BUDGET & FACILITIES COMMITTEE, Chair:  Richard Willson

The committee met on March 28, 2007.
Absent:  Karner, Herendeen (excused) and Keller (excused).

 Discussion at this meeting centered entirely on the salary data, with extensive analysis by Sens. Kadipasaoglu and Copeland with input from several others.  Frustratingly, there are still a few errors in the data set (largely of rank classification), but the quality is much better and is steadily improving.  A variety of interesting preliminary conclusions can be drawn from the current data set, but the committee decided to focus on scrubbing out any last errors before disseminating substantive conclusions.  The BFC will have a representative from the committee or the Senate, check each data set with the appropriate college business administrator.  Sen. Titz will check with Libby Barlow to confirm the precise date of the data set, as a couple of examples appear to be anachronistic.  Sens. Willson and Kotarba will identify Senators who can vet the data for colleges not represented on the committee.  The BFC will also inquire of the administration as to the availability of the gender-identified data set.

COMMITTEE ON COMMITTEES, Chair:  Katy Greenwood

March 28, the Committee on Committees met with Barbara Chapman regarding the status of the ITTC (Information Technology & Computing Committee), which has been working for the past year on a proposal for governance infrastructure for information technology for the university.  She provided a status report on the steps and procedures the group has gone through to develop a proposal.  She indicated that the proposal was nearing completion.

April 11, the committee met with Dave Irvin, Associate Vice Chancellor/Associate Vice President for Plant Operations to discuss the University Purchasing and Plant Operations Committee.  The COC is studying the role and scope of this committee and the possible overlapping of roles with the Senate Budget and Facilities Committee.  The COC will continue to discuss the best avenues for faculty input to remodeling or improving classroom facilities, for allocation of resources to improve the environment for instruction or research and what committee structure is needed for efficient and effective interaction. 

April 25, the Committee will review the final report from the ITCC committee submitted by Barbara Chapman and will continue through May 2 to discuss the committee structures needed in the area of facilities, purchasing and plant operations.

EDUCATIONAL POLICIES & STUDENT AFFAIRS COMMITTEE, Chair:  David Mazella

The committee met on March 30.
Present: David Mazella (Chair), Diane Bruxvoort, Andrew Gordon, George Trail, Meredith Duncan, Martha Haun
Absent: Dan Wells, Valentini Brady, Y.L. Mo, Craig Pirrong

In reference to the proposed drop policy (UCC 0016 O7S) forwarded from the Undergraduate Council and the UCC, the committee voted 6-0 not to recommend, until certain concerns had been answered.  These concerns included:

2.  What would happen to students who violated these policies?  Or to students who asked for Ws but were turned down?  Would they be forced to take courses or pay fees that hitherto they had not before, or accept Fs where previously they would have received Ws?

3.  Whether the policy would be more effective, and less potentially damaging to enrollments, if phased in rather than immediately imposed in September?

4.  What kinds of exceptions would be countenanced for health, family, and work obligations, and who would decide those exceptions?

5.  Whether taking control of absentee Ws from faculty and giving discretion to the Deans and advisors after the final drop date was the best solution?

6.  Most importantly, since one foreseeable consequence of these changes would be far higher numbers of Fs than previously, what kind of an impact would this policy have on enrollment numbers, retention, graduation rates, and so on?

FACULTY AFFAIRS COMMITTEE, Chair:  Mark Clarke

DATE:   28th March 2007
TIME:    12:00 PM
LOCATION:   MD Anderson Library, Room 220U

COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT:  Drs. Clarke, Houston, Manny, Middents, Sansgiry, Subhlok and Schiff.
COMMITTEE MEMBERS ABSENT:  Drs. Eichberg, Kadish, Kugler, Linzer & Williams
AD HOC COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT:  Dr. Wynne Chin

AGENDA ITEM #1:  Minutes from 2-31-07 meeting

ACTION:  A motion to accept the minutes from the 2-31-07 FAC meeting as written was made by Dr. Manny and seconded by Dr. Middents.  The motion was unanimously accepted by the committee and the minutes were entered into the record.

AGENDA ITEM #2:  College By-Laws Update.

ACTION:  Each Senator present gave an update on the progress made regarding the review of College Bylaws (including submission of the FS-COUG checklist) as follows:

The College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences has a recently rewritten and accepted set of bylaws. They by and large conform to the FSCOUG recommendations, certainly in spirit, and largely in letter. The college has an active Faculty Governance Committee as a part of the structure, and the Dean, Dr. Antel, has demonstrated a commitment to shared governance. Those items on the FSCOUG checklist for which the College appears non-compliant are to a great extent a reflection of the broad diversity within the college, and, as indicated on the analysis, appear better left to the attentions of individual departments rather than the college. The Bylaws can be found on the Web at http://www.class.uh.edu/about_cga_bylaws.html (report submitted by Senator Middents).

