2007-08 Faculty Senate April 7, 2008 Minutes Summary
May 14, 2008
I. Roll – The following senators were absent: Barcelona, Calculator,
Charpentier, Dowd, Greenberg, Hamlin, Huang, Kaen, Lane, Park, and Walsh. Excused
were Afolayan, Bachrach, Berndtson, Dorfsman, Echt, Hartter, Kistler, and Sample.
Guests were Mark Rubinstein, David Cross, and Anne Lawing.
II. Campus Security – Vice President Mark Rubinstein introduced David
Cross who is the director of the Counseling Center and Anne Lawing who is the
senior assistant vice president for Student and Academic Services. Anne Lawing
said that the administration has developed various initiatives designed to
provide better monitoring and services which hopefully can prevent instances
of disruptive behavior on campus. Around the country, in the past three or
four years, many universities have developed behavioral intervention teams.
UNH has an interdisciplinary team of professionals who get together either
weekly or every other week to review information about students who may be
in trouble and who have come to the team’s attention through faculty,
staff or student referral. This provides an opportunity to consider students
with troubling patterns of behavior in order to intervene, hopefully at an
early stage, to prevent incidents from happening. The people on this team are
Anne Lawing, David Cross, Scott Chesney, Judy Spiller, Kathleen Grace Bishop,
and Deputy Chief Paul Dean. Anne Lawing said that she has met with a number
of students to talk about what’s going on, to introduce the “care
team” concept, and to find out what kinds of services the students may
need. She added that what is done now, as compared with the past, is to mandate
for students, if we believe that they should be assessed by our counseling
center, an assessment of between two and four counseling sessions where the
student is given an opportunity to meet with a psychologist. The university
will continue with the care team and provide training. A nationally-known anger
management expert is going to come to campus at the end of May. He has been
working with schools and businesses for years and analyzing behavioral assessments
of people who are angry or disruptive in a variety of settings.
So far, the care team has worked with about a dozen students in the month
it has been operating. The team can serve various types of students including
those who may not have caused serious problems but who seem to be under increasing
stress. In addition, a student with any mental illness or disability can register
with the student disability services office. Anne Lawing said that faculty,
who identify troubled students in class, may contact department chairs, associate
deans or any member of the care team for follow-up; and then that group will
get back to the concerned faculty member. She said that internet or email harassment
concerns can also be brought to the care team and that there are a variety
of ways that the team can consult and evaluate the emails and decide what the
best course of action is.
David Cross said that he provides a program which is about an hour in length,
on identifying students at risk for suicide and homicide, looking at signs
and symptoms to be aware of and at the resources on campus which are available
24 hours a day and 7 days a week throughout the whole year. A senator said
that, considering confidentiality issues and a possibility of violence or other
disruption, at what point does the university let other faculty members know?
Anne Lawing replied that FERPA is apparently being expanded to allow us to
communicate more readily with one another and with parents or other significant
others if there are issues around health or safety. She said that we may be
given more leeway if we need information in order to perform our jobs, in order
to teach in the classroom or carry out our responsibilities. Faculty should
tell a member of the care team and let them evaluate the situation and develop
an action plan. The health and safety exceptions in FERPA give us the ability
to communicate with anyone whom we perceive to have a legitimate interest in
knowing the information. The university must report to the community if an
incident represents an ongoing, serious and continuing threat to the community.
She said that, if we think that there is going to be a risk to anyone in our
community, we will do an intervention.
Last semester the university acquired a service which can send text messages
to anyone who is a subscriber of the service; and for Clery Act notifications,
that is one way to get information out about an issue on campus. Currently
only about 6000 of the 22,000 people who could subscribe to this service have
done so. A senator asked whether there is some way of differentiating the announcements
that are of high importance from those about run-of-the mill disruptive behavior.
The Clery Act requires notification of certain crimes, but “alert fatigue” could
develop. A senator said that the only twenty four-hour number is 911 but that
there are people who are reluctant to call 911 and engage the police in something
that may be a mental health issue. If a matter is urgent, 911 is the number
to call. The cards distributed earlier give a couple of additional numbers
including the counseling center, for people who do not want to use 911. The
goal of the care team is to identify a situation as it is starting to emerge
and to reach out to students and assist them before they reach a crisis point.
