IFO MnSCU Statewide Meet and Confer

Unofficial Notes

September 22, 2006

MnSCU Present:  Manuel Lopez, Chris Dale, Chancellor McCormick, Linda Baer, Steve Franz, Gary Janikowski, Jim Jorstad, Whitney Harris, Mary Leary, Gary Langer, Pradeep Kotamraju, Renee Hogoboom, David Laverny Rafter, Judith Ramaley (Winona SU President), Deena Allen, Barb Miller, Lynda Milne, Gail Olson, Laura King

IFO Present:  Nancy Black, Cindy Phillips, George Seldat, Elizabeth Dunn, Dave Bouchard, Mary Kesler, Annette Schoenberger, Cindy Phillips, Debra Japp, Cathy Summa, Cindy Finch, Patrice Arseneault

MnSCU:  There are three policies and we need to give you a brief presentation to make you aware.  With our new MnSCU Board format, we are not doing as many policy meetings this year as last year.  Steve Franz will cover two policies today

IFO:  Before Steve starts I have to ask if MnSCU is working on anything that will affect the terms and conditions of our employees that we don’t know about.

MnSCU:  No, not that I know about.

Chancellor:  There are some measurements (action plan) but you saw them all.  We’ll be asking the presidents for feedback.

MnSCU:  It isn’t for the terms and conditions.

IFO:  In terms of avoiding any possible miscommunication this year we believe that there was an item last year that should have been brought to meet and confer and it was not.

MnSCU: I understand.

Policy 2.3 & 2.3.1:

MnSCU:  (Passed around copies of two policies.)  This is a routine review, drafted and cleaned up and the changes are minor.  They haven’t gone through the policy council yet.  We asked for participation from MSCF and IFO and unfortunately no one was available so it’s important that you see this today.  (Policy 2.3 was reviewed first.) The changes in student involvement are fairly minor.  The first substantial change that has significant impact on students was taken from part of the procedures and students felt this should be elevated to policy.  The procedure 2.3.1 makes minor changes where you’ll see words like “participate” have been stricken and “representation” has been put in there instead.  That’s not a change in meaning but just to be consistent with the policy.  We tried to make it consistent so the language throughout was consistent and more understandable to students.  There is a change that is in sub 1 under sub a brought forward by the students. This language says either side can bring something forward. 

We have stricken measures presented to the Board, they don’t go to the Board any longer.  I believe those are the only issues of substance and the others are language corrections to make the procedure more clear. 

IFO:  We need more clarity on the definition of committees.  I’m assuming this relates to some type of university committees.  This enables the students the right to participate on the committee.

MnSCU:  That’s right, committees under collective bargaining agreements are excluded; these are policy committees.

IFO:  If I look at the procedure document on lines 28 examples of search committees.  Is the intention to mandate students serve on search committees?

MnSCU:  That’s not mandatory but an option; that would be fine.

IFO:  Who has control over that decision?

MnSCU:  The university.

MnSCU:  We don’t want to dictate; it’s open.

IFO:  But when you say “yours” you’re talking about the administration.

MnSCU: …Whatever process you use at your institution for search committees.

IFO: Several of our universities already include students on search committees.

MnSCU:  This was one of the first policies written in 1995; it’s been a rocky road at times.

IFO:  If the student served on the search committees, it would not be appropriate to have them apply to the student association but rather the department.

MnSCU:  It is student association.

IFO:  Who appoints them?

MnSCU: Student Senate and they are full voting members.

IFO: But for a department faculty search it doesn’t make sense.

IFO:  So we have an issue.  I think we’ve been consulted and we’ll talk about this and move along.

MnSCU:  The students meet on Tuesday at the Policy committee.  Maybe we can work out some initial language.

Chancellor: Maybe part of the language is the Student Association appoints a student from the department?

IFO:  Faculty are appointed by the department not the faculty senate, parallel would be within majors.

IFO:  Department search committees are different.

Policy 2.1.0:

MnSCU: A routine review, as you know, of the policy takes place every 3 years but now it is every 5 years.  This policy was last reviewed in 1995, but that’s because this policy has worked well and isn’t controversial.  The other issue is instead of colleges and universities being allowed to require students to live in student housing for students who do not live with relatives, now there are guidelines to live on campus.  Since I don’t think any of our universities have this policy currently, it may be an issue in the future.  The students were fine with this and they agreed and the housing people were present and agreed.

IFO: Any other questions?

IFO:  The language is somewhat confusing.  Guidelines seem to imply suggestions and the word require is used.  When I read that it creates in my mind an argument, is it guidelines or requirements?  Is there a better word that would preclude later arguments?  I think it cuts off that argument down the road should an institution seek to do that.

IFO:  On line 13, the appropriate student group would be determined by the campus and the student association wanted to make sure student senate was included.

MnSCU: We think that is up to the campuses’ usual procedures for how they deal with this.

