Faculty Meeting Minutes
College of Forest Resources
Anderson Hall Room 22
Monday, December 11, 2006, 9:30 a.m.
CALL TO ORDER
The meeting was called to order at 9:32 a.m. by Gordon Bradley, College of Forest Resources Faculty
Chair.
ATTENDANCE
PRESENT
Agee, James
Allan, G. Graham
Bakker, Jonathan
Bare, Bruce
Bradley, Gordon
Bura, Renata
Doty, Sharon
Eastin, Ivan
Edmonds, Robert
Ettl, Gregory
Ewing, Kern
Greulich, Frank
Halpern, Charles
Harrison, Robert
Johnson, Jay
Kim, Soo-Hyung
Mabberley, David
Manuwal, David
Marzluff, John
Moskal, Monika
Perez-Garcia, John
Reichard, Sarah
Schreuder, Gerard
Sprugel, Douglas
Turnblom, Eric
West, Stephen
ABSENT
ALSO IN ATTENDANCE
Bolton, Susan
Davis, Amanda
Briggs, David
Smith, Nevada
Brown, Sally
Ford, E. David
Franklin, Jerry
Fridley, James
Gara, Robert
Glawe, Dean
Gustafson, Richard
Hanley, Donald
Hinckley, Thomas
Hodgson, Kevin
Lee, Robert
Lippke, Bruce
McKean, William
Paun, Dorothy
Peterson, David
Ryan, Clare
Schiess, Peter
Strand, Stuart
Torgersen, Christian
Vogt, Dan
Vogt, Kristiina
Wott, John
Zabowski, Darlene
The attendance reflects a quorum of the voting members of the faculty.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
FACULTY MEETING SCHEDULE FOR REMAINDER OF THE ACADEMIC YEAR:
March 26, 2007
April 9, 2007
January 8, 2007
April 23, 2007
January 22, 2007
May 7, 2007
February 5, 2007
May 21, 2007
February 26, 2007 ADDITIONAL DATE
March 12, 2007 DATE CHANGE
June 4, 2007
NOTE: Meeting time has changed. Meetings will take place from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. in Anderson
22.
Dr. Bradley announced that the faculty voted to keep CFR 509 as a requirement. Therefore, the motion
made by Jerry Franklin in the December 4, 2006 special faculty meeting would need to be seconded in
order to move forward with a vote. Dr. Franklin moved that all students admitted in and prior to 2004 be
C:\Web\cfrmain\internal\committees\minutes\All_College_Faculty_Meetings\facminutes121106.doc
CFR Faculty Meeting
Minutes 11-27-06
Page 2
exempt from the requirement to take CFR 509. Jim Agee seconded the motion. An electronic vote will
be solicited.
•
The Faculty voted to approve to exempt students admitted prior to and in 2004 from the requirement
to take CFR 509. The results of the vote are recorded in the Faculty Office.
Dr. Manuwal distributed a draft of the College Faculty Bylaws. The Elected Faculty Council is updating
the Faculty Bylaws at the recommendation of the Faculty Senate. The bylaws recommendations are
tentatively scheduled to be considered at the February 26, 2007 faculty meeting. [Please note changes
to the Faculty Meeting Schedule: February 26, 2007 added and March meeting date changed.]
PRESENTATIONS
No presentations were scheduled.
DEAN’S AGENDA
1.
Opening comments.
The Dean thanked the faculty for the opportunity to have a dialogue and thinks once a quarter is a good
idea. He also thinks another good time for him to attend faculty meetings is when candidates for faculty
positions are being considered. He asked if there were any additions to his agenda. None were offered.
He was glad to see the new faculty in attendance and hoped all “survived” the quarter and recognized
that it was a busy quarter for all of us.
The Dean acknowledged the new Provost has changed many operating procedures. It’s been a learning
experience for him to interact with new people and how they interpret policies and procedures. The
Provost is engaging in a formal planning process. The final version of the new UW vision statement is
ready after a year of work. Five goals and a specific work plan will follow.
