University Senate
Memorandum
Date: September 6, 2007
To: The Academic Community
From: Jennifer Ballengee, Secretary
Subject: September 10, 2007—Meeting of the University Senate
The first regular meeting of the University Senate was held on Monday, September 10, 2007, at 4:00 p.m. in Rooms 314-315 of the University Union.
Prof. Sullivan called the meeting to order at 4 p.m.
Absent were Senators Brown and Webster, and Vice President Moriarty and Vice President Sheehan.
President Caret drew for his remarks upon the 5 Themes of TU 2010: Enrollment, Partnerships, Student Experience/Student Success, Resources for Success, and Telling and Selling the Story. As he noted, TU 2010 originally had 86 action items. Every March the document is reviewed; at this time, completed items can be removed, new items can be added, and some items are moved to a maintenance list. As of this year, Pres. Caret explained, 10 of the original items have been completed, 16 are on maintenance, and 6 new items have been added. Thus, TU 2010 now has about 66 ongoing items.
>Enrollment:
Successes:
-Towson is approaching 20,000 headcount
-Averages for incoming Freshmen this year: SAT 1080/ GPA 3.6
-Towson currently boasts an 80% first-year retention rate
Challenges:
-Space: There is currently no office space for any new faculty; TU has leased space at 7400 York Rd., and is looking at purchasing a new building (maybe Terracedale or 7400).
-Housing: Towson is creating new housing slowly, but the need for housing is being addressed. TU is talking to private developers about private housing in close proximity to TU.
-Hiring faculty and staff: TU hired 100 net new tenure-track faculty last year (170-180 searches). The 18-19.6 student to faculty ration is being maintained.
Initiatives:
-Trimester: TU is moving forward on it. They are putting together a small business plan to present to the state. TU will only pursue the trimester if the state will subsidize growth in summer teaching. One plan for summer enrollment is to entice students by providing a different fee structure. TU has asked for the ability to begin that a year from next summer, for classes in high demand in Fall and Spring. Pres. Caret promised that TU will not proceed with this without faculty input.
-Parking: Pres. Caret acknowledged the current parking problems, calling it a “no win situation.” The basic issue, he explained, is that parking, by state law, is a self-support function. The only way to build lots is to raise the money to pay for them. This has become more expensive. There is a plan to build a 1500 car-garage over in the West Village.
-TU is only 10% use in the summer; even if we went up to 20% use it would be beneficial in terms of parking.
Student Experience:
Successes:
-Student attendance is up on campus activities. TU is putting an emphasis on trying to keep students here and create a residential experience. In another year and a half, about 5000 students will be living here or near campus.
-There have been talks about perhaps building a Greek village, possibly including Honors housing and International housing. VP Moriarty is leading the charge on this.
-4600+ students every semester are involved in some kind of student-learning experience.
Challenges:
-Maintaining faculty-student ratio.
-Faculty work: what do we expect of faculty?
-Involvement of faculty in student life.
-P and T process and faculty role in it.
Initiatives or challenges
-High percentage of part-time instructors
-Full-time lecturers: Today we have 140 full-time lecturers. This percentage needs to be rebalanced.
-One solution to maintaining faculty may be to use the Boyer model for P and T and Merit. This would provide flexibility in evaluating faculty in teaching, service, and scholarship, including what is viewed as scholarship.
-The benefit of TU is that it can support a range of faculty. But the challenge is understanding the flexibility all through the ranks. All faculty need to be involved in scholarship at some level.
Resources for Success:
Successes:
-TU has grown in state funding; TU now averages between $5200-5300 per FTE.
-TU now has $5 million in construction on the books. The new Liberal Arts Building is on-track. The first half will open before the second. This is all in the governor’s budget, and we hope it will remain so.
-New faculty are a big resource.
-TU has almost doubled its fund-raising.
