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Meeting Minutes, February 18, 2020

The Arts and Sciences Council (ASC), February 18, 2020, 3:30-5:00, Large Ice Rink Overlook at Recreation Center

Representatives present: Stephen Mojzsis, GEOL; Leslie Irvine, SOCY; Mike Zerella, RAPs; Juan Herrero-Senes, SPAN; Sebastian Casalaina, MATH; Daniel Appelo, APPM; Annje Wiese, HUMN; Alison Hatch, HNRS; David Stock, EBIO; Tania Barham, ECON; Rob Kuchta, BCHEM; Lonni Pearce, PWR; Erica Ellingson, APS; Andy Cowell, LING; Matt McQueen, IPHY; Evelyn Shih, ALC; Ding Xue, MCDB; Gerardo Gutierrez, ANTH; Deborah Whitehead, RLST; John Gibert, CLAS; Julie Lundquist, ATOC; Barbara Buttenfield, GEOG; Roger Pielke, ENVS;

Representatives not present: Francoise Duresse-Stimilli, Tanja Cuk, CHEM; Hanna Rose Shell, CINE; Angelica Lawson, ETHN; Tim Weston, HIST; Patricia Rankin, PHYS; Lewis Harvey, PSYC; Tina Meyers-Denman, SLHS; Tim Kuhn, CMCI; Samantha Martin, ��������ƵSG; Rebecca Wartell, JWST

Ex-officios present: Roshanne Ebrahimian, SAC; Leaf van Boven, PSYCH

Also in attendance:  Jim White, A&S Michele Moses, Office of Faculty Affairs; Ann Schmiesing, Academic Affairs; Amy Lavens, A&S

The meeting was called to order at 3:35 pm.

Chair’s Remarks

Stephen Mojzsis welcomes everyone to the meeting and encourages the use of ��������Ƶ’s recreation center (where this meeting is being held), which is a great campus resource. He reminds all that the election for a new chair of ASC will be taking place at April’s “all hands” meeting in the Old Main Chapel. Candidates will be announced in March prior to the meeting. All nominations are due by March 10^th directly to Mojzsis. Each candidate should provide a mission statement, which gives the candidate an opportunity to consider how they would help move along the ASC’s goals. If anyone would like to learn more about the position, reach out to Mojzsis.

Mojzsis reminds everyone that we still don’t know what is going on with the college restructuring. He believes we should be concerned about the lack of an announcement and as well, about the amount of interim administrator appointments we currently have. ASC plans to approach the Boulder Faculty Assembly about the interim issue.

ASC’s Faculty Affairs Committee will have their first meeting soon. The founding members will meet with Mojzsis to put together the charge and composition of the committee.

Dean’s Remarks

Regarding the lack of an announcement about restructuring, Interim Dean Jim White says he does not have much of an opinion, and explains that restructuring the college is a big deal, so taking their time isn’t a bad thing. White believes the provost will make an announcement in the next week or two.

Regarding the provost’s denial of the 3/3 instructor course load, White would not refer to this as a “rejection” of the course load. It was instead a request to tap the brakes as the provost would prefer that we go through the restructuring process before implementing this.

Regarding the money on course fees, White says this was a good exercise, but the amount of money available was less than they would have liked to see. White does not have the exact amount. White recommends taking advantage of this process again next year. The campus is serious about moving salaries over to continuing budget lines, along with providing benefits for that. This could mean a much more considerable influx of cash.

Someone asks if we should assume that the 3/3 course load will not happen for the Fall 2020 semester. White confirms that this will not happen as the window for Fall 2020 has closed.

Someone asks why the restructuring needs to happen before implementing the 3/3 course load. White explains that he argued this should be implemented now, especially since the Colorado Equal Pay Act will be in effect soon. However, he is not sure why the provost wants to wait for the restructure to take place first.

Regarding the consulting group working on ��������Ƶ’s online education, White clarifies that the group is providing advice, but not taking over the conversation. White strongly encourages all those with concerns to approach Dean McDonald from the library about this, as he knows more.

