Tulane University
Staff Advisory Council December 2012
ATTENDEES
OFFICERS
Loshbaugh, Alysia,Chair
Smith , Lawrence, Vice Chair
Bouyelas, Sheri, Election Coordinator
Bourgeois, Kathy, Recording
Secretary
Conners, Linzi, Corresponding
Secretary
Chavez, Gwen, Member At Large
ATTENDEES
DOWNTOWN CAMPUS
PRESENT
PRESENT
Davis, Patrick
Haase, Tanya
Heisser, Michael
PRESENT
Huber, Jennifer
PRESENT
PRESENT
Kivell, Anita
PRESENT
Leger, Kay
Ligget, Mark
Miller, Michael, Senator at Large
Parzynski, Stacey
Pick, Amy
Vasquez-Lockhart, Yesenia
PRESENT
PRESENT
PRESENT
PRESENT
PRESENT
EXCUSED
PRESENT
PRESENT
NORTHSHORE
Guichard, Kenny
MacLean, Avery
Viana, Rick
PRESENT
WFMO REPRESENTATIVE
Wallace, Christina
PRESENT
UPTOWN CAMPUS
Bocage, Jered
Branley, Kathy
Cheramie, Christopher
Espinosa, Miriam
Houck, Katie
Keck, Jeanny
Lane, Christopher, Immediate Past
Chair
Leonard, Angelica
Lowe, Brian
Mitchell, Scott
Murphy, Louise
O’Dwyer, Lisa
Platner, Robert
Richards, Whitney
Robinson, LaShanda
PRESENT
EXCUSED
PRESENT
PRESENT
PRESENT
PRESENT
*PRESENT
PRESENT
*PRESENT
EXCUSED
PRESENT
PROXY
Charles, Anna (Proxy)
Feiling, Greg (Proxy)
Guilbeau, Elizabeth (Proxy)
Hankins, Julia (Proxy)
Hayden, Nadrine (Proxy)
Hills, Tynette (Proxy)
Hyde-Augillard, Sharon (Proxy)
Kivell, Lyndsie (Proxy)
Lossi, Suzanne (Proxy)
Nolan, Andrea (Proxy)
Parzynski, Stacey (Proxy)
Relayson, Barbara (Proxy)
Schafer, Liz (Proxy)
Schor, Meredith (Proxy)
Starck, Tamar (Proxy)
Strong, Sewann (Proxy)
Tedesco, Ken (Proxy)
Wilde, Elizabeth (Proxy)
Wilson, Marilyn (Proxy)
Young, Peter (Proxy)
PRESENT
INVITED GUESTS AND VISITORS
Provost Michael Bernstein
* Via teleconference
PRESENT
*PRESENT
PRESENT
*PRESENT
TU Staff Advisory Council Meeting
December 13, 2012
Page 2
All Officers are serving the Staff Advisory Council term 2012 – 2013
Call to Order:
The meeting was called to order by the Chair, Alysia Loshbaugh, at 3:31 pm.
I.
Review and Approval of the Minutes
November 2012 minutes were approved
II.
Guest Speakers
Provost Bernstein talked about the successes and disappointments of the last academic year and what is
in play for this academic year.
Every June or July Scott Cowen gathers his administrative team and they go around the table and talk
about success and disappointments from the previous twelve months. They recruited a new TUPD
Superintendent, Jon Barnwell. Elizabeth Boone, a member of the senior faculty on the uptown campus,
was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which is a huge honor. It is a great
distinction for the University. The office of General Counsel settled the last of the lawsuits associated
with Katrina. From a legal standpoint, Katrina is behind us. Tori Johnson and her team have been
working for several years resolving those legal issues. The Weatherhead Residence Hall on the uptown
campus was completed and is occupied by our undergraduate students. Last year was a pretty solid
financial year for us. We closed the books pretty well. We are on a fairly stable base right now, but we
continue to work on some deficits. There has been steady improvement in the financial picture. Fund
raising is strong. We are raising money well. Our key sources of revenue at the University are tuition
payments from our students, the revenue from the physician practice plan in Health Sciences, research
support, grants and philanthropy. On the undergraduate side our retention and graduation rates are
improving. One of the key variables we always look at is what percentage of students show up in the
sophomore year. We have been in the mid eighty percentile in the past. We are now at about 90% or
91%, but we would like to drive it to 95%. If we can do that, we are going to be with the Duke’s and the
Vanderbilts, Harvards, Yales and Princetons. It is going to take some hard work to get there. The
hardest students for us to retain are the students from Louisiana mainly for financial reasons. They have
the option of lower cost public schools. Research funding remains a very strong highlight to the
University. Our faculty and research staff are very productive. They bring in about 160 million dollars’
worth of grants and contracts on the research side every year, which is remarkable for a university of
this size. We have been involved in a big strategic planning exercise. This past year we did a lot of data
gathering. We are where we want to be at this point. We are hoping by this coming June to have plans
from all of the units. We are finished with the renewal plan. About 89% of the renewal plan got
deployed. It is time to re-define ourselves.
