THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY

T H E S E N A T E R E C O R D

Volume 31-----APRIL 28, 1998-----Number 7

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 1997-98.

The publication is issued by the Senate Office, Birch Cottage, University Park, PA 16802 (Telephone 814-863-0221). The Record is distributed to all Libraries across the Penn State system. 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.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Final Agenda for April 28, 1998 Pages ii-iii

A. Summary of Agenda Actions Page iv-v

B. Minutes and Summaries of Remarks Pages 1-73

II. Enumeration of Documents

A. Documents Distributed Prior to April 28, 1998 Appendix I

B. Attached

Door Handout - Senate Committee on FA -

Procedures for Terminating Tenure Protected

Faculty for Adequate Cause Appendix II

Door Handout - Senate Committee on SL Appendix III

Senate Calendar for 1998-99 Appendix IV

Chairs and Vice-Chairs for 1998-99 Appendix V

Standing Committee Assignments for 1998-99 Appendix VI

Roster of Senators by Voting Units for 1998-99 Appendix VII

Results of Senate Elections for 1998-99 Appendix VIII

Corrected Copy - Senate Committee on FA -

HR-40: Extended Reviews Tenured Faculty Appendix IX

Corrected Copy - Special Committee on Faculty

Teaching Development and Evaluation Appendix X

Corrected Copy - Senate Committee on FA -

Procedures for Terminating Tenure Protected

Faculty for Adequate Cause Appendix XI

Corrected Copy - Senate Committee on SL -

Suggestions for Learning Environment Actions

To Discourage Alcohol Abuse Appendix XII

Corrected Copy - Senate Committee on SL -

Guidelines for Basic Student Services at all

Penn State Locations Appendix XIII

Senators Not Returning for 1998-99 Appendix XIV

Attendance Appendix XV

FINAL AGENDA FOR APRIL 28, 1998

A. MINUTES OF THE PRECEDING MEETING -

Minutes of the March 31, 1998, Meeting in The Senate Record 31:6----------Page 1

B. COMMUNICATIONS TO THE SENATE - Senate Curriculum Report

(Blue Sheets) of April 17, 1998----------------------------------Page 1

C. REPORT OF SENATE COUNCIL - Meeting of March 14, 1998----------Page 1

D. ANNOUNCEMENTS BY THE CHAIR - ----------Pages 1-3

E. COMMENTS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY - ----------Pages 3-11

FORENSIC BUSINESS -

7. UNFINISHED LEGISLATIVE BUSINESS -

8. LEGISLATIVE REPORTS -

9. ADVISORY/CONSULTATIVE REPORTS -

Faculty Affairs

Procedures for Terminating Tenure Protected Faculty for Adequate Cause----------Pages 33-45

Faculty Benefits

College of Medicine Addendum: 1997 Report on Faculty Salary Equity

by Gender-------------------------------------------------Pages 45-51

Faculty Salary Comparisons within Penn State and Other Universities--Pages 51-52

Outreach Activities/University Planning

Faculty Involvement in the World Campus----------Pages 52-53

Student Life

Suggestions for Learning Environment Actions to Discourage Alcohol

Abuse--------------------------------------------Pages 53-58

Guidelines for Basic Student Services at all Penn State Locations----------Pages 58-62

10. INFORMATIONAL REPORTS -

Guidelines for General Education Reform 1998 Knowledge Domains--Pages 62-65

Implementation of the First-Year Seminar ----------------------Pages 65-67

University Planning

Status of Construction Projects---------------------Page 67

Academic Calendar Changes--A Status Report----------Pages 67-69

Report of Senate Elections

Senate Council

Senate Committee on Committees and Rules

University Promotion and Tenure Review Committee

Standing Joint Committee on Tenure

Faculty Rights and Responsibilities-----------------Page 69-70

Faculty Advisory Committee to the President

Senate Secretary for 1998-99

Senate Chair-Elect for 1998-99

Comments by Outgoing Chair Geschwindner------------------Pages 70-71

Installation of Officers

Comments by Incoming Chair Berkowitz---------------------Pages 71-72

K. NEW LEGISLATIVE BUSINESS - -------------------------------Page 72

L. COMMENTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE GOOD OF THE

UNIVERSITY - --------------------------------------------Page 73

M. ADJOURNMENT - -----------------------------------------Page 73

The Senate passed six Advisory/Consultative Reports:

Faculty Affairs - "Procedures for Terminating Tenure Protected Faculty for Adequate Cause." This report reinforces the University’s commitment to tenure by codifying protections for faculty members facing termination proceedings which is beyond present Pennsylvania law. (See Record, page(s) 33-45, Door Handout Record Appendix II, Corrected Copy Record Appendix XI, and Agenda Appendix "E.")

Faculty Benefits - "College of Medicine Addendum: 1997 Report on Faculty Salary Equity by Gender." This report advances two recommendations to examine the unexplained differences in salaries within rank between male and female salaries at the College of Medicine. (See Record, page(s) 45-51 and Agenda Appendix "F.")

Faculty Benefits - "Faculty Salary Comparisons within Penn State and Other Institutions." This is the annual report on faculty salary caparisons and makes two recommendations concerning allocation of University resources and salaries. (See Record, page(s) 51-52 and Agenda Appendix "G.")

Outreach Activities/University Planning - "Faculty Involvement in the World Campus." This is a joint report that makes a series of seven recommendations ranging from faculty endorsement of the World Campus concept to the faculty and student interaction within the World Campus. (See Record, page(s) 52-53 and Agenda Appendix "H.")

Student Life - "Suggestions for Learning Environment Actions to Discourage Alcohol Abuse." This report brings to a culmination a series of reports on the impact of alcohol abuse and it effects on the environment both in the academic and general University settings. (See Record, page(s) 53-58, Door Handout Record Appendix III, Corrected Copy Record Appendix XII, and Agenda Appendix "I.")

Student Life - "Guidelines for Basic Services at all Penn State Locations." This report makes a series of recommendations concerning student life functions across the University system. (See Record, page(s) 58-62, Door Handout Record Appendix III, Corrected Copy Record Appendix XIII, and Agenda Appendix "J.")

The Senate passed one Legislative Report:

Faculty Teaching Development and Evaluation – "Final Report." This report offers four recommendations to ensure that all academic units can further improve their methods of teaching development and evaluation. (See Record, page(s) 27-33, Corrected Copy Record Appendix X, and Agenda Appendix "D.")

The Senate held two Forensic Sessions:

Faculty Affairs - "Proposed Revision of HR-40: Extended Reviews of Tenured Faculty." This report contains the extended review requirement, a statement on college flexibility, guidelines and a recommendation associated with proposed revisions for extended review of tenured faculty. (See Record, page(s) 11-23, Corrected Copy Record Appendix IX, and Agenda Appendix "B.")

Libraries - "Collection of Faculty and Staff Libraries Fees." This report outlines a method that faculty and staff may pay library fines/fees via payroll deduction.

(See Record, page(s) 23-27, and Agenda Appendix "C.")

The Senate received four Informational Reports:

General Education Implementation Committee - "Guidelines for General Education Reform 1998 Knowledge Domains." This report was information-gathering in nature and is the first step in several that will make it possible to implement the new General Education at the University. (See Record, page(s) 62-65 and Agenda Appendix "K.")

General Education Implementation Committee- "Implementation of the First-Year Seminar." This report was presented to engender the sense of the Senate regarding the First-Year Seminar for the new General Education. (See Record, page(s) 65-67 and Agenda Appendix "L.")

University Planning - "Status of Construction Projects." This report notes the University's major construction programs dated February 20, 1998. (See Record, page(s) 67 and Agenda Appendix "M.")

University Planning - "Academic Calendar Changes--A Status Report." This report was to inform the University community regarding the impact of the change of the calendar regarding the Thanksgiving breaks. (See Record, page(s) 67-69 and Agenda Appendix "N.")

A report of elections results for 1998-99 was read. The report was to announce the results of the Senate election for the 1998-99 Senate year.

Officers for 1998-99 were installed.

The University Faculty Senate met on Tuesday, April 28, 1998, at 1:30 p.m. in Room 112 Kern Building with Louis Geschwindner, Chair, presiding. One hundred and sixty-two Senators signed the roster.

Chair Geschwindner: It is time to begin.

Moving to the minutes of the preceding meeting. You have received The Senate Record, providing a full transcription of the proceedings of the March 31, 1998 meeting. It was also sent to all University Libraries and is posted on the Faculty Senate 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 Geschwindner: Opposed? The minutes are accepted. Thank you.

You have received the Senate Curriculum Report (Blue Sheets) for April 17, 1998 in the mail.

Also, you should have received the report of the Senate Council, the meeting of April 14. This is an attachment in The Senate Agenda for today’s meeting.

I refer you to my remarks to Senate Council that are contained in the minutes attached to today’s Agenda, and I will avoid repetition of these items.

I would like to read to you the names of Senators who will not be returning to the Senate next year. The Senate thanks these Senators for their dedication and hard work to the Senate, their voting unit and the university. The following Senators will not be returning next year from the College of Agricultural Sciences: Phyllis Adams, John Becker, Nathan Hartwig; from the College of Arts and Architecture: Jane Ridley, Cary Libkin; from Penn State Erie - The Behrend College: Meredythe Burrows, Kenneth Fisher; from Berks-Lehigh Valley College, the Berks Campus: Deena Morganti; from the Smeal College of Business Administration: Joseph Cavinato; from the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences: Amy Glasmeier, David Gold, Paul Howell, Peter Thrower; from the College of Education: Eunice Askov, Joe Kincheloe; from the College of Engineering: Brian Dempsey, John Lamancusa, James Robinson; from the College of Health and Human Development: Robert Burgess, Virginia Fortney, Scott Kretchmar, Susan Youtz; from the College of the Liberal Arts: Irwin Feller, Paul Rose, William Schmalstieg; from the College of Medicine: Hamid Al-Mondhiry, Graham Jeffries; from the Eberly College of Science: Andrea Mastro, Richard Robinett; representing Military Sciences: Marc Goldberg; from the New Kensington Campus: Robert Howard; Wilkes-Barre Campus: Charles Ghilani; from the University Libraries: Katherine Clark; the following Appointed Senators: William Asbury, J. Gary Augustson, John Bruhn, Carol Hermann, James Ryan, Gary Schultz, James Stewart; Undergraduate Students: Kara Ballek, Timothy Blair, Timothy Creyts, Julie Laubach, Michael Platz, Carie Spampinato, David Lubkemann, Jayatri Das, Matthew Otstot, Julie Cain, Christopher Anderson, Michael D'Ausilio, John Baer, David Kayal; Graduate Students: George Crist, Irja Haapala, Lara Lomicka, Erica Michael; and Ex Officio Senator: Rodney Reed. Again we thank all these Senators for their service.

The Faculty Advisory Committee to the President met on April 9, 1998, and discussed the following topics: University Ombudsman; Report of the Ad-Hoc Committee on Computer Aided Instruction and Learning; Post Tenure Review; a number of faculty issues at various locations; and the status of dean searches, especially for the Eberly College of Science. The FAC also held a special meeting on Thursday, April 23, to discuss the "School of Information Sciences and Technology." That was our last meeting of FAC for the 1997-98 Senate year and we are in the process of scheduling FAC meetings for the coming year.

