University Senate

Memorandum

Date:   September 13, 2010

To:      The Academic Community

From:  Sharon Pitcher, Secretary to the Senate

Subject:  Minutes from the September 13, 2010  - Meeting of the University Senate

The first regular meeting of the University Senate was held on Monday, September 13, 2010, at 4:00 p.m. in Rooms 314-315 of the University Union.

CALL TO ORDER

ROLL CALL- Professor Sullivan introduced the new Senators.  Vice President Sheehan, Vice President Brasington and Kay Kazinski, TUSC, were absent.

APROVAL OF AGENDA – agenda approved unanimously

PRESIDENT CARET’S ADDRESS TO THE SENATE

• The new Chapter 3 is complete.  It is now on the web.
• Towson is receiving notice for our work on lessening the achievement gap between white students and African Americans and Hispanic students.  Additionally, 74% of the students are graduating. We have been asked by the Educational Trust, Gates Foundation and USDE to provide information about how we are doing this.

• We have also been noted as being one of the Greenest campuses and veterans friendly campus. 
• We have 650 million dollars of building being done.  This is probably more construction than 25-30 years prior to this.
• This year we had 16,000 applications for 2600 freshman spots, we won the first football game.
• On the 2011 budget the real negative was the furloughs.  Otherwise, we were able to manage through the rest of the budget.  The good news is there is no mention of furloughs in the 2012 budget and the chancellor has stated that furloughs are not acceptable.  We have a 5% increase coming in this year (3% increase from tuition and 2% from state).  What has been affected is the fund balance.  If they continue to hit reserves, this will affect our bond ratings.  We think this will not be cut. 
• For 2012 we were told to build in a 2-4% tuition increase and a 3% base increase.  There is also the possibility of a 3% enhancement for workforce issues, achievement gap, etc.  The state still has a rolling deficit, which has been paid for by furloughs and stimulus money.  So if the economy does not shift, we would be all right, but we are preparing for budget cuts so we have asked the vice presidents to put in a 4% cut that can be held in reserves.
• The state is not funding the increasing enrollment initiative.  So we are still targeting -1 or  +1 percent of the present enrollment.  We may come in a little higher especially in graduate level.
• We now have hundreds of personnel keeping the technology going today, which is where a lot of the increased costs are.  We also have more development people today and staff required by national laws and accountability issues. If we look at the academic piece of the pie, we do well in the achievement gap because we make this a priority.  He also looks at percentage amount of dollars in operating budget (20%) to support the labor part of the budget (80%) so we can do what we need on campus.
• As we loose credibility in the public arena, tenure comes under fire.  The suggestions are often easy fixes like faculty teaching more classes.  The challenge is to maintain credibility in the public arena, but maintain what we need to do.  Shared governance is also at the forefront. Legislation is being proposed in areas that have never been addressed before such as academic freedom. The role of core faculty is critical.  We were getting up to better percentages of tenure track faculty and that is falling behind again because of the economy.  He is committed to getting the percentage of core faculty back up.  As we continue to hire, then we are getting compression and we need to fix that to be fair to employees.
• We also have some challenges on the local level.  He is committed to breaking ground for the Harford facilities.  There have been all kinds of challenges with this. We will have to change the name of the building to broker this deal.  Then we will have the challenges of getting the programs out there.
• The trimester is going well.  He wants to see more students with larger course loads during the summer.  We have gotten more funding from the system, but this year we want more resources from the state. We are selling this as the Towson only initiative because we are a low cost commodity and can serve more students.
• One of his goals this year is to bridge and make stronger the relationship between DECO and Academic Affairs.  We have over 100 staff in DECO that work to increase outside funds coming in. We need to tie the funding from DECO to the research and students on the Academic side.
• Some challenges that President Caret sees:  the amount of students that have been involved in service learning is only 9%; the amount of student that study less than 5% is 20%; the amount of students that read less than five books while they are here is 17%; the amount of students that work on research is very low.   These are the areas that we have to work on because they are not that different than five years ago.  Reaching out more, providing the time and resources necessary to address these needs has to be a focus.  Part of what we need to do is look internally to realign.  Looking at what we will do with the 4% cut could begin this process. If you want people to be creative, you need to allow them to be flexible with funds.

President Caret then received questions from the Senate:

• Professor Vatz asked about compression, whether it is something that we can’t do anything about.  President Caret answered that we need to have competitive salaries to be fair along with being competitive.  The only way we can do this is realign or do something very different.  Because we are so cheap to run, we can do anything for a fraction of what other universities in the State can do. If we took the faculty/student ratio up to a half a student a class, we could generate millions more and the funds could go back to faculty. Trusting each other in this process, we may be able to be more generous to our faculty.
• Professor Siegel stated that many faculty do think that the faculty/student ratio has gone up.  She also perceived that student start in classes and then drop which is a waste.  She also knows that the universities are putting together mission statements at this point from CUSF.  President Caret replied that the Provost is working on our mission statement.  We have to figure out how to build in the Jewish PhD, and the Harford location.   When they started looking at this, we found many different mission statements.  Professor Siegel requested that there be some faculty input in revising the mission statement.
• Professor Ballengee also pointed out that for P&T our research has to be aligned with the mission statement so we need some input.  President Caret agreed that it should come to the Senate, but we just do not want to word smith by committee.   Professor Ballengee pointed out that President Caret’s enthusiasm is catching, but she is concerned that we do not have enough faculty to do these initiatives.  President Caret agreed that we have to increase core faculty to do these things and do them well to maintain the characteristics that we all feel are important, we can only do this with people so we have to figure how to fund it. In the system when new moneys come in, we need to figure out how to get more money to grow.  If we are never going to get more money, we have to figure out how we are going to change.
• Professor Ewell pointed out that the re-certification of some of our courses for the new curriculum is falling on a small amount of our faculty.  Provost Welsh responded that we are starting with the new curriculum in 2011.  They are working on the deadlines, but if the Gen Ed committee does not approve courses, they cannot be offered.
• Professor Maronick asked how we do this re-alignment.  President Caret responded that we have to look at how we can do things differently.  Provost Welsh gave an example of the different amount of students in online courses.  President Caret asked the vice presidents to start thinking about this so they can think about what could be fazed out.  He gave the example from when he was at San Jose and they had over 200 programs across the campus.  There were too many programs to sustain.  Teaching classes with a small amount of students is not cost effective.  We were able to merge some of the programs and graduate programs that only graduate a few students a year were cut.  It is not easy to do, but we need to look at what we need to achieve our mission.
• Professor Siegel then pointed out the pressure on Gen Eds now that we are starting the Towson Seminar and  the core faculty are handing a lot of this.

ELECTION OF SENATE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OFFICERS FOR THE YEAR

• The Senate had four positions to fill on the Executive Committee.  Professor Slotkin shared that Professor Sullivan has agreed to serve as Chair again. He was elected unanimously.  The nominating committee then put forward Senator Street, one of the student Senators, for Vice-chair. Traditionally this has been a student.  She was elected unanimously.  Professor Knutson was also elected unanimously to fill the position of Secretary.  The provost announced that she is hiring a part time administrative assistant in her office to help with the University Senate, AAUP, and Senate committees, including the UPTR&M. Professor Stors was then elected unanimously as At Large Representative and Professor Anthony was elected again as Parliamentarian.  Professor Sullivan thanked Professor Pitcher and Professor Zimmerman for their service on the Executive Committee over the past years.
• The Senate meeting ended at 5:30 and will convene again on September 20th for its regular monthly meeting.