Faculty Senate Minutes of ______ s1

Faculty Senate Minutes of March 29, 2011

The meeting was called to order by Chairperson Thomas Breslin with the following Senators and visitors present: COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE & THE ARTS Ibrahim Tansel Jaime Canaves Sabri Tosunoglu Phillip Church Kuang-His Wu David Dolata Absent: Jacek Kolasinski Malek Adjouadi COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES Osama Mohammed Dawn Addy Geoffrey Smith John Berry SCHOOL OF HOSPITALITY Thomas Breslin Percival Darby Julian Edward David Talty Piero Gardinali Alan Gummerson Steven Heine SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM Kenneth Johnson Neil Reisner Leonard Keller Absent: Mary Levitt Carlos Suris Oren Maxwell Florentin Maurasse COLLEGE OF LAW Aurora Morcillo Absent: Joe Patrouch David Walter Joerg Reinhold Howard Wasserman Gene Rosenberg Dev Roy LIBRARY Peter Thompson Lauren Christos Victor Uribe Andy Grof Enrique Villamor Dean Whitman WERTHEIM COLLEGE OF MEDICINE Absent: Absent: Joan Baker Dietrich Lorke Rebecca Friedman Luther Brewster Felice Lifshitz Yvette Piggush STEMPEL COLLEGE OF PUBLIC HEALTH & SOCIAL WORK COLLEGE OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION Nasar Ahmed Krishnan Dandapani Fatma (Rose) Huffman Dana Farrow Ray Thomlison Delano Gray Shahid Hamid GUESTS: Absent: Irma Becerra-Fernandez Dinesh Batra Elizabeth Bejar Clark Wheatley Stephen Fain Andres Gil COLLEGE OF EDUCATION Alina Gonzalez Martha Pelaez Robert Grillo Marc Weinstein Susan Himberg Absent: Rosa Jones Leonard Bliss Howard Lipman Tonja Moore COLLEGE OF NURSING & HEALTH SCIENCES Nicol Rae Jennifer Doherty-Restrepo Doug Robertson Sandra Jones Matk Rosenberg Amy Paul-Ward Damaris Rubio Absent: Doug Wartzok Florence Keane Debra Sheridan Kathleen Wilson I. Approval of the Agenda – The agenda was approved as presented.

II. Approval of the Minutes of the March 8, 2011 meeting – The minutes were approved

III. Chairperson’s Report – Dr. Breslin provided the following report: Today we will have a number of important reports, including from our President, our Provost, our Vice President for University Advancement and our Vice President for Student Affairs. So my oral report will be exceptionally brief. There was no good news at the Advisory Council of Faculty Senates in Tallahassee on Friday. The state budget situation continues to be grim with unpredictable consequences. Cuts in the SUS budget will be steep; there is some chance that some money proposed to be cut will be returned solely for the development of the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics programs, provided that the universities can find matching dollars. The increase in tuition revenues has made up only about one half the $600 million loss in General Revenue to date. Students are now contributing about 40% of higher education costs, up from 25% before. We were warned that there was still a chance that the ban on guns on campus might be lifted in the frenzied last days of the session. A salary cap of $220,000 in state funds has been proposed for presidents and administrators. There is a proposed end to the state matching program as of July 1. There is a proposed increase of up to 8% in tuition costs for out of state students, graduate, and professional students. There is some degree of concern at the BOG that the federal Office of Civil Rights has been looking with concern at state plans to end program duplication especially where FAMU is concerned. FIU also seems to have attracted the attention of OCR. Board staff was reluctant to discuss the matter. Governor Scott has been in discussion about higher education with Governor Perry of Texas. We were encouraged to look at texashighered.com. UNF and USF are worried about poaching in Education and Computer Science by the state colleges. Closer to home, the announcement of free tuition at MDC for local high school graduates who have a 3.0 GPA and pass college ready tests should be a matter of interest.

IV. Action Items: A. University Core Curriculum Oversight Committee Motions – Liza Merly The following motion was approved: Motion: The Faculty Senate approves the Great Ideas in Science class to fulfill either the Life or Physical Science section of the core for AY 11-12 for the purpose of gathering data on the feasibility of such a course before a formal proposal is made to the UCCOC for inclusion in the core at a later time.

The following motion was approved: Motion: The Faculty Senate approves the Policies and Procedures of the University Core Curriculum Oversight Committee.

