IFO MnSCU Statewide Meet and Confer
Unofficial Notes
December 9, 2005
IFO Present: George Seldat, Dave Larkin, Bruce Svingen (substituting for Mary Kesler), Becky Omdahl, Cindy Phillips, Patrice Arseneault, Debra Japp, Nancy Black, Judy Kilborn, Steve Bohnenblust, Russ Stanton
MnSCU Present: Manuel Lopez, Ken Niemi, Whitney Harris, Leslie Mercer, Chancellor McCormick, Judy Borgen, Chris Dale, Linda Baer, Jim Jorstad, Barb Miller, Nancy Bennett, Deena Allen, Gary Langer, Linda Skallman
Also Present: Roy Saigo (State University President SCSU)
Called to order 8:35 a.m.
Nancy wished the Chancellor and his staff a happy holiday
IFO MnSCU Contract Ratification:
Chancellor: I am pleased that we were able to get it done earlier than in the past. Maybe next year we can get it done a month or so earlier? I’d like to get everyone’s money in their paychecks earlier, but there are bureaucracies. Thank you, it’s been more positive and hopefully more positive in the future. Thank you for your leadership, Nancy.
IFO: Hopefully faculty will see their increase in the January 20 paycheck.
MnSCU: It looks like JSER is going to meet in January. I can get you the time frame.
Chancellor: This is one of the few systems that have to go through the legislature. We have board members appointed by this governor. I still hold out hope that we can discuss the possibility to give the board legislation to ratify our contract since these board members are appointed by the governor. We ought not to have to be going over there when there’s a governing board appointed politically. I want to see if we can’t clear some of that away. If they understood the governing board was appointed, we’re not in the position of the U of M; maybe over the next few months we can look at these impediments and the boards understanding to change some legislation.
IFO: Thank you, and congratulations on your new contract.
Chancellor: I have reason to believe I have your support and the board leadership.
Teacher Center Initiative:
(A handout was given.)
IFO: We’d like to have a status report maybe some history, where is the funding coming from to support this?
MnSCU: We began the idea some time ago and one of the first ideas is coming out. The idea of science and the curriculum - they can work together. Faculty was interested in working together. That’s where it came from. Leslie can you say something?
MnSCU: I gave a hand out and a fairly detailed list of courses. I think Vice Chancellor Baer is correct that faculty starting working on this and it grew out of the superintendents’ meeting in rural MN. There is science licensure for teachers who were licensed in chemistry, but weren’t licensed to teach biology. John Truedson and his fellow science teachers have been talking about this for quite a while. They are doing this right now in an informal way. As you can see, we were thinking this would meet the needs of people already employed. A good portion will be on line, but the lab work would be done in the summer, geographically in the state. A lot of this is their discussion and not a lot of details have been worked out. Now we have this on paper and know what needs to happen. (Introduced Nancy Bennett) Nancy is working on the teacher center; half of her time she is interim director and has been working closely with this group.
Chancellor: Leo Christensen has been reassigned to Normandale for one year. Nancy is filling in for him. I believe I saw data that suggested that we have math teachers across MN and some are not certified. Do you see a future move toward us trying to fill in some of those gaps?
MnSCU: That’s a possibility and depends on the faculty willingness. MnSCU didn’t say we wanted this. The only thing some faculty asked us to do is if they get together will we buy their lunches. That’s all we’ve compensated. John Truedson sits on the COPE committee and was aware of what was going on with the Teacher Center and one thing we wanted to do was bring groups together to collaborate. If we wrote up a proposal would you consider funding as part of the teacher center? We said certainly!
MnSCU: Each of your campuses has “no child left behind” that you’re working on assisting those small rural schools. The campuses and the teacher center idea are responding to people who are teaching out of outside licensure in science.
Chancellor: We learned through the governor’s designees that he didn’t view the teacher center with what we had in mind as a Center of Excellence. I know there was some disappointment, but at that point there was some enthusiasm on how to do this on our own; we took about $200,000 to try to move that center without the governor’s funding.
MnSCU: We met with the Presidents, CAOs, and the Deans of Education on Wednesday and talked about the next steps on the teacher center. There is a work plan. We determined we had “the who” and “the what” figured out; we could focus on the metro areas and coordinate how our campuses could work together – students are going to the privates because they don’ have a public choice. We determined we need to know how to do this and I’ve been working with people on best practices and the higher learning commission.
Saigo: I’ve seen the growth of the private college. We can provide an opportunity for the private student as Linda found. We need to work on governance and provide those services. We have not done that in the past.
Chancellor: We want to look at the facts and costs. Because of the way we were created and our locations, I’ve heard some of the presidents say we are just giving up this masters degree market in our unit. It is business that belongs to us that we are losing. We probably do it better than some of the others; I hope we don’t lose that market. I think this is a growing market that we need to serve. I hope we don’t give up that business to the privates.
