Meeting, March 14, 2013
Law, Room 201
Members
Present:
B. Allen, L. Ametsbichler, D. Beck, A. Borgmann, B. Borrie, M.
Bowman, J. Carter, J. Cavanaugh, J. Crepeau, T. Crawford, A.
Delaney, J. Eglin, C. Galipeau, A. Glaspey, J. Glendening, L. Gillison,
S. Gordon, N. Greymorning, L. Gray, K. Harris, J. Hirstein, D. Hollist,
M. Horejsi, M. Kavanaugh, B. Layton, S. Lodmell, M. Mayer, N.
McCrady, M. McHugh, D. MacDonald, C. Merriman, J. Montauban, P.
Muench, H. Naughton, P. Ngai, C. Palmer, E. Putnam, R. Premuroso,
M. Raymond, J. Renz, M. Rosulek, A. Szalda-Petree D. Shively, D.
Sloan, P. Silverman, G. Smith, A. Sondag, D. Spencer, M. Stark, N.
Vonessen, A. Ware, K. Wu, K. Zoellner
Members
Excused
W. Davies, J. Gannon, J. Munro, M. Neilson, J. Sears, E. Rosenburg,
S. Tillerman
Members
Absent
W. Chung, H. Eggert, R. Fanning, C. Hahn, W. Holben, D. Jackson, J.
Laskin, S. Mills, M. Monsos, E. Plant, D. Stolle
Ex-Officio
Present:
VP Whittenburg, Associate Provost Hinman
Guest:
ASUM Sustainability Coordinator, Eva Rock
Chair Renz called the meeting to order at 3:10 p.m. Registrar Johnson called role.
The minutes from 2/14/13 were approved.
Communication:

Eva Rock, ASUM Sustainability Coordinator
Last semester she and Sheri Peacock, the Campus Sustainability Coordinator
taught a course on Institutional Sustainability, Evaluation and Monitoring. The course
used the Sustainability, Tracking and Rating System (STARS) to perform an
assessment of the university. Jody and Tailor, two Environmental Studies students
taking the course took an interest in the fact that the University did not have a
comprehensive list of courses that included sustainability content. So they devised a
campus-wide survey in order to create one.
At a fall climate change meeting students and faculty identified the need for better
awareness of sustainability initiatives. The STARS assessment ranks the university
sustainability efforts. It is hoped that UM will become a leader in sustainability. The
survey results will provide current and future students with assess to courses related
to or focused on sustainability issues. Faculty need to participate in the survey for
the list to be accurate. The survey will likely be sent next Monday.
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
UFA President David Shively
Faculty should have received an email call for nominations to the various UFA
Executive Board positions. There will be a general meeting to present the
nominations. Additional nominations will also be accepted at the meeting. The
ballots will be sent to your home address on April 16th and must be counted by April
30th to comply with the procedure outline in the UFA Constitution. Please return your
ballot and encourage your colleagues to vote as well.
The Inter-Unit Benefits Committee had a meeting on February 21st. Professor Celia
Winkler represents the UFA on the Committee. With the exception of the traditional
and retirees’ health insurance plans, it appears that most insurance premiums will
decrease. The fee for processing flex accounts will also be eliminated.. Wellness
benefits may include a subsidy for gym membership, but the details of how this
would be administered are still being discussed. Dependent care benefits will be
audited to comply with the Patient Affordable Care Act. The UFA will provide
additional information to members as the discussions continue.
The NEA Higher Education conference is in Portland, Oregon next week. There is
still time to register. He is attending and will report on the issues addressed.
Kevin McCrea, Associate Commissioner of Higher Education convened a meeting
last month of the Coalition of Union Faculty in Montana. The meeting focused on
how to develop a model or approach to address salary inversion and compression
across the institutions if money happened to become available. Two workgroups
were established to work on 1) identifying the appropriate pier institutions,
disciplines, and ranks; and 2) identifying various models to determine the severity of
the problem and the best way to implement fixes. There will be another meeting after
spring break.
The state pay plan has not made it out of legislative committee. There is not
adequate support for the 5/5% proposed salary increase. There are concerns about
the broadband classification system and managerial positions in particular. The
legislative website provides easy access to legislators contact information. Please
remember that if you do contact a legislator do it on your own time and do not use
your university email address.
Questions
The Tiaa-Cref Equalization Bill was tabled and another bill (HB 338) would end all
public employee pensions and force new public employees into one huge defined
contribution 401.
Kevin McCrea is busy with the Legislature, so bargaining has again been delayed.
This tends to delay bargaining. Last session, the UFA filed an unfair labor practice
complaint, but it was dropped when became evident that it was no longer beneficial
to continue the complaint.
MPEA may file an unfair labor practice complaint if the pay plan does not pass given
it was negotiated with the Governor. The complaint would argue a breach in
bargaining in good faith.
A proposal to shift the computer rollout from three-years to four-years has not made
significant progress. The proposal would result in a savings of approximately
$100,000 per year. The idea is to use the savings for additional faculty development
or other program benefiting faculty and students. The administration is in favor of
using the savings to purchase a university-wide faculty database. The UFA would
not be in favor of using the savings for this. Your perspective on any technical
issues with delaying the rollout would be useful to the UFA.