Challenges:
-Faculty workforce issue: TU is almost at the level of research-intensive. TU doesn’t intend to become a research one university (research extensive), but we will become more research-intensive. A research-intensive faculty means we’ll have different peer groups, more like U-Mass Boston or U-Wisconsin, Milwaukee, U of Central Florida. Over the next year, Pres. Caret thinks that will happen. Up till now, the only campus that could have aspirational peers was Univ. of Maryland College Park. The state funding guideline is attached to peer groups; therefore our peer groups need to change. TU’s workload is tied to our peer group, too. The fact that the Board of Regents wants us to have a 7.5 teaching load is tied to our peer group. But we’re in a quandary because we have to earn the 6.5 teaching load while still at a 7.5 load. TUs core faculty are at 6.9 credit hours; with lecturers TU is at a 7.3. We’re moving to a 6.5 at some point. The Board and Chancellor have approved this, but it will be incremental. This will be another challenge.
-Part of the reason for the creation of DECO was to take large Centers and allow them to function as a business. The Provost’s goal is to figure out how to involve faculty and students in those centers.
Partnerships:
-The biggest challenge here is focus, Pres. Caret remarked. TU has many partners, but they need to be focused and improved to enable us to follow our direction.
-The Cherry Hill partnership is going very well.
-The new NYTimes partnership continues to be developed.
Telling and Selling the Story:
-Almost all of TUs image-development marketing is now oriented toward the political sphere, not necessarily students.
Challenge:
-TU needs to expand to Prince George’s and Montgomery County. TU is looking at expanding its outreach into Montgomery County.
Q and A:
Prof. Rosecky remarked that his view looks different from President Caret’s. He has been with TU 18 years; he’s an Assoc. Professor and he is paid about $10,000 less per year than new tenure-track professors. Faculty-student ratios don’t match his experience, which is usually 35 students per class. He averages 7.5 courses per year, because he’s told he hasn’t published enough in the past 5 years (4 peer-reviewed articles instead of 5). Prof. Rosecky invited Pres. Caret to remark on this situation of inequity.
Pres. Caret responded that the student-faculty ratio is an average; the low could be 7 to 1 (for example, in some departments because of accreditation). The only way to move is to be naïve, and hope for the best, he noted. Pres. Caret stressed that he doesn’t want any of the goals that TU has set to be put on the backs of any individual. He added that TU does want to maintain a 7.5 as long as we can, because it gives us time to grow. He can argue to drop the average for certain departments. The standards for teaching, however, are a departmental issue. But, he is asking ask that there’s some kind of normalization at the college level. He suggested banking course hours.
Prof. Tabak remarked that one of the priorities in 2010 is retention and graduation rates. She then asked how have these rates changed in the past few years. Are we any closer to being in the top 10% of our peer institutions?
Pres. Caret admitted that the retention rate has dropped slightly, 80-82% in the last few years. But he asserted that this is partly because of new programs we’ve added in the expansion of enrollment. The graduation rate has risen slowly and steadily in the past few years. This information is available on the web: the 5-year trend. Provost Clements agreed to report on that next week.
Prof. Vatz noted that he loves TU and its direction and leadership, but he doesn’t like being punished for success. Departments are being punished for having more students, more faculty, and thus less merit, he argued. Also, he noted the problems with parking and asked if the legislature couldn’t make an exception for the rule against funding parking, since TU is being targeted for expansion?
Pres. Caret said that they could, but it’s unlikely. There are too many pressures on the capital budget. TU could have reserve parking and charge more for it, in order to make money. Also, valet parking or hourly parking are options.
Prof. McLucas noted that the AAUP is making salary equity a major focus this year. He then remarked that tenure/tenure-track faculty is up to 630 this year. He asked what percentile salary the faculty at TU are making, compared to peer institutions.
Pres. Caret answered that the percentile with our peers is 75th percentile in terms of salary. The system goal is 85th percentile and TUs minimum goal is 80th. But dollars evaporate, he remarked; for example, TUs health benefits for faculty/staff/ and retirees alone will go up 6.5 million dollars in the ’09 budget. The state Commission for the Funding of Higher Education (on which Pres. Caret serves) is addressing the problem of salaries and funding in general. The report will be in two phases. The phase one report will talk about the higher education budget in general, trying to get a state mandate for that; then a phase two report will talk about who gets which pieces of the pie. Pres. Caret is also serving on the governor’s workforce investment board, as chair of the subcommittee on education. It is the view of the Commission, he remarked, that by any measure this state is drastically underfunding higher education. Today, we’re only 29% funded by the state (including auxiliaries), he explained. The goal is 60% funding from the state. Salary compression is immoral and unethical, he agreed, but it is realistic that it happens occasionally, in a given year. In most companies, though, employees will ultimately get salary compression. The TU AAUP did regression analyses in ’94; he’s willing to work with the AAUP on doing the same thing again.
