UH Hilo Faculty Congress
Minutes for Meeting of September 26, 2008 3:00 pm - 5:15
pm, K-127
Meeting called to order at 3:07 p.m.
Members Present: Sevki Erdogan, Harald Barkhoff, Iota Cabral, Kerri Inglis, Reni
Ivanova, Terrence Jalbert, Gail Makuakane-Lundin, Chuck Malenfant, Bruce Mathews,
Cam Muir, Emmeline de Pillis, Ghee Tan, Regina Titunik
Ex-Officio: Phil Castille, Debra Fitzsimons, Luoluo Hong, Randy Hirokawa, Marcia
Sakai
Guest: Linda Johnsrud, UH System V.P. for Academic Planning and Policy
1. Approve Minutes from April 25, 2008
http://www.uhh.hawaii.edu/uhh/congress/documents/Congress0708Minutes04_25_08.doc
Motion to approve made by Cam Muir, seconded by Gail MakuakaneLundin, approved unanimously.
2. Approve Minutes from May 16, 2008
http://www.uhh.hawaii.edu/uhh/congress/documents/Congress0708Minutes05_16_08.doc
Motion to approve made by Cam Muir, seconded by Chuck Malenfant,
approved unanimously.
3. Approve Minutes from August 29, 2008
http://www.uhh.hawaii.edu/uhh/congress/documents/Congress0809Minutes08_29_08.doc
Motion to approve made by Cam Muir, seconded by Chuck Malenfant,
approved unanimously pending correction of typo in second paragraph of
Chair’s Report.
4. Report from the Chair: Sevki reports that he has been participating in the All
Campus Council of Faculty Senate Chairs, that the budget remains at the
forefront, and that V.P. for Academic Planning and Policy, Linda
Johnsrud, is here to discuss the budget. He attended a meeting with
V.C.A.A. Castille and the curriculum process task force. Congress needs
to elect a representative to this task force, as do the colleges. Regarding
the Student life center: about 1,000 students go daily, and the number is
growing. Discussions on faculty use of the center are ongoing. He met
with V.C.A.A. Fitzsimons and discussed budget cuts and how they may
affect faculty positions, reduction of electric usage, and so on. V.C.A.A.
Fitzsimons is forming a committee to deal with the 1.5 million shortfall.
The Congress Executive committee met and prepared for this meeting.
5. Committee Reports:
a. Report from Admissions Committee Chair -- Emmeline de Pillis
Emmeline is acting as the Congress representative to a
campuswide enrollment management team under V.C.S.A. Hong
in lieu of maintaining a Congress Admission Committee.
b. General Education Committee Chair – Regina Titunik
The G.E. Committee is receiving applications for G.E.
certification, and they have started reviewing the applications.
Everyone should communicate with their faculty that the
Committee is prepared to come to departments and help put
together the application materials. The Committee also has all
sorts of information on their website:
http://www.uhh.hawaii.edu/uhh/genedfac/. The Committee wants
to make this as painless as possible.
At the last CEC meeting three issues relevant to G.E. came up.
i.
ii.
Apparently, students are failing to take English 100 in their
first year and the question was raised about whether we
should require students to take English 100 in their first 24
credits. There seem to Regina Titunik to be two problems
with requiring English 100 in the first year at this point.
One is just a resource issue, all the English 100 sections
were packed to the limit this term and the Dean and to raise
the cap. Secondly, we are just in the process of
transitioning to a new G.E., Titunik recommends we wait
until we see how that new system plays out before making
any new rules. But you guys can say what you think in this
regard.
It was suggested that either we should get rid of the upper
division WI requirement (which is in our current and new
G.E.) OR programs should be required to identify
appropriate upper division WI classes for their majors. The
problem is students from the Science s, for example, are
taking upper division WI Shakespeare not because it has an
interest for them but because they need the WI.
iii.
According to the College of Hawaiian Language mandate,
CHL can teach in any academic area as long as the course
is taught in Hawaiian. The question came up about
whether, if CHL wanted to teach biology or math, for
example, whether the biology department or the math
department would provide clearance for the course.
Titunik wrote to the chair of CHL yesterday and hasn’t
heard back yet. After Titunik hears back from CHL, She’ll
report back to Congress and we can discuss this issue.
c. Academic Policy Committee Chair – Reni Ivanova
It was announced earlier that the previous committee had never
met, but Reni met with the previous committee and its chair; they
did meet and did achieve something they felt important and we
should acknowledge that. This year’s committee will be reviewing
what was accomplished to build on what was inherited, e.g. their
February survey.
