Penn State University Home  

 

 

THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY

 

T H E   S E N A T E   R E C O R D

 

Volume 35-----MARCH 26, 2002-----Number 6

 

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 2001-02.

 

The publication is issued by the Senate Office, 101 Kern Graduate Building, University Park, PA  16802 (Telephone 814-863-0221).  The Record is distributed to all Libraries across the Penn State system, and is posted on the Web at http://www.psu.edu/ufs under publications.  Copies are made available to faculty and other University personnel on request.

 

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 inappropriate, 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 which have appeared in the Agenda of the meeting are not included in The Record unless they have been changed substantially during the meeting or are considered to be of major importance.  Remarks and discussion are abbreviated in most instances.  A complete transcript and tape of the meeting is on file.  Individuals with questions may contact Dr. Susan C. Youtz, Executive Secretary, University Faculty Senate.

 

                                   TABLE OF CONTENTS

   I.  Final Agenda for March 26, 2002

 

       A.  Summary of Agenda Actions

 

       B.  Minutes and Summaries of Remarks

 

II.  Enumeration of Documents

 

A.    Documents Distributed Prior to

March 26, 2002

 

Corrected Copy - Faculty Affairs – Incorporating

The UniSCOPE Model into HR-23

 

Attendance

 

III.  Tentative Agenda for April 23, 2002

 

FINAL AGENDA FOR MARCH 26, 2002

 

A.     MINUTES OF THE PRECEDING MEETING -

Minutes of the February 26, 2002 Meeting in The Senate Record 35:5

 

B.  COMMUNICATIONS TO THE SENATE - Senate Curriculum Report

                        (Blue Sheets) of March 12, 2002

 

C.  REPORT OF SENATE COUNCIL - Meeting of March 12, 2002

 

D.  ANNOUNCEMENTS BY THE CHAIR -

 

E.  COMMENTS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY –

 

F.  FORENSIC BUSINESS -

 

G.  UNFINISHED BUSINESS -  

 

Committees and Rules

 

      Revision of Bylaws, Article III, new Section 7 – Election to the Senate –

      Excessive Absences

 

H.  LEGISLATIVE REPORTS –

 

Undergraduate Education

 

      Revision of Senate Policy 65-00 Schreyer Honors College

 

      Revision of Senate Policy 42-27: Class Attendance

 

I.  ADVISORY/CONSULTATIVE REPORTS –

 

     Faculty Affairs

 

      Incorporating the UniSCOPE Model into HR-23

 

J.  INFORMATIONAL REPORTS –

 

      Computing and Information Systems

 

            Institutional Licensed Software Distribution Program (ILSD)

           

      Committees and Rules Nominating Committee Report - 2002-03

 

      Senate Council

 

            Roster of Senators by Voting Units for 2002-03

 

      Faculty Benefits

 

            Faculty Salaries Report, External Comparison

 

      Faculty Rights and Responsibilities

 

            Annual Report for 2000-01

 

      Intercollegiate Athletics

 

            Annual Report of Academic Eligibility and Athletic Scholarships 2000-01

 

      Research

 

            Report on University Research

 

      Senate Council Nominating Committee Report – 2002-03

 

      Student Life

 

            Student Use of Web vs. Printed Material

 

      Undergraduate Education

 

            Grade Distribution Report

 

K.  NEW LEGISLATIVE BUSINESS -

 

L.      COMMENTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE GOOD OF THE

      UNIVERSITY -

 

M.      ADJOURNMENT -

 

SUMMARY OF AGENDA ACTIONS

 

The Senate passed three legislative reports:

 

Committees and Rules - “Revision of Bylaws, Article III, new Section 7 – Election to the Senate – Excessive Absences.”  This legislative report changes the Senate Bylaws to provide voting units with the authority to replace Senators with three or more unexcused absences from Senate meetings during an academic year.  (See Record, page(s) 14 and Agenda Appendix “C.”)

 

Undergraduate Education – “Revision of Senate Policy 65-00 Schreyer Honors College.”  This legislative report focuses on the following areas; 1) eligibility for admission and retention; 2) participation, advisement, research experience; 3) honors credit requirements; and 4) advisory committees.  (See Record, page(s) 14-19 and Agenda Appendix “D.”)

 

Undergraduate Education – “Revision of Senate Policy 42-27: Class Attendance.”  This legislation acknowledges that students miss classes for legitimate but unavoidable reasons. Faculty are encouraged to use strategies to minimize the problems associated with students’ absences. Students will be held responsible for contacting their faculty members in advance and using only legitimate, unavoidable reasons for requesting a make-up of an examination or other evaluative mechanism.  (See Record, page(s) 19-22 and Agenda Appendix “E.”)

 

The Senate passed one advisory/consultative report:

 

Faculty Affairs – “Incorporating the UniSCOPE Model into HR-23.”  This advisory and consultative report presents each of the three mission areas of the University—teaching, research and service, as a continuum of scholarship.  The report proposes the revision of the promotion and tenure dossier (the rainbow dividers) to reflect the expanded definitions of scholarship.  (See Record, page(s) 22-25 and Agenda Appendix “F.”)