A senator asked what similar support system exists for faculty. Mark Rubinstein
replied that the university has the Employee Assistance Program. David Cross
added that the Counseling Center can serve both faculty and students and is
happy to consult with faculty and staff and do some strategizing for interventions,
using the Employee Assistance Program’s basic structure.
III. Remarks by and questions to the chair – The senate chair said that,
after the contract was negotiated, he sent an email to the senate committee
chairs asking them to convene the committees, in order to rank the charges
by importance and then figure out which might be done by the end of the semester.
So please look over your charges and take a look at what can be done. In addition,
every ten years, the university is accredited by NEASC; and every five years,
during the fifth year of the ten year cycle, the university writes a report.
A university committee is now in the middle of writing that report for distribution
to NEASC this summer. That report should go to the senate committees on academic
affairs, research and public service, and student affairs for their review
on the twenty eighth of April, so that they can give recommendations to the
senate. Then in the final senate meeting the senate can look at the report,
discuss it, and then vote on whether to ratify it. Also, the university system
is going to implement a background check policy this summer. Documents have
been passed to the senate’s Academic Affairs and Professional Standards
Committees, for them to look over these documents and generate a response to
our administrators including Vice President Dick Cannon. Depending on what
the committees find, the senate may or may not have a discussion about these
background checks.
The initial background-check documents from the university system last fall
indicated that, any time faculty are hired or promoted, there would be background
checks, of a type depending on what security level that person would have.
This policy would include the hiring of graduate assistants and is about whether
or not there was due diligence to ascertain if the person has reasonable potential
for harm to a third party. A senator suggested that the university would then
open itself to lawsuits, from people who were not hired because they had committed
a minor infraction many years ago. There would be lots of gray areas which
would raise really difficult decisions. A senator asked if this matter might
be a faculty union issue, especial regarding faculty promotion, as the new
policy might be considered a change of established working conditions. The
senate chair said that he has indicated to administrators that they should
be sure to bring the AAUP on board to discuss this but that he does not know
if the administration has actually made contact. A professor said that, before
the senate takes this on, it would be good to clarify the situation regarding
whose responsibility this falls under, because if this is about working conditions
that concern the bargaining unit, then the senate should not pick this up.
However, hiring graduate students is clearly not an AAUP issue. The senate
chair asked Curt Givan, who is a member of the AAUP executive committee, to
let him know what the AAUP’s position is on this matter; and the senate
chair will send Curt the pertinent documents.
The senators discussed whether the background checks would be used for nearly
all faculty upon promotion or not and added that the cost could be substantial.
The senate chair said that the two senate committees will review the documents,
gather information, and decide what they think the most effective response
would be. A senator said that safety-sensitive positions would trigger deeper
screening and perhaps drug testing, but what is a safety-sensitive position?
Another senator expressed concern that, because of past racism, minorities
may be more likely to have criminal records and thus be unfairly penalized
as a result of background checks.
The senate chair said that recently the Central Budget Committee looked at
the financial forecast for the university and that, for FY09, UNH is now projecting
about a 1.5 percent deficit, which is about four or five million dollars. The
senate chair said that the president is considering forming a task force or
committee with lots of senate involvement, in order to look at this issue and
see what can be done to mitigate the problem. The senate chair and vice chair
have also had discussions with the president regarding a retreat to discuss
shared governance. The Agenda Committee thought that it would be good to have
a couple of senators join in that discussion to make it a little broader. So
any senator, who is interested in joining a retreat with some principle administrators,
the Agenda Committee and perhaps a few other individuals to talk about shared
governance, could send the senate chair an email expressing that interest.
If there are many who want to join in, the Agenda Committee would select one
or two to participate. A senator stated that the retreat invitees should include
the chair of each senate standing committee.
IV. Minutes – The minutes of the last senate meeting were approved,
with a change in the last sentence of item III to state that the “presidential
chairs will entail $15,000 per year from the President’s Excellence Fund
for ten years, renewable” and with a change in the first sentence of
item II to indicate that President Huddleston is a “former president
of an academic or university senate”.
V. Motion regarding work-to-rule – David Richman moved and another senator
seconded the following motion.
Pending ratification of the contract between the UNH chapter of AAUP and the
University System of New Hampshire, the Faculty Senate will act in a timely
manner upon all business that comes before it. We will regularly invite the
president, the provost, and other administrators to address the full senate
and its committees; and we will consider all requests from administrators,
students, and staff to address the Faculty Senate and its committees. Should
the contract not be ratified, we will reconsider this matter.