I have been asked to announce that copies of the "1997-98 Operating Budget" and the "1997-98 Operating Expenditures" (Volumes I & II) are available for your inspection and review at the Senate Office.

I received a memo from President Spanier regarding the three advisory/consultative reports presented and passed at our March 3, 1998, Senate meeting. The first report titled "Revision of HR-23 Definition of Academic Ranks" is being referred to Billie Willits so that the necessary changes may be made in that policy statement. The second report entitled "HR-60, Access to Personnel Files" is also being referred to Billie Willits so that changes can be made in that policy statement as well. The third report entitled "Implementation of 1996 Salary Equity Review Process" has also been accepted by the president. He indicated however, in recommendation #1, "that we will need to access our resources and our needs before we can commit ourselves to raising the amount of equity adjustment as recommended by the report". He continued, "we will do what we can to address the equity issues as recommended by the report but as I indicated last year in accepting the original report, it is probably unlikely that we will be able to remove as much as 25 percent of our raise pool for this purpose".

I also received a memo from President Spanier regarding the advisory/consultative report passed by the Senate on February 3, 1998, titled "Report of the Ad-Hoc Committee on Computer Aided Instruction and Learning." He noted that there are a few particulars which need to be given consideration before he is able to endorse this report, particularly pertaining to issues of ownership and copyright. Therefore, the president along with the Senate Chair will appoint a joint committee to address these concerns and develop the details of implementation. This committee will report back to the Senate upon completion of its work.

I want to remind all of you from University Park that the new ID+ cards are being processed until May 1 in the White Building on the University Park campus. It takes about 10 minutes to complete the process under normal circumstances. I would encourage you to, if you haven't already, to go and get your new ID card and also ask that you remind your colleagues about this activity.

At this time I would like to ask Peter Deines and Susan Youtz to join me at the podium here in front of the stage.

For 28 years, Helen Clark has been serving the university. As Curriculum Recorder, she is the single clearing house for all issues relating to curriculum. She is the strength behind the work of the Senate Committee on Curricular Affairs and is the person with the answers when any question is asked regarding the curriculum of this university.

Helen, would you please come down to the front of the auditorium.

This will be Helen’s last University Faculty Senate meeting, since she plans to retire at the end of this academic year. Susan, Peter and I represent the many past chairs of the Curricular Affairs Committee who wish to express our sincere thanks to Helen, on behalf of the entire university, for her many years of dedicated service. We present these 28 roses as a small token of that appreciation. Will you please join me in a rousing round of applause in thanks for all that Helen Clark has meant to Penn State.

Senators: Applause and standing ovation.

Helen Clark, Curriculum Recorder: Everybody that knows me, knows I'm a person of few words anyway. I just want to say thank you, everyone, and it's been a joy working with Curricular Affairs. I've enjoyed every year. Thank you very much.

We move on to comments by the President of the University, and President Spanier is here and he would like to make some comments.

Graham B. Spanier, President: Thank you very much. Twenty-eight roses is very impressive. Nowadays university presidents get three or four, that's about all they can accumulate. Now it reminds me of a story. This young man gets up in the morning, goes down to breakfast and his mother is going to give him breakfast and he says, "Mom I'm not going to school today for two reasons, the teachers don't like me and the kids make fun of me." And the mother says, "Son you are going to school today and I'm going to give you two reasons. First of all, you're 49 years old, and second you’re the president of the university." So I really admire that you got 28 of those things.

A few announcements, we expect that our budget for the 1998-99 year will be signed tomorrow by the Governor at about 11:00 unless he has a change of heart. It's a good budget for Penn State this year. It is not as much as we had hoped for, but it is the most generous budget that we have received from this governor--in fact, about as well as we've done in quite a number of years. It's a 3.25 percent increase to our base budget, which, while it is ahead of inflation, still lags considerably behind what we consider to be our needs and helping us reach all of our aspirations and taking advantage of the opportunities that are out there. But we hope that in conjunction with a modest increase in tuition and fees, we will be able indeed this year to accomplish several things, and I think it's going to be a very good year for us. We hope to put together a fair and modest salary increase. We hope to begin to invest funds for at least two or three of the major initiatives that we announced last year that we would be launching in the future. Those initiatives are children, youth and families, material sciences, environmental sciences, and information sciences and technology. We hope to take the first steps on two and possibly three of those initiatives, and once we begin down that road we expect to make additional investments in each of those areas over a period of several years. We will continue our commitment to put $1 million of new permanent funding into the life sciences consortium. That is something that we began a couple of years ago. It's a five year commitment to put $1 million of new funds each year into that area, and we should be able to do that. Last year we began another initiative that is not quite so jazzy but I think is very important to the future of the university, and that is to increase the funds that we put into deferred maintenance. Fixing up things, maintaining things, renovations, bringing some of our facilities back into better conditions. Our needs there are phenomenal, and so our goal is to put $1 million of new money each year into that and gradually increase the base that's available on a continuing basis. We hope to be able to do that again this year. We will, of course need to put aside funds for funding of fuel and utilities associated with new buildings coming on-line or in some cases even renovation projects; because now something is air conditioned, for example, increases the utility bill. We have funds set aside for that and we do have a number of new facilities coming on-line at our campuses across the state. We want to make a continued investment in and upgrading of what we do in the entire range of initiatives in information technology, public access laboratories for students, networking, vamping up our involvement in Internet II, keeping up with the phenomenally growing demand of electronic mail and connections that all of you have. I think you know we have more than 100,000 active electronic mail users on the Penn State system. We're generating something like 1.7 million electronic mail messages a day. Access to our web pages, web sites and other electronic traffic is really phenomenal. We also want to put some new permanent money into the libraries. We're working on the final details of that right now. That's an area where you can never really put to much money in because of the continuing escalating costs and the demands that we have there, not only here at University Park but at our libraries throughout the state where we still have a way to go. We had made a commitment earlier to put funding into the new general education curriculum that you approved and we expect to fully fund that at the levels hoped for earlier. We will continue our initiative to add new faculty positions throughout the state. That will be facilitated not only by the budget generally but in large part because of increased enrollments that we expect. Of course there is a good news and bad news side to the increased enrollments. We would much rather be a university like ours that is very popular right now and where there is an intense student demand, but of course the volume of mail that I get from parents whose children have been rejected by Penn State is also greater than it's ever been and we do seek to have the right balance. But we will have record enrollments throughout the Penn State system next year and at the University Park campus. We will be adding new sections of courses, new faculty, and we might be asking some of you to take an extra student or two, or ten in your classes. Not a good time to mention that as you're trying to grade papers now and finish up the semester, I suppose. We believe that we will be able to accommodate in the budget all of the existing commitments that we have made, so we think it's going to be a pretty good year even though we still have some level of disappointment that the legislature was not able to be more generous with us in the end, particularly in a very good budget year for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. We are continuing to be as entrepreneurial as we can. We're continuing through the University Planning Council to look at reallocations and there will indeed be some reallocations as a part of the budget process this year. Overall we think it will be a good step forward for us. Now, I would be happy to take your questions on any subject.

Jacob De Rooy, Penn State Harrisburg: We as the faculty are aware of the increase in the demand by external constituencies for accountability of faculty. You are the point man in making our case to these constituencies. How can you convince them of the effectiveness of our procedures for evaluating our faculty without giving them a body count?

President Spanier: Now is that related to the discussion you're about to have this afternoon? Well it is one of the…what you're raising is clearly one of the major issues in higher education today. Certainly it's an issue internally at universities because most major universities are having discussions similar to the one we're having this afternoon. Some have adopted internal mechanisms for a higher level of accountability; some have adopted post tenure review schemes; some have changed how they deal with issues of tenure and annual faculty review within their university. It's also an issue in higher education in a couple of other respects, first of all among governing boards. There is something called the Association of Governing Boards, and members of boards of trustees for all colleges and universities belong to this organization. They just had their annual meeting in Nashville last week and they talk about these issues there, very prominently and very often trustees come back from those meetings wondering how their institution measures up in the accountability arena. Then for public universities it is an important issue, because increasingly governors and legislatures--and people in the corporate business community that influence governors and legislatures--have somehow come to the conclusion that universities have not been demonstrating the same level of accountability that they think other institutions in society have had to step up to. So there can be no doubt that this is an issue, and, while faculty don't see it, I see it every day. Questions like this come up in many, many public forums that I attend. Now, I think we have a pretty good story to tell at Penn State, and I do tell it, and I don't feel like I've lost any of those arguments, so to speak, up to this point. We do about as comprehensive a system of annual reviews as any university does. Our second, fourth and sixth-year reviews leading up to tenure tend to be more comprehensive than you would typically find. Some universities don't even have a two and four-year--maybe they have one at three years, but we do more of that than you typically find at other universities. So what’s my conclusion on this? My conclusion is that Penn State has a good system in place. It works for us pretty well, and I feel very comfortable supporting what we're doing. On the other hand I do welcome the Faculty Senate's efforts to think about whether we can do more, because the greater the degree of accountability that we can show as a faculty, the better it is I think in the long run for this university. I want to make very clear, I don't have a strong position on the concept of post tenure review. This is not a make or break issue for me. I'm glad the faculty is talking about it. I think if we do something like that it probably makes my job a little easier, but this shouldn't be about making my job easier. I'm comfortable explaining and defending what we do in any sense. But it is important to be aware that there are sentiments about this issue that go beyond the faculty into governing boards and the Governor will sign tomorrow almost exactly a $300 million appropriation for Penn State, just maybe a little hair under that, and in the eyes of the taxpayers and the people who send us that money, they want to make sure that we're good stewards of those dollars. Admittedly they don't understand very well what tenure is all about, and the nuances, the issues that we all deal with on a day to day basis. So part of it is explaining what we do, but as I said we want to make sure that we're as accountable as we can be. My position is I'm going to support whatever your decision is on this. I'm sure you'll have a good discussion about it.

Gregory K. Farber, Eberly College of Science: I am in the College of Science, one of a growing number of colleges that is searching for a Dean. I would like to know under what circumstances internal candidates are considered for Dean searches, and under what conditions are searches limited to external candidates?

President Spanier: Just to summarize to get everybody on the same page, we have an ongoing search right now for Dean of the College of Science. I think we're fairly close to bringing in a group of finalists in this round of the search for that position. We have an ongoing search for Dean of the College of Education, and this afternoon in fact after this Senate meeting, John Brighton and I will be meeting with the faculty and staff of the College of Communications to talk about the appointment of a search committee and to launch a search there. We would expect in a typical year at Penn State, given our size and the number of academic units we have, to be searching for two or three deans and a couple of campus executive officers or deans on our campuses. It would be very unusual for a search at the level of dean or higher in the university to not have a national search. There would be exceptions to that, exceptions could come about for a variety of reasons--some emergency where a permanent person has to be appointed, that somebody is so clearly a front runner who happens to be internal that it doesn't make sense to anybody to do a broader search. In my career I've seen other reasons why internal searches are done, but at least nine out of ten times and probably more like 99 out of a 100 times for a position like that you are going to do a national search. It has a way of slowing things down, and the process can become a little more complicated--reference checking is slower, getting schedules for people to come in slows things down so there can be a down side to it--but generally that's the preference.

David Kayal, Student Senator, Division of Undergraduate Studies: What kind of message is the university sending by hosting cocktail parties for legislators and Board of Trustee members before and after football games. And also that the university licenses out its name to be printed on shot glasses and beer mugs. What message do you think that sends to students?

