The University of Oklahoma (Norman campus)
Regular session – April 9, 2012 – 3:30 p.m. – Jacobson Faculty Hall 102
office: Jacobson Faculty Hall 206
phone: 325-6789
e-mail: facsen@ou.edu website:
http://www.ou.edu/admin/facsen/
The Faculty Senate was called
to order by Professor Georgia Kosmopoulou, Chair.
PRESENT: Apanasov,
Ayres, Baer, Bemben, Buckley, Burns, Chang, Devegowda, Ellis, Fagg, Grady,
Gramoll, Hahn, Jean-Marie, Kimball, Klein, Kosmopoulou, Leseney,
Marsh-Matthews, McPherson, Morrissey, Morvant, Moses, Moxley, Natale, Nelson,
A. Palmer, Park, Ransom, Soreghan, Stock, Vehik, Verma, Wydra, Zhang, Zhu
ISA representatives:
Cook, Hough
ABSENT: Adams,
Bergey, Bisel, Cox-Fuenzalida, Keresztesi, Laubach, Loon, Minter, G. Palmer,
Stoltenberg, Tabb, Taylor, Williams
________________________________________________________________________________
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Bicycle Friendly University
Announcements:
Social Justice Award
Faculty retiree deaths
Research, non-financial conflict of interest
Senate Chair's Report:
Semester reports from council chairs
Benefits: Retiree medical proposal
Faculty workload policy
Meeting with OSU and HSC
Faculty award recipients
Early progress reports
Preliminary nominations for councils, committees, boards
________________________________________________________________________________
The Faculty Senate Journal
for the regular session of March 12, 2012 was approved.
BICYCLE FRIENDLY UNIVERSITY
At the March meeting, the
Faculty Senate’s Faculty Welfare Committee introduced a resolution supporting
recognition as a Bicycle Friendly University.
In response to suggestions made at the last meeting, Faculty Welfare
Committee Chair Scott Moses proposed two friendly amendments (attached).
With no further discussion from the floor, the Senate unanimously approved the
resolution as amended.
Nominations are being
accepted until April 15 for the Social Justice Award (see http://csj.ou.edu/social-justice-awards). Through the Social Justice
Awards, the Center for Social Justice honors individuals who demonstrate
compassion, courage, and leadership. Nominees are people who work to eliminate
discrimination, oppression, and injustice locally and globally. Each year the
Center for Social Justice honors one student, one faculty member, and one staff
member who work to make our world a better place. The Social Justice Awards highlight
individuals’ tireless efforts to impact our world and inspire others to do the
same.
The Faculty Senate is sad to
report the deaths of retired faculty members Harriet Turkington (Home
Economics) on March 7, B.G. Schumacher (Management) on March 15 and Ed Cline
(Mathematics and former Faculty Senate Chair) on March 23.
REMARKS BY VICE PRESIDENT FOR RESEARCH
CONCERNING PROPOSED NON-FINANCIAL CONFLICT OF INTEREST POLICY
Vice President for Research
Kelvin Droegemeier said he had presented a draft of the proposed non-financial
conflict of interest (COI) policy to the Faculty Senate a year ago. After receiving input, he and a task force
developed a revised policy (see http://www.ou.edu/admin/facsen/NFCOI412.htm) that is now out for open comment. The University already has a financial COI
policy that says individuals who have a financial interest in a company must
disclose that and develop a plan for managing or removing the conflict. There are other types of conflicts, such as
conflict of commitment, use of resources, use of official position, and
relationships with organizations. In
August 2010, the Compliance Advisory Committee asked that a broader COI policy
be developed for the Norman campus. An
ad hoc task force, with faculty representation, was formed, and the task force
drafted the policy presented last year.