The Provost is taking over much of the day-to-day operations of the University allowing President
Emmert to engage in the public arena. The President has defined three guiding principals: excellence,
engagement, transformation. The College of Forest Resources is in alignment with these principals.
2.
SAF accreditation.
The Society of American Foresters (SAF) review of the proposed Master of Forest Resources in Forest
Management program underwent a site visit review in April 2006. The report of the visitation team was
given to the SAF Committee on Accreditation and was considered at the SAF Annual Convention in
Pittsburgh this autumn. The Dean was pleased to announce that the MFR in Forest Management was
accredited for 10 years, though we must provide SAF a report addressing 5 points on which SAF wants
additional information. It was noted that Jim Agee will be helping to prepare this report.
3.
Diversity in the College
Ivan Eastin and Michelle Trudeau serve on the UW’s Diversity Council. The Diversity Council works
on diversity issues relating to student recruitment, retention, and graduation rates. They also work to
improve the climate for diversity on campus. The Provost is also working on diversity in the UW
faculty.
The Dean advised that we need to pay attention to increasing the diversity of CFR faculty. He suggested
that we should look at new faculty candidate pools with diversity in mind. He stated that if we don’t
have diversity at the faculty level it will be hard to have diversity at the student level.
The Dean addressed an issue that doesn’t necessarily happen very often in CFR but is important enough
to speak to. Sometimes faculty inadvertently say something in the course of interactions with students
C:\Web\cfrmain\internal\committees\minutes\All_College_Faculty_Meetings\facminutes121106.doc
CFR Faculty Meeting
Minutes 11-27-06
Page 3
that reflects a negative gender or racial bias. Dean Bare also mentioned that sometimes students say
something either in or out of class that goes unchallenged by faculty. The Dean encouraged us all to
become more aware as a group regarding these kinds of statements. He is working with Ivan and
Michelle to bring us training—best practices and what the University recommends we do in these kinds
of situations. Dr. Bare said that though the incidence is small students do talk to him about these issues.
Dr. Bare fielded a question: When would the UW consider we are diverse, is it only about sex and color,
or are there other parameters that are being considered? This faculty member pointed out that CFR has a
diversity of opinion and background and many people from other places; we have professional diversity.
The UW is focusing on gender, racial, and ethnic diversity. The previous Provost provided a report
comparing us among our peers. Dr. Bare hopes the new Provost will also provide benchmarks. He also
stated that deciding to recruit and support a diverse faculty and student body should be part of our culture
and may not necessarily reflect a specific numeric target. He wants us to strive for it when we hire new
faculty.
4.
RCR allocation.
Dean Bare is looking at how the RCR (Research Cost Recovery) funds are distributed to the Chair’s
office and to the faculty to support the research enterprise. Funded expenditures were about $9.5 million
last year. There is a subtle growth, but in ‘real’ dollars they are effectively dropping. He attributes this
to retiring faculty who are slowing down and the fact that new faculty have not yet ramped up. He
anticipates the amount of funded projects to increase.
RCR is generated from grants that carry indirect cost (IDC) reimbursement and is based on expenditures.
CFR has grants that do not receive IDC or have a reduced rate of IDC. IDC is awarded to the University
with a certain percentage being returned to schools and colleges as RCR. CFR gets between $350,000
and $375,000 in annual RCR revenue. That money is currently used to pay staff that service grants
directly, financial services staff, and IT personnel. These salaries amount to ~$250,000/year. Of the
remaining ~$100K 75% goes to the faculty and 25% goes to the Dean’s office. This distribution model
began in 1991 or 1992. Faculty decide how their portion will be distributed. It used to be based on
interest groups. Now it goes to the faculty chair and the chair allocates.
The Dean’s 25% is used to support new initiatives and travel to meetings and conferences.
Part of the Chair’s allocation goes to research faculty to cover salary while they are writing grants. This
salary coverage is by Federal requirement. Faculty cannot use current sponsored project money to
generate new sponsored project money. Faculty who have salary from sponsored projects document their
effort on the Faculty Effort Certification report. The Federal auditors are looking very carefully at effort
certification. Other Universities have had to payback significant amounts of money because faculty
effort was incorrect.
