December 9, 2013 Faculty Council Meeting
Hillary Hart (chair, distinguished senior lecturer, civil, architectural, and environmental engineering):
{0:00:40.0}
Okay, let’s get started. Hi everybody, thank you for being here during this extremely busy and crazy time
of the year, I really appreciate it. Once again, our secretary is not here today so I am going to give the
Report of the Secretary. There was a memorial resolution completed for M. Michael Sharlot and really no
other items completed since the last report. What we need to do today is to approve, if we can, the
November 18 minutes. In spite of what the slide says, our last meeting was November 18. I hope you’ve
had a chance to look at the minutes so that we can vote. Because this is all transcribed, let me just remind
people again, we need you at a microphone and we need your name and department.
Alberto Martinez (associate professor, history, faculty council):
Thank you, very quickly Al Martinez, Faculty Council. I have a very brief objection to one footnote. The
only footnote in the report, it says both President [William] Powers and Vice President [Kevin] Hegarty
have acknowledged that the Shared Services planned numbers were not accurately reflected in the Shared
Services presentations and that they should be updated. I know that that’s not something that happened at
the meeting, so what I’m hoping is that this footnote does not come from an e-mail I sent Hillary. Hegarty
has spoken to me about this in private conversations; however, you know, I think that both he and Powers
should communicate directly with the Faculty Council if there’s a statement in the minutes about their
comments.
Hart:
You know it certainly didn’t come in an e-mail to me. Debbie, can you say something about the minutes
here? {0:2:27.4}
Debbie Roberts (executive assistant, office of the general faculty):
My understanding is that Dean Neikirk wanted a footnote indicating that, [Hart: that the figures need to be
revised] right, just to let faculty know that he was aware that the numbers were not correct. I think it was
discussed in the FCEC+ meeting. I don’t know…we can delete it if you all choose to have it deleted.
Hart:
Okay, let’s—let’s ask Kevin.
Kevin Hegarty (vice president and chief financial officer):
I was not at the last meeting if the comment was made there. If it was made outside of the meeting, relative
to my conversation about that, I disagree. I don’t know that…my exact comment was that the pattern of the
numbers may change. Some revenue, some expense may accelerate, may decelerate, but it’s going to be
what it’s going to be. So there is no basis for restating those numbers.
Hart:
My memory of this was that, Al you may have brought it up at the meeting and the president acknowledged
that there may be some slippage there, or some difference, but there was nothing specific, and so I think we
probably should strike that. Okay, so with the revised minutes with the footnote, the only footnote taken out,
may I have a motion to approve? Is there a second? All those in favor please say Aye. [Aye.] Opposed,
nay? [Nay.] And, abstentions? Okay, great. Passed. All right, the next part of the meeting is questions with
the president, communications with the president, questions for him. We do not have Bill Powers with us,
but we have our provost, Greg Fenves, who is going to address the questions from Blinda McClellan and
Jon Olsen. Thank you.
Gregory Fenves (professor, executive vice president and provost): {0:4:38.4}
Thank you Hillary. I’m Greg Fenves, executive vice president and provost representing President Powers,
who could not be here today. I assume everybody can read the question or has read it so I won’t repeat it.
So, since this question was submitted, I’ve worked with Patti Ohlendorf in the general counsel’s office,
looking at some of these issues. And there are two important aspects to the answer. Number one, individual
faculty own the copyright to materials that they prepare for their courses. So syllabi, reading lists, notes,
flash cards, those are copyrighted by an individual faculty member. The University does not assert
ownership or copyright of any materials prepared for a class.
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December 9, 2013 Faculty Council Meeting
So that’s going to be very important, and the second part of this is that sites like CourseHero are file
sharing sites. Some of you may remember in the 90s and 2000s there was huge controversy about music
sharing sites. What was the big one… Napster that went out of business and was forced out of business, so
there were huge changes taking place in the distribution of copyrighted material and trademark material.
That eventually led to what is known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which I think passed about
a year or two ago. And so the new copyright act does allow the file sharing services to share files without
any liability for copyright infringement, unless the owner of the copyrighted material requests the file
sharing site to take it down. So what does this mean for CourseHero? Well, if you’re teaching a class, and
your class materials end up on the site, presumably a student in your class downloaded it from a site that
they needed to be a registered student to receive them, then uploaded them to CourseHero, CourseHero can
host that until you, as a faculty member who holds the copyright, requests CourseHero to take it down. So
the University cannot act on a faculty member’s behalf, because the University doesn’t own the copyright.
We’ve worked over the past day or two with the general counsel’s office to think about a few things that
could be done. Number one, the attorney in Patti’s office has created a template that’s basically a form.
There’s a very specific procedure for a copyright holder to request material being taken down. It’s
straightforward, but it does require action by the faculty member, the holder of the copyright, to send this to
CourseHero to request it be taken down. And CourseHero must do it, or then they do become liable for
damages, but that doesn’t prevent another student or the same student from reposting it. This is the way the
copyright act has been set up under the recent law. But, we could set up a template, educate faculty about
what are the procedures for requesting material to be taken down. But again, as the University, we can’t act
on behalf of a copyright holder unless the faculty member elects to turn copyright of the materials over to
the University, and that’s generally something we haven’t wanted and faculty haven’t wanted, because
faculty should own the copyright.
We’ve talked with the Dean of Students about an education campaign to students that when they download
material it’s for their use for their class; it can’t be distributed because it is owned by the faculty member.
In fact, if they do transmit it to CourseHero or other file sharing sites, they are violating institutional rules
and violating the honor code. So part of this is education of our student body who may be doing this. The
third thing that can be done is, if a faculty member does request it to be taken down and there’s identifying
information for a student, then Student Judicial Services can open up an investigation of the student
violating institutional rules by using material from a class in a way that they shouldn’t. Those are the
mechanisms that are available. Again, with the understanding that the faculty member owns the copyright,
and under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, these file sharing services are allowed to do things unless
they’re given notice by the copyright holder. We’re very interested in getting feedback from faculty with
these ranges of things that can be done, again, primarily an education campaign with students. Faculty can
put notices in their syllabus that students should not use material for purposes other than their material use
in the class, so their students are aware of this. Then, if enough faculty give notice to CourseHero, they may
decide that they don’t want to receive uploaded material from The University of Texas at Austin students,
and it’s just not worth the liability. Those are a number of actions that can be taken. {0:10:24.3}
On the second question about some of the material, I guess think about the student that submitted material
to a file sharing system with their name on it—you have to wonder what they were thinking—but, the
question is, is the name and EID protected under FERPA? The answer is, both of those are considered
directory information, and so those are available publicly unless the student has gone to the registrar’s
website and requested that directory information not be made public. So in general, releasing directory
information does not violate FERPA. It would depend on whether that individual student had actually gone
to the registrar’s site. But presumably, it was that student who submitted the information— although you
can never tell. So that’s where we are with file sharing services.
Blinda McClelland (lecturer, biology instructional office): [0:11:24.2]
Hi, I’m Blinda McClelland. [Fenves: yes] I’m the one that submitted the question, and I had two purposes
in doing so. First of all, because I had submitted questions to our IT people and various other people who
might have some control over this situation and haven’t received any answer. So I was a little frustrated.
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December 9, 2013 Faculty Council Meeting
Secondly, everyone I have talked to has been shocked to find out that materials that we upload to
Blackboard, that we consider to be only accessible to students, like my PowerPoints, are uploaded to
CourseHero. I think we all understand a huge difference between creating a public personal website and
uploading things. And then, you know, if a person—and by the way, people pay to download material from
CourseHero, so CourseHero’s making a profit on our material. I mean, if they’re paying for information
that they can get for free, then that’s an issue for P.T Barnum, but I think we all understand the difference
between materials that are uploaded. I had 133 results for William Powers Texas when I searched, fortyone for Bill Powers, four for Greg Fenves [Fenves: Well, there’s something suspicious there, because I
know I haven’t submit…I don’t have any materials on Blackboard] Well, your name just happened to come
up. Right, twenty-five for Hillary Hart, eight for William Beckner, seventy-five for Dean Neikirk. I don’t
know if you would consider it a good thing or a bad thingto rate how many uploads there are with your
name attached. But, I want to thank you for your answer and I really support an education outreach to the
faculty to make them aware and secondly to the students. CourseHero is just one site [Fenves: it’s just one
site, that’s correct] And I appreciate the idea of putting it in the syllabus so…
Fenves:
And back to [Hart: three minutes], back to Napster, some universities working with some of the record
companies really did go after students who had been illegally uploading. After a few of those prosecutions,
it pretty much ended Napster. I think getting the message out there that this is not something our students
should be doing, it’s violating the honor code, it’s violating institutional rules, and it’s really violating the
rights of the faculty they’re taking courses from should help. But I’ll check to see what they have with my
name on it. All right, Thank you. {0:14:13.2}
Hart:
Don’t go too far away though, because we are now at the report of the chair and I want to give you an
update on UTS 180, the System…Blinda, you got a problem? [unidentified voice speaking, inaudible] Well,
I think provost Fenves has been nice enough to impersonate Bill Powers in a prepared question, but
questions to the president are for the president, especially from the floor. I’m just going to say it has to wait
until January. You can blame me. It’s not Greg’s decision, it’s mine. Okay, thanks. So I wanted to give you
an update on 180, the System policy on Conflict of Commitment, Conflict of Interest, and Outside
Activities that has gone up to System, the model HOP language that the Faculty Council Executive
Committee worked on with legal affairs, and Neil Armstrong’s office has just gone to System I think, early
this month. The implementation of the policy is being prepared under provost Fenves’ direction so I’ve
asked him to give us an update on the implementation. Would you come up here?