Someone asks if it would be possible to invite Dean McDonald to an ASC meeting. Mojzsis agrees that he would like to know more about this consulting group and that inviting Dean McDonald to an ASC meeting is a possibility.

Someone asks why the equal pay act would require us to move to a 3/3 course load. White clarifies that it isn’t a requirement. The EPA is important because we have instructors that have the same job, but teach different loads and have different salaries.

Someone asks why other colleges at ��������Ƶ have implemented a 3/3 course load. White explains that there are many interesting approaches to what constitutes a full teaching load and that this is a very difficult question to answer. White hopes that if they make the case to the provost that this is a good idea, they can move forward to regularize the work load.

Mojzsis reminds all that one of the ASC’s recommendations was to go back to a 3/3 course load. In his opinion, “pumping the brakes” simply means it was rejected. From his perspective, waiting for restructuring is a false argument as we do not know when restructuring is taking place. It is important that we continue to ask these important questions.

Reports on Budget & Faculty Governance

Michele Moses, report on Faculty Governance

Mojzsis welcomes Michele Moses, and recommends we view this as an open Q&A session. Material from the report that Moses is talking about will be projected.

Moses takes a few minutes to discuss the process. In the wake of last year’s committee on restructuring, the provost convened three committees (budget, structure, faculty governance). Michele’s group was instructed to assume that there would be one overarching executive dean with three divisional deans under that. The committee had nine members, which included eight faculty members from A&S (some had ASC and BFA experience). The committee spend the summer working on how to think about this task in terms of values and principles. The committee strongly recommended that before any changes are considered, the full A&S faculty needs the opportunity to weigh in, keeping in the spirit of collaboration. The committee delivered their report to the provost on December 13^th, 2019.

The provost’s charge included: developing a set of principles; looking at other models of shared governance; making recommendations for what faculty shared governance would look like under this new structure; determining how the newly proposed governance structures would interface with campus-wide faculty shared governance (i.e. BFA). Moses then opens the floor up for questions.

Someone asks: the first charge (principles) implies that the university feels there was a problem with shared governance. What was the problem?

Moses explains that there was a sense of dissatisfaction with the level of engagement. If a college is operating as a whole with three divisions, they thought it would be a good idea to re-think how shared governance would work. In the end, they wanted a body like the ASC that would work in strong collaboration with smaller groups (chairs, directors, etc) underneath the full college. Within this committee, many conversations were had about clearer communication between faculty and college administration.

Someone expresses concerns about this recommendation decreasing the power of faculty governance.

Moses explains that the committee had long discussions about how the chairs & directors councils would work in collaboration with the new “Arts & Sciences Faculty Senate.” There would be an executive committee for the ASFS with 7 representatives from the Arts & Sciences Council (figure 2 in the report).

Mojzsis clarifies that none of this can happen without the vote of the faculty. He adds that something is going to happen eventually and we have to be prepared to respond to it.

Someone voices concern over the decline of the faculty’s ability to make meaningful decisions. Faculty governance is fairly disempowered right now. How do we re-empower faculty governance? Or is it okay the way it is?

Moses explains that one of the reasons the committee put forward this model is to try and reinvigorate faculty governance so that it’s clearer across campus what the faculty’s role should be in important decisions. The recommendations are meant to highlight the places in which faculty should have principle authority (like curriculum).

Ann Schmiesing, report on Budget

Ann Schmiesing says she is joined by Amy Lavens. Schmiesing clarifies that if you have the report, it is a draft report- not the final report. The provost now has the final report in his hands. When the provost officially accepts the report, this does not mean he is agreeing or disagreeing with the report. The final reports will be posted on the Academic Affairs website.

This working group believes that regardless of what structure is adopted, there are meaningful changes that could be implemented with regards to budget.

The group’s charge from the provost included: to work closely with the college structure group and understand the changes recommended; to determine budget alignments to support this change; to identify opportunities to optimize other resources; to propose a transition plan; and to identify the challenges and opportunities of such a transition.

