To: Faculty, Staff & Adjunct (And MCHS)

From: Doty, Howard Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2003 3:39 PM To: Faculty, Staff & Adjunct (and MCHS) Subject: Faculty Sub-Council Meeting at the TBR on Friday, January 24, 2003

Dear Nashville State Tech family, Each quarter, I attend a meeting at the Tennessee Board of Regents as the Faculty Representative from Nashville State Tech. Our most recent meeting was this past Friday. Below is a summary of what happened.

A. The new Governor of the state has ordered a hiring freeze, equipment purchase freeze, and an Out-of-state travel freeze on state workers and departments. However, (at this time) this does NOT apply to the two systems of higher education nor public education.

B. We were supplied with the Tennessee State Senate Committee appointments so that you would know who to contact concerning matters such as education in the state. Many different committees effect higher education but the members of the Education Committee in the State Senate are: McNally, Dixon, Burks, Atchley, Crutchfield, Crowe, Graves, Ketron, and Trail.

C. As we all know, we use Social Security numbers for students. This will somewhat end. (In the near future, it will also end for faculty and staff-with a few exceptions like W-2 forms). Each college will replace the 9 digit Social Security number with an eight digit number randomly selected. The student will have no say in their number. However, the beauty of what they are doing is that the student does not even need to know their own student ID number. The way it will work is that the new 8 digit number will be appearing on SIS, rolls, etc and the old Social Security number will NOT. However, if the student is sitting in your office and you need to find out something for them, you will still be able to enter their social security number (or even their name) and their records will still pop up but with the new student ID number and not the social security number. The computer will automatically convert your request and only show the 8 digit number. There are still a few bugs in this including Web courses and Web For Faculty that still uses social security numbers. The reason for all this is because of identity theft.

This past legislature, there was a bill proposed (that did NOT pass) that would prohibit the use of 4 straight digits that were the same as your social security number. So the new 8 digit number will NOT be using part of the students soc. sec. number at all. Once again, since the SIS system will automatically convert to the 8 digit number, neither faculty, staff, nor students will need to learn these numbers.

D. Approval of new Degree will only have to go to the TBR if they affect 18 credit hours. New forms were also approved for all this. E. The TBR has set deadlines for the 60/120 hour requirements on all degrees. Plans for reduction will be due by September 30, 2003 with at least fifty percent of the plan being implemented by Fall, 2005. Complete implementation will be achieved by Fall, 2006. We are O.K. as to our A.A. and A.S. program but will have to revise our A.A.S. programs within these guidelines. I am sure that Dr. Ellen Weed will be addressing these matters with her return since she is very current on these matters.

F. Along the lines of the above "E.", The TBR has appointed several Task Force Groups for the different disciplines and General Education Core and will be meeting with these groups in February. Each Task Force has members from Nashville State Tech in their discipline. During their one day meeting at the TBR, they will hammer out concerns as to transferability. I have a list of all representatives but you can ask your dean for who will be representing your discipline from Nashville State Tech. Some of our members are Jennifer Knapp, Flora Setayesh, Art Ward, Don Pelster, Karen Stevenson, Annette Sanchez and Donna Whitehouse. Talk to these individuals and help them prepare for the meeting so that they can convince the other members of their task force that your courses should be taught as we are teaching them at Nashville State Tech, and therefore, be transferable.

G. - Adjuncts- There has been a lot of talk at the TBR by the faculty representatives of how little adjuncts are paid. Not only that, since they are part-time, they get no benefits. Therefore, your Nashville State Tech representative asked the TBR to investigate into maybe getting Adjuncts health benefits as a group. This the TBR did and came back with a simple - NO. They talked to several insurance companies and found that no insurance company would take them as a group without charging a minimum of $500 per month for the Adjunct to pay. (Needless to say, not many adjuncts would want to pay that much.) There was also the problem of adjuncts teaching one semester and then not teaching again for another year, what they call "breaks in service." Currently full-time faculty pay 20% with the state paying 80% of your health insurance, but adjuncts would have to pay 100% under a group rate. Therefore, the TBR concluded that it was too expensive.

H. Post -Retirement Service Programs. There is a problem in the insurance coverage of these individuals. Seems there has been too much retroactive changes especially around spouses that are also covered. Therefore, the TBR has decided to only pay a flat premium on all of these individuals whether they are married or single. This means that a single person under the post retirement will be paying a higher percentage. If you have questions concerning, you need to email Linda Bishop at the TBR at [email protected]

One other matter here, currently guidelines say that an individual who enters this program has a cap of 4 years. There is a proposal at the TBR to extend this longer.

I. Tennessee Higher Education, according to national surveys, need more graduate assistant and graduate research individuals. Therefore, it has been proposed that the state pay ALL of their health insurance premiums

J. There is a new state of Tennessee "Long Term Needs Plan". (We use to call this "nursing home insurance"). It provides for guaranteed coverage of all state employees, their spouses, parents and parents-in- law. It is through Med America which is a Blue Cross provider. Premiums would be directly withdrawn from your pay check and transferability will apply if you leave state employment. Nothing yet as to coverage such as whether it will cover only nursing home or both that and in-home care. It will be coming up at the TBR's board meeting in March.

K. It was proposed that out-of-state web students be given a different "e Rate" for tuition. However, it has been determined that it would increase in-state tuition and no one wants to do that so the e Rate is out for now.

L. The TBR is establishing a committee to look at overload pay issues. M. SACS is visiting our (TBR's) RODP web based degree. Dr. Ellen Weed is handling this at the Board. Unfortunately, unlike at Nashville State Tech where she could assign all sorts of departments and people to help her in putting all the forms together, she is having to pretty much do this by herself. There will be on-site visits by SACS in the Middle Tennessee area, which probably means us at Nashville State Tech.

N. If you are doing outside "consulting", you may want to get with me concerning this. The TBR is going to be looking more closely into this. The main thing you need to remember is that you must submit this to the President of the college for approval. This is not to say that you can't do it. Dr. Weed used examples of some of our faculty that do work on Saturdays as examples of acceptable outside employment.

O. General Education Core - Way too much for me to discuss here. Just be aware of "F." above and get in touch with your Deans concerning where this is all going. There are several different task forces that have been appointed to hammer all of this out.

P. There are problems in Tenure and Promotion uniformity throughout TBR. There is already a TBR committee working on this that will meet on February 7. Dr. Jeff Kent of Vol State, emailed me sometime back asking for problems we are having with that at Nashville State Tech. I forwarded this to the Faculty and did not hear a single reply. You may want to send Jeff an email if you are interested. He is a good guy- faculty member there. The problem seems to be the granting of too many "exceptions" throughout the system. It was also brought out at our meeting that some individuals who are no longer members of the faculty were trying to get faculty promotions.

Q. Lastly, as you all know, Dr. Ellen Weed is leaving the TBR staff and we are going to miss her there. However, I publicly welcomed her back to Nashville State Tech. She will be returning in February.

Respectfully submitted, Dr. G. Howard Doty, Chair of Academic Faculty Sub Council of the Tennessee Board of Regents [email protected]