Fenves: {15:42.6}
As Hillary said, our version of UTS 180 in our Handbook of Operating Procedures is now at the System
office for final approval. This is the version that, as Hillary mentioned, has gone through the Executive
Council with some changes from the model policy, but we were satisfied with it. I talked about it earlier in
a Faculty Council meeting. It’s about as good as we were going to get and a significant improvement over
the original version of UTS 180. We’re expecting System to approve our version of UTS 180 in the
Handbook of Operating Procedures. The key step now is in the implementation of UTS 180, and Neil
Armstrong in my office is working with System on that. When I looked at it about two weeks ago there was
a real problem in it and it stemmed from the fact that UT System is developing a website for faculty to
access to do the advanced approval where required and then the annual reporting. The annual reporting was
okay. The advanced approval had a major problem in my view in that it required faculty to declare
compensation for an activity in which they’re requesting approval, no matter what the conditions were. And
of course, under the policy, which we reviewed and which we submitted to UT System, compensation only
needs to be reported if it is over $5000, and if there is a “conflict of interest management plan” in effect.
That’s a very specific condition that requires reporting of compensation for that outside activity. UT
System set up this website so that it can be used by all fifteen campuses within The University of Texas
System. According to them, some campuses wanted to use the level of compensation in the determination
of whether there was a conflict of interest. We do not want to do that. The website, at least in the version I
looked at a couple of weeks ago, did not reflect the policy. So we’re working with UT System to either
modify the website or have it programmed specifically for UT Austin faculty. I haven’t heard back how
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December 9, 2013 Faculty Council Meeting
that’s working out yet, but I’ve made it clear that we want an implementation that directly follows the
requirements in the approved policy. I hope we will get that. We will get it. They are also working on
training materials to describe the policy to faculty and staff. We will scrutinize those very closely to make
sure that those do reflect the actual policy and the procedures for carrying out the policy. So that’s what the
current status is. I believe they will be doing a beta test of the website early in 2014, and I’m not clear on
this, but I think the rollout is expected in March of next year. Thank you. {0:10:06.3}
Hart:
Thank you, Greg. Last I heard was that the reporting was going to be for January through March, but it
probably won’t roll out until March, so we’ll stand by for updates on the timing. The only other thing I
want to do in my report is to let you know who the winners of the Civitatis Award are this year. I don’t
think either one of them are in the room. This is an award that was—some of you may know about this
award—this was an award that was created, I think, in 1997 to sort of honor good faculty citizenship,
faculty going above and beyond and being helpful to other faculty. I have the exact wording somewhere,
but I lost it. It’s a really wonderful award because it honors a lifetime of giving to the University in many
ways and just being a fantastic faculty citizen. I think that’s the best way to put it. And this year’s winners
are two, Larry Abraham, who was interim undergraduate dean—Larry’s here! Larry, all right. Please stand
up. [applause] Those of you who know Larry at all know how many endless hours he has worked for
undergraduate studies and for undergraduate education on this campus. Thank you Larry. And Pat Davis
from pharmacy who has been on many, many committees and done a lot of service through the years and is
probably a familiar name to a lot of you. So congratulations to both of you. [applause]
{24:04.5} Okay, no report of the chair-elect since we have no chair-elect here. No unfinished business. So I
want to move to the reports that we have under new business. With your permission, I’m going to change
the agenda a bit and ask David Laude, senior vice provost for enrollment and graduation management to
come forward before Mary [Steinhardt], who has kindly said that she would go afterwards to talk to us
about four-year graduation rate initiatives. Thank you David.
David Laude (professor, senior vice provost for enrollment and graduation management):
Thanks, Hillary for the opportunity to speak with you all today. As I understand I’m going to take about
fifteen minutes to give you a broad overview of what we’ve been doing with respect to the notion of fouryear graduation rate improvement. If you think back a few years, there has been some conversation about
how a university goes about being efficient in the way that it educates its students. There has been a long
tradition that it takes four-years to go to college, and I know that many of us probably did it in four years
not really knowing why, but we did, and we graduated and moved on.
Here at UT and across the country over the last several decades, there’s developed a somewhat different
perspective of how to use college. You end up seeing lots of differences in the graduation rates for students.
Universities where it’s very expensive to go to school still have four-year graduation rates that are right at
four years. At other institutions where you have the opportunity to spend more time and where the
economic pressures aren’t as substantial, you end up tending to see students take longer to graduate. Here at
The University of Texas, we have a reasonable four-year graduation rate, the best in the state of Texas. It’s
at about 52 percent for a public university. That’s consistent with a lot of our peers such as Texas A&M,
for example, and some of the Big Ten schools. However, it’s also true that there are institutions out there
that we consider our peers who are able to graduate their students at a substantially higher rate—North
Carolina, Virginia and Michigan have four-year graduation rates around 70 percent. President Powers
found himself in conversation with others a few years ago about whether or not the University was able to
get itself from this place where we were around 52 percent up to about 70 percent and said yes, he thought
we could. He charged the task force that was chaired by Dean Diehl in liberal arts to look at ways that we
could go about doing this. That task force met over the course of many months and issued a task force
report, which said basically three things. It said: 1) we should improve orientation, 2) that we should
improve advising, and 3) that we should hire a champion for four-year graduation rates and I believe that is
me. I am the champion for four-year graduation rates. They also had a list of like a hundred really hard
things to do that would improve four-year graduation rates, and they told the champion that it would be his
or her job to do that. So that’s the job I’ve taken on. I’ve been in the provost’s office for the last eighteen
months with that particular responsibility. I should stop here though and tell you that my view of four-year
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December 9, 2013 Faculty Council Meeting
graduation rates is couched less in the notion that we’re supposed to be graduating students with a 70
percent four-year graduation rate, and more with the perspective of student success. I come out of a student
dean’s tradition, fifteen years in the College of Natural Sciences. As for me, it wasn’t really whether a
student graduated in three years or four years or five years. It was whether or not when they were through
at their time here at this University they felt that they had a successful academic, intellectual and personal
experience. That to me was what mattered most. {25:00.4}
It seems to me that with the caliber of student we bring to this University, if we do things right, a student
will, on average, graduate in four years. Certainly 70 percent of them will. 30 percent of them will not.
Maybe because a few of them will decide to leave the University, or maybe because some of them decide
to stay longer to pursue other sorts of academic interests. But it doesn’t seem out of bounds to imagine the
idea that you would be able to graduate 70 percent of our students in four years. The question is, how do
you go about doing that? I’m going to show you a few slides to give you some idea of what we’ve been
doing over the first few years with respect to those students. But I want to start by giving you a sense of
how we’re trying to frame things for our students.
If you’ll indulge me I want to show you about a two-minute video. This video was shown at Orientation
this last summer to the class of 2017. Now already I’m sort of framing things in a different way than we’ve
talked about before. In much the same way that students went off to high school and were told that they
were going to graduate in four years, and so you just did the math, and it was four years later, and that’s
when you knew your class was. Well, we’ve decided to start doing that here. There is, in fact, for every
single class its very own logo, its very own champion, its very own sort of identity as that particular class.
So as we, and Carolyn here, help start this up, as we bring students onto campus for Orientation, the
opportunity to have it impressed upon them that graduating in four years is something that makes sense is
one of the things that they see. Let’s go ahead and see the video. [video plays] {0:29:29.1}
One of the things about that video that impresses me is that those are all undergraduates doing the work. I
remember when I went to college it didn’t look like that. I sat in a lot of classes and listened to a lot of
people that looked like you and me talk at me. I took some tests and I graduated four years later. It really is
remarkable the kinds of students who show up on this campus, and the sorts of things that we are
innovating to make a new way of learning available to them. I’m going to briefly go through some of the
things that we’re working on and if you have questions, I’d be happy to answer them.
First, let’s start with finding the right kind of student to come to the University. It’s interesting, we’re one
of those universities that is enormously attractive to students, and at the same time, there are restrictions on
how it is we’re supposed to go about the application and admissions process. So the top 10 Percent Law
requires that 75 percent of our students automatically qualify to come to the University. At the same time,
we have this ever-increasing population of applicants who want to be here as well. So for that other 25
percent it becomes, in many ways, as competitive as going to an Ivy League school. So there’s this
confluence of these two very different sorts of processes by which we admit our students. And it’s from
within that that we’re supposed to form the four-year 70 percent graduation class. If we’re smart about it,
we will go in and look at these students and we will start to evaluate them in the context of graduating in
four years. The first thing I want to show you is a new way that we’re doing this, and I don’t want to take
credit for it because this is not my doing, this is Dan Slesnick, senior vice provost in the provost’s office,
who worked with a team to help develop a way for us to actually evaluate a student’s success on this
campus specifically in the context of graduating in four years. You can imagine what a lot of these
parameters are that define success. They might be the fact that they have a high SAT score, or that they
have taken a lot of dual credit or AP credit courses. But there are lots of other factors that come into play as
well, and they end up helping us decide who the students are that we’re going to try to recruit. We do this
in a couple of ways. First, we have some amount of discretionary financial aid available to us and we use
that money to go after students that we think are going to be most successful in graduating in four years.