Finding a stable clinical platform for the medical school remains a challenge. We operate in a city and
region where there are far more hospital beds than we need. There are about 40% more hospital beds
out there than are needed. Our medical school needs the beds with patients to train the students to do
TU Staff Advisory Council Meeting
December 13, 2012
Page 3
its research. We are still out there looking for strong partnerships in the region and we have not yet
solved that puzzle. It is a challenge for all of the medical systems in the area.
The state budget and Louisiana economy have been a challenge. There has been a proposed reversal of
medical cuts. We have to find the right partners to make up the difference there.
Crime and security in New Orleans are a challenge. Jon Barnwell and his team are trying to develop new
strategies and we are trying to put more money in for more officers, more cars, more cameras and
better practices to ensure the safety of the faculty, staff, students, visitors, community members and
patients.
Space and facilities are issues. We are maxed out on the uptown campus. There is a big plan to try to
grow the faculty in the Freeman School of Business, but we have no idea of where we will put them.
There is space downtown, but it isn’t in the condition that they need it to be in.
Academic Affairs is working on the strategic planning initiative. They are partnering with all of the
academic units and facilitating their efforts to develop their own plans. Our goal by spring is to have at
least draft strategic plans from all of the schools and academic units with the goal of having a composite
report by June for Scott and the senior leadership team.
There is a goal is to launch a capital campaign to raise money. They will probably announce that in a
year or so. You have to have a strategic plan first before asking people for money.
They are conducting some leadership searches. They continue to search for the inaugural holder of the
SACS Distinguished Chair in Civic Engagement and Social Entrepreneurship. It is a faculty position for a
leader in the social innovation field that can help us in our community initiatives and our community and
civic engagement work. We have been searching for over two years. They will be launching a search for
the next director of the office of Institutional Research, because Dave Davis is retiring. This is the central
office that analyzes and collects key data on the institution. There are some initiatives in graduate and
post-doctoral education and training. This is to look at our PHD training programs. This is best practice
at Universities these days. Every seven years or so, you review a program to see if it is doing its job. The
Associate Provost for Graduate Studies and Research, Brian Mitchell, is heading this effort. The
Graduate Counsel, which is a faculty group, and the University senate will look at this data as well. Each
year we will do a different set of programs to get into a rolling cycle of reviews.
We are also going to try to develop better career counseling for our graduate and post-graduate
doctoral students. The students are calling for this. Obviously as the external environment gets more
challenging for jobs, more counseling is needed.
The faculty handbook is being looked at. It is a difficult document that is about forty years old. It has
been manipulated, refined and revised, but it has never been taken apart and re-done. The handbook is
the key map that helps with faculty appointments, promotions, leaves and benefits. It also affects staff
that works with faculty especially the Human Resources staff that deals with them. They want to re-
TU Staff Advisory Council Meeting
December 13, 2012
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write the entire handbook. They will get legal advice. If possible, they will have a new handbook by
next fall for approval. About a dozen faculty members showed up to work on the revision. They broke
them up into teams. One group is working on appointments and promotions, one is working on
academic privilege and freedom issues and one is working on benefits and leaves. They will come up
with suggestions. The voting members of the University senate have the ultimate decision on the
revision.
