Welcome and Introductory Comments from Martha Anne Dow, President, OIT:

Interinstitutional Faculty Senate Meeting

October 4^th, 2002

Present: Marye Hefty (OIT Communications), Jim Tooke (EOU Mathematics Education), Dan Edge (OSU Fisheries & Wildlife), Bill Danley (SOU Special Ed.; IFS President-Elect), Marc Levy (SOU Psychology; IFS Secretary), Scott Burns (PSU Geology), Elaine Deutschman (OIT Mathematics; IFS President), Nels Carlson (OHSU School of Medicine), Jim Isenberg (UO Mathematics), John Leahy (UO Mathematics), Duncan Carter (PSU Liberal Arts & Sci.)

Absent: James Earl (UO English), Bob Turner (WOU Biology), Craig Wollner (PSU Social Science), Jim Lundy (OSU Transportation Engineering), Steve Teich (OHSU Library), Peter Gilkey (UO Mathematics), Bruce Sorte (OSU Agricultural Science)

I. Elaine Deutschman called meeting to order at approx. 1:00PM. Announced that Mary Anne Linden has left the OUS system, and Elizabeth Furst has resigned from IFS, so they will no longer serve with us. Craig Wollner will be returning as an active member as of December.

II. Welcome and Introductory Comments from Martha Anne Dow, President, OIT:

A. In looking at the budget issues, $150 tuition surcharge per FTE per term to be instituted Jan. or Feb. 2003. Press gave negative impression by focusing on this instead of the fact that it amounts to about $10/credit hour per student.

1. Took biggest administrative cuts in the last budget cuts.

2. Appreciates the institutions and faculty trying to work together as a team to address problems – helps all of us when we work together.

3. Need a good, effective plan to address the new biennium’s legislature, and the new Governor.

4. Jarvis’s “Deal” plan might or might not be one viable answer, but without a longer-term commitment from the State (beyond two-year periodic commitments), any viable plan is likely to be a moot issue.

5. Acknowledged her faculty as showing teamwork by offering to hold off on their salary increases to save positions at the college. Hasn’t had to be instituted, and she hopes to find means to cover these increases. Salaries at the faculty, staff, and administrative levels continue to lag behind peer institutions.

B. Had to give up the opportunity to bring an IT program to Bend during the last series of cuts.

C. Working on creation of a Center for Renewable Energy to give students more opportunity for research and service.

D. Wants to continue looking at having one or two sound graduate programs.

E. Issue of independence: Has looked at soliciting more private support, and has a President’s Advisory Council that has representatives from private business. When they were offered $100 million from a private donor, Martha Anne first kept it a private issue and discussed it with key people on campus. After opening it up to whole campus, word somehow got out that it was a “done” deal or that she had somehow made a “deal” with some private interests. These were not true, yet that was what was reported. When they got word from the Board that it was fine to explore the opportunity further, they asked for more information regarding the parameters of the endowment from the private donor. Before they had all their answers, the extent of the due diligence research and expense necessary to get to all the answers, they decided not to go forward. The $100 Million would not have been sufficient for full self-support anyway.

F. All our institutions are now pursuing more flexibility and autonomy with Board approval.

G. Have a new grant program ($300,000) to help new female faculty get started in the engineering and technology areas. Mentoring fellowships would involve supervision by senior faculty and opportunities for Fellows to mentor female students.

H. Marye Hefty received OIT’s Faculty Excellence Award.

I. Dr. Dow will be attending the Presidents’ Call, a focused open community discussion about the value and importance of supporting liberal arts education. OIT is an official “partner” of this event to be hosted at Southern Oregon University on October 16^th. More information on this important event can be accessed at www.sou.edu.

J. Question – If budget situation continues to get worse, how will OIT handle the continued shortfalls? Hate to consider cutting programs, but might have to review them. In the worst case scenario, can’t imagine that the system could avoid as severe a discussion as which whole institution to close.

