Volume XXXIV, Number 9
Minutes of the Academic Council Meeting
October 21 , 2004

XXXIV, 9 The meeting was called to order at 1:30 p.m. by President Michael Hilgers. Roll call was taken, and absentees noted were: Charles Chusuei, Pericles Stravopoulos, Trent Watts, and V. A. Samaranayake. Dr. Williams Weeks IV was noted as a substitute for Dr. Kurt Kosbar.

There was a motion and second to approve the minutes of the September 16, 2004 Academic Council meeting.  The Academic Council body voted to accept the minutes. 

1 REPORTS AND RESPONSES

A. PRESIDENT'S REPORT - This report was presented by Academic Council President Michael Hilgers.

a. Motion was passed that the Academic Council respectively requested that the Provost attend a meeting with representatives from the Information Technology to discuss several items with regard to the desktop replacement policy with an open forum. Dr. Barbara Hale will be addressing that report later on in the meeting.

 

b.      IFC Retreat – October 6th.

1 Faculty Accomplishment System going live in November.

2 Non-regular faculty was discussed with the committee not liking the phrase non-regular faculty, but the phrase non-tenure track people who work on this campus and other campuses. A subcommittee was formed to put together an initial draft of a document that will help standardize how non-regular faculty members are handled throughout the campus, with Mike being the representative for this campus.

3 Rule of 85 will cost 1% of the University of Missouri budget to activate this year. Considering that the fact that we are looking at a 2% pay increase that will be giving half of the raise to go into the Rule 85 of retirement to go into place.

4 Campus incentive plan with Peter Weldon visiting this campus and University of Missouri-St. Louis to discuss this matter. University of Missouri-Rolla Personnel Committee was the only one to supply a written report that he requested, and he was extremely thankful for the report.

c.   Strategic Planning - Mike Hilgers expressed very strong dissatisfaction with the procedure that was used to distribute the strategic initiative money to President Floyd.

d. University of Missouri-Columbia is going to implement a new grievance handling procedure on its campus, and it is viewed as a three-year pilot study. If it is successful, then we may look into going system-wide.

e. One new agenda item requesting Dr. Larry Gragg to discuss new chancellor's search.

 

f.   When Peter Weldon was here on campus he asked that an ad-hoc group form a conflict of interest committee with Wayne Huebner as their chair to serve on the systems level when they formulate the policy that they are proposing.

B. CHANCELLOR'S REPORT - This report was presented by Chancellor Gary Thomas.

Homecoming was a very successful weekend. Every department participated with approximately 900 who attended the event accompanied with the Minority Engineering Program's 30th Anniversary Celebrations being well attended. There were also several meetings timed with the homecoming weekend: Board of Trustees, Corporate Development Council, Alumni Association, African American Recruitment Retention Committee. All meetings were well attended.

 

There were three programs initiated by the system. There was a 12 million dollar increase in appropriations over the approximately 400 million that the legislators and governor allocated to the University of Missouri. That money was set aside. Three million was sent to University of Missouri-St. Louis, and nine million was set aside with three incentives.

1 One to one match for endowment for need-based scholarships. Approximately 1/4 million has been raised towards that. We will be getting close to 1/2 million very shortly with people coming to homecoming being quite interested in that option. We should be able to match 3/4 million that was set aside for UMR. Once we match that we may be able to get some of the remaining 1 million that is available for the campus, but there has not been criteria set for who and when we will have access to it.

 

2 UMR will get two endowed chairs in the sense that the system will match the cash flow on those two endowments. There are five areas that were selected. Energy, Environmental & Biological Engineering Science, Civil, Architectural Environmental Engineering, Sustainable Materials and Manufacturing, and Lifecycle Software Engineering.

 

3 Missouri Transportation Institute will be formally approved on November 10th. University of Missouri Board of Curators will meet here on November 18th and 19th. There will be several new Missouri freshmen legislators' tour the campus Dec. 15th. due to term limits.

C. PROVOST'S REPORT - This report was presented Y. T. Shah.

1 Passed out report and was happy to answer any questions. Addressed a few important things. The first thing is growth in management. We are down this year as compared to last year. Because of the 10% down in master's degree. Jay and I have been articulating the strategy to address this issue. What is important is the retention, and we have a 63% retention rate.

2 Research - new awards through September: $10.9M, down 9.8% from a year ago, but on track for a $40M+year. New submissions through September: $40.2M, up 69% from a year ago. 52 UMRB proposals were submitted by the October 4th deadline. 22 plus-up proposals were received and will be reviewed on October 22nd.

3. REPORTS OF STANDING AND SPECIAL COMMITTEES

a. Budgetary Affairs - Don Myers gave a brief report.

b. Curricula - Report was e-mailed since C. Chusuei could not attend.

c. Information Technology/Computing Committee - Barbara Hale gave the report. There was very lengthy discussion regarding the desktop replacement policy. The parts of the motions 1, 2, and 5 were moved forward and approved. On part 3 the parenthetical remark was removed and voted and approved. Parts 4 (re-deployment should be handled within the department where the equipment resides) and 6 (effort on dollar amount that will be spent on desktop replacement) were voted on and did not pass.

d. Personnel - There was no report to be given.

e. Student Affairs - Report was given by Nathan Mundis. At their last meeting on September 22, 2004, Stephanie Fitch was elected Chair, and Nathan Mundis was elected was Vice-Chair. The committee considered four student organization constitutions. The Biology Graduate Student Organization and Technical Invigorators Entrepreneurs Society. Both returned the organizations constitutional revisions as did the University of Missouri-Rolla College Democrats. If the College Democrats had submitted their revisions by this meeting, then it would have been considered. The constitution of the student organizations of Business and Economics and Information Technology was recommended for recognized organization status by the committee. Nathan asked that the Academic Council approve that constitution. Motion was voted on and passed.

f. Tenure - Report was given by Ken Ragsdell. The committee met several times electronically regarding early and late tenure positions. Motion 1: A letter is sent to all tenure-tract appointees from the provost, the dean and the chair, making it clear when their date of initial consideration is, and everyone in the pipeline receive such a letter also. They also recommended an approximate date that their dossier should be in place as part of the letter. Motion was voted on and passed. Motion 2: Would have to have consistency and uniformity that the Campus Promotion and Tenure Committee review and make recommendation concerning any application for extension and that review is done in a timely manner. Not at the time that the application is due. Motion was voted on and carried.

g. Chancellor's Search - Presented by Jay Gregg. Search will be closed all the way until the end of the search. Committee will pick four, five, or six finalists and bring them to the campus. The committee is taking a poll to see if they should have an open forum so people can interact, or closed so that only the people on the search committee will be allowed. Argument from the recruitment firm by assisting us is that their belief is that UMR will get more sitting chancellors from a richer pool if we have it closed to the search committee. The other side of the argument is that if it is open at the end is that all faculties get to interact, ask questions, and assess the person. Please e-mail one of the people on the committee to let them know what you think. There were some discussion concerning that the appointed search committee would make a decision without getting input from all UMR faculties. Chancellor Thomas will be leaving in August 2005, and the committee would have to have someone in place by July 2005. There was a poll taken of the Academic Council and it resulted in having an open forum.

Mike Hilgers adjourned the meeting at 3:30 p.m. since class was starting.

Respectfully submitted,
(electronically submitted, 11/11/04 )
Kurt Kosbar, Secretary

*Minutes of the Academic Council are considered official notification and documentation of actions approved.