The University of Oklahoma (Norman campus)
Regular session – April 11, 2011 – 3:30 p.m. – Jacobson Faculty Hall 102
office: Jacobson Faculty Hall 206
phone: 325-6789
e-mail: facsen@ou.edu web site: http://www.ou.edu/admin/facsen/
The Faculty Senate was called
to order by Professor LeRoy Blank, Chair.
PRESENT: Adams,
Asojo, Atiquzzaman, Ayres, Bergey, Blank, Bradshaw, Chang, Chapple, Chiodo, Deacon,
Gramoll, Hahn, Kimball, Kosmopoulou, Lauer-Flores, Leseney, Marsh-Matthews,
McPherson, Morrissey, Morvant, Moses, Muraleetharan, Natale, Palmer, Park,
Ransom, Remling, Sadler, Sandel, Stock, Strauss, Tabb, Taylor, Vehik, Verma, Weaver,
Williams, Wydra, Xiao, Zhu
Provost's office representative: Mergler, Heiser
ISA representatives: Hough
ABSENT: Baer,
Cox-Fuenzalida, Devegowda, Jean-Marie, Minter, Moxley, Wyckoff, Yi
________________________________________________________________________________
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Announcements:
I/N grades for international students
Wireless Internet, oZone
Bicycle ride
Phased/early retirement
Resolution, Regent Larry Wade
Faculty death
Benefits, FY12 health plan
Online course evaluation system
Honors Council
Enrollment changes
Conflict of Interest Policy, National Research Council study
Preliminary nominations for councils, committees, boards
Senate Chair's Report:
Benefits: retirement plan management committee
Faculty award recipients
Grade reporting
Reimbursements
Integrity Council
Meeting with OSU and HSC
Healthy food options
Legislative issues
Faculty Senate Executive Committee meeting with council
chairs
High school standards, uniform testing
Jacobson 102
________________________________________________________________________________
The Faculty Senate Journal
for the regular session of March 21, 2011 was approved.
The International Student
Services office would like to remind the faculty that international students’
immigration status, in most cases, prohibits them from taking I or N
grades. Doing so may result in their
failure to maintain a full course of study, which is a requirement of their
visa status in the U.S. This results in
a loss of their immigration status. The
ISS office routinely communicates this information to faculty members after
they have assigned an I or an N grade to an
international student, but thought it would be helpful to share this information
with the faculty prior to the end of a semester. For more information, contact
Monica Sharp, Director of ISS, 325-3337 or msharp@ou.edu.
The Chair of the Information
Technology Council, Prof. Chung Kao (Physics & Astronomy), suggested that
faculty members should contact him if they are aware of any locations on campus
that do not have wireless Internet (Wifi)
connectivity. Faculty members should
also contact him if they have any oZONE-related
concerns/problems as Information Technology is moving from the repair phase
into a maintenance phase. Prof. Kao’s
email is chung.kao@ou.edu.
A 40- to 63-mile “Two Wheeled
Schooner Ride” is being considered in September for faculty (as well as staff,
students, and friends) who are bicyclists.
Search on Facebook for a “two wheeled schooner” event and click if you
are interested and want to be informed.
The Faculty Senate’s Faculty
Welfare Committee is seeking faculty input regarding a phased retirement and/or
early retirement plan. You may send your
comments to Scott Moses, Chair of the committee, at moses@ou.edu.
President Boren’s response to
the Faculty Senate’s resolution last month expressing sympathy for the loss of
Regent Larry Wade was “Thank you for this heartfelt remembrance of the great
contribution of Regent Wade to our University.”
The Faculty Senate is sad to
report the death on March 22 of retired faculty member Sean Daniel (Music).
Human Resources (HR) Director
Julius Hilburn provided an update concerning the health plan renewal for
FY12. Our current contract agreement with
Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) is through 2011.
After consulting with our consultants and Employment Benefits Committee,
HR decided to focus on renewing with BCBS through 2012 rather than going back
to the marketplace. One motivation was
we have not had any particular service issues or problems with BCBS. Feedback from employees is that BCBS is as good or better than other companies. Unless we can get a substantially better
financial deal, it is not worth the disruption to employees to change vendors
and networks. In the last 10 years we
have had four different vendors. HR
believes it will be possible to negotiate aggressively with BCBS. The main factor that determines changes in
premiums is utilization. We can vary the
nature of the benefits, such as what is covered and deductibles, to manage any
increase. Generally, health care has
gone up 10 percent a year nationally. OU’s
experience has been better. Last year,
OU’s premiums went up about seven percent.
Based on our utilization so far, we are encouraged that next year’s
increase will be less than five percent.
