September 17, 1999

November 19, 1999 (Preceded by the Colloquium on Technology in Teaching on November 18, 1999)

February 18, 2000

April 7, 2000 (This represents a change from previous calendars.)

September 15, 2000

November 17, 2000

February 16, 2001

April 20, 2001

 Hugh Hindman announced that the North Carolina AAUP will hold its spring conference in Raleigh on April 17, the day following our next meeting. Delegates are invited to attend.

 Dan Noland asked that delegates consider nominees for Assembly leadership positions during their committee meetings. Several committees do not have nominees for chairs. The slate will be presented at the meeting this evening.

 The Chair wrote the President regarding the privacy of computer records and asked that we be kept informed about changes in the Public Records Law.

 The Chair wrote the President requesting that the President encourage the Chancellors to include faculty members as participants in Board of Trustees meetings.

 The Chair has appointed Hugh Hindman to chair a committee of the Assembly to consider faculty grievance processes on each campus. The President has also asked Mr. Richard Robinson, Vice President for Legal Affairs, to form a task force to consider this issue, and the members of the Faculty Assembly task force may become members of that committee.

A task force will be appointed by the President to consider copyright issues, and will include four Faculty Assembly delegates: Gloria Knight, Lolly Gasaway, Pam Hunter and Mary Anne Nixon. Librarians, campus attorneys, technology transfer officers and others will also be members, including four other faculty members.

 The Chair asked the faculty Senate chairs to attend the Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee meeting for at least the first hour.

 President Broad reported on her meeting with Gene Rice, who was very complimentary about his discussions with chairs.

The President reported on her meeting with retired faculty members who reside in the local area. She reported that the group was extremely supportive of the University. 

The President introduced Mr. J. B. Milliken, our new Vice President for Public Affairs and University Advancement and Ms. Diana Oblinger who working with the University on the development of the information technology strategy. Ms. Oblinger's experience with IBM will be invaluable indeveloping the next stage.

 Major initiatives for 1999 have been compiled, and the President suggested that a couple deserve emphasis and discussion:

Although obtaining new science facilities is important, we must also provide state of the art equipment to fill these. We must also increase the amount of the stipends we provide to graduate students. The President agreed with these points. 

Regarding the recent Legislative decision, which apparently was contrary to the desires of GA, to provide Eight million dollars in tuition waivers and provide them only to UNC CH and NCSU.

 Regarding our resolution about faculty representation on Board of Trustees, has there been any progress other than the two institutions that have started this procedure. The President will raise this issue next week when she meets with the Chancellors.

 Regarding a perception among faculty that we are spending more time assessing each other's performance, do you believe this is a perception only, and is there is any documentation about the amount of time spent onassessment activities.

 Regarding salary equity on each campus, especially between new hires and established faculty and equity among the institutions. As campuses attempt to deal with inequity issues, are there any ideas to develop sources of funds to deal with these issues?

Brought greetings from the Association of Student Governments. Each institution has four voting delegates to this body, which tries to address system level issues important to students and address these at a system level. Major initiatives include making a student member on the Board of Governors as a voting member, although that individual is currently an ex officio non-voting member. A second initiative is the improvement of academic advising at each institution. Finally, keeping education affordable and accessible remains an important issue. This year, the first student led academic advising workshop will be held at UNC CH to discuss advising issues. Each institution will have a faculty member invited. The group has also initiated a student led award for good teaching and advising. Common goals between our two organizations may include raising faculty salaries, which the student group has consistently supported. A second common concern may be facility adequacy. Focusing on quality education in light of projected enrollment increase is a concern, as well. Lolly Gasaway will be invited to their next meeting.

The nature of faculty work will change, if for no other reason than the changing demographics of the faculty. Many faculty are in the later stages of their careers, and their plans and successors are often known given the data on each campus. On most campus, there is a large group of senior faculty, a small group in the middle, and a large group of younger faculty. This mirrors the growth and support of education. In the last seven years, there has been a 30% replacement at the junior level.

The future of faculty work will be influenced by technology, which breaks down the boundaries among departments, and between the university and outside private entities.

Finally, there are the demographic shifts in the student population and the increasing role of alternative providers. Private organizations see education as a profit center, and are operating by doing the easiest things in the most cost-effective way. These trends will lead to many changes.