 

The Senate heard 10 informational reports:

 

Computing and Information Systems – “Institutional Licensed Software Distribution Program (ILSD).”  This informational report focuses on computer software utilization at Penn State and the opportunities for cost savings and “upgrade protection.”  ILSD supports 18 programs serving 2000 licenses to 102 administrative areas at the University.  (See Record, page(s) 26 and Agenda Appendix “GC.”)

 

Committees and Rules Nominating Report – 2002-03.  This report listed names of nominees (and the opportunity for nominations to be made from the floor) for the following three committees: Faculty Rights and Responsibilities, Standing Joint Committee on Tenure, and University Promotion and Tenure Review Committee.  (See Record, page(s) 26-28 and Agenda Appendix “H.”)

 

Senate Council – “Roster of Senators by Voting Units for 2002-03.”  This report is a listing of Senators by Voting Units.  (See Record, page(s) 29 and Agenda Appendix “I.”)

 

Faculty Benefits – “Faculty Salaries Report, External Comparison.”  The report emphasizes comparisons of Penn State faculty salaries with those at other universities.  The university participates in three institutional faculty salary data exchanges.  These sources allow for comparison and interpretation regarding faculty salaries.  (See Record, page(s) 29-32 and Agenda Appendix “J.”)

 

Faculty Rights and Responsibilities – “Annual Report for 2000-01.”  This is the annual report of the Faculty Rights and Responsibilities Committee to the Senate sharing types and numbers of cases examined during the year.  (See Record, page(s) 32 and Agenda Appendix “K.”)

 

Intercollegiate Athletics – “Report of Academic Eligibility and Athletic Scholarships for

2000-01.”  This informational report examines NCAA graduation rankings, academic all conference standings, and numbers of athletes screened for eligibility.  (See Record, page(s) 32-35 and Agenda Appendix “L.”)

 

Research – “Report on University Research.”  Expenditures for research and development at Penn State continue to increase, with a 7 % growth this year.  This is a review of new initiatives to strengthen activity in the life sciences and other interdisciplinary areas.  (See Record, page(s) 35 and Agenda Appendix “M.”)

 

Student Life – “Student Use of Web vs. Printed Materials.”  This report is a presentation of recent Pulse surveys of students’ use of the Internet and web-based services. Discussion of services that students use and obstacles to use of online services including system access, concerns for confidentiality and distrust of computers.  (See Record, page(s) 36 and Agenda Appendix “O.”)

 

Undergraduate Education – “Grade Distribution Report.”  This is an annual report presenting grades for baccalaureate and associate degree students by college, location, and semester GPA and discussion of a modest upward trend in grades.  (See Record, page(s) 22 and Agenda Appendix “P.”)

 

Senate Council – “Nominating Committee Report for 2002-03.”  This report listed names of nominees (and the opportunity for nominations to be made from the floor) for the following three offices/committees: Senate Officers – Chair-Elect and Secretary, and Faculty Advisory Committee to the President.  (See Record, page(s) 28-29 and Agenda Appendix “N.”)

 

The University Faculty Senate met on Tuesday, March 26, 2002, at 1:30 p.m. in Room 112 Kern Graduate Building with John S. Nichols, Chair, presiding.  One hundred and sixty-one Senators signed the roster. 

 

Chair Nichols:  It is time to begin.

 

MINUTES OF THE PRECEDING MEETING

 

Moving to the minutes of the preceding meeting, The Senate Record, providing a full transcription of the proceedings of the February 26, 2002 meeting, was sent to all University Libraries, and is posted on the University Faculty Senate's web page.  Are there any corrections or additions to this document?  All those in favor of accepting the minutes, please signify by saying, "aye."

 

Senators:  Aye.

 

Chair Nichols:  Opposed?  The minutes are accepted.  Thank you.

 

COMMUNICATIONS TO THE SENATE

 

You have received the Senate Curriculum Report for March 12, 2002.  This document is posted on the University Faculty Senate's web page.

 

The Senate calendar for 2002-03 is attached to your Senate Agenda as Appendix “B”.  It is for information, so please make note of the meeting dates for next year.

 

REPORT OF SENATE COUNCIL

 

Also, you should have received the Report of Senate Council for the meeting of March 12, 2002.  This is an attachment in The Senate Agenda for today's meeting.  There are a number of announcements in those minutes and in the interest of time I will not repeat them here today.  But if you have not read them, I encourage you to glance them over.

 

ANNOUNCEMENTS BY THE CHAIR

 

Chair Nichols:  The Senate has received correspondence from President Spanier regarding the calendar report that the Senate passed at our last meeting.  President Spanier notes that he will “carefully review all of the information before making a decision,” and expressed his appreciation for the work the Senate did on this important issue affecting teaching and learning at Penn State.  He also said that he expected to announce his decision on this matter by the end of the spring semester.

 

In an effort to make better use of technology and time, the Senate Office this time around sent the committee preference form via email.  All of you should have received your committee preference form.  Make sure that you have received this and please respond to the email by completing your preference form and returning it online.

 

The Senate Officers have two visits remaining for the spring, and they are to the College of Communications on April 18, 2002 and the University Libraries on April 25, 2002.  That will complete the sum total of all locations and all University Park colleges.

 

The Senate Self Study Committee expects to have an interim report to the Senate at the April meeting.  The committee will continue to receive your feedback over the summer and then will submit its final report and recommendations early in the fall.