HR will explore all options to get better rates. The process over the next several months will
be to work with the Faculty Welfare Committee, Employment Benefits Committee,
and our consultant, the Segal Company, to find ways to make our program more
cost effective for both participants and the university. Possible options are to tweak certain aspects
of the benefit, alter deductibles, and/or change networks to generate
savings. The timeline is to make
recommendations to the OU regents in September for benefit changes that will
start in January 2012. Mr. Hilburn will report
back to the Faculty Senate as he gets more details. Prof. Hofford asked whether we were looking
into offering some of the wellness incentives that BCBS has with other
companies. Mr. Hilburn replied that we
are looking at how to incorporate wellness incentives more directly into our
program.
Mr. Aaron Biggs, developer
and coordinator for eValuate, reported on the
online course evaluation system (see http://www.ou.edu/admin/facsen/eValuate.pdf). A total of
17 colleges and programs are now using the online evaluation system. To get students to complete the evaluations,
the university has been giving away iPads as incentives. For spring 2011 the iPad
2 will be the incentive. Various methods
of communication are utilized to notify students and faculty about
evaluations. Direct email is the most
effective means of communicating with everyone. Other methods include Facebook,
Twitter, the OU homepage, Desire2Learn (D2L), course announcements posted by faculty,
oZone, computer labs, table tents in the dining areas,
and sidewalk chalking in high-traffic area.
Comparing the effectiveness of the communication efforts, Mr. Biggs said
direct communication went down about 9 percent from spring to fall, but that
means students are utilizing other communication avenues such as D2L, oZone and the OU homepage.
Overall, there were more visits to the site for fall 2010 than spring
2010 and more evaluations completed in the fall than the spring. There were about 9,000 more visits to the
site in the fall compared to the spring, and we almost doubled the number of
countries and cities where students access the site. The most popular time to evaluate courses is
10:00 a.m. The average time to complete
each page is about three minutes. The percentage
of students who completed all their evaluations was 73.83 percent in fall 2010. Mr. Biggs showed a breakdown of the response
rates by college and program. Overall,
the response rate for fall 2010 was 55.62 percent. Generally, the average response rate from
fall 2005 to fall 2008, when we used paper evaluations, was 66 percent. For the last two semesters, when everyone was
online, it was 54.56 percent. According
to the research, other institutions that transitioned from paper to online had
a decline in response rates. However,
over time the rates increase. Given that
our response rate increased by 2.12 percent, we are moving in the right
direction. We now have evaluation
reports that are accessible online. Instructors
and unit staff can log in and view live response rates during the evaluation
window. Reports can be provided two days
after grades are posted. The documents
are easy to read and can be exported in PDF format. The statistical and comment reports are now combined. College and department staff can search for
and retrieve all reports for a specific instructor to use in faculty
evaluations or tenure review. Cross and slash-listed
course are now easy to identify and view.
The site is a repository for all evaluation reports since fall
2010. Mr. Biggs showed an example of the
screen when someone logs in. He said he
thought one of the major benefits to online evaluations was the short
turnaround time. Instructors can view
the reports before the upcoming semester and no longer have to wait 4-6 weeks
to get the data.
Prof. Stock asked if any
thought had been given to increasing the response rates by making students wait
an extra 3 or 4 days to see their grades if they do not complete their
evaluations. Mr. Biggs said other
universities are using a number of incentives, and a couple of universities
have delayed grades. Provost Mergler said
it was important that individual faculty members should not give extra
credit. She has allowed the random
drawing for iPads and is discussing with deans
whether they would want to do some college-wide incentives. Another possibility is to make college
computer labs available. An advantage to
the online version is students can evaluate all their courses at one time. She said delaying students’ grades between
fall and spring could negatively impact things like financial aid eligibility
and enrollment. Withholding of grades
from students is not something she is comfortable with. She thinks the right way to get a higher
response is to make students aware of the importance of evaluations. She hesitates to use a negative tactic. Prof. Bradshaw asked whether the eValuate team had looked specifically at the open-ended
comments. Mr. Biggs said that anecdotally,
he thought the students were providing more comments, but a comparison between
the old and new systems would be hard to measure as they do not have the old
data and cannot compare on a course-by-course basis. He also mentioned that, after receiving
complaints from students that they had lost everything they had written, the system’s
timeout period was lengthened from 15 minutes to about five hours.
Prof. Chapple said her
faculty colleagues believe they are getting a bimodal distribution, or much
more of the extremes, with the online version.
They would like to increase the participation of the students in the
middle. Mr. Biggs commented that the
students in the middle do not have as much incentive to fill out an
evaluation. That is why it is important
to get students to think of doing evaluations as a professional duty. Provost Mergler said even when they were in
paper format, there was discussion of the polarizing
effect of course evaluations. Any format
can lend itself to a skewed result. With
paper, the student had to be present in class the day the evaluation was
done. With online, every student can be
heard. Course evaluations are important
for instructional factors. Prof. Hofford
pointed out that course evaluations are being used for performance evaluations
and merit pay increases, so their validity is a good question. Provost Mergler said the OU regents have a
policy that we will evaluate our courses.