MnSCU: We believe there is effort for the whole state; we will keep you informed. At the Board of Trustees meeting they passed a request for a global initiative focus on extending our services to China but not the universities. If we don’t do the job you’re going to have, for example, Troy University doing theses things. I think we are behind the edge; we need to move forward aggressively.
IFO: We have a problem with the interaction of this group working with COPE. They’ve been acting as a committee which affects all the seven state universities and they have never been appointed by the IFO. That bothers us a little bit. Will the courses go through the typical academic approval process?
MnSCU: We don’t expect one-time offerings to be developed; they will be going through the curriculum process.
MnSCU: That’s an example of the kind of thing we need to talk with you about now that we have a better sense. The curriculum process is similar on each of your universities but there are some differences. Our intent is not to get in the way of how you do things locally. The groups doing this are trying to bring it together for the high school teachers who need licensure so it will meet their needs.
IFO: There has to be a process for our faculty to all get this information, we are concerned about this $99,000 budget.
MnSCU: That’s the budget the faculty submitted to us.
IFO: Why hasn’t this come to meet and confer or local meet and confer? We’ve heard discussions outside of the process.
MnSCU: I think we are trying to learn as we go, we need to work with the IFO and we were trying to have something more concrete first before we did that. I’ve learned a little bit more about that and we have no intention of going around the IFO or your contract. We need to talk more and we are glad to do that.
IFO: Especially important with a project of this size is intellectual properties. We need to talk about how this affects faculty ability to use what they’ve published.
MnSCU: We’ll take your questions and concerns to the next meeting in January.
IFO: Is there a timeline for implementation?
MnSCU: Fall 2006.
MnSCU: Who would you like the point person to be?
IFO: I’ll have to get back to you.
IFO: I heard they were considering temporary courses; even those take a while to get through the curriculum approval process. I don’t know how fast other campuses are, it takes a while for us.
MnSCU: I’ll take that under advisement; this is an opportunity for us as a system to meet a critical need in greater Minnesota. We are an excellent provider for this education. We’ll do what we can do. Maybe their timeline is too ambitious, but they are trying to meet a need.
IFO: I think that all of us faculty want to be able to respond to these needs. It is a cautionary tale for all of us when a group of science teachers who are meeting morphs into a different kind of discussion and proposals that maybe we need to jointly revisit. We are wondering about COPE and how we have participated in the past; it seems to be morphing into other activities. That is the major point I’m seeing, things that were specialty discussions are taking on larger roles that implicate contract issues. We need to be more careful about how we establish and monitor these committees.
IFO: We recognize these important needs. As I look at the implementation, it is unclear if there is a summer 2006 schedule. Isn’t that already scheduled on our campuses?
IFO: One of the issues I think coming out of this is concern with intellectual property rights. What I’m seeing is we are moving rather quickly and this has broad implications. We will see these effect areas other than intellectual property (IP) rights. Even on our campus there is a certain amount of confusion as to how you look at IP rights, and I’m sure Chris Dale will give us some insight of IP rights now that we are dealing with a related grievance on our campus.
MnSCU: We’d like to ask if we can take the job description agenda item next.
IFO: We want to know the actual mission and procedures that are going on between COPE and the Teacher Center and how they integrate. It seems there are certain individuals on both committees and we’re not sure how them come together.
Chancellor: We’ve got an initiative working on something that’s needed; you’d hate to turn that off but it seems communication has broken down. I’d like to ask Nancy Black to identify what issues like property rights we should be looking at. When we establish these committees how do we get it right to begin with and how we have a better consultation process for our members? Could we give the leadership inside the circle so we are not threatened and affect the momentum and the future?
MnSCU: Nancy and I will talk more and take these issues into consideration.
Job Description Anti-racism:
IFO: We haven’t seen the description and at the last meet and confer Whitney said he would get back to us with the description and now we’re glad to see it. We were concerned about the anti-racism taskforce.
MnSCU: We worked hard to get this job description right as perceived from the needs of the office. Carissa was our temporary project analyst who left. We were going to create this position anyways. We developed another program manager to work with HR. It was posted on Monday and we are now in the process of applications being sent and the review process with a search committee.
MnSCU: This position was held by Stacy Wells.
MnSCU: This is a MAPE position – program director is the title, two handouts were given.
IFO: I don’t see antiracism here, I see diversity though.
MnSCU: The current job description would permit the assignment of those initiatives.
MnSCU: In our mind antiracism and feminism, for example, fall under this job description.
IFO: What is the salary range?
MnSCU: $35-54.
IFO: Who is on the search committee?
MnSCU: We don’t know; Renee will chair.
IFO: The responsibilities are considerable.
MnSCU: We want to make sure we have room in our job description to achieve a work plan of the Chancellor’s office; we needed to keep it broad and didn’t put in specific activities.
