Senate Minutes 14 May 2008

Minutes of the University Senate Meeting May 14, 2008

Present: C. Bengston, P. Boye, H. Briston, C. Cherry, L-S. Chou, D. Falk, P. Gilkey, A. Gladhart, N. Gulley, E. Herman, D. Hernandez, J, Hunter*, D. Levin, B. Malle, T. Minner, C. Moore, J. Newton, M. Pangburn, A. Papailiou, C. Parsons, E. Peterson, N. Rajabzadeh, M. Redford, G. Sayre, L. Stephen, A. Taylor, T. Toadvine, N. Tublitz, P. van Donkelaar,

Excused: A. Mathas, S. Paul, F. Tepfer, L. Vandenburgh

Absent: C.A. Bassett, G. Berk, R. Bramhall, M. Chong*, A. Coles-Bjerre, R. Davies, R. Illig, P. Lambert, P. Lu, C. Martinez*, L. Middlebrook, D. Olson, F. Pyle, P. Rounds, J. Rowell, A. Schulz (* non-voting member)

CALL TO ORDER

The regular meeting of the University Senate was called to order by Senate President Gordon Sayre at 3:08 p.m. in room 150 Columbia. President Sayre made several remarks of a procedural nature and noted that spring election results are available on the senate’s website. He thanked everyone who ran for a position, but commented that there were many uncontested races and several vacant seats on the senate; he emphasized the need for broad-based participation in order to make faculty governance work well. President Sayre announced that Chancellor Pernsteiner will oversee the presidential search, which will be run by the State Board of Higher Education. In addition, the new presidency at the UO will trigger a review of faculty governance structures as part of the state’s Internal Management Directives for the university system, so the senate can anticipate a process of review during the coming academic year. University President Dave Frohnmayer recently ratified amendments to the senate’s enabling legislation (see http://www.uoregon.edu/~uosenate/dirsen078/Governance8May08.pdf ).

Last in his preliminary remarks, President Sayre encouraged everyone to participate in the University Day activities (May 15^th). He added that the smoke free campus task force would host an open meeting May 15^th starting at noon in the Browsing Room of the Knight Library.

APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES

Senator Peter Gilkey, mathematics, moved to approve the minutes of April 9, 2008, which were approved as distributed.

STATE OF THE UNIVERSITY

Remarks from President Dave Frohnmayer. Noting the fullness of the meeting agenda, the president compressed his remarks as much as possible, saying he would send a letter to the general campus community that would embody his comments at the meeting as well as other matters.

The president spoke on three general topics: the presidential search for his replacement due to his retirement in June 2009, resource demands due to the large incoming freshman class, and immediate agenda items. Regarding the presidential search for his replacement, President Frohnmayer remarked on the importance of the transition to a new president, noting that the last such search was 20 years ago. He said that this year affords a time for reflection and renewal, and emphasized the importance of the processes of consultation with the chancellor and the involvement of the Faculty Advisory Committee (FAC), as new visions and next steps for the university are contemplated. Members of the FAC will meet as necessary during the summer months.

On the second topic, the president reported that an unusually large cohort of freshmen have accepted invitations to attend the university in the fall. As a consequence, there is limited time to deal with the surge of housing demands and enrollment that poses an unequal strain across the university. Nevertheless, the president assured everyone that the flow of resources will follow the flow of students’ choices. Staffing of needed courses at new times will be met with appropriate resources, and providing emergency housing opportunities for students has the highest urgency.

First among immediate agenda items is the pendency concerning legislature-sequestered salary money, that is, whether it will be released by the Emergency Board at the June meeting. Such action requires a request by the governor. The OUS share of the held back funding is $28 million for which many contractual agreements have been made. The administration fully backs the release of the funding and is working to achieve that outcome. Another matter the president spoke about concerns how the physical appearance of the campus will change. The release of the McArthur Court facility’s footprint due to the building of a new basketball arena will open opportunities regarding the future use of that space. New buildings are soon to emerge in the Agate street area with a new academic learning center, an alumni center, and underground parking with the arena. And, the university is proceeding as rapidly as possible toward construction of new housing for students.

