November 16, 2016

FACULTY SENATE MINUTES
November 16, 2016

Present: Dean Astumian, Bob Bayer, Erik Blomberg, Emmanuel Boss, Tony Brinkley, Sudarshan Chawathe, Mauricio da Cunha, Farahad Dastoor, Paula Drewniany, Scott Dunning, Thane Fremouw, Per Garder, Michael Grillo, Leonard Kass, George Markowsky, Grant Miles, Patti Miles, Sidney Mitchell, William Nichols, Clint Relyea, Bob Rice, Deborah Rogers, Michael Scott, Howard Segal, Kathryn Slott, David Townsend, Shihfen Tu, Mark Wells, Gail Werrbach, Clayton Wheeler, President Susan Hunter, Provost Jeff Hecker, VP Research Carol Kim, Jen Bonnet (PEAC), Brian Preziosi (Grad Stud Gov)

Absent: John Allen, Jason Bolton, Laura Cowan, Amy Fried, Chris Grindrod for Nancy Hall, Jason Harkins, Zhihe Jin, Peter Koons, David Kress, Jordan LaBouff, David Marcinkowski, Brian McGill, Brian Olsen (sabbatical), Deborah Saber, John Singer, Owen Smith, Mona Therrien, Andrew Thomas, Peter C. Altmann (CEAC), Hashim Allah (Stud. Gov.)

The meeting was called to order at 3:20 pm

I.  Proclamations

Proclamation: Brian S. Robinson† (1953-2016)

Associate Professor of Anthropology and Climate Studies Brian S. Robinson passed away from pancreatic cancer on October 27 at the age of 63. Brian was a wonderful colleague, an award-winning, inspiring teacher, and an acknowledged expert in the archaeology of Maine and the surrounding region who worked closely and collaboratively with Native American communities.

Educated at the University of New Hampshire (BA 1975) and Brown University (MA 1987, PhD 2001), Brian worked on a variety of archaeological projects in the 1980s. He then spent eight years at the University of Maine-Farmington’s Archaeological Research Center. In 1997, Brian came to the University of Maine as a grant-funded Research Associate, later Research Assistant Professor. In 2004, he was hired as an Assistant Professor in the Anthropology Department and Climate Change Institute, and he earned tenure and promotion to Associate Professor in 2010.

Brian’s teaching accomplishments earned remarkably high evaluations from students at all levels. His enthusiasm for archaeology was infectious and he could get even the largest classes of non-majors to share his excitement. He built a loyal following of outstanding students, both undergraduate and graduate. Many worked with him on the MAPI (Maine Academic Prominence Initiative) project that he co-directed with Native American colleagues. Since winning the MAPI grant in 2005, he had many early summer field seasons in downeast Maine in which fully funded students received hands-on archaeological training and engagement with Maine’s Native community–while making important discoveries. Brian’s teaching was recognized last spring with the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Outstanding Teaching Award and the Graduate Mentor Award for CLAS.

As an archaeologist, Brian’s professional focus was to bring Northeast archaeology into the national spotlight through comparative study, but also to advance Maine’s Native American heritage through partnership with Maine’s modern Native communities. He had a remarkable ability to acquire and synthesize extraordinarily detailed datasets. Brian supported his research with a combination of competitive external awards and internal sources. He authored or co-authored a series of publications that cemented his reputation as the leader in northeastern archaeology. Brian’s dissertation and resulting papers established modern understanding of the Archaic Period Moorehead Tradition (aka the Red Paint People). His seminal work was a paper on the Paleoindian site of Bull Brook, in Ipswich Massachusetts, published in 2009 in American Antiquity, the flagship journal for North American archaeology. Funded by the National Science Foundation, Brian spent years recovering site data from amateur excavations in the 1950s and extracting novel and convincing anthropological details from these data. Thanks to his work, Bull Brook is now recognized as one of the most important early sites in North America.