That’s the equivalent of going after your very best students and having a merit process for that. {32:04.5}
The other thing we want to do look at our students who come here and identify the ones who are going be
to be challenged with respect to graduating in four years, so we can see what we can do to supplement their
educational experience to help them to be successful. Notice this is happening within this parameter that we
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December 9, 2013 Faculty Council Meeting
have described as ‘the four-year graduation rate.’ I’m not sure how well you can see this data, I tried to
keep the numbers as small as possible here, as few as possible so that you can see them, but this is showing
you something of the correlations between the SAT that students have coming to the University and their
predicted four-year graduation rate. Without going into too much detail, just to give you an idea of the
difference between 2012 and 2013 in terms of our recruiting, when we tried to incentivize students coming
to this University, we incentivized towards students who were more likely to be successful. You can see
that with respect to some of the traditional parameters. You see that the 2013 class is measurably better
than the 2012 class, whether it’s the fact that we have a higher percentage of students with high SATs
coming to the University, or the fact that they have a greater likelihood of graduating in four years, and that
we’ve reduced the number of students with a lower likelihood of graduating in four years. That might not
seem like that’s all that unusual, that correlation between SAT and four-year graduation rate, but then you
see how it’s complicated, and this is one of the challenges we face at this University.
Take a look at this data right here. This shows you students coming into The University of Texas by college.
And this shows you the likelihood of graduating in those colleges. This right here, actually for me, is some
of the most depressing data you can imagine. It shows that the students who are defined as our best students
by SAT, the students coming in engineering with really impressive average SAT [scores], are least likely to
graduate in four years, and similar trends are seen in natural sciences. The reasons for this are many. These
are more difficult degrees, they’re more complicated, they have tougher courses, and, I think, most
importantly, for a lot of these students they don’t really know that this is the kind of major that they want to
have. On the other hand, you see that we have some colleges that are already achieving substantial
success—communications, for example, has already made its four-year mark. But at least having this kind
of data available to us lets us know who the students are that we have to go after if we’re going to help
them improve their ability to graduate in four years.
So what are we doing? It comes in stages. The first stage is with respect to college readiness. We want to
make sure that before the student matriculates, before they arrive on campus for Gone To Texas and start in
class, that certain things have happened. One is that they get oriented. Marc Musick did a wonderful job
over the last couple of years of overhauling orientation so that it became an expectation that every student
would go. In fact, last year more than 99 percent of our students showed up for orientation and got what I
think is a much more academically focused experience. We’ve also started to implement more substantial
science, technology, engineering and mathematics readiness for our students. These are the students who
typically struggle, and these are the students for whom a lot of front-end college readiness work was done.
Notice for example, a Summer Bridge Program that we put into place. We identified about 200 students
who were least likely to be successful at UT and were able to give them $6000 scholarships to show up to
UT in the summer, to take a math course, to take a writing course in the second summer session and to
incentivize their participation by giving them $1000 if they passed their courses. The argument here was
that these students would have been at home in the summer working, so why not have them come here and
do the work of doing well in their coursework to be successful? {36:05.5}
Once they get on campus though, it’s entirely possible that they will not be successful. We need to be much
more nimble in the way that we work with our students. We implemented a Major Switch Program. This is
an interesting idea that said perhaps there are students, especially in a STEM field, who get a month into
school and suddenly realize that they’ve made a terrible mistake, that they weren’t as ready as they thought.
They take their calculus course, they take their chemistry course, and they’re failing them, and failing them
badly. In the old days, what would happen is they would continue to fail the courses all the way up until the
end of the fall semester, and they would basically go on dismissal or probation, and it would be very
difficult for them to recover. These days, with the Major Switch Program, we’re actually able to identify
those students, sit down with them, talk to them about what their goals are, and if their interest is in getting
better and staying in the sciences, we help them. Most recently, about forty students chose to leave. They
were routed into non-majors math and sciences courses, so they’ll still get their core courses taken care of,
but they’ll be able to move over into a new field of study and not be burdened by the bad grades that they
might get in those other courses.
If you take a look at the four-year graduation rate likelihood of success, you’ll see that about a quarter of
our students will struggle to make the 40 percent four-year graduation rate. For any student who has less
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December 9, 2013 Faculty Council Meeting
than a 40 percent likelihood of graduating in four years, we require that they be part of a success program.
There are a variety of great success programs that have been created around the campus in engineering,
undergraduate studies, DDCE and natural sciences. These programs provide students with mentoring, small
classroom experiences and supplemental instruction that allows them to perform better in terms of what it
is they’re trying to accomplish in their freshman year. We substantially increased the amount of money we
put into these programs, as it shows you right here. We have about 1,200 of our students who are now in
success programs in their freshman year. We’ve also decided to expand the idea of a small community
experience to all of our students—that’s 7,200 incoming students, putting them into 20 student cohorts,
means 360 connections, 360 different small cohort experiences. We did that this year for the first time with
the help of undergraduate studies and the folks working in the FIG program, and then in all of the
community programs across campus, and the honors programs and the success programs. This was really a
remarkable effort. When I first came to UT twenty-five years ago, the idea that a student would have a
small classroom experience was a bit of a fiction. Now, we can honestly say that every single student who
shows up here as a freshman sits in a room around the table with twenty other students, with a mentor, with
an instructor, and has a conversation once a week. This didn’t come overnight – this came from about two
decades of building up the kind of infrastructure to make this happen. And then, importantly, as I said, we
provided an identity for these students, the fact that they are part of the class of 2017. That right there is the
logo for the class of 2017. There will be a class of 2018 logo, 19 logo and so on. These students met on the
football field at the beginning of the year and formed a giant picture of the shape of Texas as I recall and
started to build that identity. Student government, senate, all of the campus leadership has rallied together
around these students to help them understand that this is part of their responsibility. So you ask, how has
this worked?
Any measure of UT success with its freshman is something we can be hugely proud of. President Faulkner,
about two decades ago, recognized that we had very bad freshman year persistence. We were down in the
high 70 percents compared to our peers. These days, we are easily over 90 percent freshman persistence. In
fact, this last year, even with the largest class in UT’s history, we had almost 95 percent of our students
persist into the next year, which is an all-time record for the University. So I think we can honestly say that
we can be really, really proud of what we do for our freshmen. The question is what we’re going to do for
our juniors, our sophomores and our seniors as they continue on here at UT. This is where I’m turning a lot
of my work now. We have incentive-based programs through financial aid where we’re trying to not get
students to show up here because they got money, but rather, receive money because of their
accomplishments while they’ve been here. You saw an example of this with the Summer Bridge Program,
where we had 200 students pass math and science courses. Maybe because they wanted to pass them, but
certainly the $1000 that they got when they finished didn’t hurt. Another example of incentive programs for
our students is the University leadership network, a program for students with need. They come in, 500 of
them, as freshmen, and for the next four years they will receive $5000 in scholarships as part of a
leadership program training, mentoring and community service as they start to grow into roles with the
University. To be able to do this, they have to stay on track to graduate in four years, and they have to
continue to develop as students within the program. There are $1500 enrichment programs for Presidential
Achievement Scholars that let them do experiential learning. There’s the Academic Excellence
Scholarships for the freshmen students in the success programs, if they stay on track to graduate in four
years. So these are ways in which we provide money to students, but the money is provided as a
consequence of the behaviors they exhibit towards graduating in four years. I should impress on you the
idea that this is not money that is anything other than discretionary. This is over and above what the
students might have received from financial aid otherwise, and it’s money that we can use to incent their
behavior.
Two other things to mention, and then I’ll open the floor for questions. This is a big University, and I
would imagine that 99.9 percent of what takes place here is well-intentioned. But, at large universities that
are well-intentioned, lots of things fall through the cracks, lots of miscommunication. All you have to do is
go onto student websites, go onto their parent’s websites, and you hear about how it is that somehow
somebody has done their kid wrong, or that somebody has done them (the student) wrong with respect to
advising, with respect to coursework, especially as it applied for four-year graduation. If you talk to the
faculty, if you talk to the deans of the colleges, they will all say, “you know, if the student’s on track to
graduate in four years, they will graduate in four years, we can promise this.” But if you talk to the students,
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December 9, 2013 Faculty Council Meeting
they will oftentimes tell you a different story. I think one of the important functions of my office is going to
be to serve in that sort of support role for making sure those lines of communication are established
between the student and the colleges. Every year, having looked at the data, we see there are three or four
hundred students who should graduate in a particular semester, and then they just do not. The question is,
what happened? Why didn’t they graduate? If you stop and talk to them and get their feedback, you hear
lots and lots of stories about how they were denied this and they were denied that. Well, I’ve been around
long enough to know that very often that’s not the real reason behind what was going on. But I also know
that if you encourage these students to be aware that there are other resources available to them to be
successful in graduating we need to make sure this happens, so we can help to eliminate the excuses that
people might have about being able to graduate.
