Senate Executive Committee Agenda 29 September 1999

We have several different items upon which I would like your advice. These items can be roughly summarized under the headings:

Meeting times (housekeeping)
Vacancies on Committees (nominees needed)
University Committee Structure (ad hoc committee to be created)
Budget Matters (where do we send requests by Ann Tedards and James Earl)
Report by the Senate President concerning the steering council on diversity. See Summer Diversity Initiative
Setting the agenda for the 13 October 1999 meeting of the Senate (are the other items of business needing to be included)

Meeting Times

The senate bylaws specify we meet the second Wednesday in each month; the meetings of the executive committee are not specified in the bylaws:

4.7 The University Senate shall meet on the second Wednesday of each month - October through May. The Senate shall meet between 15:00 (3:00 p.m.) and 18:30 (6:30 p.m.) that day. At the discretion of the Senate members, the body may reconvene at another time to complete unfinished work. The Senate has the right to call additional meetings as necessary. Prior to a meeting of the Senate, the Senate President shall distribute an agenda to each member of the Senate. The Senate President is responsible to see that all motions not introduced at the preceding meeting of the Senate, are circulated to each Senator at least ten calendar days prior to the next scheduled meeting....
5.3 The function of the Executive Committee is to advise the Senate President and facilitate the work of the Senate. It meets at the call of the Senate President.

This causes difficulties as it pushes the meeting in December either into the exam period or into the vacation. I propose to schedule as follows but want to know if it requires taking the matter to the Senate:

Wednesday 1 December 1999 UO Senate

Wednesday 30 November 2000 UO Senate

To have the agenda available 10 days prior to a Senate meeting causes a problem in January every year and in April in some years

Wednesday ? Executive Committee, Wednesday 12 January 2000 Senate (2 weeks prior hits winter break)
Wednesday ? Executive Committee, Wednesday 10 January 2001 Senate (2 weeks prior hits winter break)
Wednesday ? Executive Committee, Wednesday 11 April Senate (2 weeks prior hits spring break)

Vacancies on Committees

The senate has two representative on the Intercollegiate Athletics Committee. Former Senate President Jeffrey Hurwit has a term that expires in June 2000. The position that expires in June 2001 is presently vacant.

There is a vacancy on the Committee on Committees. Senate President Gilkey has nominated Professor Julian Weiss and will ask the senate to confirm the appointment in October. Relevant correspondence follows:

Dave Hubin writes on 14 September: ``This note is a follow-up on our conversation this morning. As we discussed, it was called to my attention that a position representing CAS Humanities division remains unfilled on the Committee on Committees. Recent different committee reform activities (led variously by Judith Eisen, Gene Luks, Randall McGowan and, of course, Senate President Anne Tedards) have all emphasized the importance of the Committee on Committees (a Senate Committee) to the general health of our broader committee structure. I hope that the Senate Exec will take whatever steps are appropriate to bring the Committee on Committees to full strength.
Gwen Steigelman writes ``I've looked up the legislation regarding the CoC. The committee make-up (Senate minutes of Feb. 10, 1988) requires a minimum of 5 members: 2 from CAS, 2 from professional schools, and 1 Officer of Admin. However, over the years, the committee has grown its current 10 members -- doubling the membership in the same proportion as legislated, but covering all divisions of CAS and nearly all the professional schools, and giving greater representation to a very large constituency, the OAs, as well as . This has been done to (a) spread the work over more people, and (b) provide a broader knowledge base of the faculty who are being appointed to committees. In this latter point in particular, maintaining a balance across the Arts and Sciences has been recommended by past committee chairs, hence the desire to fill the CAS humanities faculty member vacancy on the CoC. Further, senate legislation of Nov. 12, 1997 initiated a two-year term for this committee (it was previously a one-year term) in order to maximize efficiency and familiarity with the committee's functions and mission, which again lends itself to a larger, i.e., 10 member committee. I think having the senate exec (or the nominating committee, if functioning) find a CAS humanities faculty member to serve is the most expedient approach -- perhaps Jim Earl can offer suggestions to get us started. We can ask for senate approval at the first meeting in October.''
Senate President Gilkey has nominated Professor Julian Weiss (Romance Languages) to fill this position. This will require confirmation by the Senate. On 21 September 1999, Gilkey wrote to Professor Weiss: ``I am nominating you to fill a vacancy which exists on the Committee on Committees; I shall ask the Senate to confirm this nomination at the next meeting on 13 October 1999. Your experience as a department head in the Department of Romance Languages in the Humanities Division of the College of Arts and Sciences, your experience as a former member of the Faculty Personnel Committee, and your other service activities in recent years make you well suited to this important task of faculty governance. Although the usual term on the committee is two years, it is is understood that you will only be able to serve for one year as you plan to be on sabbatical during 2000/2001; thank you for agreeing to fill this vacancy on the Committee on Committees at the last moment so to speak.''

