Thursday, February 4, 1999
SS115, 2:00 p.m.

PRESENT: Karen Dewey, Dave Eisler, Judy Elsley, Bruce Handley, Thom Kuehls, Judith Mitchell, Diane Pugmire, Candadai Seshachari - Chair, Alden Talbot, President Thompson, Kay Brown - Secretary

EXCUSED: Monica Mize

MINUTES
Judith Mitchell: Moved to accept the minutes of January 14, 1999
Second: Karen Dewey
Outcome: The minutes were approved.

FACULTY GOVERNANCE

Judith Mitchell reported on the conference of the American Association of Colleges and Universities that she recently attended in San Francisco. She was supported to attend the conference through funds from a FIPSE Grant, Faculty Senate funds, and Department funds. The conference focused on providing better education to students.

EMIA

President Thompson reported on current insurance issues with Educators Mutual Insurance Association. Insurance costs are rising at a rate which will not allow EMIA to honor the current contract with Weber State which states they will not raise their rate more than 5% a year. EMIA is now looking at a 35% increase. This increase would require all or nearly all of the legislative salary money to go toward benefit coverage. The increase will affect Weber State and 6 other state institutions. There are a number of options: (1) Self Insure, (2) Rebid with FEHP, United, and Blue Cross, and see what they would propose, (3) Stay with EMIA. Because EMIA cannot hold to the 5% guarantee, we are not obligated to stay with them. President Thompson will meet with EMIA on Friday, February 5. It is important that employees of Weber State understand that Educators Mutual Insurance will continue to insure Weber State through June 30, 1999. Richard McDermott and Joan Ogden have been contacted and the administration will be consulting with them. The University may have to settle on one provider. There is a six to eight week window in which the University needs to have the insurance issue resolved.

COMPUTER LITERACY

The Faculty Senate passed the computer literacy requirement last spring. The Provost is looking at having the Telecommunications and Business Education Department monitor this requirement. That department has the expertise and the facilities. This is an academic piece and should be included in the academic area. TBE is looking at outside testing and they will come back with a recommendation. It is hoped that this policy will be implemented by Fall 1999. Information regarding the computer literacy requirement will be disbursed to students through student orientation.

DAVIS DIRECTOR

The Davis Campus has been in transition from being housed in Continuing Education to reporting to the Provost. Provost Eisler is currently functioning as the Director of the Davis Campus. The Davis Campus presently has a 5 year contract for maintenance, custodial, and grounds keeping services. The Provost is trying to establish an academic community where they will station full time faculty. The following criteria is being considered as they search for a Davis Campus Director: Full time, tenured faculty member from the Weber State campus, comes from a discipline that teaches a significant amount of classes at the Davis Campus, someone who is very interested in Davis County, and someone who will teach three courses at the Davis Campus. The Provost would like this appointment to be for 2 or 3 years. Executive Committee members felt the 3 course load was expecting a lot in consideration of all the other duties of the Director. The Provost would consider changing that requirement to a 2 course load.

ASSISTANT/ASSOCIATE DEAN APPOINTMENTS

There are currently two interim Assistant/Associate Dean appointments, The College of Health Professions and the College of Arts and Humanities. Health Professions has many satellite programs. It takes a considerable amount of time to run those satellite programs. These positions are designed to work on specific projects and are not designed to be involved in administrative decisions. After a year, the Deans, if they feel the position is effective, can begin a search process as outlined in the PPM.

ENROLLMENT

Comparing Spring Semester enrollment currently shows 9,689 FTE. This is about a half of a percent below the figure from last year. If the numbers are compared to annual FTEs, we will be down about one percent overall. As of February, we are up over last year 300 applications for Fall. The University took in over 950 applications last weekend, of which 150 came off the web. The policy from the Regents is that Spring enrollment is not final until the end of Spring Semester.

APPORTIONMENT

Doris-Geide Stevenson, Chair of the Constitutional Review, Apportionment, and Organization Committee presented the following information on apportionment. The Constitutional Review and Apportionment Committee voted on February 3, 1999 to apply the following rule in allocating the 39 Faculty Senate seats:

Once the fractional representation per college is obtained, the fractions have to be translated into the actual number of faculty senate seats each college obtains. A consistent rounding in the sense of a fixed cut-off for rounding up or down cannot be applied since we have to work with the fixed number of 39 faculty senate seats. Rather, we voted on a simple ranking rule. Using the 1999 Apportionment as an example, the rule will be applied as follows. First, summing the full integers of the 1999 apportionment data for fractional representation (draft 11-20-98) yields 35 seats. This implies that only 4 more seats can be distributed. These seats should go to the colleges that are the closest to the next highest integer. Education (3.9834) will first receive an additional seat, then the College of Science (S) (5.8361), next Social and Behavioral Sciences, and then Applied Science and Technology. No other college obtains an additional seat. This procedure results in an additional seat for AS&T (5) and the loss of one seat for B&E (3) compared to the apportionment initially suggested.

The committee discussed adding additional members to improve the proportionality. The PPM clearly states that 39 Senators will serve on the Faculty Senate.

MOTION

Karen Dewey: Moved to send the 1999 Apportionment to the Faculty Senate for the February 18 meeting along with the policy statement of the committee.
Second: Alden Talbot
Second: The motion passed unanimously.

CHARGE TO APAFT 1999-2000

The University needs to look at how the Senate members represent the faculty. We have people who fight to get appointments on the Senate and who are supported by their colleagues with the notion that this is a way to obtain points in a portfolio. We need to have people serve on the Senate for the right reasons. The committee discussed whether or not there should be a requirement of some institutional history before they are allowed to serve on the Senate. The University needs to look at how we define service. The Executive Committee would like to include in the charges to the APAFT Committee for 1999-2000 the requirements to serve on the Faculty Senate, how service is defined, and Senate members representing themselves and someone else at Faculty Senate meetings.

APAFT

Frank Guliuzza, Chair of the Appointment, Promotion, Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee, reported on proposed changes to PPM 8-11, 8-12 and 8-13.

MOTION

Judith Mitchell: Moved to send PPM 8-12 back to the APAFT Committee to discuss the suggestions of the Executive Committee.
Second: Karen Dewey
Outcome: The motion passed unanimously.

PPM 8-11and PPM 8-13

PPM 8-11 EVALUATION OF FACULTY MEMBERS and PPM 8-13 EVALUATIVE CRITERIA FOR ACADEMIC RANK were discussed. The committee discussed the possibility of placing the Evidence of Teaching Effectiveness in both PPM 8-11 and 8-13. Other suggestions included taking out the College of Health Professions statement under Definition of Channels. Other minor deletions and additions to statements were discussed to help clarify the procedure.

MOTION

Bruce Handley: Moved to sent PPM 8-11 and PPM 8-13 back to the APAFT Committee for further discussion.
Second: Karen Dewey
Outcome: The motion passed unanimously.

UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY

The Provost up dated the Executive Committee on the request of Utah State University. Utah State is closing their operation at the Metro Center. They are requesting space to conduct their classes in our EdNet rooms. This space needs to be reserved as we are currently scheduling classrooms for Fall classes. The Executive Committee discussed the pros and cons of having Utah State teaching their classes on our campus. The current proposal would give them some office space in Promontory Tower in addition to classroom space. Their proposal is to offer graduate courses only. The Provost would set up a process to review their courses and see if they were in conflict with courses that we offer. The Provost is hopeful that this arrangement will build additional cooperative relationships between Weber State and Utah State.

ADJOURN

The meeting adjourned at 4:20 p.m.