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THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE
UNIVERSITY
T H E S E N A T E R E C O R D
Volume 35-----OCTOBER 23,
2001-----Number 2
The
Senate Record
is the official publication of the University Faculty Senate of The
Pennsylvania State University, as provided for in Article I, Section 9 of the Standing
Rules of the Senate and contained in the Constitution, Bylaws, and Standing Rules of the University Faculty
Senate, The Pennsylvania State University 2001-02.
The
publication is issued by the Senate Office, 101 Kern Graduate Building,
University Park, PA 16802 (Telephone
814-863-0221). The Record is
distributed to all Libraries across the Penn State system, and is posted on the
Web at http://www.psu.edu/ufs under publications. Copies are made available to faculty and
other University personnel on request.
Except
for items specified in the applicable Standing Rules, decisions on the
responsibility for inclusion of matters in the publication are those of the
Chair of the University Faculty Senate.
When
existing communication channels seem inappropriate, Senators are encouraged to
submit brief letters relevant to the Senate's function as a legislative,
advisory and forensic body to the Chair for possible inclusion in The Senate
Record.
Reports
which have appeared in the Agenda of the meeting are not included in The
Record unless they have been changed substantially during the meeting or
are considered to be of major importance.
Remarks and discussion are abbreviated in most instances. A complete transcript and tape of the
meeting is on file.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. Final Agenda for
October 23, 2001
A. Summary of Agenda
Actions
B. Minutes and
Summaries of Remarks
II. Enumeration of Documents
A.
Documents
Distributed Prior to October 23, 2001
Door Handout – Resolution
for George Bugyi
Attendance
III. Tentative Agenda for December 4, 2001
FINAL AGENDA FOR OCTOBER 23, 2001
A. MINUTES OF THE PRECEDING MEETING –
Minutes of the April 24, 2001 Meeting in The Senate Record 34:7
Minutes of the September 11, 2001 Meeting in The Senate Record 35:1
B. COMMUNICATIONS TO THE SENATE - Senate Curriculum Report
(Blue Sheets) of August 28, 2001
and October 9, 2001
C. REPORT OF SENATE COUNCIL - Meetings of August 21, and October 2, 2001
D. ANNOUNCEMENTS BY THE CHAIR -
E. COMMENTS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY –
F. FORENSIC BUSINESS -
Senate Council
Joint Committee to Review the University Calendar – Initial Findings
G. UNFINISHED BUSINESS -
H. LEGISLATIVE REPORTS -
I. ADVISORY/CONSULTATIVE REPORTS –
J. INFORMATIONAL REPORTS –
University Planning
Budget; Strategic Planning (new approach); and Budget Planning,
Rodney A. Erickson, Executive Vice President and Provost of
the University
Senate Council
Status Report on the College of Medicine and the Milton S. Hershey
Medical Center, Darrell G. Kirch, Senior Vice President for Health
Affairs and Dean
Joint Committee on Insurance and Benefits
Annual Report
Admissions, Records, Scheduling and Student Aid
Summary of Petitions for Waiver of the Twelve-Credit Limit for Non-Degree
Conditional Students
Awards and Scholarships
K. NEW LEGISLATIVE BUSINESS -
L. COMMENTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE GOOD OF THE UNIVERSITY -
M. ADJOURNMENT -
SUMMARY OF AGENDA ACTIONS
The Senate held a Forensic Session:
Senate Council – “Joint Committee to Review the University Calendar – Initial Findings.” This Forensic Session was to hear the Senate’s views on the four options presented by the Joint Committee to Review the University Calendar. From this Forensic Session, the Joint Committee will submit their final report to the chair of the Senate. (See Record, page(s) 8-20 and Agenda Appendix “B.”)
The Senate heard five informational Reports:
University Planning – “Budget; Strategic Planning (new approach); and Budget Planning.” This report summarizes Penn State’s budget for 2001-02 and the University’s appropriation request for fiscal year 2002-03. (See Record, page(s) 20-27).
Senate Council – “Status Report on the College of Medicine and the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center.” Dean Kirch discussed changes at the Hershey Medical Center and College of Medicine as a result of national trends and the de-merger with another health system. (See Record, page(s) 27-32 and Agenda Appendix “C.”)
Joint Committee on Insurance and Benefits – “Annual Report.” This is a yearly mandated report updating the Senate on the work of the Joint Committee on Insurance and Benefits and changes made in the health plans. (See Record, page(s) 32-37 and Agenda Appendix “D.”)
Admissions, Records, Scheduling and Student Aid – “Summary of Petitions for Waiver of the Twelve-Credit Limit for Non-degree Conditional Students. This report summarizes the results of the twelve-credit waivers between the period of August 1999 and July of 2001. (See Record, page(s) 37 and Agenda Appendix “E.”)
Admissions, Records, Scheduling and Student Aid – “Awards and Scholarships.” This report shows the total number of awards and the amounts of the awards for the 2000-01 and 2001-02 years. (See Record, page(s) 37-38 and Agenda Appendix “F.”)
The University Faculty Senate met on Tuesday, October 23, 2001, at 1:30 p.m. in Room 112 Kern Graduate Building with John S. Nichols, Chair, presiding. One hundred and eighty-seven Senators signed the roster.
Chair Nichols: It is time to begin.
MINUTES OF THE PRECEDING MEETING
Moving to the minutes of the preceding meeting, The Senate Record, providing a full transcription of the proceedings of the April 24, 2001 and September 11, 2001 meetings, was sent to all University Libraries, and posted on the University Faculty Senate's web page. Are there any corrections or additions to these documents? All those in favor of accepting the minutes, please signify by saying, "aye."
Senators: Aye.
Chair Nichols: Opposed? The minutes are accepted. Thank you.
COMMUNICATIONS TO THE SENATE
You have received the Senate Curriculum Report for August 28, 2001 and October 9, 2001. These documents are posted on the University Faculty Senate's web page. In addition, Louis F. Geschwindner, Chair of the Senate Committee on Curricular Affairs, has asked me to call your attention to two items mentioned on the cover sheet of the September 11, 2001 Agenda. The first one is the deadlines for the 2002-2004 hard copy version of the Undergraduate Degree Program Bulletin are forthcoming. Those deadlines are listed and he calls your attention to it. Second, the Senate Committee on Curricular Affairs is seeking faculty input on the first phase of the automated prerequisite checking system.
REPORT OF SENATE COUNCIL
Also, you should have received the Report of Senate Council for the meeting of August 21, 2001 and October 2, 2001. This is an attachment in The Senate Agenda for today's meeting.
ANNOUNCEMENTS BY THE CHAIR
Chair Nichols: I had
intended to make some introductory remarks on September 11, 2001 but, for
obvious reasons, I did not. Although we
have a full agenda today, I’d like to take a few minutes of your time now for
those remarks.