For this year’s work, Reni has spent time educating herself on the
issues. She has spent more than 50 hours meeting with junior and
senior faculty, division chairs, etc., to learn the issues and
background. There are big issues and it will take a lot of time to
prioritize and work on the issues such as making the contract
renewal, tenure and promotion process clearer and fairer and easier
to go through procedurally. Establishing guidelines for evaluating
someone in a different area of expertise than yours, for example,
will prove challenging. Right now, we have a pretty good process
and good instruments to evaluate the quantity of the work, but the
quality is also very important—how substantial and influential the
work is. So, new criteria need to be established. We need a more
objective way to evaluate the work, not just quantity. We should
also look at impact factors, external reviewers, etc. Objective tools
should be encouraged. This would certainly lead to fewer
disagreements between faculty, deans, the V.C.A.A., etc. So now
the committee is going through current document and prioritizing
what to work on next.
d. Assessment Committee -- in the absence of a Chair, Sevki Erdogan
Pamela has joined, and former members are still around. The
Committee is working on guidelines for departments to use in
program reviews. Some funds may be available. A request for a
full time assessment person is in the PCR request going to the
B.O.R.—as per V.C.A.A. Castille.
6. Old Business:
Cam Muir moved to table Old Business until the next meeting.
The motion was seconded by Regina Titunik and approved unanimously.
5. New Business
a. V.C.A.A. Fitzsimons to discuss budget issues.
Linda Johnsrud prefaced Debra’s remarks by referring to an overview
of the situation given by President McClain. He chose to move
forward with the CIP budget while holding back the operating budget
until October since the University would not have been able to
function under a complete budget freeze. He also produced a memo
stating that the University would freeze G funds in the areas
requested by the Governor, but would use tuition revenues, gifts, and
other means of financing in responsible ways to support hiring,
equipment, travel. We must be very conscientious about spending,
though. Each chancellor was challenged to implement that on their
campuses, and President McClain has asked each chancellor to report
on all exceptions s/he or his/her V.C.s make, and the only good
reason is “mission critical”. That’s the background on how we’ve
implemented the freeze.
The budget office has asked for a 10-15-20 percent cut scenario for
the 10-11 biennium budget. That would be $13, $22, and $30 million
systemwide. They divided the budget into discretionary and
nondiscretionary funds, and mostly cut from discretionary funds, but
put utilities in discretionary funds as well, so some confusion has
resulted. President McClain does like to remind everyone that we do
have $200 million more than we did in 04-05, so, as tight as it may
feel, we’re still in better shape than most state agencies because of
tuition, donors, etc.
President McClain has made capital improvement a priority since, in
the ‘90s, when there were no increases in the budget, the System
saved programs and people at the expense of repairs and
maintenance; now we’re living with the fallout. President McClain
has taken $15 million from the operating budget for repair, renewal,
and replacement that isn’t bondable. He then invited all 10 campuses
to each submit 3 PCRs, but, in the end, they could only total $10
million. The idea was for the campuses to stick to the strategic
outcomes and only put forth PCRs in areas that would help us
advance—more students graduating, more Pell Grant students, more
students right out of high school, etc. The biennium budget
committee looked at all those PCRs and whittled them down and
focused on student success to get them down to $10 million.
The only other things funded were some operating costs for campuses
with new buildings: a couple million in one year, four million in the
next, for buildings coming online. Plus, when the legislature gives us
a new position, they only give us nine months of salary, figuring that
the new person will only be present for part of the first year. But,
because it’s a biennium budget, in the second year we still only have
nine months of salary for that person, and we have to make that up
with tuition or ask for it separately.
Finally, we asked for $7-9 million for electric costs and inflation.
That all comes to $35 million. So, we intended to request about that
much, but, instead, we’re being asked to come in with a cut of $30
million, and President McClain sees it as a $60 million dollar
problem. So he is asking us to think about what principles to use
when deciding how to cut and how to spend.
New tuition would cover about 10 percent, but is that hurting us? Are
we doing our part for the state deficit? The B.O.R. is chaired by the
chair of the Bank of Hawai’i, the vice chair is associated with First
Hawaiian Bank, so there will be no getting past them. He is looking
at the operating costs for new CIPs, electricity, and salary for new
hires, and covering those with tuition, and debating whether to ask for
the rest. We’ve been told not to, and we always have anyway, but a
$900 million dollar deficit for the state is very high and very serious.
V.C.A.A. Fitzsimons then began her remarks:
Even though we’ll be taking reductions, we still have planning and
other initiatives that need to move forward, so we need to keep
pushing for it.