As you saw in that video, we have a way of reminding students about graduation. This is an evolving tool
in the registrar’s office that allows students to see how they’re doing with respect to four-year graduation.
This is going to be of enormous benefit to the advisors, so that they can look at it with a student and say,
well you know it’s not 50 or 60 different really complicated degree requirements anymore, it’s just the
color. You need to do something if you find yourself down in the yellow about turning around and getting
those extra courses so that you can graduate.
The final slide I want to show you is the way in which I hope that you will be able to help this University
with respect to four-year graduation. On the left hand side is Shelby Stanfield with the registrar’s picture of
how our degree audit system looks. That’s a collection of if-then-else statements that shows you how
complicated our degrees are. On the right is a model for what our peer institutions look like. You’ll notice
that they are substantially less complicated. I think all of us agree that our degree plans have over the years,
in a very well-meaning way, gotten more and more, I guess a nice word for it is…sophisticated. That
sophistication though, can oftentimes be a stranglehold on a student’s ability to graduate. So there’s effort
taking place across the various colleges to look at trying to remove some of those lines connecting those
bubbles and in fact, to pop some of those bubbles so that our students will be able to get the quality
education they need, but not necessarily have to jump through quite as many hoops. So, there’s a lot of
work taking place in CUDPR, and a lot of work taking place with the colleges on these sorts of initiatives.
That’s the end of my presentation. I would be happy to take any questions that you have. {46:15.0}
Sonia Seeman (associate professor, music):
Hi, I’m Sonia Seeman in the Butler School of Music. I appreciated your prefacing this in terms of the
quality of education. I have two questions, one specific and one general that address this emphasis on the
four-year program. One, the specific question has to do with summer programs. In certain schools the
amount of funding available for offering courses over the summer are being whittled. So I’m wondering
how that initiative as one way in which students can finish within four years is going to be offset with the
availability of courses over the summer when tuitions are going up, fewer students are enrolling, and there
are a smaller number of programs are now being offered in the summer? My other question has to do with
if a four-year degree can be balanced with the issue of students who do creative or important double major
emphases, which can take an additional year. What would be unfortunate is if those students that choose to
have double majors in biology and music, for instance, if these students are made to feel like somehow they
are failing, when in fact, they are going to be graduating with powerful contributions to society. Whether
this system as devised could support students that may take longer, either because they’re double majors or
first-generation students from disenfranchised minority communities that have not had access to training.
Laude:
With respect to the second question, the easy answer is to say we’re only trying to do it for 70 percent so
the other 30 percent can take more time if they would like. On a certain level that is true. I think that if you
look at a typical population of students you will find that there are those who want to be more creative in
the way they use the time they spend on their undergraduate education. I’ve talked to no one in positions of
authority that are seeking to stop that. I think we have remarkable students who are capable of thinking of
ingenious ways to weave these sorts of ideas together. I don’t think that there’s necessarily going to be any
pressure that way. I do think that when we think more broadly about what education is going to be as we
change the way semester credit hours are earned as students start to show up on campus with substantial
amounts of credit already earned, we’re going to think about what that time on campus ought to look like.
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December 9, 2013 Faculty Council Meeting
Should a student who’s trying to double major in biology and music necessarily be spending their time
trying to knock off a variety of different three-hour semester credit, three-semester credit hour courses,
when in fact, what they’re trying to do should be something more substantial than that. I think the jury’s
still out on how that’s going to evolve. But at this particular point I don’t think there’s any issue or concern
about whether or not students are going to be forced to stay here for four years before graduation.
With respect to financial aid, I agree with you completely, the idea that we would be incentivizing students
to take financial aid in the fifth year, while at the same time building up student loan debt makes no sense if,
as alternative, we can find more creative ways to move the students into summer school. I’ve been working
with Tom Melecki on this particularly. He’s the director of the office of student financial aid. We’re going
to look at specific examples of programs where if students come in the summer, either it’s because this is
where they’re going to be able to get that rare laboratory that they wouldn’t be able to get otherwise, or
where they need that remediation you talked about, that we actually provide the financial aid for it so that
they’re doing it in the summer, rather than finding themselves doing it in an expensive fifth year. {50:44.1}
McClelland:
Hi, Blinda McClelland, biology. It’s my understanding that Texas A&M offers a financial incentive at the
end of four years for completing their degrees in four years, whereas your incentives all seem to be on the
front-end of the four-year experience. I was wondering if that had been a consideration, to offer the carrot
at the end of four years rather than at the beginning.
Laude:
Well, I think that the carrots we’re using here are along the way. Certainly you can imagine the one simple
way to get students to graduate is to dangle expensive carrots in front of them after four years. I think we’re
taking a more nuanced approach here, in which we put the emphasis on the quality of the educational
experience along the way. Things like the University Leadership Network provide $500 to the student at
the beginning of every month for four years. But this is conditioned upon them actually staying on track to
graduate. I think most of these are “evaluate as you go” ways of doing things.
Brian Evans (professor, electrical and computer engineering):
Brian Evans, engineering. There are a number of integrated MS/BS programs or BS/MS programs.
Computer science has one, for example, so the student would finish and get a bachelor’s degree at the end
of five years along with a master’s degree. They wouldn’t make the four-year cut. There’s also plan II in
liberal arts and engineering. We’re about in my department to do integrated BS again, with possibly about
20 percent of students finishing at the end of five years. These are really among our very best students that
are ready for grad school. Strictly speaking, none of those are going to get counted as finishing in four
years.
Laude:
Well, this is one of the challenges. If a student, as things are currently structured, comes in as a first-time
freshman the clock starts on him. If they’re a student for example, in an architectural program in which it
takes five years to graduate, or one of these combined MS programs, then that counts against us. We also
have students who leave and go into pharmacy after two years and that counts against us. At some point I
think we’re going to have to be more sophisticated in the way we evaluate success for students. In fact, we
can think more broadly about this. Our students go about the business of gathering credit from multiple
institutions. You see a lot of institutions with very low numbers with respect to graduation rates. But in fact,
students started there but ended up graduating somewhere else and they didn’t get credit for the fact that the
student did this. We’re currently tied to this idea of the first-time freshman, but I think that exploration of
this with the coordinating board and others is going to be important.
Evans:
I completely agree. So you talked about having the 30 percent headroom. We don’t have that headroom,
because even if we keep 90 percent every year, even 95 percent, by the time we get to the fourth year you
take point 9-5 times point 9-5, times point 9-5, you don’t have a lot of headroom to make 70 percent. And
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December 9, 2013 Faculty Council Meeting
so we don’t have a lot of…. if 70 percent is our goal, which is an, ad hoc, informal, target from which I
understand, it’s hard to get that goal with all of our five year initiatives that are out there. {54:10.1}
Laude:
I think what has to be appreciated is that higher education’s changing pretty substantially in a variety of
ways. Things like the combined degree you just talked about, the opportunity for students to earn credit
more fluidly through high school and through online initiatives means that the traditional notion of a fouryear graduation rate is going to start to dissolve away.
Anthony Petrosino (associate professor, curriculum and instruction):
Tony Petrosino, college of education. I realize you might not be in a position to answer this question now,
but if you could, provide us with a little bit of the computational models that are being used to make these
predictions on the recruiting of students that it seems like we’re doing to address the 70 percent graduation
rate. In other words, I applaud all the efforts that are being done on campus for the existing students that we
have, the incentive programs, etc., I’m perhaps a little concerned on what predictive models we’re using to
actively recruit students who would somehow raise our four-year average. For instance, if I say fees are
being used then I know there’s a high correlation with income and education level. That might be intended
or unintended consequences affecting the general student body. If you want to maybe comment on one or
the other, I’m particularly interested in the computer model or what factors we are using in the model that
predicts whether students are going to have a 70 percent or….
Laude:
Sure, sure. I would prefer not to talk about the specifics of the model other than to acknowledge exactly
what you’ve said. The reality is that there are certain types of students who are more likely to graduate in
four years, and it doesn’t take a lot to sort that out. They come from affluence basically, and that affluence
buys that student lots of advantages with respect to ultimately being successful. So then you start to ask
yourself what the purpose of a public university is supposed to be? Is it a university that goes after the best
of the best students and is able to demonstrate rather effortlessly that they were able to graduate them in
four years? Or does it do everything it can on behalf of students coming from underserved backgrounds? I
think that this University has performed admirably this way. Regardless of what you think of the top 10
percent legislation, it delivers a substantial population of students to this University who in fact,
demonstrate based upon those predictive models that they are unlikely to be successful. However, having
said that, I would put our success programs on this campus whether it’s TIP, whether it’s Gateway, whether
it’s the Discovery Scholars program, the work being done into engineering, and then these new programs
that we’re trotting out. These are specifically intended for that population of student. Whether it’s to
supplement their academic experience or to incentivize with financial opportunities, this is the way that
we’re going to try to raise that particular group up. To sum it up, if it works, then that kind of student who
was predicted to graduate with less than a 40 percent likelihood will now be above that bar and there will
be no such thing as that kind of student. All of them will be graduating up here.
