Faculty Senate President's Message
To:
From:
Re:
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Faculty Senators
Bruce Sorte
Faculty Senate Summary
January 6 - 10, 2003
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Faculty Senate activities are extensive and the Faculty Senate meetings
do not allow enough time to advise you on all that we have been doing.
Hopefully, these notes will partially bridge that gap and also give
you a sense of my positions on issues so you can provide ideas and
information that may support or redirect those positions. I will try
to keep my comments to two pages and clip and paste from other documents
as needed. I will not cite references when the information is routine
unless the citations add to the interpretation. The notes may be a bit
rough and they are mine alone and should not be used to infer the positions
of others'. They will be in chronological rather than priority order and
issues will run together in the paragraphs. Please do let me know when you
agree or disagree.
Some members of the Executive Committee (EC) and the Budgets &
Fiscal Planning Committee interviewed one of the candidates for the
Foundation's VP of Development. He did not seem like a centralizer
and expected the administration and colleges to lead the way on programmatic
initiatives. Another candidate will interview next week.
Sabah and I will meet every other week. We met on Tuesday and
discussed 2007 and budget. It would be difficult to implement
the administrative and programmatic recommendations of 2007
simultaneously. It seems to me that any administrative changes
will go first (two years) and then any programmatic changes (some
time from 2005 out). I also expressed concern about the graduate
students' benefits and asked Sabah, if he could provide the EC an
update. As budgets become tighter, we will need to carefully consider
how competitive we are for good graduate students and fixed-term
faculty. Interest is increasing to recruit a new leader in
international education and research and I asked Sabah to consider
contacting Dave Acker or Ed Price, both prior directors of OIRD,
for their ideas. Rather than long-term outreach programs, international
research may be moving to short-term multidisciplinary programs for
which universities are very well suited. We need a leader who has
the experience with these types of programs and has the stamina to
work overseas as well as in D.C.
At the EC meeting we started scheduling facilitators for small group meetings
with President White. President Risser, with an EC member facilitating,
met with 40 small groups of faculty and President White will continue
the meetings. We also discussed the most recent OUS OMB A133 audit,
in which OSU was one of three OUS institutions that was required to
implement a new procedure, which will require faculty assistance.
Basically, the Office of Financial Aid and Scholarships must identify the
last date of attendance for students who receive all "F's" each term by
contacting faculty and/or the students. In order to avoid penalties, OUS
has agreed that OSU will go back and request attendance information for
aid recipients from 2001-02 forward. When programs are closed, consolidated
or redirected, the Faculty Consultative Group reviews and advises on the
process. The Faculty Consultative Group is comprised of the EC and the
chairs of Budgets & Fiscal Planning, Faculty Status and Curriculum
Council. We worked on questions for that group to ask.
New senator orientation seemed to go well with many very experienced
faculty members attending the whole session. My message was take risks,
propose motions or amendments during deliberations, and find multiple
ways to communicate with your constituents. I am available any day at
7 am at the Bean, with one day's advanced notice, to work on motions
or other issues with individual or groups of faculty.
The legislators' comments seemed helpful during the FS meeting,
although I hope I did not overload you with political/legislative
information. It just seemed right given the beginning of the session
on Monday. I tried to make the swearing in somewhat formal to communicate
really what a privilege and confirmation of confidence that your
constituents have in you to elect you to the Interinstitutional
Faculty Senate (IFS), the EC and/or the FS. The new admittance
standards concern me because I believe the definition of success
is too narrow, we may be just admitting those who know the formula,
external constituencies may perceive it as just an enrollment cap,
and there are insufficient resources identified to do a careful job
of the assessment. I like adding the tiers and assessments, have not
been able to offer a better measure of success, believe faculty
representation has be broad throughout the process, and hope that
the process can be slowed enough to have you deliberate on the
issue in February. The floor motion on aggression was difficult,
whether I agreed with it or not (I did agree with the fundamental
points). I do believe our contribution in these very values based
resolutions relies on the quality of the discussion so will try
hard, even with very time sensitive issues, to assure adequate
time for deliberation.
Finally, it is particularly interesting, rewarding and challenging
to represent faculty that have had such a significant impact on my
life and have so much opportunity to contribute to students, science
and society.
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