 

As you know, it is the practice of the Senate to occasionally invite those whose activities have brought credit to the university and remind us of the core values and mission of the university.  At about this time last year, I had the privilege of attending the awards ceremony for the Center for Adult Learners and I was really impressed by the stories of sacrifice and commitment to higher education of the award winners.  Two of the recent award winners are with us today.

 

The Outstanding Returning Adult Student Award Recipient for 2001 is Dawn Dishart, who I have had the pleasure of meeting on a couple of occasions.  As a young woman, Dawn put her husband through medical school while caring for their three children.  After graduation he left, and leaving her with the sole responsibility of raising the children.  Following another marriage, another divorce, and three more children to care for, Dawn worked two or three or more jobs to support and educate her family and to save enough money so that she too, perhaps one day could attend college.

 

In 1997 Dawn began her college education at Penn State Altoona commuting 40 miles each way to class while raising children ranging in the age from 8 to 18.  Despite family tragedies and legal entanglements, she continued her school work with such success that she became a Schreyer Scholar upon arriving at University Park.  And last year she graduated with highest distinction and a grade point average of 3.98 majoring in Spanish.  She currently is pursuing a masters degree in Spanish.  Dawn wrote, “My motivating factor has been a secure faith that the advantages of my education, particularly as an example for my children, will prove worthwhile in the end.  I cannot ask of them what I would not do myself.”

 

This year’s 2002 Outstanding Adult Student Award Recipient is Kimberly J. Cassidy-Miller.  She is currently pursuing a baccalaureate degree in Health Policy and Administration.  Kimberly’s nominator, Faculty Senator Dennis Shea from the College of Health and Human Development wrote, “When I look at her, I see the possibility that at least some of the problems our society has in achieving health and welfare for families and children will be resolved.”

 

Yet as a child, Kimberly experienced a very transitory and dysfunctional home life, moving more than eighteen times before her high school graduation.  Knowing that further education was the key to a better future, Kimberly enrolled at Penn State University Park as a transfer student in the summer of 1998.  Getting to this point in her education was not easy.  Both Kimberly and her husband, also a Penn State student, both work and share responsibility for raising their two young sons.  Until their younger son enrolled in kindergarten, they scheduled their classes so that one of them always could be with a child.  Despite these challenges, Kimberly is excelling academically and has a cumulative 3.87 grade point average in her Health Policy and Administration major.  She also finds time to volunteer for the Centre County’s Communities That Care and the Centre County Health Community Partnership.  Kimberly wrote, “I seek to overcome my past mistakes and alter my life’s direction, but I also try to consciously hold on to the lessons I have learned along the journey.  I do not want to allow myself to become distanced from where I have come, rather I want to be constantly aware of my past when reaching out to others.”

 

I would like to ask Dawn and Kimberly along with Charlene Harrison from the Center for Adult Leaner Services, to stand and be acknowledged by the Senate.

 

Senators:  Applause.

 

COMMENTS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY

 

Chair Nichols:  Agenda Item E, Comments By The President Of The University.  President Spanier is in attendance today and does have comments.  As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question of the president you need to be recognized by the chair, then you must stand, and identify yourself and the unit you represent before addressing the Senate.  Thank you.

 

Graham B. Spanier, President:  Thank you.  The Board of Trustees of Penn State had a very interesting and successful March Board of Trustees meeting.  We met in Washington, DC.  A lot of people forget that Penn State is very dependent on our relationships with and support from the federal government.  We tend to focus so much on state relations.  So it was great for the trustees to be in Washington, DC and to see our intense level of connections there and for them to hear first-hand reports from national leaders, heads of agencies, NIH, defense department, and national associations about Penn State’s role in the national higher education community.  I wish that all of you could have been there to hear some of the great things said about Penn State and the work that you are all doing and the importance of what we are doing for our nation.

 

Speaking about Pennsylvania and the budget, I think most of you have probably been following this and I’ll just give you a brief update.  Did any of you have the opportunity this year to hear my appropriations hearings?  Well, good for you.  Thank you so much.  In the middle of what night were you listening to the re-run of that?  The rest of you missed it, and I know you are seriously disappointed but actually they went extremely well this year.  We were very nicely received in both the Pennsylvania Senate and in the Pennsylvania House.  It is amazing how nice they are to you when they don’t have any money to give you.  This year in the Senate, we had a joint hearing with the four state-related university presidents, and it was very easy for us this time to be very supportive of each other because we all had a very common goal, which was “please don’t cut our budget.”  In the Pennsylvania House, we had our individual hearings and in both cases we had a good opportunity to talk about the great things happening at Penn State.  I think I answered their questions satisfactorily and made a very strong message about our situation.  Unfortunately, what continues to remain on the table at this time is a five percent cut in Penn State’s appropriation.  This is very significant for us and of course even a five percent increase if it swung the other way would still be a very challenging budget scenario for us given that we continue to want very much to give a decent pay raise to our faculty members, to keep up with employee benefits and to pay for the extraordinarily high level of premium increases in insurance that is affecting the entire insurance industry as a result of last September 11, 2001, and the rising cost of malpractice insurance.  We want to keep up with our traditional share of the cost of health care and other employee benefits for our employees and those are continuing to see double-digit increases.  We want to continue the progress we have made in our university libraries and in the area of information technology, but there are super inflationary operating costs in those areas.