Brian was always ready to help students and colleagues, on campus and off. Among many campus service activities, he was a Faculty Senator and chaired the Program Creation and Reorganization Review Committee several years ago. He was a valued collaborator with the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem MA and the R.S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology at Phillips Academy, Andover, where the Peabody Advisory Committee observed a minute of silence in his memory last week. We will all miss him sorely.

Proclamation Read at the University of Maine Faculty Senate Meeting
November 16, 2016

Professor Gordon Hamilton

Dr. Gordon Stuart Hamilton, Professor in the Climate Change Institute and the School of Earth and Climate Sciences died 22 October 2016 in a tragic snowmobile accident in Antarctica. At the time of the accident, Gordon was conducting glaciological research to investigate the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and surveying the route for the South Pole logistics traverse.

Gordon was born in Dundee Scotland where he learned to love the outdoors and the inclement weather of the Highlands. He attended the University of Aberdeen and then went on to receive a PhD from Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge. Following Cambridge Gordon took a position at the Norsk Polar Institute in Norway and then at Ohio State University’s Byrd Polar Research Institute. In 2000 Gordon moved to the University of Maine with his wife Fiona and their two children Martin and Calum. The Hamilton’s have lived in Orono ever since and early on became active and greatly loved members of the community.

Gordon’s career at the University of Maine can only be described as a constantly accelerating event. As demonstrated by the outpouring of condolences from all over the world, he touched not only those in our University, but many colleagues, students, and friends through his research, teaching and mentoring.

Gordon was passionate about literally everything he did. In regard to his science he was in the upper echelons of his discipline – dynamic glaciology – by making significant contributions to the understanding of the health and stability of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. His work elucidated the cause of ice mass loss and the expected future contribution of this mass loss to global sea level rise, a greenhouse gas warming reality that will be a major driver for societal decisions in coming decades. He used innovative tools, such as high-precision GPS, a suite of satellite remote sensing observations, and laser scanners, and even developed much of his glacier monitoring equipment himself. During the many field seasons that Gordon spent in the polar regions he trained and mentored many students, offering them remarkable new vantages from which to view the world and inspiring them to contribute to the world through scientific discovery. He was highly successful in garnering support through federal and private foundation grants, which funded dozens of student projects and strengthened the University’s research reputation. He took all that he learned and translated it into his extremely popular and informative graduate and undergraduate level courses. Gordon was also passionate about sharing his knowledge with the public through interviews with the media, perhaps most notably Rolling Stone Magazine, and was quite successful at translating difficult scientific concepts into information that had value to individuals, communities, non-governmental units such as Green Peace, and governments.

For those of us who shared many months in the field with him, for his friends and colleagues and most of all for his family we know that Gordon could always be counted on to be dependable, fun loving, and creative. He was always prepared to talk about science and share field stories over a pint at conferences and had a knack for incorporating just the right amount of humor into all aspects of his work and life. His intelligence, compassion, and humor will be terribly missed by all who knew him.

The best way to remember and honor Gordon Hamilton is for all of us to follow three basic principles that I believe were important to him:

Be passionate about what you do if you feel it is worth doing;
Be passionate about sharing with and informing others;
Be passionate about doing the very best that you can do to make this an ever improving        world.

Paul Andrew Mayewski, Director, Climate Change Institute &
Ellyn Enderlin, Research Assistant Professor, Climate Change Institute

II.  Welcome, Announcements and Comments:
Dr. George Markowsky introduced Susan Finer, President of AFUM at USM, to address Faculty Senate. The issue she discussed was the MBA program at USM and faculty concern with the process and how it has bypassed shared governance and faculty participation. At the last USM Faculty Senate meeting they asked for a cease and desist until shared governance is taken into account, the motion passed unanimously. The Graduate Council also passed a similar resolution. She requested that UMaine work with USM to build a program and for UMaine Faculty Senate work on a resolution. She stated; if you think the System wants to end shared governance and tenure, “you are right.”