IFO: On the position purposes it states “investigates claims.” I’m assuming those things are done on the campus, how does this position play into that?
MnSCU: I conduct investigations as well, and I needed a back up.
IFO: How do you conduct an investigation?
MnSCU: If someone calls me or a complaint comes in against a president, I investigate.
IFO: You might want to think about relationships with the unions and faculty and I think there is a good deal of concern or skepticism about where the Office of the Chancellor is going. Certainly having our reps on the committee will build some support and there may be some strategic important reasons for faculty to be involved.
MnSCU: Generally we don’t put MAPE people on search committees for IFO positions.
IFO: We’re concerned about the Office of the Chancellor and how it functions.
IFO: There have been concerns among one of our IFO standing committees with the antiracism initiatives of the Office of the Chancellor. We strongly support this initiative.
MnSCU: I attended 2-3 of those meetings and am making sure that it is a high priority of our office. As you know, currently Raul Ramos is our Director of these initiatives.
IFO: This week Whitney Harris and I are meeting on the American Indian initiatives. We are eagerly participating in this initiative.
MnSCU: We’ve gotten a lot of input and guidance from faculty in our general discussions. I’ve been doing campus visits and have heard those issues raised.
Saigo: Nancy, how do you see the IFO moving more aggressively in educating all faculty on some of the racism issues that come up?
IFO: We have had a good deal of training on campuses, we also had the entire IFO Board participate in a full day of antiracism training as well as the local initiatives taking place on our campuses. Pat, do you want to address the initiatives?
IFO: The antiracism initiatives on the campuses really are serving the faculty well in terms of education. St. Cloud has come a long way. Moorhead is in a third stage, the furthest along of all of our campuses. That seems to be the best way to educate faculty. We are working with the other campuses on the HEART initiative and working those initiatives in the curriculum.
IFO: I’m trying to get a system idea. I’m asking for maybe a strategic plan that would give an opportunity for all faculty and all administrators to be trained on a cyclical basis. These are long term resistant issues that continue to have to be brought up from the grass roots, it cannot be pushed from the Chancellor and the presidents, it has to penetrate our society in many different avenues. I’d like to hear not what SCSU and Moorhead is doing; this is such an important societal issue that we cannot allow one job description to help us.
IFO: When we had the IFO Board training, one of the things it afforded us was to see where the schools are, that coordination is still happening and with our Multicultural Issues Committee. One reason I raised the issue with the word antiracism is because it is different from multicultural and diversity. I do think it has to be a grass roots thing and that’s why I’d like the job description to focus on antiracism more.
Chancellor: We have a problem of people dropping out in the state and when you look at it, the Scandinavians and Europeans are doing better than the Blacks and Latinos. If Minnesota is going to be the great state it is, you can’t not bring everyone along. We have all of these immigrants and if we lose them we will become mediocre. We have a long way to go. The University of Minnesota is a great research institution, but if we don’t do this, who will? I think it is our number one challenge and I’d like to find a way for us to talk about this more.
IFO: We agree with this. We need to lead by example from the top down. With all due respect, we think the Board of Trustees themselves would benefit from this type of antiracism training because we are all are in the process of learning. We see race and ethnicity and do not see gender; we need that subcategory, for example the difference among African, Latino and Somalian women and men.
MnSCU: I have opposed releasing any official data until we have solid data. I am working with Craig Schoenecker.
IFO: Antiracism training is working for us. We keep looking for what is making a difference. Now we have something that we can say is working for us. Once you go through the training, it immediately translates to all the groups. That is why we are so concerned that we see this specifically on the job description for your office.
Saigo: I am proud of our faculty because they did this training.
MnSCU: We certainly support that. You don’t have to worry about this not being a part of the new job description. I understand that focus you are pointing out.
HRA FSA Plan:
IFO: We’ve had some issues with the implementation.
MnSCU: I don’t know if this will answer your questions. We heard there were some questions about the transition; it is a new plan so we don’t know all the answers, and we created a flow chart for people to better understand. There is just one account.
Chancellor: If you don’t use it do you lose it?
MnSCU: The short answer is no; but there is a way you can lose the money depending on a relationship with the employer, if they are employed for a short period of time and have no entitlement to severance. This is a fairly slim group of people, fixed term adjunct, if they do not have a Health Care Savings Plan (HCSP). We had a flowchart on our webpage and Russ Stanton sent out some info that refers to that webpage, and we have replaced the flowchart with this one that is hopefully easier to understand. You can’t make the number of decisions simple.
IFO: You said something that caught my attention. I think of this like computer memory, you have short term and …now my understanding in looking at this in your immediate pot of money you have $500. On 1/1/06 the money would spill over into savings and you would no longer have it immediately available for you to spend….
MnSCU: No, I was answering a different question, that’s the danger here.