 

Also, some of you may have seen this news, we have pledged to include in the budget that begins for the fiscal year July 1, 2002 the new higher level of health insurance benefits for graduate assistants at the university.  This will give them health care benefits equivalent to those you all receive as faculty and staff.  It will put us out in the lead nationally among universities and what we are able to do for our graduate students.  Our stipends are already quite competitive and this will be a great step forward.  This is something Eva Pell has been advocating since she came into her position.  When you put all of these things together and there is quite a bit of pressure on our budget and the five percent cut doesn’t help at all.  We can offset that to some extent in our basic educational programs because we can raise tuition as reluctant as we are, we have said that principle number one must be to maintain the quality of what we are doing at the university and if we have to raise tuition to keep up we will.

 

But, there are other parts of the university budget for example, in the College of Medicine, in our Cooperative Extension Service and our agricultural research programs, where there is no offsetting revenue stream.  So what it means is, truly a reduction in the number of employees.  We are looking at about 100 employees right now and that is a very real consequence for us.  One of the things that we have decided to do is to appoint a task force—it will be a small task force that is co-chaired by Rodney Erickson and Gary Schultz—which is basically the budget cutting task force.  That is not quite the right title but their assignment is to look very, very hard at the university budget from top to bottom and look for places to tighten our belts.  Yes, we know we are going to raise tuition and we are looking at a double-digit tuition increase, but at the same time, it is very incumbent upon us both for the legislature and citizens of our state and for our own students to look in every nook and cranny of the university to look for savings and there may be some out there.  If you have any ideas about it, send them to Rodney Erickson.  All good ideas will be welcomed and we hope to do some trimming so we can moderate the overall tuition increase that we are faced with.  If you have any other questions about the budget, ask them later.  There is a lot more I could say but I don’t know how much you want to hear about that right now.

 

I have received the calendar report.  Rodney Erickson, John Cahir and I are taking a close look at it.  We are starting the process of analyzing it from our end, everything that was discussed here.  We had the entire Senate Record transmitted to us and in addition, you must have been invited to send in emails because we got about 300 emails.  No, you didn’t?  Well, we got 300 emails anyway.  We got lots of emails from students and some faculty members writing us directly with additional comments and those actually have been pretty helpful.  Many of them are thoughtful, but many of them, however are just one issue emails like, I don’t really care about anything having to do with the calendar except this one thing.  We have to look at the entire picture and we will try and do that as well as we can.  Some of the feedback has been very helpful because it has raised aspects of this that we do need to take into account as we look at the whole thing.  This has been the only issue I can remember since I have been president where every official communication on the matter says, “however, the final decision will be made by the president.”  Now, while that is officially true on most issues I suppose, few people are willing to acknowledge that on other issues.  In this case, everybody seemed to be happy to acknowledge that I will have to make the final decision because I think everybody is prepared to be mildly disappointed in the outcome and why should any of you take the blame, right?  So we will simply just do the best we can and try to come up with something that works well in the best interest of the university.

 

Rodney Erickson and Terrell Jones continue to be in the midst of meeting with all the relevant groups and task forces on the midpoint of the five-year updated plans to foster diversity.  They are working through comments sent back from the review panels and our goal I think is, by the end of the semester, is to have the plans themselves as well as the feedback posted on the website for people to look at.  I feel very good about the process.  People have taken it very seriously, and in the end I think the university will be better off because of it.

 

Our enrollment situation is just about where we wanted it to be.  We are pretty much on target with our admissions enrollment and paid accept profile for this coming fall at University Park.  The rest of the campuses are a little more variable—some up, some down, some on target.  Overall, the university’s enrollment profile should be about where we want it but, of course, there are campus variations.

 

One of the projects I have been working on which is very faculty oriented, I hope, and I just wanted to tell you a little bit about it.  I think most of you know that I try to find opportunities, as many opportunities as I can to spend time with students.  I stay in the residence halls, I eat in the residence halls, and I accept invitations to have dinners at fraternities.  I go to HUB Late Night and I try at least once every weekend to stop by there.  I meet with lots of different student organizations and honorary societies.  When I meet with student groups, I talk to them most often about undergraduate education.  That is a very common topic.  I ask them who the best professors are that they have ever had.  Some of you may have gotten a note from me somewhere along the way saying that somebody mentioned your name.  Over the last year, I have tried to engage students in a little greater depth in the discussion about the actual experiences they are having with faculty members in the classroom and outside of the classroom.  You come away with the impression that, for a large university like ours, given our faculty/student ratios, given the fact that we do have a lot of large classes, especially here on this campus and especially in the freshman year, we do a pretty good job.  But, in these discussions, you can’t also help coming away with the impression that we could probably do better and there are certain kinds of themes that keep coming up in these discussions.  I thought it would make a great topic for a speech I would give on “what is wrong with the faculty” or something like that, and my colleagues talked me out of it.  They said, that is a bad idea and you know it is not going to work if you make the theme of your state of the university address, “what is wrong with the faculty.”  After all, most of our faculty are working 60-80 hours a week, they have complex jobs, we are all trying to do the best we can, and what good does it do for the president to get up and say, here are the problems I am hearing.  But I wanted to find a way to somehow let you hear some of the things I was hearing.  So here is what I did.  I invited a random collection of students, none of whom I knew before—10 or 12 students.  I let somebody else go through the process of identifying them and inviting them in.  I am not sure if they actually knew why they were coming, but I just wanted to have an evening’s discussion with them, except I had the discussion at the WPSX-TV studio in front of cameras.  So it was me and them just talking for the evening and we videotaped it.  We videotaped about an hour and a half of it and I basically talked to them and interviewed them and asked questions about their experiences as students.  They were all students on this campus, but some of them had spent time at other campuses, but they are all now at this campus.  We have taken that video and edited it down to under 20 minutes and we are having copies made, not 5,000 copies for all the faculty, but maybe enough for one per department or something.  We are going to get these out to you and I hope you will look at them.  I hope you just see what a random group of students had to say.  It wasn’t a complaint session at all.  They said some wonderful things about the faculty but if you listen carefully you do hear some things that might cause you as Faculty Senators in particular, to want to think about what we can all do collectively to improve the educational experience for our students.  That was one of my projects.  You will be seeing this video and I hope you will find some value in it.