III.  Approval of Minutes
October 19, 2016
Approved

IV. Committee Reports
BOT Rep – Patti Miles
Patti stated that she attended the recent BOT meeting in Machias. Discussed was a UMaine and USM Master Program, which passed with no input from faculty. Patti spoke at the meeting asking if it is fiscally responsible to build a $180 million project with funds that could be used in other areas. The BOT Reps met with the Chancellor and Vice Chancellor before the BOT meeting.

Work at the BOT is built around four points:

Increase enrollment,
Increase Student success,
Economic development and support,
Academic programming.

Patti questioned allocating funds to the four points when UMaine has already increased enrollment, student success, etc.

Academic Affairs – Michael Grillo
The Academic Affairs Committee has a motion under New Business. The committee is looking to address aligning funding needs with curricular development and completing the Infolsilm survey.

Constitution & Bylaws – David Townsend
The committee met in October and will be working on three issues: attendance of Faculty Senators, Honors College, and adjuncts serving on Faculty Senate. There will also be a discussion regarding whether someone needs to be full-time faculty to serve on senate and whether part-time faculty should be considered for inclusion in the senate.

Research & Scholarship – Emmanuel Boss & Mauricio de Cunha
The committee met Monday and worked on a motion to be presented in two weeks regarding research day in April. The committee will draft a resolution regarding research, based on the BOT not realizing all research will benefit Maine. Looking for feedback on how infrastructure on campus and/or system holds up faculty research projects. Information can be provided by faculty and/or departments – please provide dates and other specific information so it can be complied and passed on.

Finance & Institutional Planning – Grant Miles
The committee met with Claire Strickland regarding the UMaine budget. The recent budget presentation was helpful with good information; it appears enrollment objectives are ambitious but doable. The committee made a request to administration to explore ways to involve Faculty Senate and/or FIPC earlier in processes, met with Ryan Low to get information regarding the Unified Budget proposal and get clarification on UMaine System vs UMaine finance issues. There will be a public budget session on December 1 at 2:30. It seems like the new plan will do better at allocating State dollars to campuses over the Outcomes Based Budget.

University Environment – Kathryn Slott & Clint Relyea
The committee met and discussed diversity and faculty retention. There’s a need to review and revise the motion from the committee tabled last May. One topic raised was the custodial services or lack of. Dave Townsend also mentioned lighting on campus and a need for improvement. The committee stated if you see a diversity issue to please forward it to the committee.

Library Advisory – Robert Rice & Howard Segal
No report.

Service & Outreach – Jason Bolton
No report.

Committee on Committees – Michael Grillo
The committee is caught up with requests from Administration.

Program Creation & Reorganization Review – Sid Mitchell
No report.

General Education – Farahad Dastoor & David Townsend
Working on a motion regarding current General Education requirements. Trying to establish a means for review to ensure that courses still align with categories they’re in.

Ad Hoc IT – Michael Scott & Patti Miles
Patti sent a suggestion for a meeting with the ITSC.

Ad Hoc Shared Governance – Jason Harkins
No report.

Reports of Faculty Members on Committees of the Administration
No reports.

V.  Announcements and Updates from the Administration
President Hunter mentioned that the recent Budget Presentation is available on her website. Input can still be added there as well.

Graduate and undergraduate students are sending a resolution for the Academic Day on April 24th, Student Expo Day.

Provost Hecker said the next faculty forum will be Thursday 3:00 – 4:30. An update on Machias will be given. Discussion will also include program integration and how it will be done.

Regarding Susan Finer’s comments, she summarized nicely. If Faculty Senate takes this on Provost Hecker would like to be included.

VI.  Questions of the Administration
Q.  How do you read how the UMaine System emphasizes research, with a focus on Maine? Seems narrow.
A.  President Hunter said she believes in global research. At a recent retreat, when they went over outcomes, it seems the outcomes are geared toward UMaine. Provost Hecker said they are looking at what the impact on Maine will be, educating on how the global research done does benefit Maine.
Comments: They ask how research impacts Maine but even global research impacts Maine. President Hunter said a resolution is something that can be discussed at meetings. Carol Kim stated the BOT and citizens are always being educated on how UMaine teaches students. Other states are discussing the same issue at research universities.