First and foremost, I’d
like to thank you for the honor of serving as chair of the University Faculty
Senate and for serving the faculty at large and the university at large. I will do my very best to be an effective
chair.
Thanks also to you too for
being good academic citizens and accepting a leadership position in university
governance. This is a time of
increasing disaggregation of this and other universities. There is a tremendous centrifugal force at
play in higher education. Academic
units and locations are becoming more atomized and increasing numbers of
faculty are little more than independent operators with loyalty to their
disciplines but, little to the institution that employs them. Under these circumstances, your willingness
to subsume your individual professional agendas or narrow disciplinary
interests in order to contribute to the good of the whole—to help find
collective solutions to common problems facing this university—is commendable.
Today is an important
milestone for the Senate. This meeting
marks the 80th anniversary of the first Senate meeting at Penn
State. In 1921, President John Martin
Thomas came to the conclusion that the faculty—which numbered 370 at that
time—had grown too large to effectively legislate as a committee of the
whole. He asked the Trustees to
authorize a Senate as a replacement to the meeting of the General Faculty. It did so, and on October 21, 1921 the first
Penn State Senate meeting was held.
Since then, the Senate has
evolved into an extremely important—and indeed probably essential—institution
at Penn State. If you are inclined to
think that I’m exaggerating and to dismiss my conclusion as hyperbole, imagine
what Penn State would be like without the Senate. Imagine trying to govern a large, complex university with 24
locations and multiple missions without having a forum by which faculty
representatives of all colleges and all locations could come together to
discuss common problems and issues, and seek solutions.
Not so long ago, I had a
conversation with a friend on the Notre Dame faculty in which he asked me why I
was not teaching this semester. After
some hemming and hawing, I asked him if I told him, would he promise not to
look on me with dismay, contempt and scorn—and could we still be friends? He said, “of course”. So, I told him the reason I was not teaching
this semester was that I was chairing the Faculty Senate at Penn State. At which point, he looked at me with dismay,
contempt and scorn. And only half
facetiously said, “may I reconsider?”
Despite the importance of
Senate service to the common good of this university and universities in
general, such reactions—while usually much more subtle—are not uncommon. However, in fairness, Notre Dame is a
special case. You may recall that,
earlier this year, its faculty senate concluded that it was so weak and so
irrelevant that it decided to vote itself out of business—only to discover that
it did not have the power to do so.
At the other end of the
continuum is Berkeley—widely considered to have one of the most powerful and
effective faculty senates in the country.
While Penn State’s Senate clearly is on Berkeley’s end of the continuum,
I have thought a bit about what are the active ingredients that puts the Penn
State Senate or any senate at one end of the continuum or the other. And a fair amount is at stake in the answer
to that question—because Notre Dame clearly is an exception to prove the rule
that there is a very close correlation between effective faculty governance and
academic quality.
The answer turns out to be
rather simple and perhaps obvious, and this summer President Spanier helped me
focus on the answer. In a meeting of
President’s Council, he said that the Senate at Penn State was the best of
those at the several universities that he had served. And the reason, he said, was our Senate quote “does stuff”.
To the extent that a
senate endlessly debates parking policies without any resolution or is largely
a forum for the faculty to sharpen their rhetorical skills in preparation to
fight a potential—but unlikely—challenge to the core academic mission, it is
not significantly contributing to the governance of the university. The converse is a senate that seeks
meaningful solutions to consequential problems and works, often on a routine
and unspectacular way, to facilitate the discovery and advancement of
knowledge. As simplistic as it may seem,
to paraphrase Professor David Hollinger (a counterpart at the Berkeley Senate),
faculty governance works best when there is some real governing going on.
Last year, our Senate
passed a recommendation on a Courseware Policy, which has since been accepted
by the president and currently is being implemented. I was initially disappointed to learn that some in the Senate and
others in the faculty at large were rather upset at the outcome of that
recommendation—they strongly disagreed with the new policy. Of course, we would all like to please everybody,
but the more I thought about it, the fact that some people were upset was not
all bad. It was testimony that the
Senate had taken action on a complex, controversial issue that directly affects
faculty and the academic mission. If
the issue was not so important, people probably wouldn’t have cared what the
Senate did. While the number of faculty
affected and the amount of money involved probably will prove to be fairly
small, the courseware policy raised some fundamental questions about the very
nature of academic work and who owns—under what circumstances—the fruits of
that work. While only the future will
tell whether we made the correct decision at that time, there is no question
that the Senate tackled a consequential problem, studied it carefully, debated
it at length, and offered a meaningful solution.
That to me is an effective
Senate. And, to do the same on a
regular basis should be our goal not only for this year but into the future.
There is an important
corollary to this point: Not only
should we focus our efforts this year on consequential problems but also, we
should legislate or make recommendations based on academic merit—not on the
fashion of the moment. Each year the
Senate is faced with internal and external pressures to act quickly on a
variety of specialized issues. This
year probably will be no different.
But, one of the quickest ways for the Senate to undermine its own
authority is to act in response to the noise level—rather than on academic
merit. If in the process of dealing
with the ephemeral, peripheral or myopic, we neglect the core academic mission
and thereby contribute to the deterioration of the quality of scholarship at
Penn State, we obviously have failed. The key, therefore, is for
the Senate to remain true to the core values and mission of the university
despite the inevitable pressures and distractions. If we meet this challenge, this will be a very good Senate year.
These thoughts, which I
wrote before the September meeting, in my opinion are still valid today. The events of September 11, 2001 have not
changed our mission, indeed they have powerfully reaffirmed our mission. The terrorist attack was not just an attack
on innocent people and buildings. It
was an attack on our value system. It
was an attack on reason and rationality.
It was an attack on pluralism and tolerance. It was an attack on intellectual freedom. It was an attack on scientific, technical,
and economic progress. It was an attack
on equality, especially for women. In
short, it was—largely—an attack on liberal education and the values for which
this and other universities stand. The
September attacks have brought into clearer focus the importance of what we as
educators do. And if there is a
silver-lining to these terrible events, it may be the re-invigoration of higher
education in America. This may foster
an academic renaissance, in which faculty and students with the support of
external constituencies come together with a renewed and expanded commitment to
teaching, learning and the advancement of knowledge.
I also have a number of
housekeeping announcements. Given the
length of time since our last full meeting and the importance of what has
transpired since then, I ask for your indulgence for a few more minutes.