 

You may have seen a tiny little news story--it was only about one sentence long in the Intercom and we will do another feature about it, but I wanted to tell you that we have hired a new dean for the Dickinson School of Law who I think is one of the great hires in the history of Penn State.  We are very fortunate to attract someone who is a brilliant legal thinker and an expert in broad areas of international law, intellectual property law, just a fine human being and a great leader and educator who we were able to attract here from the University of Illinois.  I think it is just a fine hire and you will see a little bit more about it but that is a recent success story I wanted to tell you about.

 

I just wanted to tell you that I will not be at the next Senate meeting for two reasons.  That happens to be the day where the presidents of the AAU institutions meet in Washington, DC once a year.  I am actually chairing a session that morning on graduate education and the changing prospects for doctoral graduates and post-doctoral and so on in different fields.  Then, that afternoon, I am on the board of something called the URA—University Research Association.  That is the organization that oversees a number of large national research facilities, like Fermi Lab and some of those projects relating to high-energy physics and astronomy and such.  If you want to know anything about “Quarks” just ask me I will give you a sociologist analysis of high-energy physics, do we have any physicists here?  Yes, we have a couple so I could talk to you about those things.  Anyway, I have to do those two things so I won’t be here, but Rodney Erickson will be giving you a report on some things and I will get caught up from the Senate leaders on what transpired.  These are a few things that I wanted to mention and now I would be happy to open it up for your questions and comments.

 

Steven Koeber, Substitute Student Senator, Penn State Altoona:  I just have two comments.  You have probably been around this campus a lot but this is the first time I have seen you.  Could you think about coming to other campuses, like Altoona?  I would like to go to see the president like some of the other students.  My next question is about the calendar.  When you make your decision, if you decide to cut the number of days of school, I would like to know how that would look to the current students and the students who are looking to come to Penn State if you increase the tuition and cut the number of days?

 

President Spanier:  Well, just let me say I have been to the Altoona Campus many times and I have not seen you.  I don’t know where you are hanging out, but I’ve been there.  I make about 15 visits a year to the campuses.  In the first couple of years I visited every campus every year at least once, but it’s hard to make it to every campus every year now, but we try our best to get around and now it’s often in conjunction with some special event or fund raising or something like that.  How long will you expect to be at the Altoona Campus?

 

Steven Koeber:  Probably for another year.

 

President Spanier:  So I might see you.  As far as the calendar goes, the main pressure on the calendar is in the fall semester.  In the spring semester there seems to be enough time for everybody to do pretty much everything they want to do.  The pressure is in the fall semester and people like to end before Christmas and they do not actually mean December 24th, they mean like the 20th or 22nd, but not right up against Christmas.  And there is also pressure on the other end, particularly as tuition goes up, summer jobs are very important and some of our students are losing out in certain kinds of summer jobs because we start so much earlier than a lot of other schools.  So there is some pressure on the number of days and the trick is how do we fit it all in.  I think I received about 300 emails from students and 299 of them really only dealt with one topic—don’t cut fall break.  That was the total scope of the commentary and the president of student government and the chair of the academic assembly visited me with a resolution from the undergraduate student government, which was to be on the calendar except that the key part of the resolution only had just one point—don’t cut fall break.  The other one email from the student I recall said, “I don’t think you ought to be shortening the calendar because we paid for so many days and we would like that”.  That didn’t seem to be the main concern of most of the students.  I suppose indirectly the concern might be if you cut any days shouldn’t we have a break on tuition or something like that.  The number of days in the calendar doesn’t affect the budget that much because all of the people are still on the payroll and you still buy the same number of library books, and the buildings are open and very little changes.  If the calendar were shortened by a day or five or whatever it might be that could affect board rates.  At the margin you would probably need a little less food because there might be fewer meals so, in the overall scheme of things that might be adjusted along the way.  To me, this is not a budgetary issue.  It is really about what makes sense from an educational standpoint, from a logistic standpoint, and even from a competitive standpoint.  We are trying to balance a lot of different things and in the end, whatever we come up with, we want to ensure that we are providing a high quality experience for our students that is appropriate given the normal rules by which universities do their calendars.

 

Michael J. Cardamone, Penn State Schuylkill:  There was a report in this past Sunday’s Harrisburg Patriot concerning the concept of having a tiered tuition increase.  It said that ongoing students would pay a different percentage tuition increase than new students would.  While this would have probably very little effect at University Park, it could have an extreme detrimental effect on those elements of the university that depend heavily on new students all the time like the campuses, for instance those where there is a great deal of competition for students.  Would you just comment?