IFO: Most of us are concerned about the flex account. You have until the end of February to exhaust the FSA and the HRA sweep date is 1/1?
MnSCU: Yes, when we don’t allow the HRA accounts to grow large, that is the material component of this plan. The Cobra issues are unexpected and they contain the potential for vast potential exposure to the employer and we were unwilling to take that risk. Our willingness was dependent on the Cobra issues. We thought there would be some federal legislation to address the Cobra issue. We don’t have to have legislative change to change the sweep date. You are going to create a problem to remedy the problem.
IFO: On our pay stubs it says we have $500 contributed to this account in November. What does that do in terms of our sweep?
MnSCU: We have to do that so MnSCU has the money so that we can fund the HRA plan including the individual accounts. We have to collect that money through the state through the payroll system. On 12/31/05 our claims processing administrator will run a report for us to tell us what people have in their accounts. Everyone who is eligible will get the contribution and it will tell us where it goes. We will have a FAQ with DOER to make sure we are on the same page. We changed the eligibility dates so that we could collect the $500 (paid in advance). We invested in short term and long term CDs.
IFO: On this flowchart it says “ee”. What does that mean?
MnSCU: Employee. There were two reasons for changing the eligibility determination date; if it is in January it was to be when people returned to school at the end of January, then we need time to put this in the accounts; we then moved it up to November 1, 2005 so it could happened around open enrollment so faculty would understand there was this second plan. We have tried to communicate that you have to exhaust your FSA to tap into your HRA account. If you have $500 or more in your HRA and you are eligible in January it will go into a HCSP account. If you don’t have one, it will be created for you. That is the primary reason, to allow an accumulation of funds so it would be available to you when you retire. The Cobra problems are unbelievable in preventing us from allowing the HRA accounts to grow large. The additional $100 you are to receive with the new contract (2005-2007) will go where your $500 went. There is going to be a limit on the HRA accounts until the Cobra issue is remedied. Practically, it is a $1,099 limit.
IFO: Anything you can do to simplify this is appreciated. I know you’re trying to do the right thing, we appreciate what you do, but anything you can do to simplify this is appreciated.
MnSCU: We have another set of FAQs we want to put out. We need to work with DOER on this as they are the plan sponsor.
Chancellor: Does this apply to other unions?
MnSCU: At this point, only the IFO gets to share in the joy of the HRA plan. This was a good idea and we had to work hard to get this plan up and running. Next year your administrators will share in the joy. The administrators will join the HRA plan in calendar year 2007.
IFO: I do think it is too bad because when we started, the idea that instead of the FSA, you could roll it forward. That’s the way we started it, at the end of the year it rolls to the next year and you take it with you when you leave but it has been made ever more complex as it has been implemented, like Social Security Part D, I think it is needlessly complex. The Cobra issue seems exaggerated, nevertheless we need to make it simpler and need a more collaborative effort. We need an ongoing collaborative effort to see how serious the Cobra issues are. It appears we have many restrictions that aren’t required by the federal law, for example carrying over expenses. I was just at an NEA Retirement Conference and they said you could carry those expenses forward forever; we need to have regular meetings about this to work out.
MnSCU: The simple ideas are more complex, you’re right. I had the same experience from the FLMA Act, it was a very simple idea, and the federal statutes are very short. This is the fate of all simple ideas put into federal law, they become complex. You have to adapt a whole set of rules to now deal with all the situations you run into. The FLMA Act is very simple, but I assure you the application is very complex.
IFO: Is there anything that identifies all of these acronyms used on this flowchart?
MnSCU: We need to put a legend on here. If we spell out everything the boxes will be too big.
Applied Doctorate Degrees:
(A handout was given.)
MnSCU: The legislature approved applied doctorates, now we need a program approval process. We are working with the Higher Learning Commission and your campuses.
MnSCU: As part of the accreditation process, if anyone of our institutions offers a doctorate, it is a major change and need to go through the institution change process. It requires that the doctorate has to be in the mission statement. Our board policy needs to add this. Currently all our policies have to be reviewed every 3 years, the Chancellor feels it should be every 5 years.
MnSCU: The crux of the issue in policy 3.17 is adding sub part I referring to a doctoral degree. This language is language that has been worked on for several months by the Graduate Council represented by administration and faculty. There is procedural change adding sub part c adding doctoral programs limited to the following applied fields…that is statutory language. We will take this to the Board for the first reading in January and have a degree offering program in place by fall 2007.
IFO: I’ve sent some of this to the IFO Academic Affairs Committee (AAC) in September. You were right; this has been discussed several times by the Graduate Council. The AAC was invited to give comments. I know Becky sent out some stuff on Metro’s campus and we are getting comments from all over the map, which tells me we are getting it right. I do appreciate the Graduate Council; the committee is working well together to accomplish offering quality programs under Mitch Rubenstein’s leadership. That’s a good committee.