University Committee Structure

Nathan Tublitz writes:

I would like the Senate Excom to evaulate the current University committee structure with a goal of having more committees reporting to the Senate rather than directly to the administration. I specfically am targetting the Campus PLanning Committee but there are probably others that may be more appropriately under the purvue of the faculty. Can we discuss this at the Sept 29th meeting?''.

Senate President Gilkey proposes that the Senate Executive committee appoints an ad hoc committee to be chaired by Professor Tublitz with two additional members to be selected by the Senate Executive Committee to look into the matter. This ad hoc committee should report back to the full Senate by November with an appropriate motion to deal with the matter. Perhaps Dave Hubin of the President's office and the current chair of the Committee on Committees (McGowan) should be members.

Budget Matters

Ann Tedards writes:

18 August 1999
To: Peter Gilkey, President, University Senate
From: Ann Tedards, Associate Professor of Music
As a member of the University Assembly and as a representative of the UO to the Interinstitutional Faculty Senate, I would like to propose that the Senate Budget Committee be charged by you or by the Senate Executive Committee to begin a review of faculty salary issues at the University of Oregon with four primary objectives:

To review data on UO faculty salaries

To identify faculty salary issues

To propose principles addressing faculty salary issues

To present to the Senate a document which summarizes the issues and proposes principles relating to faculty salary issues. This document would then serve as a basis for Senate discussion and development of a Senate statement of issues and principles relating to faculty salary issues.

RATIONALE:
The Senate Budget Committee is the appropriate body within our system of shared governance to initiate a study of faculty salary policies. This study is timely for several reasons:

the UO, contrary to some institutions within OUS, does not engage in collective bargaining, so there is no established mechanism, other than our system of shared governance, for faculty involvement in budgetary decisions which affect them directly;

the recent UO Accreditation Report listed the need to raise faculty salaries to a par with our comparator institutions as one of its four recommendations, yet this is the only one of the four which has not yet been addressed by the central administration;

although there is a line item within the new OUS funding model for recruitment and retention of faculty, there is no mention of raising existing faculty salaries, a situation which may exacerbate the current state of severe faculty salary compression; and

the UO may soon receive increased funding from the State which must be allocated.

The following exerpt from the 1992 Senate legislation describes the charge to the Senate Budget Committee:
"The Senate Budget Committee will inform itself about issues that affect the financial well-being of the University. It will advise the President and the Senate on budgetary policy and long-term financial strategies, and will keep the University Senate informed about financial matters. The committee will develop and maintain a broad overview of the University's budget, paying particular attention to General Funds (i.e., State appropriations and tuition and fees). Not a forum for special pleading regarding budgetary interests of particular departments or programs, this committee will not make allocation decisions per se; rather, it is intended to become the University's primary agency for faculty and student participation in fiscal policy. The budget committe may initiate the study of financial issues."

Jim Earl writes in response to the memo from Ann Tedards: ``Let me alert you to my own interest in the issue of dependents' education benefits--by which I mean the policy most of our peer institutions have of waiving tuition for the children of faculty. Under the new budget structure we may be able to raise this issue without getting the automatic reply, "If we give it to the U of O, we have to give it to everyone in the Oregon system." Children's tuition could be considered a salary issue among Ann's other more obvious salary issues."

Wayne Westling writes in response to the above: ``I'm happy to be the convenor, but only if we really have a committee. I fear that a referal of campuswide salaries will frighten away prospective members, and also feel that that project could consume all of our available time and energy. I don't want that to happen, so am hereby lobbying for a seperate ad hoc committee on faculty salaries. I believe there are plenty of university budget issues to occupy our attention, and don't want to get bogged down in one mega-issue to the detriment of the increased functioning of the budget committee.''

Web page spun by Deady Spider Enterprises 15 September 1999. Webmaster Peter B Gilkey 202 Deady Hall,
Department of Mathematics at the University of Oregon, Eugene OR 97403-1222, U.S.A.
Phone 1-541-346-4717 (please do not leave a voice mail message)
Email:gilkey@darkwing.uoregon.edu