Faculty Senate Minutes
October 13, 2015
Meeting convened Tuesday, October 13, 2015 at 7:00pm by Oliver Dinius, Vice-Chair of the Faculty Senate.
Senators in attendance: Rachna Prakash, Charles Ross, Kris Belden-Adams, Patrick Curtis, Brice Noonan, Robert Doerksen, Greg Tschumper, Ahmed Al-Ostaz, Brad Cook, Tossi Ikuta, Feng Wang, Tom Garrett, Richard Gordon, Adetayo Alabi, Ann Fisher-Worth, Jay Watson, Andrew O-Reilly, Yang-Chieh Fu, Oliver Dinius, Noell Wilson, Robert Magee, Antonia Eliason, Stacey Lantagne, Dennis Bunch, Lorri Williamson, Ashley Dees, Savannah Kelly, Kristin Rogers, Dwight Frink, Lifeng Yang, Sasha Kocic, Tejas Pandya, Heather Allen, Amy Fang-Yen Hsieh, Adam Estes, Michael Gardiner, Mary Roseman, Meagan Rosenthal, Travis King, James Bos, Breese Quinn, Ben Jones, Jody Holland, Amy Fisher, Marcos Mendoza, Minjoo Oh, Allan Bellman, Joe Sumrall, Mark Ortwein, Michael Barnett
Senators excused: Dan Novak
Senators absent: Sasan Nouranian, Jim Lumpp, Darren Grem, Milam Aiken, Michael Repka, Danielle Maack
Approval of September 15, 2015 Minutes
Minutes of September 15, 2015 meeting were approved by the Faculty Senate as a whole without comment.
Presentation by Morris Stocks, Interim Chancellor of the University of Mississippi
The Office of the Provost has had a representative at the Faculty Senate meetings for nearly every meeting.
This is a time of transition. Chancellor Stocks thanked all the members of his office for their service.
Tomorrow, October 14, 2015, there is an event where several UPD police officers will be recognized by our local office of the FBI for their work on the James Meredith statue incident.
On the Chancellor search, Michael Barnett is there serving on the Search Advisory Committee tonight. We had a 32 member campus advisory committee and some of those members were added to the Search Advisory Committee. Interviews started today and continue tomorrow; next round will be next month. There is a goal of naming a preferred candidate in early December, who the Board will then bring to the campus. Chancellor Stocks is optimistic because our campus is vibrant and gaining recognition daily.
Over $100 million research dollars were generated last year. We have hundreds of thousands of hours of service to our professions, communities, state and region. 1
As of November 1, 2015, most of the last 12 months Chancellor Stocks will have been serving as either acting or interim chancellor. His theme during that time has been let’s maintain the momentum that we have going, as there is tremendous momentum at our university. As this is vague, he asked the leadership group to set some tangible objectives for the coming year. These are very precise goals that will help us be a better university.
Provosts look inwardly – so it has been a shift to a general outward looking focus with a different set of constituents. Priorities include working with the IHL commissioner and trustees, to strengthen the relationship between the University of Mississippi, the medical school, and the Board of Trustees. Chancellor Stocks has worked on emphasizing the good work the medical center is doing. He is also encouraging IHL to adjust and to work on their materiality threshold, since they require a contract of over $250,000 to be approved by the IHL Board, which given that the medical center has a nearly $2 billion budget, means that they have to get permission with the board for smaller contracts. There should be different materiality thresholds for different institutions. One of the issues cited with Chancellor Jones was contract issues, so he has been working towards addressing that. He is spending certain days at the medical campus.
He set a goal of 21 major donor visits. He has spoken at high schools, and has committed to spending time with our mayor. Our town and gown relationship is important. He is also working on Chancellor Jones’ project to make the university more inclusive. In the search for a vice chancellor for diversity, there were no recommendations for a campus visit, so they are working on next steps, and the way the action plan is written, the provost will lead that mission. The plan is now to identify a search consultant to help in the next effort to find the right person. A second point on the action plan was to provide history and context to some of the monuments and buildings on our campus, with a small taskforce appointment by Chancellor Stocks to begin to work at least on the buildings and monuments identified and to begin to find a way to add some history and context to those pieces of history.
