T H E S E N A T E R E C O R D
Volume 51—–December 5, 2017—–Number 3
The Senate Record is the official publication of the University Faculty Senate of The Pennsylvania State University, as provided for in Article I, Section 9 of the Standing Rules of the Senate, and contained in the Constitution, Bylaws, and Standing Rules of the University Faculty Senate, The Pennsylvania State University.
The publication is issued by the Senate Office, 101 Kern Graduate Building, University Park, PA 16802 (telephone 814-863-0221). The Senate Record is on file in the University Archives and is posted online at http://www.senate.psu.edu/senators under “Publications.”
Except for items specified in the applicable Standing Rules, decisions on the responsibility for inclusion of matters in the publication are those of the Chair of the University Faculty Senate.
When existing communication channels seem insufficient, senators are encouraged to submit brief letters relevant to the Senate’s function as a legislative, advisory and forensic body to the Chair for possible inclusion in The Senate Record.
Reports that have appeared in the Agenda for the meeting are not included in The Senate Record unless they have been changed substantially during the meeting, or are considered to be of major importance. Remarks and discussions are abbreviated in most instances. Every Senate meeting is webcast via MediaSite. All Senate meetings are digitally audio recorded and on file in the Senate office. Transcriptions of portions of the Senate meeting are available upon request.
Individuals with questions may contact Dr. Dawn Blasko, Executive Director, Office of the University Faculty Senate.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FINAL AGENDA FOR DECEMBER 5, 2017
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- MINUTES OF THE PRECEDING MEETING Minutes of the October 17, 2017, Meeting in The Senate Record 51:2
- COMMUNICATIONS TO THE SENATE
Senate Curriculum Report of November 14, 2017
http://senate.psu.edu/curriculum/senate-curriculum-reports/ - REPORT OF SENATE COUNCIL – Meeting of November 14, 2017
- ANNOUNCEMENTS BY THE CHAIR
- COMMENTS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY
- COMMENTS BY THE EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AND PROVOST
SPECIAL INFORMATIONAL REPORT
Senate Committee on University Planning
Progress on Implementation of the University’s Strategic Plan - FORENSIC BUSINESS
- UNFINISHED BUSINESS
Committees and Rules
Revisions to Bylaws: Article I-Officers, Section 1 - LEGISLATIVE REPORTS
Admissions, Records, Scheduling, and Student Aid
Updating Language on Conditionally Enrolled Students Changes to Senate Policies: 02-50; 02-80; 05-80; 05-81; 10-00;
12-00; 12-30; 12-70; 32-30; 54-50; and 67-10
Committees and Rules
Revisions to Bylaws: Article II-Membership, Section 5(c)
Revision of Constitution; Article I- Functions, Section 1
Senate Committee on Undergraduate Education
Changes to Senate Policy 42-27, Class Attendance - ADVISORY/CONSULTATIVE REPORTS
Senate Committees on Faculty Affairs and Intra-University Relations
Revision of AC-21 Definition of Academic Ranks – Standing-Non-Tenure-line Faculty
Revision of AC-21 Definition of Academic Ranks – Provision of Multi-Year Contracts - INFORMATIONAL REPORTS
Senate Committee on Admissions, Records, Scheduling, and Student Aid
Update on Bulletins
Senate Committee on Faculty Benefits and Joint Committee on Insurance and Benefits
2016-2017 Annual Report on the Status of Benefit Changes*
Senate Committee on Libraries, Information Systems, and Technology
Office 365 Email and Calendar
Senate Council
Penn State Strategic Communications
Senate Committee on University Planning
Biennial Development and Alumni Relations Report - NEW LEGISLATIVE BUSINESS
- COMMENTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE GOOD OF THE UNIVERSITY
- ADJOURNMENT
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The University Faculty Senate met on Tuesday, December 5, 2017 at 1:30 p.m. in room 112 Kern Graduate building with Matthew Woessner, Chair, presiding.
Chair Woessner: Good afternoon, everyone. The Senate will come to order. We have a very enthusiastic crowd this afternoon. We have a busy agenda, so we’re going to move as briskly as possible to get you out of here at a reasonable hour.
MINUTES OF THE PRECEDING MEETING
Chair Woessner: The minutes of a proceeding meeting– October 17th, 2017, Senate records providing a full transcript of the proceedings were sent to the University archives and is posted on the Faculty Senate website. Are there any corrections or additions to the minutes? I heard somebody approve, but we want to make sure there’s no corrections. OK. Hearing no concerns, no objections. Can I hear a motion to approve?
Unidentified Senator: Second.
Chair Woessner: OK. All in favor of accepting the minutes, please say, aye.
All Senators: Aye.
Chair Woessner: All opposed? Ayes have it. The motion carries. The minutes of the October 17th meeting have been approved.
COMMUNICATIONS TO THE SENATE
Chair Woessner: Communications to the Senate. The Senate Council report for November 14th, 2017, is posted on the University Faculty Senate website.
REPORT OF SENATE COUNCIL
Chair Woessner: Report Senate Council. Minutes of the November 14th, 2017, Senate Council Meeting can be found at the end of your agenda. Included in the minutes are topics that were discussed by the Faculty Advisory Committee to the President on November 14th.
ANNOUNCEMENTS BY THE CHAIR
Chair Woessner: Announcements by the Chair. We would like to welcome two new members of our Faculty Senate staff; Kathe Craig and Joy Robertson. Kathe will be working with Anna on student petition systems, and Joy will be working with Allison and Kadi on curricular processes. So welcome to you both.
[APPLAUSE]
Chair Woessner: Due to the limited wireless bandwidth in the auditorium, I ask that attendees limit their smartphones, tablets, and so on so that the critical functions of Mediasite and PollEverywhere have sufficient wireless service for the meeting. Please do not use video streaming during the meeting because of the large amount of bandwidth it requires. Thank you for your consideration.
All centers using Mediasite, please use the ‘Ask a Question’ box to send a message that you have successfully connected to the live feed so that we’re able to add your name to the attendance list. As a reminder, senators joining today by Mediasite are using the voting system at PollEverywhere.com/FacultySenate. Instructions for using this poll system are posted on the Senate website. Please log in now.
The President has accepted two Advisory and Consultative Reports that were approved at the meeting on October 17th, The Pennsylvania State University Smoke-Free Task Force Report and Implementation Plan and the endorsement of the Deferred Rush for Fraternities and Sororities. The President’s response letters will be posted on the agenda, in their respective sections of the Senate meeting, where the records were approved by the Senate.
The Senate Officers will visit the following units—Altoona, January 11th, Fayette, January 11th, Hazleton, January 24th, Penn College, January 10th, Schuylkill, January 24th, Wilkes-Barre, January 29th, and Worthington-Scranton, January 29th.
Unidentified Senator: Scranton is next year.
Chair Woessner: OK. We’ll work on that. The visits are in the process of being scheduled for Dickinson Law, Penn State Law, College of Medicine, DUS, Education, Engineering, Earth and Mineral Sciences, and the Graduate School. Senators in these units are asked to encourage their colleagues and students to participate in these informational gathering sessions.
In the 2018 Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration Week activities will include a day of service on Monday, January 15th, from 8:30 to 4:30 in Alumni Hall of the HUB-Robeson Center. A memorial banquet will be held on Monday, January 15th, beginning at 6:30 PM. A community showcase will be held on Thursday, January 18th, from 5:30 to 7:00 PM in the HUB-Robeson Center. Finally, an evening celebration on Friday, January 19th, from 6:00 to 8:00 PM in the Schwab Auditorium. I hope the Senators will take the opportunity to participate in these events.
Soon, each unit will be contacted by the Senate office regarding elections for senators for next year. If your unit is electing one or more senators, please help identify worthy candidates for election. As you know, the Senate elections must be contested, and it is important that all units have alternates available should a vacancy arise during the year. I’m pleased to report that the 2017 meeting of the Big 10 Faculty Governance Conference, held at Penn State on October 26th, 27th, and 28th was a great success. And thanks to the hard work of Director, Dawn Blasko, Patti Hoppes, Paula Brown, and all of the Senate staff for a very successful meeting.
Senate leaders from twelve of the Big 10 universities gathered to discuss important topics, including faculty-administrative relations, free speech, and academic freedom. And perhaps the highlight of the conference was an extended discussion of the Senate practices concerning the structure and operation of three distinct shared governance models, at Penn State, Ohio State, and Rutgers. Admittedly, a ninety-minute discussion on governance structure might sound dull, but as a political scientist who studies the representative institutions in academia, it was enlightening. For every school’s representative structure, culture, and mission is different.
All the Big 10 schools, in fact all the schools throughout the nation, face the same basic challenges as they operate their senates. First, with a limited grant of authority, where the administration exercises control over budgets, regulation, and disciplinary powers, how can faculty exercise any real influence in the policy-making process? Second, given the all-too-human temptation for executives to minimize dissent or work to consolidate political power, how can senates maintain their influence without sparking needless conflict with the administration? And finally, how can the senates convince university stakeholders that, despite its complexity and apparent inefficiency, the traditions of shared governance are vital to the institution’s strength and vitality?
Perhaps, it’s my disciplinary bias that, even with respect to conflicts of power within the academy, I look to the American founding fathers for inspiration. The authors of the Constitution distrusted the consolidation of power for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which was the belief that, by engaging in an open debate, a spirited opposition can ensure that the executive does not become insular, complacent, or closed off to new ideas. And while the consideration of alternative perspectives sometimes slows or even frustrates the ambitions of executives, the process tends to generate much needed support for the institutional policies and promote dialogue and compromise.
For more than a century, great universities have relied upon senates to provide an alternative perspective on policy making with administrators offering an independent perspective. However, senates cannot act effectively at the university unless its members feel free to stake out positions that are sometimes at a variance with those espoused by the administration or even the board of trustees. Conscious of how rules shape institutional decision making, the Committee on Committees and Rules has been very busy looking at small changes in Senate procedures that permit us to operate more autonomously, but operating autonomously is not enough. As the sentinels who watch over Penn State’s academic mission, our power is rooted in our ability to be persuasive, to argue for the moral right, and as importantly, to make the case that our objectives are practical and achievable.
In my studies of faculty senates, I’ve come across many powerful institutions that have, over time, become marginalized, leaving faculty with no effective voice. To preserve Penn State’s status as one of America’s great universities, the Senate has a responsibility to continue to exert influence on the policy-making process by providing administration with good counsel. And that we trust that the administration values our perspective and will do what it can to accommodate our informed judgment. In our discussions with the Senate leaders throughout the Big 10, it was clear that resisting centralization or the corporate model of higher education is an ongoing challenge. However, it was an ongoing challenge when the Senate was found ninety-seven years ago.
Maintaining a faculty voice in an institution is a continual struggle but one that strengthens the University. Recognizing how much we sacrifice to be part of the University Senate, it’s helpful occasionally to reflect on the contributions that we make. Nearly halfway through our academic year, I wish to thank all of you for the important work that you have done. The University Faculty Senate remains an important force because of your vigilance. Thank you.
COMMENTS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY
Chair Woessner: Comments by the President of the University. I now call on President Barron to provide his comments. President Barron.
Eric Barron, University President: Well, thank you, and I know your agenda is full, and I’ll see if I can just hit maybe one of the more important topics of the day which is tax reform. I wanted to make sure that you knew how busy and how active we have been in addressing the issues. We’ve gone through every single tax issue that we think would influence the University and mapped out what the impact might be; and then that guided our efforts through Government Affairs to focus on our Pennsylvania delegation to seek support.
Just to give you an example, Senator Toomey is deeply involved in the Senate portion of this being on Finance. And many of you may have seen him on the floor of the Senate arguing the case for some of the things. And from that viewpoint, it’s very fast moving. From that viewpoint. I had a conversation with him, and the conversation was all about Penn State’s priorities in this space.
In the House Bill there are three elements that I think have a profound impact on students, and in our mind, those have no business in the tax bill. So the first is to tax student loan interest, and of course, we already realize that student loans are a burden. We already realize that there is a limitation for many individuals, typically if they’re financially disadvantaged, to go to college. Yet, we know that the impact on them for the rest of their lives is really extremely large. So the notion of now taxing the interest, I think, would have people turn away and decide this really isn’t worth it.
The second is to tax the salaries of graduate students for Penn State. That could turn out to be a small number or as high as $4,000 dollars with an average for the institution of $2,000 dollars. It is a burden for individual grad students. In my mind, that’s also something that is just not acceptable, and many people are discussing whether this would have graduate students change their minds and decide this was too expensive. And the third was to tax employee tuition benefits.
So Penn State gives for its employees a significant discount in tuition if you have your children come to Penn State. I would tell you that there are many people out there in the legislature who see this as a perk for faculty. But in fact, the thing we also have to stress is that we have people working at OPP at a relatively low wage, maybe even the night shift, who are taking these jobs and working here because they know their kids can get a world class education at a very reasonable cost. So this is the third element of I think where the taxation in the House Bill has a profoundly negative impact on students.
And so our highest priority, and the way I describe this, our highest priority and working with the Senate is we cannot let those provisions to make it into the bill that comes out at conference. Our senators know this is our very highest priority. They get it, and I see also significant support from other people in the House in the state of Pennsylvania.
