IFS Meeting June 6, 2008

1:00 p.m. Report on new shared governance model. Steve Clements, Chair, EOU University Council and Dan Milke, EOU Senate President. EOU had a university wide assembly. That included teaching faculty, administrative faculty, some classified staff and student leadership. The major issues brought forward to the assembly were curriculum issues. Three years ago a committee was established and that committee was made of the same combination of the former assembly groups. A two party structure was created with University Senate and University Council. There are some things that need to be governed by the Senate & others by the Council.

New governance has existed for one academic year. Steve reported that EOU is seeing some strengths and some weaknesses in the process. One difficulty is trying to get representation at a higher level. Two councils are requesting representation on the University President’s Council. Perhaps it will happen under the next President. Effective two-way communications is one of the most difficult problems. More people attended the assembly and now there are less people attending and therefore not disseminating the actions.

Dan said that he felt that the representatives should be the person who gets messages and information from their respective committees back to their organizations. The communications must also be strengthened between the main Senate & Council and the committees under their oversight.

University Council and Senate were both kept out of the BART plan and the people who participated were not representative. Unsure if there is a true “shared” governance. We may never get there. We get to share what the administration will let us share. Some of the decisions by some committees have been reversed by the administration in the past.

Fixed term, non-tenure track faculty are eligible to serve on either the senate or council. Terms of appointment to the governance committee are staggered and when a position becomes vacant, the council or senate contacts the group whose position is open and they are asked to elect a new member from their group.

There is a checks and balance system in the system. When one body makes a decision, the other body is given time to review the decision and request reconsideration of that issue. Concern was raised about the change from individual faculty voting to the representative type of government. Because of attendance being uneven, it was difficult to accomplish anything that took more than one meeting. EOU does not have an initiative process that requests a full vote by all faculty members, if requested.

The system is still new and the process still needs some changes. There is no support from the administration. Members are having to collect and record information and there is little support on creating a web presence. Not all meetings are web-cast. Assistance from an FTE position would be beneficial. However, with EOU’s budget issues this past year, there has not been support as needed.

One IFS member requested that the IFS address the issues of governance in the future. Some universities are finding a difficult time to get people to participate in committees under the faculty governance system. EOU is not facing this problem at the beginning of their new, shared governance model.

2:07 p.m. – George Pernsteiner

To what extent can an administration overrule the faculty? George Pernsteiner reported, that the President has the power and is empowered by the board to make decisions concerning faculty. Faculty feel that they have no power. At one university, faculty spent many years creating a strategic plan and when a new president came in, the plan was done away with in its entirety.

The multiple searches are not just an Oregon problem. Some of the positions are opening after being filled for a long time. One of the requirements for new presidents is that they must also be fundraisers. They must insure that the entity that they oversee continues and funding is being reduced by the legislature. George report that what we are seeing in academic searches is that those remain under the purview of the faculty but the rest of the administration is more a business model. Some faculty expressed concern about the new business model and the affect it will have on academic freedoms. George told the members that this fear has been cyclical over time since the 1920’s. It is possible that this is possibly true. Academics have changed over time and one change is that we now have disciplines. The definition of an educated individual has also changed over time.

3:13 p.m. Housekeeping. Tomorrow, breakfast will start at 7:30 a.m. and our meeting will start at 8:00 a.m.

3:20 p.m. Representatives from the faculty union, Ruth Davenport and Bill Grigsby, came to report on the AAP response to the BART (budget and repositioning team) plan. Since no members of faculty were on the BART team, members of the faculty union reviewed the plan and prepared a response to the formal plan. Financial stability was one of the specific considerations of the AAP response. This included cuts in faculty that increased remaining faculty loads as well of other lack of detail on other cuts in programs. The group also requested more participation of all stakeholders. Another stage addressed was marketing & branding to look at what do we market and can EOU utilize the marketing faculty to assist in this stage. The final stage looked into was revitalization and how to get students into the university and keep them.

3:40 p.m. President Lund, Provost Michael Jaeger and Vice-President of Finance Virginia Key presented the IFS members information on the BART process. The President’s cabinet made up the BART team, vice-presidents, provost and deans. President Lund discussed some of the potential, now for increased enrollment and change from this time a year ago when the BART plan was developed. EOU was facing a rapid decline in fund balance due to various reasons. Additionally, there was a downward trajectory in enrollment. Also had problems with the local media that contributed to our enrollment drop. Finally, the vote of no confidence against the last president was the final straw. The instructions given to President Lund when she took over was that she could not go into the red. The administration needed to prepare a 3-year budget and get fund balance in a reasonable range. This cut was $4.5 million and these cuts had to be implemented quickly. The time was also a time of union salary negotiations and mending fences. Various other strategies were undertaken. EOU had drafts of the SOU plan and used it as a basis for beginning their plan. Union timelines also were part of the consideration.

The draft plan was required by the Chancellor in August and faculty were not around. This is one reason that the faculty were not made a part of the BART team. Emails were being sent to keep stakeholders informed. Open forums were held in every building, some were not attended.

The projection was that October would be the time when the plan would be presented to the OUS board. On October 31^st, President Lund sent an email copy of the plan to the Chancellor. In November, the plan was discussed with the OUS Board. The EOU President’s council did not like using the financial exigency route. Some savings on the cuts were realized and therefore the total budget cuts were reduced to some extent.

The final plan was postponed until early January 2008 when it was presented in its entirety to the OUS board. Comments were received over many weeks prior to that presentation. Immediate supervisors met with any individuals whose positions were being reduced or eliminated.

Provost Jaeger addressed how the cuts were made. Since a significant cut was made in previous years, there was not must left to cut. What core values were important was one of the first questions. They could not cut academic programs with larger enrollment. Cuts within the direct service to the students could not be cut either. Cutting athletics and student services was also added to the list of core values. Specifically cutting on equal percentages was not possible as departments and divisions were not equal.

VP Finance, Virginia Key presented a chart showing the originally determined cuts as distributed by division as well as by employee classification. New charts showed an actual, lesser decrease in faculty cuts. When vacated positions existed, those positions were cut as often as possible so that people were not cuts.

A new enrollment division was created with the BART process. The desire was to also plan with changes that would be made in the future to get EOU back on track. Additional changes were made within the technology area, which had not received focus in the past. Plans are still being made to look forward to the future and make more EOU even more stable.

4:__ p.m. Meeting adjourned until working dinner meeting at 16:55.