First, the Faculty
Advisory Committee to the President has met on four occasions, and in the
interest of time, I ask you to refer to the minutes of the Senate Council of
August 21, 2001 and October 2, 2001 (which are attached to this and the
previous agenda) for a listing of the topics discussed. The next meeting of FAC is scheduled for
November 14, 2001. If anyone has items
for the FAC agenda, please contact one of the Senate Officers or one of the
three elected members: Gordon De Jong,
Elizabeth Hanley and/or Peter Rebane.
Second, the president has
responded to a number of Senate reports from last year, and they are summarized
in the Senate Council minutes. Because
some of the president’s responses are not routine, I encourage your attention
to them. In cases where the president
has not accepted reports in total, they have been referred to the appropriate
committees for further consideration.
Of particular importance is the president accepted, without exception,
the proposed Courseware Policy. And as
is called for in that policy, Dean Pell and I have appointed a Courseware
Advisory Committee.
Three other significant
matters have occurred since the last full Senate meeting and they are also
reported in the Senate Council minutes.
The first is the Senate Chair’s report on the faculty’s very effective
response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The second is the Chair’s detailed report on the Senate’s role in
the Plan for Diversity. The third is
the retirement of the long time Executive Secretary, George Bugyi, arguably the
most important challenge that the Senate has faced or will face for a
considerable period of time. My written
report to Senate Council is posted on the University Faculty Senate web page, but
the essential elements of it are as follows.
First of all, Provost Erickson, who has the ultimate authority for
appointing the executive secretary and Vice Provost Secor recognized the
extraordinary importance of George’s retirement and the need for a smooth
transition not only to the Senate, but to the entire university. I’d like to publicly thank both of them for
orchestrating a great search and agreeing to an emergency re-hire of George to
ensure a smooth transition. I’d also
like to thank Robert Pangborn who chaired the search committee and the other
members of the search committee for a superb search, attracting an excellent
pool of candidates, and expeditiously presenting a short list to the
provost. The result is that what could
have been an absolute nightmare for any incoming chair, even before the first
Senate meeting, ended with an extremely well-qualified executive secretary
being appointed and under George’s tutelage, was on the job. So it’s my great honor to formally introduce
or more appropriately re-introduce the new Executive Secretary of the
University Faculty Senate, Dr. Susan C. Youtz.
A faculty member in the College of Health and Human Development for 19
years, Dr. Youtz also served 12 years as Assistant Director of the School of Nursing,
where she coordinated the school’s undergraduate programs and directed the
Rural Nursing Center Project. During
the year 2000-2001 she was an Administrative Fellow in the Office of the Vice
President for Outreach and Cooperative Extension. Dr. Youtz also, as most of you know, was a Faculty Senator for
almost a decade, during which time she chaired the Senate Committee on
Curricular Affairs and the Senate Committee on Intra-University Relations and
was a member of Senate Council. Will
you please join me in giving Susan a warm welcome.
Senators: Applause.
COMMENTS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY
Chair Nichols: President
Spanier could not be with us today. He
is attending meetings of the American Association of Universities. The chair recognizes Immediate Past-Chair
Schengrund.
Cara-Lynne
Schengrund, College of Medicine: Thank you.
I move that the Senate suspend the rules for the purpose of a special
recognition of our immediate past Executive Secretary, Dr. George Bugyi.
Chair Nichols: It has been moved and seconded that the Senate suspend its rules for the purpose of a special recognition as many that are in favor of the motion, please signify by saying, "aye."
Senators: Aye.
Chair Nichols: Opposed? The motion carries. The chair recognizes Chair-Elect Moore.
John W. Moore,
College of the Liberal Arts:
RESOLUTION FOR GEORGE J. BUGYI, EXECUTIVE
SECRETARY
Whereas Dr. George
J. Bugyi has served The Pennsylvania State University as Executive Secretary of
the University Faculty Senate since 1983 with dedication and distinction, and
Whereas George Bugyi
served for more than 32 years as a faculty member in the College of Health and
Human Development, and
Whereas George
Bugyi, in his capacities as Executive Secretary of the Senate, has
distinguished himself through wise decision-making and judicious counsel, and
Whereas George Bugyi
has effectively served the community through his many generous contributions of
time and expertise, and
Whereas George Bugyi
has displayed true unselfishness, by always putting this University and the
Faculty Senate first in his professional actions and concerns, and
Whereas George Bugyi
is a respected colleague and friend, a man of loyalty and constant civility,
THEREFORE, BE IT
RESOLVED that the University Faculty Senate of The Pennsylvania State
University, on this 23rd day of October, 2001, expresses its
gratitude and appreciation to George Bugyi for all of his accomplishments on
behalf of the institution and its faculty, and recommends that the President of
the University bestow upon him the rank of Executive Secretary Emeritus of the
University Faculty Senate.
Chair Nichols: This resolution comes to the Senate from Senate Council and therefore does not require a second. The vote is to endorse the resolution including the recommendation for emeritus status. All those in favor of the motion, please signify by saying, "aye."
Senators: Aye.
Chair Nichols: Opposed? The motion carries. The chair recognizes the provost of the university.
Rodney A. Erickson, Provost: Thank you. May I ask Dr. Bugyi to join me down at the podium, please. In the administration’s continuing quest to respond quickly to Senate initiatives…
Senators: Laughter.
Rodney A. Erickson: I’m pleased to take an action on this request already and I have in front of me a certificate that says, “By special action of the president of the university, George J. Bugyi is hereby accorded emeritus status with all of the honors, privileges thereto appertaining,” George.
Senators: Applause and standing ovation.
Rodney A. Erickson: That still doesn’t give you the right to park in my space. I would like simply to read the letter that went along with this certificate. I think between this letter and the resolution that the Senate just passed conveys very much our sentiments on this occasion. “Dear George: The special distinction of retirement with emeritus status is recognized at Penn State with a certificate noting that official action. No document can adequately convey the depth and extent of the appreciation due to you for the quality of your endeavors at Penn State. But the certificate confirms the significant contribution of your years of professional services to the university. This university is grateful to you and proud that you contributed to the great purposes of Penn State. With my many thanks I add my personal best wishes to you. Sincerely, Graham B. Spanier.”
