Minutes of the University Senate Meeting, April 11, 2001
Present: L. Alpert, B. Altmann, E.
Bailey, E. Campbell, S. Cohen, R. Darst, J. Dawson, D. Dinihanian, D. Dugaw, J.
Earl, C. Ellis, D. Hawkins, M. Holland, L. Kintz, K. Lenn, R. McGowen, G.
McLauchlan, P. Mills, R. Moore, M. Nippold, C. Phillips, J. Raiskin, L. Robare,
N. Savage, J. Schombert, S. Stolp, D. Strom, F. Tepfer, M. Vitulli, M. Weiner
T. Wheeler, P. Wright
Excused: D. Conley, M. Epstein, R.
Kellett, C. Lachman, D. Merskin, M. Reed, N. Tublitz
Absent: T. Arnold, M. Bayless, R.
Cambreleng, C. Gary, J. Hosagrahar, S. Jones, S. Kohl, S.Shauger
President
Earl called the regular meeting of the University Senate to order at 3:07 p.m.
in room 123 Pacific.
Minutes
from the March 14, 2001 meeting were approved as distributed.
Update on nominations for
faculty elections. Gwen Steigelman, Secretary
of the Senate, announced that there has been a good response for faculty
elections. The nominations web page is
linked from the senate’s main web page and lists all the various elected
councils and committees and nominations to date, updated regularly. Voting faculty will receive a paper copy of
the nominations list and balloting will take place the last week in April and
first week of May. Elections results
will be available at the next senate meeting on May 9.
Senate
President Earl moved the senate into Executive Session at 3:15 p.m. in order to
discuss and vote on the nominations for this year’s Distinguished Service
Awards, presented by Mr. Dave Hubin.
All non-senators left the room prior to the discussion and vote, and
returned shortly after the Executive Session ended at 3:25 p.m..
STATE OF THE UNIVERSITY
Lorraine
Davis who is now the senior vice provost for academic affairs and who
effectively functions as the immediate associate of Provost Moseley, would be
titled vice president for academic affairs, and would be the chief liaison with
the deans and the academic affairs component.
Reporting to that office would be the associate vice president for
budget and finance, Frances Dyke. The
associate vice president for governmental affairs, Michael Redding, and Joanne
Hugi, associate vice president for information services, will retain their
current reporting lines. The Council of
Deans will be recognized as a formal entity on the organizational chart. The vice president for research and graduate
studies, Rich Linton, is currently a vice provost, so this is a name
change.
A
significant change is that student affairs currently reports partly to the vice
president for administration. It is our
view that over a relatively short period of time there likely would be an
impending retirement, thus it would be appropriate at this point to elevate
matters dealing with student affairs to a vice presidency level, which would be
the subject of a national search. The
vice president for administration would stay essentially the same with the
potential in the future of moving budgetary functions under that vice
president. Finally, there is a current
search for a vice president for institutional advancement. This is a renaming of a position that we now
call public affairs and development.
That search should be completed in the next few weeks.
Approval
from the chancellor will be sought after completion of the campus consultative
process. The intent is to have these changes in place by July 1, 2001. President Frohnmayer then indicated that
comments on the plan were welcome.
Senator
Chris Phillips, mathematics, asked if both of the TBA positions on the chart
correspond directly to positions we now have.
President Frohnmayer responded that the vice president for student
affairs position is new and will represent a consolidation of functions that
are now being performed separately, but parallel to the provosts. Under the direction of the vice president
for student affairs, this position would be a consolidation of the functions of
enrollment services, which now reports to the provost, and the associate vice
president for student affairs, which only recently was created and reports to
the vice president for administration.
Senator
Tom Wheeler, journalism, asked if there was a site online where one could find
out more about the philosophies and rationale behind some of the decisions and
reorganizations suggested. President Frohnmayer indicated that the
organizational chart would be posted on the web immediately. Although a site providing specific decision
philosophies was not available, the deans and other senior administrators are
avail to discuss the advisability of the proposed changes. A final question was
posed by Senator Diane Dugaw, English, who asked about the impact of the
changes on the budget. President
Frohnmayer indicated that the budgetary ramifications would not be significant.
Senate
Budget Committee (SBC). Wayne Westling, law, indicated that he had hoped to be able to report
on how the university was doing in terms of catching up with our comparator
universities because that is part of the goal in the SBC White Paper -- not
just to raise salaries but to get them to 95% of parity. Instead, Mr. Westling summarized his report
with three points.
First,
the SBC does not yet have information from the comparator universities, so they
are still unable to give exact answers in terms of whether our faculty salaries
are catching up, staying the same, or falling behind. This information has not been reported in the national databank,
but that should occur by the end of April.
