October 20, 2010

FACULTY SENATE MINUTES

OCTOBER 20, 2010

Present:  Kate Axelsen, Joe Carr, Ted Coladarci, Robert Dana, Rebecca Davison, Mike Eckardt, Susan Erich, Janet Fairman, Robert Franzosa, Eric Gallandt, John Gregory, Michael Grillo, Gordon Hamilton, Dan Harrison, Nikki Hemingway, Sue Hunter, Kirsten Jacobson, Deborah Killam, Dennis King, Kurt Klappenbach, Judy Kuhns-Hastings, Larry Latour (for Sudarshan Chawathe), Bill Livingston, Stuart Marrs, Elizabeth Mayberry, Michael Mayberry, James McClymer, Elisabeth Poling, Anne Pooler, Nubia Quinones, Andrew Reeve, Robert Rice, Ashley Robinson, Eric Rolfson, Tom Sandford, Dan Sandweiss, Mike Scott, Scott See, Howard Segal, Sean Sevey, Phillip Silver, Kathryn Slott, Touradj Solouki, Claire Strickland, Nikki Stephanou, Claire Sullivan, Shihfen Tu, Janet Waldron, Jim Warhola, Erin White.

Absent:  Douglas Bousfield, Ian Bricknell, Tony Brinkely, Chris Campbell, David Dvorak, Cynthia Erdley, Todd Gabe, Robert Gundersen, Duane Hanselman, Clarissa Henry, Irv Kornfield, David Marcincowski, Sid Mitchell, David Morrison, Harlan Onsrud, Tina Passman, Howard Patterson, Justin Poland, Paul Rawson, Roy Turner, Chuck Wallace, Mark Wells, Vivian Wu, Huijie Xue.

The meeting opened at 3:20 pm.

Senate President Grillo announced that there will be a special meeting of the senate on December 8, with Allyson Handley and Curt Madison who will discuss the System’s E-Learning plans.  He also reminded senators that Chancellor Pattenaude will be the guest at the December 15 senate meeting.

The minutes for the meeting of September 22, 2010 were approved with the following correction:  CETA stands for the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Assessment.  The minutes for the meeting of May 26, 2010 were approved.

Eric Rolfson, Vice President of Development, gave a Powerpoint presentation on fundraising at UMaine.  He began with an update on Campaign Maine which is a $150 million comprehensive fundraising campaign.  The campaign has three fundraising areas:  Endowment, Capital Improvements and Annual Operations.  As of September 30, 2010, $139.8 million has been raised, 93% of the goal with 81% of the timeline elapsed.  If the campaign finishes by the end of FY11 it would mean raising approximately $1.13 million per month.  If the campaign continues until December 30, 2011, it would mean raising $680,000 per month.    To date the student financial aid aspect of the campaign has raised $41.4 million toward the goal of $50 million.  The Faculty Support aspect of the campaign has raised $32 million of the $50 million goal.  In the Capital Projects category two of the original renovation priorities are nearly funded, the Hutchinson Center and the Collins Center for the Arts.  They are also in the process of planning for the renovation of the Memorial Gymnasium with a $7 million private fundraising goal and the renovation of the Alfond Arena with a goal of $1 million.  He continued to show charts representing faculty support by college, current operations for faculty and staff and countable Office of Research and Sponsored Program grants.  He explained how much money it costs to raise a dollar at UMaine and compared it to other institutions.  Some fundraising activities are very expensive such as special events and donor acquisition, while others, like capital campaigns are less so.  Other variables to consider, when reviewing return on investment include, start-up costs, the age and maturity of the program and the profile of the constituency.  When last calculated by UMaine’s office of Administration and Finance, it was costing an average of eleven cents to raise a dollar.

During the last four and a half years of Campaign Maine an average of $21 million per year was raised versus $14.5 million for the six-year period preceding the campaign.  This represents an average 45% increase in fundraising during the current campaign.  In the years prior to the campaign, very few gifts in excess of $1 million had been received.  Since the campaign began more than a dozen seven-figure gifts have been made.

Mr. Rolfson said that President Kennedy had recognized the need to invest in the fundraising operation in order to ensure a significant return during the campaign and between 2005 and 2008 had more than doubled the budget for the development office, from $1.11 mill to $2.66 million.  The Development Office, like the rest of campus, did take budget cut of $387,000 but continue to introduce “best practice” initiatives.  This past summer the DO received encouraging results from a comprehensive wealth screening exercise.  The objective was to enhance the prospect research, focus resources and inform future investments in front-line fundraisers and alumni engagement programs.  Wealth Screening is a data mining process whereby more than 30 data points are collated from public sources and is largely calculated based upon five factors: income, real estate, stock holdings, pension information and charitable giving.  The results of this study were that more than 18,000 or 14.6% of the database are capable of making gifts in excess of $100,000.  More than 70 alumni are capable of giving $5 million plus.  More than 450 are capable of gifts from $1 – 5 million and more than 4,000 are capable of $250,000.  The total potential uncovered by the wealth screening process is $2 billion.

He also covered philanthropic potential by college and showed a map of the United States which shows where the current pool of roughly 1,800 donors and prospects reside. 

He also touched on the next fundraising campaign in which it is hoped that $300 million will be raise for university priorities between 2014 and 2020.

Committee Reports:

Board of Trustees Rep – Bob Rice

The Presidential search is ongoing but there is not much information to share at this time.

Academic Affairs – Judy Kuhns-Hastings

The committee is looking at room-scheduling software.  There is also a letter that is being composed which will be sent to Jim Breece at the Chancellor’s office regarding the common calendar.

