The meeting was called to order by Vice Chair and Presiding Officer Larry C. Schooley at 3:00 p.m. in Room 146 of the College of Law.

2. OPEN SESSION

(Please note that speakers at the Open Session are expressing their personal opinion, which may not reflect the position of the Faculty Senate.)

Senator Peter Medine – Report concerning faculty salary issues. (attachment)

3A. ASUA President Francisco Aguilar

Senator Aguilar attended the Governor’s Task Force meeting several weeks ago and said the Arizona Students Association is still requesting a student representative to be named to this group. He is meeting with the Superintendent of the Tucson Unified School District today to discuss the K-Forever proposal. He reminded faculty of Homecoming activities this weekend and asked Rachel Reinhardt, Director of the ASUA Escort Service to report on its status. Ms. Reinhardt reported that the projected budget for the Escort Service this year totals $107,000, but the actual budget only contains $55,000. The Escort Service has requested funds from the UA Parents’ Association and The Dean of Students’ Office to make up the shortfall. The budget does not include any promotion, training, or new vehicles and only limited maintenance of existing vehicles. Currently the service has one shuttle minibus, one minivan, two golf carts and 21 employees who dispatch, drive vehicles, or walk people to their destinations. The service is currently averaging about 300 requests per night. In the past four years, ridership has increased by about 50 percent each year, and will probably continue to grow. Results of an informal survey conducted with similar institutions showed they tended to receive better funding.

3B. GPSC President Laura Roberts

Senator Roberts announced the Seventh Annual Student Showcase will be held on the UA Mall November 5-6, 1999 during Homecoming weekend with the awards ceremony on Saturday. This year’s Showcase has over 130 exhibits of undergraduate and graduate research projects. GPSC is beginning a new program, "Preparing Future Faculty," in conjunction with the Teaching Center and several faculty members from American Indian Studies Program. Workshops will include "How to Develop a Vita," "How to Develop a Teaching Portfolio," and "How to Be a Better Professor in the Classroom." The GPSC has a new webpage at www.u.arizona.edu/~gpsc/.

Vice Chair Schooley requested all Senators make their reports, questions, and answers as short as possible in order to provide more time for discussion of substantive issues. He also removed agenda item 7 which was improperly scheduled for today’s meeting.

3D. Secretary of the Faculty Susan Heckler

No report.

3E. Chair of the Faculty Jerrold Hogle (attachments)

Chair Hogle reported that the Governor’s Task Force on Higher Education has agreed that all meetings will be open to observers. The Governor’s Task Force has invited members of the Arizona Faculties Council (AFC) to sit on the various Support Teams which will be providing information and data to the Task Force (attachment). As Chair of the AFC, Chair Hogle has already named some members to these teams but is advocating for even greater representation in several areas. Meanwhile, at a recent meeting with representatives from around the state, the Advocats distributed a document, "University of Arizona Legislative Issues for the 2000 Session" (attachment). Although it will be difficult to make changes to the biennial budget, there is some encouragement to make requests and these priorities have been endorsed by the Advocats. Faculty and staff salaries are the top priority with 1) an effort to get university employees back on Classification Salary Adjustments (CSA), 2) an increase in the percentage amount given to state employees, and 3) possibly a separate request for faculty salaries. Other priorities include building renewal, digital television conversion and tuition collections adjustment. Advocats may push for $26 million to renovate the Arizona State Museum and also pressure for a possible College of Public Health in the Arizona Health Sciences Center if tobacco settlement money permits and if that money is targeted for medical purposes. The University will also request the legislature to change the existing law to allow for the design-build planning for buildings that has been used in initiating the new Student Union. The Board of Regents has asked the AFC to report on the degree to which the education offered to students fits the label "learner-centered." Chair Hogle requested Senators to comment via his e-mail (hogle@u.arizona.edu) about the AFC’s definition of learner-centered education prior to the November 18-19 Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) meeting (attachment).