Second, and perhaps most importantly, despite the uncertainty of the
state budget the SBC is working on the assumption that the university we will
be able to implement the next phase of the White Paper salary increases. Mr. Westling remarked how that will be
accomplished remains a mystery because of the many uncertainties about the
state funding budget. Neverthess, the
SBC is working in a tentative way to try to develop a plan to have additional
faculty compensation for the upcoming academic year. Third, the original timetable the SBC used was not workable
during years in which legislators meet and do not settle the budget until after
our university’s academic session is over for the year. Instead, the SBC will switch to a timetable
so that in years when the legislature is tinkering with the budget, the SBC
will not begin to develop an annual plan for salary improvements until
spring/summer when those numbers begin to be firm. This fall, the SBC will present a plan to the University Senate,
and the annual increases related to the White Paper will not go into effect
until January 1st. Rather
than having salary increases going into effect at various times during the
year, the SBC suggests having a system where salary increases happen January 1st.
Ad Hoc Committee on
Trademark Licensing and Monitoring. David
Frank, Honors College and committee chair, gave a brief history of the
development of and charge to the committee, reminding the senators that the
committee was established last May to bring clarity to the many issues
surrounding the university’s membership in the Worker Rights Consortium
(WRC). After listening to widespread
opinion and voices of students, faculty, administration, trustees, alumni,
licensees, donors, and others the committee presented its report to the senate
executive committee at their September 18, 2000 meeting. The report concluded that the WRC and Fair
Labor Association (FLA) were both viable monitoring organizations. But on October 25, 2000,
President Frohnmayer, on the advice of legal counsel, announced that the
university would not make the financial contribution necessary for affiliation
with WRC. Further, on February 16,
2001, the State Board of Higher Education passed a motion that reads as
follows:
Consistent with OUS’s commitment to the free flow of commerce and efficient business practices, OUS institutions shall not adopt limits on eligibility to enter business agreements or otherwise conduct business unless based on the ability to perform, evidence of illegal activities or other criteria required or allowed by statue or Board rule. OUS institutions shall report compliance with this policy no later than December 31, 2001.
Mr.
Frank reported that the committee struggled with the board’s motion and turned
to university counsel, Melinda Grier, for advice. Counselor Grier opined that
the ruling would prohibit the university from joining a monitoring agency, and
that the university could not enforce the Code of Conduct. Counselor Grier’s interpretation was
verified by Ben Rawlins, attorney for OUS.
In the wake of that decision the committee decided that its original
mandate was no longer relevant and that it should report on its activities, set
forth one recommendation, and provide the Senate Executive Committee with
insights from its members. On March 21,
2001 the committee met with the Senate Executive Committee, presented its
report and several members of the committee addressed the Senate Executive
Committee.
The
single point of consensus the committee was able to achieve was that the
university should initiate research and instruction on the many human rights
issues raised by the WRC controversy.
In discussions with industry representatives, monitoring experts, and
labor rights activists, the committee was told that there is a great need for
sustained research on such human rights issues as the living wage, working
conditions, and the right to form labor unions. Consistent with the research mission of the University of Oregon,
the committee thus calls for the serious study of these and other related
issues. Toward this end, University of
Oregon research centers and other disciplinary departments that address labor
rights and human rights issues should collaborate on a research and educational
program that illuminates the meaning of human rights in a global economy. Mr. Frank went on to state the committee’s
recommendation that the senate petition the administration to form a
programmatic approach to the research of, and instruction in, human rights,
particularly as they relate to the condition of workers in developing
countries. The funding for this
proposal might come, in part, from licensing fees. Accordingly, the committee envisions the creation of:
§
Internship
programs for students to learn about the characteristics of human rights, codes
of conduct, and the practice of monitoring.
In the committee’s earlier discussions with the University of Oregon
Foundation’s Board of Trustees, it was told that funding might be available for
educational opportunities that would expose UO students to these issues. The committee could foresee UO students
emerging as professionals prepared to work with non-governmental organizations,
compliance officers in multi-national companies, and international and national
governmental agencies.
§
Interdisciplinary
degree programs that would join the expertise of professors who might reside in
different departments.
§
A
research center for the study of human rights. This center could sponsor
research on the issues that have been at the center of debate on the campus.
The
committee came to the conclusion that because the UO’s mission is research and
education, it should embark on programs featuring human rights that would help
students and faculty to better understand the issues confronted by the
committee during the past year. (For full text of the report, see http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~uosenate/dirsen001/dirWRC/wrc12Apr01.html.)