L.J.: President McClain said no new construction, just deferred
maintenance, but later was shown that we still needed to plan new
construction for the future, so we did put in some requests for
planning for new construction.
Debra distributed a handout, the Governor’s memo, and the
Presidents’ memo. We have created a form so that, as positions are
reviewed, units have a process to work through to get positions
funded. We want to make sure we have a consistent process to
implement the budget freeze, so we all know what’s going on and we
know what the process for exceptions is. Any position that is a T.A.,
casual hire, etc, is out of G funds, so would need an exception. Here
at Hilo, all travel, and the operating budget, is out of tuition and not G
funds, so we wouldn’t need exceptions for those. We are expected to
be cautious in our spending. Follow the instructions carefully and
talk with your dean to prioritize. Not every position, even
instructional, is going to be filled. We will have some “must have”
positions, and maybe some delayed positions, but some units may
have to cut positions entirely to handle the next few years. This is
effective as of September 09.
Dean Hirokawa: all the deans have been asked to prioritize; I have
organized positions into “mission critical”, “postpone until 09-10”,
and “postpone indefinitely”. Within those tiers are subpriorities. In
the top tier is workforce development, then enrollment and G.E.
demands, and then critical mass for small departments. Within those
tiers are also extenuating circumstances that may move some
positions from a lower tier into a higher tier. That’s the plan for CAS.
D.F.: But requests for janitorial, grounds and maintenance positions
will have to go all the way to the Governor, as will civil service
positions, so the cuts will have a big impact campuswide. We will
adjust accordingly.
LJ; What about software?
D.F.: For us, that comes out of tuition.
L.J.: We’re implementing software out of Institutional Research so
MAPS reports are live. There’s a site license that the campuses can’t
afford, so I want to buy it for the System and I may need to get an
exception.
D.F.: we want to make sure instruction takes place, and we are trying
to minimize impact on the classroom, but until we know how, and in
which year, this will all play out, we’re planning for the worst. How
do we allocate? Do we prepare for the worst? We also have a
situation with our utility bill, $1.5 million. We have to reallocate that
within the campus budget this year, so that’s already a cut we’re
living with. Our tuition and fee dollars were already committed. We
put in requests for new electricity money for next year, but “what if?”
We also took a look at taking a 15 percent cut on our own in addition
to what we’ve already taken and in addition to the electric bill. So
we’re allocating out a smaller dollar amount for everybody and
putting in a reserve in case of a further budget cut. If the cut doesn’t
come, you can use the reserve for a one time purpose or save it.
We’re doing that in addition to the budget freeze. We still have
initiatives we have to address, like WASC and G.E. and others
important to Congress and the campus, so there a couple different
reserve accounts for different purposes, like accreditation. The other
reserve we’re looking at is faculty equity in acknowledgement of
Congress’ past resolutions. The third reserve is assessment. In
addition, in case of a worst case scenario, we’re thinking about a
small emergency contingency reserve.
P.C.: For example, in case of unexpected enrollment in ENG 100, we
could use emergency funds to add more sections.
b. Visit from V.P. for Academic Planning and Policy, Linda Johnsrud
and
c. The role Congress and faculty should play in the search of the new
Chancellor and President. There were quite a few options raised by
the president.
LJ: when President McClain met with the CEC and Cabinet last
week, he wanted to talk with a larger faculty group about the search
for a new chancellor. He couldn’t come today because of an Oahu
United Way charity event he had to attend, so I am here.
President McClain originally envisioned a process like when Peggy
Cha retired: time for overlap, a year's notice, etc. The B.O.R. said
they would prefer the new President to hire UHH's new chancellor,
and since his last day is July 31, there's uncertainty. There is even
uncertainty about who is on the B.O.R. and who will chair it. So they
have not started a search for the new President.
The faculty search committee for Rose's replacement will be called an
"advisory" committee, but the B.O.R.'s President search committee is
being called a "selection" committee.
They have talked about student and faculty representation on the
committee to select the President.
They have posted three names so far on the website.
They do intend to get a search firm. They intend to have a President
in place before President McClain steps down. Their goal is to have
the new President selected before students and faculty leave this May.
So, the search for a new Chancellor may have candidates in the fall,
but can they start by January 1st?
Regarding the make up of the advisory committee, the President
recommends a candidate to the B.O.R. for approval. So, he's looking
at how he's done other chancellor searches to form the advisory
committee for this one. At the community college level it’s a little
different because the community colleges have an intervening vice
president between their chancellors and the President of the System,
but here the chancellor reports directly to the President, so he sees
them as his staff members. At both west Oahu and Manoa, the
President worked directly with the advisory committee after
candidates were vetted.