President Spanier: On the general issue this is something of course I've given a lot of thought to, and in fact I've been thinking about it a lot lately because tomorrow I'm giving the keynote address at a national higher education conference sponsored by the American Council on Education on this very topic of excessive consumption of alcohol and the problems that it poses for colleges and universities nationally. I think Penn State is at the moment a model of programs that have been implemented principally through our Student Affairs Office to deal with these issues. The Faculty Senate leadership last year sent out a letter to faculty pointing out ways in which the faculty could be involved. We have a council that involves people in the community. We have ongoing discussions with medical personnel in the local hospital emergency room. We are really trying to deal with this issue in so many ways, and I think we've had some modest success but still have a long way to go. Just for the record, when we entertain legislators here in conjunction with football games, we do not serve them alcohol. We entertain them at the Nittany Lion Inn, and we feed them, but the fluids that they are offered tend to be coffee, tea and soft drinks. So I don't want to leave any impression on the floor that that's what happens when we invite legislators here. People do point out the phenomenon that around football and other events people often do drink, but we hope that the people who are doing that are 21 years of age or older and doing so responsibly, and if they are over 21 and they're doing so responsibly, that's really not the principle issue for us. The problem that we're mostly combating at the university is the excessive consumption of alcohol by underage individuals and binge drinking, which is a phenomenon in colleges and universities nation wide which really has some pretty serious consequences. As near as we can tell the phenomenal level of alcohol-related crime that we see in our region, the hospital emergency room admissions that are alcohol-related, disorderly conduct, public intoxication, vandalism, fighting, injuries that are alcohol-related, and some of the other negative consequences that we monitor really come about not from somebody who is of legal age having a drink or two at a university-sponsored social function or even on their own around the edges of a university activity, but it is the underage binge drinking that relates to most of those issues. That's really where we're focusing the energies, and for me this has never been about saying, "nobody should drink," or we must have some level of prohibition about Penn State. It's trying to bring to our whole scope of activities a higher level of responsibility.

Jamie M. Myers, College of Education: I have a small specific concern that will actually have a great impact on faculty who use the journals in the library. Business Services runs a copy service in the library, and it's my understanding that service is going to end. This will inconvenience faculty a little bit, and they have to spend quite a lot of time standing at the xerox machine when in the past they could leave the article with the service. This is quite a contrast to ten years ago, when I was at Indiana University and you could order an article by using email and the xerox would show up in the mail a couple of days later, yet we consider ourselves to be so technologically advanced here today.

President Spanier: Well let me say that it's a real good question and I don't know the answer because I'm not sure what's happening there. I am aware that this whole scheme of things is going to be changing over time. Right now, for example--here's a bit of trivia--Penn State has become just overnight since its conception the largest user of the new J-Store program. Have any of you used that? This is the new journal storage project. Penn State is a subscriber, and we have Penn State data. Thousands of our faculty and students are using it. Where principally social science journals at this point…they have digitized the permanent archives of a whole range of social science and other journals, and you can go in and get copies and access them electronically, and this will expand to other journals quickly over time. The retrieval and printing and accessing of journals is changing, and so the traditional method of going somewhere and printing them out is probably going to shift. Clearly what you describe is a need that I suspect we continue to have, and I don't know if it’s a copyright issue where our folks have been warned by somebody that we need to constrain that, or if it's as you have suggested it might be, a financial issue. If it's a financial issue, I imagine there's some way to solve that problem. Do we have an expert on this topic here?

Linda C. Friend, University Libraries: I'm not an expert but this is a contracted service. It's actually offered by Business Services and they have indicated that because of financial reasons they are discontinuing this service.

President Spanier: Well John Brighton is leaving for China tomorrow to represent us at a very important event there--actually that's kind of interesting what's happening there in its own right--so maybe what we could do is hereby appoint Vice Provost Bob Secor to look into this matter and to….

Robert Secor, Vice Provost: Unless you feel this is something which should be handled by the Provost, in which case you could send me to China instead.

President Spanier: There's usually another side to the story, you learn in university administration, but assuming it's something as simple as just getting the financing of it worked out, it does sound like something we ought to pay some attention to. We'll look into that, and we'll either fix the problem or we'll get back to you with an explanation why it's more complicated than it might seem.

Chair Geschwindner: I think we have time for one more question.

Peter D. Georgopulos, Delaware Campus: What comments can you make about changes in the new division head structure in the Commonwealth College in light of discipline coherence?

President Spanier: Well, again, sort of a complex issue for the rest of the group that's not as close to this. When the Commonwealth College was put together--the college consisting of 12 of our campuses around the state--we realized that to make the transition to functioning as an academic unit it would need a different kind of structure. Many faculty members then chose to have their tenure in that college, some continued to choose that their tenure home would be an academic department at University Park. But new faculty coming in will increasingly affiliate with this new college. So there is a need to have within the college, not just a liaison function but people who are in positions of responsibility where they can oversee, monitor, facilitate issues like faculty development, promotion and tenure, sort of nurturing the academic side of the disciplines. The original structure that was put into place, which was done quickly and which many people thought might or might not work and that would in any event be fine-tuned after the first year, consisted of putting into place 17 divisions, with 17 division heads who were spread over the 12 campuses. So you might have the person in charge of English at one campus, with nothing more than a reduction of one course, to oversee 70 some English professors in the Commonwealth College. As we began to look at this through the year, it occurred to many individuals, I think, within the college, and I must admit also to me, that this may not have been the most functional system. There were other things that popped up, like some concern about the level of connection between those division heads and the faculty they represented, and their disciplinary homes or their former disciplinary homes at University Park. So we've been looking at that. Many of us have been struggling with this for a few months now and Joe Strasser is in the process. He is today visiting one of the campuses. He is today visiting his fifth campus. For the last two weeks he's been on a swing of the campuses. He will have visited seven by the end of this week. He's been communicating by email with other faculty members, and what he would like to come out of that consultation is a plan for some adjustments in the division structure. I think you pointed out pretty well the balance that he's going to try to strike is trying to bring down the number of divisions to a more manageable size, trying to set up the divisions so that the faculty who are involved truly have the resources to do their jobs properly, and we're working that discussion through the budget process right now. It's one of the loose ends that we'll be trying to tie up, but at the same time trying not to have so few divisions that faculty members in a particular area are put together with faculty who have very little in common with them. There needs to be enough of an appropriate connection there that people feel, I don't know, if they're a social scientist that somebody who has the appropriate social science background is associated with them, or English with English, and Math with Math, and Engineering with Engineering and so on. That's what he's in the process of working through right now. You're not happy with that answer.

Peter D. Georgopulos: The point is that the present system for instance has division heads in physics, chemistry and biology. The idea of getting one liaison, a scientist, sounds fine. If we reduce the number from 17 down to say 8 persons, a number which from an administrative point is manageable, but from a faculty perspective say in the sciences, I think is a disaster. If you want disciplinary coherence, you don't want someone in biology trying to judge someone in physics or in chemistry. We further lose the connection that we had with the traditional departments and the discipline.

President Spanier: I think it's an interesting question. Can a physicist promote the faculty development of and oversee a promotion and tenure process for a chemist? We do that at Penn State Erie, for example, we have long standing experience with that. The Dean of the College of Science has to be either a physicist or a chemist or a mathematician, and they are making decisions about people. Theoretically, of course, we'd all say, "yes it's possible," but I think the devil is in the details. It's whether a physicist is truly making the preliminary promotion and tenure recommendation on that individual, or are they a facilitator for putting together the appropriate committee which will make the decision and shepherding it through the system. I think it's questions like that that Joe Strasser is trying to get a reading on and--did you say you're at Delaware?--so I think he's already been to your campus and undoubtedly heard your thoughts on that.

Peter D. Georgopulos: The point I'm trying to make is we lose that connection to the departments at University Park.

President Spanier: Let me comment on that, too, because that is at the top of the list of what I've been pushing in looking at how the system is working. I think we've lost a little bit of that with the 17 division head structure, and I am adamant, as many people in this room know, because they've heard me talk about it in other contexts. I am adamant that we continue to view this university as one university, geographically distributed. There is one faculty at Penn State, there is one president, there is one Board of Trustees, there is one Faculty Senate, and we need to pull together, and that means that there needs to be clearly identified people who are providing leadership across the whole university. If you're a physicist, I want all of the physicists within the university to feel they have something in common. They are Penn State physicists. I want the head of the Department of Physics to feel some responsibility for facilitating faculty development for all physicists, but we have to get the right balance. I don't want the Dean of the College of Science at University Park to feel that he is literally in charge of all physicists when that person might be in a different college and belong to a different dean. That's the balance we're trying to strike. We are trying to come out of this with much greater disciplinary cohesion rather than having it fractured, and that's what we have to work on, and believe me I appreciate very strongly the perspective that you're bringing. We just have to get the details right and make sure it fits together.

Chair Geschwindner: President Spanier, thank you very much. We're going to have to relieve you from your time at the podium. Now, all those folks who are standing in the back waiting for an opportunity, if you want to find a seat, please feel free to join us. As we begin our discussion of reports, I will remind you to please stand and identify yourself and the unit you represent before addressing the Senate. I will also point out and remind all of our visitors that only Senators will be recognized to speak except for those people who have, prior to today, asked for permission for the privilege of the floor, and it has been granted and I will call on them as appropriate. Our first piece of business is a forensic session sponsored by the Faculty Affairs Committee, the proposed revision of HR-40. Murry Nelson is here to begin this discussion.

SENATE COMMITTEE ON FACULTY AFFAIRS

Murry R. Nelson, Chair

Murry R. Nelson, College of Education: Thank you, Lou. We have a couple of things we wanted to say to you before hand. I'll try to contain my remarks to about a minute, and then Bob Secor will talk for about five minutes to give some of the larger background to this. I wanted to say a couple things about this in reference to, first of all, the responses that we've gotten. As you may know, I think most of you know, this report was put on the web, and I wanted to make sure first of all that your responses to this report are to the revised report which was put on the web after our last meeting of March 31. So, I hope that if you have not double checked that, you will check what's in the document today and make sure whatever remarks you may have indeed are relevant to the particular report that we have here. Second the responses that we had--and there were many--and some of you may have sent them, have focused on a lot of different issues. What we will do today in the session is try to cull from your remarks today those things that will be useful to us in trying to again revise the report. Remember that this is a draft and it will change. We are not putting forth this particular document. We are putting it here because this is where we are at this point and will make whatever changes we feel are necessary after reviewing the commentary that comes from this particular forensic session. The comments that we have gotten have indicated at times that there is an overall--on the part of some people--there's an overall opposition to the notion of any sort of review like this, so we note that. There's not much we can say about that substantively, but we note that there are folks that are against the whole notion, and that won't really add much to the forensics other than to say that this is something you are against. We are hoping that we will be able to deal with substance, or, if you are against that, you can say, "I'm against it," but we have received many comments about reasons why and things that may be useful for us to see. There are some changes I want to note, and if you'll please make notes on your particular documents you'll note three things at least that we have identified as changes in this report.

The first occurs on--these are all small--on page four, under "C" just to make sure that there is not a misunderstanding. The last words should be the "faculty member," because the implication by using the term candidate is that this is someone who is up for something, and they aren't.