B. Constitutional Revisions – First Reading The following motions were approved:

 Add the following text in the Preamble: A Senate for the 21st Century shares with the university administration the following core values: The primary value, and in effect the principal faculty mechanism to achieve all other values, is 1. Effective shared governance From which these other values follow: 2. Degree credibility 3. Student intellectual development 4. Commitment to a humane and just community and society (Amendment approved) 5. Student competitiveness (Local, National, Global) 6. Faculty Competitiveness Highest Quality Faculty (amendment voted down) Maintaining a high quality faculty that is competitive on a national and global basis (Amendment approved with one abstention) 7. Rigor, integrity, and civility 8. Administrative effectiveness and accountability  Change Item A under BILL OF COLLECTIVE RIGHTS AND PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNANCE to: Academic freedom is the freedom of faculty members to present and discuss all relevant matters in the classroom; to select instructional materials and determine grades; to pursue all avenues of scholarship, research, and creative expression; to speak freely on all matters of University governance; to speak out in matters of controversy; and to write and act as an individual, all without institutional reprisal or restraint and unhindered from internal or external groups. (Amended with semicolons approved with one abstention)  Insert the words “full-time” before “faculty” in ARTICLE II. MEMBERSHIP A.  Insert “iii. The chair of the Faculty Senate shall be an ex officio non-voting member of the committee.” Under ARTICLE V. COMMITTEES A. 4. University Curriculum Committee a. Membership  Insert “iv. A student representative, designated by the graduate student governing body, shall be an ex-officio non-voting member.” Under ARTICLE V. COMMITTEES A. 5. Graduate Council a. Membership  Insert “iv. A student representative, designated by the undergraduate student governing body, shall be an ex-officio non-voting member.” Under ARTICLE V. COMMITTEES A. 6. Undergraduate Council a. Membership  Remove all instances of “Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities” and replace it with “Research, Scholarship, Creative Activities, and Engagement Committee”  Insert “with at least one from each of the four areas” after the word “members” under ARTICLE V. COMMITTEES A. 8. Research, Scholarship, Creative Activities, and Engagement Committee a. Membership.  Strike “University Park Campus” and insert “Modesto A. Maidique Campus” under ARTICLE V. COMMITTEES A. 11. Library Committee a. Membership iii.  Insert the words “non-voting” after “ex-officio” under Graduate Council Membership, Undergraduate Council Membership, Technology Committee Membership, and Health, Safety and Welfare Committee Membership.  Strike the words “and Campus” and insert “Building, and” after the word “Preserve” under ARTICLE V. COMMITTEES A. 14.  Strike the word “four” and insert “five” under ARTICLE V. COMMITTEES A. 14. Membership  Insert “ii. Membership shall include at least one faculty member from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and one from the Department of Architecture or the Department of Landscape Architecture.” under ARTICLE V. COMMITTEES A. 14. a. Membership (Amendment approved)  Insert the words “review university policies and plans and to” after the word “To” under ARTICLE V. COMMITTEES A. 14. b. Duties and Responsibilities vi.  Insert “vii. To receive, raise and distribute funding to pursue its core mission.” Under ARTICLE V. COMMITTEES A. 14. b. Duties and Responsibilities  Insert under ARTICLE V. COMMITTEES A. “18. Global Learning Curriculum Oversight Committee a. Membership i. This committee shall consist of five faculty members who will be appointed by the Chair of the Senate and approved by the Steering Committee. ii. Members of this committee must attend at least two global learning workshops iii. The Director of the Office of Global Learning Initiatives shall serve be an ex-officio non-voting member b. Duties and Responsibilities i. To consider and recommend new courses for inclusion in the University Global Learning Curriculum; ii. To review existing courses for compliance with University policies on the Global Learning Curriculum; iii To consider and recommend courses for deletion from the Global Learning Curriculum; iv. And to perform other related duties as directed by the Senate or the Senate Chair.” V. Reports: A. President’s Report – Dr. Mark Rosenberg, FIU President

President Rosenberg thanked the Senators for their commitment to the university and for their participation in governance.