Committee
member Chad Sullivan, ASUO, urged everyone to read the report. He supported the recommendation for a human
rights research center, but also challenged the policy adopted by the state
board that prevents membership in monitoring organizations. He believes the policy is a poor one without
adequate public debate, and one that excludes human rights and environmental
protection in university contracts. Mr.
Sullivan suggested that, at the very least, the state board should be asked to
re-open the policy for further consideration.
He also encouraged consideration of further action to adopt a state wide
code of conduct that would address human rights and environmental concerns and
that would provide a universal code for all universities.
Senate
President Earl accepted the committee’s report and opened the floor for
discussion. Several faculty members
spoke of their disappointment in the state board’s policy precluding the
university’s affiliation with monitoring organizations. Senator Greg McLauchlan, sociology, stated
that one of the major forces behind the drive to locate production in low-wage
developing countries often is to avoid labor laws, human rights laws, and other
kinds of protections that exist in more developed countries. It appears that the state board and OUS are
saying that universities should not join organizations that are the source of
much of our knowledge about human conditions in developing countries. Senator McLauchlan suggested that such
thinking contradicts the mission of the university, which is to provide access
to knowledge. He summarized his
feelings of frustration and dismay by saying that it is a sad day for higher
education when it voluntarily steps back from affiliation with organizations
that seek to find knowledge and information about fundamental working and
living conditions in the world today.
Senator
Randall McGowen, history, echoed Senator McLaughlan’s comments and acknowledged
the students for their role in focusing on the moral issues involved and
bringing them to the university’s attention. He believes it is unfortunate that
a legal decision ignores the campus processes involved in reaching the decision
to affiliate with monitoring organizations.
Margaret
Hallock, Wayne Morse Center, remarked that there is still much that can be done
under the OUS policy. For example, the
university can have an aspirational code of conduct, which will work in a
voluntary way with our licensing. She
suggested that many of these voluntary actions by corporations, as well as the
National Governing Organizations, are progressing nicely. The issue of legality is not as important as
moving forward with a code of conduct that maintains those principles. Similarly, Senator David Strom, physics,
encouraged people not to give up on the idea.
As an example, he cited the pressure investors put on companies 20 years
ago to divest from South Africa because of apartheid, which was eventually
abolished.
Dan
Goldrich, political science, spoke in support of the students’ efforts to link
the university to this pressing issue.
He recommended asking the State Board of Higher Education to reconsider
its decision, or to at least meet with the people who have worked on this
issue. Also, he would like to see a
more affirmative response from the university that takes advantage of all the
suggestions that have made and form a committee. President Earl said he would take this suggestion under serious
advisement. He noted that as a member
of this committee, when the state board made their policy announcement most of
the committee were disappointed to the point of a profound cynicism. After grappling for several weeks with what
they thought was an unfair and strongly ideological move by the board, he felt
the committee did a laudable job of focusing its disappointment into a positive
recommendation for curricular reform.
In
thanking the committee and accepting their report, President Earl commented on
the full spectrum of opinions expressed on the issues and the balance within
the committee. He concluded the
discussion with acknowledgment and respect for the work that was done.
Resolution US00/01-4 --
Academic calendar and athletic event scheduling conflicts. President Earl stepped down as chair of the meeting in order to
speak on this issue. He moved to
introduce a substitute motion for the motion left on the floor when the last
meeting was adjourned. President Earl
indicated that the substitute motion was written with the cooperation of the
Intercollegiate Athletics Committee (IAC), as follows:
The growth of
intercollegiate athletics has made the scheduling of athletic events more
complex, and conflicts with the academic calendar are almost inevitable. A recent scheduling decision causes special
concern: the Civil War football game for 2001 has been scheduled for the Saturday
before fall final exams. Such conflicts
may be unavoidable, but we should not lose sight of the principle that the
academic needs of our athletes and other students are always our top priority.
The combined
university senates of UO and OSU therefore made the following recommendations
to our Presidents and Provosts: in the future, the academic calendar should be
of paramount consideration in the scheduling of athletic events. In particular, we suggest that major events
should not interfere with dead week and final exams; in general, we urge a
heightened sensitivity to the academic calendar by the athletic departments of
our two universities.
President
Earl remarked that although the new motion has fewer “teeth” in it, the motion
might accomplish three things. First,
the motion allows the senate to register publicly its disappointment with the
scheduling of the Civil War game and the procedures by which that scheduling
took place. Second, it can inject into
the issue of intercollegiate athletics for the first time the at-large faculty
voice beyond the few faculty that sit on the IAC. Third, there is a significant gesture in joining with the OSU
faculty senate to sponsor this motion.