K. Jim Isenberg – By cutting administration and other services, is there a danger of the public saying that this is evidence that the institutions don’t really need the resources they say they need?

III. Jim Jones, COCC VP & CFO, and Henry Sayre, OSU Associate Provost, Cascades Campus

A. Seeking $35M in bonds for new buildings for campuses.

B. Have a presence in 5 communities throughout Central Oregon.

C. Been in existence over 50 years.

D. In process of reducing 40 of 320 full time positions.

E. Reducing budget by 10-15% next year.

F. Reducing administrative services by about 40%.

G. Reducing faculty by approx. 10%

H. COCC/OSU Cascades Center – Cascades Hall just opened in Fall. 38,000 sq. ft., leased to OSU.

I. There’s a split tuition deal for students where they pay only about $48/cr. hr. for the COCC lower division credits and higher rate for the OSU-sponsored upper division credits.

J. Budget situation is forcing COCC and OSU to look closer at integration, a strategy that may serve as a model for other communities. Sayre predicts that if OUS budgeting continues on the downward spiral, OUS will lose students to community colleges anyway. More and more, students are becoming aware that they can get similar lower division classes at CC’s at lower cost, and that transfer to the OUS schools. They also get smaller classes and more exposure to actual faculty members at CC’s than they do at the larger OUS institutions, where they’re likely to have 500 students in a lecture hall and don’t even get to meet the T.A’s appearing at the front of the room.

K. Jay Casbon, OSU Cascades Campus Executive Officer – sharing of resources between CC & OUS campus systems (including material resources such as library use, building maintenance, etc.) is an innovation that brings special challenges but also opportunities.

L. Very strong support, mandates, and expectations for higher education offerings from throughout Central Oregon.

M. Other partners included or being pursued with other community colleges and OUS institutions.

IV. Jim Lussier, OUS State Board President

A. In answer to the question about spending resources to build Cascades while other institutions are being cut back, he says that given the reality of economic challenges, the fact remains that the need and desire to support higher ed exists in central Oregon. Looking at the way successful businesses operate during economic downturns, one has to innovate, look at where the resource allocations make the most sense, meet the most demand, and anticipate future growth.

B. Some comments are his own biases since he cannot speak on behalf of the Board.

C. We do not have a sustainable formula for higher ed in this State. Doesn’t think Board has either had a mandate for directing higher ed policy, nor have they done very well in initiating such

D. We don’t have a strategic plan for higher ed., and need more power to develop and carry out one.

E. We need to do much more public relations work at the highest level – need to really educate the public about the value of higher ed.

F. Still thinks one of our goals needs to be to double State support. May not make it, but if we don’t have the goal, it’ll never happen.

G. Bottom line is that the State has too many programs and not enough resources to fund them. Public doesn’t want to raise taxes, doesn’t want to reform the tax code, so the time is here for us to say that this is the reality and start planning for the future.

H. Another area – systems design. Citizens want to see more distance education opportunities, they want differentiated mission statements to reduce duplication.

I. Legislature is not going to give us more autonomy unless we can show them what we can give them (better return, etc.).

J. All of these revolve around having a strategic plan. Presidents’ letters to the Board was a start, but we need more design development decisions. E.g., what does “autonomy” mean especially since the public still would like there to be a state “system” rather than seven independent institutions doing their own thing.

K. Claims the citizens are continually asking “given the limited resources, can the State afford to keep seven separate institutions?” He’s not insinuating that closing institutions is imminent, but we have to continually ask “how do we use our resources more efficiently” while maximizing quality performance.

L. As we continue raising tuition, we’re losing kids to other states. How can we begin to address the concerns of Oregon’s low “grades” (Medford Mail Tribune, Oct. 3, 2002)?

M. Wants to increase participation in the Board meetings by representatives of the OUS constituencies – to help educate Board members and committees as they make important decisions affecting all of us.