Right now there are $900 million of facilities under construction and the assets are valued at $2.7 billion. If you think of it as a business, portfolio includes a hospital with 1000 beds and over 10,000 employees; annual payroll over $1 billion; summer utility bill for one summer is $2.14 million; there is a private 94-office police force; almost 30,000 meals per day provided; permanent housing for over 6000 provided; has the busiest general aviation airport in Mississippi with capacity to park 130+ planes and land a 737; bus shuttle services serve almost 1.5 million people per year. Four years ago there was no bus service. There is a 146 room hotel and a convention center; an 18-hole 220-acre golf course handling 24,000 rounds per year and generating over $1 million in annual revenue; wellness centers serving over 20,000 members in 7 locations; nationally acclaimed entertainment enterprises. Telecommunications company manages 2400 miles of cable and over 5000 telephone extensions; post office manages 2 million pieces of outgoing mail; process more than 80,000 non-payroll checks per year. There is a 23 megawatt power company enough to run a city; water and sewage company with 1 million gallons of treated water that can be pumped at 4,000 gallons a minute. Prices lower than competitors; customers very satisfied, and you pay less than other companies.
The situation here with the IHL board is as if Pepsi had the same governing board as Coca-Cola. The revenue source that was 50% of total revenue in 2000 (state appropriation) was 15% in 2014. Federal funds generates 3% of our revenue which requires strict adherence to expensive guidelines. We are the largest employer in Mississippi. We are a complicated and wonderful institution. 2
We need to grow our graduate enrollment and invest in research. We will continue to push for student success, as well as plan for growth, continuing our support from alumni and friends. Athletics are important as the doorstep to our university. We are the second fastest growing flagship institution in the country after Alabama. We have to manage that growth. We will continue to maintain a strong financial position.
Q: How are we going to improve research?
A: We are joint reporting with the medical center now. We need to provide the environment necessary for people to conduct the kind of research that will bring necessary recognition at the university.
Q: A few years ago in the same presentation, Chancellor Jones talked about changes/non-changes to the political environment. Is there any change in trends since we just had new appointments to the IHL Board?
A: If Governor Bryant is reelected he will have the opportunity to have appointed the entire IHL Board. The terms have been shortened to 9 years. Have met new appointees, and don’t think you could categorize them into one political camp. Did an interview with a group trying to make some recommendations on health policy and asked about the IHL Board. One question was whether IHL Board is made up of people without higher education experience. While this is true, Chancellor Stocks would speculate that Boards of Trustees across the nation aren’t generally made up of former provosts or chancellors. This is a dynamic political environment.
Q: Where do you see the international profile of this university?
A: This should have been included in the presentation as this is important. We entrust some of these responsibilities to our senior international officer. Faculty involvement may not be as closely tied to the senior international officer’s work, but he would encourage the faculty to help the provost and chancellor with suggestions on how to do this and how to improve international exchanges with faculty.
Senate Committee Reports
Executive Committee: Nothing to report.
General Academic Affairs: Nothing to report.
Academic Support Affairs: Nothing to report.
Finance: Nothing to report.
Governance: Nothing to report.
University Services: Aid in transporting individuals with handicaps around campus. Met with group that involved various stakeholders to discuss. Athletics can transport students with injuries, but 3
there is no other system in play. The only solution is the expansion of the current OUT system. There will be a new circle line that will run around campus to transport people around the heart of campus. This bus will be a level entry bus and there are 4 more level entry busses being introduced. Beyond that it does not look like there would be a system with trained employees to cart people around who need it. Instead we will stay with the system we have now and expand it. If you are injured, it is a very simple one day process to send a note from the doctor to parking and get a temporary handicapped tag for your vehicle, so that if you have a parking pass, commuter or faculty, already, you can park in the Circle.
Old Business
Guidelines for Distinguished Professor Appointments
Motion to bring it off the table. Motion passed.
Maurice Eftink who was on the committee to come up with the guidelines is here to help us work through the suggestions from Robert Doerkson.
Stylistic changes
Vice-Chair Dinius suggested that we could take the stylistic changes as a block. Motion proposed and approved. Stylistic changes taken in block.
Next point: change from two to six years of service at the University of Mississippi, based on a suggestion that they should do their service here. Proposal was seconded.