Being evaluated by anyone is a sensitive moment. The comments lead to other data points that
can include peer evaluation, a review of course materials, syllabi, exams, and
so on. Course evaluations are not the
sole way to determine how effective someone is as an instructor. Prof. Hofford said his point was we need to progress
toward getting more evaluations. He
asked whether we gather any information about the students, such as what grade
they expect to get. Mr. Biggs said some
forms ask that question, and those answers are captured, but eValuate does not
directly capture any demographic data. Prof.
Blank said faculty should tell their students that instructors really do care
about evaluations and respond to them.
The proposal to dissolve the Honors Council (attached), which came as a
recommendation from the Honors Council (see 3/11 Faculty Senate Journal), was approved
on a voice vote.
The proposed changes in policies governing student
enrollment changes (attached), which were
discussed last month (see 3/11 Faculty Senate Journal), were approved on a
voice vote.
Prof. Blank explained that Vice
President for Research (VPR) Kelvin Droegemeier wanted to give a brief report
on a proposed Conflict of Interest Policy (see http://www.ou.edu/admin/facsen/COIpolicy.htm and attached overview). He noted
that it was just the beginning of the conversation and was not something that would
be solved overnight. The purpose of the
discussion was to get faculty input. He
said he understood the complexity of the issue but would like to simplify the
proposed policy.
Prof. Droegemeier said he
first wanted to make the senate aware of the new VPR annual report called Aspire.
It highlights several faculty members and their scholarship, includes a
page of faculty honors, and contains a section called Dashboard, which has
facts, figures, and statistics on such things as funding. The section, Where OU Stands, presents
various rankings. It turns out that much
of the information was not maintained in a central location, so the Research
office will now be the repository for the rankings. The report is available on the VPR web
site: http://vpr-norman.ou.edu/ (VPR Publications).
Prof. Droegemeier said he wanted the report to highlight the faculty and
provide a sense of who we are and where we are going. He said he would like to have feedback on the
report from the faculty.
Prof. Droegemeier discussed
the proposed Conflict of Interest (COI) policy with the Faculty Senate
Executive Committee on April 4. OU already
has a financial COI policy. The proposal
is much broader and covers such issues as conflict of commitment, use of
resources, use of official position, and relationships with organizations. When the Association for the Accreditation of
Human Research Protection Programs (AAHRPP) did a site visit here last year,
one recommendation was that the Norman Campus needed a more comprehensive
conflict of interest policy. The Health
Sciences Center had passed such a policy, so our campus used theirs as a
starting point. An ad hoc task force was
put together and delivered a draft report in February. The two faculty members who serve on the COI
Advisory Committee were on the task force.
An important question to be addressed is whether we should have one
overarching policy that includes the OU-wide institutional COI policy and the
one proposed here. Prof. Aimee Franklin brought
up the point that the Institutional Review Board policies might also need to be
folded in. In addition, we need an
implementation plan to make sure the policy gets enacted. Another issue is we rely on self-disclosure of
potential conflicts currently. We need
to do better at protecting faculty and managing those potential conflicts. The Faculty Senate Executive Committee provided
some thoughtful input. For example,
members pointed out that the policy addresses the responsibilities of faculty
but not the University, it needs to be more readable and less like a legal
contract, and all of the COI policies should be brought together. Also, there is the question whether operating
policies of the Research Council and other entities should be included. The University-wide Compliance Advisory
Committee will discuss the policy, but significant work needs to be done on it. The policy will probably take another year of
work. His expectation is to seek OU
regents’ approval in spring 2012. He wants
the faculty to have an opportunity to comment on the drafts.
Last July, the National
Research Council established a committee charged by Congress to look at the future
of America’s public research universities and provide the top ten actions that would
ensure the health and prosperity of our nation’s universities. A seminar that Prof. Droegemeier gave recently
is on the VPR web site: http://vpr-norman.ou.edu/ (VPR Presentations).
A consensus draft report is due next month. Two principal issues that the committee began
with were compliance mandates, which have been increasing dramatically, and the
under-recovery of indirect costs. For OU,
$30 million was un-recovered from FY07 through FY09. The indirect cost rate for Norman campus
research is 50 percent, yet we actually recover just 30 percent. Some of the initial suggestions are to fully
enforce recovery of allowable indirect costs, allow administrative and
secretarial support to be charged to grants, harmonize the compliance
regulations that come out of the various federal agencies, and eliminate
regulations that add no value but create a huge burden. There is a push in this country now, even at
the federal level, to reduce the compliance regulations. If we can reduce many of the regulations,
faculty would have more time to spend on their teaching and scholarship, and
fewer staff would have to be hired. There
is a catch, however. Greater recovery of
indirect costs would eat into the direct cost budget. It would need to be phased in over a period
of time and when the federal research grant budgets are growing. Prof. Droegemeier asked the senators to
contact him if they had questions.
