two meetings of the Finance Committee of the Board of Regents in the past month. During those meetings we have been able to share revenue assumptions and proposed investments in our employees, students, and programs. The foundation of the recommended upcoming budget will be a fourth consecutive year of across-the-board salary increases of 2%, continued funding of our market compression pool, and fully funding all faculty rank and promotion increases. Over the past four years, we have funded nearly $14 million dollars in across-the-board and recurring increases in salaries.

Given the impact of the new FAFSA rollout, we have adopted a very conservative revenue forecast and expect this next budget year to operate without any mid-year adjustments. We have also reformatted our budget to reflect traditional functional reporting units along specific Vice Presidential lines. This will be a positive and differentiated improvement on how financial performance is presented to the Board and the campus. The updated budget book will be available next week prior to the Board meeting on May 15th.

April in the News
Be sure to check out our news highlights on pages 3-6 in the written report.

Upcoming Events

• May 10- Commencement (Alltech Arena at the Kentucky Horse Park)
• May 15- Board of Regents Meeting (Crabbe Library)
• May 15- 2024 Pedagogicon: Steven M.R. Covey (EKU Center for the Arts)
• May 24- Summer Advantage Schedule Begins 

REPORT FROM THE PROVOST: Sara Zeigler

The Chief Financial Officer’s search committee has been given a due date of May 9th which is our next meeting to review all 21 applicants, complete rubrics rating those applicants. The goal at that meeting is to have a short list for Zoom interviews and then narrow that down to a finalist list of people who will visit campus. We will arrange for the candidates to make presentations which will be offered in hybrid format to make it easier for faculty to meet the candidates and complete feedback forms. Faculty serving on the committee in addition to the Provost include: Dean Derek Paulsen, Chair Dana Howell, and faculty member Maggie Abney.

As you know, Chair Kay, Dr. Ozan Kalkan from Political Science, and I have been working to collect data to look at our trends, look at both our head count and our departures to see what is going on and where we can build our faculty retention efforts. As we are still in the process of refining the data, it won’t be presented to the Board until the fall semester. We have also been working on what we can do moving forward to retain faculty, so we will be doing some baseline studies to ascertain what faculty value, what their priorities are, and what keeps them here or prompts them to leave. That will be conducted by an external entity sometime in the fall semester, and then they will design some support services and trainings for us in response to the findings on the survey. The survey will be repeated at regular intervals so that we can see how we’re doing and whether the work we’re doing with them is productive and reaching the projected outcomes.

The last update has to do with advising and academic centers as part of a larger discussion that involved the Registrar’s office and some other activities. We have assembled two working groups. One to talk about advising and how we can best serve our students efficiently but also to make sure that faculty time is focused perhaps less on scheduling and logistics than on mentoring and guiding the students. The other is an Academic Centers Workgroup which concerns all of the tutoring centers and the various support services on campus. They will be looking at where we’re using our resources to make sure that students are being compensated fairly and evenly and to make sure they all have some strong training. There will be ample opportunities for focus groups and surveys as we work on that project with the idea of making recommendations probably mid-fall for implementation in spring 2025.

GUEST SPEAKER:

Student Government Association Update. Camden Ritchie announced that William Lampert will serve as the SGA President next year.

NEW BUSINESS:

Report from the Council on Academic Affairs. Associate Provost Wies introduced the CAA materials. Items for approval included one new program and five program closures. In addition there were several curriculum items presented for notification only. (See also: CAA_04-25-24_unofficial-minutes)

Senator Bishop-Ross moved approval of the new program and the five program closures, seconded by Senator Ginn. Motion carried. (YES = 36 votes | NO = 0 votes | ABSTAIN = 4 votes) (See also: Individual Votes)

Budget Committee Presentation. Senators Lauk and Fister presented a PowerPoint which focused on EKU’s budget analysis and financial condition.

Senator Lauk thanked Barry Poynter, Brad Compton, Emily Watters, and Sara Zeigler for meeting with the Budget Committee regularly throughout the year to discuss on-going budget updates and to the address the committee’s questions and concerns.

Faculty Rights & Responsibilities Committee Presentation. Senator Ginn shared a PowerPoint on the committee’s charges for the year, their findings, and their recommendations which included:

• Request that the Faculty Senate approve the submission of an impact statement to be submitted to the University Policy Designee with a request for a drafting team to review POL 1.1.1.
• Request that drafting team members consider 1) clarifying faculty rights and responsibilities and 2) strengthening Faculty Senate involvement in policy development.