 

President Spanier:  What several of our peer institutions have done and every year more and more are doing it, to deal with the declining state revenues and therefore the declining state appropriations for public universities, universities are having to go to extraordinarily high tuition increases.  We are not in that four or six percent zone anymore.  We are at another level up.  That does not represent tiered tuition so much as a phase-in of a higher tuition, that is what it really is all about.  The concept there is, which the task force is looking at among all the other concepts that are out there, the idea would be to say, all of our current students came here with a certain expectation of what their tuition was going to be.  They knew tuition was going to go up every year but they were not expecting it to go up 12 or 14 or 20 percent, and it might be a little unfair to spring that on them while they are already here.  But if you give more than a year’s notice people who have not even applied yet, but you put right in the admissions literature here is the zone, tuition is going to be in when you start, then they are applying knowing what it will cost and there are no surprises.  So the idea is that the new freshmen come in at the new rate.  The others get the normal annual increment but not this higher level that it is going to take given the direction state appropriations are going in.  Then all subsequent new freshmen groups coming in would be at that higher level so it is a phase-in.  By the time you get through the cycle, everybody is now at that higher level.  That is one of the things that we are looking at and they have already done it in Illinois and Minnesota.  I think Ohio State is looking at it.  I think there were three Big Ten schools already and another one looking at it, and we are studying it and others will be studying it.  So that’s the concept there.

 

Now how does it affect the campuses?  Now there is also the question and it is a separate question of whether we go to a system where we recognize that our 24 campuses are in different market places so to speak, attracting different types of students.  We have some commuter campuses.  We have residential campuses.  We have some campuses that draw from a national or international market place.  Other places are going much more locally or regionally and so should we raise everybody at the same level, and there are many people who believe that should not be the case and that there is more price sensitivity at a campus like Schuylkill, for example.  If you bought that philosophy and that is another thing that is being studied, we might very well have a lower tuition level at some campuses than we have at University Park.  Everything is on the table right now and in the end we will try to do what is in the best interest of Penn State and is fair to our students.

 

I should also say, I am not aware if anybody in the media has picked up on this, but every budget scenario that we are building has built into it an additional commitment of significant university resources for student financial aid.  So we have in our preliminary planning scenarios for the budget for the next fiscal year $1 million of new money for institutionally sponsored financial aid.  Now that is not going to make a world of difference by the time you split it up against all the needy students.  But the concept that we are trying to follow is absolutely a fundamental concept in my mind, no matter where our tuition ends up, I want to be able to say, and I will be able to say this, that no student will be prevented from coming to Penn State because of their inability to afford an education.  Through some combination of scholarships, grants and loans no matter what our tuition is my goal is that every student is able to come here.  Even if it means we have to raise tuition even a tad bit higher for everybody to build more money into the financial aid pool.  If we put $1 million of new money in the budget let’s say every year for the next five years, now we are up to $5 million a year of new additional money in the budget—that begins to be real money—that is our goal.  A majority of our students do now have financial aid and the majority of our students have loans and the loan burden will increase.  I am not saying that this is all going to be a gift of new money to everybody.  Yes, there will continue to be lots of students with loans but I believe in a Penn State education.  Last year, our surveys showed that 98.3 percent of our graduates were employed within six months.  So they may have loans, but they can pay off those loans if you have a Penn State degree and their lifetime earnings are going to be something like double what they would have been had they not come and gotten a college education here.  It is not going to be smooth sailing for everybody but you will be able to get from here to there under the scenarios that we are looking at.

 

Peter D. Georgopulos Delaware County Campus:  Since you are looking at these differential tuitions at non-University Park sites, will salary increases therefore be detrimentally affected by those incremental increases?

 

President Spanier:  Only if you are judged to have goofed off that year.

 

Peter D. Georgopulos:  Compared to University Park?

 

President Spanier:  No.  In case you have not noticed and I think most of you noticed, and I was not around here for ancient history, but since I have been president, every year we have put exactly the same percentage from the salary pool into every unit’s budget.  Every college, every campus has had the same percentage salary pool and I believe in that.  I think maybe you have an agenda item on this later that is not to say that salaries are the same everywhere.  There are differences by discipline, location, merit, and every other way, but in terms of what I inherited, we have tried to treat everybody fairly and put the same amount into the salary pool.  We are committed to continuing to do this.  I do not buy into this idea that people are more important one place or another and that our money should be focused somewhere.  The deans and campus executive officers have to deal with market forces and all the other variables but from our standpoint, we are handing the money out in a more evenly distributed way and that won’t change.

 

Eric B. Cowden, Student Senator, College of Agricultural Sciences:  What is the likelihood of this phase-in process happening and if it did occur, would it happen this fall semester coming up?