George J. Bugyi, Executive Secretary Emeritus, University Faculty Senate: Let me just take a moment. I know you have a lot of very, very important work to do especially the forensic session on the calendar but let me just…we’d really like to bring that to some closure by the way. Let me just say to you thanks for letting me be your colleague for these 32 years. Most of you don’t know that I turned in my letter of resignation on April 25, 2001. You do know that the last Senate meeting last year was April 24, 2001 so therefore, my plans were just totally…they were good plans. No worry about it at all because what I was going to do is slip away just as I served as a sort of a quiet advisor and as a servant. But it didn’t happen. First of all, there was a very, very nice dinner party with the Senate Officers and some colleagues from Old Main. Judy and I really appreciate that. Secondly, there was a beautiful reception and I’d love to again thank the staff of the Senate Office for all those arrangements. It turned out absolutely beautifully. By the way, I didn’t really want that reception but they declared me public property, so I had to go and it worked out very, very nicely. Thirdly, as most of you know, I taught and coached at Mont Alto Campus for 14 years before coming to University Park, and there was just an absolutely beautiful little reception down there on Saturday. It consisted of maybe 50 former student athletes, their families, their children, it was just absolutely beautiful. We dedicated a Japanese Elm in my name. Just beautiful. So the arboretum has now a specimen tree that it didn’t have before. It was very, very moving for me. The fourth thing of course is this resolution. Many of the resolutions that came to the floor over the last 18 years I wrote. Obviously, none of them were written as beautifully, obviously none of them had the sort of emotion attached to them and I thank you very, very much for that. Many of us only dream about the fact that we could be granted emeritus status at the university. I am very, very honored and very, very pleased to accept that. It is something I just never dreamt of so Rod, I appreciate it very, very much. So to all of you and also on behalf of my lovely wife Judy, because many of you know her very, very well from the Nittany Lion Inn, we would both like to thank you for the many, many courtesies that you’ve extended to us over the last 32 years. Thank you very much.
Senators: Applause.
Chair Nichols: The
Senate Officers and former chairs were…it is indeed true that George asked for
no honors and hoopla, but the Senate Officers and Past Chairs sat down to
discuss that for all of about 30 seconds.
We concluded that in fact George and Judy, his delightful spouse, are
Senate property and he could not be allowed to leave quietly. So, George thank you for indulging us. If you believe that a well functioning
Senate is essential to shared governance and by extension academic quality,
then George is one of the most significant academics on the Penn State faculty
in the last two decades. Some of you,
probably most of you, do not know that in a former life George was on the
University of Maryland…the only University of Maryland football team to ever
beat Penn State. After 32 years of
service at Penn State by George, all is forgiven. Best wishes from the Senate to you and Judy. Reminder that there is a reception in the
Alumni Lounge to honor George immediately after the Senate meeting.
Agenda item “F,”
forensic business. This is the report
of the Joint Committee To Review The University Calendar. James Smith the chair of that committee will
open the forensic session with some background. A couple of things, first of all, I have granted the privilege of
the floor to members of Jim’s joint committee who are not Senate members and in
addition to that, for those of you in the Senate who wish to speak if you will
do the usual and that is to please stand and identify yourself and the unit you
represent before addressing the Senate.
FORENSIC BUSINESS
SENATE COUNCIL
Joint Committee To Review The University Calendar—Initial Findings
James F. Smith, Chair, Joint Committee To Review The University Calendar
James F. Smith, Penn State Abington: Thanks, John. I think…I wonder if George would mind stepping down again and sharing the platform for this? Last spring the Joint Committee To Review The University Calendar was charged by Provost Erickson and then Senate Chair Schengrund with words to this effect, “The calendar is broken, fix it.” So began our group’s deliberations. As you might see from the list of committee members, we drew representation from a variety of university interests and constituents as well as from the administrative side, which includes faculty and students. And what surprised me when I was persuaded to take on this charge was I was obviously interested enough in the subject matter being with the university since we used to be on the term system. Also, I actually worked while on the Senate with three previous recommendations on the calendar (so one more or less to that string). One of the things that surprised me was once the committee was announced and my email address was given out last spring that there was the absence of email, telephone calls, letters and commentary, so we began our deliberations. The second surprise was our diverse group of people that came to some conclusions rather quickly. So quickly that we scared the devil out of the Senate Officers when we formulated a recommendation and we were ready to present it. They said, “whoa” we have to be more deliberate, more inclusive and so on. So we decided to frame our report in the fashion that you have in your Senate Agenda which is in a matter of fact fashion that has been public pretty much since early August. The absence of electronic communication, telephone calls, letters, threats, or whatever channeled to me, has continued. However, over the last couple of days I have noticed a ramping up of attention. Last night I visited with the Commonwealth College Caucus, and a good handful of people were there and Anthony Baratta and I sat with them and talked with them about our findings and listened to some of their suggestions. Once again this noon, a little less than three hours ago, I met once again with the Commonwealth College Caucus which was augmented by the Senate Officers to a much larger group of people and discussion ramped up a few more notches. And all day long people have been saying to me, “Are you ready for this? Are you all set?” and I said “Do I need body amour? What’s the story?” The idea is that we wanted this forensic session to be an opportunity to gather information from the university community to help us in framing a position statement, which is a recommendation that will go from us to the Senate Committee on University Planning and will presumably come back to the Senate at the most expedient and appropriate time possible. So that’s our agenda. Today is for discussion. Today is to try to assess the variety of opinions from all of our constituents. The calendar, like so many things that we discuss here at the Senate, will evoke many different, even conflicting responses on what is the best solution to a problem that maybe not everyone perceives as problematic. But the past year saw an increase in the number of concerns raised both to the Senate leadership during its visits to campuses and colleges, and also in the complaints made directly to central administration. Hence, what we have been is a joint committee appointed by the administration and the Senate leadership to review the calendar and to make recommendations on improving it. What we have done in the forensic document that you have in your Agenda is list some of the issues that were regarded as problematic with the current calendar, (1) the informal and unauthorized extensions of breaks like Thanksgiving and even Fall Break, (2) the availability or lack of availability of sufficient orientation time prior to the start of fall semester, (3) the lack of designated exam days during the summer sessions at University Park was part of the charge. Further, disruption of fall semester caused by three breaks—a break at Labor Day, a break at Fall Break and a break at Thanksgiving was included. The last time the Senate had a comprehensive review of the university calendar was in the 1985 Bennett Report, led by Peter Bennett then with the Smeal College of Business Administration and as you might imagine that report saw considerable divergence of opinion regarding the calendar. Although there was a great deal of support at that time for shortening the duration of the semester to 14 weeks which is a similar configuration to comparable institutions and the added benefit is such a configuration would make a post-Labor Day start for fall semester possible in at least some years. The Bennett study included a survey of faculty, a very broad based survey, that ultimately was depending on who was evaluating the data, as it could be seen as widely divergent or inconclusive. There was considerable support for that 14 week semester but no calendar alternative offered got a clear majority of faculty support. So what we want to do today is open the floor to your discussion and remarks. We are listening. We are taking notes. I am assured that there will be a transcription of today’s discussion available to us during our next deliberations and if at all possible, what we want to do is craft a report. That isn’t going to please everybody, as John described earlier, we hope that we will fix some of the broken pieces that people have brought to the attention of both your colleagues on the Senate and the administration while giving us the opportunity in our calendar to do the best possible job we can do for our students. And with that, I’ll just stop and try to respond to your questions, and I hope we get a good discussion going. Thanks.