{57:41.9}
Hans Hofmann (associate professor, integrative biology):
Hans Hofmann, integrative biology. So David, I’ve found this very interesting what you have said but there
are two things, and one you just mentioned, that you didn’t say anything about. I’m curious whether there is
any thinking in this direction. One is, is there any chance to get rid of, I may be a minority here on this
view, the 10 percent law, to modify it, to make it less of a straightjacket? And the other question is, because
that could obviously help with it though….and the other question is, in other states at public universities
there are arrangements that students who do not do well as freshmen at the flagship University then get
encouraged to a lesser campus and vice versa, it doesn’t seem to happen here in Texas very much, is that an
idea that is worth thinking about or am I discriminatory?
Laude:
So I sit with Kedra Ishop [vice provost and director of admissions] a couple times a week, and we talk
about how absolutely fascinating the state of Texas is in which to execute the business of higher education.
In response to both of your comments, these are things that are outside our control. We deal the hand that’s
been given us. I think having said that, that, when I look at the kinds of students who show up on this
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December 9, 2013 Faculty Council Meeting
campus, I teach a 500 student section chemistry course every fall and spring, and the kids are just so good
compared to twenty years ago. Anybody who thinks they were better twenty years ago just hasn’t spent
time with these students. It’s just remarkable, we keep raising the expectation bar for these students and
coming from all walks of life, they’re stepping up. Granted, there are those who struggle, but on the whole
the entire ship is being raised. I’m not particularly concerned about the quality of student we get, they’re
doing great when they show up here, and I think we have a responsibility to all of the students across
whatever sort of foundation or background they come from.
Hofmann:
Thank you.
Linda Reichl (professor, physics):
Linda Reichl, physics. There seems to be a huge contradiction between what the administration is doing
and your talk, because there was…the first person who asked questions asked about the fact that resources
to teach summer courses are being cut, and I know that’s true in natural sciences. There will be much fewer
courses taught next summer than there have ever been in the past because there are no resources available.
Can you comment on that?
Laude:
I think it’s safe to say that there is an appropriate tension that exists between the student side of things and
the resource side of things. And, it’s a good thing to have that tension because that’s how you build
efficiencies. I think as we start to move in a direction that puts more importance on the summer, you will
naturally see a willingness to move in that direction. The money that I talked about providing was student
financial aid, so the students would be able to take courses in the summer. If we’re able to demonstrate that
taking courses in the summer will get students graduated in four years, then I think that the provost’s office
will certainly work with the colleges in making sure that those courses are offered.
Reichl:
Okay. And when, when will that happen? Because it’s not happening in the near future. So we really do
have a contradiction.
Laude: {1:01:17.7}
So it’s not so much a contradiction. It’s the realization that the University, particularly in the STEM areas,
finds itself awash with students who need to be able to graduate. And certainly until such time as we get
enrollment management sorted out with respect to putting students where they need to go, we’re going to
have to put resources where they need to go for us to be able to get these students graduated. The
commitment that I talked about, about making sure that students would be able to graduate in four years if
they’re making normative progress, is one that I would stand by. So, if a college wants to come back to the
provost’s office and say ‘we don’t have the resources to be able to do that,’ they should, and then we will
work together to make this happen. You know, when I came into the provost’s office a summer and a half
ago, we had just admitted the largest class of students in the history of the University, and the provost’s
office immediately allocated substantial amounts of one-time money to make sure that the introductory
courses were taught and to make sure that the students would be taken care of. I have to assume that that is
going to continue to be the process.
Evans:
There are two things. One is our TA, at least in engineering. Our TA budgets have been cut year after year
for eleven years in a row. I don’t know about the others, it doesn’t sound good elsewhere. The other thing
with the…..you can put a lot of money in the first year cohort that comes in, but if they’re going to be
around for four years you need four years of additional funding and we just haven’t seen it. Where I am.
Laude:
Coming at it from the student’s side, I know exactly what you’re talking about. The challenges in terms of
making the first year a good one will pale compared to the challenges of what we need to do to find the
resources to provide for the students finding their courses so they can graduate. This is something that has
to be an absolute priority for the University.
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December 9, 2013 Faculty Council Meeting
[woman’s voice: Thank you.] Thank you. [applause]
Hart:
Thank you, David. We’re now going to hear a report from our faculty ombudsperson, Mary Steinhardt,
who is also a professor in kinesiology and health education. She gives us a report every year. Welcome
Mary.
Mary Steinhardt, professor, kinesiology and health education; faculty ombudsperson, faculty
council:
Thanks everyone, thanks for having me. I wanted to tell you that although I’m going to talk about the
faculty ombuds office that there are three ombuds offices on campus, and if you Google ombuds you’ll see
the white thing on the left and we have a student ombuds office that’s run mainly by students. Brittany
Linton is a PhD student in educational psychology and there are other students working in that office. We
have a full-time staff ombuds, and that’s Jen Sims, located in Walter Webb Hall, and then the faculty
ombuds, that’s me. So the faculty ombuds office was established in 2004 to provide faculty with a prompt
and professional way to resolve concerns, conflicts and complaints beyond coming to their supervisors, and
then in 2010 we also started to see postdocs. The faculty ombuds office is located next to the post office in
the west mall building. It’s the same office that the faculty council is located in and Debbie Roberts helps
run that office, and, as you know, is fabulous.
This is the general trend from 2004 when the faculty ombuds office was created. It shows the visitors and
you can see from the first four years average visitors was forty-three. That’s gone up. This past year I saw
ninety-four people. In 2010, when we started seeing postdocs there were two postdocs, the next year three
post docs, and this past year six postdocs. Of the ninety-four people that came by this past year, they were
from twelve different colleges, forty different departments and divisions, as I said, six postdocs, six
lecturers or specialists, eighteen assistant professors, seventeen associate professors, and thirty-one full
professors. Thirteen department chairs or directors and three deans, about equal numbers of males and
females.
As you might expect, the postdocs had concerns mainly linked to their mentors and their relationship with
their mentor. Lecturers were concerned about their contract being renewed or the teaching load. Assistant
professors were concerned about tenure, that continues to be the main thing that they come for. Associate
professors promotion, and full professors post-tenure review or retirement. Other than just across the board
faculty conflicts, thirteen people just requested information. I’m working about ten to fifteen hours a week.
Most cases can be resolved without filing a formal grievance, and I really enjoy this job because I have
extraordinary cooperation from everybody. I’m really grateful for the deans and chairs and Renee Wallace
has been fabulous. The UT lawyers are fabulous, it helps me do my job better.
When a faculty member first comes to me I tell them to read the website and then I tell them we have four
principles: confidentiality, neutrality, informality, and independence. First and foremost I tell them that
their visit is confidential and I won’t discuss their concerns unless they give me permission. Although there
are exceptions to that and we go over those, mainly eminent risk for harm. I’m a neutral third party, so I
don’t take sides but I try to help everybody. It’s informal and off the record. I only write things down to
help me remember and when we close the folder I destroy the file. Nobody has to come to the ombuds
office, it’s voluntary and it’s independent and I report directly to provost Fenves. The student ombuds and
the staff ombuds report to the president. {1:07:33.2}
This is just a list of ways that ombuds can help. This is for all three offices. For myself, mainly I’ve learned
to value listening more than I first did. This is my sixth year in the ombuds office, so I do a lot of listening.
I answer questions, or if I can’t or don’t know the answer I find out the answer. I explain a lot of policies
and procedures or I if don’t know the answer I find out. I mainly work to help people identify options and
next steps they would take and so forth, and this is posted up on the website and you can read it more. But
this is the way we all work. When people come in, we try to identify the issue, I try to get a picture for
what’s the issue and what do you want to happen? Then we strategize all the options we can think of
together and what’s the possible outcome for each option and what option would be best to help them get
what they want. And we try to facilitate understanding and resolution to their issue.
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December 9, 2013 Faculty Council Meeting
This is a list of concerns commonly brought to all the ombuds offices. For the faculty ombuds it’s mainly
tenure and tenure related issues, post tenure review, and retirement issues, but these more broadly are the
amount of issues we had. And then, I love this from Stan Roux, he used to show this to me all the time, and
I agree this is basically what I do. I remind people to choose actions that best demonstrate fairness and
respect, and where appropriate, advocacy for rewards. Nonetheless, conflicts will arise. Well meaning,
bright people sometimes disagree and most can be resolved amicably. I’m happy to answer any questions
that you have. I’m not as popular as Dave Laude. [applause]
Hart:
Thank you Mary very much. She is remarkable. She’s great at her job, I can tell you. And so we move on to
the report by the faculty welfare, the chair of the faculty welfare committee, Blinda McClellan from
biology to report on an idea for a faculty education benefit. Blinda.