The next is on page six, under Roman numeral VI, having to do with cost and implementation. There was a general feeling, and this was given to us in a number of emails, also, the notion that there is no additional cost should be modified to say, "the only additional cost for this program will be in the time and effort for faculty members." I think a number of people took umbrage at the notion that faculty members' time and effort was not worth anything. The point of this is that when we cost things out we have dollars and cents. This is not to imply that faculty members time and effort is not worth something. We simply can't put a price on it; it's worth that much more.

Finally, for some reason the "rationale" in the beginning was reiterated at the end on page seven, and that wasn't intended. So if you'll just put a line through that to note that we did not mean to have that there a second time.

I certainly could say much more. I do want to just note that the impetus for this is something that has grown over the years nationally, and we were not put in any position to be forced to do any of this as a committee. We have done this as a committee with the understanding that this is something that is going on nationally. We also have a number of external forces that have been brought to bear on higher education generally, but there is no gun to our collective heads and the Senate's decision on this which will come in the fall will indeed be the Senate's decision. The committee feels that we have spent an awful lot of time on this--in fact we know we've spent a lot of time on it--and we feel that what we have put forth at this point is a good report still undergoing some modifications. We hope you will help to improve it and give us some ideas about what those should look like. Bob Secor has done much of the work at the committee's behest. Bob has also provided much of the background and has also engaged in a number of research studies about what is going on nationally. Bob is going to make some short comments and then we will "forenz."

Robert Secor: Thanks Murry. I must say in working with the Faculty Affairs Committee and reviewing the comments that we received from you, a number of them had the tone of, "Why should we vote for this proposal? After all, turkeys don't vote for Thanksgiving." Well, I'm here to try to convince you that you are not turkeys, and to ask that you engage in this forensic session with an open mind rather than that of a turkey being presented with a proposal for Thanksgiving.

A major part of my responsibility is to oversee and to be a spokesman for, our tenure system--to make sure it works, and also to convey both internally and externally the importance of tenure and to defend and support the concept. I would not come to you on behalf of a proposal that would in any way undermine our tenure system. That is an assignment I would not accept. My support of this proposal is just the opposite--that I think, as do people in my position around the country--that such proposals are necessary to protect what we have.

I am sure you are all aware of the attacks on universities as bastions of privilege and inefficiency, leading to reductions of public support and attacks on faculty and the tenure system. Higher education in Pennsylvania has not avoided the attacks or the scrutiny. You know how well President Spanier has defended Penn State against such attacks in Harrisburg, confronting, on our behalf, such questions as why Penn State faculty need to have sabbaticals, or tuition reduction arrangements for our children. Our Extended Review proposal does not come from Graham Spanier, but I am convinced that it will help our president to help us when he speaks on our behalf in Harrisburg, particularly when issues of tenure come up.

The concept of tenure is constantly being raised by the public, the legislators and boards of regents and trustees in every state in the nation, with the primary question being, why do professors have lifetime security where they can do anything they want, cut the lawn while we have to go out to work, and we have to support them with our tax dollars while we have to worry about our jobs every day of the week? Let me quote from an issue from the Chronicle of Higher Education last semester: "The top policy maker for public colleges in Massachusetts [James F. Carlin, chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education], said last week that U.S. colleges would improve only if they abolished tenure, ended presidential search panels, limited research, and re-evaluated faculty duties. [He said tenure was] an 'absolute scam' that insures 'a lifetime job guarantee' rather than academic freedom." Mr. Carlin said "ending or overhauling tenure, as well as redistributing faculty workloads, would be 'the No. 1 and 2 issues for the state board."

That's Massachusetts, not all that far away from us--unlike California. Although I did hear one speaker on the subject say in a national conference recently, if there ever was a Proposition 209 on tenure, we would lose--and no resolution from the AAUP would protect us against that kind of a state law.

The responses of our institutions have been twofold: one, to get the word out the best we can about what tenure really is, and what faculty life really is like; and we tried to do that here as well. As you know I spoke before the Board of Trustees making every argument I could as to what tenure means, how it came to be and why we still need it. You know what I said, because I made that presentation to Faculty Senate at the request of senate officers. And then President Spanier and Provost Brighton and myself put together a four hour workshop for the Trustees just to go through what a faculty life looks like and to take out our P&T dossiers and show them what it means to get tenure in this university and to talk about accountability." The accountability that we all have every day of our lives. In both of those sessions the question came up from members of the board, "how do we know that the faculty you tenure continue to do what they need to do, how we talk about accountability. And we did mention that the Faculty Senate was looking at post tenure review. If we didn't say it, they would have asked. The second way of ensuring the public and our external constituencies that we know what we're doing, is to assure them that we have accountability, but that accountability is our business, not that of outside forces like state legislatures or boards of trustees. As Donald Kennedy, President Emeritus of Stanford says, "The alternative to internal reform with active faculty participation is apt to earn intensified drive for external accountability. Most of the academic community will surely prefer a social contract revived from within."

Many of you may know the case in Minnesota last year. It was all over the internet, all over the Chronicle, the newspapers--where the board of trustees at Minnesota have gotten involved with tenure considerations and suggested they would change some of the tenure assumptions at Minnesota. The faculty at Minnesota organized and it became a very public battle conveyed around the country. Ultimately the board did back down, four members of that board resigned and didn't run again. What the faculty said was, "we will institute on our own, post tenure review. Get off our backs we'll take care of ourselves." That is the nature of the conversation. Minnesota is engaging in post tenure review, faculty decision.

Our own national organizations have been making this argument since the 1980s, but most intensely at the present moment. In 1982, the National Commission on Higher Education Issues stated that "nothing will undermine the tenure system more completely than it's being regarded as a system to protect faculty from evaluation," and the more recent 1997 publication of the AAHE said that we need to have procedures that confront "public and government concern about the public accountability of universities." As you know more than 30 states now have it, it's coming. I was asked just the other day to join a listserv by AAHE for a discussion among those concerned with such issues. I was told that there were currently 300 subscribers. This is not something new to Penn State.

Let me just say a word about our proposal and then turn it over for discussion. The subcommittee that first presented a proposal to Faculty Affairs, it was a small group (two deans and the past Senate Chair). We reviewed about 15 policies, from such schools as the University of Texas, the University of Virginia, and the Universities of Maryland, Colorado, Wisconsin, Iowa, Rutgers--all of these being comparable to Penn State in reputation and mission. Our goal was to draw on these policies, but not be limited by them, to come up with the best policy we could that would work for our faculty, stressing the developmental possibilities of what we chose to call extended review. Last year Faculty Senate voted for annual written reviews.

All that was needed was to pause every five years to make that review--rather than a one or two year review, a more extended review--looking back five years and projecting ahead into the future allows for recognition and support, adjustments, plans for developing and responding to areas of concern. Our desire was also to keep it simple--vitae, evidence of teaching, anything else desired, and a statement of future plans for professional achievement. Our desire was to make it peer based.

Let me just indicate one observation: one of the first in there was the University of Hawaii. They just did a review--a ten year review--of how it worked for them in the previous ten years. They had two conclusions. 1) In ten years, 1,079 reviews. Some of those reviewed developed plans to improve their performance as a result of those reviews, and some may have retired earlier than they otherwise would have, but none, not one, was terminated as a result of a post-tenure review. 2) Most of those surveyed concluded that it was all worth the effort.

I'm going to let you have your conversation, but I'd be happy to answer any other questions in the forensic session.

Chair Geschwindner: Remember after you are recognized, stand, give your name and the unit that you represent.

Gordon F. De Jong, College of the Liberal Arts: I for one think this is an idea whose time has come for a lot of reasons, but I have four specific suggestions for you. First of all, I urge you to consider re-titling this and title it "Extended Tenure and Faculty Development Review". I think this more clearly conveys the purpose and goals of this review. The second point is, I urge you to develop a common set and not a unit-specific set of procedures for the entire university. As a former member of the Senate Faculty Rights and Responsibilities Committee, it is my conclusion that to do otherwise is to invite procedural irregularities and inequalities and this I can tell you is the essential stuff of litigation. My third point would be that you explicitly, explicitly tie tenure, extended tenure and faculty development and reviews to the yearly administrative reviews that are already in place at Penn State. President Spanier mentioned this as a strength; you dismiss it largely in this report. My own suggestion would be that you would have a trigger criteria for initiating these extended tenure and faculty reviews, such a trigger procedure might be successive years where negative performance concerns were raised on the administrative reviews, and this triggers an evaluation by a college level committee or the department. As I understand it even some other Big Ten institutions are considering this particular triggering so that the burdensome load is reduced. My fourth point would be, if this trigger criteria or some other similar criteria is not adopted, I urge you to greatly reduce the non-productive and burdensome time costs to faculty who are involved on both sides of this review. I have two suggestions here, one to extend the time frame from five to seven years, that corresponds with the current pre-tenure cycle, and/or two, by utilizing a fast-track dossier, perhaps one that contains the multiple years of administrative contact reports, with more extensive dossiers only for a subset where a more detailed review is being warranted by college level committees. There are approximately 15 hundred advanced ranked faculty members at Penn State, minus Hershey and Dickinson. 15 hundred. Do the math yourself, times five. To argue that reviewing this number of faculty has no additional implementation costs is only valid if you assume that the faculty write no grant proposals and do not publish regularly. Thank you.

Jamie M. Myers: I'd like to have an opportunity to add to Senator De Jong's four points. I think that the current yearly reviews is a strength and I support having some type of a trigger that you describe where an extended review happens as a result of a collection of unsatisfactory yearly reviews that we already go through. I think its really unessential to have every faculty member involved in reviews. I believe that there are a lot of faculty members that are truly productive, and the original version would take away from that productivity. I think that the extended review--by the way I'm not against it--I think that you know that we live in a system where we have a promotion and tenure and I don't think that its out of the ordinary to add an extended review. Mentally, we can't handle it at first, but I think we can handle it later as long as it's not something that everyone has to subscribe to. I think that the review once it's triggered, as I think was well described from the yearly review, that a faculty member should have an additional year to prepare their extended review dossier and then the review should be part of the responsibilities of the Promotion and Tenure Review Committee. I don't think we should have another layer of committees or separate extended review committees conducting reviews. It would be extremely valuable for the current Promotion and Tenure Review Committee to participate in an extended review, because then they have the picture of the whole idea of scholarships across the range of faculty being reviewed. I guess my biggest fear is that we will adopt an extended review process that becomes more invasive, or more from the feeling we are being watched rather than a supportive one, and so I'm really advocating that you adopt what was suggested about university-wide guidelines not unit-specific ones which would provide equity in the process.

Jonathan Phillips, College of Engineering: I thought I'd start with a story for our Provost because apropos of his impending visit to China. I went to China with my wife. We were concerned that upon our arrival no one would understand English and thus we would not know how to get to our destination at Tsingua University. And I think the organizers of the meeting I attended were also concerned about this because they sent us detailed maps in Chinese. To our surprise, when we got to the airport a guy rushed up to us and said in English, "Where are you going?" I named the university and he said, "I'll take you there: 1,000 renminbi." I said, "Well how about 100 renminbi?" I had no notion of the value of a renminbi. He said, "Well its you and your wife so although 100 just for you, for you and your wife 250." I said, "Well 100 and 100 is 200." So he goes, "Okay, 210". Well, it turns out by a little arguing I saved $150.

I'm afraid that what we have here is a document that gives the taxi driver the whole 1,000 renminbi right off the bat.