The College of Education by-laws were originally written with the FS-COUG report recommendations in mind. As such, after review of the COE Bylaws it was found that all but one category was in compliance with the FS-COUG recommendations, namely Item#16 “delineation for opportunities of leadership development among potential faculty administrators, Chairs and faculty administrators”. This item has been referred to Dean of the College of Education for discussion with the COE Faculty Executive Committee. The Bylaws can be found on the Web at http://www.coe.uh.edu/mycoe/coestu/dean_coeconstitution.cfm (report submitted by Senator Clarke). 

College of Optometry - The revised by laws have all the elements in them.  They have not yet been adopted because each of the two departments must develop their department by laws first.  Once the departments develop their by laws, and revised college by laws are in place, Optometry will have all the elements in the by laws. The current bylaws are only shy a few elements, list of faculty is one of them and some of the voting issues are not as clear as they should be. (report submitted by Senator Manny)

Hotel and Restaurant – The college is in the process of revising their by-laws and the process should be complete by the end of the semester. After discussion with Associate Dean Boger, Dr. Manny suggested that in the revision process the College should consider the FS-COUG check list as a guideline for the revision. (report submitted by Senator Manny).

Library – The Library has been contacted. They are in the process of completing the review of their by-laws (report submitted by Senator Manny).

College of Pharmacy – The college has submitted a FS-COUG checklist and is actively revising and updating their by-laws in line with the FS-COUG guidelines (report submitted by  Senator Sansgiry).

College of Architecture – The college has reviewed and submitted a FS-COUG checklist indicating that their by-laws are in compliance with the suggested format (report submitted by Senator Sabatino).

College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics – The college is in the process of revising their by-laws this semester (report submitted by Senator Subhlok).

College of Technology – The college is in the process of revising their by-laws this semester (report submitted by Senator Greenwood).

Colleges yet to submit review – Law, Engineering, Social Work & Business.

AGENDA ITEM #3:  Proposed Resolution Supporting the Formation of a GLBT Resource Center

ACTION: After review of the documentation supplied by Dr Gonzalez by the FAC a discussion ensued concerning the specifics of the proposal and what a UH Faculty Senate Resolution should consist of. In order to stimulate a larger discussion amongst Senators on the proposed resolution, Dr. Manny offered a motion that stated” that Dr. Gonzalez should be invited to the next Full Senate Meeting at which she would be asked to present her proposal on the Senate floor as a 10 min presentation.”. This motion was seconded by Dr. Subhlok. The committee voted 4-2 for the motion.

(Postscript: Dr. Clarke reported the FAC recommendation at the April FEC meeting. The FEC indicated that they would like to review the presentation on this proposal by Dr. Gonzalez prior to bringing it to the Senate floor. As such the FEC extended Dr. Gonzalez an invitation to make her presentation to the FEC, an invitation that she accepted.)

SCHOLARSHIP & COMMUNITY COMMITTEE, Chair:  Suzanne Ferimer

On April 5, the Scholarship and Community Committee met with Mr. Jeff Fuller, UH Associate Director of Admissions.  Mr. Fuller explained that the UH recruiters visit every high school in Texas at least once each year and high schools that are proven to feed successful students to UH may get visited eight or nine times a year.   These recruiters have areas from the state of Texas and Houston and it suburbs which they cover.  The committee asked about recruitment outside Texas and Mr. Fuller said that plans were being made to expand recruitment to areas in the Midwest. He also said recruitment at Community Colleges around the area was also a big part of his job.  Mr. Fuller was also asked about Alumni helping in recruitment and said at this time Alumni are not used as well as they could be and that this was being studied.

Mr. Fuller explained that outstanding SAT & ACT scores were not always good indicators of success at UH.  He said that students in the top 20% of their class, with so-so SAT’s or ACT’s often proved to be the students who succeed at UH.  Each year UH admits about 7000 first time students and about 3400 students enroll.

The committee asked what faculty could do to help recruit students.  Mr. Fuller was very happy that faculty would like to become involved and suggested that faculty who would go into local classrooms to act as “experts” would be very effective.  Also, any faculty member who might let interested students visit their classrooms would be welcomed by those who recruit students.

AD HOC COMMITTEE ON PLANNING, Chair:  Steven Craig

Members: Peter Copeland, Alex Ignatiev, Ali Kamrani, Sujit Sansgiry, and George Trail

The Planning Committee had its inaugural meeting, where it decided to pursue understanding graduate education in light of the Provost’s call to increase graduate enrollment.  Graduate enrollment also deserves attention because there has been approximately a 25% growth in undergraduate enrollment over the last decade but this change has been accompanied by no change in graduate enrollment.  After e-mail exchanges, the committee met with Ed Hugetz, UHS Associate Vice Chancellor/UH Associate Vice President for Planning & University Outreach, Marco Mariotto, Dean of Graduate & Professional Studies, Craig Ness, Executive Director of Academic Budgets & Administration, and Libby Barlow, Executive Director of Institutional Research and Interim Registrar, to discuss the data availability and the aim of the information.  Specifically, we discussed the data requirements to understand the financial implications of expanding graduate enrollment in various disciplines.

Separately, at the behest of President Joe Kotarba, the committee discussed how to define a research university.  It was decided the best way to implement this question is to think about how to measure progress towards the university’s goals.  This discussion will be ongoing.