Our second highest priority is the focus on philanthropy. Because if we double the standard deduction, and you take away many people that are itemizing, they may no longer feel the urge to write that check for $100 dollars or $300 dollars that they can take off the top, in terms of their taxes. We think this is going to have a significant impact on giving. We have many, many donors that give annually less than $1,000 dollars. It adds up to be millions of dollars for the University.
This one is a tough sell because of the viewpoint that this tax bill will promote economic growth higher salaries and therefore a population more likely to give. And my description of this is, this one I have in my hand. This one I don’t know whether it will be true. I’m going for the one that I have in my hand, knowing that thousands of people write these small checks to Penn State every year. But I believe, given the fact that a House and Senate both are looking at this, that I think this one will become law. And we will have an experiment to see whether or not it changes. It changes giving at Penn State for athletics, for academics, for everything it is that we do. So we will find out. We’re one of those institutions that has a lot of donors that give small amounts that add up to big numbers.
The third thing on the list, in my view, was my just explaining what happens when you have the University pay a 20 percent tax on the five highest salaries at Penn State University, what that would cost. And I did not argue that this was incredibly important to this institution, and I could argue every single one of these were important to the institution. But my feeling is ‘students first’. Do not make it more expensive for them to go to college, and philanthropy is second, and the other things I want the legislatures to know. So top five salaries, over a million dollars. And so I just said, we just want you to know, that this is one coach and four doctors. And they will pick up the surcharge for which the University will have to pay the tax. OK. Got it. All right, but this is interesting signal. I don’t see there’s a lot– I don’t see this coming up on a high level, where we can fight about that.
There was, in a Senate bill at the beginning, a tax related to the use of your logo and mark for unrelated business income. So if we’re marketing our marks and letting someone use them in making income, this was a few million dollars of income from the University that would be taxed. It’s not a huge number. I just explained what this would be. It is no longer in the Senate bill, may pop back in there, but right now it’s not there.
The next is that if I’m giving to athletics and generating points and using those points to get a good seat in the stadium, that that’s actually receiving something, and those should be taxed. And the notion here is that if I’m doing something for athletics, it’s hard to see that this should be something that should be tax free, given that athletics is not the primary business of the University. It’s very hard for the universities to say no. This is so fundamental to the success of the University. You cannot tax these proceeds. So we said, look, this is what’s going to happen to the University. This is what it will cost us, but not a fight.
I said Senate multiple times, and that’s because the Senate margin here is razor thin. And so our expectation is that it will go to conference, the house will not just support the Senate bill. That’s a hard thing for them to do, after they worked hard on their bill. But, what comes out of conference is very likely to be very close to the Senate, and that’s because the margins are so thin that they can’t afford to make any large changes to it and expected to pass.
We believe that our delegation is going to fight to protect the student side of this equation. And we believe that we will probably end up with an experiment on philanthropy, because of the new rules. And that the others, if they are in both House and Senate, will happen. So I don’t know whether there are questions on that particular topic. I’m happy to take them. I’m also happy to take any other topic you might want my thoughts on.
Chair Woessner: Very good. Please wait for the microphone and remember to announce your name and your location. Any questions for President Barron? I see one back there.
Jake Springer, College of Education: Jake Springer, College of Education. Is there anything that you could tell the student government to put out any things that students can do to help Penn State in this cause? Is it just as simple as emailing your congressman, or is there anything else that we can let the student body know?
Eric Barron: Yes. So Government Affairs will activate this by request. I think they’re feeling has been– and of course, people’s opinions, to have them weigh in is important– but I think the sense is that this is moving very, very quickly. It’s almost certainly going to happen before the holidays. It’s just viewed as too important for the Republican Party and for the President.
And so what we’re trying to do, very actively working with all of our legislators, is to describe the impact. And I think we’re doing well in doing that, realizing that when you say, “Well, I’m not sure why you’d want to garner this tax.” You pick up a football coach and four chairs of medical departments at Penn State Health. And the answer is, its $2.7 billion dollars. The answer is that’s $4.2 billion dollars. Every billion counts, and so we don’t see that there’s a lot of room to move those things. And I’ll be surprised if the student part of this ends up on this list, because we’re all working so incredibly hard not to have any greater burden on students, any student, if we can help it.
Chair Woessner: Another question.
Kevin Reuning: Hi. Kevin Reuning, I’m a Graduate Assistant here. Just to ask a clarification, you said that the House GOP Bill would tax graduate salaries. I already pay taxes on my graduate salaries. It would actually tax tuition waivers.
Eric Barron: Tuition waivers, yes.
Kevin Reuning: Something that isn’t really close to being salary.
Eric Barron: Yeah.
Kevin Reuning: OK.
Eric Barron: I think it taxes just about everything that you get as a benefit will now be taxed.
Chair Woessner: Other questions? OK. Very good.
Eric Barron: OK.
Chair Woessner: Thank you, President Barron.
Eric Barron: Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
COMMENTS BY THE EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AND PROVOST
Chair Woessner: Section F, Comments by the Executive Vice president and Provost the University. Next line, please recognize Provost Jones who will present an informational sponsored report from University Planning on the progress and implementation of the University’s Strategic Plan that appears as Appendix C in your agenda. Provost Jones.
Nicholas Jones, Executive Vice president and Provost the University: Thank you very much. Before I begin, I did ask for the Chair’s concurrence with just saying a few words about Work Lion, the new HR payroll system. I think most of you are aware, should be aware, that we are rolling this out December 10th, so basically this weekend. And there’s a few things that I wanted to just highlight for you.
These are areas where, as you engage with Work Lion for the first time, there may be some things that get your attention. So I just wanted to go through a few of those briefly in-advance of the Strategic Plan presentation. So again, Sunday, December 10th, 2017, is when Work Lion, based on Workday, will be rolling out. The first time you will log into Workday, it may take a little bit longer. The system may feel a little sluggish to you, then will be typical as the system for their first time matches people with their roles and other information from our current system. So don’t be too concerned about any lag time that you experience in that first log-in or two while the system does those one-time processes.
Faculty titles will all be imported into Work Lion from the current IBIS information. Some of these titles may be abbreviated or truncated due to system limitations, prior system limitations, but note that faculty titles pulled from IBIS will not be front-facing. They will not populate any websites, for example, so there is no need to concern, and there will be opportunities for those to be adjusted as we move forward. The Workday team will reach out to HR strategic partners in February and March of 2018 to collect updated titles for faculty and ensure that they are loaded correctly into Workday.
Faculty will not log hours worked or time off requests in Work Lion unless they are part of the Applied Research Lab or the University Libraries. Faculty who supervise employees are designated in Workday as managers. That’s the term that is used in Workday and will have additional responsibilities such as approving time worked and time off submissions. If needed, faculty can have a timekeeper assigned to approve those time off submissions. They can simply do this by visiting WorkLion.psu.edu, on or after December 10th, clicking Manager Tools and then clicking Request Workday Security Role.
In Workday, a manager is defined as anyone who supervises one or more direct reports, whether that be a staff person, another faculty member, a graduate assistant, or a part-time student employee. All managers can view compensation data for their direct reports based on a decision from the Executive Steering Committee, which oversaw the implementation of Workday. If they manage full-time staff, they will also use Workday for performance reviews beginning in spring of 2018.
Speaking of payroll and tax, December paychecks and 2017 W2’s will be issued through IBIS, the existing system. The first paychecks issued through the new system will be employees on the bi-weekly payroll schedule. For employees on the bi-weekly payroll schedule will be on January 5th, 2018, and for employees on the monthly payroll, January 31st, 2018. Employees who are paid bi-weekly, such as technical service and wage payroll employees, will begin tracking time in Work Lion on December 10th. Graduate assistants will receive their stipends through Work Lion, but they will not log time worked or request time off in the new system. Period.
More about imported data. Data from Penn State’s legacy system was converted into Workday and may result in faculty seeing data that was not previously visible to them, such as business title. Data can be updated through Employee Self-Service Activities or by calling the HR Shared Services Center. Benefit elections, dependence, and direct deposit accounts will all transfer into Work Lion. Beneficiaries will still be maintained on previously submitted paper forms, until employees update their beneficiary’s information in Workday, at which point that will be the most recent record of beneficiaries.
All employees and graduate assistants will receive a Go-Live checklist for use in verifying their information in Workday is accurate, such as legal and preferred name, beneficiary information, emergency contacts, and other items. That’s all I really had to share with you. I will just comment that I’ve been asked a number of times about the need to do some training for the new system. There are a couple of modules that for people who are interested, you can certainly do it. The new system is quite intuitive. So I don’t think it’s absolutely essential that you do this, but there are a couple of modules that are available to give you an overview of the system and a basic roadmap. As of December 1, twenty percent of all of our employees, faculty, and staff have registered and conducted some level of training, at least one training module. I drilled in a little bit deeper, six percent of our faculty have done one of the training modules. So for those of you who are a little bit nervous about the transition to Workday, I do encourage you to just go to the site and click on the training modules. They’re very simple and very short just to get that overview if you have some concerns. Maybe I’ll just pause for a second to see if there are any questions, but it’s Sunday, December 10th.
Richard Singer, Altoona: Singer, Altoona. I asked this question before, and they weren’t sure at the time. But what will happen to the historical data that’s in IBIS, such as the last year’s paychecks for those of us who use them for tax purposes and things like that?
Nicholas Jones: All that data will be stored and archived. I’m not sure about the exact URL that I can point you to access, but none of historical data will be deleted. Work Lion will become the system of record, rather than IBIS, but we will still be able to make information, historical information available as needed.
Chair Woessner: Other questions? OK.
Nicholas Jones: I should point out, too, that in the transfer of data, for about 6,000 or 7,000– I forget exactly what the number was– faculty members, there was one new faculty member who popped up in Workday who was not accounted for in IBIS. So if that’s one of you, please let me know at the end of the meeting. OK, so getting to my main subject, which is an update on the implementation of the Strategic Plan, and I welcome the opportunity to do this. I’ll begin by providing an overview of the planning process and reviewing some key points with you. Then, we’ll have time for you to offer feedback, ask questions about the multi-year plan implementation process, and the proposals and initiatives that are integral to it.
SPECIAL INFORMATIONAL REPORT
Senate Committee on University Planning
Progress on Implementation of the University’s Strategic Plan
Nicholas Jones: As you know, Penn State operates on approximately a five-year strategic planning cycle with three primary components– integrated planning, unit-level planning, and university-level planning. Contributions from stakeholders across the University, including faculty, of course, were integral to developing our plan for 2016 through 2020, which is titled “Our Commitment to Impact.” The written plan and related information are published online at Strategicplan.psu.edu.
During its meeting in February of 2016, the Board of Trustees gave its concurrence to the Strategic Plan which the Committee on Governance and Long-Range Planning had approved the previous month. So, after a broad and inclusive two-year process, we published the Strategic Plan which identified Penn State’s goals at a macro level and established a firm foundation for their pursuit in the coming years. It was based on the Strategic Plans developed in 48 academic and administrative units throughout the University.
At the time I said, the Strategic Plan is our collective vision of how to chart Penn State’s continued success over the next few years. It is not only a roadmap for the future of the University but the embodiment of Penn State’s mission, vision, and values that have helped make us a leading global institution. Now, nearly two years after publishing the plan, we are well into the implementation phase of the five-year cycle. So that’s what I’ll be covering today. As a reminder, the plan and its implementation structure are built around three core elements– the plan’s foundations, its thematic priorities, and the supporting elements.
You may recall seeing this chart, which shows the layered committee structure we’ve built to implement our plan centered on those three core elements. The Oversight Committee, shown at the top, oversees the work of eight executive committees and their supporting steering committees. Each steering and executive committee is tasked with focusing on a specific thematic priority or supporting element from the plan. The foundational areas, shown on the left side of the chart, do not have a separate committee structure, but they do have representatives on each steering committee.
The committees were set up this way to ensure that the initiatives developed for the thematic priorities and supporting elements would incorporate aspects of the foundational areas. The steering committees are the driving forces behind the Strategic Plan implementation. They are made up of faculty, staff, students, and administrators. Each steering committee is charged with recommending goals, initiatives, and metrics to support them to their respective executive committees.
The executive committees are made up of unit leaders from across the University. Their job is to direct and oversee the work of the steering committees, to prioritize their recommendations, and to identify resources to support those initiatives. The executive committees report to the Oversight Committee, which I chair. This group is ultimately responsible for decision making relative to the plan and for regular progress reporting to the Faculty Senate, as well as to President Barron, the Board of Trustees, and the broader University community. A key role of this committee is to integrate the work across all the other committees, facilitating a holistic approach to plan implementation.
As you can see, committee members come from all parts of the University and are chosen for their talents in specific areas of expertise. The membership reflects the shared governance model under which Penn State operates. We have 56 members of the faculty, 38 executives, including me, dean, vice presidents and vice provosts, 83 administrators, 31 staff members, 29 academic administrators, 3 students, and 1 member of the Board of Trustees. We are trying to attract more students to participate in the planned implementation process, as they were heavily involved in the Strategic Plan development. So if you know a student, undergraduate and graduate, full or part-time, you think could contribute, let me know or reach out by email to StrategicPlan@psu.edu.