I believe that tenure is very important for protecting our rights as faculty members and distinguishing our careers from those of our colleagues in industry, where money is all that counts. I believe in academic freedom and I believe that faculty must be protected in the event they write or say things that are unpopular with the administration. I also understand that tenure is a very important responsibility, and it implies a host of responsibilities for all of us to live up to. I think we do a remarkably good job of living up to them. So, my problem is that basically when I read this document it can be read as the end of tenure. Indeed, according to this document, from now on we are going to be faculty that is reviewed every five years. There will be nothing special about our position. Our rights will be even less than those of senior faculty, including full professors, who are not tenure track. In my college and department there are many faculty in this category and they are never reviewed by faculty peers. They are reviewed only by the administrators. So, I'm asking: If we have this document what rights and advantages does a tenured faculty possess relative to a faculty member appointed by a department chairman to the position of full professor? My answer is NONE. Actually the tenured people will have a harder time. They'll be reviewed more often and more scrupulously then those people who are actually not tenured. My understanding, and perhaps this is actually a question, is that people who are on multi-year contracts cannot be terminated without the same due cause as folks with tenure. The administration must show cause; either economic hardship or incompetence, before they terminate a faculty member on multi-year contract. These are the same reasons which can be employed to terminate a tenured faculty member at the present time. So, in sum, tenure under the proposed document will have NO VALUE. In fact, one will be better off with a multi-year contract, already a common procedure here. YES: Multiyear contracts insure far less oversight!

Finally I'd just like to add I'm a little disappointed in the argument expressed for adopting this 1,000 renminbi plan. The argument is entirely based on responding to a couple of demagogues out there who are screaming about things being bad. I don't want the university making policy that is based on responding to every demagogue. I don't want to listen to Rush Limbaugh. We should only do this if it is really demonstrated that its good and really improves this university. That's the only reason we should do it.

Jacob De Rooy: I am speaking for my colleagues at Capital College, who held a faculty forum on this subject. They wish to point out that we have a very effective annual review process at Capital, which allows, as one of the specific questions, a look forward and a look backward regarding long term faculty performance. Our annual review form specifically asks for references to past performance over the last few years and the direction for future professional activities. So we feel that the proposal procedure (extended tenure review) would be redundant.

The next point relating to this is that it is naïve for us to say that we can adopt a new procedure at low or no cost. We have a three-page document on HR-23, and a 15-page document on the administration of HR-23. I expect that if we adopt an extended tenure review there will be some administrator in Old Main, perhaps a senior deputy associate vice provost for extended tenure review, who will come up with lengthy administrative guidelines for HR-40 and multi-colored divider sheets for organizing all the material it will call for!

The last point I wish to make is a personal one. I'm an economist who has chaired faculty search committees. I know that prospective faculty members who want to teach here want to know about the availability of tenure. From the standpoint of the job market, tenure is part of the compensation package and if we weaken or eliminate tenure we are going to have to substitute money for it in the form of higher salaries. I do not think Penn State's budget can afford to pay the highly productive faculty we have here if we had to substitute cash for a weakened tenure component of the compensation package.

Chair Geschwindner: Other comments or questions?

Amy Glasmeier, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences: One of the issues that was raised at our discussion in preparation for meeting with you was the fact that there's an enormous variety of reviews by members of the Penn State faculty. At some of the commonwealth schools it’s a very explicit program and quite elaborate and well developed. In other domains it's not quite so specific. One possible recommendation that was part of the discussion is to develop some kind of uniform standard where we all have that record that looks forward and looks back on an annual basis. At this point there's so much variety we would at least have to raise this issue and examine carefully, if we were going to say that that standard rule this kind of post tenure review. I will also say as a member of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences that we as a faculty adopted post-tenure review in the fall of 1997.

Philip A. Klein, College of the Liberal Arts: I think Gordon made a number of points that were very useful and I think maybe something needs to be done for cosmetic purposes, but I think we ought to be very clear about where the problem is that the public does not understand tenure, or do we think that some of the charges that these people make are true.

Robert G. Price, College of the Liberal Arts: First I'd just like to endorse Gordon's last remarks and Phil's remarks as well as the remarks about tenure made by the Senator from Penn State Harrisburg. But most important we send President Spanier to Harrisburg to face our critics with the notion that we have this nifty new plan to be developed by our committees in the Senate. Some seven years down the road, we will have succeeded in reviewing this and you may as well send him empty-handed. I think it just has to count as your post-tenure review on what your annual review, however embellished, by some further peer review. There are a lot of people who retired early rather than face some of the processes in the course of the one year review. I'm sure we will decide not to schedule one for next year. Post-tenure review is there. I think we need to open up and say so, loud and clear.

James G. Brasseur, College of Engineering: We had a lot of discussion in our department (Mechanical Engineering) on this issue. However, rather than summarize this discussion, I wish to make comments from my own heart.

The issue that concerns me the most about the "extended review" proposal is not post tenure review per se. Personally, I don't mind being reviewed. In the College of Engineering we are reviewed every year, and it is a major review. I feel that I am very productive, I work very hard, and so do all my colleagues. What bothers me is what this proposal is supposed to be addressing that has not been addressed. I brought this up at the last Senate meeting: Why did this proposal come up? My own conclusions are drawn from discussions surrounding this word "accountability". I think this issue is about politics. We have lawmakers like Mr. Lawless who are trying to convince the rest of the population in Pennsylvania, in fact in the country, that tenured professors don't work very hard, and that this is because we are not "accountable". This is wrong on both counts: we work very hard, and we are accountable.

The perception is that once we get tenure we are living the easy life. We all know that this is not true. (How often I've said that if I only had more time, I would write a letter to the editor about this.) Typically, I come home in the evening, I spend a couple hours with my children, and then I work: grading, preparing lectures, writing papers,… On weekends if my wife can get a few hours out of me to work on the yard, she feels like she's accomplished something. And I know from observing my colleagues in engineering that I am the rule, not the exception. It bothers me a great deal when I am told that I am not working hard enough and it bothers me even more when I have a university that is implicitly supporting this notion by sponsoring a post tenure review initiative rather than dealing with the political issue head on. I feel that the university is attempting to put a band aid over words and perceptions of others that are simply not true.

Robert Secor: I think I should point out that nobody has said anything about the proposal yet. I am concerned about the sense that the proposal is there to try and find ways to terminate faculty or to undermine tenure. There is nothing in the proposal that does that. The context is national debate about post-tenure review. The proposal is in terms of faculty development, and what it suggests is that every five years faculty get together with a group of peers or the department head, if that's the option taken, with the opportunity to say, "This is what I'm doing, this is what I've achieved, let me tell you about it, and let me suggest what I project for the near future. That is, help me do my work better." It is not a way of finding ways for termination. If there are ways of bettering this proposal, you should suggest them to Faculty Affairs so that they can look at them. There are systems where such reviews are triggered only when someone is doing a bad job, bad annual reviews then you have a post tenure review. The Faculty Affairs Committee does not see this as a way of uncovering people who are not doing their job. Rather, every five years the annual review would look forwards and backwards. It's not a way of undermining tenure; that was never even suggested in the Faculty Affairs Committee.

C. Michael Comiskey, Fayette Campus: Another Senator and I were trying to find out were there any other state colleges or universities in Pennsylvania that are taking action on this issue. Supposedly, if it is coming from the state legislature, then we suspect our colleges and other universities have, and so far we haven't heard anything from the administration on that. So I'd like to know if Vice Provost Secor or anyone else here who represents the administration knows what the other state schools in Pennsylvania are doing.

Chair Geschwindner: Bob, do you want to comment?

Robert Secor: I don't know what Pitt and Temple are doing. Again, I don't know it. I would like to try and talk about the proposal and discuss any specific language in it that Senators might find threatening.

Irwin Richman, Penn State Harrisburg: My issue is as a Senator from capital is a variant of this product of our annual reviews. At Harrisburg we have this really extensive program where I have a dossier together like this every year. I get back this three or four page single-spaced letter from the person who evaluated me. Why do we need to be doing this again every five years doesn't make sense. If we need to go through a long range proposal, why can't we just take this, putting it together takes you five years? We are doing it now, and here you come and do it again. There is nothing in this proposal that scares me, because I know myself and a number of people here know. We are very busy, know that we are doing things and personally I'm at that stage in my career where I know that this won't particularly impact on me. But the point is, why another set of things? It's for five years where we said we are doing well, and the administrators are saying, "Hey, you are doing well." There are five years of this, why automatically…if that period isn't the true test of where you've been and where you're going.

Robert Secor: If only individual units do that…

Irwin Richman: It is being done now…

Robert Secor: Yes, the revised proposal from the Faculty Affairs Committee, which you now have, says that individual units can decide how to do this. Those colleges can say, "Look, we have done this every year very extensively, and the fifth-year review is going to be a review of what we have done thoroughly the previous five years." The proposal allows units to choose their own procedures.

Irwin Richman: Even if it's clear that this is not done at all, why not ride on these units? Just because we've been good, and a lot of other people have been good, and those few who have not been doing this should be held up and said, "Do it." We have as a college voted for this to be done, but to say that because a few places are not doing it that you have to institute a whole other level, university wide, goes beyond me.

Elizabeth A. Hanley, Health and Human Development: Two points. We had a debate in our faculty and I think one of the key things is, what we brought up earlier and that is really the change in the title of the document, including faculty development instead of the words "review". I think this is a positive point first of all, and that is really essentially what we're trying to do. And yet we can accommodate the annual review and if you look at and have read through the document you'll know that the wording is such that we really can take into account almost every idea and agenda being but forth today. I think, if we look closely at the document, this is one thing that should be done right now.

Tramble T. Turner, Penn State Abington: I'm on Faculty Affairs. We tried to follow up on what Bet's was just talking about. If you go to section II and notice that that entire section is brand new allowing unit flexibility. That's in response to comments that Faculty Affairs heard that indeed at a number of locations everything that you find listed on page four, section "E" of the materials we submitted is already being done. But in discussions over the last few months what there was an awareness of is after the Senate vote or requirement last year that there be annual reviews, we can not say that as a university that type of annual review occurred university wide. Now, what a number of us from the committee were inviting more comments on, is indeed how do we best word this to ensure that such thorough reviews that we now have are recognized and address that internal concerns exist. To go back to Gordon De Jong's concern with the trigger mechanism. Again, to call for comments on specifics here, on page four, the middle paragraph in capitals begins with phrasing that the review will only occur when the administrative review is less than satisfactory. I haven't heard specific comments yet as to whether that's an inadequate or inappropriate trigger or not. It remains a concern. But that might help us all to continue the discussion to get comments on it.

Chair Geschwindner: We're going to take about five more minutes and try to bring this to a conclusion.

Anthony J. Baratta, College of Engineering: From what I've gleaned from this discussion, it appears that we do have a requirement for annual reviews and that it is not being done consistently throughout. I do like to think that in the proposal that was backed by my tenured administrator annual review and somebody gets an unsatisfactory then you go into some sort of development program, which is basically what the proposal suggests, One, two, three or four, whatever the number is gets satisfactories, then you would go to the latter requirement. The idea though of making these faculty five-year reviews, putting together every five years, I think personally is inadequate. I think we need to be placing emphasis on an annual review, get those done properly and as soon as possible. If somebody doesn't do well on an annual review two years in a row then I think its probable to have one the next year; not every five years as we have here. That's what I have a problem with.

