FACULTY SENATE MEETING MINUTES
November 13, 2014, 3:10 P.M. Skaggs Building, Room 169
CALL TO ORDER
Chair Lodmell called the meeting to order at 3:10 p.m.
The Interim Registrar Joe Hickman called roll.
Members Present: B. Allred, L. Ametsbichler, J. Bardsley,A. Becker, A. Belcourt, B. Borrie, M.
Bowman, S. Bradford, M. Brooke, J. Bunch, J. Carter, J. Cavanaugh, A. Chatterjee, T.
Crowford, J. DeBoer, M. DeGrandpre, D. Erickson, E. Gagliardi, S. Galipeau, J. Glendening, S.
Gordon, L. Gray, K. Harris, L. Hart-Paulson, S. Hines, M. Kia, H. Kim, A. Kinney, R. LaPier, B.
Larson, G. Larson, J. Laskin, B. Layton, S. Lodmell, P.Lukacs, D. MacDonald,M. Mayor, M.
McGirl, J. Montauban, S. Richter, J. Sears, S. Shen, D. Shepherd, D. Sherman, S. Stan, K.
Swift, E. Uchimoto, N. Vonessen, A. Ware, K. Zoellner
Members Excused: J. Banville, T. Beed, U. Kamp, C. Kirkpatrick, L. Howell, A. Larson, M.
Raymond, D. Schuldberg, A. Sondag, R. Vanita,K. Wu
Members Absent: T. Crowford, H. Eggert, L. Frey, L. Gillison, M. Hamon, W. Holben, M.
Horejsi, M. Nielson,C. Knight, N. McCrady, C. Palmer, A. Szalda-Petree, S. Tillerman,
Ex-Officio Present: Provost Brown, VP Whittenburg, Interim Associate Provost Lindsay
Guests:
Minutes: the minutes from October 9th were approved.
COMMUNICATIONS:
The meeting began with the UM minute.
 PROVOST BROWN
The University will be joining the 12th cohort in the American Council on Education’s (ACE)
Internationalization Laboratory activity. Over 90 Universities have participated to improve
international engagement and coordination. The lab guides the institution through a selfstudy to understand our current internationalization efforts in preparing students for a global
world. It will also provide examples and best practices in use at other universities. A
Steering Committee will be formed to work on this activity. It will need to talk with lots of
people on campus.
LEGISLATIVE SESSION
The campus is preparing for the upcoming Legislative session. There are four major focal
areas; 1) present-law-adjustment, 2) faculty and staff compensation, 3) long range building
(including differed maintenance and new/remodel construction), and 4) research initiative.
All of these items are in the Governors November 15th budget. How the budget fairs at the
Legislative session will not be known for some time. The Governor is proposing to freeze
tuition for in-state students in conjunction with a $44 Million state backfill for basic
educational programing and obligations ($11 million). The $32 million base would include
$6 million to be allocated based on performance. So there would be some uncertainty.
There will be three bills to watch, HB 2 for the general fund budget, HB 13 for long range
building, and HB 5 for the pay plan.
SEARCHES
The Registrar Search Committee will conduct skype interviews with four potential candidates
to decide who to recommend for on-campus interviews. The on-campus interviews will likely
take place during the first couple of weeks in February.
The Search Committee for the Davidson Honor’s College Dean is currently being
assembled. The position will be filled on an interim basis soon. Dean McCusick leaves in
January to become the founding Dean of a new Honors College in Missouri.
 VICE PRESIDENT WHITTENBURG
Innovation and Technology Transfer are going well. A slide prepared by Director Joe
Fanguy showed the pipeline, work in progress, success and the available services in the
network. A second slide explained some of the resources available to students and faculty
and provided examples of faculty companies doing well. Stakeholders want to see a return
on investment. The Blackstone LaunchPad helps students, alumni, faculty, and staff turn
their ideas, skill and passions into real world businesses and non-profit organizations. There
may be 20-25 companies that result from the efforts. The Entrepreneur-In-Residence (EIR)
program provides hands on assistance to start-up companies looking to grow and scale.
The Procurement Technical Assistance Center (PTAC) is dedicated to helping local
businesses successfully compete in the government marketplace. The Montana
Technology Enterprise Center is the central hub for entrepreneurship and economic
development in western Montana.