President
Earl noted that OSU also is due to vote on this substitute motion. He strongly encouraged senators in the
discussion of the motion to not throw their energies into trying to re-write
and perfect the language, but simply to support it. He remarked that the OSU faculty are on the same track and the
sentiment behind the motion should be very clear.
Senator
Phillips supported the motion, stating that it was vastly improved. He took issue, however, with the reference
to “dead week” remarking that there is no such thing as dead week in the
mathematics department nor in any other mathematics department that he has been associated
with as a student or faculty member.
With
no further discussion, the motion to replace the main motion with the
substitute motion passed by voice vote. The new
main motion was thus on the floor for debate.
President Earl reminded Senator Phillips of the letter received from the
provost outlining what can and cannot be done during the dead week before
finals. Vice Provost Lorraine Davis
commented that “dead week” was actually created by the senate through faculty
legislation.
With debate ended, Resolution US00/01-4 concerning the academic calendar and athletic
event scheduling conflicts was
passed by voice vote.
Notice of Motion. Mr. David Frank, chair of
the Ad Hoc Committee for Trademark Licensing and Monitoring gave notice of
motion that at the next meeting he will move the recommendation concerning the
human rights initiative noted earlier in his committee’s report.
Motion US00/01-3 -- Amend group satisfying general education
requirements. John Nicols, chair of the Undergraduate
Council, presented the motion, which replaces legislation governing the
approval of courses meeting general education requirements and the distribution
of courses student must complete within each group. The motion is designed to consolidate previous legislation, and
ensuing amendments, into one cohesive statement. Text of the motion follows.
Group satisfying courses in Arts and Letters, Social
Science, and Science must meet the following general criteria:
1.1.Group-satisfying courses in arts and letters
must create meaningful opportunities for students to engage actively in the
modes of inquiry that define a discipline. Proposed courses must be broad in
scope and demonstrably liberal in nature (that is, courses that promote open
inquiry from a variety of perspectives). Though some courses may focus on
specialized subjects or approaches, there must be a substantial course content
locating that subject in the broader context of the major issues of the
discipline. Qualifying courses will not focus on teaching basic skills but will
require the application or engagement of those skills through analysis and
interpretation.
1.2.Group-satisfying courses in the social sciences
must be liberal in nature rather than being professionally oriented or limited
to the performance of professional skills. They must cover a representative
cross-section of key issues, perspectives, and modes of analysis employed by
scholars working on the subject matter addressed by the course. The subject
matter of the course will be relatively broad, e.g. involving more than one
issue, place, or time. Courses with an emphasis on methods and skills will
satisfy the requirement only if there is also a substantial and coherent
theoretical component.
1.3.Group satisfying courses in the sciences should
introduce students to the foundations of one or more scientific disciplines, or
should provide an introduction to fundamental methods (such as mathematics)
that are widely used in scientific disciplines. Courses should introduce
students to the process of scientific reasoning.
2.Specific Criteria:
2.1.Group satisfying courses must be numbered at the
100, 200, and 300 levels.
2.2.Lower division courses must be offered annually,
and upper division courses at least every other year.
2.3.Approved courses must be at least 4 credits
each.
2.4.Upper division group satisfying courses must
provide depth and rigor beyond that of typical lower-division general education
courses. Departments must justify, in terms of content, workload, and method of
instruction, the assignment of a course to the upper level.
2.5.Courses that are offered for majors only are
excluded from group status, but courses that are designed for both majors and
other students may qualify.
2.6.Although laboratory courses are not
automatically excluded from group status in the sciences, to acquire this
status, the courses must not focus primarily on techniques or data collection.
3.Procedures governing the approval of all courses
designed to meet General Education requirements:
3.1.Before submission to the Senate, such courses proposed by departments must be reviewed at several levels:
3.1.1By the curricular committees of the various
colleges and schools
3.1.2.By an inter-college committee including the
members of the CAS Curricular Committee and two representatives appointed by
the deans of the others schools and colleges. This second committee is also
charged to review such courses as do not meet the standards set in paragraph 2.
and to negotiate a solution with the sponsoring department.
3.1.3. By University Committee on Courses.
3.2.The inter college committee is authorized to establish procedures governing the review process.
4.Completion of group requirements (student
progress):
4.1.Within the full set of courses that fulfills all of the requirements, students may not count
4.1.1.more than one course that has the subject code
of the major, or
4.1.2.more than three courses that have the same
subject code.
4.2.Within the smaller set of courses that fulfills the requirements of each group, students must complete at least two courses that have the same subject code.