RCR funds also cover up to ~$100 for a grant that is in deficit at close out. These funds are also used to
pay publication page charges.
Dean Bare stated he would do his best to minimize the off the top take by trying to find other budgets to
pay some of the salaries. He asked the faculty to grow the IDC base which would increase the RCR, and
he would try to return more to the faculty.
5.
Promotion Merit Tenure (PMT) process.
Dean Bare acknowledged that there have been a lot of emails during fall quarter regarding the PMT
process. Faculty elect six people to serve on the PMT committee. He recognized that there was a data
problem last year. Historical data were not accessible. Several faculty noted difficulty with the data
C:\Web\cfrmain\internal\committees\minutes\All_College_Faculty_Meetings\facminutes121106.doc
CFR Faculty Meeting
Minutes 11-27-06
Page 4
update and the information provided by the database in general. The faculty hope they will get data more
quickly this year and much earlier in the process. The Dean hopes that the new data manager recently
hired by the College will help and that his first task will be to work on the faculty PMT data.
The PMT Committee considers the package of information faculty submit to them. The Committee
submits recommendations for faculty vote; faculty vote according to rank. The Chair makes
recommendations to the Dean considering the vote. Last year, the College received merit salary funds
equal to 2.6% of the budgeted state faculty salary base to distribute. Faculty who were recommended for
no merit received 0%, those recommended for merit received 2%, and those recommended for high merit
received an additional salary increase. No one was recommended as non-meritorious last year. At the
end of the process there was $0 left in the merit salary pool.
The Dean makes all final merit salary decisions. Last year there were 33 tenured and tenure-track faculty
in the state merit pool. He awarded high merit salary increases to 22 tenured faculty including all faculty
recommended by the faculty and Chair as being highly meritorious. In making his decisions, he
considered how much additional merit above the 2% base to award based on a comparative salary review
of each highly meritorious faculty member with other highly meritorious faculty positioned at about the
same point in their professional careers; the level of service each offered to the profession, College and
University; and the recent history of merit salary awards to each highly meritorious faculty member. The
Dean attempted to spread the small 0.6% of additional merit salary money to a fairly large proportion of
faculty. In the end, about 50% of our tenured and tenure track faculty received a merit salary increase of
3% or higher.
Service classes vs. professional classes.
The Dean stated he spends about 25% of his time on development or money raising issues. He was
happy to report that we were at 90% of our fund-raising target at the end of November. The College of
Forest Resources endowment is now valued at about $23.5 million which returns about 5% per year to us
in revenue. Most of this money is restricted for chairs, professorships, scholarships and fellowships,
although some of it is discretionary. Our College has the 11th highest endowment value out of 31 campus
units and is 6th in the number of endowed gifts.
The Dean’s five-year review committee was interested in how the College allocated its limited resources
to support its teaching obligations including TAs. In particular, they raised the issue of how we decide
whether to support TAs for a large service course versus a smaller professional course. Should lecturers
be hired to teach the large service classes to free up faculty time to teach the smaller professional classes?
CFR made the decision in 1998 or 1999 to focus on SCH (student credit hours), and SCH generation by
our faculty have been high. But the Provost asks “How many majors do you have?” “Are your numbers
growing?” We should evaluate how valuable the service courses are to recruiting new students. The
CFR alumni association has agreed to help us recruit at the community level. We are going to bring
them in and educate them about the recruiting process. This process will start early in the new year.
7.
Dr. Bare wished everyone a nice holiday season. See you all next year.
UPCOMING EVENTS
1. Next Faculty Meeting: Monday, January 8, 2006; 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. in Anderson Room 22
ADJOURNMENT
The meeting was adjourned at 10:49 a.m.
C:\Web\cfrmain\internal\committees\minutes\All_College_Faculty_Meetings\facminutes121106.doc