Edward W. Bittner, McKeesport Campus: I'm concerned about doing this only for faculty development reasons. There was one time when the university--I've been around too long--that SRTE's were solely for faculty development. This development led to a primary way of evaluating teaching and it scares me that these evaluations are being done this way.

Charles H. Strauss, College of Agricultural Sciences: We had a faculty meeting of our college in mid-February to review this same policy. The only item that was not included in the review was the option of having the college decide that the units and leaders could conduct the five-year reviews as we see them here. The response to that meeting was much as we have heard in this meeting. Our faculty was largely concerned about the redundancy of the existing annual review system that is implemented within the College of Ag. Science. We saw limited need for a five-year post-tenure review system. The results of that meeting suggested that we ought to canvass a larger group, and the chair of our faculty group did that and secured over 110 responses, ninety percent of which were also opposed to this particular proposal as we are today. The one item that continues to come forward particularly today is this one item that says, page three the extended review requirement, "Penn State Policy HR-40 mandates that all faculty members be reviewed each year, and that the results of that review be communicated in writing to the faculty member". Now, apparently it is not being followed uniformly throughout our university system. I would suggest this is not a faculty problem. This is an administrative problem. Then why does the faculty have to organize a second review that is not being covered by the one that is suggested in HR-40? This indicates a problem, and our annual review is treated as unimportant and taken very lightly within this proposal. The annual review within our particular college does look back, does look forward, on an annual basis and also on a five year basis. So I feel the college has a good review system in place, as do most of our faculty within our college. Thank you.

S. Diane Brannon, College of Health and Human Development: I want to argue on behalf of the proposal. I think some faculty are reluctant to support this because the arguments for it all seem to be driven by external accountability. I think that this is probably distasteful and I understand that. I think the larger issue is our internal accountability as a profession. Somebody more literate than I can tell me which Marx brother said, "Why would I want to belong to an organization that would have me for a member?" Credible professions monitor themselves and to say that an administrative review is an adequate substitute for peer review, then you're giving up what other professions are fighting very hard to maintain.

Peter Deines, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences: Has the committee given serious thought to the suggestions of Dr. De Jong's? I think his observations are very important. Has the committee any comments on this?

Murry R. Nelson: We've entertained some of the things that Gordon said, yes. The trigger mechanism that Tram mentioned is something that we've already considered and talked about. The notion of having things all the same, the universality, was something that we altered because of the universal responses of negativity from faculty throughout the university saying that they did not want to have that. They wanted to have some different ways that they could do different things. The notion of extending it from five to seven years, we did not consider another number. We certainly are amenable to that. That's up to you folks to give us your feelings.

Michael E. Broyles, College of Arts and Architecture: What I wanted to say has already been said.

Wayne R. Curtis, College of Engineering: On a slightly different perspective: what I don't want to see happen, in the fall of next year, is the newspaper on my door step--and all of my neighbors door steps--is the headline that "Penn State faculty reject post tenure review". And I want to comment directly to the committee. In bringing this forward, we're essentially bringing more than a small possibility that its going to essentially backfire on us. So I think one of the most important decisions that's going to made here is the decision to bring this forward. They may want to even consider a 'straw vote' ahead of time. Rejecting the proposal would be a very negative message and it's going to have a very negative impact that we do NOT want as we take this thing forward.

Actually, after taking one last re-read, the proposal is not a very stringent…Senators would have to take this forward and sell it as individual faculty members. I look at it and say, "I am going to be doing this post tenure review in my 25 year chair," because it doesn't kick in until 8 years after your final promotion. So this is really far in the future for many faculty. I don't think that people have looked at it in terms of trying to sell it for how little a change that it is.

James M. Donovan, Mont Alto Campus: I would feel a little bit better about this proposal if the size of the review committee was increased from a minimum of three to a minimum of five. I think that a committee as small as three carries a little too much risk of an evaluation that's biased or arbitrary or capricious. I think a larger number would come out a more balanced number.

Chair Geschwindner: Although we're going to have to bring this discussion to an end, that's not to indicate that the committee is not willing to hear more from you, and I encourage you all, if you have additional comments to make or want to reiterate what one of your colleagues has said, to please communicate to the committee. Murry reads his email and I'm sure he would be happy to hear from you.

Murry R. Nelson: Just to follow up on what Lou said, the committee will be meeting this summer to address this series of commentary that we had here today. So, indeed do as Lou said, because we will be working on this through the summer. It's not an enviable task. It will be something that we'll be working on, and finally I want to thank you all for your thoughtful commentary.

Chair Geschwindner: We next move on to…

Paul L. Rose, College of the Liberal Arts: Mr. Chairman, a point of order. This does not have to go forward at all. Someone suggested a forum…

Chair Geschwindner: Excuse me, are you a Senator?

Paul L. Rose: This is a motion…

Chair Geschwindner: Excuse me, are you a Senator?

Paul L. Rose: Yes I am. Just a motion…

Chair Geschwindner: Since this is a forensic session, a motion is out of order, and a motion could be made under new legislative business at the end of the session. But keep in mind that this is a forensic session to provide input to the committee. The committee may choose based on the information they've gathered here not to come forward with something, or to come forward with something totally different or exactly what they've had here. So the real value of the forensic session is that we have provided input to the committee. So I would encourage you not to propose a motion at the end that would short circuit the value of the forensic session that we've just had. We will move on to the next item, which is a forensic session on the libraries, Collection of Faculty and Staff Library Fees and Felix Lukezic will present the report. Now don't everybody leave. We've got a lot to do this afternoon.

SENATE COMMITTEE ON LIBRARIES

Felix L. Lukezic, Chair

Felix L. Lukezic, College of Agricultural Sciences: The Senate Committee on Libraries has been asked to make a recommendation on a policy change allowing university libraries to collect library fines/fees by payroll deduction, by the new Penn State ID+ card. This change is being brought about because of concern of outstanding money by the accounting department. As this will effect all users of the library, the committee wants your input before making a recommendation, and may I remind you that signing up on this is voluntary. There's no one going to coerce you to sign up for this. The proposal has been on the Senate web for comment, and we have had at least 15 comments from the site users. Most of the people are in favor or not overly-concerned. The main concern has been when there's been a dispute between the users and the library. The original proposal is not clear on this, on how it could be resolved. Thus the policy has been changed to allow disputes to be resolved before requesting payroll deduction. Nancy Eaton, Dean of the Libraries is here to answer your concerns and questions.

Chair Geschwindner: Any comments or questions?

Dwight Davis, College of Medicine: Just a couple of clarity questions. First of all, the current system that you have with the collection agency, how is that financed? Who pays for this?

Nancy Eaton, University Libraries: It's a university process. It's always been available to us.

Dwight Davis: Do they charge us?

Nancy Eaton: Other parts of the university also have access to that as a mechanism. I would also say that we seldom use it.

Dwight Davis: And what is the ultimate consequence for a fee dispute where the libraries feel that a fee should be paid then the individual feels that a fee should come back?

Nancy Eaton: There is an internal committee that handles such disputes, and it in fact has a representative from the faculty, and as of this morning the Senate Committee on Libraries has agreed to be a venue of last resort. What this policy says is that any action would be suspended until such a concern was addressed.

David Kayal: I think this is excellent, because what happens right now when faculty/staff pick up books and don’t return them is that money to pay for new books?

Nancy Eaton: Well, the current policy is, if after a certain amount of time following notification, we can suspend privileges and do. But the money stays on the books as an outstanding uncollectable, and that's an accounting issue with…where in any auditing process you get criticized for that. Any degree that we can reduce that problem would be to the good.

David Kayal: Faculty have to be held accountable just as students. You won't let a student graduate from the university without paying library fines.

Nancy Eaton: That's correct.

David Kayal: I think that's a substantial added penalty for something like that and to let faculty members get away with this $30,000 it's ridiculous.

Peter D. Georgopulos: Why is this option not for everybody? There are people who are delinquent. Why would they want to sign off on this?

Nancy Eaton: There are people who, clearly, as Dr. Lukezic indicated, see it as a benefit to them of being able to have it done automatically. To the extent that people are willing to do that, we want to make it available. If people object, we will have an alternative. We'll continue with current policy. We're not saying that we won't do anything. We'll just revert to the current policy.

Nancy J. Wyatt, Delaware Campus: Who owes this other $270,000?

Nancy Eaton: That would be the students.

Senators: Laughter.

Nancy Eaton: You have to understand it's the current three years of students who are currently enrolled or who have never graduated. It is true that they can't graduate without paying. So it's basically the current outstanding balance.

Thomas N. Jackson, College of Engineering: I just wonder if this is straining at gnats. There's $300,000 in fines outstanding, $30,000 that's from faculty, most likely predominantly from a few individuals, and I agree that those individuals should pay their fines. But overall, it seems like a letter of commendation saying you're doing pretty well might be more appropriate for most faculty than a new method to collect fines. I wondered what the cost of implementing this is? Would it be similar to the funds you hope to recover?

Nancy Eaton: No actually it will save us money in that the most expensive part of this is the labor that goes into billing, and it will save us that labor. So it benefits the library on that side as well.

Dennis S. Gouran, College of the Liberal Arts: I find the fact that we are discussing this to be something of an embarrassment as a faculty member. The real issue, it seems to me, is the irresponsibility of members of the faculty. In fact, what we are talking about is properly viewed as shared resources. I have some question about whether or not automatic deduction will simply perpetuate a pattern of irresponsible behavior.

Nancy Eaton: Please note that this only goes into effect after 90 days, after we've already tried those things.

Dennis S. Gouran: I still think you are encouraging people to be irresponsible.

David Kayal: Was there any discussion of making this mandatory for everybody, or is that not even being discussed?

Nancy Eaton: My understanding of it is that it's required that faculty sign off on our ability to do this.

Amy K. Glasmeier: Does that mean that if you have a choice you wouldn't have us all sign up?

Nancy Eaton: It would be our preference, but we're not going to force it.

Richard B. Englund, Penn State Erie - The Behrend College: I'm curious, I've been so long in industry, I guess, what percentage of the faculty or a total of how many people account for the upper half of that 30,000?

Nancy Eaton: I can't answer that. There's no way for me to answer that.

Richard B. Englund: My suspicions would be that if someone would do some counting it would be fairly obvious that ninety percent of the problem is ten percent of the offenders.

Nancy Eaton: There is no way for us to collect that data because under the policies that we follow we once…well, never mind. I'm trying to remember how the system works, and I'm incorrect on what I was about to say.

James T. Elder, Shenango Campus: Are library fines and fees part of the annual review?

Chair Geschwindner: I think it depends on what unit you're in. Any other comments or questions? Okay, thank you very much, and I would encourage you again, if you have not responded or if something comes up or any of your colleagues identify something, the committee would be more than happy to hear from you. We now move to unfinished legislative business. We have the Faculty Teaching Development and Evaluation Report which is in your Agenda as Appendix "D." Terry Engelder will present the report.