I mentioned the importance of our faculty in developing and supporting the Strategic Plan, and that extends to planned implementation as well. As you can see, several members of the Faculty Senate are serving as volunteers on committees charged with implementing the plan. I am thrilled that so many senators are engaged in this process, and on behalf of the University, I will take this opportunity to thank you for all your service. If you would like to know who is serving on the various committees, in addition to the members of the Faculty Senate, you can find rosters on the Strategic Plan website. Within the committee’s dropdown menu on each website, you can see who is serving on each executive or steering committee focused on a specific thematic priority or supporting element. Just click the appropriate link to see the list.
As we move forward with our implementation efforts, people often ask how unit and University plans are integrated. In our process, unit plans precede the development of the University plan, giving units the freedom to capitalize on their strengths and move nimbly and strategically over time. However, these units do not exist in a vacuum unaffected by University priorities. The unit plans published in 2014 reflect many University priorities, and unit executives regularly report on their processes, including how their approaches and overall progress support the University’s goals. Individual unit’s goals may not connect explicitly to every overarching University goal, but we expect that there will be many points of alignment.
In May of this year, each budget unit was asked to report on its progress towards the goals outlined in its current plan that covers the academic years of 2014-2015 through 2018-2019. Units reported on their progress related to University goals and to their unique specific goals at the unit level. The progress demonstrated across units, including our many colleges and campuses, is difficult to summarize in a few bullets, but there are some common themes and areas of focus. They include the introduction of new majors, new and renovated facilities to meet changing needs, regional collaborations, key faculty hires, new research centers, new co-curricular opportunities, programs to support entrepreneurship among faculty and students, and increased numbers of online educational offerings.
The University plan purposely lags the unit plans by one year, and we are making significant progress too toward the overarching plan goals. The University’s Strategic Plan committees has spent a significant amount of time and effort identifying synergies between University and unit goals, developing methods to support each component of the plan and gathering ideas for strategic initiatives to support their goals through a comprehensive request for proposal process. With the Strategic Plan implementation process well underway, people are engaged across the University. However, one of the most common question I get involves what implementing the plan looks like in real time.
What is actually happening at Penn State that reflects the content of our Strategic Plan and showcases our commitment to executing it? You don’t have to look very hard to answer this question. On any given day, you can read Penn State today or review the plethora of stories on news.PSU.edu to find examples of initiatives and projects related to the plan’s foundations, thematic priorities, and supporting elements. The majority of these projects are not coming out of the committees tasked with implementing the Strategic Plan, and that’s a good thing. The plan is built on existing areas of strength and activity, so we can take Penn State to the next level in these identified areas. So how then are we doing that? Examples abound of initiatives and success stories that show how we are already operationalizing the Strategic Plan across Penn State. Here are just a few of them.
First, the Energy University. Through a comprehensive university-wide approach, additional investment, and deeper collaboration with industry, Penn State is positioning itself to be the go-to institution regarding energy policy and law. In conjunction with this effort, a proposed new Penn State Center for Energy Law and Policy will serve as a hub for systematic interdisciplinary research benefiting the Commonwealth, the nation, and the world. About a week ago, President Barron and I participated in a related conference over at Penn State Law. I left that event excited about the opportunities we have to draw from the disciplinary depth and breadth across Penn State; to explore ways in which we can address important energy law and policy issues. Further, we will have the opportunity to partner with leaders in industry, government, and the environmental community to engage in constructive dialogue and make progress on many energy-related issues.
Another example is “All In.” Our university-wide diversity and inclusion initiative kicked off in October of 2016 with a spectacular multimedia presentation projected onto the front of Old Main here at University Park. That event was also live streamed to the Commonwealth Campuses. Earlier this year, our All In Conference attracted several hundred participants to discuss myriad issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion at Penn State and across American higher education. Meanwhile, you have already heard a good bit about “Invent Penn State.” This popular and highly-impactful initiative connects students, faculty, and community members with resources and opportunities to collaborate, innovate, invest, or grow a business.
We now have innovation hubs open across the Commonwealth, and tomorrow President Barron will be on hand at the grand opening of The Corner, Penn State New Kensington’s entrepreneurial center, located in the heart of downtown. Next semester, we will hold our second annual Invent Penn State Venture an IP conference. The inaugural event attracted hundreds of investors, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and representatives from a variety of startup businesses. Meanwhile, through our global engagement network, we are establishing long-term, worldwide partnerships to leverage complementary strengths and pursue a common strategic vision for higher education and research. Doing this will help us all to address the challenges of our time.
And I’d like to mention “100 and Change.” The MacArthur Foundation competition ultimately will award a grant of $100 million dollars to one proposal designed to help solve a critical global problem. While our proposal was not a finalist in this grant competition, it was an exceptionally good exercise for us. And we made a really profound effort to show how Penn State impacts the world in positive ways, and that collaboration is leading to a host of follow-up opportunities.
Of course, beyond these examples, the University is substantially invested in driving student success and supporting their learning. We are making great strides in this area. For instance, we’ve increased support for student mental health programs through the University Park CEDAR Clinic. Penn State Start-Up Week demonstrates how a strong college program from IST can scale up for the entire University. The student engagement network connects learners with unique curricular and co-curricular experiences and provides faculty and staff with tools to support high-level student engagement.
We have new Commonwealth Campus programs, such as the Arts Administration Community Engagement Capstone projects at Penn State, Behrend. And we are very proud of our Pathways to Success Summer Start program, which lasts for five or six weeks during the summer, prior to a student’s first year at Penn State. Participants who successfully complete their first full year at Penn State are eligible to continue the program in the second summer. During the program, students take classes for credit, receive a $250 per credit scholarship, are guaranteed a job to earn extra money while taking classes, and are paired with peer mentors who assist with their transition to college.
Meanwhile, despite a difficult funding environment, Penn State’s research expenditures continue to rise. A growing number of interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research centers are being proposed and taking root, such as the Center for Security Research and Education and the Center for Arts and Design Pedagogy. In addition, the new 2D Crystal Consortium is a national user facility funded by a four year $17.8 million dollar NSF grant. Countless research projects across the institution tie directly or indirectly to the thematic priorities outlined in the Strategic Plan. These are only a few highlights.
So what about new programs we consider valuable? Well rest assured, they are coming. New strategic initiatives across Penn State may be funded in a variety of ways, including combinations of unit investment, University investment, philanthropy, and grants. We also can make strategic reallocations of funds, unit or central, from underperforming initiatives or programs that have reached the end of their planned life spans.
Our University fundraising campaign identifies three imperatives inspired by the Strategic Plan– open doors, create transformative experiences, and impact the world. For the first time in Penn State’s history, our fundraising campaign is directly tied to the goals of our university-wide strategic plan. University development is working with the Strategic Plan committees to identify philanthropic opportunities to support their initiatives. The campaign success, so far, suggests this is an approach that resonates with donors. We are more than 25 percent of the way toward our goal of $1.6 billion dollars with an increase of 50,000 supporters over the prior year. One financial commitment worth noting, total $30 million dollars, and donated by Donald P. Bellisario, to support our rapidly growing College of Communications that now bears his name.
Earlier I mentioned the request for proposal process, through which our strategic planning committees can receive ideas for initiatives that support the plan, assess their value, and identify funding mechanisms for them. The RFP process is open to current students, faculty, and staff. Submitters are strongly encouraged to work with the appropriate steering committee or committees to develop strong proposals. The rolling submission process will continue through the end of spring 2018, and committee review and award announcements will occur three times a year. You can learn more on the Strategic Plan website at StrategicPlan.psu.edu/RFP.
The first round of submissions, which we called Cycle One, included 64 proposals across the American supporting areas, as you can see broken down here. The number of intriguing proposals made it tough for our committee members to determine which of the many potential initiatives to pursue and fund, but needless to say, that is a good problem to have. I’m getting the warning back there.
We just released a new story, I believe this morning, regarding the ten initiatives that were approved in RFP Cycle One. If you haven’t done so yet, I encourage you to read more about them in the story or on the Strategic Plan website, which now has a page that summarizes the initiatives we are moving forward. They include plans for the creation of an integrated data system solution for health equity, the expansion of sustainable food systems learning across the Commonwealth Campuses, and the launch of an effort supported by the United Nations to create more energy-efficient buildings. As we enter a cycle two of the RFP process, we are getting more questions regarding elements of what we could consider a great proposal. Ultimately, the best ones are transformative in nature or have the potential to be so.
We have compiled some do’s and don’ts that we hope will help people develop even more exceptional proposals. We do want proposals to have a clear and well-explained connection to at least one, and ideally more than one, plan priority. Explicitly incorporate the plans foundations, explicitly, and have the potential to scale up and plan for sustained funding beyond the award period, and finally, involve committed collaborators from multiple units. On the flip side, proposals should not exceed the scale and scope of the funding, so $250,001 dollars, not a good proposal. Seeks strategic initiative dollars where traditional funding sources would be more appropriate, such as research projects with a very narrow focus, and seek to replace funding more appropriately sourced at the unit level.
This is a quick look at our planning timeline. Not much has changed from prior iterations, but note that we expect progress measures to be developed and communicated in June of 2018. So, moving forward, we have a clear call to action; while developing our strategic plan was a university-wide effort, implementing it, is, as well.
I have met with many Penn State leaders, including members of the Faculty Senate to explain what is expected of them throughout the multi-year process. I’m asking key stakeholders on all of our campuses and in all of our colleges, departments, and operating units, to connect our strategies to their day-to-day activities and efforts. I’m asking them to be engaged, accountable, communicative, and receptive to feedback and change. That’s the end. I now welcome any questions or comments you may have. Thank you.
Chair Woessner: Are there questions for Provost Jones, and please stand and wait for the microphone before you give your name and unit. And those Senators attending by Mediasite, if you have a question, please type it into the question box with your name, academic unit, and of course the question. Is there one up here?
Fred Aebli, Worthington-Scranton: Thank you for the presentation. It was excellent. I’m involved in the Invent Penn State initiative at the Scranton campus, and like some of my peers, we’ve been involved in a lot of things. Being nimble is not what we’re really good at right now, and when we look at a lot of these things, you’re asking us to be connected and engaged. But we often find a slow process on the back end, when it comes to risk. And we don’t want to put the University a risk in any way, but every time we take two steps forward, we’re slowed down by risk management.
Understood how that works, but if you can give us advice on how we can weather that. That’s the thing. So when we go down these pipelines, and we’re in the pipeline for a year and a half or two years, and we’re trying to make things happen, several things start to happen. Our collaborators, as you identify up there that are external to us, start to look at us and say, “You just can’t do it.” And that becomes a little bit tiring after a while, but we continue to press through it – but after a while what advice can you give us to continue to press. Are we not knocking on the right doors, or is somebody on your side, within risk management, not understanding this message?
Nicholas Jones: Yeah. That’s a great question. Thank you for asking it. First of all, I would say if you don’t ask, you don’t get. So you have to push the envelope. We will get to where we need to be by taking risks, pushing the envelope, pushing boundaries. Yes, from time to time you will run into speed bumps or roadblocks or bollards or whatever. I can tell you that, at the administrative level, we are committed to ensuring that no unnecessary impediments stand in your way. If there are things that are particularly frustrating in terms of implementing some of your ideas, those need to be pushed up the pole, ultimately, to people like me or Neil Sharkey or even Eric. Because if there are things that we are seeing that really don’t make sense, we’re happy to roll up our sleeves with you and help push some of those aside.
However, with my boss sitting here, I should say that we do have to be respectful and cognizant of true risks to the University, but let’s push that envelope. And it is hard. We’re a big institution. It’s hard to be nimble, but we’ve got to try.
Chair Woessner: Other questions?
Nicholas Jones: Can I just say on the proposals that were funded, you saw from the earlier slide that we were soliciting proposals in the range of $50,000 to $250,000 dollars. They are large enough to facilitate collaboration across multiple units and among different groups of people. They’re not large enough to sustain projects for extended periods of time. So we are looking for good thinking about how these efforts can be sustained. We had, as you saw, 64 requests. We funded ten. So as of yesterday, ten letters went out committing of order $2 million dollars in funding to these projects. We’re on cycle two now, and we’ll do something similar, and there is one more cycle this year. We are very excited by the ideas that we are seeing coming forward, and I’m pretty optimistic that we will continue this program in a similar form next year. So look up the RFP and submit your ideas.
Chair Woessner: Any other questions? Thank you, Provost Jones.
Nicholas Jones: Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
FORENSIC BUSINESS
Chair Woessner: Item G, Forensic Business, none.
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
Chair Woessner: Item H, Unfinished Legislative Business. For those attending in person, we will use clickers for voting today. Senators who have received clickers before entering the auditorium, make sure they work. Raise your hand if you need a clicker or if your clicker is malfunctioning. Those attending by Mediasite use polleverywhere.com/facultysenate.
We have one unfinished business with the Committee on Committees and Rules, Revisions to Bylaws, Article I, Officers, Section I. It was introduced at the October meeting. Its proposed change in the Bylaws found in Appendix D. Committee Chair, Kent Vrana, will present the report and respond to questions.
Revisions to Bylaws: Article I – Officers, Section 1
Kent Vrana, College of Medicine: Thanks, Matthew. I direct your attention to Appendix D, page 19 in particular. Just to remind you, this is a recommendation to change the Bylaws such that the Officers of the Senate are elected by the elected Senate members.