First, there will be a move from focusing on faculty and what we know to a focus on learning, of both students and the community. Second, we will move from professional autonomy to institution building. Third, instead of working in individualistic ways, we will move to collaboration (my work to our work.) Fourth we will move from a culture of unexamined assumptions to a culture of evidence, where we will have to demonstrate that we do what we say has merit. Many of the private providers are successful because they can demonstrate their effectiveness. Our skills should make us effective in assessment and evaluation. Fifth, we are moving from career dependence to career resilience. We must focus on developmental efforts on faculty, especially early in their careers, to keep them up to date in their fields and with technology. Compared to private enterprise, we invest little in development. Finally, there is a movement from universities existing as separate worlds to places where faculty take responsibility for public life and democratic participation.

We must also merge together a collegial culture, which is faculty oriented, peer led, peer reviewed, in a community of scholars with shared governance clashes with a managerial culture that emphasizes accountability, bottom line, worth instead of merit, customer orientation and organizational instead of individual or discretionary time. These two cultures must merge, with members in each attempting to understand the values of the other. What may result is a collaborative culture, one which is "bi-cultural" and represents a partnership that creates the future in a proactive manner. The tensions between the two cultures must be resolved. Part of this relies on our ability to articulate the values of our current culture and to understand the values of the other.

Regarding post tenure review within our university, Dr. Rice applauded the emphasis we have placed on development. He also hopes that the review process will serve to increase our dialogues on teaching and that it will help to make our teaching efforts more public and open. Perhaps this will allow us to recognize our accomplishments and strengthen our ability to reward our efforts.

The link between post tenure review and phased retirement was not intended, but may be positive. Those who "retire well" are those who plan well, and phased retirement may help that process. We need to increase our efforts at helping faculty plan for retirement. Senior faculty echoed the importance of this, although the Department Chairs felt somewhat unable to address this issue. For post tenure review to be effective, resources must be made available to recognize achievement and to address the inadequacies that require development. One addition to the process may be funds and programs devoted to "later life planning" that perhaps may involve off campus counseling.

 Reminded that the discussion topics for April will include the Space Study and Information Technology.

 Asked for volunteers to become the webmaster for the Assembly site.

 Said that the EC had considered committee structure and had discussed possible changes. The proposed changes will be brought up for discussion in April.

 Announced that The Code has been revised, but that the revisions do not seem to be substantial, although few have had a chance to review it in depth.

 The possibility of a hiring freeze was introduced as a way the Legislature may deal with decreased revenues.

 Fred Eckel has been serving on a GA committee examining mutual fund options for faculty. Fred reported that a recommendation has been submitted to the Board of Governors for a company to provide a fund.

 The benefits study group appointed by the President includes two members of Faculty Assembly, including Keith Howell and Jose d'Arruda. Kitty McCollum has been a resource to this group. The group has met several times and has submitted a report to the President. The report has a goal of moving the system into the top third of similar institutions. To do this, they focused on the most significant benefits: retirement and health insurance. Data from several professional organizations and consulting groups were used, comparisons were made to relevant peer groups for all categories of institutions, and on almost all comparisons our system is below average. Our goal is to reach the top third for all institutions. The recommendations ask the President to seek legislation action to:

 The Welfare Committee requests support from the Faculty Assembly on these recommendations. A motion: "General support for the recommendations" passed without dissent.

 The second item addressed by the committee dealt with part-time faculty. The group examined the percent of faculty who are tenured or tenured track at each institution. Over a ten year period, the percentage of faculty who are tenure or tenured track has declined by about 2% in the system. This varied greatly among campuses s for example on nearly half the campuses the percentage is closer to 7%, indicating an increase in the use of part-time or temporary appointments. A few campuses have seen a slight gain in percent. This data will be available for examination.

 The committee considered a request for a Faculty Assembly appointed (or hired by GA) ombudsman to handle problems, concerns, and complaints of faculty. The committee discovered that in other systems this is often done on a local campus basis. After discussion, the committee decided not to pursue the issue.

The committee declined to study equity issues further, given the President's recent response to this issue.

Met with Ken Grogan on budget issues, including examining a summary of GA's budget requests. The committee was concerned about three areas not found in the Governor's budget: information technology initiative, distance education, and libraries. There is no recommendation for any increased funding for these initiatives in the Governor's budget.