McClelland:
Thanks Hillary. Thank y’all. Do I….how do I? Okay. We’re working on some initiatives, some little baby
steps to improve faculty welfare in as economically efficient way as possible. So we’re looking at initiative
to improve our lives here, our work lives as well as our personal lives, without costing a whole lot of
money. One of the ways that could be identified that could be improved would be to offer educational
benefits to faculty members. So to enable faculty members like the staff can do now, and this may be
something that y’all are not aware of but staff are permitted, and I’m sure encouraged in some ways to take
up to 3 hours of course credit here at the University and essentially have a tuition waiver for that privilege.
So they can essentially take one course a semester. What we are suggesting is that we extend that to faculty
members as well. I have the website up here for information regarding the staff educational benefits so this
is just a little bit of information right from their website. There are of course, restrictions that apply to this
staff educational benefit. It doesn’t cover several things, and so we would assume that should this privilege
and benefit be extended to faculty members there would also be some kind of restrictions involved.
Obviously the restrictions go on for two pages. All right, three! {1:11:54.2}
Okay, so among the questions that you might have are ‘why would someone with a PhD want to take some
kind of education here at The University of Texas?’ Well, I just sat down and thought of several ways…
reasons why you might want to take courses at the University, and I actually came up with a nice long list,
starting with a biologist like me and ending with a biologist but trying to hit all the different areas and
colleges on campus. For instance, I do, I might do…my colleagues and I do lots of research in Latin
American countries, so why wouldn’t I want to take a course in Spanish? Something like that, it’s a very
simple example. Career development, we have very rapidly advancing fields, I know mine is
extremely…biology is very rapidly advancing. Emphasis on interdisciplinary studies, this is something that
I think the Center for Teaching and Learning is emphasizing to us that we should broaden our perspectives
and increase qualifications for grant awards. If you have to turn in some of your qualifications to a grant
proposal agency this might be to your advantage. Increased facility and data analysis and communication,
my taking Spanish might fall under that category. Retention and recruitment of faculty, I don’t have any
solid data, I don’t think there is any solid data regarding how many people might refuse to come to The
University of Texas or stay at The University of Texas without this benefit, but UT is very much lacking in
this benefit to faculty when compared to peer institutions.
I’m about to show you some data. Personal development, there probably as many reasons for y’all to want
to take a course as there are y’all in this room. All right, so…facts, evidence, data, information. I’m a
biologist. I am the worst kind of biologist, I study animal behavior, which makes me squishy, even within
the context of biology, and Hans can verify that. So Physics Cat and my colleagues notwithstanding, I tried
to find some facts, evidence, data and information about faculty educational benefits. So I set about to look
at the ten largest public university campuses by enrollment as of fall 2012. Here’s the deal: first of all,
every university I contacted, either by the website or calling them up, which was an adventure, make no
distinction between staff and faculty when it comes to educational benefits. So these are our peer
institutions as far as enrollment is concerned and I’ve offset The University of Texas. We’re number five,
right behind College Station, which is the only university that’s worse in offering some kind of benefit. I
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December 9, 2013 Faculty Council Meeting
called them up and I speak Aggie, but it took like five transfers and my explanation what a benefit was
initially to even get them started to understand what I was talking about and lack of evidence is not proof of
absence, or something like that. I had to verify and they said ‘oh no we don’t offer that.’ So anyway, our
peer institutions enrollment-wise, every one of them offers staff and faculty benefits. Not only that but for
the most part, the faculty benefits and staff benefits include: spouses, domestic partners and children and
there’s an incredible variation. Arizona State, for instance, offers nine semester hours per semester of
benefit for both staff and faculty and their families. We’re not just a little behind the curve, we’re way
behind the curve when it comes to educational benefits. So what we are proposing is taking little baby steps
to first just extend the benefit that is enjoyed by staff to faculty and then maybe at a later time we can work
on extending this as our peer institutions have done to family members as well.
Here are our peer institutions from the top national public universities. This is not by enrollment, this is by
whatever the US News and World Report algorithm is for overall awesomeness, and, the ten here are, it’s
fairly stable, which ten universities…so this is our competition, right? These ten universities end up in the
top ten. Although if you look from year to year they change positions so I didn’t put actual numbers for
ranking. The University of Texas at Austin is in a three way grudge match for 16 th place. But once again,
these are the universities that we are competing with, and you can see that staff educational benefits and
faculty educational benefits across the board are offered by all of our peer institutions that we might be
competing with for faculty recruitment and retention.
Can we predict how many faculty would take advantage of this benefit? Well, no, in fact it took five phone
calls and four e-mails to get information, a ball park figure from the accounts receivable department to find
out approximately how many staff members are taking advantage of this benefit right now this semester,
and they gave me the ball park figure of about 220. So doing the math, I figured out that this is
approximately 1 percent of the staff, so extending that to faculty this would be about 25 people. So, another
question might be what is the cost and I put cost in air quotes because, basically one of the criteria we
would assume would be part of the restrictions on this benefit would be only if there are open slots in a
class so we certainly, of course, want our students to graduate in four years. We certainly don’t want to
bump somebody out of a course in computer science if it’s going to prevent them from taking that class. So
basically this is kind of a benefit that would be provided on a stand by basis.
So, cost? It’s an empty seat in a classroom and it’s paperwork. So I’m not really sure we can equate this
kind of benefit with what a student would be required to pay to take those three hours, but UT tuition for
three hours ranges from a low in liberal arts $2,059 to $3,066 in the business school. But one of the
restrictions that you see if you look at the staff restrictions is that basically business school courses are not
permitted within this benefit. {1:19:38.1}
So this is my presentation and it’s my understanding from Hillary that I’m presenting this information to
you as chair of the faculty welfare committee. We are working on some other initiatives. I’m kind of in a
fact-gathering mode right now, and if anybody has any questions, Hillary has said that I just need to get the
flavor….
Hart:
Yes, this is Hillary. Hillary Hart, civil engineering. No, I just suggested a report, and if any of you have
ideas for this, have objections to this, you’re telling Blinda is helpful. I think she would plan to bring some
legislation, probably in January. Anybody have any comments?
Charters Wynn, associate professor, history:
I think it would be really wonderful if that was extended to retired faculty because that’s, you can really…
McClelland:
Yes, and, many schools that I looked into do, and thank you, offer this to, not just to retired faculty, not just
to retired staff but to alumni. There are...one of the universities you pay $25 and you can get, you know, so
it’s a real marginal fee to cover the paperwork. But it’s like flying stand by. If an airplane door closes and
there’s an empty seat it’s gone. And so in this sense, having an empty seat in the classroom would be I
think, a terrific benefit for many of us at marginal, if not zero cost. Yes.
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December 9, 2013 Faculty Council Meeting
Domino Perez, associate professor, English:
Domino Perez, department of English. My understanding of this benefit as it extends to and as it relates to
staff is that it is for staff who are non-degree seeking. Well, there are two options, there is a non-degree
seeking version and then there is a degree-seeking version. [McClelland: hmm.] And then there is a
specific amount, there’s a specific number of hours that the non-degree seeking [McClelland: right.] staff
members can take. Do you imagine instituting these kinds of tracks for faculty? Is there a degree that’s
going to be involved? I mean, how are you imagining outcome?
McClelland:
Well, that’s entirely possible. I mean, I’m assuming the vast majority of us in here have terminal degrees,
which are PhDs, so again, why would you want to take a course if it’s not really going to benefit you
towards a goal? I guess the answer is most of us…. I do see the possibility of achieving let’s say a master’s
degree in something, although it might not, if you’re already a professor here, it’s probably not going to
benefit you in terms of getting another job. But for instance, if you’re applying to a funding agency it might
look good on your transcript. Another thing about the staff benefit is that I think it’s too restrictive. In many
cases, they don’t extend it to graduate level classes. In other words, the benefit does not apply to any
dissertation courses and certainly there are restrictions on the business school. [Perez: and the number of
courses you can take. The other thing I want to…] Exactly. It’s three hours. You can take multiple courses
as long the number doesn’t exceed three hours per semester, which, by the way, is also very behind the
curve for our peer institutions. {1:23:44.7}
Perez:
The other thing that I would suggest is that there are national programs that faculty can apply to that allow
for, I don’t want to say….. euphemistically, retraining or additional training in another area in their
particular field. So if I’m a Victorianist, I can apply for a grant to receive additional training in digital
media. That kind of certification [McClelland: right.] or retraining program might be something that you
want to think about also as a possible outcome.
McClelland:
Yeah, I think that, I think it’s great and, people brought up what about online courses? Why don’t you just
take an online course? Well, I think none of us would really equate an online course or a workshop or
something like that with taking an actual course. So it’s great—I was just surprised to find out how limited
The University of Texas’ offerings to faculty along these lines are compared to our peer institutions.
[Perez: Thank you.] [Hart: one more question.]
Jon Olson (associate professor, petroleum and geosystems engineering):
Jon Olson, petroleum engineering. Just a quick question. As it’s currently implemented at UT, is there any
restriction in grade? Does it have to be credit or no credit? Does it have to be for a grade only? I don’t
know if there’s…[McClelland: you know, I’m not sure.] okay.