N. Strategic plans formulated in the past have been based on assumptions of unlimited resources, and therefore have been relatively useless. The Strategic Planning Committee of the Board is seeing more participation from outside parties.

O. “When I lay the missions of the seven universities out in front of me and look at them, I can’t tell who is doing what… how they are different from one another.” Acknowledges that duplication per se is not necessarily a bad thing, just that we need to look at where it makes sense.

P. Ongoing issue and coming agenda issue has to do with the degree to which the Board should “micromanage” each institution. Right now institutions have some autonomy about the way they carry out allocations, for example. Board sets parameters/policies, but institutions can decide how and to what extent they carry those out.

Q. New Chancellor Jarvis’s “Deal”

1. We never have been completely funded in the model.

2. We’re now down to 75%.

3. Promise us 90% of the model, and we’ll eat the remaining 10%.

4. In return, we expect to be able to pursue other sources of funding, e.g.,

a. Flexibility with financial aid.

b. Ability to increase tuition independently.

c. Expenditure of non-state funds.

d. Academic planning authority

e. And nine more changes

5. If legislators get the idea that what these mean is that we’re trying to bail on the State, we’re sunk before we start.

6. If we did a better job of PR with the public, there wouldn’t be a single candidate in the State who would avoid addressing the need for more support for higher education.

R. Question – How’s the new Chancellor doing?

1. Good listening capability, good networker.

2. Innovative

3. Not completely from a “traditional” mold

4. Honoring his commitment to the State. Could have gone elsewhere and have had a much easier time.

S. How will the Board respond when we inevitably hear more gloom and doom from the fiscal projections?

1. We’ll ask for a lot of help and have to make really tough decisions.

2. Cannot speak to the issue of how to handle increasing enrollments with decreasing resources. “It’s a dilemma.” Proposals will be coming from the Presidents.

T. Re: graduate education. Question: All the institutions have been capped on how much money they can get from the model for their graduate enrollments. Can we get this on the table? Yes, we need to look at that.

U. Question: We’re always formulating our budgets based on a current service level, and this is followed by 10-20% cuts of funding and asked to carry out the current service level at that time. Answer: Yes, we need to look at not having such a centralized management model that creates budgets that mandate particular services at each institution.

V. Can’t even finish the 2003-2005 budget proposal because we can’t straight answers from the legislature about what our targets are to be – they continually change every time we talk to them.

W. PERS is an issue because the average person on the street looks at it, sees that they don’t have that, and complains to their legislators. No one on the Board has any particular agenda about it right now, but we agree that it will come up in the next session.

X. Elaine – I encourage you to attend the OUS Board meetings, especially when they come to your respective campuses. Lussier – it’s not the collective Board meetings where the important decisions get made, try to get to the working and committee meetings.

Y. Lussier will be at the SOU campus for the Presidents’ Call and the Chancellor’s town hall meeting on October 16th, and the Board meeting on October 18^th.

Interinstitutional Faculty Senate

Business Meeting

October 5^th, 2002

Absent: James Earl (UO English), Bob Turner (WOU Biology), Craig Wollner (PSU Social Science), Steve Teich (OHSU Library), Peter Gilkey (UO Mathematics), Bruce Sorte (OSU Agricultural Science)

I. Cuts ranged from 7.3% to 10%

II. Total hit to entire OUS – 9.5% ($79 million). Chancellor’s office took 14% cut.

III. Although Bob Turner is not present, he has conveyed that he will place notes from the latest Academic Council meetings on the web site.

IV. Issues for IFS Consideration This Year

A. Proactively make ourselves available to the Chancellor’s office to participate in the solution generation for the future. Chancellor will meet with us at the December Friday meeting from 3-5pm.

B. Discuss the issues surrounding partnerships with community colleges.

1. Community colleges do have a governing board, but have much more individual autonomy.

C. Jarvis’s “Deal” – the fifteen points were an outgrowth of the Presidents’ input to the strategic planning committee of the Board.