The new draft document is for Norman campus faculty and staff. It would be an addition to the existing
financial COI policy and presently is a separate policy. Some points that the Faculty Senate had
suggested were to make the policy more readable (reduce the legalese) and to
fold the compliance policies into a single COI plan. To address the first point, another document
was created to explain briefly how to comply with the policy. After the Regents approve the final
non-financial COI policy, the expectation is the policies will be blended into
a single policy. A change made since the
last policy, because of NIH guidelines, was that the minimum value for
reporting a potential conflict went from a $10,000 to a $5,000 interest in a
particular company. However, the
interest applies only to a company that does business with OU and relates to an
employee’s professional area. For
example, it would apply to a faculty member who is funded by a pharmaceutical
company that provides equipment to OU or has some research agreement. A second change is that faculty and staff
would have to get approval to serve on a board, as an officer, or as some type
of director for a company that does business with OU. It may mean that the conflict could be
handled by recusing the employee from certain discussions. The consequences of failing to comply can be
pretty severe. At the national level,
COI is continuing to be more of a burden, although a few agencies are pulling
back from some reporting requirements.
On behalf of academia, he is strongly advocating to the agencies that
faculty members already spend 42 percent of the time that they spend on research doing administrative activity
associated with research and grants. He
is working to bring that number down.
Each vice president would be responsible for developing an
implementation policy. Most faculty will come under the Provost office, but some staff
report to different vice presidents. The
task force worked with the Institutional Review Board to make sure that the
various policies across campus were consistent.
As the next step, Vice President Droegemeier
put the draft out for a 30-day public comment period. It is on the Vice President for Research web
site (http://vpr-norman.ou.edu/non-financial-COI-open-comment) and
requires a log in. The first document is the 24-page
proposed policy that will be considered by the
OU Regents; the second document is a user’s guide that summarizes the key
points. He would like to reduce the
guide down to one page. Dr. Droegemeier
said he welcomes input on both documents and will try to respond to all the
comments. He also will be making
presentations this month at the Deans’ Council, to the Compliance Advisory
Committee, and to the Staff Senate Executive Committee. After the comment period, the plan is to
evaluate the comments and make revisions.
The policy document will be put on the Regents’ agenda sometime this
summer or fall. Once the policy is
approved by the Regents, the task force will develop an implementation
plan. Eventually all the COI documents
will be merged into a single document.
He asked the senators to remind their colleagues that he values their
input. (The slides that Dr. Droegemeier
presented at the meeting are available from the Senate office.)
Prof. Grady said he did not
agree with the logic of using 25 percent of an employee’s nine-month salary as
the maximum for outside income. If the
25 percent number is used, then the salary should include fringe benefits. Dr. Droegemeier answered that the origin of
the number had to do with conflict of commitment. The question becomes where your loyalty
resides and to whom you are committed if you are tripling your salary by doing
outside work. Prof. Gramoll clarified that
the 25 percent only applied to income from companies that do business with OU
and the activity is in the employee’s area of expertise. Prof. Ayres pointed out that the policy says
professional or consulting activity and implies that activities such as
investing or engaging in something outside of work might not apply. Dr. Droegemeier said maybe that should be
clarified. Prof. Ayres mentioned that
just because a person had to disclose a potential conflict did not mean he
could not do the activity. Dr.
Droegemeier said it was not the intent to overrule that notion. Prof. Palmer said her understanding was that
faculty who are on 9-month appointments could do what they wanted during the
summer. Dr. Droegemeier said the policy
talks about funded FTE. Prof. Ayres
noted that the policy reads, “Annual income for professional or consulting
service from a company in excess of 25 percent of the employee’s institutional
base salary.” Then it goes on to say
there are some activities that have no business relationship to OU and are
unrelated to an employee’s academic or professional activity. Prof. Grady said he thought the threshold
applied to all companies, not just “a” company.
Prof. Burns asked whether faculty would have to disclose book
royalties. Prof. Ayres said this policy
was not really a change from the existing policy. Prof. Morvant said he thought the policy
would apply if the book was based on one’s professional area. Dr. Droegemeier said he would look into the
issues the senators had raised: the 25
percent figure, non-professional related activities (e.g., ownership in a
family business that has no relationship to OU), and book royalties.
Prof. Soreghan asked how this
policy compared with policies at peer institutions. Dr. Droegemeier said the task force looked at
policies from other institutions and tried to include what was necessary
without being too restrictive. He
reminded the group that he would like the faculty’s thoughts on the policy as
well as the user’s guide.