The last slide shows the total economic impact ($200 million per year) of research and
scholarship. The data was prepared by the Bureau of Business and Economic Research
last summer. The information will be shared with Legislators.
Questions:
There is an interest in an honest accounting of money going to MonTEC. Will the University
see any financial benefit for its investment?
The Research Office is not putting resources into MonTEC. The value MonTEC is that it
offers opportunities for our faculty. The University has position in a couple of the
companies. This will have value when the companies go public.
The Research Office is working on a bridge program for faculty between funding. This has
been used for three faculty members thus far. There are some restrictions and a process to
ensure productive faculty do not loose resources. Research expenditures are up 10% from
last year. This includes some grant renewals.
 STEVE SPRANG, CHAIR, RESEARCH COUNCIL -RESEARCH STRATEGY PLANNING
The Research Council was formed last year to make recommendations to Vice President
Whittenburg with how his office and the university in general could stimulate research and
scholarship, including both traditional science based research and scholarship and creativity
in general. The Research Council has broad faculty representation from across campus.
Half of the Council focused on strategic planning and the other half worked on procedures.
The Strategic Planning group was charged with recommending strategies to 1) stimulate
research, creative activity and scholarship (RCS), 2) reduce barriers to faculty who whish to
conduct and fund RCS, and 3) develop metrics for RCS that can be incorporated into
funding models for the university, schools/colleges, departments and programs.
The scope includes all forms of creative activity. It is essential to the educational mission of
the university and is one of the four goals of UM’s Strategic Plan. The recommendations
recognize the role of the Vice President for Research and Creative Scholarship as well as all
UM faculty.
A brief synopsis of the plan identified four general categories.
•
•
Evaluate, quantify and allocate: Recognize the economic value of RCS Develop
quantifiable and qualitative metrics that accurately model the contributions of RCS to
enrollment, retention, student success, the reputation of the university and the impact of
these on the Montana economy. RCS metrics should be included as criteria for
allocation of state general funds to schools and colleges.
Coordinate and Facilitate: President, VPRCS and Provost and Deans work
collaboratively with UM faculty stakeholders to support RCS. Where major
institutional resources are needed, Identifying areas of greatest existing and potential
strengths for major support (e.g., hiring initiatives, construction, new graduate programs;
UM Foundation funding priorities). Identify and pursue sources of support for major RCS
initiatives in a coordinated and directed manner. Be strategic, not reactive. At the
same time, all faculty must be encouraged and supported to pursue RCS in areas of
their choosing.
•
Incentivize: Recognize and reward faculty for their pursuit of RCS. Value of RCS
should be reflected in departmental unit standards, resources to help faculty seek and
maintain research funding, allocation of buyouts to conduct RCS, access to support for
students, and to infrastructure needed to conduct these activities. This includes bridge
funding for faculty in between funding.
•
Publicize: Provide faculty and departments multi-media resources, tools and guidance
to communicate their RCS achievements to potential students, colleagues, the public
and elected officials.
The subcommittee would like your input regarding the draft plan. Please send email
comments to Stephen.Sprang@mso.umt.edu with a subject line: Research Plan.
Questions:
Once the Research Strategic Plan is approved the next task will be to create action plans
and think about how to create taskforces across the university to implement them. The
Research Council will recruit new members and reach out to faculty to help solve the issues.
Research has more than an economic benefit. It creates better teachers and more engaged
students. These factors should be included in the metrics.
Some of the matrices will be qualitative, but will need to be incorporated into the value
scheme.
There are other campus committees with intersecting goals such as the Academic
Alignment and Strategic Planning Program Taskforce that the Research Council should be
working more closely with. Please inform Professor Sprang if there are others.
The revised procedures and guidelines created by half of the Research Council are now
available on the Research and Sponsored Programs website. These are designed to be
explicit, be clearly defined and provide transparency in decision making and clarity to the
process. Senators are encouraged to provide comments to James Laskin in Physical
Therapy.
Teaching assistantships are not specifically addressed in the plan.
The Subcommittee should put more effort into how to support graduate students with the
mechanisms that currently exist.

PROFESSOR ANDREW WARE- ACADEMIC ALIGNMENT AND INNOVATION PROGRAM
AAIP was the topic at the last University Council meeting. There was a good discussion.