Motion to Revise Policy 1.1.1. Chair Kay presented the following motion from the floor and moved that the Faculty Senate support the request for the University Policy Designee to revise Policy 1.1.1., seconded by Senator Couvillon. [See also: Impact Statement: Revision of Policy 1.1.1 & Memo to University Policy Designee] Motion carried.  (YES = 39 votes | NO = 0 votes | ABSTAIN = 0 votes) (See also: Individual Votes)

Motion for a Faculty Grievance Liaison (FGL). On behalf of the Executive Committee, Chair Kay moved to approve the procedures to allow the Executive Committee to appoint a Faculty Grievance Liaison in order to be in compliance with the new Faculty Grievances regulation. As this comes from committee, a second is not required. Motion carried.  (YES = 39 votes | NO = 0 votes | ABSTAIN = 0 votes) (See also: Individual Votes)

Chair Kay stated that a special session of the Executive Committee will be held in the near future in order to appoint a FGL before the next academic year.

GENERAL & STANDING COMMITTEE REPORTS

REPORT FROM SENATE CHAIR: Senator Kay

The Faculty Senate Executive Committee met on April 22, 2024. Following the pre-meeting with the President, the Provost’s report, and an update from the Rights and Responsibilities Committee, the Executive Committee discussed the faculty handbook. In addition, the committee approved the tentative guests for the May Senate meeting, and liaisons provided updates on committee work.

Our Problem Solvers Group met with the Provost on April 15th.

A Faculty Lunch and Learn session was held on Wednesday, April 10th.

Former Senator Carolin Walz’s Celebration of Life will be on Saturday, May 25th, at 1:00 p.m. at DreamTime Farm, 6301 Old Richmond Road, Lexington, KY. Phaedra has requested an estimated headcount, so please email Kathy.Mounts@eku.edu if you plan to attend.

Thank you for submitting feedback on the proposed Academic Curriculum Policy. The drafting team found it to be helpful.

Comments continue to come through via the virtual suggestion box, and all of them are read and forwarded as appropriate. All comments are also shared with Provost Zeigler and Regent Marion. Here are some topics of recent comments:

• Building temperatures and maintenance
• HR focus groups
• Academic Curriculum Policy
• Evaluation of untenured tenure-track faculty
• Tuition waiver
• Compensation
• Faculty retention
• IDC support
• Crosswalks
• Photos of EKU Online students

REPORT FROM FACULTY REGENT: Senator Marion

The next meeting of the Board of will be on Wednesday, May 15. Once available, the agenda will be posted at the following website: https://regents.eku.edu/agendas-0.

Since the last meeting of the Faculty Senate, the Board’s Finance Committee met on May 1 to review and discuss the Budget recommendations presented by Vice President Poynter in preparation for the May 15 meeting.

Since our last meeting, in addition to the activities I’ve been involved with regarding the Problem Solvers (Chair Kay, Vice-Chair Blair, and Provost Zeigler) and the Executive Committee of the Faculty Senate, I’ve provided comments on several policies likely on the Board agenda for May 15, including the Academic Curriculum Policy. Also, in my standing meeting with the President, I conveyed some questions and concerns regarding faculty talent retention (extent of problem and strategies to retain), and the beyond normal workload faced by department chairs the last several months (regular academic reports, some accreditation site visits, aligning spending with foundation accounts, budget sweeps, procurement deadlines, developing spending plans, and challenges linked to consequences for having rushed spending plans in a time-limited environment).

Going into the budget discussion for this year, the budget is likely going to be built with reduced maintenance and operation budgets to afford more flexibility at the university-level for the next academic year, while also investing again in our people. For budgeting, the human capital costs associated with adjusting budgets in the early- to mid-spring semester time frame every year, particularly this last year, have been apparent and hopefully will be relieved by the new budget. Also, the need for investing in faculty and staff remains unabated. I have tried to provide additional perspectives or questions on how to assist faculty and departments or divisions where the market rates have made recruitment and retention very difficult.

STANDING COMMITTEES

Academic Quality Committee. Senator Stevenson shared the committee’s progress on their charges in the written year-end report.

Recommended charges for next year include the following:

• Provide a channel of communication among the Faculty Senate, the faculty-at-large, and the Administration on academic matters and the formulation of academic policy. 
• Be available as an advisory agency to the President of the University and to the Provost on academic matters. 
• Serve as a channel of communication with the Student Government Association on matters concerning student academic responsibility and students’ role within the academic community. 
• Review report from analysis of data analyzed by the STA 575/775 class in Spring 2024 (See Appendix A). Develop a report and recommendations as a priority activity in Fall 2024 to share with senate. 
• Follow up on memo requesting addition of student parents as a priority group (See Appendix B). Pursue this issue as appropriate with senate and administration to advocate for this vulnerable population at EKU. 
• Evaluate faculty and student satisfaction with Bartleby if it continues to be a contract that EKU chooses for use with the new LMS. 
• Coordinate with the Rules Committee to assess and update internal procedures.