D. In order to activate the need for more faculty support, we need to help put together data that show such metrics as the effects on faculty turnover, stability of faculty, attrition, increasing percentages of adjunct faculty, etc.

E. Question: going further with the adjunct % issues, what is our argument about the negative aspects of over-relying on adjunct faculty?

1. James Earl – less training in general teaching methods, content areas, theory

2. Elisabeth – her research is showing that grade inflation is more of a problem with adjunct faculty as they may tend to inflate in order to maintain employment.

3. Scott – less availability of faculty to advise, provide guidance,

4. Jim Tooke – FT faculty more likely to stay up on current academic/theoretical trends.

5. Bill Danley, Dick Fairley – need to keep overall quality in mind, not necessarily to rid system of adjunct faculty in places where they offer unique practical contributions from the field: k-12 teacher education, some fields of technology

F. Marye Hefty – contribution we can make to the public’s awareness of our value

1. Marc – Why not use the most popular medium of our society – TV? Why not show the public how our graduates benefit the average citizen directly through their inventions, skills, and service? Why not use our own media with TV production student projects to create PSA’s ?

2. Elisabeth – also underscore the concurrent volunteer service that so many of our students provide to their respective communities.

3. Scott – remember to include the idea of lifelong education. Also, we need to take these issues to our respective faculty senates to participate in this idea and solution generation. Perhaps they could assist in developing local initiatives as well.

4. Jim Lundy – public needs to see the real impact that their decisions against funding support create. Unfortunately, the fact that we do keep our doors open may be sending the unintended message that we really did have too much “fat” in the system.

V. Proposed Plans For Next Year’s (2003) Meetings

A. Feb. 7-8 WOU; April 4-5 OSU/Salem?; June 6-7 UO; Oct. 3-4 SOU; Dec. 5-6 PSU

VI. Association of Oregon Faculties (AOF)/IFS Joint Meeting (usually toward the end of April at OSU)

A. AOF will come to us seeking some funding.

B. One controversy has to do with AOF’s utilization of Mark Nelson as a lobbyist – he also represents the tobacco industry and opposed the cigarette tax increase.

C. They’ve also asked to be linked from our website.

D. Elaine – our annual budget is currently $5,000 and is used for IFS President’s travel to

E. OUS Board meetings, OUS-related events, some secretarial support, communications, other miscellaneous expenses.

F. Bill Danley – historically IFS has focused on academic issues, and was not intended to serve a lobbying or union-like function. In recent years, money has been a major academic issue, so we have been forced into more involvement in those areas.

1. One benefit of partnering with groups such as AOF and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is that they are more likely to focus efforts and resources on legislative lobbying efforts. Our (IFS’s) basic mission has a different focus than theirs.

G. Motion (Scott Burns) – We continue our joint meeting with AOF (2^nd – Dan Edge). Passed with two opposed (Jim Tooke, Jim Isenberg). Caveat (Jim Tooke – my preference is to keep us distinctly separate since our basic missions are different).

H. Motion (Scott Burns) – We provide some financial support for that meeting, the amount at President’s discretion (2^nd – James Earl?).

1. Discussion – Bill Danley – Perhaps we should be cautious about providing money from our budget since it might appear that we are supporting AOF.

2. James Earl – we shouldn’t necessarily look at it as supporting AOF per se, but rather a joint meeting between our two organizations. Elaine – last time our check was cut directly to the caterers, and not AOF.