They are looking at the undergraduate core curriculum. Admission to Newcomb Tulane College comes
through one door now. It used to be that you were admitted to six or seven different schools and you
would apply directly to the school that you were interested in. Now you apply to the college. Common
to all of the students is the core curriculum of general requirements. They want to look at it to see if it
needs to be revised. Independent of the specific degree, they all share a core. We are challenged to see
if that remains the adequate approach. There are debates about the value of an undergraduate
education especially at a very expensive private school like Tulane. The questions are: Will or should it
get you a job? How does it get you a job? That process will take years. The challenge for Academic
Affairs will be to disconnect the discussion of what education should be and the turf patrolling that goes
on by faculty. We have to look at what will serve the students well and attract them to an expensive
Liberal Arts education.
A member asked if we should think of students as customers as opposed to just students. The staff
thinks of them as customers. We typically think that the customer is always right. The Provost thinks of
it as a balance, because we are here to guide the students as well.
It used to be that it was up to the student to do something with their degree. Times have changed,
though. We have to recognize that. The vast majority of our students are doing extraordinarily well.
The problems do take up the majority of our time.
Another member had a question. As the retention rate grows, how do you plan to increase the faculty
and classes? We don’t have enough faculty. Some of the problem is the echo effect of Katrina. The
good news is that student head count is way up. The opposite problem would be much worse for us.
We have been admitting about 1650 undergraduates, but before Katrina, the goal was 1400. Our peer
institutions have endowments that are two or three times larger than ours. Ours is about one billion
dollars and theirs are about three to five billion dollars. It makes a big difference in terms of the number
of faculty and staff that you can recruit. That is where fund raising and grants activity comes in. There is
a university that is like us in terms of size of endowments and number of students, which is Carnegie
Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Their endowment is about one billion dollars. They bring in enormous
amounts of research money especially in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. That is how they
make up the difference. Our external funding was around one hundred million around Katrina, but it
was about one hundred sixty million last year.
A member asked if we are looking at stabilizing the number of students we take in every year and are
tuition rates going to increase? We should keep it at 1,600, because we can’t afford the reduction in
revenue. We can’t expect to increase tuition at about 5% or more every year without running into a
TU Staff Advisory Council Meeting
December 13, 2012
Page 5
problem. We have been trying to slow down the rate of increase in tuition. The total combined
increase has been about 3% to 4%, which is well below what our competitors are doing. They are doing
5% to 7% a year. We give about 40% back in aid. For every dollar we are being paid in tuition, about
forty cents goes back out the door in tuition support. We want to look at the admissions documents
first and then look at the financial. Some schools look at the financials first. We are a relatively tuition
dependent institution, because 33% of our revenue comes from tuition. If we could drive that down to
15%, we could start thinking about freezing tuition or reducing it. If we eliminate financial aid, and
reduced tuition to a fixed price to about $20,000 without giving financial aid, it isn’t clear that we would
be ahead. We want to admit the best students. The challenge is how we meet all of our needs, how we
hire more staff and faculty and keep the tuition from rising too quickly.
III.
Report of
Loshbaugh
the
Chair,
Alysia
We had a special election at the Primate Center to replace Desi. Amber Wright attended in Avery
MacLean’s place. We have a vacancy on the Senate Technology Committee. Brian Lowe from the
uptown campus serves on it, so we need a downtown or Primate Center. Rick Viana volunteered. They
don’t meet very often.
IV.
WFMO Liaison
V.
Officer Reports
A. University Senate
University Senate met on the 5th. President reported that we had about 25,000 early action
admission applications and by the time they close, they feel they will have about 30,000
applications. So far about 60% of the applications are from females. There are more apps
from the west coast, but they are shooting to accept fewer students next fall to get smaller
classes. Tulane is leaving the conference USA and joining the big east. About 80% of our
big east conference home games will be at the arena, because we will need more seating.
The Dalai Lama will be the speaker at the commencement this year. There have been some
complaints from the Chinese students and the Chinese government. Because of the security
issues, they are going to be doing tickets. Each student will get seven tickets, which will give
the student one ticket and six for family members. A member said that they recently
increased it to sixteen tickets. They anticipate tight security. He will also receive an
honorary degree. There are many staff members in medicine that want to go to hear him
speak. If they can’t find tickets, they should volunteer. They worry about being stuck in the
lobby, but we are normally able to be inside by the time commencement begins. He is also
doing some lectures at UNO for $25 and the School of Social Work has some opportunities
to hear him.