The Faculty Senate Committee
on Committees’ preliminary nominations for the end-of-year vacancies on
university and campus councils, committees, and boards was distributed at the
meeting and will be voted on at the May meeting. A few vacancies still need to be filled.
The Retirement Plans
Management Committee (RPMC) made some major progress and was approved to move
forward by the OU regents.
Implementation will take place in late fall. All employees were sent a letter that
explained the actions taken. The Faculty
Senate Executive Committee suggested the addition of two faculty members to the
RPMC, for a total of three faculty members with three-year staggered terms;
that recommendation was approved. Current
member K.K. Muraleetharan will serve one more year, Scott Moses will have a
two-year term, and Terry Crain will have a three-year term.
The faculty awards ceremony
was held on April 7. Prof. Blank said he
had served on the faculty awards and honors council on two occasions, and it
was a great personal reward to be able to recognize faculty members for what
they do. Senator Pramode Verma received
an award for a patent and Senator Mark Morrissey was recognized for 20 years of
service.
At a recent deans’ council
meeting, Matt Hamilton, Vice President for Enrollment and Student Financial
Services and Registrar, said he is planning to make available direct upload of
grades from Desire2Learn, hopefully by the end of the fall semester.
A question was raised about
reimbursements for trips, etc. Currently,
reimbursements are automatically deposited into the bank account in which the individual’s
paycheck is deposited. Some people would
like to deposit reimbursements in a separate account. In about 3-6 months, the state system will
have the capability to issue a check that could be deposited in another account.
The Integrity Council has
been approved by the OU regents, is moving forward, and already has a number of
faculty representatives. The council currently
is soliciting student members.
The Faculty Senate Executive
Committee will be meeting with the executive committees of the Oklahoma State
University Faculty Council and OU Health Sciences Center Faculty Senate on April
25. Prof. Blank asked the senators to
send him any issues that they would like the group to discuss.
Some members of the Faculty
Senate Executive Committee met with Dave Annis,
Housing and Food Services director, concerning the interest in increasing the healthy
food options available on campus. Food
Services already has a lot of initiatives in that
area, but improvements could be made in special events, such as the Associates’
dinners.
OU has been concerned about a
number of legislative issues. So far, bills that would allow guns on campus have
been diffused. Tuition authority will
likely remain with the regents and not be taken back by the legislature. Funding from the state is still in a fluid
state. OTRS funding remains a problem
and is something we need to watch.
At a recent meeting of the
Faculty Senate Executive Committee with the chairs of councils, several items
came up of interest to the faculty. The Continuing
Education Council is looking into non-traditional doctoral programs as well as
competency and accreditation standards. The
Academic Programs Council is processing an incredible number of courses and
programs. The council is using Desire2Learn
to process program proposals. The Information
Technology Council is addressing wireless connections and oZone
issues (see announcements). The former
course management system, enroll.ou.edu, has been replaced with The Book in the
oZone system. As
a cost-saving measure, IT is encouraging people to use centralized equipment
instead of desktop printers and copiers.
The Budget Council is talking to a large number of people about budget issues
and is looking into medical and dental costs.
HMO costs are likely to exceed PPO costs next year. Compression is still a concern and is being
discussed with the President. The
Research Council is doing an incredible amount of work, in part because the VPR
has provided additional funding. A
number of councils mentioned that student representatives do not attend the
council meetings. Prof. Blank encouraged
the faculty to solicit students to be involved with the various councils and
committees so students will have input.
The OU-Tulsa campus is moving forward rapidly. A new library building will open in May; the
library’s previous space will become the student union. The Faculty Welfare Committee has been
working on the retirement plans management, health care renewal, and incentives
for wellness. The Faculty Compensation
Committee produced some language concerning contributions to OTRS during full-year
sabbaticals, which was incorporated into the Faculty Handbook, and also is working on alternative ways to
increase faculty compensation.
Prof. Blank is the OU-Norman
campus representative to the Faculty Advisory Council to the state regents; Prof.
Kosmopoulou will be the representative next year. The council heard a report about the
initiative to have across-the-board core standards and uniform testing for high
school students. Universities would then
know if a student is prepared to come to a higher education institution.
The project to remodel Jacobson
102 is going forward and is expected to be finished by the fall semester.
The meeting adjourned at 4:53 p.m. The next regular session of the Faculty Senate will be held at 3:30 p.m. on Monday, May 9, 2011, in Jacobson Faculty Hall 102.
____________________________________
Sonya Fallgatter,
Administrative Coordinator
____________________________________
Amy Bradshaw, Faculty
Secretary