Eftink indicated that the Committee suggested that if a school was trying to hire a really outstanding candidate at Full Professor rank, didn’t want to use it as a mechanism for hiring them, but as a carrot and stick, allowing promotion within 2 years when hired as a full professor.
Here, the language indicates that there are exceptions possible on this point.
Vote to accept language: 25 for, 17 against. Change approved.
Eftink: This has been shared with Deans as well who may have input.
Next point: Current holders of a fulltime administrative position are excluded from being candidates for the Distinguished Professor rank, but the rank can be held by people who are promoted to administration after having been appointed Distinguished Professor. Proposed sentence addition.
Doerksen: Idea of Distinguished Faculty is to retain professors and to honor those who are excellent in teaching, research and service, so it should be made explicitly not regarding those in upper levels of administration.
Comment: Does this include Chairs? 4
Doerksen: Chose not be specific as to whether Chairs should be included or not. Amendment proposed.
Proposal seconded.
Comment: Chairs should be eligible since they can be really active with research, service and teaching and can be full professors. Shouldn’t penalize them.
Eftink: Committee did discuss this – decided to be silent on this for a very similar reason, because of the Chair issue. Thought it would indirectly be limiting of the ability to hire people.
Comment: Directors of research institutes would fall under that category as well.
Doerksen: Another concern is idea of instituting a new rank that would benefit people who are already at the top of the pyramid. This is a valuable thing for professors in general, but we shouldn’t just look at this as a way of awarding people who are already at Dean or higher level.
Comment: Pharmacy has assistant deans that are associate level and active. This is something that has come up significantly in our department. Could end up pigeonholing people.
Comment: Concerns in the library department from multiple colleagues that because we are faculty but not teaching faculty, and the teaching part isn’t in the classroom, there aren’t necessarily methods to evaluate. Possible issue of fairness, or rather to make sure that some of these non-teaching different types of faculty wouldn’t be excluded.
Comment: Process of selection is by nature going to eliminate nearly every administrator. Downside is the tacit support people want to give administrators which could give behind the scenes political support.
Comment: Also in some way related to process of how the dossier would be reviewed. If by a faculty not administrative committee, dynamic might be different.
Vote on amendment: Vote for: 3. Vote against: 39. Amendment struck.
Next point: Subsection B: process of composing the dossier, and changing it to usual procedure for promotion to full professor where the chair is the party to request the letters.
Doerksen: Proposes amendment. Seconded.
Eftink: The problem with this is if the person being nominated is the chair, which is why we had a less specific person called the nominator request letters, or if there is a situation where there is a conflict between the chair and the faculty member, could have another full professor nominate the faculty member.
Comment: This is a serious concern, where the chair may not be in good terms with the faculty member.
Eftink: Included both the possibility of applying for and being nominated for the title of Distinguished Professor because some people might be humble and need to be nominated.
Doerksen: Need some person considered to be good quality to supervise. So if a chair nominates himself, then the Dean would be in charge of that. Proposes adding sentence: “If the applicant or
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nominee is a chair or higher administrator, then his or her immediate supervisor is responsible for soliciting letters of recommendation.”
Comment: Still doesn’t address issue of where the immediate supervisor doesn’t get along with main party – should be other avenue.
Comment: Tradition is that this goes through department first. Is there a parallel mechanism that covers a situation where if a Chair is going up for full, they can’t be solicitor of letters?
Comment: The key is whether you consider this truly a promotion or an award or an honor. If it is an honor, then you might feel uncomfortable following the promotion guidelines, otherwise the promotion strategy is the most effective.
Eftink: Yes, this is meant for distinguished professors – they will often have more achievements than the Chair. Need mechanisms for people who are not their immediate supervisor to nominate them. This is all about getting truly distinguished people forward.
Doerksen: Possibility of going outside chair system is somewhat surprising. If someone is about to be promoted from associate to full professor, wouldn’t it be nice to get someone from elsewhere to nominate them or push the nomination through. The way this was presented to us and most of the wording made it seem as though this would be taken care of at the department level. If this is really superdepartmental, then why not have the whole thing with a special committee to deal with the distinguished professor award and have it unrelated to the existing departments.
Eftink: You could. Could also build the review process along the lines of the existing process.
Comment: Maybe going from full to this is different than going from associate to full – seems logical that one might be judged much more on the national and international scale or even at greater odds than their chair, and is this something to take into consideration.