COMMITTEE ON FACULTY TEACHING DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION

Terry Engelder, Chair

Terry Engelder, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences: Accountability appears the buzz word of the day, and in my view the best type of accountability leads to an institution getting better at what it does. Of course, you all know that we in the Penn State community engage in three endeavors for which we are accountable. Those are roughly called teaching, research and creative accomplishments and service. Now in effect the committee that I chaired, the Faculty Teaching Development and Evaluation Committee, was charged with recommending ways in which Penn State could get better at its teaching endeavor. We would roughly call this teaching development, and you'll note in our recommendations, as I indicated last time, we make some recommendations for teaching development but hand in hand with that there are recommendations for evaluation. We really have to know whether we're getting better at what we do, among other things and we'd like to encourage teacher development. That's found in the rewards section, and you can see these on the first page, the executive summary. Now we would like to offer one friendly amendment prior to starting and this deals with recommendation number four. We'd like to add three words to recommendation number four. We'd like to have it read, "each academic unit or cluster of units rather than individuals." We want to add the words "rather than individuals" right after "related units shall take the steps required to achieve a multi-dimensional excellence in teaching, research/creative accomplishments and service." With that, what I'd like to do is point out many of you read the Penn State alumni magazine called The Penn Stater, and often in the last couple of years there was an editorial entitled, "My thoughts exactly". A couple of years ago, John Moore, one of our colleagues, actually had an article in here. Its title is "What Universities Owe Their Students." I think that part of what we're trying to accomplish with this particular piece of legislation is, we're trying to answer that question. But John actually has a couple comments that I'd like to have him make before we open the floor up.

John W. Moore, College of the Liberal Arts: That's a nice introduction. I'm a member of this committee so therefore I'm going to speak on behalf of the report. The direction I'd like to take is to say why I was committed to serving on this committee. We met for over two years and it was a very stormy time sometimes because it was a room filled with people who have strong convictions of how best to perform the teaching service and how best to go about this. But I think for me, one of the things that pushed me on was the realization that I've been here for more than 30 years and I don't think a week has gone by in all those years that somebody hasn't said to me that Penn State undervalues teaching or Penn State doesn't take its teaching seriously or Penn State cares nothing about their students. But this is a committee that was put together by two types of leadership. On one hand, the Senate leadership at that time wanted this committee to be formed and wanted to bring about improvements. Secondly, the Provost's Office wanted it also. So it was a partnership that had two types of leadership saying, "look into improving the situation of teaching at Penn State." The committee itself was made up of a lot of non-Senators with powerful teaching credentials and I just want to mention their names--Fern Willits in Agriculture, Patrick Terenzini from the College of Education, John Lowe from Science and Jim Eisenstein from the Liberal Arts. What we basically came up with was four sets' of recommendations. One, as Terry has already pointed out, is that we understood that good teaching can only take place in an environment that values it. Which means that the academic units themselves must take responsibility for, to use Presidents Spanier's remarks, "overseeing and fostering the development of teachers." And that's exactly what we wanted to have happen. We all knew that in order to do that units themselves must set forth recommendations for teaching. Units themselves must develop the teacher who is going to be evaluated and who has the opportunity to develop. How do we do this evaluation? What the report also does is to address the issue of doing this evaluation in a variety of ways such as a teaching portfolio where each of us can present evidence that we've done the job well. In other words this proposal allows us to assert that teaching matters at Penn State and teaching matters a lot and here's how you develop those teachers. This is how we can prove that they've done a good job and these are the ways in which good teaching can be rewarded. So we're hoping that you will like the report and that you will support it.

Chair Geschwindner: Let me remind you that this is an advisory/consultative report, and we will be voting on it, and we will be voting on the recommendations which are summarized on page one of Appendix "D" as well as the rest of the information in the report that supports those recommendations. Any further comments or questions?

Jamie M. Myers: I realize that the timing of the review process of the construction of portfolios is not that detailed in the report because the report asks for each unit and then the college as a collection unit to formulate that decision themselves. What I wondered was, what discussions the committee might have had about that timing aspect. I know that you do after your numbers have a paragraph that directs the activity in certain ways. For example, on page six, under number one "Information from Faculty Members," there's a sentence that suggests that the peer review faxing or mailing this type of information that it might be viewed by faculty other than yourself, and they might be gathering information, making a report. What did the committee say about how often the portfolio would be constructed and the peer review take place?

Terry Engelder: Well, I think it's understood that a portfolio is a document that you produce, presumably when you teach a course. A portfolio consists of a number of things that include such things as a syllabus. It can include a set of goals. In fact, it even can include a post course statement about whether these goals were accomplished or not. So at least implicitly our assumption was that portfolios could accompany every course that you taught.

Jamie M. Myers: I think you did an excellent job in your committee on coming up with a lot of ways to support teaching and the environment of teaching. The reason that question came up is, just at the end, there's a lot unsaid here and the people that present these things to a special review committee, the Vice Provost. What's the composition of the review committee, and what the review committee will consider and whether or not we're going to look at portfolios every 10 to 15 years.

Terry Engelder: Well, we were concerned about the degree to which we wanted to make this document prescriptive, and we wanted to move away from that and hence the statement about allowing the individual units to arrive at some sort of guidelines. In fact I was struck that there's a number of parallels between this and the document that the Faculty Affairs Committee presented. They also wanted to back away from prescription, and it is important that we recognize that each unit may well have different criteria by which they teach, by which they evaluate teaching and a different set of expectations for excellence in teaching.

Dwight Davis: Obviously, I can't imagine this body not giving its full support. I'd like to just make a point about your last comment with respect to accountability, if you will. I would hope that several years from now, and in light of a very important aspect of what the university ought to do, and that is fostering regard for teaching. That every time some administrator or leader in this university talks about activities that in addition to, how many dollars are raised, how many football games attended, how many sporting activities we have, that in all of that commentary will be some important lead-in about how good we as a university are doing with the job of education. Although I agree with the concept that this should be open, I hope that in fact we take it seriously enough that it becomes really a great part of what we talk about and on a regular basis it becomes an activity. I'm totally supportive and I think the onus sits on us and on the leadership of the university, but we ought to talk a little bit more about this path.

Terry Engelder: We certainly would hope that by adopting this document we make a number of jobs easier. We make it easier for the president of the university to stand up and say, "We really are attempting to make ourselves better as teachers," for example.

James G. Brasseur: I want to support this proposal. The document is obviously a very positive one. It is saying to the rest of the state that we do take teaching seriously. I would encourage that we actually translate our seriousness into improvement. My comment is to ask the question what is it that this proposal is ultimately attempting to improve with better teaching? I argue that ultimately we are trying to improve the quality of the student who graduates from Penn State. With that in mind I would like to propose that some language be added to the document that makes this ultimate goal explicit. The one place where I can see that this language could be added is on page nine, the last bullet item, where it reads, "the quality of the university's teaching should be evaluated in five years to determine whether any difference has resulted from these efforts". I would like to propose that be made a little bit more specific with the words "whether any difference in the academic quality of graduating seniors has resulted from these efforts." That is really what we're trying to do.

Terry Engelder: Now is that offered as a friendly amendment? I'm not sure.

Chair Geschwindner: I was just going to ask you if you want to accept that as a friendly amendment or whether you wanted Jim to make it as a motion to amend?

Terry Engelder: I don't see why that can't be a friendly amendment? It sounds very nice to me.

Chair Geschwindner: If you'll accept that on behalf of the committee, then we'll have that.

Terry Engelder: Yes.

Chair Geschwindner: So that we're adding on page 9, the last bullet before conclusion, "The quality of the university's teaching should be evaluated in five years to determine whether any difference in the academic quality of graduating seniors has resulted from these efforts." Everybody got that?

Brian B. Tormey, Penn State Altoona: I would like to second Dwight's comments earlier about providing additional support for the message that the university needs to put forward, both internally and externally, in terms of not only encouraging teaching but also post tenure review that we have in place at the present time. I would like to encourage the Senate leadership for next year, perhaps in particular in the context of excellent teaching, direct the Committee on Undergraduate Education to look into and explore mechanisms that might be shared with the entire university administrations to more effectively provide that message--the need to be accountable. I know John Cahir would be very happy to receive that kind of information.

Terry Engelder: I'm sure that will be passed on.

James F. Smith, Penn State Abington: I must support this proposal. But the report we have before us now is not the end of the story. To use one of Penn State's latest "buzz" words, it is only the latest "iteration" of the story. For a long time many of us have been talking about good teaching at Penn State. Professors Moore, Lowe, Eisenstein and others who sat around in the old society of teaching award recipients talked about recognizing good teaching at Penn State. When Bob Secor was not Vice Provost and was a Senate officer we were talking about good teaching at Penn State. This report is the latest phase of that conversation, but it shouldn't be the end of the story. Although I support this document, I have to recognize that some of my colleagues have expressed reservations about certain limitations in this report. I am less bothered by those concerns because I do see this as a continuing story. I think this is something that we have to make sure stays in the mind of the Senate and in the mind of the university for a long time to come. After all, I thought we had HR-40 clarified last year.

Felix L. Lukezic: One thing that bothers me on page 9 is we are getting set up to evaluate five years after starting. What is going to be our base line? What are we going to evaluate? And then you say that after that time an appropriate university group will be asked to develop an evaluation plan. Isn't that too late? We should get a base line first then measure what changes occurred. It seems to me the way the wording now read that it could be up to seven years before we know if we are effective.

M. Susan Richman, Penn State Harrisburg: First, a point of order. If we vote to approve the four recommendations. Does that mean we also vote for all of the explanations the committee makes?

Chair Geschwindner: An advisory/consultative report--we're passing the whole report on to the administration. So, there's not an implementation issue here, this is the general advice of the Senate.

M. Susan Richman: First of all, I do want to applaud the goals in this report. I also want to propose the statement that I'm trying…possibly contradictory to say that establishing a fair system for assessing evaluation to be mandated to the data gained from the SRTE. Secondly, I would like to bring up an earlier issue that it’s a matter of cost. One cost I foresee is the already non-quantified issue of faculty time. The other is in recommendation three "institute a system for adequately rewarding demonstrated excellence." I believe one of the primary sources for the cynicism about all the discussions on the importance of teaching excellence is the fact that it rarely shows up in the reward system and I would like you to shed some idea on what it would cost to implement this plan in the new system and whether or not that is going to be accepted as well as the recommendations?

Terry Engelder: Well, you asked three different questions. I'd like to answer the middle one by again pointing you to John Moore's article in the Alumni magazine, December of 1996. The answer to the question, "What universities owe their students?"--is time. Now you've already heard that time is a quantity that can't be evaluated in terms of money. I think that we are more or less going to have to deal with that, because it is a fact that we're not going to be able duck with this. To do it right will take time.

M. Susan Richman: I'd like to respond to that, and then go on to the other two. It's not that I begrudge the students time. Like our colleagues in Chemical Engineering, many of my colleagues have run out of time. To give time takes it away from something else, and I'm not saying that this isn't worthy of it, but there are many other things that are worthy also, and perhaps this should be analyzed at some time.

Erica B. Michael, Graduate Student, College of the Liberal Arts: Can I just propose a friendly amendment to the proposal? It's really a tiny little thing, but it should say, under quality of graduating students, you don't have graduate students.

Terry Engelder: I accept that.

Chair Geschwindner: You're in charge as far as that goes.

Terry Engelder: Yes, on behalf of the committee.

Peter Deines: I think this is a very nice report. I do think that you raised a very important point, that is, if you like a measure of your success and do not proceed at a base line. We cannot wait five years to establish a base line. How do you suppose we address that?

Terry Engelder: The only way that I can respond is to say obviously we have to move up the first review in some way or another. However, I'm not sure that we would get an effective base line in much less than five years time. Basically we're looking at this as a plan that is going to be in place for a number of years, and it's not clear to me that we'd gain much with a base line measure in much less than five years time.