Chair Woessner: Are there questions or comments? Are we ready to vote? OK. This report is brought to the floor by committee and needs no second. Senators joining the meeting by Mediasite, you may cast your vote at PollEverywhere.com. So to accept the motion press A, to reject press B. We’ll wait for Mediasite.
Anna Butler, Senate Staff Assistant: Poll Everywhere, I have 14 accept.
Chair Woessner: Motion carries.
Paula Brown, Senate Staff Assistant: The vote here is 127 accept, nine reject.
Chair Woessner: Wonderful. Thank you, Kent. Motion carries.
LEGISLATIVE REPORTS
Chair Woessner: Legislative Reports. Please remember that parliamentary procedure requires that all motions be submitted to the Chair in writing. If needed, the Senate staff can provide you with paper and pencil. We have four legislative reports today.
The first report is Admissions Records and Scheduling and Student Aid, titled “Updating the Language of Continually-Enrolled Students, Changes to Senate Policies 02-50, 02-80, 05-80, 05-81, 10-00, 12-00, 12-30, 12-70, 32-30, 32-40, 54-40, and 67-10.” You all get that? I actually have to read it for the transcript. So Committee Chair, Mary Beth Williams, will present the report and respond to questions.
Updating Language on Conditionally Enrolled Students
Changes to Senate Policies: 02-50; 02-80; 05-80; 05-81; 10-00; 12-00; 12-30; 12-70; 32-30; 54-50; and 67-10
Mary Beth Williams, College of Science: Thank you. This is a change in language to reflect the need for our students to be regular degree-seeking students in order to be eligible for federal financial aid. And so it’s a simple language change in twelve different policies that we’re asking you to support here.
Chair Woessner: Other questions for discussion? Are we ready to vote? I see a question back there.
Kathleen Hodgdon, Engineering: Kathy Hodgdon, Engineering. Are they not currently regular degree-seeking students? Isn’t that assumed for getting financial aid?
Mary Beth Williams: They are currently regular degree-seeking students. The change here is to place them in a unit of enrollment to make it clear that they are regular. So we’re making the language in our policies consistent with the practice of having them in DUS as conditional students.
Chair Woessner: Other questions or comments? Are we ready to vote? All right, this report is brought to the floor by committee and needs no seconds. Senators jointing by Mediasite, you may cast your vote on PollEverywhere.com. To accept press A, to reject the motion press B. And now we wait for Mediasite. I actually think polling worked faster in ancient Greece.
Anna Butler: On Poll Everywhere, I have 22 accept.
Paula Brown: Here we have 133 accepts and three rejects.
Chair Woessner: Motion carries. Thank you, Mary Beth.
Chair Woessner: The second Legislative Report is from the Committee on Committees and Rules, titled “Revisions to the Bylaws Article 2, Membership, Section 5(c)”, and appears in Appendix F. Because the revision of the Senate Bylaws, we’re going to answer questions. We had some discussion about parliamentary procedure on this. We’re not going to discuss the proposed change, but we’ll answer questions if there are any.
Revisions to Bylaws: Article II – Membership, Section 5(c)
Kent Vrana: Thank you, Matthew. So this is the first of two legislative reports that we’re placing before you for consideration and voting next time. This one comes to us because it was brought to our attention by leadership of the Graduate and Professional Student Association- that they did not have mandated representation on the Senate. And this wasn’t in harmony with the fact that UPUA, the University Park Undergraduate Association, and the Commonwealth Campus Undergraduate Student Association did have representation. So all this is to add a representative from the Graduate and Professional Student Association. Any questions for clarity?
Chair Woessner: OK, thank you, Kent. That will be on the agenda for the next Senate meeting.
The third Legislative Report is from Committee on Committees Rules and is titled, “Revisions to the Constitution, Article 1, Functions, Section 1.” It appears in Appendix G. Again, because the revisions are to the Senate Constitution, we can answer questions at this meeting, but there will not be a vote until the next meeting.
Revision of Constitution: Article I – Functions, Section 1
Kent Vrana: So in this case, this is a legislative report suggesting changes to the Constitution to essentially clear up a vestigial term that remains from the past. That term, as you’ll see in the report, is that the Senate had responsibility for graduate an undergraduate resident instruction. And in fact, that raises the question of whether or not we had purview over the World Campus and nonresident education, which of course we do. So we are striking the term ‘resident’ and using this opportunity also to clarify that we also have purview over professional education. So the addition of the word ‘professional’ and the striking of the word ‘resident’. Any questions for clarity?
Chair Woessner: OK.
Kent Vrana: Thank you all very much.
Chair Woessner: We will look at that at the next Senate meeting.
The fourth and final Legislative Report is from Undergraduate Education. It is titled, “Changes to Senate Policy 42-27 Class Attendance.” It appears in Appendix H. Committee Chair, Beth Seymour and Renee Thornton-Roop, Associate Director of the Office of Veterans Programs, will present the report and respond to questions.
Changes to Senate Policy 42-27, Class Attendance
Elizabeth Seymour, Altoona: How is everybody doing? Good? We’re moving along. This was brought to Undergraduate Education last year by the Commission for Adult Learners, and it was considered by that committee and was moved on into this committee- just because of the timing.
It made sense for us. What it does, if you haven’t read it or you haven’t looked at it, it clarifies a pathway for military service people when they’re called-up for short-term unexpected deployment. She’s my expert. To have a path in which they can figure out success, either by necessarily finishing work late or, if necessary, dropping out– or withdrawing, sorry. Any questions on that?
Chair Woessner: Are we ready to vote? OK. The report is brought to the floor by committee and needs no second. Senators joining by Mediasite, you may cast your vote on PollEverywhere.com. To accept the motion press A, to reject the motion press B. And we will wait for Mediasite.
Anna Butler: In Poll Everywhere I have 22 accept.
Paula Brown: Here we have 135 accepts, four rejects.
Chair Woessner: Motion carries. Thank you Beth and Renee.
ADVISORY AND CONSULTATIVE REPORTS
Chair Woessner: Item J, Advisory and Consultative Reports. We have two Advisory and Consultative Reports to consider today. The first report, submitted by Faculty Affairs and the Intra-University Relations, is titled “Revisions to AC21, Definition of Academic Ranks Standing Non-Tenure Line Faculty” and appears as Appendix I in your agenda. Committee Chairs, Nicholas Rowland, of Faculty Affairs and Rosemarie Petrilla, IRC, are here to present the report and stand for questions.
Revision of AC-21
Definition of Academic Ranks-Standing, Non-Tenure-Line Faculty
Nicholas Rowland, Altoona: OK, so this is AC21, formerly HR21 that you might recall. Over the last couple of days, some last minutes concerns were brought to our attention. This is going to be some changes here to show you that we went through committee. Committee was fine with it and Faculty Affairs, and I understand that the same thing happened in Intra-University Relations. Essentially– I think it’s on the next page, at the top there. Could you highlight number six?
Currently Number Six does not appear in your agenda as it is. The goal of this report is to include a group of faculty members that were inadvertently excluded from the process, if you really get into the weeds, in the final section of formerly HR21 currently AC21. Here’s how that goes. For those of you who do not know what a Standing Non-Tenure Line Faculty member is, this is how it works.
One way, very traditional way, to separate faculty members is you’ve got Tenure-Line Faculty members, and you’ve got Non-Tenure Line Faculty members. Amongst those Non-Tenure Line Faculty members, there are Fixed-Term Faculty, many of which are right here, and also a group called Standing Faculty. Now, an important difference between these two groups is that Fixed-Term faculty are overwhelmingly funded by temporary funds, while Standing Faculty are overwhelmingly funded by permanent funds.
So what is a Standing Non-Tenure Line Faculty member? That was inadvertently excluded from this. This is drawn from HR6. It’s one of the reasons HR6 is under review currently, and it’s going to be available again in five short days, but is not available right now. Thank you, Kathy Bieschke, for sharing a little bit of that information up front.
So here’s how we’re defining this at Penn State. Standing Faculty have no specified end date, and where they can be terminated in accordance with University policy; standing appointments are considered to be at will. So this is the group of people that were inadvertently excluded. This leads us to point number six. If you take a close look at this, the committees that do the review work for all these folks that are on the Non-Tenure Line, our friends in the Fixed-Term Faculty and our friends who are Standing Faculty.
These committees are named Fixed-Term Promotion Review Committees, not Tenure-Line Promotion Review Committees. It seems like a minor thing, but it’s something that we could take care of in the process of taking care of some of these other changes, and we thought that it would be a reasonable thing to include. Somehow we missed it; so did IRC, so did Senate Council, but we see it now. And now that I’ve seen it, I can’t let it go. So we’re making a very modest amendment, if you want to go to the next piece. The changes that it actually creates are pretty minimal.
You’re going to see here, with some of the striked-out language, it comes up four different times. And so all we’re doing is replacing that language, and then in turn, you’ll also notice where the other bold language comes in. All we’re doing is, after you see Full-Time Fixed-Term Faculty, we’re simply adding “And Standing Non-Tenure Line Faculty”; so that these individuals are included in the promotion process. If you read this by the letter, they are in a kind of technical sense excluded right now. We don’t think that’s appropriate. We also don’t think it was intentional. A lot of changes to AC21 over the last couple of years. Any rate, a vote in favor is a vote in favor of clarification for the role of Standing Non-Tenure Line Faculty.
Chair Woessner: Are there any objections we can go by unanimous consent as far as the addition of Number Six, or we can hold a formal vote. There’s no objections by unanimous consent, we can just vote on this on the basis of Number Six, with Number Six included. Can we back up just for second so we can see that extra language? There we go. So is there any discussion or questions? Are we ready to vote? This report is brought to the floor by committee. It needs no second. Senators joining by Mediasite, you can cast your vote on polleverywhere.com. To accept the motion press A, to reject the motion press B. And we’ll wait for Mediasite.
Anna Butler: On Poll Everywhere, I have 23 accept and three reject.
Paula Brown: We have 135 accept and seven rejects.
Chair Woessner: The motion carries. Thank you, Nicholas and Rose.
Chair Woessner: The second Advisory and Consultative Report is from Faculty Affairs and Intra-University Relations Committee and is titled “Revisions to AC21, Definition of Academic Rank, Provision to Multi-Year Contracts” and appears as Appendix J in the agenda. Committee Chairs, Rosemarie Petrilla and Nicholas Rowland are here to present the report and stand for questions.
Revision of AC-21
Definition of Academic Ranks – Provision of Multi-Year Contracts
Nicholas Rowland: Do you mind if I make a few changes to this one as well?
Chair Woessner: Well, it’s the body’s decision.
Nicholas Rowland: Well, some discussion has come up, during the Officers and Chairs Meeting, along with a series of very friendly emails that I received regarding some changes here. So we just wanted to clarify what the intent of the report was. That wasn’t clear to some individuals and so we thought that some language being added here. What it indicates is that the intent of the report is to strengthen stability for Full-Time Fixed-Term Faculty members. What we’re trying to do is have both faculty and administrators think on a longer-term contract basis for Full-Time Fixed-Term Faculty members, and we’re linking this with promotion and the document, when it is that longer-term contracts are feasible. And our additional aims, of course, are to improve communication and transparency in the process, and so this is the intent of the process as it stands.
And then in addition to that– if you go a couple more. One more please, one more, OK, sorry– there were also some concerns about the explicit language that was used. You can see where the explicit language and the intent to kind of go hand-in-hand in this case.
And so previously the document had indicated that the faculty member shall be considered for a three-year contract. That is the way it was, and here we’re basically saying that it should be a multi-year contract of three-years or more for folks that are in the second ranked. That’s the language that we’re using here. And then we specify, also in Number Six, that the faculty member that’s in the third tier shall be considered. That’s the bar that we’re passing here –shall be considered for a multi-year contract of five years, and so these are language changes.
Chair Woessner: Before we proceed with discussion on the merits of this, are there any objections to the addition of the language? I’m more than happy to go through a formal vote if we don’t have this by unanimous consent. OK, so then let us proceed to the discussion on the merits.
Nicholas Rowland: Sure. OK, so that set aside, with this new language in addition, I’d just like to lay out some context for those of you haven’t been at this for as many years as some of us have. Today, a vote in favor of this more or less is communicating to administration that Fixed-Term Faculty members deserve the right to be considered for multi-year contracts. That’s the foundational element, and for better or for worse, a vote against this indicates that Fixed-Term Faculty should not deserve the right to be considered for multi-year contracts. And this is the space that we’re working in.
The logic behind three and five years is relatively straightforward. A three-year contract is the longest or the highest contract they’ve been granted on temporary funds. We thought that would be appropriate for somebody at the second tier. A five-year contract is the longest multi-year contract that can be granted at all, which we thought would be appropriate to match the highest rank that somebody in a fixed-term position can earn and so that’s the logic behind three and five.
I can tell you, just personally, I’ve received a lot of feedback about this particular report. Folks that are on the more conservative side see this is far too radical to be functional. Folks that are on the more radical side think that this is so conservative that we’re essentially giving things away. From what I can gather with nobody happy, I have really found a position of compromise. We recently referred to it as the middle of the middle’s middle, at least as I saw it. So that’s the status. That’s the situation that we’re in. It’s not enough for some it’s too much for the rest, and so this is where we are at three and five. Rose?