Q.  At a Research Council meeting Carol Kim asked for a day off on April 24th.
A.  It is an Academic Day, not a day off, a day to celebrate what students and faculty do. Having graduate and undergraduate students in one forum showing what they do was a success last year. More legislatures, businesses, employers, etc. attended last year.
Comments: It’s difficult with some classes only meeting once a week. Carol Kim stated there are small rooms at the Cross Center so a class could meet there. It was asked if this couldn’t be done on a Saturday. Carol Kim stated that an overwhelming no came from faculty and students when they were asked about doing it on a Saturday. In the future, efforts will be made to not hold the Student Expo on a Monday. President Hunter said she’d ask students to look at Tuesday or Thursday in the future.

Q.  Regarding the BOT, is there time to bring them in during the Expo so they see research?
A.  Yes

Q.  With enrollment going up and down, by design over the years, what is the optimal size to pay the bills? It appears all BOT initiatives list increased enrollment.
A.  The number was closer this year to a balanced budget because of increased enrollment. President Hunter said an optimal number appears to be around 12,500.

VII.  Old Business
None

VIII. New Business
RESOLUTION OF THE FACULTY SENATE
PROPOSED FOR REQUESTING UM LEADERSHIP TO PETITION THE CHANCELLOR’S OFFICE FOR INFORMATION ABOUT THE UMS PROPOSED STRATEGIC RESOURCE ALLOCATION PLAN
November 15, 2016

The UMS has put forward a draft Strategic Resource Allocation Plan and solicited campus input without providing substantial, detailed documentation besides a draft PowerPoint slideshow available at https://thinkmissionexcellence.maine.edu/. UMS VC Wyke and VPA Neely are currently conducting a “RoadShow” of campuses soliciting input for the Plan, which is expected to be approved by the UMS BoT at its November 2016 meeting. At an open forum held Friday, October 28 on the campus of UM and sponsored by the Chancellor’s Office and UMS leadership focusing on advancing priority outcomes and measuring improvement of the planning process, no substantive details of the plan itself were provided for discussion.

Resolution:

The UM Faculty Senate submit the following request and Exhibit to the President and Provost post haste:

November 15, 2016

Dear President Hunter and Provost Hecker,

The UMS Strategic Resource Allocation Plan contains objectives and recommendations that will determine the growth and priorities of the University of Maine for the next five years. The faculty of UM was encouraged by campus leadership to participate in a workshop forum held Friday, October 28, sponsored by the Chancellor’s Office and UMS leadership. The open forum focused on advancing priority outcomes and measuring improvement of the planning process. However, details of the plan itself were not substantively discussed during the Forum, nor were they provided in the draft PowerPoint slideshow distributed in advance of the forum. The PowerPoint presentation is the only information the System has provided about the plan. For the faculty of the University of Maine to review the expected effect of investment priorities on curricula, courses, faculty teaching and research, and the campus environment, we need more specific information and details about the plan. The range of questions we would like answered is suggested by the Appendix to this Resolution.

It is imperative for the Senate to have access to needed information through proper communication channels at the campus-level. Good communication in a timely fashion assures faculty that UM admin are appropriately and adequately engaged in the System’s planning process. Also, good communication inspires confidence among the faculty that it can provide good, useful feedback and insights to the UM and UMS administrations.

We need your leadership in asking the Chancellor’s Office to address a range of questions about the UMS Strategic Resource Allocation Plan and the planning process to led to it. Answers to these questions will give us the information we need to work with the administration in the spirit of shared governance and allow faculty meaningful input to this system-wide initiative.