Chair Nichols: And
a reminder to please stand and identify yourself and the unit you represent
before addressing the Senate.
Peter C. Jurs, Eberly College of Science: I am speaking not just for myself but for the Eberly College of Science. In preparation for this forensic session, I have canvassed the undergraduate officers in the seven Departments of the Eberly College of Science. We are unanimously opposed to shrinking the semester from its current 15-week configuration and we are also opposed to eliminating a separate identified finals week. Some of us are merely opposed and some are adamantly opposed and I think I personally fall among the adamant category but I’m going to try to represent what the seven other people which are faculty members in my own department of chemistry and science, have told me.
I see in the Tables in Appendix “B” of the Agenda here that Penn State offers more instructional days than either Temple or Pittsburgh. I think we should be proud of that. I think that’s a good thing. I also see that we offer more instructional days than all the other Big Ten schools, with the exception of Northwestern. I think that we should be proud of that too. I think having a longer instructional semester is a good thing that we should keep here at Penn State.
The math, biology and chemistry departments here are among the largest generators of student credit hours in the whole university. I am most familiar with the University Park numbers and I know that at University Park the chemistry department is the third largest generator of student credit hours and math is second, so two out of the top three. Those courses that we are teaching are very large, multi-section courses on fundamentals. They have a lot of material to cover, and we need all the instruction time we can get. The students also need adequate time in between their class meetings to absorb the material, to work homework problems, to gather in groups to study, and to reflect on the concepts being taught. For these reasons and the rest that I have left out in brevity, we support the continuation of the 15-week semester.
I also see in Appendix “B” that only 40 percent of classes here at University Park actually schedule final exams in final exam week. Our large, multi-section courses that I’m talking about in the Eberly College of Science are precisely those courses which are among the most likely to have final examinations during finals week. I personally teach freshman general chemistry, CHEM 12, this semester and in that course we give final exams and in that one course, one semester, it is taught to several thousand students each year. This particular semester we have 65 sections of CHEM 12, which is about 1800 students and there is no way we can give a final exam to 1800 students that is the same. Therefore, to be fair without having them take it all at the same time, and there is no way we can do that without a separately scheduled final exam week. We strongly support the continuation of separate final exams and not folding final exams into the instructional semester.
Another point, laboratories in chemistry and biology present a lot of special problems. Multiple sections that meet across the week mean that scheduling is already a nightmare for these kinds of classes. In addition, in biology and microbiology labs, the living organisms that are being used in the labs have their own timetables. They do not pay attention to administrative thoughts or faculty thoughts. Growing flies or microorganisms from one lab period to another imposes such a timetable on labs that may or may not be compatible with the university calendar. The three disruptions we already have in fall semester cause scheduling problems for those labs which are causing those courses to offer less substantive material to the students than would be the case if there were fewer disruptions. To shorten the semester further would just make a problem that already exists worse.
One additional consideration speaks against shortening the fall semester. In the Senate here we spent a lot of effort in the last couple of years incorporating active learning elements into our General Education courses. I have not heard anybody that disagrees with the proposition that introducing such active learning elements takes more time--not less. So to shorten the semester would be counterproductive to this large university-wide effort in my opinion and the opinion of the Eberly College of Science faculty that I’ve been discussing. Now we only have four possible calendar configurations presented and at the risk of just saying that we are against something and we do not like those suggestions very much and so as a consequence, we favor choice number one (1), which is the status quo. But what we really favor is a 15-week semester with final exams in a separate time for all the reasons that I’ve just explained.
James F. Smith: Thanks, Peter. Those are very thoughtful remarks and the committee is glad to hear them. The only thing that I will respond is and do not take this as a counter argument because we do not have a position yet. We are trying to explore only one calendar configuration. If we had one last June, we have abandoned it. This is truly an open process. What we are talking about is a shift from a 15-week to a 14-week semester assuming that the alternative chosen keeps the current classroom minutes as now scheduled. The worse case scenario of shortening the semester is 150 minutes, which is 10 minutes a week on a 15-week schedule. If pedagogically a Penn State professor cannot accommodate 12 minutes a week of instruction by doing what she/he does better during the length of time that she/he has in class I would be very surprised. I would not want to see us equate minutes committed to a class schedule with quality because that seems to be a stumbling block when we start saying that by shortening a semester we are giving up quality. I would imagine if one of our colleagues from Princeton, on a 12-week semester, were in the room, that colleague would argue that the quality in his class would be comparable to the quality in my class or your class even though they had presumably three weeks less instruction in the class. Minutes in class may or may not have an intrinsic relationship to the education that occurs or the learning that students experience. But the position that Peter has articulated is one that I think we know well and we have heard many times in the Senate and certainly is a position that needs to be reckoned with and that is why the alternative of maintaining the status quo is one of the four options that we have put in the document. However, our position is that if the alternative that is ultimately decided upon, the issues that have been raised to the Senate and to the administration will be left unaddressed.
Annette K. McGregor, College of Arts and Architecture: I do not care how long the semester is but in our school a later start would help us accommodate the large percentage of our students who are doing summer internships, who are working in the field, and who are continuing their education during the summer. And our calendar is forcing them to miss…and continually our graduate students to miss the first week of school because it is starting before the kind of traditional end of the summer season and that cuts into jobs or internship possibilities. I also would like to say that I also teach large classes. I am already losing days every semester that I am not supposed to lose to Thanksgiving break starting now on the Friday before Thanksgiving. And now October break starts on the Friday before October break and I am teaching class. However, when I am teaching 50 instead of the 800 students that are registered I am not sure of how good I am doing or how much educating is going on. So I only want to speak for myself primarily in favor of somehow solving the problems that are on the report. The status quo is not working in terms of getting the hours that are on paper, at least in my area, and the early start is disadvantageous to our students who are trying to work in the summer in their field.
James F. Smith: Thank you. One of the things that occurs to me as a result of your remarks is as one reads options two, three and four on our list is I hope nobody reads those options as a conspiracy to shorten the semester. I think the perspective of trying to solve a problem by a later start is the rationale for this. It is not a conspiracy to somehow deprive anybody of anything. It is an attempt to address issues that were brought for us, so thank you.