Rosemarie Petrilla: I think as we go forward, I would just like to hope that each FT faculty person at the time of promotion can be looked upon as an individual and what their role is in the unit. And there are certainly, I think we all recognize there are some positions that are more vulnerable to enrollment numbers than others, but on the other side of that, conversely, there are FT faculty who have been here a long time, were there may be an opportunity to consider them for a five-year contract. So I think it has to be looked upon as an individual case as we go forward.
Chair Woessner: Questions or comments? Please remember to rise, state your name, and your unit.
Ira Saltz, Penn State Shenango: Yeah, Saltz, Shenango. I fully support this. I think this is long overdue, but I do have a technical question based on something. You said that three years is the longest contract that could be issued from temporary money. Now, if we passed this and are expecting faculty promoted to that third level to be offered a five-year contract, what if they’re still on temporary money? Do we have a technical issue there or any sort of problem there?
Nicholas Rowland: Well, this is a great question. Discussions have taken place over the last year-ish; discussing whether or not it was possible to have an exception. As it happens right now, a five-year contract is available on permanent funds only. So you’re correct in pointing that out. Have no illusions about the way that this is going to happen. Please. Our suggestion was maybe an exception could be made, where once a faculty member has earned the highest rank, it’s possible that temporary funds could be used in that specific instance. If that kind of a compromise can’t be made, then there are certain circumstances under which, if we follow the policy as it’s laid out here, the way that it will go is that a faculty member will be considered for a five-year contract. Or the longest contract– that would be our hope– that would be feasible for that particular faculty member and that particular set of circumstances that they’re in.
And then that would simply be communicated back, that we don’t have the flexibility to do this, however, we can– this is all hypothetical here– but we could offer you a three-year contract. We’re shooting for five. I can’t do that now, but we could do three, and I imagine that’s the way some of those discussions will unfold, if we go this direction.
Rosemarie Petrilla: And I’d just like to say, this shouldn’t be a surprise. When a faculty member, in order to get promoted to the second levels here, five years, although there’s no time designated when you can go to the third level. If you’re doing your annual reviews, you’re having those conversations with the administrator, it shouldn’t be a surprise when this is happening. So if we look at all the resources that we plan for within this University, I say we’re almost as important as classroom space. The faculty are a resource, and we can look forward and plan. I think administrators can plan, if they feel as though the circumstances are there for a five-year contract.
Chair Woessner: Other questions?
Richard Duschl, College of Education: Duschl, College of Education. As a unit that does an awful lot of Outreach, and some of you may be familiar with the Center for Science in the schools, we have a heavy teacher student teaching kind of role, and our fixed faculty are very important. For the recruitment of high quality people, it’s essential to have some stability in their employment lines, and so I rise to support and encourage others to support this.
Chair Woessner: Thank you, other questions or comments?
Ira Ropson, College of Medicine: Ropson, College of Medicine. Is there going to be any plans to track the multi-year kinds of contracts that come forward in the future, if they do?
Nicholas Rowland: I can put the proverbial cat out of the bag, if you like. Indeed, depending upon how the vote goes today, already prepared is language to change the Standing Rules, so that a mandated report for Faculty Affairs would be not just the tenure flow report, which many of us are familiar with. It’s in its young 20-year consistent. I guess we’ve had that for 20 years in a row, and we thought that it would be appropriate, now that we have both the third tier. And if we move this direction of multi-year contracts, to have a fixed-term promotion flow report that would go along with the tenure flow report, and so your intuition is strong on that.
Chair Woessner: Other questions or comments? Are we ready to vote? OK, and this report is brought to the floor by committee and needs no second. Senators joining by Mediasite, you may cast your vote at PollEverywhere.com. To accept the motion, press A. To reject the motion press B.
[INAUDIBLE]
Chair Woessner: Do we lose the vote? For those of you voting by clicker, we’ll start over. There we go.
Nicholas Rowland: Does mine count for two?
Chair Woessner: And we’ll wait for the results from Mediasite.
Anna Butler: In Poll Everywhere, I have 20 accept and three reject
Paula Brown: And we have 101 accept, 12 reject.
Chair Woessner: Motion carries. Thank you, Rose. Thank you, Rose and Nicholas.
INFORMATIONAL REPORTS
Chair Woessner: Item K, Information Reports. As we move into informational segment of today’s agenda, I would like remind our presenters to adhere to the times allocated by Senate Council for their presentations. I will inform each presenter when they have five minutes left.
We have four information reports. The first information report today is from Admissions, Records, Scheduling, and Student Aid. It is titled “Update on Bulletins” and appears in Appendix K. Bob Kubat, University Registrar, and Alan Reick, Vice President and Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Education, will present the report. Five minutes has been allocated for the presentation and discussion.
Update on Bulletins
Alan Reick: Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you about a very exciting process that we are embarking on with Bulletins. In spring of 2017, we launched an initiative to replace the current University Bulletin with a web-based interface with CourseLeaf catalog. This will also include a curriculum management system, where the curriculum management system and the catalog will be able to speak to each other. So when a change is made in a course or any program going through the normal process, that would immediately be corrected and changed within the Bulletin, and it will also go out to all of places where courses are in those programs are seen in the Bulletin.
The executive sponsors for the Bulletin Project are Rob Pangborn and Jean Younken, and we’re excited about sharing some of those things with you. So CourseLeaf is a product. It allows higher education clients to build Bulletins and Catalogs. There are many of our peers from across the country who currently use CourseLeaf. Included in that list are University of Wisconsin-Madison as well as California, Berkeley, and those are actually two of the sites that we have used extensively to build our ideas off of.
The current Bulletin– I’m sure you’re used to this presentation. This is a college page for Arts and Architecture. The new Bulletin will have this type of presentation. So we will have some photos. We’ll be able to lay things out in the right hand, side some buttons that will change the text below the photo.
That will have Overview, Departments, Schools, Majors, Minors, Tickets, et cetera, and any time there are not words populating any of those items, they will not be seen on that particular college page. So it’s pretty intuitive type of a situation here. This is a Program page, an example of a program page, a draft. On the right hand side, you see the Overview, which is below the Program Description is the officially passed version of the description that was passed by Senate. We’ve worked extensively to make sure that all of the official language is maintained, and that there’s not any leeway for it to be substituted or changed without going through the official channels.
Below that is the how to get in, which again, is going to be the prerequisites for the degree program, and how to go through the process. And again, those will be included only the things that have been officially passed. There will be some reference to other places, for example, in the School of Music where you can find more information to interpret what that means. So we’ll be helping people find that information, but we’re not changing any of the things that are currently there. Program Requirements, et cetera, you can see Learning Outcomes will be part of that.
Academic Advising will have a specific contact for students to make contact with people to answer their questions. You can see Accreditation, Career Paths, et cetera. This is what a course description would look like. Any time that this course, any time that Chem 101, would be seen in the Bulletin as you drop a cursor over that, this description is able to come up, if you press that cursor. And so it’s not a matter of changing pages back and forth when that page itself, and prerequisites will be included in those course presentations.
Currently, we’re in the Migration Phase. On the left you see what we currently have in our bulletin. On the right, you see an example of some of this information going into the new format, where we have an implementation team that is working extremely hard, many, many hours, to match up. To make sure that there’s no interpretation on the right hand side that doesn’t match what was intended on the left hand side. So that’s a huge task, and we’re very fortunate to have several quality people working with us on that.
One of the advantages of the system is it will identify places where we have inconsistencies. These red boxes are examples of how the system tells us, time out, time out, you need to look at something here. All the course information that is in the system is coming directly from LionPATH. And if we run into a box here, we are checking with Senate records to make sure that, if it’s missing, if it’s indeed a deleted course, if it was not, we’ll be working with the appropriate people to correct those types of things. So we are hoping and looking forward to greater accuracy and clarity in the presentation of Bulletin.
We’ve also asked colleges to give us some additional information that we showed a little bit earlier, some of the contact information, some of the plan information that we don’t currently have available in an effort. To make it more accessible to students, answer some of their questions up front to assist them to interpret some things. We had a Set-up Phase in August. Our implementation phase goes till January 19th. All the migration is happening there. We currently have 408 pages that are being checked to make sure migration was correct. This Friday, I’m sure we’ll be getting 150 more of those, and it will go on until January 19th. In the middle of January, the entire Bulletin is released to us to make editorial changes and corrections. And right now there are several of those that we intend to do to make sure that everything is accurate. Rather than, for example, some of the credits, they have an automatic addition system, so the credit counts are off a little bit. We’re going to correct all those in the released Administrator’s Phase.
So you see the release happens. The publication says March 15th. I’ll be more than surprised if it happens that date. I hope April 15th. It will happen before NSO starts, and so our new students will be able to use the new undergraduate catalog. We are also working on graduate, law, and med catalogs. Those will be rolled out after the undergraduate catalog is completed.
So we’re hoping that we can quickly resolve any inconsistency that spring up, and we may be coming to you for some clarity on some of those things. We were very fortunate to have people in the Senate office, on both the steering committee and the implementation team, who’ve been a tremendous help to us in these processes. There you have it.
Chair Woessner: Very good, thank you. Questions? We have a few.
Matthew Wilson, Harrisburg: Will there be any opportunity for– Wilson, Harrisburg, I always forget. At least I’m consistent. Will there be any opportunity for the faculty responsible for the programs to vet the changes before it goes live? Or are we going to have to wait till after it goes live to then say, “We’ve discovered these problems.”
Alan Reick: Well, great question. The process, anything that is official Senate information is not changeable except through the normal process, through the curricular process. Anything that is added for clarity, we intend to have that be seen by several people that are involved with that to correct that. I was involved in this process at a different institution, and the release to administrators time period that was one of the key things that we did. We gave it to key constituents to proofread and make sure that we hadn’t missed some things.
Chair Woessner: Other questions? In the back. Actually, right here, we’re closer. Let’s do that.
Carolyn Mahan, Penn State, Altoona: Is this going to be behind a firewall, or can non-students access it as well who are exploring majors and exploring our courses?
Alan Reick: Non-students will be able to access this as well. Many universities use it as a primary recruiting tool. That is not our intent in putting it together, but we believe it will serve to be that to some degree.
Chair Woessner: Other questions? I see a couple on the back, and we’ll watch our time.
Cynthia Young, University Park: Hi. I’m Cynthia Young, University Park. So I’m head of the Department of African-American Studies, and it used to be something else before, so there’s two different designations. Who do I talk to, what’s the process if like I’d like to get rid of AAAS, as which no longer exists? Who do I tell that to?
Alan Reick: Do you want to take that one?
Cynthia Young: And how does that happen?
Bob Kubat, University Registrar: So this is getting rid of the course numbers the course code?
Cynthia Young: No, so I teach in African-American Studies. It used to be something else. So I had a student say to me, “I wanted to take a course in your department, but you guys don’t have any courses this coming up semester”, because she was looking under AAAS and not AFAM. So I’m just curious, how do I?
Alan Reick: Right now the implementation team is working with identified people within the colleges to make some of those corrections and inform them of things that need to happen. I would go to the college office to talk with them and make sure that you find out who the person is that’s connected to the implementation team, and we could make those notations.
Cynthia Young: Thanks.
Chair Woessner: I think we have a question from the front of the room. Go ahead.
Ann Taylor: Taylor, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. I’m hoping that you’re going to have a good answer for me. We just encountered what I understand is an issue that’s technical in nature. Where if the Senate approves a course change proposal, that because something to do with the LionPATH roll, that it won’t actually be live. In our case, we just had two course change proposals approved, and they’re not going to be live in the system till spring, 2019. How quickly will new– if it’s a course change, how quickly will they show up in the Bulletin?
Alan Reick: As soon as somebody presses the Accept button on the curriculum management system. Once that is up and running, it will be changed in LionPATH immediately. That’s the second piece that we’ll probably come back and present on another time. But we’re working to develop a management system for curricular processes that will incorporate all of our process now, but it will be a system that can speak to the Bulletin, so that we have real time changes.
Chair Woessner: Any other questions?
Michael Bartolacci, Penn State Berks: Bartolacci, Berks. I sit on Curricular Affairs, and today it was explained to us, with regard to pre-reqs in the new Bulletin, that there’s something called Concurrent, that would be concurrent and pre-req, and that the pre-req would not be listed, only concurrent. Can you verify this, or explain the nature of this?
Alan Reick: All of these things that are currently within the course descriptions, including concurrent and prerequisite will be listed in the Bulletin.
Michael Bartolacci: OK, thank you.
Alan Reick: They have to be. Well, it’s not truth in advertising to our students, if we don’t.
Chair Woessner: Our time is near the end on this. Are there any last minute questions? OK, in the back.
David Smith, Division of Undergraduate Studies: David Smith, Division of Undergraduate Studies. Can you talk at all, just briefly, about some of the search abilities in the new Bulletin. I think that’s a really important part of what we lack at the moment. For our students at the Division of Undergraduate Studies and other students who are exploring, the ability to evaluate and assess programs courses et cetera. Is there a lot of thought going into how we’re developing this as a tool for students?