The Senate

EXHIBIT A

The faculty of UM and campus leadership participated in a workshop forum held Friday, October 28, sponsored by the Chancellor’s Office and UMS leadership. The open forum focused on how to advance priority outcomes and measure improvement of a System-level planning process for Strategic Resource Allocation Plan. The System provided a draft PowerPoint slideshow in advance of the forum, but no other documentation. For UM faculty to most effectively and efficiently collaborate in this process, we need information. Toward that end, we have formulated a set of questions concerning specific aspects of the draft Strategic Resource Allocation Plan presentation (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1Ah4cCUjArLR3A0TFRQeEZuaGc/view) and related YouTube video version of the presentation with narration by Vice Chancellor Rebecca Wyke (cf. https://thinkmissionexcellence.maine.edu/), to suggest the scope and depth of information UM faculty request to ensure full engagement in the System’s planning process:

  • In the introductory narration for the presentation, Wyke notes that in Maine, since 2007, the number of 15-24 year olds is “down by nearly 20%.” Wyke continues that in “this environment, we have struggled to maintain enrollment, causing our fiscal positioning to slip. But in this same environment, our competitors have increased their market share.” What specific data and analysis was performed to understand this situation? Were the constituent factors identified? If so, how? What data were used? Where are these analyses and reports? How did such information inform the working group’s thinking and strategizing?
  • What is the history of campus- and System-level responses and efforts to regain “market share”? At what time did “student enrollment” become “market share”? What strategic aim was the relabeling meant to serve? More specifically, what is the basis for the MYFA (Multi-Year Fiscal Analysis) impact projections (slide 26), as a function of annual enrollment growth? What is the basis for expecting such growth targets to be reasonable/achievable? What factors besides cost of growth and benefit rate change are recognized as possible substantial impacts? Do these figures assume a 100% fund rate for additional investment in next 5 years ($109M)? Metrics (slide 27) are listed, but what will be done if we don’t hit our targets? And how do we ‘course correct’ along the way? For example, the metric to be used to assess progress toward meeting “increase enrollment” targets is to “achieve or exceed the 5-yr enrollment management projections.” If we assume this means hitting the annual increases for 2019, ’20 and ’21 (whichever trajectory on slide 26 is selected), what happens each year we miss our target? Do we raise targets for the succeeding years? Who is responsible for the failure? Who is responsible for the corrections? How will enrollment increase impacts on campuses be monitored?
  • More generally, what are Plans B and C if the proposed plan is not properly funded? If less money is allocated in a given budget, if the bond fails, if enrollment flags, etc.? What is the long-term sustainability of this plan’s administrative build-up, and how does this administration increase square with all the work-to-date to reduce and streamline administration, to generate efficiencies? Where is the academic planning in all this?
  • Wyke also indicates, in the presentation’s introduction, that “Our purpose as Maine’s public university system is to build futures and strengthen Maine. This is the “Purpose” statement developed by the University Presidents. This purpose statement guided the work of developing the strategic resource allocation plan.” How specifically did the purpose statement guide the working group to articulate the plans Primary Outcomes and its focus for next five years? What deliberative process did the planning working group use? What campus-level resources did the group consult during its process?
  • Let us consider the five Primary Outcomes and two Secondary Outcomes listed on slide 5 (Increasing Enrollment, Improving Student Success & Completion, Enhancing the Fiscal Positioning of UMS, Supporting Maine through Research & Economic Development; Relevant Academic Programming, Workforce Engagement). Has the working group modeled impact scenarios? If so, where can these scenarios be reviewed. For instance, suppose aggressive enrollment and retention targets are achieved (these include student success & completion). What will be the impact on class sizes, numbers of sections offered, course hours taught, faculty and temp faculty needed, etc. Has this been factored into ‘net benefit’? If so, where can these calculations be reviewed? How does increasing enrollment & retention square with mentoring? If we are successful in meeting our targets, we will have more students, more classes, bigger class sizes, more faculty demand (especially to provide 300- and 400-level courses). Yet a key part of “workforce alignment” includes more faculty mentoring. How does the plan anticipate this consequence of success Is success here predicated on strong faculty buy in? If so, where in the plan is space made for the collegiate, collaborative process necessary to ensure maximal buy in and optimal implementation?
  • What are “Transformation Enablers”? There is neither a general framework for enablers nor adequate granular descriptors of specific enablers. A number of terms in the presentation need precise definition. For example, how precisely are these terms defined by the working group:
    • Target Markets (under OOS/International Experience Maine, under Pipeline for Enrollment, under Increase Enrollment) (slide 7)
    • Public Higher Ed Value Proposition (ROI) (under Marketing, under Market Positioning, under Increase Enrollment) (slide 8)
    • EAB Predictive Analytics (under Retention: 2nd Yr to Completion, under Advising, under Pathways to Completion & Workforce Success, under Improve Student Success & Completion) (slide 11)
    • Navigators (under Advising, under Services & Supports, under Improve Student Success & Completion) (slide 12)
    • Company Problem Solving (under R&ED Partnership, under Research & Economic Development, under Support Maine through R&ED) (slide 17)
