Faculty Assembly Report
January 23, 2004

WCU's delegates to UNCs Faculty Assembly, Mary Adams, Marie Huff, and Mary Anne Nixon, represent our faculty's concerns at the system level, reporting what they learn from system administrators and other delegates annually and making resolutions and recommendations. Because we believe the knowledge we gain in Chapel Hill to be potentially more powerful than our recommendations, we'd like to share our findings in report form as soon after meetings as possible. 

Below you'll find a short summary of discussions we thought of greatest concern for the WCU community at the last session, along with links to the web pages for the Faculty Senate and the Office of the President for you to read more.

These notes are not the official assembly minutes. When they're available, you can read official Assembly minutes at the UNC main site.

Download a printable copy of this report (Word)

Download a printable copy (Acrobat)

Some links in this report:

• Chancellors recieved 9-12% bonuses this week (read the article)
• Jeff Davies's presentation on tuition increase requests on the 16 campuses (PowerPoint)
• How tuition increases will be used at WCU
• How this year's raises were determined at WCU (Newt Smith's senate report)
  • PDF
  • Word
• Salary resolutions pdf
• Salary resolutions (word)
• Board of Governors budget expansion calendar
• Weighted credit agreement between UNC and the public schools
• Current system-wide software contracts
• TLT conference web site and submission guidelines
• Office of the President’s Directions for Participating in the Creation of Long-range plan for 2004-9

Salaries and Tuition Increases

• Renewed public interest:
• The Atlantic Monthly is writing a big article that President Broad believes will draw attention to the problem of faculty salaries.
Reporters actually showed up at our meeting and are interested in faculty and staff unrest, so this would be a good time for each of us to write our representatives, talk up the issue locally, and even show up at legislative assembly in Raleigh. Use these resources to help raise a stink:

• Dates:
• General Assembly interim calendar (look for meetings of the Educational oversight committee and Appropriations on Education/ Higher Education) http://www.ncleg.net/InterimCalendar/PublicInterimCalendar.pl
• July is when the Board of Governors will act to distribute whatever legislative funding is made available.
• Board of Governors Expansion Budget Request Calendar for 2005-7:
• Contact information:
• Governor
• State representative (house) Phil Haire
• State representative (senate) Robert Carpenter
• Appropriations on Education committees
• House
• Senate
• Since no one on assembly could agree that tuition increases were always a bad thing, or that faculty and staff salaries should never be supplemented by them, we managed to pass a resolution that asked the state to do right by all us, and another one saying that they should not let such increases take the place of meaningful raises.
• Resolutions on raises and tuition increases
• New Policy: Schools must now make multi-year raise requests that show board-initiated tuition increases, campus-initiated tuition increases, and fee increases on the same page, with a breakdown by beneficiary of these funds. Some schools invented new euphemisms to that did not distinguish between faculty, staff and administrators, (NCSU used "academic excellence" and we used "salary enhancement funds"). Jeff Davies predicts that the Board of Governors will want all schools to develop a common vocabulary.
• Raises at WCU
• Raises at the 16 institutions
  • Chancellors recieved 9-12% bonuses this week (read the article)
  • An article: Some UNC Staff this month received raises designed to bring state employees above poverty level
  • An editorial about recently announced bonuses for UNC Chancellors

Campus Long-range (2004-9) plans now underway

·         Both President Broad and VP Bataille emphasized that faculty should take greater interest in the long-range plan for their campus.

o        President Broad says this document helps the university adapt to change, and says our newest plan has a "more strategic focus" on two things: skills and the global economy.

o        VP Bataille says faculty should take a more active role in the development of such plans. Most faculty at assembly, including me, do not even know if campus faculty are involved in the creation of their campus long range plans. Similarly, most of us did not know if any faculty had a role in determining campus budgets.

• I made note of one exception: the recent, unprecedented process of determining faculty equity raises at WCU, which I described as a model for fairness and transparency (details to be available at the end of this month, I'm told). Several campuses indicated an interest in seeing our model.
  • How this year's raises were determined at WCU (Newt Smith's senate report)
    • PDF
    • Word

·         Office of the President’s Directions for Participating in the Creation of Long-range plan for 2004-9

Technology and E-learning

·         The Office of the President's  Academic Affairs division is started an e-learning task-force, which will concentrate on three things:

o        finding ways to modernize technology and eliminate the many "silos" on our campuses

o        Linking e-learning to pedagogy

o        reducing costs—especially by forming partnerships. Other ways to keep costs down will include creating common record-keeping, making registration more user-friendly to students, making e-courses easier to transfer between campuses, forming common sets of prerequisites, and improving marketing.

o        I asked whether the OP could assure faculty who undertook online courses that the university would not then assert ownership of such courses and replace us with Romanian labor. President Bataille replied that we should be more concerned about gaining compensations or course reductions for taking on such work.

·         Planning for the March 17-19 Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) conference, co-sponsored by the TLT collaborative and Faculty Assembly, is now underway, and the deadline for submitting a proposal is Friday, January 30. Why should you present?

o        It’s a glamorous, high profile conference (i.e. members of the Office of the President will be there).

o        Although “presenters and co-presenters who attend must pay the appropriate registration fees, you can apply for small travel grants if you live far away (and we do) and “[h]otel costs up to the state per diem rate will be covered at the conference hotel for participants who live and work more than 35 miles from Charlotte. Conference / workshop materials and selected meals will also be provided.” – Make sure you apply for the travel grant when you submit your proposal.

o        There will be a special session on intellectual property issues, etc. as they affect faculty workload.

o        TLT conference web site and submission guidelines

·         Statewide software licensing. The TLT is serious about using the combined buying power of the 16 campuses to buy software, and this time they aren’t just talking about statistical packages. They will be surveying faculty to find out what kind of software we’d most like but can’t afford.

o        Current system-wide software contracts

·         Online music distribution—and what it means for you. President Broad is one of two chancellors serving on a “joint committee on higher education and entertainment.” Higher education is interested in keeping peer-to-peer networking (the kind used in Napster, Limewire, etc) legal, and in finding new business models for sharing music. Why? Because surveys show our students care more about music downloading than any other single form of entertainment.

o        Three system universities and their faculty are participating in participating in three pilot programs that will study this issue.

Teaching Load, Benefits

·         The Academic Freedom and Tenure committee is considering a resolution that recommends best practices for teaching (including teaching loads), research, and service, and tackles the big question: is there a way not to do too much? Can we reward those who do too much?

·         A proposal to make life insurance available to state employees was put on hold until we understand what entity in this state is legally able to offer it to us.

·         It could be worse: some campus reps report they aren’t seeing their paychecks until the middle of the month, so as to increase their campus’s “flexible spending” ability.

·         We may be getting more ORP options—stay tuned.

Public Schools and the Teacher Shortage

·         The office of the President has a new task force to deal with the teacher shortage. President Broad fears that if UNC doesn’t do anything to address the teacher shortage, others (such as the community colleges) will. The task force will emphasize partnerships with community colleges and others.

·         Alarming statistics:

o        More than half of all new teachers burn out and quit within five years.

o        More than half of all new teachers enter the profession through alternative licensure (and those people are more likely to burn out)

·         The UNC system and public schools have signed a “weighted credit” agreement (that gives extra weight to honors courses, etc. so students can actually come here with a 6.0 average).

• Text of Weighted Credit Agreement

 Miscellaneous

• A new UNC in DC exchange program is in the works. It should be available to students at all 16 campuses.
• Members of the Assembly’s athletics taskforce, including our own David Claxton, are beginning to collect information about athletics on campuses. Let David know your concerns.