Prof. Bergman asked what would happen to the percentile if we compare to our aspirational peer institutions?
Pres. Caret noted that it gets much worse. There is a great variation between schools with good state support and poor state support (and higher tuition). The Commission is open to the public, he remarked; anyone may attend and observe.
Prof. Zimmerman noted that the 75th percentile figure doesn’t take into account discipline-specific figures. Some departments are much worse than 75th.
Pres. Caret agreed. He noted that it differs very much from rank to rank, too. Some year, he said, we need to take some money and get people who are outside of the norm back into the norm. Prof. Zimmerman then asked if there are any benchmarks for moving to research intensive.
Pres. Caret described various benchmarks.
Prof. Siegel noted that the funding commission includes community and private colleges and universities.
Pres. Caret clarified that private universities get 18% of the state funding that TU gets. Community colleges get 18%, too.
Prof. Siegel noted that CUSF is trying to get a table that they have had before: each university by rank, giving percentile of salaries in mean and median.
She then asked how using the Boyer model can fit with moving to a research-intensive grant-winning level.
Pres. Caret described it as a balancing act. This year TU brought in about 21 million, but 15-16 million of that came from DECO. Provost Clements is going to work on grants and fund-raising with the Deans of each college.
Prof. Siegel noted that part of the problem is not having enough graduate students and not enough funding for graduate students.
Prof. Ballengee asked about TUs exploration of public transportation as a solution to the parking problem.
Pres. Caret answered that there are no clear options in that regard. TU has been studying Traffic Patterns. The county has looked at adding turn lanes, etc.
Prof. Goins noted the loss of spots for handicap and visitor parking and asked how that will be compensated?
Pres. Caret answered that the goal is to minimize the amount of unused space. Changes have been made in that regard.
Prof. Pitcher noted that the College of Education has some concerns about the Cherry Hill partnership. There are not many tenure-track or tenured faculty down there. The rumor is that the President’s office is taking that over. What is TU doing down there, and how is the College of Education handprint being included?
Pres. Caret explained that Dennis Hinkel, Dean of Education, was hired when Pres. Caret was Provost. Hinkel created over 100 professional development schools with the college. When Dean Lorien came on board, Pres. Caret told him he wanted to see more such schools in the city, and possibly become involved in a charter school effort. TU stumbled on Cherry Hill, because the neighborhood has 6 schools all within walking distance of each other. So TU planned to create a network of professional development schools, and to develop a political base with the neighborhood. TU was then asked to guide and implement these schools with one additional elementary school (Morrell Park). Those are university partnership schools, where TU intends to help develop schools, have a place for student teachers, and develop teachers who want to remain in the city. Pres. Caret expressed his assumption that TU faculty are involved with student teachers there.
Provost Clements recognized the need for Cherry Hill to be a more university-wide partnership, and to involve more tenured/tenure-track faculty in the process.
Prof. Sullivan noted that a third of the Senate has just been elected to terms that end in 2010.
1. Election of New Officers.
Chair, Vice-Chair, Secretary, Member-at-Large, Parliamentarian
(Senate Nominating Committee)
Prof. McLucas announced the nominations made by the nominating committee for each office and also solicited nominations from the floor. No nominations for any positions were offered from the floor.
Chair of the Senate: The nomination of the committee was Prof. Sullivan. Prof. Sullivan was unanimously elected.
Vice-chair: The committee nominated Prof. Guerrero. She was unanimously elected.
Secretary: The committee nominated Prof. Ballengee. She was unanimously elected.
Senator-at-large: The committee nominated Prof. Zimmerman. He was unanimously elected.
Parliamentarian: The committee nominated Prof. Goins. He was unanimously elected.
Prof. Sullivan adjourned the meeting at 5:40 PM.
Senate will reconvene on Monday, September 17, 2007, at 4 p.m. in Rooms 314-315 of the University Union.