  • What is the plan for growing Research & Economic Development (R&ED)? When research was simply something that faculty members do, development was simply funding that supported graduate research assistantships (GRAs). GRAs effectively increase workforce opportunities and contribute naturally to the economic development of Maine. But today, this ability to secure funding for one’s research does not appear to have a clear inherent value within the System’s vision of R&ED. But the USM’s and UM’s track record in ED via R&ED Partnerships and Community Engagement (not to mention Commercialization Acceleration) has been uncertain to date. Where can the studies and reports be found demonstrating the viability of these strategies to date, and justifying increased investment in these areas? E.g. how many UMS start-ups in past 10 years? Where and when? What is the current mean value of these efforts? How many start-ups last 1 yr, 3 yrs, 5 yrs, 10 yrs? What has been done to ensure that UMS start-ups will have the institutional support needed to effectively launch private businesses? What is UM’s patent licensing portfolio? Etc. (Cf. slide 17.)
  • How does UMS determine what it is that businesses in Maine need? While survey instruments can be used to collect data about business attitudes and perceived needs, on what basis do we believe that such instruments accurately and adequately identify true (versus perceived) needs? How do we identify which aspects of what we do throughout UMS will “transfer” to commercialization, to measurable economic development in Maine beyond the UMS? Is Cooperative-Extension the model for all engagement? What to date, excluding Coop-Ext, is UMS’s record concerning the actual impact of UMS efforts to promote economic development on businesses and economic sectors throughout ME? How is this measured? What benchmarks for growth are used?
  • More generally, how is Economic Development defined for purposes of this presentation, and how does this definition align with the State’s understanding of Economic Development?
  • Metrics appear to be defined with respect to a fully realized vision. Many implied action items seem to entail changing faculty (“workforce”) performance expectations in advance of full funding. Faculty may well become accountable to un- or underfunded measures. What safeguards are in place to ensure that the implementation of metrics is coordinated with securing the investment required for this plan to have measurable results? How do we assure fairness here?
  • Has an impact study of proposed Relevant Academic Programming on existing faculty been performed? (slide 20)
  • How is Relevant Academic Programming expected to impact curriculum? How are faculty expected to engage in this planning, relative to the fact that faculty have authority over its curriculum?
  • There is an implicit plan to better align curriculum with workforce preparation. Where is this plan? Who developed it? If there is no plan, how does System imagine undergrad and grad education to better align with workforce needs (slide 20)? Workforce needs is a moving target: How would we keep up? The counterargument is to provide a broad liberal arts education for success in every workforce pursuit.
  • At a very different level, there is a fundamental difficulty in the presentation’s vocabulary regarding the secondary outcome “UMS Workforce Engagement.” Faculty members at UM are paid members of a research-based academic community. This is not the same as saying they are employees whose work is being a research faculty. They are not the same because faculty members at a research university have a unique relationship to their university. Whereas in any other business, the nature of the work, the accountability and judgment of the work is performed by managers hierarchically arranged ‘above’ the employee. But at a university, the faculty have and are expert in their fields and only peers in the field are adequate to judging their work: the admin superstructure of any university, unlike most businesses, does not possess superior knowledge of content or performance. Thus the relation of faculty and admin is necessarily collaborative: Faculty must engage and assess one another about those key performance measures that define a research university. And the faculty is entrusted to maintain the integrity and quality of the academics provided by a university. Quoting Wyke’s narration over slide 23 of the Roadshow presentation: “We need to invest in our workforce so they will align with us and feel engaged around these goals” (emphases added). Who are “we” and who are “they”? How do System leaders such as Wyke imagine faculty will respond to being called workforce and treated as a them to be invested’ in? Is this a roadshow approach to achieving alignment and engagement? This way of talking at, inadvertently talking down to, makes effective collaboration all the more challenging. The vocabulary is not friendly to or respectful of faculty, and is used with casual assurance, though there has not been a discussion with faculty concerning how faculty should be characterized when referred to by UMS administrative leaders. Shouldn’t Wyke and others in the working group that developed this plan be concerned that the potential alienation such language will create works contrary to the objective for holding these working sessions? Should faculty simply accept the apparent lack of respect unchallenged, shoulder their share of the responsibility for a vision developed by the System and subsequently communicated down the pipeline to campuses and faculty? (slide 23) Similarly, on the following slide (24), we have a basic conflict with how Wyke presents “talent management,” from “onboarding” through “performance mgmt.” The talent of faculty does not require management to flourish; it needs respect. Respect that takes assumes high performance as the norm, a quality inherent in the university’s faculty and staff, something that deserves recognition and support. The aim of the objective is to foster talent and get the most from faculty and staff, but this model will achieve the opposite, because “getting the most” implicitly relies on people feeling entrusted to do what they’ve been hired to do, so they’ll go the extra mile because they have personal commitment to their work, their peers, their communities, their university, to the very concept of the academic endeavor. But a System that reduces its vital community members to a workforce to be managed has effectively displaced self-motivation with supervision. Alignment may well be achieved, but too likely at the expense of the faculty buy-in needed to fully realize the BOT’s vision. The plan is entirely predicated on efficiencies and based on new investment; what of assessing existing untapped resources. How would it be possible to leverage energy and creativity of those already here (and getting paid)?

