PROVOST COUNCIL
MINUTES
December 3, 2014, 8:00-12:00
Present
Brandon Schwab, Dale Carpenter, Kevan Frazier, Brian Railsback, Richard
Starnes, Lowell Davis, Tim Metz, Darrell Parker, Susan Fouts, Dana Sally
Guests
Henry Wong, Chip Ferguson for Jeff Ray, Brian Kloeppel for Mimi Fenton
Recorder
Natalie Broom
ANNOUNCEMENTS
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Dana Sally’s retirement dinner.
Becky Kornegay will be interim dean of Hunter Library and will join Provost Council at the
beginning of January. Official announcement will be coming out in the next couple of days.
Darrell: FPA: this afternoon Denise Drury is taking over as interim director of the museum and
David Brown will no longer have administrative duties. Andrew Adams is interim associate dean of
FPA.
AJ Grube is the department head of the School of Accounting, Finance, Information Systems and
Business Law. Paul Johnson is the department head of the School of Entrepreneurship, Hospitality
and Tourism, Marketing, and Sport Management. Hollye Moss is the department head of the School
of Economics, Management, and Project Management.
DISCUSSION
Gender Equity Study
Follow Up
(Henry Wong)
Timeline: November 2011 conduct study, March 2012 banner database. Henry
presented data on gender equity. Women’s salary ratio: women are achieving
about 88% compared to men, 93% associate, 91% assistant averages of salaries
by college. Faculty degrees: more men have doctorates compared to women.
More women have master’s degrees than men. Tenure status by gender.
Presentation ensued. Question: does any of this suggest discrimination? By
gender it does. Women are earning a little over $2,000 less. March 2012 was
the snapshot date.
Commencement
(Lowell Davis)
Lowell passed out 2 pages of the script for commencement with twochanges
that should be noted. The dean of the candidate of the degree that is awarded
will shake the hands of the students first, then Dean Fenton and Dean
Railsback.
Summer Session
Tuition
(Lowell Davis)
We have the opportunity to increase the tuition rate for summer. Athletics is
thinking about changing the athletic fees in the summer. Summer school is
separate in terms of fees in the fall/spring. If we actually cut fees we would
increase enrollment and could generate funds. WCU is the second most
expensive in the system in charging fees. The student activity fee is
questionable. We can’t control those. The athletic fee and student activity are
the two for possible changes. The other fees the students have to pay. Athletics
funds everything on fees including personnel. We do not want to see an
increase in the fee. Do we want to support a statement of keeping or decreasing
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the fee/tuition? If we ask athletics to decrease, we should do that for tuition as
well. 5 or 6 UNC institutions will increase to 170. A 5 or 10% cut would be
about 8.50 a student. It would be a small cut. Discussion ensued. Lowell will
share that the Provost Council is not interested in increasing the fee but
keeping them the same to remain competitive.
Biltmore Park Office
Space Requests
(Kevan Frazier)
We have supported the IT request for an IT person to be at Biltmore Park. We
have come up with an interim solution with Craig Fowler for the spring. We
have about 595 students at Biltmore Park and 195 classes. Also, 40
faculty/staff are permanently assigned to Biltmore Park; 50-60 that teach at
least one class or part time assignment, which is an increase from last year.
Student Affairs staff now spend 3 days a week at Biltmore Park. The site is
hosting over 200 meetings of off campus groups[1,000 meeting or other
appointments using the space for on campus entities. We are now getting
requests for office space which is problematic. Three cubical work spaces will
be available for all faculty who need it. Upstairs is a faculty work room but
looking to turn that into better workspace areas and adding lockers. There has
been a request from faculty including 5 office spaces for counseling faculty in
the fall. Request for entrepreneurship…when the lease for the SBTDC is over
downtown. Colleges that have programs at Biltmore Park will meet at the end
of exam week. It is going to take some creative problem solving. No known
opportunity to expand space. The University of Phoenix space is cubical space
and that is $250K. We will discuss how to maximize that space for fall. We
have been working with Mary Anne Lochner, Legal Counsel, on programs that
need to provide courses that are outside the program (e.g., engineering and
math courses). Those can happen. Working on providing liberal studies at
Biltmore Park. This meets the MOU. Alison is in conversation with Provost at
UNC Asheville.
Co-locating
Complimentary
Departments
(Tim Metz)
Space element of the master plan. Looking at a recommendation to look at a
space to accommodate departments with pooled resources and co-locating a
single department. Stage and Screen is in 3 different buildings. That will be the
first step. As you are engaged in conversations within your college and have
any suggestions, please email Tim.
Blue Ridge
Community College
Instructional Site
(Tim Metz)
Any instructional site that hasn’t been providing instruction for 5 years needs
to be closed. BRCC fits this definition. Tim has the letter drafted to SASCOC
to send. Wanted to make sure that there weren’t any plans for this site. The last
activity there was 2009; potential partnerships with lab spaces that will be built
with grant money; build one course there to keep it alive. We would need that
delivered pretty soon and we would have to adjust our institutional profile if
that was to happen.
Enrollment,
Retention and FUSS
Our spring registration number is down. A report generated by OIPE will be
sent to the deans of students who have not registered yet. We are estimating
300 students at the end of the semester. This number is point in time up. We
see an increase in students in fall. We are going to try the last few days to
reach out to those students and register. We do send a survey to learn transfer
reasons, with about a 10% response rate. Hopefully, we will gain students who
will register. Faculty senate has raised the issue of examining priority
registration and programs will have to lobby for specific reasons to Executive
Council or another group to present their case. As soon as we figure out the
process and timeline it will be sent to the deans. Conversations were started at
APRC and Faculty Senate and the Provost decided to form a committee to see
what is happening with priority registration. The issue is how this impacts
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student athletes, students with disabilities, graduate students, and military
students. Discussion ensued.
Advising
Rolling out GradesFirst, a student communication, scheduling, and early
warning system, on campus is being examined. Currently, professional
Advisors have adopted GradesFirst and ultimately, all academic advisors will
be required to use this. We will start by colleges. Alison wants support from
Provost Council before this rolls out. We want to be proactive and utilize a tool
that General Administration endorses and do a campus wide implementation.
There has been positive feedback. Tutoring will move to GradesFirst as well.
Council in favor and Lowell will proceed to go by colleges.
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