Constitution & Bylaws – Jim Warhola

The committee now has two more members, Dennis King from EDHD and Scott See from LAS.  The committee needs members from Natural Sciences, Forestry & Agriculture, Business, Public Policy & Health, and Engineering.

Research & Scholarship – Janet Fairman

The committee has met twice.  President Kennedy will attend the committee’s meeting on November 9.  Michael Eckardt has been extremely helpful to the committee this year.  The committee hopes to hold a workshop on grant proposals in Spring 2011.

Finance & Institutional Planning – Jim McClymer

The committee will meet on October 27.  They need a member from Engineering and NSFA.

University Environment – Mike Scott

The committee meets on October 25.

Library Advisory – Howard Segal

Planning an initial meeting, one of the topics will be e-books.

Service & Outreach – Deborah Killam

The committee has not yet had time to meet.

Committee on Committees – Roy Turner

No Report.

Program  Creation & Reorganization Review – Harlan Onsrud

Dr. Onsrud was at a conference, Jim Warhola gave a report.

The committee will be very busy this semester.  There have been several proposals for program  suspensions or eliminations from Alumni Hall that will affect the  BA programs in German, Latin, Women’s Studies, Theater, and Public Administration.  The committee has begun the process of canvassing units for a hearing conducted by the PCRRC so the senate can submit recommendations to Alumni Hall.  The hearings will be held in the next month to six weeks as President Kennedy wants to make his decisions before the January Board of Trustees meeting.

General Education – Tina Passman

The committee is working with the curriculum reform committee on the writing intensive gen ed.  NEASC conference will be held in Boston in early November.  Jeff St. John, from the Center for Excellence and Teaching Assessment (CETA), Ted Coladarci and Tina Passman will be attending.

Ad Hoc IT Committee – Mike Scott

At the last IT Council meeting, it was reported that all UMaine alums have access to FirstClass accounts for three years after graduation even if they do not join the Alumni Association.

Questions and Discussion with the Administration.

A question was asked whose domain is PeopleSoft.  Dr. Hunter answered that it is under the administration of the Chancellor’s Office.

Dr. Hunter introduced Steve Abbott, the Interim Athletic Director.  She said he grew up in Orono and is the son of Walt Abbott who worked at UMaine for 50 years.  He is a graduate of Harvard and the University of Maine Law School.  He was also the chief of staff for Senator Susan Collins.

She then spoke about e-learning.  There are two entities for e-learning; OnLineME which is the UMS initiative and UME OnLine which is the named entity for UMaine.   UME OnLine still has to be reviewed by the chancellor’s office before it is placed on OnLineME.  There is some  concern here on campus with the speed it is moving forward but there are many people involved in reviewing the process including presidents and provosts.  Also Curt Madison who is now at UMA is involved in the review.

Our named entity, UMaine OnLine, will consist of Project 24/7, the graduate on-line degree programs and undergraduate degree programs.    The team working on Project 24/7 are Bob White, Dan Sandweiss, John Gregory, Jeff St. John, Sue McCullough, Justin Hafford, and the Deans.  John Dorrer and Jake Ward are providing data about the state’s needs and work force.  Tony Cavernalla at Georgetown University is providing information about the national work force trends.   None of these programs can move forward without the assistance and input from faculty.

In addition to  developing on-line graduate programs we are also developing on-line undergraduate degree programs and  post BA programs which will bridge an unrelated BA degree to a Master’s Degree program.  Many institutions are selling these post-BA bridging programs, for instance a student who has a BA degree in an unrelated field but wants to attend medical school, their on-line programs will prepare the student for the MCAT Test.  A review of all on-line programs will begin in November.  Departments’ curriculum committees, chairs and the UPCC will be involved.  Any new program has to go through the standard approval process as a live course.  The University of Maine System will be assessing the quality of the programs.  There has been encouragement for collaborating with other campuses in developing these programs.    There is an approval process for each proposed program, the same process that all degree programs undergo, pertaining to the unique mission for each campus.  UMPI is going to offer a BA in English with only 3 faculty members.  Someone has described this as the “Wild West Scenario”.  As for the possibility of multicampus course accreditation, that would constitute a substantive change and would need to be addressed with NEASC.

Ten days ago we were awarded the Rising Tide Advancement of Women NSF Grant.  It is a 3.16 million dollar grant.  It is designed to promote the recruitment and retention of women in the STEM fields and the social sciences.  There are no faculty lines attached to this grant, unlike Susan McKay’s Research in Science Education grant which included monies for two faculty lines.

Old Business:

There was no Old Business.

New Business:

Motion Assigning Program Suspension Reviews to the

Program Creation and Reorganization Review Committee

20 October, 2010

Motion:

As the representative body of the University of Maine Faculty empowered to oversee “the establishment and elimination of academic programs” (Constitution of the University of Maine Faculty Senate, Article III, Section 3), the Faculty Senate designates the Program Creation and Reorganization Review Committee as the committee appropriate to fulfilling the University of Maine System guidelines for program suspensions (Section 305.4, Paragraph 2g) to review all proposed academic program suspensions, hold public discussions on these proposed suspensions, and make recommendations to the Faculty Senate.  The Senate will then send any resulting motion to the University of Maine Provost and President for inclusion with the Administration’s recommendation to the UMS Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs.

The motion passed:  19 for, none against, no abstentions.

The meeting adjourned at 4:29 pm.

Respectfully submitted,

Kathryn Slott, Secretary