Elections & University Nominations Committee. Senator Spira reported the following:

• This year the committee reviewed our internal procedures and submitted a final product which was approved by the Senate at the March meeting.
• We also oversaw the adjunct faculty election. The new adjunct representative for the next two years will be Sheri McGuffin with Bianca Fisher serving as the alternate.
• In addition, a memo was sent out to all department chairs asking them to elect replacements for any senators who are rotating off in May and to review their full time faculty numbers with their number of representatives on Senate to see if any adjustments are needed.
• As SLATE took over the listing and recruitment of faculty for vacancies on University Committees that can now be removed from the standard charges. 

Next year, the committee recommends the following:

• Oversee the Faculty Regent election in Spring 2025.
• Ask each department to make sure that their faculty numbers are consistent with the number of senate representatives that they are entitled to.
• Review the wording of the faculty adjunct election email sent to department chairs regarding the responsibility of said chairs to nominate one adjunct faculty member per department to run for representative. This year’s email only asked for a list of adjunct faculty.
• Consider adding in a minor change to the Adjunct Election: “If no nominations are received by the department chairs within a month of the email being sent, an open call directly to adjunct faculty will be sent out through Institutional Research.” (A template for the open call letter would need to be written and added to the materials in the Internal Rules Handbook.)
• Stand ready to administer all Faculty Senate elections as necessary.

Information Technology Committee. Senator Fry shared the committee’s progress on their standard charges for the academic year.

In addition, Senator Fry, as chair of the committee, was asked to serve on a university IT Sub Committee to review IT reform. The additional committee members include Tanlee Wasson, Barry Poynter, Jeff Whitaker, Carrie Ernst, and Dana Fohl. The RFP was solicited and closed on March 24. Three vendors made the final cut for interviews against a rubric in which each of the committee members followed. The committee met and held three, one-hour meetings with the top three vendors. The committee unanimously voted on a vendor to perform the consulting services. The work and contract most likely won’t begin until mid-May, so the work will probably be split across the fiscal year. The budget is not very transparent and we are unsure where the funds are coming from. As of the day of this report, the name of the vendor will not be released until the contract has been issued.

Faculty can interface with this process by being involved with the surveys, interviews, and open discussions the vendors will be conducting. More information will be shared with faculty as it becomes available.

Next year, in addition to our regular charges we are recommending that the Faculty Senate IT committee be responsible for assessing the IT reform consulting.

Faculty Rights and Responsibilities Committee. Senator Ginn shared a year-end report which provided an update on their progress on their charges for the year.

Rules Committee. Senator Bishop-Ross reported that significant updates were made to the Chair and Vice Chair procedures as well as the Budget and Welfare Committees and the updated internal procedures were passed at the April Senate meeting.

In addition the committee also assisted the Executive Committee and other relevant units on campus in the creation of an updated version of the Faculty Handbook. That work is still in progress.

The committee also considered updating the archaic language in the Organization of the Faculty of EKU (Part 7 of the old faculty handbook) but determined that an update was not needed at this time.

Recommendations for next year include the following:

• Continue to work on the replacement for the faculty handbook.
• Make the fixes regarding the adjunct faculty selection process for their senator.

Welfare Committee. Senator Manning reported that the following charges were undertaken and completed:

• Continue to monitor and inform the Faculty Senate on matters related to compensation including, but not limited to, salary compression, across-the-board salary increases, and merit pay.
• Coordinate with the Budget Committee to determine the cost and future rate of the health benefits at EKU.
• Continue monitoring the external environment for higher education as well as faculty perceptions of benefits being provided. Work directly with key decision makers within and outside of EKU to improve workplace conditions and compensation.
• Produce short list of requests related to the tuition waiver that can be passed along to administrators. (For example, we could request that dependent students with outside merit-based scholarships be permitted to make use of any funds exceeding tuition expenses if they spend them on campus.)
• Survey faculty and staff regarding perceptions of Jaggaer.
  Recommendation: The committee recommends continuing with this charge next year and plans to distribute a survey to faculty within the first month of the fall semester.
• Coordinate with the Rules Committee to assess and update internal procedures.

ADJOURNMENT:

Senator Grabeel moved to adjourn at approximately 5:15pm.

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