D. Joshua Troxell, Student Senator, Division of Undergraduate Studies: I would like to read something that the students have prepared because we have had considerable discussion within our meetings outside of that. The calendar revision issue is an issue that affects us all. The Undergraduate Student Government Academic Assembly is comprised of student representatives from each college at the University Park campus and acts as the voice of the students on this issue. They are represented here today by the Student Faculty Senate Caucus. The Student Faculty Senate Caucus reviewed the proposals regarding possible calendar configurations. After considerable discussion, proposal number two—a 15-week semester including final exams and all forms of final assessment, as well as proposal number four—a 14-week instructional semester with established class times plus five days of final exams emerged as the most favorable recommendations presented in this report. It is important to note that of these two proposals there was not one that stood out more clearly than the other. And by that same token proposals number one and number three were not dismissed, but they were not favored as highly as the other two. The reasons why we support these various proposals are as follows. For proposal number two—a 15-week semester including final exams. The students support this because it encourages other methods of final assessment that are somewhat implied by not having a final exam block. Second, it minimizes the instructional time lost as a result of having a final exam week while still shortening the semester. And as was previously mentioned, the later fall semester start allows additional opportunities for faculty to attend conferences, longer orientation for new students, and more time for the students that are returning from the summer classes, co-ops, internships, and other educational pursuits.
We were concerned about proposal number two in that it would provide a possible overload during the end of the last week of instruction. It would probably be assumed that if an instructor was going to give an in-class assessment, theoretically, all those could occur on the Friday of the last day of school, which I do not think is something that any student really wants to see happen. Also, students would have less time to complete these exams if they were given in class versus having a one and a half hour block. This was a concern because if we are going to cover the same amount of material this would result in fewer questions, a higher point value per question and obviously if you miss one question it is going to affect your grade much more dramatically.
Proposal number four was supported because it does maintain the current semester format allowing for a final exam block which was favored by most of the science and math-intensive majors. The current 50 and 75-minute period lengths are still maintained thus preventing the lengthening of the academic day, which would be proposal number three. And it still allows for a later start in the fall, which was previously discussed. The concern was that there would be a loss of instructional time—a loss of a complete week and the concern was that some faculty members may feel it necessary to cram all that extra material in thus adding to the burden of the student trying to study for final exams.
The Student Faculty Senate Caucus also considered and discussed the issue surrounding Fall Break. Regarding this issue, the student body is much more single-minded. The students definitely oppose the elimination of Fall Break. While we do acknowledge that Fall Break is not necessarily used as the study days as was originally intended, Fall Break still does serve the student population in a very positive way. The break coming at the middle of the semester allows students the time to refresh, to relax, and come back to the second part of the semester ready to attack their studies and continue their academic pursuits. Although some people have suggested moving Fall Break and combining it with Thanksgiving, and this would give the students a break much like Spring Break, but it was felt that this would not be beneficial to the students due to the timing of Thanksgiving being only two or three weeks before the end of the semester. By taking an entire week off, that is going to mean less time for students to ramp up after the break to get ready for finals.
In summary, the Student Faculty Senate Caucus recognizes the need for changes to the calendar as it currently exists and recommends that proposal number two and/or proposal number four be advanced for further consideration with the concerns previously noted, including but not limited to leaving Fall Break as it currently stands in the fall semester. Respectfully submitted, Josh Troxell.
James F. Smith: Thanks Mr. Troxell. The issues around fall break are issues that some of us on the Senate remember well. Those of us with good memories will even remember that during the discussion in which we authorized a Fall Break the suggestion was made even at that time to collapse Fall Break and Thanksgiving week and turn it into a one-week break at that time. And that resolution was defeated at the Senate largely because of extremely effective and vigorous lobbying by the students who were originally the prime movers for the concept of Fall Break. The points that Josh raises are not unanticipated. The alternative of the collapsed Fall Break in one week was suggested as a possibility because of minimizing the interruptions. No one is naďve enough to believe that it will eliminate the extension tactic of the Friday before or in this case the Monday after Thanksgiving for the hunters in the crowd. But it does reduce the number of occasions for those extensions. We understand that it does not provide mid-term relief. On the other hand…you know this is like the scales of justice swinging back and forth. On the other hand, I can imagine a scenario in which a student with two major projects due during those last three weeks of the semester might appreciate a week long hiatus in much the same way that the student preparing for a mid-term the Wednesday after Fall Break would appreciate those two days to study. So I think that depending on the students course demands and schedule in a given semester a student could maybe thank the presence of that week just as easily as they could see a disadvantage to eliminating the two days earlier in October. But this is an issue and you notice of course that we decoupled a recommendation on Fall Break from any of the semester scenarios because I think Fall Break condensation if that is what people want to do can be used in any of the configurations or conversely any of the configurations can be used with the present Fall Break and that was deliberate on our part on the committee. Thanks, Josh.
Bill Ellis, Hazleton Campus: I wish to give the results of a forensic that was held at the Hazleton Campus. Since some of the points have been made before I will keep this brief. The faculty at Hazleton were not uniformly or adamantly opposed to change to the semester length. We have a mixed report. There was admission of several sources that a later fall start would be beneficial to many of our students who have seasonal employment and also many of our non-traditional students who rely on these jobs for part of their tuition income as my colleague from the Theatre Department pointed out. And we also admitted that a large number of classes with the consent of both faculty and students concluded at the end of the 15th week without a final exam and apparently these classes have been with the entire approval of the students as they do not see that their education has been cheated in this fashion. Therefore, there were a large number of people that suggested that an alternative to the alternative number four would be acceptable. There was concern among a number of faculty that this kind of move to a 14-week semester with the elimination of the final exam week could compromise the quality of education, particularly by not allowing students a final chance to show that they have mastered the content of the class. Therefore, they asked me to pass on to the committee the need to justify any change of a semester length as pedagogically sound. Moreover, it should not simply be a convenience to students and faculty, but it should be as good or better a way of delivering a class. And finally I do not see any sentiment for changing Fall Break.