 

President Spanier:  If it happens, and as I say we are seriously looking at it so yes, it is the trend.  We have to be in one of two modes.  One mode is everybody, everywhere gets a large tuition increase—15 percent, 18 percent whatever the number has to be to deal with the overall situation.  The other mode is the existing students will get let’s say six percent and you start phasing it in at a much higher level, a double digit type level for those coming in.  So we are going to end up being in one of those two modes and all I can say is, we are seriously looking at it and this is a possibility.  To answer the second question, no, we would not do that for this fall because the whole idea of that kind of system is to give people notice.  So the earliest that could happen would be fall 2003.  Now what that means for this year however, is we are in the first mode I described.  This year everybody is going to have to have a pretty good size increase.  It is just the way all the variables have conspired to force our budget right now.  So yes, this year we will kind of be in that other mode where everybody…unless something dramatically changes in the legislature and we are still working real hard.  We are going to be at some double-digit level.  If the state economy at the end of April reports that things just turned around and there was great news all of the sudden and the state decided to give us an increase in our budget—even two or five percent, I don’t think we would necessarily have to be in a double digit zone but it just does not look like it is going to be that way right now.  Every bit of news we get is forcing our planning scenarios into higher numbers.  Every meeting I have with the folks who work with the budget every day, come out of that meeting saying, maybe we have to go up a little higher.  It is not a good situation but we just have to cope with it.

 

James A. Strauss, Eberly College of Science:  If you look around it is just sort of a reminder that this is kind of like looking at Congress and sometimes you get bad budgetary scenarios and yet they are voting for themselves big salary increases, not that our salary increases are huge but the question is unpopular.  If we really are in a financial crisis and we really are saddled with the burden of making this deficit up with tuition dollars for a record tuition increase, should we as faculty really expect to have a salary increase this year?

 

President Spanier:  That is very generous of you to make that offer.  Here is my philosophy, in that spirit I would love for any of you to take your pay increase and to donate it back to a scholarship fund at the university.  That is how you could individually make such a statement and of course we encourage you to do that anyway.  As you know, we send you these forms and hope you do that and a lot of our faculty do.  Or, when you retire you just leave your estate to Penn State and we can help you with that also.  I would rather see you do that than to have us get into a mode of saying, look we just cannot afford pay raises this year and I will tell you why.  I think our faculty would be understanding and we would not have some catastrophic moral crisis because we tried to treat people pretty well the last few years, if we said no we just cannot do pay raises this year.  But I do not think that is the right solution for a couple of reasons.  First of all, we are in a competitive marketplace and one year doesn’t make or break somebody’s loyalty and commitment to the university but we do operate in a competitive marketplace. 

 

People think faculty and staff at universities should just work for free and we are all so altruistic but we all have families and we went to school for 10 or 30 years to get to where we are and people ought to expect to be able to make a decent living and so there are competitive marketplace forces to which we have to be sensitive.  Secondly, the fact is that our salaries have slipped relative to our peers over the last several years.  We have been losing about a percent a year so in any one year if you got a three percent raise and the rest of the schools get four percent, you don’t worry too much about the one percent.  But then at the end of five years you say hey, wait a minute I am five percent behind.  There is a point at which you keep heading down that road and now you are way behind. 

 

So public university employees are way behind private university employees.  That gap has gotten very bad.  That is over 20 percent now nationally and we are about five percent behind our peer group.  Now we can say, but we have got Mount Nittany and we have got the Pennsylvania forest and I am on this beautiful campus at Abington and I love looking at that pond out my window or whatever it might be.  That only goes so far.  It just seems to me not only do we not want to head down that slippery slope, I think you may know that the Board of Trustees endorsed my goal that I outlined for them last year to actually go one percent above the peer group every year for five years.  Now that is our goal.  I don’t know if we can do that.  At this point if we can just stay even that might be good enough and maybe we will get that extra percent in another year but I think that is what we have to do because we do not want Penn State to be in a zone below our peers. 

 

We want to attract and retain the best faculty and it is particularly an issue for current employees, because new employees come and you just have to pay them the market rate.  If the University of Iowa is offering them $40,000 you have to offer them $40,000, and then hope they will come here, so we already have to do that for new employees.  Then, you get into salary compression issues for existing employees and at some point that bothers me when salary compression is too great.  We understand why it happens, we try to deal with it but it’s not a good long-term strategy.

 

David W. Russell, York Campus:  Last Thursday we had some transfer meetings at our campus and I was told by my college representative that some of the majors are starting to reduce the number of credit hours required to earn a bachelors degree.  We were also told at the time that one of the pressures toward reducing the number of credit hours is, in fact, the expensive nature of the tuition at Penn State.  My question is, at what point do tuition increases, though regrettably necessary given the state’s evacuation of its responsibility, at what point do they begin to impact potentially the academic integrity of our degree programs?

 

President Spanier:  On the subject of the state evacuating its responsibility let me just go on record saying that I am grateful for the $300 million that the legislature does send and there are fine people in the legislature who care very much about Penn State and are doing the best they can.  Nevertheless, I do understand what you just said.  I think with regard to the transfer thing there is about half of that story that sounds right to me, but not the whole thing.  I don’t think there is anything about the financial pressures relating to tuition that has to do with that discussion, because there are some public universities, and there are some peer institutions that charge students on a per credit hour basis.  The institution I was chancellor of before coming here did that.  You paid by the credit hour.  We do not do that here.  Once you are a full time student it does not matter whether you are taking 12 or 20 credits, you are paying your semesters’ tuition.  I think that discussion has more to do with the fact that over the years we have allowed--you the Faculty Senate because this is a Faculty Senate curriculum thing as much as anything else—that we have allowed some of our major requirements to get too great.  In some cases, we are way beyond what is really required by the profession or the accrediting bodies or what maybe makes good sense.  And these things happen for a lot of reasons. 