Approximately 2/3rds of the surveys have been returned. There will be one more meeting
the Monday after finals and three workgroup meetings during winter break.
Two open forums will be planned in the spring. The preliminary survey findings and
potential new programs should be completed over the break.
 CHAIRS REPORT
Chair Lodmell reminded senators to complete the Evaluation of the Administration and
encourage colleagues to do the same. The deadline is next Wednesday, December 10th.
Vice President Reid has asked for a faculty representative to serve on the Space Allocation
Committee. He has charged the Committee with developing a space utilization/allocation
procedure. The nominee will help consider space priorities from the Faculty
perspective. Please contact the Faculty Senate Office if you are interested in serving on this
Committee. Volunteers are also needed to serve on a Taskforce to flesh out specifics of
the Rafter proposal as it might be implemented at UM.
Nominations for the Faculty Service Award must be submitted to the Faculty Senate Office
by February 6th.
PRIOR LEARNING ASSESSMENT
The draft Prior Learning Assessment policy is posted to the agenda. Prior Learning
Assessment gives credit for learning that occurs outside the classroom, such AP, IB, dual
enrollment, Military Credit (ACE), NCRRS, or training agreements. Montana campuses are
currently giving PLA credit through these avenues. Portfolio assessment is the option that is
unfamiliar and causes the most concern. Portfolio review is currently used in the College of
Visual and Performing Arts to place students in a course that is commensurate with their
skill level.
Given common course numbering and the Board of Regents attention to transferability the
draft policy is designed to provide guidelines to campuses for accepting Prior Learning
Assessment. If one campus accepts PLA Credit and the student transfers then the other
campus is obliged to accept if the learning outcomes (80% equivalent) have been met for
the course. The policy provides a uniform guiding principle so that all campuses use similar
context and language. It does not mandate that all campuses implement the same practice.
It requires a mechanism be put in place to track the students in succeeding courses.
A study of 60,000 students showed that students with PLA credits are 2 times more likely to
persist to graduation, take more credits, and take less time to earn a degree. Students who
pursue PLA credit are motivated. Chair Lodmell has a freshmen in his lab that transferred
with 60 PLA credits. Data on the portfolio option was not available.
Chair Lodmell met with ASCRC and is meeting with the deans next week. Senators were
encouraged to review the draft policy and send comments and concerns. A Moodle
discussion board has been set up for senators to use for this purpose. A revised draft will
be posted when available. The Taskforce needs your feedback. There may be some
courses that would not be appropriate for PLA credit. Accreditation standards could also
limit PLA credit.
OCHE will present the policy at Board of Regents meeting in March or May.
The PLA Taskforce met with the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning. It provides a
service to students and universities to help prepare and assess a student’s portfolio. The
Taskforce was not comfortable with having an outside company do this work at a charge
(several hundred) to students and the University. There is concern regarding who would
do this work. Taskforce has made it clear that if portfolio review is adopted, then there must
be compensation for the additional workload. Any student fees would be associated with
the cost for assessment/ transcripting not pay per credit.
The policy also requires that the students be tracked in succeeding courses, so a
mechanism will need to be put in place to accomplish this.
COMMITTEE REPORTS

ASCRC CHAIR JOHN DEBOER
The curriculum consent agenda, general education course consent agenda and rolling
review, and the writing course consent and rolling review documents were approved.
ASCRC has decided to establish a separate subcommittee to review all the crosslisting
forms, so those on the November consent agenda were unapproved and will be acted on at
the February Senate meeting. It was clarified that a few language exemption requests were
missing from the review and will be acted on in February as well. Interim Director of the
Office for Student Success will send a communication to advisors clarifying the specifics for
advising students in majors that no longer are eligible for the exception.
The revision to the Writing Committee Charge / bylaw amendment was approved.
 GRADUATE COUNCIL CHAIR-ELECT MICHELLE MCGURIL
The curriculum consent agenda was approved. There were only a few additional items.
NEW BUSINESS - EXECUTIVE SESSION

Provost Brown presented the honorary degree nomination. It was unanimously approved.
The Senate was reminded that the name of the nominee is confidential until confirmed by
the Board of Regents.
ADJOURNMENT
The meeting was adjourned at 4:45 p.m.