3F. Provost Paul Sypherd

Provost Sypherd encouraged faculty members to attend the Student Showcase on Saturday. Referring to last month’s question about international long distance service at the University, he explained that after the RFP for the three universities went out two years ago, AT&T became the service provider. He said phone service at the University is run as an auxiliary with operating costs and administrative service fees to cover, so an overhead and markup are added onto the prices given by AT&T. He also explained that voice transmissions subsidize about 64% of the cost of data transmissions. According to a federal document that governs the way we charge the government for our activities, local long distance rates average .13/minute and international long distance rates average .93/minute. Provost Sypherd encouraged all employees to participate in the United Way Campaign and noted the UA’s participation rate has dropped from 29% in 1994 to 23% in 1998.

3G. President Peter Likins (attachment)

President Likins reported on the success of a Campaign Arizona convocation that motivated and inspired volunteers from all over the United States. The Deans and the Provost’s Council have concurred with the method of staffing and financing the campaign. The Governor’s Task Force on Higher Education has sent a summary of its activities from the first meeting which was dedicated to developing and prioritizing categories of interest/importance for the Task Force via a decision lab process (attachment). All of the fourteen members present at that meeting placed funding the Universities at the highest level, followed by the student-centeredness of the institutions and institutional accountability. President Likins believes this legislature will be more favorably disposed to higher education than it has been in the past.

4. QUESTION AND ANSWER PERIOD

Senator Szilagyi asked when the institution will fully address the faculty salary issue. He commented that he still doesn’t understand the long distance pricing discrepancy between his home and workplace. Provost Sypherd acknowledged the long distance rate system is complex and includes the actual contracted costs for all the base services and taxes, and also averages the time of day issue.

Senator Witte expressed her concern that the Governor’s Task Force appears to have placed student and faculty input at a low level and suggested that added data collection from faculty and students on the priorities of issues might yield very different results.

Senator Gruener inquired whether the University of Arizona Police Department (UAPD) is working with the escort service to provide increased security and safety on campus, particularly at night. F. Aguilar replied there has been a joint effort of the students and UAPD to have more blue light phones installed. UAPD also has a small number of community service officers who walk or bicycle the campus at all times but this department is also under-funded.

Regarding learner-centered education, Senator Levin expressed concern that the AFC is being co-opted to someone else’s notion of learner-centered education. Chair Hogle replied the AFC is being given an opportunity to state what the paradigm is and noted that ABOR isn’t asking for a major shift. President Likins added that as a result of the Regents’ retreat of June 1998, the Regents are becoming educated about all that the universities do and are learning that the number of classroom hours is not the way to measure effectiveness of teaching activities.

The minutes of the Faculty Senate meeting on October 4, 1999, were approved as distributed.

Senator Witte distributed a description of the Committee of Eleven’s Millennium Forum. Four seminar topics: 1) Intellectual Property – Who owns your ideas and works? 2) Faculty-centered Research University? 3) Values and the Value of the University and a University Education, and 4) The University of Arizona in 2025: Wishes and Visions will be presented with a member of the Committee of Eleven facilitating each forum in a participatory interactive format. She asked that Senators and all faculty members submit two to three questions for each forum and three wishes and a vision for the University of Arizona in 2025 by campus mail or e-mail to fitzgera@u.arizona.edu.

Withdrawn.

Senator Larson explained some of the amendments to the Whistleblower Policy which were made last spring were not acceptable to the administration or the legal staff, so the APPC revisited the policy in an effort to come to an agreement which would replace the administration’s interim policy with the Faculty Senate’s policy. The APPC proposed an amendment [Motion 1999/00-4] to change the last sentence of the policy to read "The hearing officer’s decision and subsequent actions of the university are subject to judicial administrative review or to de novo review if permitted by state law." Senator Spece proposed a friendly amendment to provide clarity and maximum protection, changing the word "permitted" to "not disallowed." Senator Larson accepted the friendly amendment. This motion passed unanimously as amended.