MnSCU: A lot of the reason we’ve been able to get to the applied doctorate level is because of this group.
Chancellor: I’ve making a plea to develop these programs - excellent not mediocre programs.
IFO: I’ve been impressed with people’s lack of ego in this group where people are outlining their concerns without competition with other institutions. I’ve been impressed with the focus on quality of programs.
IFO: I think we are in agreement on that, we are getting feedback from our AAC and faculty. Manuel, you’ll be getting a letter from me to attend our IFO Board meeting in January. Faculty have questions on funding; we don’t want current programs to be affected.
MnSCU: I can only respond to the programs emanating from the campuses.
IFO: Is the tuition rate different for the doctoral programs?
MnSCU: The Graduate Council has talked about differential tuition. I have to go back to the legislative language; the understanding was the ability to charge a differential tuition would make up for the funding necessary.
Chancellor: We had an allocation formula differential issue for that.
MnSCU: We have noted that and it needs to be adjusted when we move into the doctoral programs.
IFO: We’ll have some information from the Graduate Taskforce survey on issues that might be relevant to doctoral education, or do think your point about time is one that will show up in future negotiations as we move into doctoral education, how do we account for that time?
IFO: Faculty are concerned with the development of the programs. That is where we are looking for some relief.
Chancellor: It’s not in the allocation formula.
Saigo: All universities have reassigned time and as is said. On the one hand rigor and quality is the utmost, on the other hand we’re not going into this blindly, we have experienced faculty. In the next decade this opportunity will enhance the state universities.
IFO: We are fully in favor of this but we don’t want to burn out our faculty or suffer from poor quality.
MnSCU: It will be ready by fall 2007 - we’d like one program by then, or two. The issue we have to think about rolling them out realistically is that the institutions need to decide what makes sense for them. I’d like to learn from this experience if we have just one program in fall 2007.
MnSCU: We’d like your input before the January BOT.
IFO: I hope you always keep time and quality in mind when dealing with this. We heard something that there is concern about duplication, whoever is first gets the program but whoever is second, is out of luck. So what an institution may end up doing is having to be first and quality may suffer.
MnSCU: There are ways that it can be done; one exemplary group is the nursing faculty who are doing this collaboratively. One will take the lead as you need a home institution under Higher Learning Commission directives. If two institutions offer it, their specialties will be different, so I don’t think the first out of the shoot will be the only one. The term duplication has to be taken seriously but not narrowly.
IFO: I understand, the problem is nothing is written, we think about duplication – who will be first.
MnSCU: In the draft document I don’t have unnecessary duplication, but I’m trying to revise it so it can go to the Grad Council and Linda’s advisory committee so we can discuss this soon.
MnSCU: We have the same concerns.
MnSCU: Officially this afternoon we will send out these policies and procedures for official review and comment. Gary has been wonderful to put up a website so you don’t have the email attachment problem. You can access it from our main website and any policy or procedure under development. Hopefully it will be ready this afternoon.
MnSCU: We will be bringing you policies in January but given the nature of this agenda we felt we had to keep moving on.
Chancellor: I have a worry now that depending on how we do this I can see how we have generated unrealistic expectations, with the development of these programs. How do we not get false expectations on how fast this will grow?
MnSCU: We are having many discussions with the dean. We are working on it and need to keep having these conversations.
Supplemental Budget Request:
(A handout was given.)
IFO: I did have a hard time explaining to faculty the final outcome at the Board of Trustees meeting.
MnSCU: I will pass around a handout what we submitted to the Department of Finance, to show you what the Board has approved. Four requests totaling 31.5 million. There are three initiatives that have been around and discussed with various folks before and a new one added by the MnSCU Board at this meeting last Wednesday morning. The first one is the energy utility supplement; we assume this will be money to pay for the increased fuel costs. The second one is the global initiatives that came out of the China trip.
MnSCU: Two trustees went on the trip and encouraged a follow-up set of activities. They would like to support teaching Chinese as a second language and a lot of interest in some niche programs we could be leading in - automotive, manufacturing, and home care. I went to China 10 years ago. I saw a difference in the ratio for cars to bikes and the need for mechanics. There was interest in the baccalaureate and in the master’s program at SCSU applied economics. We wanted to put resources in a plan that promotes student faculty exchanges. We want to support that in a targeted way and not have this stop at China; we have also been discussing India and Turkey.
Chancellor: We do apologize for this process. Normally we work through the Leadership Council but it really developed that morning and it just came up and the pressure was there. There was some belief that the governor may have an appetite for this and the belief that it may be possible and may not interfere with any other items. This is not the way we usually do business.
MnSCU: The Governor began with $20 million to support teaching centers; as it turned out after the evaluation process, the evaluators wanted to see something more in relation to what was being proposed in bioscience. We brought the campuses together for ongoing conversations. The Board was in support of this.