3. Vote – passed – 2 against (Jim Tooke, Jim Isenberg), 1 abstention (Dick Fairley)

I. Motion (Elaine) – to provide a link from our website to AOF’s (2^nd – Scott)

1. Motion fails with 2 abstentions (Elaine, Marc)

VII. OUS Board Meeting September 18, 2002 at SOU

A. Elaine encourages whomever can make it to attend and show our strength.

B. Arguments in favor of faculty as an asset

1. Provide continuity and history at institutions where administrators come and go.

2. Provide unity

3. Represent interests other than financial ones.

4. Professionalism and accountability for the knowledge we impart and methods we use.

C. We want Jarvis to know that we want to be a full partner at the table.

D. Take opportunity to educate Jarvis about what IFS is and does.

VIII. December Meeting at OHSU

A. Participants

1. Chancellor Jarvis – has set aside a whole 2 hours (3-5pm) for us.

2. OHSU president

3. Inviting Board Member……….

4. Should we invite Grattan Kerans, former legislator and current OUS lobbyist

5. Invite Governor-elect

6. Invite a legislator to come if Governor’s office is not represented.

IX. Campus Reports

A. PSU (Scott Burns) –

1. We’re going to hit 33,000 students by the 4^th week.

2. Lost several important administrators

3. Voted to raise admission requirements to 3.0 next year, and will present to the Board.

4. Faculty Senate is attempting to build more cohesion. Began a wine tasting tradition after every meeting last year. Helped to keep Senators till the end of meetings. Scott was Senate President and had approached the Provost for financial support due to the need to build community on campus – now taking up 32 city blocks, and people don’t know each other.

5. Ads – PSU began running ads that highlight faculty contributions and development. Magazines, newspapers, and community program publications.

B. SOU (Danley & Levy) –

1. Getting to know new President, Elisabeth Zinser, strong leadership style, has positive vision for SOU’s future, e.g., membership in the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges.

2. Up 3-4% in enrollment

3. President’s Call regarding the value of liberal arts education – community and academic leaders

C. UO (Earl)

1. Campus agenda-setting is now more formalized and inclusive of faculty committees, particularly with the institute of an annual retreat for all parties to come together to discuss issue and initiative priorities.

2. University has developed a “strategic directions” document. First drafts were very focused on economic issues and had virtually no academic issues addressed. The Faculty Senate demanded more influence in the document, resulting in multiple revisions and more inclusion of academic priorities as well.

3. $600M Capital Campaign – Faculty also being proactive in having a say in the allocation priorities.

4. Athletics continues to be a big issue. One-third of the capital campaign is likely to go toward athletics. The athletic subsidy has been discontinued.

5. Student body has grown to about 22,000 and faculty feels very overwhelmed. In current resource situations, faculty are very against further growth. Financially, they hope to get to about a 50% level of out-of-state student population. However, this creates ambivalence over the issue of access for Oregon residents.

D. EOU (Tooke & Boretz) –

1. New Provost, John Miller, background in sociology, doctorate from UO

2. Student enrollment up.

3. Push to create a union on campus.

4. No faculty were cut, but when faculty contracts finally came out, a note was included.

5. Semester system discussions were discontinued.

E. OSU (Edge & Lundy) –

1. enrollment up 6-7% (about 17,000 – goal is 20,000)

2. Lots of work going on around a restructuring plan, shooting for 2007 as a goal.

3. Concerns over PERS - it’s estimated that 20-25% of the faculty are retirement eligible and may “bail” if their benefits are threatened.

4. Executive Committee of Faculty Senate has submitted a DRAFT resolution regarding PERS – trying to become part of solution rather than part of problem.

F. OIT (Deutschman & Hefty)

1. also some discussion about the relative subsidizing of athletic programs.

2. Also refer to Dr. Dow’s comments from yesterday.

G. OHSU (Fairley) –

1. Being a private corporation, and with some of the capital improvements going on, the public may think things are not being affected by the State’s budgetary woes.

2. Four schools - School of nursing, medicine, dentistry, and now Oregon Graduate Institute (OGI), a school of science and engineering (especially regarding medical technology).

3. Enrollments up 7%

4. Working on strategic planning

I. Adjourned at 11:25 AM for Tour of the Cascades Campus by Henry Sayre, Assoc. Provost.