McClelland:
I’m not sure. I assume that if they sign up, they take it for a grade. I haven’t actually discovered one of
these 220 people that is taking….. thanks Hillary, thank you everybody. If you have any additional
questions or suggestions, not just about this but any other aspect of faculty welfare that you think we can
work on this semester please contact me. {1:25:33.3}
Hart:
Thank you Blinda. Thank you. [applause] So we may have some legislation in January. All right, the last
item on our agenda is a resolution, a new resolution that was posted this morning. Some of you may have
had a chance to read it but you certainly had a chance to read the print version that was available at the
table outside. If anybody has not gotten a copy of the resolution, Debbie I’m sure there…just, just wave
your hand and Debbie will give you one. Resolution to stop the implementation of Shared Services is
presented by Dana Cloud in communication studies and Snehal Shingvahey…Shingavi, English, but this is
Dana. Dana’s the presenter. Solo presenter.
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December 9, 2013 Faculty Council Meeting
Dana Cloud (associate professor, communication studies):
Thank you. I want to thank Hillary and also Debbie Roberts for allowing us to be on the agenda today, and
I want to thank you all for hanging in there. It’s late, I know. I think it’s really important to get this
conversation started among faculty about Shared Services and what it might mean to us. The resolution as
it stands is mainly designed today to get the conversation started. Any voting or discussion of amendments
and stuff can happen later, in the New Year. As far as getting the conversation started, we wanted the
faculty to know the reason we have serious questions and concerns about implementation of the Shared
Services plan. You can find out a lot more information about it in all kinds of different places but you may
be familiar that it’s a plan to centralize some of the services at the University.
Some of the concerns that we have, well, first we should all say that we agree that we are all interested in
delivering a high quality education, supporting faculty and students. I think a thing that the faculty should
really, really, really be concerned about is the displacement of staff dedicated to local units, so that your
administrators, your person who handles your travel budgeting, your person who deals with your money,
your equipment for your lab, your IT professionals who are just down the hall, these kinds of things are I
think, at risk. Not everywhere, not universally, but it’s very difficult to know to what extent that’s true. I
think that could be incredibly damaging to our work lives and, at The University of Michigan where the
faculty stood up against this same plan, although theirs is ten times smaller than ours, note the
dehumanizing quality that happened in the workplace when people leave their “families” in their dedicated
unit, to a more impersonal service. So that’s a big thing. Another big thing is that there is expected loss of
jobs through attrition of 500, which means that we will have fewer people supporting us. Also, some really
serious questions about the involvement of consulting firms, particularly Accenture, who has a pretty
sordid past, fraud, misuse of state funds, and so on with regard to food stamps and all kinds of other things.
There also are a serious number of questions about the consistency of the math and the numbers that have
been put forward. And there’s a handout that you also got by Al Martinez explaining some of those
questions.
{1:29:02.9}
So basically, the main thing that we are asking for first is a full disclosure of information. The financial
details of the plan, including the role in compensation for Accenture, specifics about the jobs, specifics
about the hiring process, and then clarification on all of the numbers about outlay of expense, which is an
enormous amount of money, projections on return, which seem to be actually much less than were figured
in the original presentations. And for the faculty, I think that we had a presentation from Mr. Hegarty,
who’s here now. I think that was excellent, but I think the faculty need representation on this issue and we
need to have a full conversation about this plan and what it means for us.
Basically, we’re asking for specifics about the process, the jobs, the money, the players, and also, to
involve faculty in the decision-making process, not to come and show up and say ‘here it is, thank you’ but
to actually involve faculty in making the decisions. The other thing that I would ask of you is over the
break to read these carefully and go out find your own research. If you find research that contradicts what
we’ve said here, bring it to our attention. But go out and find out everything that you can about this plan
and about what happened at Michigan, and so on, so that you will know when we reconvene in the spring
semester some of the basics that we can actually have this conversation. I appreciate your sitting here and
listening to me, I’m going to stop. You can read this yourself, and you can read the other handout, and just
let there be some discussion.
Snehal Shingavi (assistant professor, English):
Snehal Shingavi from English. I’m another person who’s sponsoring this early draft of a resolution. Many
of us have been attending the town halls that have been really informative and have raised a number of
questions about what Shared Services will mean. But I think in the last couple of days the conversation that
has happened in places like the chronicle of higher education and, with 1,100 faculty at The University of
Michigan coming out against Shared Services I think warrants us to examine Shared Services again with a
really careful focus.
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December 9, 2013 Faculty Council Meeting
Even the sort of petition that The University of Michigan professors have signed layout some pretty serious
challenges to Shared Services being a solution or any kind of improvement to the quality of education. I
just want to read a little bit from the report that the University of Michigan faculty put together. They have
at least six claims that they make about what’s wrong with Shared Services. Number one, a reduction in
faculty productivity by 10 to 20 percent, as faculty now do jobs that were given to staff. Number two, less
faculty access to students and diminished quality of teaching for undergraduate students and supervision for
graduate students. Number three, loss of research funding to the tune of several tens of millions of dollars.
Number four, increased frustration and consternation by the faculty because a significant fraction of the
effort is diverted into tasks that were normally done by staff. Number five, no cost savings on the contrary,
a great deal of loss of revenue, and number six, the dehumanization of the staff more generally.
These are, fairly serious claims that are being made by The University of Michigan faculty. I know that the
way that we’re attempting to implement it here at UT is through a series of pilot programs, but these are I
think, charges that warrant us looking at what Shared Services will actually look like if and when it is
implemented. These are conclusions The University of Michigan faculty have come to after the
implementation of Shared Services on their campus. I think it means that we really should reopen and think
about this conversation much more fully, especially if, in the coming months and years this is going to be
the way. Anecdotally, those of you who have attempted to do any kind of faculty travel through the Concur
system, I hope you’ll agree with me that it’s a nightmare to try to figure out how to do it. I’ve been very
grateful for the support in my department that the staff has provided for all kinds of travel questions. If this
is the way that we’re going to have to do travel in the future, I think it’s going to be serious problems for all
of us. Thank you. {1:33:24.2}
Martinez:
Thank you, Hillary. I’m Al Martinez, associate professor in the department of history. I published a couple
of op-eds about Shared Services, which is why professor Dana Cloud kindly e-mailed me to ask if I could
prepare some sort of a handout about concerns and objections to Shared Services. That’s the one you have
other than the resolution. It has three parts, financial concerns, a summary of developments at Michigan,
and a summary of why some of us are troubled by Accenture’s participation with the UT initiative.
In Michigan as many of us know, 50 staff jobs will be cut, meaning that if people quit, then by attrition
these jobs will not be replaced. About 275 staff will be moved out of their units, out of their departments, to
a building on the edge of campus. Here I personally have spent quite some effort trying to understand our
project, but although I know that we seek to eliminate ten times more staff jobs in our departments, that is,
500 jobs eliminated, my question today is to Kevin Hegarty, which is, how many staff will be asked to
move out of their departments to the Shared Services center? That’s my key question. Other than that I just
have a few comments of the …. suggestions for questions you see on the handout.
Big concern about the finance, will 30 to 40 million really be generated from cutting the 500 specific jobs?
We want an itemized breakdown of 160 to 180 million in the investment, we want to actually see how that
pans out, and we request a list of the projected jobs, this has already been requested by Dana Cloud and
Adam Tallman in an article in The Daily Texan, a list of the projected jobs. How many? In what
categories? With what salaries and benefits? Before UT tries to make Shared Services work as a reality, I
think that the plan itself should work, and I don’t think it currently works. Thank you.
Hart:
Kevin.
Hegarty:
Kevin Hegarty, vice president, chief financial officer. I’m happy to answer questions that I’ve had enough
practice at it. I’ve personally been engaged in more than 31 public presentations on the various matters.
Some faces I do recognize, and have been there, and I’m happy to answer those again. I think that the first
thing we need to recognize is the path that we’re on. A lot of what I’ve heard today were about budget cuts,
the lack of being able to afford classes in the summer. The lack of being able to do this, the lack of being
able to do that. That is the path that we are on. The path that we are on today is more of the same. Budget
cuts, budget cuts, budget cuts. Now, how is that being done? It’s being done department by department,
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December 9, 2013 Faculty Council Meeting
unit by unit. I personally have had to reduce positions in my department, a tremendous number of positions.
We reduced in ITS alone 90 positions just to save money for the University in order to be able to reinvest
that back into the people that are retained by the University. So when I hear concerns about shifting
workload from staff to faculty, or staff to staff, they are real concerns but they should be concerns today,
because that is the path that we’re on. Without re-thinking how we deliver administrative services to this
campus, I can guarantee you, given the current financial constraints, a reduced state investment, which has
happened now for 26 years over a trend line, we’ve had some ups and downs but in the end, let’s face it,
it’s been a national phenomena that the investment in public universities has declined. Certainly at this one.