Alan Reick: Absolutely. One of the aspects we didn’t include in this is the filtering system. If you want a good example of that, if you go to Guide.Berkeley.edu, you’ll be able to see that. But it’s going to allow students to filter options by campus, starting campus, ending campus, by college, by interest, by many other things. So students will have much more immediate access to the things that they’re looking for if they choose the filters to identify what it is they’re looking for.
Bob also asked me to let you know that this is V1, and we’ve said that numerous times in this process. We’re going to get a first version, and we recognize that there will be some improvements that we’ll want to make after that. We will have a student group feedback as it goes live, and we’ll try to respond to those things as well. I think they’re going to be pleased though.
Chair Woessner: Thank you, Bob. Thank you, Alan. Technically, there were five minutes allocated. So I should have given you your five minute warning immediately, but I didn’t.
2016-2017 Annual Report on the Status of Benefit Changes
SENATE COMMITTEE ON FACULTY BENEFITS AND JOINT COMMITTEE ON INSURANCE AND BENEFITS
2016-2017 Annual Report on the Status of Benefit Changes*, Appendix L. This report is a summary of Penn State benefit changes, changes under consideration, and issues discussed, for which the Joint Committee on Insurance and Benefits provided consultation with the administration between September, 2016 and May, 2017.
Chair Woessner: The second informational report is from the Libraries, Information Systems, and Technology titled “Office 365 Email and Calendar.” It appears as Appendix M. Committee Chair, Roger Egolf, will introduce Michael Kubit, Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer. Jen Stedelin, Senior Director of IT Strategic Operations, is also present and available for questions. Fifteen minutes is allocated for this presentation.
Office 365 Email and Calendar
Roger Egolf: Over the next eight or nine months, I believe, the current email systems of which there are many different units have different email systems. The idea here is to replace all those multitude of email systems with one email system that everyone in the University will use. It’s also a calendaring system to make things work more seamlessly for the University. This report will be presented by Michael Kubit, who is the Vice President for Information Technology here at Penn State.
Michael Kubit, Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer: Thanks, Roger. Good afternoon, everyone. I think it was exactly one year ago today that I moved to the area. So, happy to be here and just by way of introduction, over the past year since I’ve arrived, as Roger had indicated, I found two things. One, is we had an email and calendaring project on the books since- I believe- 2009. So that was something that sort of caught my attention early on, and the fact that, as Roger indicated, I believe we had at least 36 different email systems that I could count or that we were aware of and certainly represents an over investment in commodity technology. I’m going to talk a little bit more about that through the presentation here.
So our goal is to really transition the University to a single email and calendaring system, and I want to emphasize that Office 365 is actually far more than just email and calendaring. So all the applications that you are all familiar with also becomes part of this as well. So some of the benefits, as far as why we would be moving is really provide seamless access, from really any place that you would be that has access to the internet.
We’ll provide a single email directory. It’s something that’s not going to be available day one, but as we work to stabilize the University’s identity and access management system, I’m sure many of you appreciate when you type in the To field on your email that you don’t get a complete directory of anyone that you may be able to be addressing. It kind of gets built currently out of folks that you address email to on a regular basis. As a result of this, and because some of the future integrations will be able to do, those emails will come up and populate when we tie those systems together.
One of the other benefits, and this was part of the new Microsoft contract that we signed this year, is that everyone at the University will have the opportunity to install the office tools on up to five devices. And they’re certainly appropriate licensing for each one of those. Improving collaboration and increasing productivity basically providing a modern set of tools for the University community to be able to leverage email and calendaring. We had a business analyst do a little bit of work on just productivity amongst the administrative professionals of the University.
Right now, because of the multiple calendaring systems that we have, you could take as much time as 40 minutes or so to actually put out a Doodle-poll, get everyone’s response, right, and figure out what are the dates that everyone could become available. Now, with tools, including in Office 365, you could basically put the attendees for that meeting, and the system will actually advise you on the next three times or six times that all those individuals are available. So from a productivity standpoint, as you can appreciate, the thousands and thousands of meetings that actually get scheduled in a given year across the University, how this could actually improve productivity.
It will certainly improve user support in the fact that everyone will be using the same back end. It’ll make it much easier for us to be able to resolve issues. I’ll talk a little bit about security, as far as the importance there regarding the threat surface. And that will allow us to develop consistent expertise right across the University community to help you as faculty to be able to use these tools in the work that you do for the University. Multiple integrations with other applications, including Canvas, will really provide a bit of a seamless ecosystem for you to be able to use these products.
So the rationale, why are we doing this? Email is the single largest threat surface for the University. I’ll talk a little bit more about that in the future, actually in a couple of slides here. Optimizing our investment in commodity technology, so based on what Provost Jones had shared with us earlier, regarding the Strategic Plan. There are a number of very exciting initiatives that will involve technology.
How do we create capacity within the University to be able to support those initiatives? Many of which are coming from your labs and from you, quite honestly. So I think it’s important for us to build those technologies that are commodity. We should be able to consolidate those commodity technologies and realize the return on investment, and really use that capacity to fuel innovation.
It encourages digital fluency of our students. This is something that you’ll be hearing more about from us over time. This provides a modern set of tools. We had some early deliberations around ‘do you go Google’ or do you ‘go Office 365?’ They’re pretty much interchangeable, as far as platforms, but when we really looked at professional opportunities for our students, 90 percent of the corporations actually use Microsoft as opposed to Gmail. So if they’re familiar with those tools and that platform as a development of their academic careers, there’ll be that much more adept at using those tools when they enter their professional lives as well. And as I mentioned, a modern set of tools to be able to support the mission of the University.
So security risk, over 50 percent of email is spam today. In fact, there was an incident within the past year, in Ukraine, in which up to a quarter million people actually suffered power outages. That was actually due to a compromised email account. So folks are able to get access. Don Welch and I were at CISO, at a cyber security exercise a couple of months ago. And that was the entry point in which basically malicious hackers were able to get in and actually obtain control of the University’s building systems.
So imagine what could happen when you actually have someone that could actually turn off cooling for research that requires cooling, turn off heating for research that requires heating. Once again, it’s really important for us to be able to protect the University and email is our single threat surface. So by improving security, having a single email account system, let’s just put modern tools to be able to monitor email and to be able to block those emails that are malicious. And to be able to flag you as a user, that this is a suspicious email. Perhaps you should not click on the link that they’re suggesting.
It also gives us the opportunity to be able to mitigate malicious payloads. So oftentimes, just received an email in your inbox could actually deliver that payload to your computer. So it’s really important for us to optimize how we can actually monitor the University’s email and to mitigate some of those threats as they move through.
Several goals of our implementation strategy. Sent out an email I believe last week, we’re actually turning on the office environment for many of the IT professionals early in the process. Because we know that they’re the first line of support for many of you at your colleges and campuses. We want to give them familiarity with these tools, before you all have to access them. So if you have any needs moving through this transition, we’ll have people who can help you.
One of the areas I’m particularly excited about in watching the evolution of this project is we truly have cross-institutional collaboration of not only IT professionals but an advisory committee of faculty, staff, and students that are advising on the way to proceed through this. So there’s a notion of kind of a pay it forward strategy. I’ll talk a little bit about the implementation strategy. Those individuals, or those professionals, that will be going early on will actually be helping those that will becoming a little bit later. Because I think the way this is actually working is at the units that are the largest and the most complex will be the ones that we’ll be doing last.
We’re going to be working through several units on a pilot. This says, before January of 2018. We’ve actually pulled the reins back a little bit on this project, and I think it’s important for me to communicate why. As I think about technology initiatives, these are really change management initiatives that involve technology. And I think one of the challenges oftentimes that we have as technologists is we want to lead with the technology and get it put in quickly as possible and transition. Not necessarily recognizing how impactful it is to all of you and the work that you have to do on a day in and day out basis.
So I want to make sure that we have a very clearly articulated onboarding plan, not only for the University, but for every unit. So what do we do at two months out and at six weeks out and four weeks out and three weeks out, and we have a go, no-go decision before we transition a unit. So being very engaging with the University community to make sure that we’re listening to your concerns, that we’re answering your questions, and that we can ensure that these transitions happen as smoothly as possible. So it really ties into goal number four is using change management, using business relationship management, and really thinking about these things.
This is about people. This is not about technology. And making sure that we sort of emphasize that to the IT community as we introduce new technologies to the University community.
The last is engaging with our students. So this will be a significant uplift, if you will, regarding their current email experience. So we’re working very closely with our undergraduate and graduate student governments to make sure that they are aware, and they’re advising, and they’re actually helping us with this message. So this is our timeline.
As any plan, it is tentative. It’s what’s on paper right now. It is the target that we’re moving towards. Earlier on in the summer, when I first talked to the President’s Council and to the Academic Leadership Council about this, we had said July of 2018. As we’re working through the project, we’re moving that timeline.
Like I said, it’s more important that this moves through seamlessly and as painlessly as possible to all of you as faculty, then to push through to an arbitrary deadline. That may cause us to make decisions that are disruptive to the University community. But the goal is now to be able to have this done by the end of 2018 and to have the University appropriately transitioned at that time. So some of the questions, and this is another aspect of this– as I said, that we’ve pulled the reins on this a little bit– is I want to make sure, we want to make sure, that we’re answering questions, the questions that you all might have.
So can you use your current email client? Yes. You may not have the same experience as Microsoft had designed for users that are using Outlook, but you’ll be able to benefit from those features. I’m a Mac user, personally. So I’m looking forward to being able to leverage some of those tools, and that will work as well.
POP and IMAP, I don’t know if it’s as much of an issue as it used to be. POP means you’re basically downloading every single email to your local system. IMAP really means that you have it available in both locations, but it’s actually stored as part of the email system and not on your local desktop. Will we be able to afford PSU? Yes. We’ll continue to be able to do this, not only setting those configurations within the system, but on the individual user level as well.
The goal is to really, as I said, engage all of the units. We’re going to be using some of the strategies that we’ve learned from in the past, regarding some of our large technology deployments. Making sure that we can answer questions that we can engage the user community from a support perspective. So I think that, Matthew, appreciate the time. Happy to answer any questions.
Chair Woessner: Questions or comments? The microphone is coming.
Mike Krajsa, Lehigh Valley: A couple of questions, I’ve been in Outlook user for a long time, and I pay for a 365 license on my personal computer, and now I can get it free. Would that mean– I have a couple of questions– does that mean I can discontinue paying my private one and use the Penn State?
Michael Kubit: So your private email is, I’m assuming, is not a dot PSU.
Mike Krajsa: No, I have that, but on my personal computer I use UCS, and I also have my own personal Outlook.
Michael Kubit: That should not have a problem having that Outlook still work for your personal email and also have it work for your University email as well.
Mike Krajsa: OK, so when I get my Outlook with Penn State, and you UCS goes away, will that merge with existing Outlook or would there be two separate Outlook accounts?
Michael Kubit: It’ll really be two separate, and not only from a personal perspective from an institutional risk, we don’t want to be mixing in personal emails with University emails.
Mike Krajsa: Can I import my Penn State Outlook into my personal Outlook, or can I do vice versa, my personal Outlook into my Penn State Outlook, so I’m only looking at one?
Michael Kubit: Yes. You could forward. You can forward using aliases. I’m not sure exactly what you’re wanting to do.
Mike Krajsa: Well, have all these folders for emails in my personal Outlook.
Michael Kubit: OK.
Mike Krajsa: OK, and I have all these folders in my UCS. Can they all come into one?
Chair Woessner: We’ll call tech support on that one.
Michael Kubit: We should follow– I don’t want to give you the wrong answer.
Mike Krajsa: OK.
Michael Kubit: My concern is mixing in personal email. And if you’re working within the same client, blending those folders together could be a problem, could be problematic from a risk perspective.
Mike Krajsa: Last but not least, when students graduate are they going to be able to keep their Outlook account?
Michael Kubit: Yes, so that is something we have been investigating. Our goal is to provide our students lifelong email after they graduate.
Mike Krajsa: Wow. OK. That’s good. Thank you.
Chair Woessner: OK, we just have a couple more minutes left. Actually, there’s a couple of questions right here. We’ll keep them going quickly.
Asad Azemi, Brandywine: Azemi, Brandywine, three questions. Do we also have Visio and Skype available on this thing in the package?
Michael Kubit: Skype is available. Visio, I don’t believe so. Yeah, we can look at that. If we find in the way that our software team looks at, if we find that there is a significant need across the University, we can build that into the contract.
Asad Azemi: Yeah, Visio is a problem depending on the licenses that you have. If you don’t buy your right license, you would not be able to add it into the new version that they have. So please take a look at that, because I have not been able to use the 2016, even if you have the license. It wouldn’t let me do it. One other question is the web mail is going to go away, right?
Michael Kubit: Yes.
Asad Azemi: OK, I’ve been using Outlook for a long time. The past few years, if I have a spam email, or something which has been identified as spam in the system, has not been downloaded to Outlook. What I was told is to go and look in the web mail, and if there is something that you like, then you will take it out of the spam, and you put in your inbox, and then it gets downloaded. If this system goes away, and I get these emails-usually, if you have a colleague from overseas and there is a character it doesn’t like, that goes into the spam. I guess, but this time it still is in the system, but if you’re getting rid of that system, does it mean that I will have no way of getting those emails?