Comment: With the mentality that this is not a promotion but an award, it should be different.
Propose: call the question.
Vote on amendment: Vote for ceasing discussion. 7 against; 24 for; 1 abstention.
Vote on amendment as whole: 8 for; 26 against. Language reverts to original language.
Comment: There might be a situation where they are both in competition to get the same title of distinguished professor, so it makes sense to have an alternative route.
Next point: Deletion of sentence regarding only combination of excellence in teaching and service and the replacement of external letters with internal ones.
Doerksen: Proposal for amendment. Seconded.
Eftink: When we looked at similar guidelines from other universities, we found some cases where these sort of distinguished professorships were primarily for teaching and service. There may be cases where people are so outstanding at teaching and service that we didn’t want to limit that. Some universities 6
had two titles, but we decided to roll it into one. Teaching and service, especially if more local is not easy to evaluate by people at other institutions.
Comment: How likely is it that someone with those credentials would be full professor?
Eftink: We have research full professors, but that wouldn’t be this issue. Could be someone who was active in research and shifted.
Comment: Support having them all rolled into one rather than having separate titles, because that other title would be looked on as second class.
Doerksen: If it came down on nominating people on great service, could find people outside of the university to write letters; too provincial to focus internally.
Comment: If there was an instructional professor who was so outstanding and distinguished to be considered for this rank, they would be strongly involved in national organizations in their field and would have relationships with people in their field. Shouldn’t be hard for an instructional professor to get external letters and they should be able to get them.
Comment: If they are truly distinguished they will be out there participating at a national level in their academic field.
Vote on proposed amendment: Votes for: 39. Votes against: 0. Abstentions: 2.
Amendment approved.
Next point: Elimination of a sentence regarding reviewing administrator soliciting confidential input from other full professors and Distinguished Professors.
Eftink: Not sure why this should be struck, since they should be able to use whatever resources they have in soliciting information. Recognizes that other people holding title of Distinguished Professor would have input potentially.
Doerksen: If it is already known that this sort of thing can happen, there is no point in mentioning it. It also makes it sound like there is a club of Distinguished Professors who can pick who joins or not. Don’t like the idea of backroom consultation put into a document like that.
Comment: Any discussion of formal faculty committee?
Eftink: That is a possibility – we considered it, but decided to build on existing structure. Would be concerned if we promoted people to this level without possibility of faculty input.
Comment: Counter for concern about cliques: if you don’t have this language, there is the potential for chairs with pet professors in their department to promote them with them being railroaded through.
Comment: But point D says all tenure full professors get to vote on this, which would seem to be a way to address this issue. Other question: what is a unit?
Eftink: A unit is typically a department but there are other units that are centers, or schools, like journalism or law. 7
Doerksen: If there were a rogue chair this would seem to support deleting the sentence.
Comment: The sentence isn’t saying full professors can give their opinions – just allows reviewers to solicit input. Do the chair, dean, etc. already have the ability to solicit any opinion they want even without the language?
Eftink: Our current promotion policy has section that says that in a promotion Deans can constitute committees within their school or college to provide input.
Eftink: Would like to have this go through the Faculty Senate but time pressure isn’t huge. Would like to see it get done within this academic year.
Motion to table this discussion. Motion seconded
Comment: Can we first figure out what the order of nomination is – it would help get a clearer sense on what we are voting for.
Vote for tabling the motion. Vote: Unanimous.
New Business
Statement on Commitment to Freedom of Expression
University of Chicago issued a document recently affirming values of university which is a beautiful document on freedom of expression. Ole Miss is in a position to be a real leader on this issue, as it is a place to supports freedom of speech, and it would be great way to be seen as such. This will be sent to the Academic Affairs committee to be discussed further and presented as motion at a future date.
Email Storage
We don’t have enough email storage. The opt-in Vault system is strange. Students have more space than we do due to being on a Gmail system. We have 486MB. We have a legal obligation to save emails. People are putting things into Gmail, which is currently a violation of university policy. For law faculty, Gmail has become preferred due to Attorney-Client privilege issues in practice. The storage issue is more general. Academic Support committee will look into this issue and present this in a future meeting.
Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned.
Next meeting is Tuesday, November 10, 2015 at 7:00pm.
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