As of this fall we will have hired about 96 new faculty. Sixty-four of these were incremental hires. This is really remarkable given the challenges that higher education has throughout the country and is testimony to the deliberations of the faculty who participated in discussions of how to deal with tough budget cuts. In the Fall of 2011 there will be 80 incremental hires over and above what we are presently staffed up at in terms of faculty. We may not be able to hire all 80 for a variety of reason but it is incredible that we can have as many as 80 incremental hires this year on top of the success we had last year. With the new strategic plan, between now and 2015, we will probably hire roughly 272 new full-time faculty above the replacements that we will hire. Our new hires are evidence that we are moving forward toward our goals.

We are going to have a discussion on the Strategic Plan on April 14th. This plan focuses us for the next five years. It will enable us to move our enrollment to about 52,000. It will increase our graduate enrollment by a couple percentage points to about 20%. Our online education will grow from about 14% to 20%. We will increase our non-resident population by at least 2%. It will improve the six year graduation rate from 44% to 48%. We will maintain our student to faculty ratio at roughly 27 to 1. We will improve our student to advisor ratio to 300 to 1. The size of our police force will increase by at least 25 officers. The plan will increase our total research and development expenditure by roughly $50M. The President expressed his excitement with this plan because it enables us to have a positive discourse where it would normally be a negative discourse. The plan says we are moving forward. We will talk about this on April 14th.

Five trustees were just recently appointed or reappointed. Trustees Albert Maury, Claudio Puig, and Larry Kahn were reappointed by the Board of Governors. The Governor just recently appointed Mayi De La Vega, and Jose Armas. We are in very good hands with a board of accomplished and prudent individuals.

Governor Scott is opening an office at FIU on the first floor of the Charles Perry building. The President is confident that once the Governor sees what we are doing here he will come out with a new respect for FIU. The Governor’s budget has held us more harmless than many of us were expecting. We are not in as bad shape as many thought we would be in part because the leadership of Senate and the Governor understand the role we are going to play in the economic recovery and many other issues we are facing in the state of Florida.

We have some challenges on the retirement side. We are an anomaly in many ways in that we did not pay into our retirement system. For universities around the country the average pay into the retirement system is 5%. We may be asked to make a contribution which could be up to 5% but we can expect it be a little lower. We are monitoring this very carefully and making arguments why we should be an exception. We still have about four weeks in the legislative session. Anything can happen but the President is confident we will come out of it in decent shape.

Questions: What is your take on the Miami-Dade College move to offer free tuition to students with higher than 3.0 GPA? President Rosenberg commends Miami-Dade for finding the resources to help our students. There’s a big need in the community for financial aid. He would like to see a closer relationship between FIU and Miami-Dade than we currently have now. We should not feel threatened by this at all.

For a long time we have focused on being a research institution and lately we have been putting more emphasis on engagement and an increase number of students. What is going to be the role of research in our university? A person will not get hired at the university unless he or she is at the cutting edge of research or creative activities. This is part of our culture now. There are multiple elements that are important as it relates to someone’s ability to provide high level teaching. We are also focusing on engagement because we cannot turn our backs on our community. Engagement should be the application of your research and creative energies to the solutions of problems in the community.

As we grow, how do you see the constraints of space impacting the increase in student enrollment? Space has always been a concern at FIU. Growth will finance the quality we want; it will not be the other way around. The PECO funding for new classrooms will come. Over the next year we are going to start to build: an observatory; the science classroom building; the public health and hurricane center building; expand the U.S. Century Bank Arena to have meeting rooms for our students; a new student support center which will have our advisors, admissions and financial aid support; and two or three medical clinics. We also have a very aggressive initiative to get the Youth Fair which is 86 acres.

On the Biscayne Bay Campus, we have an equally aggressive plan to grow enrollment there by at least five to seven thousand to expand the Journalism and Mass Communication program significantly, the School of Hospitality Management significantly and SEAS will hopefully at least quintuple in size. All of this would necessitate us raising money or getting PECO support for it. Truthfully, in a five year span not all of this is doable but in a ten year span with a little bit of luck it is doable. President Rosenberg assured the Senate that at any point in the process we can pull back because every year in May the Board approves the next year’s plan. The growth will enable the quality that we all want to continue to maintain.

In the next five years we are going to replace the faculty we lose, hire incrementally new faculty and we still will have resources to invest in strategic initiatives aligned along the priorities that are articulated in the strategic plan.

B. Mr. Howard Lipman, Senior Vice President, University Advancement and President & CEO, the FIU Foundation

Mr. Lipman expressed his excitement about returning to FIU and thanked the Faculty Senate for inviting him to speak.

