Members of the State Board of Education Friday 7 May 2004

It is welcome news that some members of the State Board of Higher Education will be able to meet with the IFS in June to discuss some of the issues facing the OUS. To prepare for that meeting, I have asked the IFS Senators, after consulting with their respective University Senates, to provide a list of ³crucial issues². I append to this report some of their reports.

Salary and compensation seem to be permanent issues, alas. I append to this report some of the raw data from the AAUP survey giving comparative compensation data for our Universities. I am sure additional and more sophisticated data analyses can be provided to you if necessary. But once again, most OUS institutions rank rather low on the list; OIT and Western being pleasant exceptions.

The news is not all bad, however. The faculty are delighted that a fair and equitable `short term fix¹ which restores funding to the Optional Retirement Program has been found. The hard work of OUS in this regard is to be commended. However, perhaps a `long term legislative fix¹ is needed as well. To this end, the IFS has already held meetings on four of the campuses at which Denise Yunker, Lisa Zavala, and HR campus administrators presented the issues surrounding the ORP to our faculty; similar meetings will be held presently on the remaining three campuses. Through the Question and Answer periods that followed the meetings, we have learned some of the thoughts of the faculty on these issues. Denise and Lisa have also conducted several `stake holder meetings¹ in Salem -- we are consulting widely and hope to discuss this issue with you at the June meeting of the Board.

Curricular issues are a very hot topic. Many faculty members we have talked with have expressed great concern about the possible implications for our curriculum that recommendations of the MBF working group may have. We all concur that unnecessary barriers to the progress of students through our system must be removed. But the devil is in the details. We note that majors reflect the expertise and interests of the faculty on each campus. They also reflect the missions of the University involved. Thus different Universities can perhaps legitimately have different requirements for a given subject major. Additionally, the educational missions of the Universities reflect themselves in the curricular requirements; one size does not fit all. My experience in dealing with faculty members over the past weeks is that we need to do a better job of communicating with our faculty exactly what the phrases ``creation of a fully transferable lower division common core of lower-division courses¹¹ or ``creation of a fully transferable lower-division set of common student educational outcomes leading into an academic major¹¹ mean (Legislative Concept 580/04).

Shared governance is about respectful communication. We look forward to our meeting in June.

Respectfully submitted

Peter B GIlkey
President 2004 InterInstitutional Faculty Senate

• Comments by Faculty on Critical Issues
• Salary Comparisons