The motion presenter said that essentially the senate would be going back
to business as usual when faculty are not on work to rule. After discussion
and acceptance of a friendly amendment, the motion was changed to the following.
Upon ratification of the contract between the UNH chapter of AAUP and the
University System of New Hampshire, the Faculty Senate will act in a timely
manner upon all business that comes before it. We will regularly invite the
president, the provost, and other administrators to address the full senate
and its committees; and we will consider all requests from administrators,
students, and staff to address the Faculty Senate and its committees.
A senator said that historically, as soon as the system office prints up the
new contract, it is made available on reserve in the library so that faculty,
before they vote, can review what they will be voting on. He added that he
has not yet heard that the document has finally been delivered and that he
hopes it will be this week and that the voting will be done by the twenty-first
of this month. The motion introduced by David Richman passed unanimously.
VI. Tabled motion on shared governance – On behalf of the Agenda Committee,
David Richman moved that the shared governance motion, which was originally
proposed in the 2/11/08 Faculty Senate and subsequently tabled a number of
times, be withdrawn. The motion to withdraw was approved.
VII. Document on shared governance – The Agenda Committee had presented
to the senate on 2/25/08 a draft of a document on shared governance and had
revised the draft, after discussion with the senate on that date and on 3/10/08.
During the retreat on shared governance, the plan is to consider this document
and also some writings by administrators. The retreat would have a facilitator;
and the group would spend the day hammering though the issues raised by the
different documents, with the goal of ending up with a single concrete document
that the administration would have agreed to and that would come back to the
senate in the fall for ratification. Some senators indicated that the situation
has recently changed and that the senate’s document may therefore need
modification. Other senators said that the concerns in the document go back
for years and need to be addressed even though a new faculty contract has been
negotiated.
A senator said that, at the senate meeting on 3/24/08, the president alluded
to decisions that would not need the Faculty Senate, with respect to the auxiliaries;
but the senator said that one of several issues of shared governance with the
auxiliaries has to do with getting rid of the vans used by faculty for academic
field trips. The senator added that another such issue that he was very concerned
about, after having been on the graduate council for a number of terms, is
that the council had worked really hard to hammer out a deal so that there
would be graduate student housing for married couples on this campus; but the
auxiliary said that did not fit their finances and refused to do it that way.
Such decisions do impact the quality of the academic programs, and so the senator
said that faculty and the administration need to remind the auxiliaries that
they also need to support the academic mission. A senator added that another
issue where the administration made financial decisions which had huge effects
on academic programs was the change in funding of the study abroad programs.
The senate chair suggested that the shared governance document should give
particular examples where shared governance has worked and has not worked,
so that everybody at the retreat has concrete examples and so that the various
groups could look through their own histories and develop data so that we can
compare the views on something that did not work and thus figure out the problem.
He added that perhaps the university could form a committee to discuss the
value of having an arrangement within RCM, where an auxiliary might not make
a profit, if the service that auxiliary is providing is worth supplementing.
In response to a question, the senate chair said that a good example of where
shared governance worked well was the American Sign Language issue. A task
force was put together; a report was developed; the senate’s Academic
Affairs Committee got the report and talked with the departments; and the matter
was worked out as a viable compromise. He said that this enhanced the ASL program
a great deal, and departments were able to choose whether or not they wanted
to participate in ASL as a foreign language and under what conditions. A senator
said that another example of positive shared governance is the current Liberal
Arts dean search. Faculty were not happy with the initial composition of the
chairs of that committee, and the composition of the chairs was changed. In
addition, the senate’s Agenda Committee had a chance to talk to all of
the candidates. He added that now, when the search committee makes its recommendations,
if those recommendations are accepted, then shared governance will have worked.
Shared governance should be an automatic thing and the way the university does
its business.
Another senator said that the Discovery Program is an example of an exercise
in shared governance, which will involve the allocation of resources and the
potential implementation of a program that was initiated by the faculty and
where decisions are supposed to be made by the faculty. There are some issues
in that regard which are going to end up on the senate’s agenda soon;
and some concerns are being expressed by members of the faculty, who have been
very much involved in that process. The senate chair said that the Discovery
Program will be considered by senate committees this fall; and then the matter
will be brought to the senate. Also on the senate’s docket next year
will be considering the academic plan, which should address the central mission
of the university.
VIII. Adjournment – The meeting was adjourned.
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