The president noted that a progress report on the Diversity Plan will be provided later in the meeting. He announced that the UO Portland Center in the renovated White Stage building will have its grand opening in the fall. The president explained that the Portland Center greatly facilitates the university’s ability to serve the state in its largest metropolitan area. Also on the immediate agenda is the follow-up for the accreditation report dealing with assessment of learning outcomes; this will be pursued in the summer and reintroduced to the faculty for more formal planning in the fall. The president announced too, the creation of a university Science Council to promote a more engaged internal dialogue among the scientists themselves. Nominations are being taken for the council and he expects the appointments to be made by the end of the academic year.

Lastly, the president concluded his remarks saying that he had the honor recently of delivering this year’s Distinguished Teaching Awards to the happily surprised recipients. Susan Verscheure, human physiology, received the Ersted Award and the Thomas F. Herman Award was received by Dennis Galvan, international studies and political science, and Peter Mills, business management. All the teaching award recipients will be recognized at spring commencement.

Diversity Plan Update provided by Provost Linda Brady and Vice President for Institutional Equity and Diversity Charles Martinez. Provost Brady began her remarks saying that 16 academic and administrative units developed strategic action plans (SAPs) during academic year 2006-07. She was especially impressed with the level of engagement in developing the plans, which begin to address needs concerning the recruitment, retention, and success of students, as well as our ability to compete in the marketplace for faculty and staff, on which the university is dependent for future success of the research enterprise. She commended Vice President Martinez and his staff for their work with individual units in the development of the plans.

Vice President Martinez reported that the individual unit plans area available on-line through the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity web site (see http://vpfa-prod.uoregon.edu/oied/?page=strategic) as well as in the provost’s office. Mr. Martinez also provided a slide presentation highlighting the work that has begun (see http://www.uoregon.edu/~uosenate/dirsen078/SAP-14May08.ppt). He explained that the campus Diversity Plan requires a yearly summary report from the provost and the vice president for institutional equity and diversity to the senate and campus community, beginning in May 2008; the current report is the first of yearly reports to the senate. Each SAP was required to have “environmental scanning”, that is, to take a look at what was currently happening. He noted that it is important to treat the SAPs as dynamic: if a unit makes progress, we can detect the efforts, and can track , measure, and adapt as new challenges arise. Each SAP has to include data and details about strengths and challenges, description of specific targeted actions to be taken given the challenges, and identification of measurable markers of progress, that is, how we would know over five years that what we are doing is working and matters. The six content areas of concern included: developing a culturally responsive community, improve campus climate, building critical mass, expanding and filling the pipeline, developing and strengthening community linkages, and developing and reinforcing the diversity infrastructure. In progress reports, units were asked to include a summary of their activities, progress and results, impact, and future plans.

Moving to a quick sampling summary of unit activities, Vice Provost Martinez noted that developing a culturally responsive community was a very active area of effort across campus, which created sustained diversity committees to guide the SAPs. He also sensed a greater willingness to engage in critical discussions about diversity within units. Citing just a few examples of unit activities, Mr. Martinez mentioned the development underway of CAS African Studies and the Queer Studies minors; refocused teacher education to include social justice and ESOL; a diversity professional development series of workshops offered through Academic Affairs, and ASUO’s work on toward the departmentalization of the Ethnic Studies program.

For the content area of improving campus climate, Mr. Martinez cited the increased efforts to involve students in diversity committees and advisory capacities within units, enhanced communications about diversity, and the President’s Office leading an effort to grant honorary degrees for interned Japanese students (as a result of World War II internment camps). For building a critical mass, he said that efforts continue to diversify the work force, train and support search committees to recruit diverse pools of applicants, on the Pathway Oregon project, and for various recruitment of graduate students from underrepresented groups (by the departments of Chemistry, Biology, Philosophy, and Geography). Growth in UO student admission has improved: 32% overall growth, 52% Latino, 37% African American, 23% Asian, 22% American Indian, 31% White. In the university work force, the percentage of people of color grew from 11.89% to 12.51% from academic year 2006-7 to 2007-8, which included increases for all protected race/ethnic groups, as well as among seven of nine tenure-related groups. For efforts made in filling the pipeline, Mr. Martinez cited OIED’s Oregon Young Scholar Program for 8^th to 12^th grade students. He conclude his report saying that the work is well underway, and OIED staff will host discussions about progress reports during the summer and in fall 2008.