Cam Muir: The advisory committee could still begin work even
without a President around, couldn’t it, to get the ball rolling?
L.J.: Yes, but I'm skeptical about whether the President search will
really happen in a timely fashion. We have to look at the ad, etc. It’s
a long process. The President may hire a search firm. My role would
be purely facilitative, no agenda. I just want a chancellor who's a
good fit. I want to help the committee find the best candidates and
then recommend them. The biggest challenge right now is the
timeline because President McClain is leaving.
Phil Castille: The question has been raised about whether serious
candidates would apply knowing the Presidency is vacant, but this
was not an issue with the recent search at Manoa.
Cam Muir: Many people have expressed concerns about using a
search firm. Who will communicate with it, and how will they get a
position description?
L.J. The search firm would come to UHH and talk with faculty and
the community to write the description and begin recruiting.
Cam Muir: Another major concern is the question over why the
System has to be part of the search given that the System has the final
decision anyway. All committee members and search activities, etc.
should be here locally. No co-chair from the System is necessary.
L.J.: This has been the President's practice at West Oahu and at
Manoa. He wants some closeness and involvement with the search.
There is no other agenda.
Regina Titunik: I have heard same concerns. So have others on the
Congress, and we’ve heard from many faculty on campus. System
involvement is scary. It’s hard to prevent people from suspecting an
agenda. The concern with Linda Johnsrud in particular is that she
was interim chancellor and then acting as chair of the advisory
committee at West Oahu, but here it's more like she's coming from
the outside, so it seems less appropriate.
L.J.: Yes, but I was the chair of the advisory committee at West
Oahu explicitly as the representative of the President. The rest of the
committee would be all local. But President McClain sees the search
as his hire for his chancellor, so he wants involvement.
Cam Muir: But we did such a good job last time, can't we plead a
special case?
Phil Castille: What if Linda Johnsrud were called "liaison to the
System" rather than co-chair?
L.J.: I'll take that suggestion to the President, but I don’t know how
he'll respond. The searches you did before were not under President
McClain.
Cam Muir: Saying that President McClain really wants a co-chair
isn’t selling your point. There’s also the issue that Manoa didn’t have
a co-chair from the System, so how come we have to?
L.J.: So the fear is that I'll be a strong arm on the committee?
Reni Ivanova: Everyone understands how skilled and what an asset
you are, there's just the concern that the System will strong arm us.
Don’t take it personally.
Sevki Erdogan: But the next President may not care about having
involvement like this, so maybe we should delay the search until
President McClain is gone.
L.J,: But President McClain sees System involvement as providing
continuity after he’s gone. And yes, the advisory committee at
Manoa didn’t have a co-chair, but the President was directly involved
because of the geographical closeness.
Gail Makuakane-Lundin: Basically, the consensus on campus is that
the decision should be made here. We know the President makes the
final decision, but we should be locally at the front line of who
recommends a candidate to him.
L.J.: I will take your concerns back. He may come and meet with
you later on this. The chancellor does work for the President and the
President does want System involvement.
Cam Muir: Can't the chair here have regular meetings with the
President as Manoa did in lieu of a System co-chair?
L.J.: President McClain would probably state that he needs the cochair for continuity.
Cam Muir: Then can't the committee meet with you rather than have
you as co-chair?
L.J.: As co-chair, I wouldn’t even have a vote; I would just facilitate.
I will take your concerns back.
Regina Titunik: We will put forward your view to the faculty and ask
them for more feedback.
Kerri Inglis: We will take this back to the faculty and see if their
concerns are allayed at all.
L.J.: It is important for the faculty to hear why the President wants to
do this and what I'm bringing to the table. But we would have a
search firm and I wouldn’t have a vote. It will still very much be a
faculty, staff, and student committee.
Sevki Erdogan: If you were the next President, what would you do?
L.J.: I think the B.O.R. is very committed to a System President who
is on top of the ten campuses, so I can see why David handles
searches the way he does. Any President working for this B.O.R.
would do it the same way.
Regina Titunik: We will take this back to the faculty. If David
would talk to the whole faculty, that would be helpful.
L.J.: Actually, I thought I was going to talk to the whole faculty
today.
Meeting adjourned at 5:15 p.m. by the Chair in lieu of a motion and vote as a quorum had
been lost.
Respectfully submitted by Chuck Malenfant, Faculty Congress Secretary, 10/06/2008.