Michael Kubit: I can’t speak to the specifics. I know that the spam filtering in Office 365 is much more sophisticated than what we’re currently using. So it will do a better job of being able to notify those. Ginger, do you have any insight on whether or not a user can go into something that’s currently been flagged as spam and white list that from the user interface?
Ginger Breon, Altoona: Sorry, Ginger Breon. Yes, you can. You can look, and all you have to do is move it into your inbox, and then it’ll know for future that that’s not a spam.
Asad Azemi: And how can I see it, because I don’t see the web mail. Now I can see the web mail and take it down. But if there is no web mail, I don’t know if–
Chair Woessner: These are good questions, but we want to resist getting into too technical of a discussion in this forum, because we have a really big time limit. Mediasite has a question. I definitely want to get to that. I don’t want to ignore our colleagues online.
Anna Butler: This question is from Rogerio Neves from the College of Medicine. What about Medical Center College of Medicine? Will we be able to use it at the medical center? Right now Hershey does not allow us to use the PSU.edu email, creating serious limitations for collaboration and communication. We have been complaining for years, but apparently they want to distance themselves from PSU, locking themselves under PennStateHealth.PSU.edu. Why can I not choose the PSU.edu email?
Michael Kubit: That is a good question. We’ll have to have a conversation with Rod and his team and find out how we can address that in a way that is not disruptive to the user community and doesn’t put the University at risk.
Chair Woessner: We’re over time, and I’m very sensitive at broad questions. Any really quick and broad that we can get to? OK. Galen, you’re our resident technology fellow. I’ll trust you.
Galen Grimes, Greater Allegheny: Grimes, Greater Allegheny. For each IMAP user, how much storage will we have on the server for email folders and such?
Michael Kubit: I believe it is five terabytes.
Galen Grimes: Thank you.
Chair Woessner: And on that note–
Michael Kubit: By the way, sorry, Matthew, just one more moment. So that is actually when we looked into support is actually the largest, most requested email system is basically increasing individual’s quotas, currently. So I very much appreciate all the questions. We intend to engage and to provide opportunities within each of the colleges and the campuses for you to be able to ask these more detailed questions, and for us to be able to have IT professionals there to be able to answer those questions and to help navigate through some of this.
We recognize email and calendar is incredibly personal. So we want to make sure that you’re comfortable with the transition before we ask you to make the transition. So thank you for your time.
Chair Woessner: Thank you, Michael. Thank you, Roger. We’ve been departing a little bit from our time limits, but we want to keep this all moving along. So forgive me if I can’t get all your questions.
The third informational report is sponsored by Senate Council. It is titled “Penn State’s Strategic Communications.” It appears in Appendix N. Lawrence Lokman, Vice President for Strategic Communications, will present the report and stand for questions. Ten minutes have been allotted for the presentation and discussion.
Penn State Strategic Communications
Lawrence Lokman, Vice President for Strategic Communications: Thank you so much. Great to be here with you today. Appreciate your granting us some time to review progress in our work to bolster Penn State’s reputation for excellence. You can see on this page that we’re really at a point today in a process of storytelling to accomplish that, and I would just say a couple things as you look at this slide.
First, that we started this analysis with an analysis that really led us to the conclusion that under-promoted aspects of the University through strategic communications really involve the need to communicate better and more storytelling around our unique 24-campus model and online educational model and the breadth of excellence of our research enterprise. Our strengths as a community are certainly well known, but we’ve really been too quiet and humble about talking about our research and educational strengths. Second, that by doing so with the right audiences, we can help build advocacy and support for University priorities. Whether it be the fundraising campaign, recruitment of the very best students and faculty, the Strategic Plan, et cetera.
And third, that we need to do this through ramped up storytelling and measure progress as we do it. So we are now in the fall 2017 phase of it, I’m pleased to say, and what I will share with you is some examples of the storytelling campaign that we’re launching this fall. And we’ll kind of ramp up with a steady drum beat in the winter and into the spring, and then beyond.
This slide is not actual marketing or advertising creative, but illustrates some of the critical insights that undergird. What our intake and testing process has looked like in developing Penn State’s positioning to support this work. First of all, in the bottom left, what we found is we looked at different positionings where the connection of harnessing the power of community for Penn State and the desire of faculty, staff, and students to drive excellence and make a difference in the world. It’s important to couple the strength of community with our impact on society and that really fits the directions of our fundraising campaign and Strategic Plan.
In the bottom right, the concept of openness and our being an inclusive community that welcomes the best and the brightest from all walks of life- regardless of who you are or where you come from. And the strength of community and size and depth and breadth of the University as a source of powerful interdisciplinary collaboration. And that kind of spirit of we and community are all aspects of the positioning that you will see play out. We also developed some language that captures what it means to be a Penn Stater. A little bit more confidence, a little bit less humility than maybe you’ve typically seen in our marketing.
I’ll read that for you quickly. Hopefully, I can see it from here. At Penn State we have a long list of accomplishments under our belt. We’ve discovered planets. We’ve smashed the atom. We’ve changed the face of humanity, and we’re not done. But what makes a Penn State accomplishment more than just a chapter in a history book? It’s the motivations and passions of the participants that went into it. It’s a shared pride we feel when our fellow students, faculty, and alumni are on the journey. The shared satisfaction we feel when they reach that destination, and the common understanding that without each and every individual’s reason for being, none of it matters. Because without these inner callings, we don’t return to our communities to help the way they helped us.
Without the humanistic force, we don’t push beyond ourselves into the world, helping those outside our community. The why we do things is what brings us together to make things happen. It’s where every Penn State story begins, and that’s where– sorry, I can’t see it from here. Sorry? Jump in there. And that’s also the reason our stories never end. We are Penn State.
Sorry, about that, but that gives you a feel for the tone of the communications that we’re looking to put forward. And for communicators around the University at the Commonwealth Campuses, at centers and institutes, we’ve developed a schematic to help them bring out qualities in the stories that better define and position Penn State. So we tested positionings and even power facts, in other words statistics that demonstrate the excellence of Penn State. We found some interesting things.
So for example, you need to emphasize our competitive and comparative advantages as a University. So instead of saying, we have an $800 million dollar research enterprise, we say that we have a research enterprise whose breadth puts us in the top 20 in the nation, and a number of our disciplines are in the top ten. Only MIT and Johns Hopkins boast a similar number of disciplines that are in the top ten in the country. So when you begin to frame things a certain way and bring out the qualities of community and impact from local to global. That’s when we found in the focus groups with donors, alumni, faculty, staff, students, voters, and influencers that we began to kind of draw them closer into feeling more inclined to support the University and understand what differentiates Penn State and drives really reasons for support.
So with that, what I’m going to do is share with you some examples of the creative that we’ve developed to undergird the first communications campaign that we’re launching, which we’re calling an Impact Campaign. You see the objectives up on the screen, which are twofold, which are to communicate our excellence and quality of life impacts across the state, and to shift perceptions really in a way that drives likelihood for voter advocacy, which help our efforts to build revenue support. In Harrisburg, we’re doing the storytelling in for categories, loosely defined on the bottom. From education to economic impact to quality of life improvement in communities; but even more broadly to the ways in which many of you are solving problems on a global basis.
Now, the creative involves a combination of video, radio, print, and ultimately, television. We’ll show you a couple of the video and TV spots.
(ON VIDEO)” I think everybody should have access to energy. I am interested in augmenting the capability of textiles. We came up with a shade structure that could also capture light, store the energy as well as give light back in the evening. If we can get energy from fabrics, it can be used everywhere.”
Lawrence Lokman: I really love the visual quality of that spot. See the next one, you’ll notice the name or the introduction gets at the reasons and motivations that the folks in the spot bring to doing the work that they do to make our world a better place.
(ON VIDEO) “If there are better ways to test for concussions, why aren’t they being used in high schools? Having gone through the process of injury, diagnosis, recovery, I saw the flaws in the system. I thought, maybe I could actually use this and help athletes, or anyone with a brain injury.”
Lawrence Lokman: That also gets at some of the ways that we’re identifying things, like our programs, within Invent Penn State to foster entrepreneurism and support economic development. Here’s another spot on the work of our extension folks to help clean up the Chesapeake Bay.
(ON VIDEO)”Tillage as a catastrophic event for the soil and the life that lives in the soil. We no longer use a plow. We have to try and farm more in nature’s image, and we like to think that that is a lot of the solution for the Bay, the management of the land.”
Lawrence Lokman: So in some of these, you can see we’re using data points, for example, that we’re really, through the work of the extension, ultimately touching lives of 17 people.
(ON VIDEO) “Dear Pennsylvania, you’ve done more than you’ll ever know. You’ve educated millions and sent people to space. You’ve changed the fate of the planet and improve the lives of your neighbors. You’ve built buildings, better schools. You funded startups. You’ve created jobs. You did this. It’s your voices and support that made it happen, and with everything you’ve done, there’s so much more to do. We are one community impacting many. We are Penn State.”
Lawrence Lokman: So hopefully you can begin to hear and see the way in which these messages collectively begin to tell a story and can support our advocacy and our fundraising work and the recruitment work that we do in communications. There are social media implementation of this effort. We’re starting with, I think, four videos, radio, a number print, and about a dozen social media stories. This is all being pushed out, both digitally and electronically really, across the state to voters and influencers. And as I mentioned, in the spring, this will ramp up to television and increase the visibility. It’s all being measured in terms of impact on perceptions, pre and post. So we can see how the work that we’re doing is moving the needle, not just this year, but really over time, to increase the commitment to support Penn State. And the surround sound side is really there to give you a feel for the ways in which we use not just paid media and marketing dollars, but also public relations efforts to help tell that story and amplify the impact of this campaign. So we’re doing things like once we identify faculty that we’re working with, let’s say, in the TV or social spots. Then, we’re also then working with them to contribute blogs to the conversation or place op-eds in prominent media or news stories on some of the participants. There’s lots of ways in which we can really begin to tell these stories through multiple channels, with multiple media, to reach people in a repetitive manner over time; which is what needs to happen in order to have communications impact. With that, I will stop, and I’d be happy to take any questions.
Chair Woessner: Well, our time has expired. If there is one question, we could probably sneak that in. OK, over here. Hold for the microphone. We’ll bring it to you in just a second.
Dwight Davis, Medicine: I believe, it’s the 29th or 30th, you’re going to have a national audience watching Penn State play Washington. And as a starter to things to follow, that would be a tremendous opportunity to, if you will in some kind of way, launch some of the things that are going to follow. What are you going to do for me watching my television?
Lawrence Lokman: Well, you’ll have to take a look at the Penn State spot that will be running, and then you’ll have to send me an email, and let me know what you think.
Chair Woessner: Very good.
Lawrence Lokman: Fair enough? OK.
Chair Woessner: Thank you, Lawrence. Thank you for your time.
The fourth and final report sponsored by University Planning is titled “The Biannual Development and Alumni Relations Report”, which appears in Appendix O. O. Richard Bundy, III, Vice President of Development and Alumni Relations, and Dave Lieb, Senior Associate Vice President for Development, will present the report and stand for questions. Fifteen minutes has been allocated for the presentation and discussion.
Biennial Development and Alumni Relations Report
O. Richard Bundy, III, Vice President of Development and Alumni Relations: Thank you. Good afternoon. Dave Lieb is not with me today. So I’m sorry. You’ll have to just settle for me, but I’m Rich Bundy. I’m the Vice President for Development and Alumni Relations, wrapping up like Michael, my first year on the job here. So this is my first opportunity to share with you some of what we’re doing with respect to fundraising at the University. Am I driving the clicker? I am.
So I will start by saying I think most of you should know by now that Penn State is in a campaign. This is our fifth– I’m sorry, our fourth comprehensive campaign, but it’s quite unique compared to the previous three campaigns. And I want to share with you a little bit of rationale behind the campaign and also some points that distinguish this one from the previous campaigns that you may be familiar with.
So really a campaign is an artifice that we use to bring focus to our fundraising efforts, to provide some energy to our fundraisers and to our donors. Deadlines are important, and so these give us constrained amounts of time in which to raise a set amount of money. But critically important to campaign fundraising is, in this case, a direct linkage to the Strategic Plan of the institution.
So you’ll see that in a moment I’m going to share with you our campaign imperatives. They align very, very closely with the Strategic Plan of the institution. And the time frame of this campaign is a five-year effort, also corresponding to the five years of the current Strategic Plan. And that’s a major difference from past campaigns that we’ve had at Penn State, which have been in some cases as long as eight years. And in some cases overlapping potentially three strategic planning periods for the institution.
So the other point that I would make about a campaign is that it brings some urgency and focus to our efforts, both with my staff and at the unit level. I want to share with you a little bit of some historic data and also perspective on that urgency. This graph behind me shows what happens when we’re in a campaign. This shows the most three recently completed campaigns at Penn State, and you can see the very dramatic growth in fundraising that occurred during these campaigns. I will point out, for the future campaign, that rather precipitous dip towards the end of the campaign corresponded with the economic crisis in 2008. There are some things we can control, and some things we can’t, and this is a reflection of what was happening in the broader economy. But overall, the impression that I want you to have here is that when we are in a campaign, we often see a dramatic increase in the philanthropic expression of our alumni, our parents, other stakeholder friends of the institution. To further emphasize that point, some of you may have heard some rumblings over the course of the last year that somehow, because this campaign which has a $1.6 billion dollar goal over a five year period. Because that amount is less than the $2.2 billion dollar that we raised in the last campaign that this is somehow an unambitious fundraising initiative. When in fact, because it’s such a shortened period of time, the lift that we’ve committed to in this campaign is really extraordinary.