STANDING AND SPECIAL COMMITTEE REPORTS

Senate Budget Committee (SBC) Report. Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Marie Vitulli, mathematics, summarized the committee’s most recent activities as working on an update of the 2000 Senate Budget Committee White Paper dealing with faculty salary goals. (See http://www.uoregon.edu/~uosenate/dircom/2007-08SBCRptExecSummary.pdf for an Executive Summary of the report and http://www.uoregon.edu/~uosenate/dircom/0708WhitePaperUpdate.html for the full report.) Ms. Vitulli noted the committee’s concern regarding the recent change in the Carnegie Foundation’s ranking of the UO in its second tier of research universities, that is, from a previous ranking of “very high” to just “high”. She opined that the change jeopardizes our standing as a member of the AAU. She noted that faculty salaries comprise only 10.2% of the total UO budget, yet the relatively small amount spent on faculty, either directly or indirectly, is needed to generate all of the revenues (from tuition, fees, athletics, grants, and contracts). Although the original stated goal of the 2000 SBC White Paper was to achieve 95% of total compensation parity with our comparator group (the universities of Michigan, California at Santa Barbara, Virginia, Iowa, North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Indiana at Bloomington, Colorado at Boulder, and Washington), this year the SBC would like to achieve the average salary of our peer comparators at each rank. Saying that it is important to keep a close eye on total compensation, Ms. Vitulli noted that faculty cannot use total compensation alone to save for buying a house, for example. She acknowledged there has been some progress (using total compensation figures) since 1999: total compensation for UO full professors has gone from 82% to 90.7% of our comparators, associate professors from 86% to 94%, assistant professors from 89.6% to 101.8%, and instructors from 86.8% to 99.8%. (Note: Data is skewed somewhat because data used for comparator institutions were from fall 2007 reports but data used for the UO were after the January 2008 salary increases.)

However, if one looks at improvements in salary since 1999, Ms. Vitulli notes that full professors are at 81% of comparators, associates at 83%, assistants at 91%, and instructors at 84%. Progress in salaries has lagged behind improvements in benefits. Consequently, the SBC calls for the university to make instructional faculty salary improvements a first priority, suggesting that it would require approximately $10.2 million to bring the UO faculty to average salary-by-rank with its AAU public university peer comparators. She said that the university should aspire to reach parity, solve compression and inversion issues, and address individual circumstances. She also commented that the university must not allow significant salary increases directed at a relatively few individuals be evidence that the university has solved the overall salary problem. Suggested approaches for achieving the salary goals include combining state appropriations for faculty salaries with a reallocation of tuition and RAM dollars; a concerted effort to increase foundation funding for meritorious faculty; and supplementing the average comparator raises for full, associate, assistant professors, and instructors by 5.0%, 4.0%, .9%, and 2.9% each year to achieve the mean of our comparators salaries by 2010-2011; and supplementing COLA and merit raises by reallocation of 1% of the prior year’s base budget to faculty salaries each year until parity is reached.

During a discussion period, Senator Bertram Malle, psychology, added his support of the report, but noted that graduate students’ salaries are much worse in comparison with other institutions, and they should be included in the plans to fix the salary problems since they are critical to faculty. Ms. Vitulli responded that the graduate student situation was not the subject of this particular report, but agreed that graduate student salary also needs to be looked at in the context of the bigger salary issues picture.

Senator Nathan Tublitz, biology, pointed out that when the White Paper was written in 1999-2000 the senate and university administration approved it as a top priority, yet it does not appear to have been a top priority because now that is being called for again. He commented that the faculty and university have been talking about the salary issue for years and years with little real progress. With no further discussion or comments, President Sayre thanked Ms. Vitulli for the report and the committee’s work.