Professor Sally Jackson, Faculty Associate for Distributed Learning, (see http://w3.arizona.edu/%7Edlearn/) explained that at its September meeting the Board of Regents asked the three universities to begin discussing the possibility of forming a virtual university. She explained that Distributed Learning refers to instruction that is not classroom-situated. At the UA this typically means using technology, new teaching strategies or web-enhanced courses (see http://www.fcii.arizona.edu/default.htm). Distance Education refers to for-credit instruction offered off campus, which can be done via technology, correspondence, or video. The term Virtual University typically refers to an organization such as a consortium of many providers formed to offer courses and degrees without any attachment to a campus infrastructure. The University is currently building capability and support for web-enhanced courses as well as providing annual grants for original web content of enduring value. Over 20% of UA courses are using some form of web-enhancement. The University presently offers about two dozen completely web-based courses, mostly at the graduate level in Library Science or Engineering. The decision to offer on–line courses lies with the professor and does not require an administrative policy change. Arizona State University offers about 100 on-line courses and Northern Arizona University offers about 150. By joining together the three state universities may be able to offer enough of a critical mass of on-line courses to begin to approach a virtual university. Professor Jackson added three observations: 1) the decision to expand learning capability is not a decision to expand distance education, 2) the decision to go fully on-line with courses is still separate from a decision to go virtual, and 3) the decision to go virtual is constrained by the stage of development (i.e. the critical mass on our own or in partnership).

Senators’ questions and observations, and Professor Jackson’s comments: 1) what are other universities doing? - the University of Maryland is offering degrees on-line, and 37 states have either a statewide virtual university or a partnership in a regional virtual university; SUNY Learning Network is one of the best-known models, as well as Penn State’s World Campus, but the California Virtual University infrastructure collapsed almost immediately; 2) it would be interesting to follow graduates of on-line universities into the job force and interview their employers - there is no evidence that on-line education is worse than traditional – it is doing very well, comparatively and there is no information yet about graduates of on-line degree programs; 3) in some cases undergraduates seem reluctant to join listservs and are simply not equipped to take advantage of even the simple task of exploring a website; 4) has the University canvassed the students to determine their interest in on-line courses? 5) if the most prestigious universities (Columbia, Harvard, Princeton) offer on-line, attractively priced degree programs, is it worth the effort of the University of Arizona to try to compete? – no; 6) what has been done in the K-12 arena? – one example is the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is selling curriculum on-line for K-12 educators; 7) at the UA, who makes the decisions, who steers the program, and how will faculty be involved in the decision-making structure? - there is currently almost no bureaucratic interference with the decision to go on-line, there is no approval process required for a faculty member to put a course on-line although residency requirements for a degree program may preclude a department from placing all of its courses on-line, and finally, faculty members are free to open a cyber-section for an existing course; 8) is it possible to compile a catalog of on-line courses which are currently available at the UA and statewide? 9) in order to offer extensive coursework on-line, both students and faculty need to become extremely web and information-conscious very quickly; 10) why are NAU and ASU offering so many more on-line courses? - NAU’s mission statement includes serving outlying areas; 11) how can we prevent "ghost" students in the virtual university? - the correspondence program offers a model in which tests would be given with a proctor, until the technology exists to do that over the internet; 12) how can mentoring take place on-line? – the British Open University model offers 1-1 tutoring in distance contexts; 13) is there any comparative data on faculty/student and student/student interaction in on-line courses? – for courses that adapt communication tools as enhancements for face to face interactions, an extremely uniform finding is that interaction increases both in the on-line environment and face-to-face.

The Senate meeting recessed at 4:44 PM to go into Executive Session.

Susan E. Heckler, Secretary

Senator Peter Medine’s statement at the Open Session.
Governor’s Task Force on Higher Education Proposed Planning Framework.
The University of Arizona Legislative Issues for 2000.
The Arizona Faculties Council’s Definition of Learner-Centered Education.
Governor’s Task Force on Higher Education Summary of Activities of October 20, 1999.
Announcement distributed on Senator’s desks regarding Committee of Eleven’ Millennium Forum Series.
Instruction and Curriculum Policy Committee Proposal for possible Faculty Senate action on October 4, 1999         (consent agenda - withdrawn).
Academic Personnel Policy Committee’s proposed amendment to Whistleblower Policy.
Transparencies from Professor Sally Jackson’s report on Distributed Learning.

*Copies of material listed in the Appendix are attached to the original minutes and are on file in the Faculty Center.