Chancellor: The two of us have been aggressive in supporting this. I felt the biosciences had been identified, I saw at least two of our universities with initiatives in that area. I was hoping we wouldn’t be out on the biosciences, we thought we had some proposals that needed more work. I don’t know where this will go.
MnSCU: We will be initiating a bioscience industry partnership similar to our health industry partnership, we’ll bring information to you but that’s in the works.
MnSCU: The last item is to make solid our computer network and hardware and to provide better security.
MnSCU: The focus is critical issues in front of us, migration of the platform, the database we are working on needs to be discontinued in 5 years (Oracle) and the network is inadequate. Security is another issue we have. We need a significant investment.
MnSCU: We have had ongoing requests to support and build technology in the legislature.
Chancellor: There is enormous support.
MnSCU: I was surprised when Chair Hoffman said the legislature was supportive.
IFO: The IFO went on record for supporting the technology for heating and we support the student tuition. Having said that I just want to say that we are engaged in so many different initiatives between doctoral and centers, I was relieved the Board did not call the global initiative a Center of Excellence. The Board may not have that sense of past history - Akita, The World Trade Center and the infrastructure that used to exist in the OOC of international. It is a “hot” idea; we are concerned that we do this right. I was taken aback by the process.
Chancellor: Do you know where you’ll be as a group on the bioscience center?
IFO: We’ll have to take it back; the funding/shortfall is a discussion, we’ll have to consult the campuses, 4 out of 7 got it.
MnSCU: We are working on some sources.
Chancellor: It was a great day at Mankato. We had the roll out of the center, the business people came out and there are partnerships that have helped those centers. I felt enormous public support, some of those people need to step up to the plate and finance it.
(Handout given – Agency request)
10 minute break 10:35 a.m.
MnSCU: We want to make sure the strategic plan, academic start dates and CLEP are addressed. Are you interested in D2L right away?
IFO: We are interested in MN Online then we can move on to D2L.
MN Online:
IFO: We are concerned about the September 29 recommendation from the council in reference to the definition of unnecessary duplication, aligning curriculum strategies, and a definition of “e curriculum”.
MnSCU: In relation to other programs, when we develop them, MN online is talking about what that means.
MnSCU: This came from the academic services group, the council has discussed this and some other venues. I don’t think this is going anywhere. I think we’re at the point of options for students and we encourage programs to work together but it was just a good discussion.
IFO: So there is no action or recommendation and you’re not anticipating this, right?
MnSCU: No. We are not moving forward on this.
IFO: When we talk about transfer in programs many times what appears to be a duplication is not. When we talk about curriculum this is faculty driven, it didn’t seem that there was an agent there?
MnSCU: E curriculum is a term instead of online learning.
Chancellor: What should be the term?
MnSCU: They mean the same thing.
Saigo: I am glad to hear that there is no decision on unnecessary duplication
IFO: Now we are going to move to D2L.
Desire2Learn:
MnSCU: I wanted to start out by thanking you, Nancy, for speaking out on behalf of the IFO in support of the tech budget request. I had another chart to bring but decided not to do it to show you how D2L works. Since last time we met, the ad hoc committee that has Barb Keinath, Metro State University, co-chairing, continues to meet. Their first set of 8 recommendations is also completely in place. One is the significant upgrade to the IBM expandable technology. The database server is the key. For the last couple of months that stays below the level where it starts to be a problem or 70% utilization. We have done preliminary work with IBM. They have stepped up to the plate and we have some reasonable assurance that this will happen. We still need a fall back position and Microsoft has to be involved which further complicates this. We are staying under 70% usage with the database server. The new database will help with the new course work being put on the server. Version 8.1 will help with that. D2l does not perform as we want it right out of the box and we need to do some fine-tuning. We just filled two staff position that are necessary - database manager and a campus support person to help. The Chancellor was impressed with that campus support person from SCSU. The ad hoc committee is looking at long term issues and one issue is where does d2l fit for using in the long term. We will have to make a decision in the next year to decide if we want to renew. The water has been muddied with the purchase of Blackboard and WebCT with the merger going on there. The fact that we’re standards-based gives us the opportunity in fall 2007. This will be a key focus of this ad hoc group.
IFO: Is this a mandated imposition of D2L? Is there room for other systems?
MnSCU: The direction encouraged by the Board was to move to a single system. I don’t use the word mandatory but that is clearly the direction this is moving as encouraged by MN Online.
Chancellor: I’m thinking of Debra Japp’s effort last summer. So when you say September 07, the faculty, this summer, will be developing their courses for 2007.
MnSCU: I agree; the only good part is because the standard based tools are much better, but D2L issues are conversion based.