Committee on Committees Report. Senate Vice President Paul van Donkelaar, chair o f the Committee on Committees, reported that most of the committee vacancies had been filled and he thanked everyone for their willingness to serve. He noted several other activities of the committee, which included the recommendation of James Reinmuth, business college, for the senate’s annual Wayne T. Westling Award for Leadership and University Service. Mr. Reinmuth will be recognized at the spring commencement ceremonies as well as at a reception at the senate’s organizational meeting in two weeks. In addition, the committee addressed a few issues concerning new committees, in particular, a possible new structure from ASUO for a public safety advisory group that has been a student-based group but that the ASUO felt had been less than successful with a limited profile. The committee has recommended that the administration look into creating a new group which is analogous to some of the other advisory committees on campus, such as the student health committee, and that the new group include broader representation with faculty and staff as well as students. Vice President van Donkelaar said a second committee recommendation is to take a closer look at the Committee on the Status of Women, which was removed last year because it was functionally abandoned several years previous. Some individuals questioned whether disbanding the committee was a good idea, so the Committee on Committees will examine the issue next year. Several other “housekeeping” recommendations are to include the registrar as a permanent ex-officio member of the Committee on Committees (Registrar Herb Chereck, has been appointed regularly over the past number of years); also, the committee recommended removing the requirement that the Johnson Memorial Award be given annually (in several recent years the committee has received few nominations and/or the nominee(s) was not recommended by the committee, hence no award was made in those years). Lastly, the list of Committee on Committees members recommended for the 2008-09 academic year was provided (see http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~uosenate/dirsen089/comsen089.html

for committee membership). The report and its recommendations were approved by unanimous voice vote.

Preliminary Spring 2008 Curriculum Report. Mr. Paul Engelking, chair of the Committee on Courses had no additions or changes to the curriculum report previously circulated to senate members and departments. This, with no further amendments or changes coming from the floor, the 2008 Spring Curriculum Report was approved by voice vote. (See http://www.uoregon.edu/~uosenate/dirsen078/CurRptS08Fin.pdf for the final report.)

Academic Requirements Committee. Mr. Jim Imamura, chair of the Academic Requirements Committee, moved the following motion:

The Senate of the University of Oregon recommends that the Oregon State Board of Higher Education confer upon the persons whose names are included in the Official Degree List, as compiled and certified by the University Registrar for the academic year 2007-2008 and Summer Session 2008, the degree for which they have completed all requirements.

The motion was enthusiastically and unanimously approved by voice vote.

Ad Hoc Committee on Scholarly Publishing. Mr. Dev Sinha, mathematics, was joined by Mr. JQ Johnson, Knight Library, to report on the work of the Ad Hoc Committee on Scholarly Publishing. Mr. Sinha summarized the essence of their activities saying that a large measure of their work focused on authors’ copyrights, and the transfer of those rights to publishers upon publication of a work. He noted that authors’ addenda are standardized terms that authors may attach to a copyright transfer agreement, thus retaining additional rights for the author. The committee strongly recommends that faculty members include an author's addendum as part of any journal article transfer they sign with publishers. The committee believes there is enough variation across discipline to not make adding an addendum mandatory, but strongly encouraged it where feasible. In most cases, an appropriate addendum would be the Science Commons "Delayed Access" addendum (meaning that six months after publication the author may have free use of the final published piece). Because of the variability from field to field concerning what authors’ rights most likely are, and what rights are desirable to retain, the committee recommends that each department consult with its library subject specialist to develop the department’s own guidelines for faculty authors.

The committee also recommended the following related steps regarding authors’ rights that should be taken:

1. The Office of the VP for Research and the library should systematically collect data on UO author journal submissions and their use of authors' addenda to determine to what extent UO faculty authors are actually successful in negotiating rights.

2. The library should take steps to make the process of creating an author's addendum as easy as possible, for example, by placing a copy of the Science Commons author's addendum engine on a UO library scholarly communications web site and providing training in the use of addenda.

3. The library’s Scholarly Communications and Instructional Support department and the Office of the VP for Research should provide assistance to authors who have questions about the terms of a copyright transfer that they are asked to sign; and they should attempt to identify legal resources that can provide limited pro bono legal advice to UO scholars on academic publication copyright issues.

4. The library should significantly expand Scholars' Bank, with the expectation that it will contain copies of most peer-reviewed publications by UO authors.

5. The library should provide data to faculty on publisher policies, allowing faculty to make informed decisions about particular publishers when submitting manuscripts, and making it easier for instructors to identify open access works suitable for use in classes.