John J. Cahir, Provost and Dean of Undergraduate Education: I don't know whether it’s a good idea to give administrative support to this (laughter). But I'd just like to say that actually there already are some base lines to the system both in terms of faculty activity and students and the process is being carried out under the auspices of the assessment effort in a number of departments, and so, while we don't necessarily have university wide base lines, we have some good base lines in which to get started. I'm sure that there will be administrative support in carrying this out. I just can't resist, while I'm on my feet praising the Senate and I'm sure you are going to approve this. The Carnegie Institution for Teaching just released a report just a couple of weeks ago, which was widely reported in the newspapers as though these universities weren't paying any attention to teaching undergraduates and so forth. If you read the report you'll see that there were many reports carried in it in sidebars which cite many of the good things that are happening at research universities today. But I think our statement here will help a great deal.

Caroline D. Eckhardt, College of the Liberal Arts: Back to the friendly amendment location on page nine, I think maybe we could solve the problem of getting a base line and so forth just by striking the three words "at that time." Let the second sentence say, "an appropriate university group will be asked to develop an evaluation plan." And that group will get started now thinking of how to develop an evaluation plan and figure it out later.

Terry Engelder: That sounds fine.

Peter D. Georgopulos: Just a point of information. Do you feel that the administration will embrace this particularly when you say that the rewards will be $5,000 per year and that the awards will amount to an increase in salary which means that in the first year it will cost the administration $5,000 times say 10 awards, the second year $5,000 times 10 old awards plus $5,000 times 10 new awards?

Terry Engelder: I'm a scientist, and so I believe in doing things empirically, and this will be that type of experiment. Let me just say, though, that the reason we put that number down was that we really wanted to make a significant impact on these people that raise to that level in their teaching. While that number can be viewed as arbitrary, I think that you would all agree that there is not a person in this room where that won't significantly impact their salary.

Peter D. Georgopulos: Do you really believe that this point in the report is going to be embraced by the administration?

Chair Geschwindner: If we pass this, this is our recommendation to the administration. We don't have to worry about whether they're going to approve everything we have recommended. I think we've had sufficient discussion and the questions have been answered. I believe it's time for a vote. Would all those in favor of the report signify by saying, "aye".

Senators: Aye.

Chair Geschwindner: All those opposed, same sign. Thank you very much.

Peter C. Jurs, College of Science: Along with Scott several years ago we appointed this committee and I think there are two task forces that labored for two years on an issue that's more central to the university progress into the future. So I'd just like to publicly thank Terry and the other members of the committee on behalf of those two of us who appointed it, and I guess on behalf of the rest of the faculty.

Senators: Applause.

Chair Geschwindner: As you all knew from looking at the Agenda, it was a long one and we've managed to take enough time that Murry Nelson has gone to his class, taught his class, and come back from his class, and so we're now ready for the next advisory and consultative report from Faculty Affairs on Procedures for Terminating Tenure-Protected Faculty for Adequate Cause, and Murry will present the report along with Bob Richards.

SENATE COMMITTEE ON FACULTY AFFAIRS

Murry R. Nelson, Chair

Murry R. Nelson: Thank you, Lou. Let me say that the class was disturbed that I returned. They enjoyed having my graduate assistant there more then having me there. We have before us a report titled "Procedures for Terminating Tenure-Protected Faculty for Adequate Cause." The bulk of the report and commentary will be offered by Bob Richards. I do want to make a couple of comments about this before hand. First of all, let me note that this entire report is essentially a recommendation. That's why you don't have just recommendations bolded, because this is not replacing anything, this is providing procedures for something that has not been given procedures before in an adequate form. This was originally put forth by John Nichols when he chaired this committee a number of years ago, and it never come to fruition. There are some things that must go on were this to be passed today, and were the president to accept it in a reasonable facsimile of what we pass today. There will have to be some alterations to PS-23, and to "What are the Guidelines for the Standing Joint Committee on Tenure." The committee recognizes that, and were these things to go on--these contingencies that I mentioned earlier--were they to come about, then one of the first things that the committee will have in its charge for the fall will be to address those two alterations which must be made. With that I will defer to Bob Richards, who did yeoman's work on this subcommittee and the committee, and I formally thank you.

Robert D. Richards, College of Communications: I'd like to direct your attention to the door handout. This is a fairly easy report in a sense to put together, because if you look at what is in HR-23 right now, there isn't very much. So we were sort of starting from ground zero. But we really weren't starting from ground zero in the committee, because as Murry mentioned John Nichols and a committee about four or five years ago put together a great deal of this. What we simply did this time around was sit down with the administration--Provost Brighton, Vice Provost Secor--and hammer out what it is that we're looking for to protect faculty interests and also to protect the university interest. Then we sat down with the university attorney and also tried to make sure that all the "i"s were dotted and "t"s were crossed. The result is what you have before you today. A couple things I'd like to point out, because I think it’s a fairly short report but an explicit one, so I want to leave in the interest of time as much time for questions as possible. The one point I do want to make, because this came out in Senate Council, this proposal does not create a new power to terminate faculty members. Quite to the contrary, what this proposal is designed to do is protect tenure. We've talked a lot today in the earlier debates about protecting the institution of tenure. That is precisely what this report is designed to do, and it does it in a number of ways. The ways that it does it are, first of all, it requires notice and a timely hearing before the Standing Joint Committee on Tenure. Presently under HR-23 any one of you who has tenure could be terminated today and the university would be required to hold a hearing. That's what Pennsylvania law requires. They could hold that hearing 11 months down the line if they would like and you would be off the payroll as of today. That's why we have put in a provision here that the hearing will take place prior to termination. Now, if there is a need because of harm to the individual or harm to others or harm to the university, to take a faculty member out of the classroom or out of the university, suspension is allowed under this proposal. It also allows that employee to remain on the payroll until the hearing which disposes of the case. It also requires a timely hearing within 60 days of the notice. So what we do is we take Pennsylvania law and we build on it, and we build on it protections that will protect the institution of tenure here at Penn State. I think it's a ratification by the university, since we sat down with the administration here and ironed this out, that this really is a ratification of tenure here at the university. The other thing that this proposal requires is full faculty participation in the process, and also puts the burden of proof on the university and separates the adversarial and judicatory functions of the process. In other words, somebody who is accusing an administrator, perhaps who is accusing a faculty member, is not going to be the one who actually fires the faculty member--there's a separation of that. So, those are the things, and I think if you look at the door handout we've tried to spell out exactly the differences between what we have in place today and what this proposal will do, and I'd like to open it up to questions at this point.

Jamie M. Myers: I think its an important proposal, and I would like to suggest a revision or an amendment, I hope it will be taken as friendly, but I think it's an important amendment that has to do with evidence presented at such hearing. I think that it would help protect both parties the administration and the faculty member if evidence was available to both parties before the hearing. It said you may enter into a hearing and have either party present evidence and I think that is the problem. Therefore, I suggest the following amendment that could be added to item number three. The burden of proof for dismissing a faculty member for adequate cause shall at all times be on the university. Evidence to be presented at the hearing should be submitted at least 10 days before the scheduled date of the hearing with copies distributed to all parties. Additional evidence is not permissible at the hearing nor can it be referenced in the case by recommendation.

Robert D. Richards: If you look at section "C" of the proposal, the Faculty Affairs Committee put in a reference there that the Standing Joint Committee on Tenure shall be authorized to establish its own operating procedures consistent with this document. One of the hang-ups with the prior proposals that have come through the Senate has been that they have gotten fairly cumbersome and complicated. What we're trying to do today is develop a difference between statutory provisions and constitutional provisions. These are the constitutional provisions. What we're trying to do is put some protections in for faculty, and there may be things later on down the line to help ease the hearing, to enable the Standing Joint Committee on Tenure to function properly or more efficiently and that we believe should be--including rules with respect to evidence--should be left to the Standing Joint Committee on Tenure to decide in its work how best to require the admission or exclusion of evidence. So that's why we deliberately left that out of the proposal.

Chair Geschwindner: Jamie, that means that they are not accepting it as a friendly amendment. Do you want to make it a motion?

Jamie M. Myers: I think it's very important…

Chair Geschwindner: Do you want to make it a motion?

Jamie M. Myers: Yes.

Chair Geschwindner: Is there a second? Would you read it again, Jamie?

Jamie M. Myers: Yes. "The burden of proof for dismissing a faculty member for adequate cause shall at all times be on the university. Evidence to be presented at the hearing should be submitted at least 10 days before the scheduled date of the hearing with copies distributed to all parties. Additional evidence is not permissible at the hearing nor can it be referenced in the case by recommendation."

Chair Geschwindner: Is there a second to the amendment? I have a second. Discussion on the amendment?

R. Scott Kretchmar, College of Health and Human Development: It seems to me very difficult to deal with amendments like this not knowing the law, not knowing all the ramifications. My second concern about the amendment--I speak against the amendment--is that it seems to me there could be other details too that I can imagine with this coming up that could be added. It seems to me that we're heading down a path here that doesn't give us good returns. So, I'm willing to look at the proposal as a general framework to be voted up or down on that basis.

Chair Geschwindner: Any other comments on the proposed amendment?

C. Michael Comiskey: I understand that the amendment is intended to protect the faculty members. But if there was some evidence that the faculty member wanted to bring up then he/she wouldn't be able to bring it up unless it was submitted 10 days in advance. So in some instances it could work against a faculty member.

Chair Geschwindner: Any other comments? Are you ready for a vote on the amendment? Do you want the amendment read again? All those in favor of the amendment, signify by saying, "aye".

Senators: Aye.

Chair Geschwindner: All opposed, same sign.

Senators: Aye.

Chair Geschwindner: The amendment has been defeated. We're back to the original proposal. Any comments?

Brian B. Tormey: I'm concerned that 60 calendar days may not be adequate time, so I would suggest a friendly amendment. Perhaps you will accept it to 90 days.

Robert D. Richards: We came up with the original 60/30 rule as a negotiation with the administration. That if the hearing time were protracted, that this would be in certain instances keeping someone who may have engaged in grave misconduct on the payroll for a longer period of time than is necessary. The university attorney participated in the negotiation of the document and did not seem concerned--at least did not express those concerns--that this would be an inordinately short time. I think that the university could get its ducks in order and I think a faculty member could as well, particularly when it’s the faculty member's career that's on the line.

Brian B. Tormey: I'm certain the university attorney can prepare his case being aware of the circumstances/procedures on how the university works. What I'm thinking about is the fact that we may have a faculty member that needs to go out and get an attorney, and that attorney has to become familiarized with the various intricacies of how the university works, how the promotion and tenure process works, how the review systems works. There's a time there, plus assembling what they may feel is appropriate within 90 days.

Robert D. Richards: One other point to remember is that the 60 day rule begins upon the written notification. That is when the dean, under this system, the dean sends the letter to the Standing Joint Committee on Tenure. Presumably if you look at the earlier provisions of this proposal there will be some discussion between the department head, dean, whomever, prior to that official notification, because that official notification is not simply a statement that "we would like to revoke the tenure of this individual." That official notification has to set forward the reasons and comes after a discussion between the dean and the central administration. I don't think it is such that an individual on a given day is going to get notice. That's the first indication that that person will have of the problem, and then therefore has only 60 days. It probably will turn out to be more like 90 or more days that they will a