IFO: We had an extended learning sub-meet and confer, and they looked at the ad hoc D2L committee report and came up with a number of things our campus views as important. D2Ls negative performance on our faculty and students has created a crisis of confidence with regard to the workarounds being able to accommodate for a short period of time and significantly impact the quality of instruction to our students. Also faculty are moving away from the use of D2L to their own course website as a result of their dissatisfaction. Many publishers provide websites. We are clearly seeing in our group a situation where it has to be more short term, if it doesn’t occur we will have to leave in droves.
MnSCU: I understand what you’re saying. I’ll pass that along to the ad hoc committee. Part of the work of the hoc committee is meeting with the president of D2L, John Baker, and Wilson Bradshaw.
Chancellor: Wisconsin is bigger than we are. If they (D2L) don’t figure out our problem they’ll go under. This was a very hard decision up here and there were other Minnesota providers that wanted our business. I was told by the faculty and everyone involved they wanted D2L. We have to be careful, now if it doesn’t’ work, we can’t live with it.
IFO: Maybe we have to say we goofed and cut our losses?
IFO: We cannot say enough about the efforts of this ad hoc committee; however I’m also hearing they wanted to talk about the relationships of the other committees that exist. These groups are all working on technology but did they come to any decision about ‘who’s on first’?
MnSCU: It was made clear that there is a lot of overlap. The ongoing D2L Advisory Committee is the key group on technology implementation, but there is the connection with MN Online. Basically Linda and I need to integrate. The ad hoc committee is meant to go away in the spring once they complete their broad recommendations then we need to operationalize it. Barbara and Barry co-chairs and the members and my staff have done a great job.
IFO: This could potentially be a big problem, we don’t know if the bucket is big enough and if we do change from D2L I can’t imagine telling the faculty that they will have to redo all of their courses. When we heard the discussion at the Board meeting about reusable learning objects (we will return to that discussion in January) but I really shared my concern with Linda. A Board member made a derogatory comment about the amount of effort from faculty to create courses at the last Board meeting. It was easy to understand when we saw the application of explaining how it works about home health care aid but when you start getting in to the disciplines (i.e. Geology at Winona) - we need to follow up on that issue.
MnSCU: The minute that board member said that, I said, “Absolutely not, this is a library of resources!”
CLEP:
(Handouts were given.)
MnSCU: You have the strategic plan. We talked at the last meeting about this. If you turn the page, we have been asked how we would recommend the passing score. The commissioner isn’t interested in different scores for different exams. The American Council on Education that looked at this issue said their recommendation was that the score that should be considered should be a score of 50 with the exception of foreign language. The tests are done in a way that the score of 50 is the equivalent of C in a college course. A lot of faculty groups worked on this. With that, we asked if they had any data on how high schools did when they took those tests (see handout) that talks about a set of high school students who took this in states that are doing this in a way that encourages them to take the tests. We talked to MSCF. We would like to talk to you about our response to Commissioner Seagren that a cut score of no lower of 50 be acceptable. And that we continue to monitor this process as more Minnesota high school students continue to do this. If we see any evidence that students with a cut score of 50 are not successful, we will want to revisit this.
IFO: We are in agreement with that. Our reps attended the meeting. Again, we agree.
MnSCU: We will send a letter.
MnSCU: The community faculty (MSCF) wanted to make sure they are in coordination with you.
Chancellor: As you know the College Board is supporting the idea of a writing exam as part of admissions. We’ve scheduled in our February or March leadership council to talk about that. It’s not that we require the high writing skills, but we want to encourage students to have higher writing standards. Maybe this will only be for the universities but I’d like to get this on our agenda to think about.
MnSCU: As a note of information in the Wall Street Journal this week, there was a writing assessment article.
Chancellor: We want to migrate this to AA for their thoughts.
MnSCU: A related topic is math; the U of M is requiring 4 years of math for admittance; we are still discussing that.
MnSCU’s Strategic Plan:
MnSCU: We began revisiting of the strategic plan; it expired in 05 but believe the content/core was basically good and felt this is why we should revisit this. An ad hoc committee of Trustees, Presidents, and OOC staff worked for several months. Nancy attended several of those meetings. Last November we had a board retreat to introduce this material to the full Board and then we took it to them this week in ed policy and the full board meeting for review because the presentation for approval will be in January. Given that, we are now discussing more of the topics behind this with the groups. The three direction statements are the same. We provided the right side/indicators and measurements. We wanted to remind them that our frame work already included many measures so you’ll see the italics are already goals, the standard font is what came from the floor – we tried to keep them limited – they are a brain storm idea. It will be a strategic direction…the fourth one is new placed by the Board.
Chancellor: The last of the Board members who adopted our plan in 02 are now leaving on June 30, 2006. The new board members could own the plan. The Board said get it done and some of the Board members said it was very deliberate. The retreat was attended by everyone except one who was in Brazil. This is my attempt to cause them to adopt the plan so when I go with my budget recommendations they are already on board. Most of what we ask for will come out of this generally.