So in this slide, what you can see are the past three campaigns there, in the three bars to the left of the slide. The number with the white line in the graph is what we committed to at the start of those campaigns in terms of average fundraising that we would need to raise each year to achieve the goal that we committed to in the campaign. And, you can see that in all three of the previous campaigns, we dramatically exceeded the goal that we originally set in the campaign. For the greater Penn State for 21st Century Excellence Campaign, we have committed to $1.6 billion dollars in five years. That will require us to raise, on average, $320 million dollars a year for each of the next five years. That’s $100 million dollars more than what we committed to at the start of the last campaign.
So it’s a substantial commitment, a substantial lift for Penn State. I will point out as well– and I don’t have a slide to demonstrate this– but it’s a good data point. Penn State has never strung multiple $300 plus million dollar years together. We’ve done it three times, including last year when we raised $304 million dollars. But in each of the previous two times, the following year we had a dramatic decrease in the amount of private gift commitments, and so we have shown that we have the capacity to raise more than $300 million dollars a year. We have not yet, as an institution, demonstrated that we can do that repeatedly and in a sustainable way. So that’s kind of the existential challenge for us as we move through this campaign.
Because this campaign is so unusual in its structure and its short time frame, it’s focused on three campaign imperatives that I’ll talk about. We spent a considerable amount of time, prior to my arrival. Rod Kirsch led most of this process, and then Dave Lieb, after Rod retired, wrapped up this work with a series. And I’m not going to go through all of them, but a series of campaign planning task forces. I mention this because it’s important to let you know that there is rigor behind the planning in our campaign, and that rigor happens not just with development leadership. It’s not just my office, but we engage our volunteer leaders. I will talk about them more in a moment. We engage senior leaders in the campus. So for example, the Provost was involved in several of these task forces; David Gray chaired our task force on business practices and campaign counting. We engaged faculty and deans and students in our conversation about planning for this campaign. We feel that we’ve got a very solid structure and framework to be successful in this campaign.
Let me tell you a little bit about the themes. These should look familiar to you, because as I said, they do align with the campaign. I’m sorry, with the University Strategic Plan. This campaign is also unique in that we’re not communicating our success in the context of, the College of Engineering raised this much money, and the College of Liberal Arts raised that much money. We’ve asked all of the units on campus, at the University and this includes our Commonwealth Campuses, Hershey, to express their campaign objectives in one of these three categories– open doors, create transformative experiences, and impact the world.
So the Open Doors imperative is, simply put, investment in financial access and affordability for our students at the undergraduate and graduate level. There are a tranche of scholarship initiatives, graduate fellowship initiatives, including a very high profile set of new pilot programs that we’re calling the Open Doors Pilots that are eligible for matching funds from the President’s Office, and I’ll touch on that momentarily. The transformative experience is imperative of the campaign, recognizes that aside from the curricular experience that our students have, what makes a Penn State education great is often the extracurricular activities that go along with that classroom experience. This would be the category of fundraising that might include things like investments in a student organization or investments in study abroad initiatives or career services internships, those types of programs.
And then, I’m really not supposed to have a favorite set of imperatives, but I readily admit that I do. The final part of the campaign is called Impact to the World, and the reason I think that it’s so special is because I think this is really a 21st century application of our land grant tradition. What we’re saying with Impact to the World is that Penn State has the scholarship, the research, the outreach heft to identify the really pressing problems facing the planet and solve them. This says “Solved The.” I know. I’m sorry. “Solve Them”. And so there are some sub-themes to this impact The World Imperative that I think are really quite extraordinary, and you’ve heard about some of them already, I know.
Energy University, which the president talks about quite a bit. The work that we’re doing with Invent Penn State and economic development activities throughout the Commonwealth. Efforts around human health and our efforts to, for example, achieve NCI designation for the cancer center. These are really extraordinary big things that, in many ways, are often at the intersection of disciplines. And so I think some of that’s the neatest work that we’re doing at Penn State and we’re excited to be able to help fund that.
So we’re at about, we’re just shy of 30 percent of the way through the campaign. Hard to imagine that just a year and five months into it we’re already a third of the way done. We are slightly ahead of pace. You can see– thank you. I’m going to have to rush through this. I’m sorry.
You can see that we’re at $459.5 million dollars at the end of November, against our $1.6 billion dollar goal. You can see the relative weight of each of the campaign imperatives and that we are ahead of pace in all three of the imperatives. Now, you’re all intelligent faculty members at Penn State, and you’ve probably already done the math and realized that the three imperatives don’t add up to $1.6 billion dollars. There is a fourth tranche of the campaign that we’re calling Additional Strategic Philanthropy, but the initiatives in that box don’t align nicely with one of these three imperatives.
And the example that I often give, if you followed Intercollegiate Athletics facilities master plan, one of the first pieces of that plan that has to move is a new natatorium. Well, a natatorium is not really in open doors initiatives or a transformative experience initiative or Impact the World. But it’s critically important to Intercollegiate Athletics and their long-term strategy, which is why it’s part of the campaign but getting maybe a slightly lesser prominent treatment. I’ll tell you how we’re doing this year, and then I’m going to skip a bunch of slides. And I apologize, but I want to give you an opportunity for some questions.
We’re off to a great start for this year. We had a record setting first quarter of receipts. We continued to be setting a torrid pace, in terms of dollars, in the door. We’re at $95 million dollars as of the end of November. I’m sorry, as of the end of October. November numbers weren’t quite ready yet.
More importantly, commitments are relatively on pace with last year, which was the third best year in fundraising. And we believe that this December, with a couple of major gifts that we have in our pipeline, that we will get in front of where we were at this point last year, by the midpoint of the year. And then make really extraordinary progress as we move through the year. Bear with me while I skip through some slides here.
I did want to share with you that another unique element of this campaign is that the president has identified a pool of matching money that we’re using to drive three initiatives, trying to secure as much money through the Open Doors Pilot programs as possible. So that we can speed the time to completion for our students towards their degree. There’s a second tranche of money available for economic development initiatives, and your colleges and campuses know about those. And really we’re using these matching dollars to incentivize donors to commit gifts to things that are a little bit unusual, perhaps not their top priority, but really strategically important to the institution. And I have a bunch of slides about that that I’m not going to go over, but I will share with you that it’s working.
Our matching gift program has already helped us to achieve a very significant number of new scholarships. This is at the end of the first quarter, but I think more importantly, you can see that we’ve got more than 130 pending solicitations that, when matched, in total, will generate potentially $50 million in new support for undergraduate and graduate students this year.
Last thing I want to share with you is we have a really outstanding volunteer committee, the Campaign Executive Committee, as chaired by Rick Sokolov. Rick is a 1971 graduate of the College of Liberal Arts. He chaired the athletics campaign in the For the Future Campaign. He and his wife are major donors to the Smeal College of Business, to Intercollegiate Athletics. They also give to Penn State Hillel, and we’re extraordinarily happy to have Rick’s energetic leadership of the campaign. So I will stop there, and how many seconds do I have left?
Chair Woessner: Two minutes for questions. Are there any questions?
Richard Bundy: Stunned silence.
Chair Woessner: No, thank you. You answered all the questions. Thank you very much.
Richard Bundy: Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
NEW LEGISLATIVE BUSINESS
Chair Woessner: Item L, New Legislative Business, none.
COMMENTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE GOOD OF THE UNIVERSITY
Chair Woessner: Item M, Comments and Recommendations for the Good of the University. Are there any additional comments for the good of University?
ADJOURNMENT
Chair Woessner: I have a motion to adjourn. All in favor, please say aye.
All Senators: Aye.
Chair Woessner: All opposed? Motion carries. The Senate is adjourned until January 23rd, 2018.
ATTENDANCE
The following Senators were noted as having attended the December 5, 2017 Senate Meeting.
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- Abel, Jonathan
- Adewumi, Michael
- Aebli, Fred
- Abel, Jonathan
- Adewumi, Michael
- Aebli, Fred
- Andrews, Thomas
- Ansari, Mohamad
- Aurand, Harold
- Azemi, Asad
- Banyaga, Augustin
- Barron, Eric
- Bartolacci, Michael
- Beahm, Mary
- Bechtel-Wherry, Lori
- Belanger, Jonna
- Berg, Arthur
- Bieschke, Kathleen
- Bishop-Pierce, Renee
- Blakney, Terry
- Borromeo, Renee
- Breakey, Laurie
- Bridges, K. Robert
- Brigger, Clark
- Brown, Richard
- Brunsden, Victor
- Butler, William
- Casper, Gretchen
- Casteel, Mark
- Chen, Wei-Fan
- Cios, Theodore
- Clark, Mary Beth
- Clifford, Matthew
- Connolly-Ahern, Colleen
- Conti, Delia
- Davis, Dwight
- Debellis, Hunter
- Decker, Alicia
- DeFranco, Joanna
- Dendle, Peter
- Douds, Anne
- Duffey, Michele
- Dunn, William
- Duschl, Richard
- Eberle, Peter
- Eckert, Jill
- Eckhardt, Caroline
- Egolf, Roger
- Elias, Ryan
- Enama, Joseph
- Engel, Renata
- Farmer, Susan Beth
- Furfaro, Joyce
- Gallagher, Julie
- Garey, Richard
- Giebink, Noel Christopher
- Glantz, Edward
- Grimes, Galen
- Griswold, Anna
- Han, David
- Hanes, Madlyn
- Hardin, Marie
- Harrison, Terry
- Harwell, Kevin
- Hayford, Harold
- Heaney, Peter
- Hodgdon, Kathleen
- Horn, Mark
- Hristov, Alex
- Hughes, Janet
- Jaap, James
- Jett, Dennis
- Jones, Maureen
- Jones, Nicholas
- Jordan, Matthew
- Jurs, Peter
- Kaag, Matthew
- Kahl, David
- Kalavar, Jyotsna
- Keiler, Kenneth
- King, Elizabeth
- Kitko, Lisa
- Korner, Barbara
- Krajsa, Michael
- Krasilnikov, Andrey
- Kubat, Robert
- Kurian, Mathew
- Lang, Teresa
- Lawlor, Timothy
- Levine, Martha
- Linehan, Peter
- Linn, Suzanna
- Lobaugh, Michael
- Love, Yvonne
- Mahan, Carolyn
- Mangel, Lisa
- Markle, Jacqueline
- Marko, Frantisek
- Maurer, Clifford
- Maximova, Siela
- Melton, Robert
- Messner, John
- Michels, Margaret
- Miles, Mary
- Miller, Charles
- Mookerjee, Rajen
- Nelatury, Sudarshan
- Nelson, Keith
- Nelson, Kimberlyn
- Neves, Rogerio
- Noce, Kathleen
- Novotny, Eric
- Ofosu, Willie
- Ogrodnik, Monica
- Ozment, Judith
- Palmer, Timothy
- Pangborn, Robert
- Patzkowsky, Mark
- Pauley, Laura
- Pawloski, Barry
- Pearson, Nicholas
- Petrilla, Rosemarie
- Pierce, Mari Beth
- Plummer, Julia
- Poole, Thomas
- Posey, Lisa
- Post, David
- Prabhu, Vansh
- Pratt, Carla
- Radovic, Ljubisa
- Regan, John
- Reid-Walsh, Jacqueline
- Reuning, Kevin
- Rinehart, Peter
- Robinett, Richard
- Ropson, Ira
- Rothrock, Angela
- Rothrock, Ling
- Rowland, Nicholas
- Ruggiero, Francesca
- Safran, Janina
- Saltz, Ira
- Samuel, George
- Sarabok, Thomas
- Saunders, Brian
- Schmiedekamp, Ann
- Schulz, Andrew
- Scott, Geoffrey
- Seymour, Elizabeth
- Shannon, Robert
- Shapiro, Keith
- Sharkey, Neil
- Sharma, Amit
- Shea, Maura
- Shockley, Alex
- Shurgalla, Richard
- Sigurdsson, Steinn
- Singer, Richard
- Sinha, Alok
- Sliko, Jennifer
- Smith, David
- Smithwick, Erica
- Snyder, Melissa
- Snyder, Stephen
- Specht, Charles
- Springer, Jake
- Stephens, Mark
- Stifter, Cynthia
- Stine, Michele
- Strauss, James
- Strickland, Martha
- Subramanian, Rajarajan
- Suliman, Samia
- Sutton, Jane
- Swope, Kayley
- Szczygiel, Bonj
- Taylor, Ann
- Thompson, Paul
- Travagli, Renato
- Van der wegen, Constantinus
- Vollero, Mary
- Vrana, Kent
- Walker, Eric
- Wang, Ming
- Warren, James
- Webster, Nicole
- Wenner, William
- Whitehurst, Marcus
- Williams, Mary Beth
- Wilson, Matthew
- Woessner, Matthew
- Wolfe, Douglas
- Wood, Chelsey
- Young, Cynthia
- Zambanini, Robert
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- Elected 155
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- Students 19
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- Ex Officio 7
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- Appointed 11
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- Total 192
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