The group determined that the following principles would be important in moving to a new structure:

• Agency and accountability
• Transparency and trust
• Alignment of budget and related resources with the mission
• Alignment of budget with need, performance, and outcomes
• Recyclability as a means to balance budgetary porosity with budgetary autonomy
• Consistency: if there is going to be greater autonomy among the divisions, there needs to be a need for consistency because what one school does will impact another

Someone asks what will be the role of the faculty in this.

Schmiesing says that if an Arts & Sciences Faculty Senate is implemented (as recommended in the shared governance report), its input would be as an advisory body.

Someone shares that they see authority as being taken away from faculty and the faculty is deeply concerned about this.

Schmiesing clarifies that this committee’s charge was not about shared governance.  They focused on budget and had 3 faculty members on the committee in order to have their input.

In the final report, there is clarification over which budget lines would be held at the college level and which ones would be held at the school level. The budget for faculty lines are at the school level while the budget for allocation is at the college level.

Someone asks who the Executive Team Schmiesing mentioned earlier would consist of.

Schmiesing says that this was defined in the structural report discussed earlier by Moses. It consists of the executive dean, divisional deans, and the associate dean of finance.

Schmiesing says that the committee determined that in order to identify opportunities for alignment of resources, there needs to be a deeper review of staffing levels. Any savings that result from this charge should be held at the local level.

In regards to a transition plan, the committee recommends that these changes should be implemented before there is a large structural change to the college.

In regards to opportunities and challenges, the committee showed concern about whether the reorganization might actually improve things. However, they believe opportunities exist regardless of whether or not a restructuring ever takes place.

Someone asks about the risks of restructuring.

Schmiesing explains that the committee had concerns with the lack of original resources to support the college. The proposed new structure might instead worsen some of the issues it intends to solve. Any new structure would be difficult and costly to implement; and difficult to un-do. The funds needed for new executive hires might be better spent on additional staff, as A&S staffing appears to be below staffing levels in other ��������Ƶ schools and colleges. There are also concerns over the executive dean’s level of authority being unclear.

Someone asks: Who should have more information (in relation to transparency)?

Schmiesing explains that chairs, school deans, and executive deans should arrive at a shared understanding of transparency. This working group did not elaborate on what transparency means. Instead, they recommended that there should be conversations around this. These conversations will take a while and the group had limited time to work on their report.

Mojzsis is curious as to what a flow chart of resources would look like with these proposed changes. It remains unclear how the new structure would be accommodated by a new budget structure.

Amy Lavens chimes in here to explain that the flow of funds to divisions are set in stone and that the new continuing money is a very small portion of our overall budget.

Mojzsis clarifies that he is asking about how the money would be broken up among the three divisions. Lavens explains that this was something that was grappled with in the committee and they don’t want to create budget models that aren’t nimble.

Mojzsis says that there is an overall concern that divisions are seeing a loss of their budget lines. Mojzsis is concerned that structurally we may see steep declines in one or two of the colleges at the expense of the third.

Schmiesing clarifies that it would take around six months for a full analysis on budget to be done and that this working group did not have that amount of time.

Someone asks why we are breaking the college up into three buckets (Arts/Humanities, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences), when other universities take a more interdisciplinary approach.

Schmiesing says that the committee had looked at models that did not have those same three divisions. The understanding was that this was considered, but it didn’t emerge as a recommendation.

Someone asks about the hiring of the proposed divisional deans. If we go in this direction, how cost effective will this be? Are there any numbers attached, and what are they expecting to happen with salaries?

Schmiesing explains that in order to give answers on this, they would have to go through a full six months’ worth of analysis. While the committee was concerned with how much money this would cost, they felt there were some opportunities that should not be overlooked.

Someone expresses concerns over the fact that it seems as though the provost is going to make a decision without crunching the numbers.

Schmiesing explains that this is one of the reasons the committee recommends incremental change before there is a large decision made around structure.

The meeting is adjourned at 5:04 pm.

Meeting minutes submitted by Marysia Lopez and approved 2-28-20.