MnSCU: This is still a draft. The Board is going with alternative #1 for the mission statement. I propose that you take some time before the January meet and confer to review this, or if Nancy and I could talk, I would appreciate feedback.
Chancellor: In February or March we’ll probably want to come back to you with this for more specifics.
IFO: I appreciate the time you put into this – I know the tension for wanting accessibility and offering low-cost accessible education but understand quality costs money. My concern isn’t so much with the Office of the Chancellor but with the Board of Trustees’ lacking the appreciation of what quality costs. My concern is the dialogue of these points.
Chancellor: I don’t mean low cost, I mean affordable to student. Who pays? I mean keep it affordable for students, that doesn’t mean low cost, but keeping it affordable we mean getting more state funds, grants, low cost doesn’t mean low cost to the programs.
MnSCU: The word value doesn’t just mean efficiency, it means effective.
Chancellor: As we take on more students it is going to cost us a lot more.
Academic Semester Start Dates:
(A handout was given.)
MnSCU: This letter is regarding academic semester start dates; this began with the Business Practices Alignment Committee (BPAC). Is there a way we can begin to consider starting at the same time? In exploring that, we’ve had considerable dialogue, state university presidents and CC/TC presidents. We’ve found out that for this start up for spring 28 are starting at the same time which means we are doing it without being told, does it include our large campuses? It shows us that yes, for spring we’ve been able to coordinate. We’re working on fall and there are 20 starting, 9 of 10 metro alliance institutions are committed to starting at the same time. This is setting the stage to see if we can do this. If we need the capacity to do this, Ken Niemi will need to know.
IFO: I wanted to narrate some questions, as a reminder we have some serious skepticism of the ability to support this and the gain from a uniform start date. Right now we have the ability to be locally responsive, what will happen to programs that are tied to a calendar? Metro has a 14 week summer, and teachers who are our students who are tied to a K-12 schedule. Also we are concerned about the links between US and public schools. There’s a state law that mandates Labor Day start date, how will this affect the economy if all state students have to leave work before Labor Day? We choose our institutions because of our calendar; I would also add a local concern - what is the relationship between a uniform start date and student learning outcomes?
Chancellor: Also I need some help with the reasons why this benefits students to help sell this. I heard a need for this.
IFO: Really, what is it saving in terms of good business practice? Are there data? Is it a cost saving? I understand the need for uniformity but education is not a business.
Chancellor: You may know this, I am more conscious of the resort industry. I talked to the resort chamber, some people may not be able to get jobs if they can’t work up until Labor Day. We need to know how the resort owners and chambers will react before we do this.
IFO: There is a responsibility on the local campus to adopt a calendar that works well for the faculty. Every year we review the calendar. I’ve seen shifts based on the type of faculty we have on campus. This eliminates the flexibility.
Chancellor: That’s just the starting dates. Again, it was recommended that there be a three week break.
MnSCU: If you feel that is not the best time frame, you need to provide your comments on what would work better.
IFO: There have been points of time where the faculty make-up would prefer a longer break or a shorter break.
Chancellor: We should never consider the old way of finishing after Christmas. I felt as a student that was really good to come back in January, fresh.
IFO: The resort business isn’t exactly large in Winona so that isn’t a concern for us. Our campuses have different needs and faculty work hard to determine what is best for our institution; we try to benefit our students.
IFO: I am a graduate of a MnSCU institution because of the tri-Moorhead program. I think that local areas are working out agreements that are incredible and as a metro alliance instructor, we need a common calendar, but that is happening already among ourselves. I don’t see a need for a common start date mandate. We dialogue at Metro State - faculty want to keep it in sync.
Chancellor: I think we are 90% of the way there right now.
IFO: The system is very similar among institutions, we have exceptions already, why add another layer of bureaucracy if it is already working well.
Chancellor: You can see how we’re working together. I want you to know that I’m ready to make a decision if Ken can get the technological capacity. It was your plea we need to have some reasons about why this benefits students and there ought to be more talk about that before we make the decision. We need to do more thinking; if it’s not good for students then we don’t have a good case.
April 7 Meet and Confer:
IFO: Thank you, thank you to the Chancellor for his suggestion that we hold the April 7 meet and confer in Winona. We understand there will be an official invitation coming and we are planning on this and are excited to be part of this inauguration.
Chancellor: I thought if we have to take two carloads of people from the campus it might be good for them to see the inauguration.
IFO: Let’s get a big bus!
MnSCU: Let’s meet in the bus.
Nepotism:
MnSCU: Can we move this to January?
MnSCU: I need your comments before the January Board meeting.
IFO: Cindy Phillips has some quick comments.
IFO: We have a lot of questions about the procedures and those are approved by the Chancellor. There is pressure and you need policy.
Cindy Phillips asked Linda Skallman if they could discuss this after the meet and confer adjourned. The meeting was adjourned at 11:38.