Our goal is to raise $750 million for FIU. We can reach this goal by establishing relationships with our alumni. That starts with the faculty. Having been involved with FIU since 1993, Mr. Lipman knows that our alumni throughout the world are very supportive of our institution. We need assistance from the faculty to help us reach out to our alums.

We will be very strategic and methodical in achieving this goal. In May, you will see a draft of a report regarding where we stand in the advancement and fundraising efforts for FIU. We should be raising somewhere between $50 and $75 million on average each year.

Questions: How do the foundation members assist with bringing in gifts? One of the things public institutions are notorious for is not engaging their volunteer board in an effective manner. Part of doing that includes a very open conversation with them, clearly defining expectations. It’s one of the things we are working on now.

Mr. Lipman thanked Dr. Fain for agreeing to chair the faculty/staff campaign. They’ve put together a Steering Committee and have begun discussions.

C. Provost’s Report—Provost Wartzok – Due to time constraints the Provost did not give a report. D. NCAA Self Study Report – Rosa Jones, Vice President of Student Affairs Dr. Jones thanked the Chair for allowing her to speak to the Senate. Dr. Jones is the chair of the NCAA Self-Study process, Dr. Elizabeth Bejar is the co-chair, and Dr. Susan Himburg is the Coordinator of the Self-Study document.

This process began almost six months ago. The Steering Committee is composed 25 individuals consisting of faculty, students, administrators, alumni, athletic council representatives, and trustees as appointed by the President. There are also three subcommittees: Governance and Compliance, Academic Integrity, and Gender Diversity and Wellbeing. Each of these subcommittees includes individuals. This is a university process which is designed to have us focus on the compliance as it relates specifically to NCAA but also an opportunity for us to develop the understanding of where our best practices are based on those principles. This also allows us to develop an improvement plan. Dr. Jones asked the faculty to look at the Self Study and the improvement plan which are both available at ncaa.fiu.edu. Open forums began last week and we received many comments and feedback. The committee is seeking the input of faculty in relation to the document.

The document will be submitted to the NCAA at the end of April and will have a site visit in October. The final decision of the recertification of our athletic program will take place next April.

E. UFF Report—Kathleen Wilson, UFF-FIU President Dr. Wilson provided the following report:  UFF-FIU was part of the group that went to Tallahassee for FIU day. Pleased that a collegial and professional relationship exists between the administration and the UFF here at FIU.

 There will be voting March 29 and 30 to ratify the MOU regarding the non-smoking policy at all three campuses from 10:00-2:00.

 April 5 will be a Nationally televised teach-in re: education, followed by discussion of local issues.

 April 8, UFF-FIU will host two workshop—at noon for Promotion and at 2:30 for tenure-with invited speakers, including Provost Wartzok

 We are currently bargaining the full book contract and already have tentative agreements on several issues. It is our hope that—especially given the bills being passed in the Florida legislature—that we will have a ratified contract before the end of June.

 Of recent concern is KCOS 11-03: House K-20 subcommittee released a proposed committee bill last Friday that does away with tenure for community and state colleges.

 UFF-FIU President Wilson attended the national NEA Higher Ed conference March 25-27 in Boston. Issues that will impact Higher Education include:

 The rise of for-profit universities and a decrease in support for publically-funded universities

 A bill to link programs to “employability.” While this is aimed at for-profit programs with questionable claims, there are eventual possible ramifications for state university programs.

 Capping enrollment in the face of budget cuts. Eg. Pima Community College in Tucson suffered a 50% cut and, in response, has restricted access to students at the remedial level. Has implications for students whose first language is not English.

 Pell Grants

 Collective Bargaining  Recent education conference in NYC for the countries with the most successful education systems. [US would not have been included had it not been hosting the meeting]. Commonalities included:

o Considering pre K-college as 1 system

o Collective bargaining

o Investing in Higher Education

F. SGA Report – Alina Gonzalez, SGA Vice President SGA elections will start tomorrow at 7PM. The First Generation Scholarship benefit is on Thursday at 6:30PM at the Ronald Reagan House. Alina thanked the faculty for all of their great work.

VI. Unfinished Business – There was no unfinished business VII. New Business – There was no new business

The meeting adjourned at 3:25PM

ANNOUNCEMENTS The next Faculty Senate meeting is Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 1:00pm in the Wertheim Conservatory. All are invited. Go to facultysenate.fiu.edu for regularly updated information on the Faculty Senate.