The committee refined a draft of a survey that will be sent to all campuses, either to the Chair of the campus budget committee, the committee or the faculty senate. The survey will solicit information describing successful models where campus committees work well with administration; whether a web site of FAQ maintained by the Assembly budget committee would be helpful, and finally it will solicit issues that they would like to see the Faculty Assembly committee address.

 A concern was raised that the increase in tuition has the effect of decreasing the amount of money given to the system by the State. This represents a decrease in our operating budget. Chair Gasaway will write the President expressing our concern about the cuts that may be coming as a result of operating efficiencies.

Diana Oblinger presented an update on the instructional technology strategy. She discussed the overall plan and its four main task forces (campus teaching and learning technology, distance education, student services and administrative systems) and used the Student Services Task Force as an example to discuss its work. Discussion followed on many points and concerns were expressed by committee members in areas including: 1) displacement of front-line personnel by programmers; 2) needs for training of faculty; 3) lack of addressing research technology; and 4) fears of needing to fit into a "one size fits all" program across institutions. It was noted that Diana is available to speak at campuses.

Judith Pulley summarized her recent enrollment workshop presentation. The rest of the meeting was spent discussing the enrollment projections and their impact on the various campuses. Growth alternatives were presented that will allow campuses that want to grow to do so, and campuses that need to stay small (e.g. UNC-A, NCSA) to stay small, and to bring up the other smaller campuses to the threshold of efficiency at 5000 s 6000 students where an economy of scale begins to take effect. Other campuses would accommodate modest growth, with some of the demand being met via off-campus centers and distance learning which would accommodate approximately 10,000 students by 2008.

Over dinner, there was additional discussion of these and other topics, including concerns about the certification of teachers who take one year master's degrees. The committee had hoped to meet with Charles Coble but had been unable to arrange to do so at the last moment and will attempt to schedule a meeting in April.

Final revision of the Bylaws should be available on the web. However, several issues remain. The committee asks the Chair for time at the April meeting to discuss a revised committee structure. After that discussion, the Governance Committee will propose changes to the Bylaws that reflect the desired committee structure.

Met with the senate chairs. Three issues were discussed:

The committee requests that a GA task force be formed (or be directed) to study the role of part time faculty on different campuses. Regarding teaching loads, it seems that on one campus faculty are given no credit for teaching labs. After collecting data from campuses, it appears that only one institution has this practice. The committee asks that Chair Gasaway report the findings to the Senate chair of the one university. Post Tenure review s each member read the policies for three institutions. All institutions were in compliance with the requirements from GA, but there were some items of concern such as the amount of input made by administrators. The committee recommends that there be a close monitoring by faculty on each campus and that a report be made back to Faculty Assembly about the implementation of post tenure review after one year of operation.

The professional development advisory committee had recommended the appropriation of funds to teaching and learning centers. The professional development committee discussed how this money might be used on each campus.

The committee also concluded that the amount of time being spent assessing faculty performance seemed to be disproportional to its benefit and that the various evaluations were not coordinated. They will continue the discussion to consider the effort involved and to see if there may be ways of streamlining the various assessments.

At the final meeting, the committee will examine its charge in light of its most recent activities.

The committee plans to ask that the 1.6 million sought for teaching centers receive the highest priority.

A resolution by the Association of Student Governments (Resolution 005 of that body) was presented: It reads:

 A motion was made that the Faculty Assembly support this resolution. The motion passed without dissent.

 Hugh Hindman, as part of the ad hoc committee on grievances, distributed a set of questions to each delegation or each senate chair that examine the grievance processes on each campus. The questions were developed in conjunction with Mr. Richard Robinson to solicit information for both task forces. The problem faced by both groups is that the policies and procedures differ on each campus. The task force asks that appropriate campus representatives complete the questionnaire and return the information by the next Assembly meeting.

 The Chair announced that certification of new delegates is due on May 1.

 The Chair asked for a volunteer to coordinate our web site. Howard Neufeld volunteered.

 The Chair reported that she has visited with five more Faculty Senates.

 Discussion topics for April: The President suggested Eva Kline to discuss the space study. The other topic might be technology, with Diane Oblinger.

 The meeting location for April has not determined, due to the unclear status of renovations at GA.

 The meeting was adjourned at 8:24.