“We had our large
executive committee meeting two weeks ago, and we heard from Al Schwarzkopf as
the chair of the Information Technology Council and representative of the
Academic Programs Council, the Athletics Council chair Emily Johnson, the
Continuing Education Council chair Shannon Bert, the Budget Council chair Susan
Hahn, the Faculty Welfare Committee chair Scott Moses and our Tulsa Liaison
Janette Habashi. Al Schwarzkopf discussed research computing with major focus
on support services for non-grant supported research. IT is continuing to work
on classroom technology (lecture capture) and making improvements for OZone. Emily Johnson, the Chair of the Athletics Council,
discussed athlete health and safety issues. We will hear a lot more about the
Athletic Department from its director Joe Castiglione, who will visit the
Senate next month. In the Continuing Education Council, they are discussing
teaching, teaching overloads and military contracts. The focus of the Faculty
Welfare Committee is on wellness initiatives and benefits. In Tulsa, they
started an external review accreditation process. They are also discussing opening a new center
for community engagement and research.
Annual reports from all councils are due on May 11.
“In our small
executive committee meeting we discussed the University conflict of interest
policy and retiree medical benefits. This last issue and our proposal was the
main topic of our discussion with the President this past week. The President
said that we should be able to reach common ground soon. There was a meeting
with the Employment Benefits Council that was still pending at the time. The
good news we heard from Julius Hilburn a few days earlier is that the cost of
the proposed changes that the Senate executive committee suggested is not very
high. We thanked the President for adopting the revisions of the faculty
workload policy proposed by the Senate executive committee (http://www.ou.edu/admin/facsen/Teaching
Policy.htm).
“Last week we had
a joint meeting with members of the Oklahoma State University Council and OU
Health Sciences Center Senate executive committees and discussed issues of
interest for the representatives of the three campuses. At OUHSC they are
discussing for the first time the format of a post tenure review process. OSU is considering dependent tuition waiver,
has implemented a phased retirement program as a pilot program initially and is
considering long-term budget solutions.
We talked about energy initiatives and President Hargis’ interest in
outsourcing student housing.
“On Thursday I
took part in the Faculty Tribute award ceremony. Faculty received awards for
their outstanding contribution to teaching, research scholarship and service. A
number of current faculty senators received awards. Those are Allison Palmer,
who received the General Education Teaching Award, and Brian Grady and Pramode
Verma, who received patent awards.
Frances Ayres and Daniel Ransom were recognized for 30 years of service
at OU, and Michael Bemben and Luz-Eugenia Cox-Fuenzalida were recognized for 20
years of service. Please join me in
congratulating our faculty and faculty senators who received awards and
recognitions this year.
“Prof. Minter
inquired at our last meeting about the timing of mid-term progress reports.
Midterm reports serve the purpose of informing students on their progress in a
class so that they can either drop the course or take steps to improve
performance. The timing of reporting was determined to allow students to drop a
course, if necessary. They are solicited in the seventh week, which gives
sufficient time for advisors to notify the students to take action. The seventh
week was recommended by the President's Graduation and Retention Task Force,
which has faculty representation, and was related to the changes to the
withdrawal policy implemented in fall 2011. In circumstances where there is no
grade assigned by the faculty member by the seventh week, he or she can
indicate so. For this process to be meaningful, the grades have to be solicited
in a timely fashion. It used to be at five weeks, and now it is at seven weeks.
It allows the advisers a couple of weeks to notify students before the tenth
week deadline. If you want to receive
more information, please contact Joyce Allman, joyceallman@ou.edu, the Associate Provost for Academic
Advising Oversight.”
PRELIMINARY NOMINATIONS FOR
COUNCILS/COMMITTEES/BOARDS
The Faculty Senate’s
Committee on Committees’ preliminary nominations for committees 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 remained to be filled.
The meeting adjourned at 4:10
p.m. The next regular session of the
Faculty Senate will be held at 3:30 p.m. on Monday, May 7, 2012, in
Jacobson Faculty Hall 102.
____________________________________
Sonya Fallgatter, Administrative Coordinator
____________________________________
Fran Ayres, Faculty Secretary