Mr.
Nicols spoke in support of the motion indicating that the motion has been
reviewed and supported by the Undergraduate Council as well as the deans and
academic advisors. He brought attention
to the frequency of course offerings, noting that upper division courses will
be offered every other year and lower division courses offered every year.
In
response to a question whether the proposed legislation would make it more
difficult for students, Mr. Herb Chereck, registrar, indicated that there will
be transition time with dual sets of regulations until catalog supplies expire,
a seven year period. He noted that it
may be problematic in advising for people who declare their majors late. Mr. Nicols also pointed out that in the
interest of simplicity, the proposed legislation reduced current legislation by
nearly a third and is considerably easier to read.
Senator
Strom asked how many students do not satisfy the criteria. Mr. Chereck answered that in a random sample
of 100 students taken during spring, the social sciences departments and
English were not consistent and had the most problems; other majors did not
have a problem. Mr. Chereck felt these
problems could be addressed through departmental advising of which courses
needed to be taken to meet requirements, but noted that undeclared students
will not know where they stand.
When
asked about when the legislation becomes effective, Mr. Chereck said it goes
into effect in fall 2002, and that it will be grand-fathered into effect for
current students. Mr. Nicols added that
a student’s core of major experience is at the 400-level, thus he would urge
students to satisfy these requirements early.
Senator Eric Bailey, ASUO, suggested that students with majors might not
have as much flexibility as undeclared majors.
To a question regarding effect on community college students meeting the
requirements, Mr. Chereck reiterated the delay until fall 2002 before the
requirements take effect.
With the discussion coming to a close, Motion US00/01-3 amending group satisfying requirements was put to a vote and passed by voice vote.
Resolution US00/01-5 -- Rising costs of scholarly journals and
retention of copyright. Gina Psaki, romance languages
and chair of the University Library Committee, presented the resolution which
resulted from the recommendations made in a report from the library committee
at the previous senate meeting. The
resolution reads as follows:
A.
Adopt a university-wide policy that all UO authors try,
to the best of their ability, to retain copyright on their own work, including
at the very minimum the right to:
1) distribute
copies of their work to classes and to individual scientists;
2) publish
their work on their own web sites; and
3) post
their work on a local UO archive.
B.
Immediately identify high-cost duplicate titles among the three
research libraries in OUS and establish target amounts for cancellation, in
areas in which cancellation would not harm present faculty research, with the
ultimate goal of substantially reducing duplication.
C.
Educate individual faculty and
graduate students to:
1)
retain copyright on scholarly articles,
2)
discover the pricing practices of journals with whom they collaborate
(as reviewer, as editorial board member, as author),
3)
disassociate from those with unethical pricing structures,
4)
lobby professional societies to put pressure on Elsevier and other
publishers of inordinately costly publications, and work collaboratively with
efforts such as SPARC in the development of lower-cost alternative
publications, and
5)
encourage professional societies, where applicable, to assume more
responsibility for publishing in their field.
D.
Begin a campus discussion about adopting the “Tempe Principles,”
the Emerging Principles of Scholarly Publishing recently developed with the
support of the AAU and the Association of Research Libraries. The principles provide a foundation for
specific actions, such as those outlined above. By adopting these guiding principles, the UO would become part of
a national effort to define new systems of scholarly publishing.
E.
Ensure that promotion-and-tenure evaluation criteria favor this effort,
by holding faculty harmless for declining to publish in journals with pricing
structures detrimental to the free circulation of ideas.
During
the ensuing discussion, President Earl pointed out that the proposed resolution
is not legislation, but rather a resolution outlining ways to begin attacking
the problem of rapidly escalating prices for scholarly journals delineated in
the library committee report (see http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~uosenate/dirsen001/LibComRpt14Feb01.html).
There
was a brief discussion about the price per page for a particular publisher and
concern that canceling duplicate journal titles might be disadvantageous in
some instances. Acting Head Librarian
Deb Carver indicated that the library is continually striving to improve
document delivery, utilizing other methods, such as fax, so that no one is
disadvantaged. She also said the policy
can be reviewed. Senator Maury Holland,
law, questioned the definition of “unethical pricing”, wondering that referred
only to high cost. Nevertheless, the
sentiments expressed were generally that the proposed resolution provided
reasonable suggestions for responding to increasingly unaffordable scholarly
materials costs.
The
question was called. Resolution
US00/01-5 concerning the rising costs of scholarly journals and retention of
copyright was approved by voice
vote.
With
no other business at hand, the meeting was adjourned at 4:50 p.m.
Gwen
Steigelman
Secretary