 

Look, you have got a lot of faculty members, they have got Ph.D’s and are leading experts in their field, they want that student when they have a bachelors degree to know everything.  And so you start adding on some extra courses and also sometimes you get into departmental politics.  I know when I was teaching in my department if a student did not have my course, they were not required to take my course, then they had a serious intellectual deficit and so you get about 10 faculty feeling that way and every course has got to be loaded into the curriculum.  We have some majors that are 128 or 136 credits.  They are way off the charts.  They do not have to be that way and what that is doing is, maybe, slowing some students down.  It is forcing them into that extra semester.  They are getting their money’s worth and they are getting a good education and so we are encouraging departments to go back and take a fresh look at just what do you need, what is appropriate for a baccalaureate degree and that in turn does affect some of the transfer questions.  Now that is my interpretation.  I have got John Romano here, Jim Wager, others who are probably involved in that discussion and could tell you more so if you just switch one seat there John will whisper the whole story to you.

 

Chair Nichols:  I don’t wish to cut off the president because this is his last meeting with us this academic year but we do have a long agenda so maybe one or two very quick questions.

 

Edward W. Bittner, McKeesport Campus:  When would the new calendar, if it comes about, when is the earliest it could come about?

 

President Spanier:  I would say in the fall 2003.  Nothing is going to happen this fall.  The earliest would be fall 2003, so I guess we should get ready for a lot of excitement in the fall of 2003.  There might be some changes.

 

Andrew K. Masters, Student Senator, College of Health and Human Development:  What can I tell the students that I represent that you are doing for the undergraduates in spite of the ten percent or double digit tuition increase.  Where the faculty are getting raises and the graduate students are getting increased health benefits, what can I say to my students that you are doing for the undergraduates so that they do not feel like they are just alone.

 

President Spanier:  I would be willing to say that they will continue to get the highest quality educational experience that you can have at a university like ours.  That the whole idea behind increasing tuition is to maintain that quality level including all the current focuses we have on instructional improvement and that if we reward the faculty properly their spirits will be up, they will want to deliver a quality product.  If you give graduate students the benefits that they should have at that station in their life, they are going to feel better about their situation, they will meet their classes, and they will be dedicated.  We cannot really offer any better faculty/student ratios or something that is all that tangible because the truth of the matter is, we are not using that tuition increase to move up to an entirely new level where we haven’t been before.  We are using that tuition increase to maintain the quality that we have, to follow through on existing commitments, to keep the upward momentum going but at that level it is not going to allow us to move into a zone that we are not.  So I do not want to over promise anything but we can promise that the goal is to maintain that quality level and to have people continue to feel good about what is happening at the university.  Okay, thanks everyone.

 

Chair Nichols:  Thank you, President Spanier.  Agenda Item F, Forensic Business there is none.  Agenda Item G, Unfinished Business, Senate Committee on Committees and Rules, this is Appendix “C,” Revision of Bylaws, Article III, new Section 7—Election to the Senate—Excessive Absences.  Jean Landa Pytel, Chair of Senate Committee on Committees and Rules will present the report.  You will recall that this report was discussed at our last Senate meeting but because it is a change in our Bylaws it had to lay on the table until this meeting for a vote.  So this is an action item today.

 

FORENSIC BUSINESS

 

None

 

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

 

SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMITTEES AND RULES

 

Revision of Bylaws, Article III, new Section 7 – Election to the Senate – Excessive Absences

 

Jean Landa Pytel, Chair, Senate Committee on Committees and Rules

 

Jean Landa Pytel, College of Engineering:  Thank you.  You’ve had lots of time to look at it and I guess I’ll stand for last minute questions.

 

William A. Rowe, College of Medicine:  There is no mention in there of double- checking attendance.  I presume the only means of checking attendance is the attendance handout sheet which every once in awhile somebody does miss.

 

Jean Landa Pytel:  That issue has been brought up and I think together with the staff of the Senate Office we will try to come up with an improved way of tracking attendance.  There is also the attendance on the minutes.  I think there is a way of checking there and then perhaps we can have something available that if somebody misses the clipboard they have an opportunity to sign in.

 

Chair Nichols:  Other questions for Jean?  If there are no questions on this report, are you ready for a vote?  It appears so.  All those in favor of the motion as listed, please signify by saying, "aye."

 

Senators:  Aye.

 

Chair Nichols:  Any opposed, "nay"?  The aye’s have it.  The motion is carried and the report is adopted as part of our Bylaws.

 

Agenda Item H, Legislative Reports, Senate Committee on Undergraduate Education, Revision of Senate Policy 65-00 Schreyer Honors College and this is Appendix “D,” and Laura Pauley is here to present the report.

 

LEGISLATIVE REPORTS

 

SENATE COMMITTEE ON UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION

 

Revision of Senate Policy 65-00 Schreyer Honors College

 

Laura L. Pauley, Chair, Senate Committee on Undergraduate Education

 

Laura L. Pauley, College of Engineering:  The Senate Committee on Undergraduate Education reviewed Policy 65-00 to update that policy to reflect current procedures of the Schreyer Honors College.  When the Schreyer Honors College was started there was just a change in name alone to this policy and now we have gone through and made the policy updated with the current procedures.  I can answer any questions.