Chairs Report
Board of Regents update
Performance Based Funding is coming. There will be a meeting in Butte April10th to
initiate the process of developing the model and implementing a plan. Originally the
meeting was going to be in Missoula, but was moved to accommodate the
administrators travel schedules. The meeting will discuss possible metrics used to
measure performance. Montana is going to join the Complete College America
Program which aims to have for a 40-60% of the state’s population with postsecondary education. The College Affordability Plan (CAP) was approved by the
Board of Regents. It includes an in-state tuition freeze. However, CAP is dependent
upon the actions of the Legislature.
The Faculty Emeritus and Honorary degree candidates were approved. Material
Science was removed from consideration because Montana State’s Faculty Senate
had concerns about the cost and did not approve it. MSU’s concerns were not well
received, so the proposal will likely return.
Policy 970.1 Biennial Allocation of State Funding to Montana University System
Campuses was approved. It establishes a three-year cycle to average resident FTE
for the budget base. The average calculation will take place during legislative years
so the funding argument can be made by the Board of Regents.
Until recently there had not been an FTE reallocation. MSU now owes UM money
due to the reconciliation. MSU elected to pay this over a period of three years and
has been using some of the money to entice students with scholarships. This year,
however, UM’s in-state enrollment was still higher than MSU’s.
Faculty Senate Elections
The Faculty Senate Elections process has started. Faculty have three weeks to
decide to opt-in or opt-out. A few voting groups do not have any vacancies – School
of Business, College of Visual and Performing Arts, and Journalism. The following
voting groups currently have fewer faculty on the ballot than seats available College of Forestry, College of Health Professions and Biomedical Sciences,
Humanities, and Law. Please encourage your colleagues to run for the Senate. At
the May meeting there will be elections for Chair-elect and ECOS. If you are
interested in serving as Chair-elect position or serving on ECOS please contact
Chair Renz or Chair-Elect Putnam.
Committee Reports

ASCRC Chair Borrie
WRIT 222 traditionally taught by Forestry was not submitted during the Writing
Course rolling review. Forestry designed a new course for their majors only.
However, there is a demand on campus for a lower-division writing course that focus
entirely on writing rather than content. Therefore, the Provost’s Office requested the
paperwork be submitted to retain the writing designation for WRIT 222. The item
was approved.
Changes in the catalog will be separating course descriptions from the departmental
information. There will be hyperlinks to the Banner database where course
descriptions reside. ASCRC is concerned that separating departmental ties to
courses would be a significant policy change and could make it difficult for students
to find courses now that rubrics no longer correspond to departments due to
common course numbering. ASCRC wanted to make sure there was a way for
students to find courses required and optional courses for their majors. It is also
important to maintain a historical record of courses offered by departments. ASCRC
unanimously approved the motion to Retain on the UM Catalog page of each
department (or program) a simple list of the courses offered by that department (or
program).
At the next faculty senate meeting ASCRC will bring two motions for consideration
and final vote at the May meeting. The first is concerning the counting of tdesignation courses at the mountain campus and the second is a rewrite of the
Academic Policies and Procedures section of the catalog.
Questions:
Registrar Johnson responded to concerns about the nature and reason for the
pending transition of course descriptions. During the efforts to enforce prerequisites
in Banner it was discovered that the content in Cyberbear and Academic Planner did
not necessarily match. Current process is to maintain a list of courses for each
department in the catalog even though the course descriptions used for Cyberbear
and Academic Planner reside in Banner. Maintaining two sets of descriptions is
untenable. So with the Provost’s recommendation and approval, the intent is that the
electronic catalog will have links to course descriptions that reside in Banner rather
than text in the catalog. This allows for one authoritative source. Each year a PDF
is made of the online catalog to serve as the historical record. There are over 1000
schools with baseline Banner that use this system.
The link brings up a search tool where you can search for any course by rubric, or
multiple rubrics, word in the title, course number, or attribute. Unfortunately pulling
the descriptions into the catalog from Banner is not practical because UM saved
money on the original purchase of the Banner Software package by serving as a
beta site. Because of this every upgrade to Banner has to be tested due to
programing changes made in the past. Additional programming changes require
ongoing maintenance and management.
Registrar Johnson will provide a demonstration in April of the search function to
address additional concerns.
Good and Welfare

The States Science Fair exhibits are on display in the Adams Center.
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The meeting was adjourned at 4:02 pm.