James F. Smith: Thanks, Bill. May I ask Peter, Josh, Bill any of the caucuses or any of the groups that have any kind of written remarks, could you leave them with some of the Senate people? It would tremendously help to the transcription process. The calendar and the curriculum are related but I do not think our committee or any of us as faculty want to see calendar driving curriculum. But the fact is particularly in the past decade and more, pedagogy has changed. Many of us, even old timers who have been around 30 and more years, are doing classes in different ways today than we would have done them 15 or 20 years ago. Chalk and talk does not work as well for everybody any more. When I was in college and when some of you were in college that was it. A blackboard, a podium, a room bigger than this, a professor in the front, graduate assistants going up and down the aisles, and lecture notes with no note taking service. Exam, exam, exam, exam, big final, boxes, bags however security was assured and that was it. Now universities, colleges, junior colleges and everybody involved in the post secondary education have been moving in a variety of different directions. The fact is that not every class has to give a final examination. If you’re doing a speech class…you know we talk about the service courses, in addition to MATH 140, CHEM 12, and PHYS 201 and the other large service courses, we do have ENGL 15, ENGL 202, and SPCOM 100 classes that do not give final exams. They do not need to. It would be a misinterpretation I think of Senate policy for someone teaching one of those courses to feel constrained to give final exams because of a finals policy that we have at the Senate or the presence of a finals period in the calendar. So I think that we are in a position to try to suggest that the calendar should not drive pedagogy. On the other hand, in the proposal for a 15-week semester including all forms of final assessment, were that calendar to be adopted there is probably an implication, I will be honest about this, there is an implication that if one gives a final examination it will be done in a way that is not business as usual. I could imagine myself in that situation. I could probably give the same examination but it might have to be over two days. Not all of the tests on the Friday of the last week, but maybe Wednesday and Friday, two parts, objective one part, essay another part, or something like that. That could be done. For those people who do not give final examinations that last week could be a week of in class presentations, portfolio collection, an assessment, return and/or discussion for the students. There could be a lot of different activities occurring during that week that culminate in a final assessment including, maybe as Josh suggested that last chance to redeem yourself after a semester. I do not think anybody on the calendar committee wants to do away with final assessment. That was not our charge. It was not our mission and it certainly is not our position so even in the most radical of the proposals is there no longer a designated final exam week set aside, please do not take the perception that we wish to do away with final assessment. That is not the case. I think what it represents is a recognition of the multiplicity of ways final assessments may be conducted.
Chair Nichols: The clock is ticking and we’ve got a very full Agenda so let’s see if we could pack as many brief comments from Senators as possible. Let us move along as expeditiously as possible.
Sallie M. McCorkle, College of Arts and Architecture: Specifically the School of Visual Arts. The bullet item at University Park indicates approximately 40 percent of classes actually schedule final exams does not reflect what occurs within our School. This is true particularly within the studio component of our School where we actually do utilize a final exam time period for individual meetings with the FA and MFA students. Long-term meetings. I mean, Monday thru Thursday we are meeting with them individually and trying to weave that kind of structure into the last week of classes instead, would be very difficult. So I want to point that out that actually we would support the retention of the final exam period.
James F. Smith: Thank you.
Joshua D. Walker, Student Senator, Penn State Altoona: I am representing the student body at Altoona and we have discussed and actually done several surveys about the topic. There is immense fear that by eliminating finals week, it is going to condense the finals and compact them to the last few days of class. And as it is right now even with finals week at a smaller campus it allows them a little bit more leniency with the time constraints. And a lot of classes actually have finals before finals week, as now, and a lot of times it creates an overload of stress and having the finals week it would be…it allows a time for students to calm down, have that time to study and know when the finals are going to be. Eliminating the finals week is going to cause problems of, “Okay, I have one exam this week but I still have classes I have to take. I have my final exam in this class the week before school is over yet I am still absorbing information from a separate class.” It really makes things more confusing than what they need to be. Option four was actually the most supported on our campus through the SGA.
James F. Smith: The reason I was wincing was the Senators should remember our own legislation regarding final examinations and anybody giving a final examination outside of final exam period is in violation of that policy.
William A. Rowe, College of Medicine: I think we need to also bear in mind the potential for public relations with shortening the school year. Particularly the agenda item that is forthcoming, this state government has not been particularly kind to higher education. There is a significant possibility of substantial increases in tuition next year and by potentially cutting instructional hours, this may send a very damaging message to the parents of our students and the parents are ultimately the ones footing the bill. I just want to raise this caution due to the timing of this sort of decision, particularly if it involves shortening instructional hours for a year where a significant tuition increase is possible.
James F. Smith: Thanks. That sensitivity is certainly been part of our discussion and it is at least in some of our opinions probably the reason why nothing has been done to change the calendar up to this point in time since 1985.
Wayne R. Curtis, College of Engineering: I have two consensus statements to read that represent the two voting bodies in the College of Engineering. The first is the Engineering Caucus and the second is the Engineering Faculty Council. The College of Engineering Faculty Senate Caucus unanimously supports the following tentative formulating in the calendar. The academic calendar should have a designated final exam period and I do not need to articulate that. Second, the calendar for a given semester should have the same number of week days. Since functionally we have courses where you would have one day you might teach a course, you may already have a 14-week calendar for some of those. The rationale statement that goes along with this considerable amount of the College of Engineering course material is pedagogically presented in a consecutive manner which logically builds to a comprehensive examination of course content and the longer format with 50 minutes. The College of Engineering finds it important to retain this performance evaluation format. Since students in engineering typically are taking three to four finals in a semester, its impractical to impose combined finals week with the end of classes. That is the end of the statement from the College of Engineering Senate. The second one is then from the Engineering Faculty Council and by the way, both of these were unanimous. The Engineering Faculty Council unanimously supports the aforementioned position and further it unanimously supported the position statement against shortening the academic year in general, basically on account of reducing quality. I just have one final personal statement which is neither of these and that is, already in a given year we have a lot of things that we are doing. I have to go to professional meetings and I feel guilty and usually cut it short to get back to teaching. If you make that time period more critical, you have students that are ill, what you are doing is you are functionally reducing the degrees of freedom. The flexibility and the importance of the time you have left. Seniors that are interviewing are going to lose a week in the process of doing that. And in that general context, the idea of compressing the semester year is not typical of a research institute and what is reflected in the Big Ten and when you say that, we should not be benchmarking against Temple.
Peter Deines, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences: This is just an observation. You mentioned that the calendar should not influence how we teach. Our present calendar does. I just needed to change my course that I teach in the spring to a fall offering and I have to do things significantly different mainly because we have three breaks rather than one break. So the existence of the three breaks has impact over the business in the classroom.
Douglas K. Brown, Penn State Altoona: Just to report the results of a forensic session at the Altoona College last week. The Altoona College faculty is unanimously and relatively adamantly opposed to the shortening of the structural semesters and the elimination of the finals exam period. Many of the reasons for that have been mentioned already. A lot of it has to do with the fact that at the college we are primarily teaching are foundational courses and a lot of the remarks made by my colleague from the Eberly College of Science come to bear. Also, we do have a written statement to put forward to your committee. I might also mention that in some of those foundational courses at other parts of the university many of those four and five credit courses are not losing 150 minutes, but something like 250 minutes by shortening the week.
Dennis S. Gouran, College of the Liberal Arts: When you started your presentation you indicated the committee was told that the calendar was broken, and so to fix it seems to be a condition that sends a set of facts not in evidence as nearly as I can tell from reading the report that we were given. Aside from the possibility that the calendar is not broken means that somehow we have come to a standstill. But even if that is the case the major breakage is not at all determined after anything I have heard, we have had some benchmarking data and we have had some expressions of preferences of what people would like to see in the calendar, but the documentation for what are the consequences of this presumably broken instrument have not been articulated. I find it very difficult to evaluate the relative merits of these four proposals or others not on the list when you do not know exactly what it is and whose perception of the breakage it is we are trying to address.