6. Academic units and the library should organize a series of educational activities in the area of scholarly publishing. Since faculty needs in this area are largely discipline specific, the primary channel should be librarian presentations at departmental events such as faculty meetings. In addition, the library should arrange for at least one guest speaker to present a public lecture in fall 2008, and should continue its existing educational efforts such as recent presentations to faculty on PubMed Central compliance.

7. The university, perhaps through the senate, should initiate a broader discussion of rights that the institution itself needs to retain beyond the rights of individual authors. For example, should the university retain the right to re-use instructional materials authored by UO faculty after the faculty member has left the institution? It should also consider the recent decision by Harvard University faculty to grant a nonexclusive license to the university to use any faculty-authored work, and how attribution and currency for this type of use would best be managed consistent with academic standards.

8. The University Library Committee should during 2008-09 assess progress on implementing these recommendations and report to the Senate.

Lastly, Mr. Sinha and Mr. Johnson drew attention to the library’s budget situation, saying that it was under pressure because of inflation, and that spending on serials has been flat or gone down over the past years. This past year the provost used some discretionary funds to help forestall further serial collection erosion, but the issue of library funding should have a broader discussion in the near future.

President Sayre thanked the Ad Hoc Scholarly Publishing Committee for its work and read the motion put forth by the committee. Motion US07/08-20 reads:

Moved, that the University Senate

a- Endorse the report of the task force on academic freedom and scholarly communication; and ask appropriate university units to implement the specific recommendations contained in the report, and

b- Strongly recommend that all UO faculty members attach an author's addendum to any copyright transfer they sign for their scholarly work.

Asking if there was any discussion on the motion, and hearing none, the president put Motion US07/08-20 concerning authors’ rights addenda to a voice vote, which passed unanimously.

NEW BUSINESS

Motion US07/08-19 to amend US07/08-7 with explanatory text regarding the use of online student evaluations. Vice President van Donkelaar brought the motion to the floor and began his comments explaining that the motion is not to change the on-line student evaluation questions (passed previous by the senate, see US07/08-7), but rather to clarify the use of the questions with explanatory text. He explained that the proposed text amends the original motion only in several different spots as follows. First, the preamble is the same but with an added reminder that student evaluations are not the only means by which teaching performance is assessed (peer evaluations are vitally important). Second, online student evaluations must be used for courses of five or more students. Third, all questions approved at the previous senate meeting are included (with no changes). Fourth, data from the first seven quantitative questions on the evaluation will be available to all students. Fifth, online evaluations may include additional questions as each department sees fit. Sixth, minor language changes were made to reflect that the evaluation is done online rather than by paper. Seventh, the output that faculty receive from the online evaluation will be part of the tenure and promotion file. And lastly, the online evaluations are completed during dead week.

After grades are submitted, Mr. van Donkelaar noted, faculty may have access to the quantitative and qualitative question responses. Departments are required to archive the evaluation report and qualitative responses are included in faculty files for future faculty evaluations. The vice president urged passage of the motion, and added that the committee’s goal is to have these changes implemented by the Office of Academic Affairs if the motion passes. Motion US07/08-19 follows:

Moved to amend US07/08-7, passed March 12, 2008 to replace the Preamble and include the following text (new text shown in italics) to explain implementation and use of the required student course evaluations questions as follows:

Student Evaluation of Teaching and Learning

Preamble:

This legislation defines expectations regarding student course evaluations at the University of Oregon, especially as they relate to annual faculty reviews and the promotion, tenure and post-tenure review process.

Certain aspects of teaching, such as the ability to create a positive learning environment, are appropriately and necessarily assessed through student evaluations. Evaluations provided by students can be effectively used by all faculty to gain insight into their teaching, and to identify ways to improve their classroom performance. Evaluative data provided by students include responses to both quantitative and qualitative questions.

It is important to emphasize that student evaluation of teaching is not the sole means by which faculty teaching performance is assessed. In particular, peer teaching evaluations are also a required component of every promotion & tenure case.

I. Student Evaluation of Teaching

1. The on-line questionnaire system will be used to evaluate all courses with 5 or more students.

2. The following university-wide questions will be included at the beginning of the evaluation form:

Please share with us your basic perceptions of the course:

1. What was the quality of this course?