{1:37:09.8}
Frozen tuitions—I heard about increased tuition from somebody today—we haven’t increased tuition for
three years. We are getting ready to submit a proposal to our regents, under required guidelines, that will
allow for zero undergraduate resident tuition increases for the next two years, maybe longer. The word is
that we don’t expect tuition increases. That’s the model that we have. Now it is true that we have more
revenue, we have very generous benefactors so we continue to raise endowments, but those monies are
available for use for very specific purpose as determined by the benefactor. Generally, almost completely,
they’re not available to pay the light bill, pay general salaries and things like that, they’re very dedicated to
students and faculty and certain initiatives. So the path that we’re on if we do nothing will almost guarantee
the concerns that exist about the possibilities related to Shared Service.
Second, we are not embracing the Michigan model by any stretch. Now I haven’t lived through all their
details, I’ve certainly read what I’ve read in the newspapers. What we are proposing to the campus is that
we engage in some thoughtful, volunteer pilots of Shared Services. That we sit down with units, whether
that be a college, a department, units that aren’t related to academics and map out with great specificity
how shared services might lay in, and what the result might be, as it relates to achieving three goals that
we’ve set out.
One, to improve the quality of the output, whatever the service is that we’re talking about. Two, to do what
we’ve found in visiting institutions like Yale, and actually talking about people in a shared service function,
and that is, improving the quality of the jobs that these people delivering the administrative services have.
And let me tell you, there is a lot of support on this campus by administrative staff in departments that are
tired of wearing ten hats, working hard, not being able to take a vacation because they’re one of one, or one
of two, or one of five in a department, don’t feel like they have any career, don’t feel like they have any
training. They are anxious to go into a unit where we actually have to make those kinds of investments.
And finally, third, and it’s very specifically third and last because it’s not our primary goal, but we do think
it’s an output, and that is reduce costs. Let’s see if we can actually save money. If, after going through that
detailed exercise, we think, the unit thinks, that we can achieve those, then let’s actually implement it. Let’s
go out and gather real data, not rely on what Michigan saw, not rely on what Yale saw, not rely on what
anybody else has seen, let’s gather data for this institution to decide whether or not we can make that
happen and achieve those goals here at The University of Texas. I think it would be really ironic if a Tier 1
research university wasn’t willing to, as it relates to their administrative services, at least go out and gather
some real data in a real pilot. And that’s what we’re asking the campus to do. And that’s a volunteer pilot,
and believe me, I’ve got plenty of units. Our challenge in this is not going to be to draw volunteers in, it’s
going to be who do we tell no. I would also tell you, though, as we go through this exercise, what we’re
finding are some absolutely outstanding examples of shared services, where when we go in and study, we
will have data they want.
A great example [is] in liberal arts; they have implemented the equivalent of shared services as it relates to
certain of their business functions. They very successfully implemented shared services as it relates to their
faculty I.T. support, and while I don’t have the data with me today, I am assured by their business officer
and by the gentlemen that run those units they have had outstanding success from the financial and nonfinancial front. And so we’re talking with them, because we don’t necessarily want to recreate the wheel if
they’ve got something that’s been effective. Let’s put some money in that and grow that. In fact, there’s a
reason why fine arts has gone to liberal arts and said, why don’t you provide me support? Today they
provide them support. There’s a reason why a very large college on this campus is in discussions with them
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December 9, 2013 Faculty Council Meeting
about leveraging their shared services. So let’s go out and let’s gather some real data. We’re not asking
people to go into this blindly, and, by the way, this is not an Accenture-driven activity. This cannot be
successful unless it’s grassroots, it’s all of us joining arms and saying let’s go through this but let’s go
through this thoughtfully. Now one last thing I will say is that we can stand still, and if we stand still, the
path that we’re on is the path that we’re on. But I don’t think there’s anything such as standing still today. I
think what we can expect is more than what we got out of Concur, but we have a system that decides what
they know best, and imposes that solution on us. And by definition, that is a solution that plays to the
average. And as we know, typically we are above the average, meaning our boat might have to fall for
other boats to rise. So, that’s where we are. Thank you. {1:42:14.5}
Hart:
Okay thank you, Kevin. Okay one more question.
Shingavi:
It’s not a question of…first, it’s a point of procedure then it’s a rebuttal. The point of procedure is, at our
first meeting of this version in the faculty senate you made a point about how long contributions from the
microphone could be, and about all of us adhering to them as best practices. I’m wondering what the
enforcement of that rule was actually going to look like.
Hart:
Okay, thank you for asking that because I’ve been thinking about that, and whether to ask Kevin to sit
down about halfway through his presentation. Yeah, I heard Al asked him some questions, so I consider
that Kevin is sort of in the role of, of presenter. So that’s, that’s why….
Shingavi:
Okay. The second I guess is, a point of rebuttal, which is, I do believe, that the data from Michigan is real
data. I don’t believe we’re looking at, things just sort of abstractly or unwilling to engage in real
experimentation, but that data needs to be rebutted before we begin another experiment. And that’s, I think
the point of what those of us here who are raising objections to shared services are saying, is that if you
want us to go forward with this pilot and a reasonable kind of inquiry, that I think we’re all capable of
engaging in then Michigan data is real data, sorry. Eleven hundred PhDs do not object to it willy-nilly.
That’s something we ought to take really seriously.
Hart:
Okay. I think Dana wants to give a final comment.
Cloud:
Yeah, so just a couple of things first. None of us is saying no change. I mean, I think that’s a
mischaracterization of the position of the opponents of Shared Services. For example, the ERP or the
computing infrastructure of the University definitely needs to be changed, it’s been falsely bundled into the
shared services, and it should have—there’s a lot to talk about there. Yale is not a utopia now because of
shared services, massive discontent there as there is in Michigan. So just a couple of things, like that,
nobody is saying no change. but I think that we should have change with all of the information, and not just,
I mean, for example, the statement that Accenture is not driving this process. Well, yay—I would actually
like to know what is the role of Accenture, and how much are they getting paid? That is a much more
specific question, and, it is a question that has yet to be answered. And, even though Accenture’s not
driving it, one of the town halls that I attended, an executive of Accenture presented with Mr. Hegarty. So,
just in conclusion, all we’re asking right now—well, two things. One is that we think that the pilots should
be suspended until we have all the information. Secondly, we just want people to go out and gather
information and to educate yourselves and ourselves more fully, and we would like refinements and
challenges to the argument, whatever, to this draft, and then, to actually meaningfully on the basis of a lot
of knowledge, that is, not coming sort of out of a PR wing of the University, what does this mean for us as
faculty? What does this mean for all the human beings at our University? Thank you. [applause]
{1:45:15.6}
Hart:
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December 9, 2013 Faculty Council Meeting
Okay, and if I may, if I may make a couple of comments taking off my chair hat and speaking as Hillary
Hart, faculty member at this University, I think I need to correct you, Dana, that was not an executive [of]
Accenture at, at the meeting. It was a former employee of Accenture who now, and for some years, has had
a position here at the University. I would encourage everyone, I agree with Dana, look--this conversation is
important, it’s good. Let’s think about what might be useful and productive in terms of a resolution, and in
terms of what we would like to see happen, these pilot programs are happening, they are going to produce
data. What kind of data would we like to see? There’s data from Michigan, there’s data from….and there’s
all sorts of, but would we trust our own data I presume, most? And what would we like to see? I think we
might think about what specific, and I think some of this is in your resolution, what specific questions do
we have, what specifically would we like to see studied in these pilot programs? Not just, for instance, a
survey (with all due respect to any of the department chairs here) of what the department chairs think, but
what the staff and the faculty members themselves think. So, I would encourage us to think about a
productive, useful, helpful, resolution, perhaps….anyway, that’s my own take on it, but I don’t want to
squash anything else. Brian, you want to say something.
Evans:
Brian Evans, engineering. I do want to thank Kevin for being open about this from the beginning, and one
of the down sides of Michigan, it was all kept very hush-hush [Hart: yes] and then suddenly it rolls out and
the non-administrative faculty have no idea what’s going on. At least this is a very open process, and I get
the sense we’re asking for more information, I think you’ve been very good at providing information, so I
hope you can continue to do that. Thank you.
Hart:
Okay yeah, no, indeed. The faculty council executive committee will be looking at this and may come up
with its own resolution. I think we’ve been thinking about that. Anything else? Dana.
Cloud:
I do also appreciate the availability of, vice president Hegarty and the availability of some information, it’s
just that some of the information is kind of not…it’s kind of empty information. So there’s some
information, one piece of information that people need is to go quietly poll the staff in your college.
Because I did that—they are terrified, they will not stick their necks out, they’re not going to tell you out
loud, they’re not going to give anybody names, because they’re going to get fired and then have to reapply
for their job at the shared services center, and who knows how much they’re going to get paid, which is a
piece of the information that we need. So I—what we’re saying is a very specific kind of information, not
information about an overall plan.
Hart:
Okay. Alright, and with that I think we will adjourn the last meeting of 2013 of the faculty council. Our
next meeting is January 27, 201four. I hope you all have [a] wonderful, restful, rejuvenating, uh, break.
Thank you. {1:48:21.6}
Meeting adjourned at 4:06 p.m.
20