BUDGET & FACILITIES COMMITTEE, Chair:  Richard Willson

The Budget & Facilities Committee met on September 6 to review its draft report on Salary Data.  The revised draft has been sent to the Executive Committee for discussion and is tenatively scheduled for presentation to the Faculty Senate at the October 17, 2007 meeting.

COMMITTEE ON COMMITTEES, Chair:  Katy Greenwood

On September 11, the Committee met with Dennis Fouty, UHS Associate Vice Chancellor and UH Associate Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer, and Barbara Chapman, Chair of the Information Technology and Computing Committee, to talk over issues and concerns with the ITCC proposal.  The discussions are on-going.

EDUCATIONAL POLICIES & STUDENT AFFAIRS COMMITTEE, Chair:  David Mazella

Meeting:  Thursday, August 30, 2007, 2:00-3:00 p.m. – 220 U, MD Anderson
Present:  Bennett, Gordon, Mazella, Mo, Pirrong, Trail
Absent:  Brady, Duncan (on leave), Haun, Wells

The Chair, Dr. Mazella, first discussed some of the summer’s developments regarding last semester’s business, including continued concerns over enrollments and the new statewide 6W drop policy.  He indicated that the committee would continue to track both issues for the remainder of the year to see how the new UH and state policies were affecting students.

Dr. Mazella also indicated that, unless committee members had other topics to add, the two major issues for EPSAC this year would be enrollments, which includes the initiatives coming from the Enrollment Management Task Force, and the ongoing business of QEPs.  Two sub-committees would be formed around these issues.  EPSAC members should indicate on which sub-committee they wished to serve. 

There was some discussion about enrollments, first about whether the university should target its efforts toward graduate enrollments rather than undergraduate, since the state formulae so clearly favored improvements in graduate numbers.  There was also a discussion of enrollments, insofar as these numbers reflected the overall quality of the information gathered and used by the university.  Some members wondered, how good was this information, and how could the Faculty Senate improve the manner in which it was used during deliberations over policy?

FACULTY AFFAIRS COMMITTEE, Chair:  Mark Clarke

DATE:              7th September 2007
TIME:               12:00 PM
LOCATION:       Faculty Senate Office

COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT: Drs. Clarke, Eichberg, Houston, Kugler, Manny, Middents, Sansgiry & Subhlok.
COMMITTEE MEMBERS ABSENT:  Drs. Kadish & Linzer.
AD HOC COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT: None 

AGENDA ITEM #1:  Minutes from 4-25-07 meeting

ACTION: A motion to accept the minutes from the 4-25-07 FAC meeting as written was made by Dr. Manny and seconded by Dr. Sansgiry.  The motion was unanimously accepted by the committee and the minutes were entered into the record.

Follow-Up on Action Items from 4-25-07 Meeting:  The committee suggests that the current presentation on faculty retirement plan choices offered to new faculty at the beginning of the Fall 2007 semester should be offered to all existing faculty, not just newly hired individuals.

AGENDA ITEM #2:  Proposed C-USA Faculty Travel Program.

ACTION:  The Chair of the committee provided a copy of a proposal from Dr. Kotarba that was sent to C-USA detailing a draft proposal for setting up a travel program to allow UH faculty members to visit sister C-USA schools for academic/research purposes in parallel with UH athletic teams. The committee discussion centered on the overall purpose of the program, how it would be administered, when such opportunities would be available (i.e. game schedules, travel with which sports teams), who would be responsible for funding of the program (i.e. what additional funding would be required from other than athletic sources) and the role of the individual faculty member in the process (i.e. who would be responsible for scheduling of travel, etc.). After discussion, the committee decided that Dr. Kotarba should be invited to the next meeting of the FAC to discuss these issues with committee prior to any formal recommendations from the committee being made.

ACTION ITEM:  The Chair of the committee will extend an invitation for Dr. Kotarba to address the FAC at our next meeting.

AGENDA ITEM #3:       Proposed Agenda Items for Fall 2007 FS Retreat

ACTION: The Chair of the committee informed the members, at the request of the FS President, that the FAC should suggest some agenda items for consideration at the upcoming FS retreat. The FS retreat topic is focused on the legislative agenda for UH in the state legislative session and will include discussions with local political representatives on how to forward the University of Houston’s goal of attaining Tier 1 status within the state.

Several specific items that were discussed by the committee included:

1)  Development of an overall presentation by the Faculty Senate to the representatives on those areas deemed most important by the faculty in achieving those goals.

to include a unified statement on the position of the faculty and UH administration with regard to the development of a medical school and/or a Health Science Center, GATF as an issue of increasing graduate enrollment, strategic planning of how to expand higher education within the State of Texas with an emphasis on the role that can and should be played by the University of Houston, how do these goals fit within the ”Closing the Gap” initiative of previous state legislative sessions.

2)   Development of an informational packet for faculty senators containing the biographies and positions taken on educational matters of the specific state legislators who will be attending or will be represented at the retreat.

AGENDA ITEM #5:      New Business

ACTION:  The committee decided to follow-up on an issue raised during the Spring 2007 semester centering on faculty benefits package.  Dr. Sansgiry agreed to chair a sub-committee of the FAC to investigate issues surrounding faculty benefits.

ACTION ITEM:  Dr. Sansgiry will present an outline of the issues that will be dealt with by his sub-committee at the next FAC meeting.

SCHOLARSHIP & COMMUNITY COMMITTEE, Chair:  Suzanne Ferimer

The Scholarship and Community Committee met on September 5.  The members present discussed the upcoming Scholarship and Community Conference taking place on September 26 from 8:30am until 6:00 pm at the UH Hilton.

Also discussed were the plans to work with the Houston Alumni Organizations and the UH Admissions Office to bring Alumni back on campus to talk to classes and to bring outstanding high school students into classrooms and labs.  E-mails, which included proposed notification to faculty about these programs, have been sent to both Admissions and HAO but no responses have been received.

AD HOC COMMITTEE ON PLANNING, Chair:  Steven Craig 

The committee met twice in the last month.  In both instances, how to respond to the memo from the Research Council about becoming a Tier One university was discussed.  The committee decided three items:  UH is trying to become a Top Tier university, that the definition of Top Tier is College specific, and the committee would solicit definitions from each Dean. 

The committee is also pursuing acquiring a data set that shows how many graduate students are funded by college, and which shows the amount of financial support and its source.  The current target date for receipt of this data is the end of September.