Chair Nichols: We have only got a few more minutes so we need to move on. If you would be as brief as possible.
James F. Smith: May I just respond to that a little bit?
Chair Nichols: Sure, quickly please.
James F. Smith: I think, Dennis you are correct in what you are pointing out. The problem is that the evidence of problems with the fall calendar is substantially anecdotal and a preponderance of opinions expressed and it is an issue that apparently climaxed in the past calendar year in the sense of its urgency to the Provost’s Office, the President’s Office, and to the Senate Office. But it is an issue that for as long as I have been involved with the Senate and certainly during my tour as a Senate Officer, was in evidence all the time. In part, it depends upon the people that you are listening to and one of the reasons for this discussion is to try to assess that. Now there have been articulate and well reasoned statements expressing relative satisfaction with the current calendar. Maybe those critics who raised the issue to the attention of the President’s Office put it on the front of the stove, maybe those positions are not being articulated perhaps because of the nature of the report itself. I do not know, but there is not empirical evidence that we can put forward that will suggest this level of dissatisfaction to your desire.
Howard G. Sachs, Penn State Harrisburg: Jim would you give us your email address?
Chair Nichols: Howard would you state your name and your unit please?
Howard G. Sachs: Sachs, Harrisburg. Jim would you give us your email address?
James F. Smith: Yes. As it was said in March and April at the Senate meetings it is JFS6@PSU.EDU. Hurry. Our committee is meeting tomorrow evening.
Alison Carr-Chellman, College of Education: With all due respect to the student representatives I really appreciate what you are trying to share with us. I am not at all opposed to the idea of shortening the semester, which seems to be a minority opinion but I will throw it out there anyway. But I have spoken to a number of faculty who are very concerned about the Fall Break and Thanksgiving break issue and the combination of those two together. Generally, everybody that I have spoken to on the faculty thinks that it is a good idea. What I would definitely be opposed to would be shortening the semester and still maintaining two breaks because in essence we are already taking almost two weeks off. People do not come to class Monday and/or Tuesday before Thanksgiving. They leave Friday before Thanksgiving and they extend the Fall Break for the entire week. So we are already in essence in a 14-week semester just by default so I would say I like the way you separated those out as options. I definitely would not support a shorter semester including two breaks but I think the combination of the breaks into one Thanksgiving break seems to have a lot of support with the faculty I’ve spoken to.
Chair Nichols: Two more and I think we will have to call an end.
Gordon F. De Jong, College of the Liberal Arts: There is empirical evidence ordered by this group three years ago for what one of the problems is and that had to do with evidence that we gathered from the pulse surveys about the number of students leaving for Thanksgiving break early and you are welcome to go check it out. So there is massive leaving early empirically documented right there. The same thing is now happening and I presume in all your classes, certainly in mine, if I do not give a quiz on the Friday before the mid-semester break. Although I agree totally with previous comments there is a problem. It is empirically documented. If you do not know the consequence for your class you are just not there.
Caroline D. Eckhardt, College of the Liberal Arts: First, I would like to support item four, for the reasons everybody said before, but mostly because I think the later start in August will allow academically in preparing teaching assistants who teach a lot of those courses mentioned and classes, especially beginning classes, at University Park. And we need a little bit more time in August to prepare teaching assistants for their teaching responsibilities.
Chair Nichols: Thank you. A lot of good input for your committee Jim. We are going to have to call an end to it. You can email Jim. The plan is for Jim’s committee…I think they are meeting tomorrow night and they are going to give a recommendation which will be considered by the Senate Committee on University Planning and the Senate Committee on Undergraduate Education at the December 4, 2001 meeting and therefore will not come forward to a vote until the first meeting of the…at the earliest the first meeting of the calendar year. So you are going to have plenty of opportunity for additional input between now and then and in addition there will be…right now we are shooting at a moving target, but pretty soon the Joint Committee To Review The University Calendar is going to offer a fixed target. So we could have a more specific discussion. Thanks a lot, Jim I appreciate your help. Moving on to Agenda item “J,” informational reports, the Senate Committee on University Planning is sponsoring a report by Provost Erickson on the Budget and Strategic Planning, Provost Erickson.
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
None
LEGISLATIVE REPORTS
None
ADVISORY/CONSULTATIVE REPORTS
None
INFORMATIONAL REPORTS
SENATE COMMITTEE ON UNIVERSITY PLANNING
Budget; Strategic Planning (new approach); and Budget Planning
Anthony J. Baratta, Chair, Senate Committee on University Planning
Rodney A. Erickson: Thanks for the opportunity to share some highlights with you about Penn State’s operating budget for this academic year. I am planning to summarize the universities budget plan and appropriation request to the commonwealth for 2002-2003 as well. In the interest of time I am going to move through this very quickly but the entire presentation will be available on the web and you may want to consult that later. Let’s start then with a look at the current year state appropriation. We received a total appropriation of more than $334 million dollars. This represents an increase of less than one percent or $2.8 million in new funds over last year. How did we arrive at this modest increase? First, the $5 million line item for program initiatives that was in our 2000-2001 appropriation was eliminated. Special funding of $2 million for Penn College was also eliminated. We then received an increase of three percent on each of our remaining line items. This includes the educational and general, agricultural research, cooperative extension, and the College of Medicine line items. And the School of Information Sciences and Technology received an additional increase of $812,000. The state appropriation is just one piece of the states budget…I think our funds for technology were cut here. That gives you an indication of how we ended up with less than a one percent increase. We should be on slide number four at this point…go one more. Okay, there we are and assuming this advances we will be back on track here. The state appropriation is just one piece of Penn State’s budget. The total budget for this academic year is just less than $2.3 billion. The activities on the left side of this chart are all self-supporting budgets. These include the medical center and restricted funds--each representing about 20 percent of the total budget. Auxiliary enterprises comprised nearly 10 percent. The items on the right side represent the general funds portion of the total budget. Tuition contributes 29.4 percent and the state appropriation contributes another 14.6 percent. Let’s look more closely at the general funds budget. This is the budget that supports the universities academic and administrative activities and maintenance of the physical plant. The state appropriation represents 31.4 percent of our general funds budget this year. Student tuition and fees contribute 62.1 percent. The reverse of what these shares were in 1970. Other income such as income on investments, recovery of indirect costs, and departmental services contribute 6.5 percent. This year the general funds budget totals $978 million. Last year I introduced you to the concept of one percent increase modules. We calculate income and expenses in one percent modules to provide some initial parameters in budget planning. For example, on the expense side a one percent increase in salaries and related benefits costs about $6.2 million. On the inc