Discussion: President Hunter asked why there are so many questions in the resolution, why to that level? It was stated that it’s difficult to respond to that number of questions. Provost Hecker agreed saying there was a lack of information in the presentations but this resolution is too much. He asked if senate could think about asking how to start a dialogue, ask the big questions to start. Someone mentioned that if senate is asking the administration to be an advocate they should be listened to when they give advice. President Hunter said it is directed to her and the Provost, need questions framed to start a dialogue.

Vote: Tabled

Motion to Improve the Responsiveness of the Current Course Fee System
Academic Affairs Committee, November 2016
Introduction:
Since around 1999, course fees have been part of the Unified Fee, distributed out to departments in relation to the Student Credit Hours they generate, plus an adjustment figure for those departments with particularly material intensive classes. Each department then divides its allotted funds according to programmatic needs. Unfortunately, however, the current system has little flexibility for departments to meet rising material costs, for the allotted amount per SCH has remained relatively fixed according to the 1999 schedule. To meet rising material costs, departments typically have to draw from other, already scarce, internal sources, or else have students individually buy supplies that would cost less when shared as a class.

Motion:
The Faculty Senate of the University of Maine asks in the spirit of shared governance for the Administration to work with the Senate to develop a more equitable, flexible, and responsive system so that departments can deliver classes more effectively and ultimately, with a goal of a lower cost to students.

Discussion: Provost Hecker said he likes the motion, it will take time to figure out due to its complexity.

Q.  Do fees go to each department/college or the unified fee?
A.  Colleges get a certain amount.

Q.  So is there a guarantee the fee comes back to the department?
A.  No.

Vote: Passed

Adjourned at 4:45 pm

Respectfully submitted,
Grant Miles

Prepared by Kim Junkins