TU Staff Advisory Council Meeting
December 13, 2012
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B. Board of Administrators
They discussed the establishment of the endowment funds. They established a resolution
for a new degree program at the Law School. They are going to buy the property at 6320
South Claiborne Avenue. The goal of the Development campaign is three hundred thirty
two million dollars. They discussed the move to the Conference USA. We went from five
teams before Katrina to sixteen, which made us eligible for Conference USA.
VI. University Senate Committee Reports
1. Benefits
No Report
2. Budget Review
They talked about the assumptions that we are going to use next year and approved a draft
of a timetable to get it approved. We are going to budget to break even or have a slight
deficit. The tuition increase is about 3.7%. If they are going to continue giving merit
increases to faculty and staff, then it is hard to go any lower with tuition increases. A
student asked for a wage freeze in the Hullabaloo.
Headcount stabilization is going away in fiscal year 2014.
Frozen funds have to get unfrozen by a senior officer. If you have old balances in a four or
six ledger account, you have to get approval to spend those frozen balances. A member
asked if something gets frozen this year, would she still have to keep requesting it year after
year. The answer is yes. That forces everyone to spend it down. They don’t want
unexpected cash flow.
3. Information Technology
They met with a group on campus that is heading up the mobile app, and they should have
some information soon.
4. Equal Opportunity
No Report
5. Physical Facilities
No Report
6. Social Issues
No Report
VII. SAC Sub-Committees
TU Staff Advisory Council Meeting
December 13, 2012
Page 7
1. Election Committee
We had a Primate Center special election.
2. Electronic Technology and Information
No Report
3. Staff Appreciation
Gwen sent a repot. The problem she is running into is that the quads are limited, because
of the construction on the uptown campus. Our options are limited, so she looked at
shelters at the Audubon Park, City Park and Lafreniere Park, but Audubon Park and City
Park are booked through June. Lafreniere Park’s parking lot can’t accommodate more than
200 cars. We would have to buy extra insurance if we want a spacewalk. Someone asked
if we could have it indoors. In order to minimize the number of students that try to come to
our event is to have it on March 24th, which is the first day of spring break. We agreed that
having it on campus would be better. Someone suggested the space behind Bruff
Commons or we may look at the Academic Quad.
4. Staff Issues
No Report
5. Health and Wellness
They have been working on the intramural idea. We can all participate in intramural sports,
but you have to have a Reily Membership. They are trying to work around that. A dining
guide is coming out. On January 28th they are going to put signs out to encourage people to
take the stairs.
6. Community Service
We did very well. Ticket sales for the raffle were $3246, general donations were $2839 the
gift cards were $830 and 600 toys. Orleans has 100 children, St Tammany has 150 and
Jefferson has 227. Each facility got $2,000 in gift cards. The majority of the children in
Orleans are teenagers. Last year we had 550 toys, $5200 in cash and gift card donations.
We drew the winners at the meeting.
Art Work winner was dkossox
Gift Basket winner was Cheryl Wilson
Saints Tickets winner was Jeanny Keck
7. Ad Hoc Student Relations Committee
No Report
TU Staff Advisory Council Meeting
December 13, 2012
Page 8
8. Ad Hoc Constitution Committee
They met on November 15th. Hopefully by the February meeting they hope to have a
draft document for consideration. They talked about changing the meetings from
monthly (10 times per year) to six times per year, but we would have to make the
meeting times longer. They talked about combining the offices of recording secretary
and corresponding secretary. A lot of the duties overlap. They talked about adding the
parliamentarian as an officer, because there are references to the responsibilities, but
we don’t have a parliamentarian. That would be an appointed position. Now it says that
the immediate past chair is an ex officio voting member and they want to change it to
have them as a member at large. They are supposed to be there in an advisory capacity
and you can do that by having a member at large as opposed to mandating that they
have to be there as ex officio.
VIII.
IX.
Old Business
New Business
Sharon Hyde-Augillard asked if anyone is interested in giving Desi an expression of
thanks and to let her know that we are thinking about her. Alysia asked Sharon to draft
something. Elizabeth has her address.
X.
Adjournment
The meeting adjourned at 4:45 pm
Respectfully submitted,
Kathy Bourgeois
Recording Secretary