MnSCU:  We are going to defer this discussion of Policy 3.2.1 until our November meeting.  It’s not ready to be reviewed.  You’ll get something in the mail before your November meeting, we may have a draft on Tuesday (at the Academic and Student Policy Council), but it’s not ready to be reviewed today

Applied Doctorate Degrees:

IFO: We’re concerned with unrealistic timelines and want quality programs to go forward.  We’re behind this, but the timelines seem unrealistic.

MnSCU:  Yesterday I heard most of these programs will come forward (with a handful remaining) to the Higher Learning Commission (HLC), and have gone through the process on their campus graduate committees and meet and confer well in the other process of getting that though, my understanding is I haven’t heard from faculty in the DNP (Doctorate Nursing Practice) but they feel they can do this and will have a quality program. 

The HLC is involved because it’s a change in status of a radically new program that hasn’t been offered before.  This same process is happening with the Graduate Council; all the same questions have been asked.  The DNP folks (Moorhead, Metro, Mankato and Winona) have been meeting. As soon as the legislature said it was ok, the informal group of faculty and administrators have been actively involved and meeting weekly.  My staff or I attend those meetings as well.  While concerned about timelines, they feel they can meet them and feel they have a quality program.  While these are target dates, if people feel it’s a problem, we’re willing to change those dates; all the proposals are formally due by the end of this month.  We said we will move forward and engage in dialog and wait for the external reviewers and plan to work with the reviewers to address any weaknesses that may be there.  We all engaged in this knowing the timelines were tight; my understanding is Mankato was approved this week.

IFO:  Can we talk about the DNP?  We understood that Mankato is not going to make the deadline.  David Bouchard was at a meeting yesterday and heard something about this.

IFO:  I don’t want to speak for Mankato, but I met with Metropolitan faculty yesterday and we completed the first phase.  In the course of that discussion there was a concern that the Mankato review would extend to October.  Again, I don’t want to speak for them but that’s what I heard.

IFO:  Our faculty expressed concern about the infrastructure.  It doesn’t appear that there was much discussion about the admission processes, in terms of having a structure there for people to apply.  We don’t have doctoral offices for admissions but we do for graduate.  Who do students talk to?  Is there a consistent policy?  There are many questions we need to answer before we feel this is going to be a quality program for success.  We need the infrastructure.

IFO:  When we find a change in one program we need to reintegrate that into the others.  There is a possibility that the proposal may change before it gets in final form and we want to make sure that integration happens first.

Chancellor:  I’m so please we are all so committed.

MnSCU:  I concur.  To be honest, I believe that the consortia agreement has evolved.  They will be meeting again and this timeline can be revised. We have some options with the HLC.  They will take the consortium as a package.  If we do the work well, there are options at HLC, even though the timeline is tight; our original timelines were within their normal process.  Since it’s our first time and their first time with a consortium, we may slow down.  It isn’t a problem if it doesn’t happen until October.  Let’s start our own review and dialog of the group.

MnSCU: We appreciate the faculty input.  HLC is supportive and helpful.  We will move at the speed to make sure quality is guaranteed.

Chancellor: When can we have our first graduate?

IFO:  You’re asking a question like that when we don’t even know what classrooms we are using.

Chancellor:  I want an idea of when we can turn out a quality product.

IFO:  I attended the Graduate Council for the first time and when I went there I asked about funding.  We only have a limited amount of funding.  In order to start new programs we’ll have to take from another program.  How will this be funded? I was told through internal reallocation at the university level.  

Chancellor:  We did tell the legislature we could do this through internal reallocations, but there was money at that time. 

IFO:  That was before they changed the method of funding, so it’s not as if conditions have remained the same in terms of allocation.  The campuses are still struggling from the $6 million technology assessment as things had to be cut at the last minute in July.  One of our major concerns is the Board of Trustees seems to think they can make decisions and implement them quickly. We are concerned that we are communicating with each other and one of the negotiations this year will evolve around doctoral students and compensation.

IFO:  In your discussion with the HLC, do they have recommendations?

MnSCU:  They have a taskforce.

Chancellor:  My pressure point isn’t the Board but rather the people who deliver our product.

IFO:  In historical perspective, four years ago we had “4 Bold Ideas” and one was to increase nurses by 40% in the state.  I want to make sure if we talk about internal reallocation then we all realize that something isn’t going to get funded.  We have real concerns that we have developed programs and put money into them.  What is going to happen with limited resources?  What is the true cost of developing and implementing the program - I don’t think we know.   It is not readily apparent how much funding is needed or where it is coming from. At the Graduate Council meeting we did not move too much past defining what we meant in terms of masters and doctoral definitions regarding courses; we’re still at the semantic level.  We’re going in many directions here and we don’t want this to get ahead of us when it appears things are not in place.

IFO:  We can’t afford another take-back. What about tuition waivers in terms of coming from other campuses to take the doctoral programs?  That could kill a program.

MnSCU:  We will be addressing that in the near future.

Chancellor:  We’re now asking for an appropriation -- what that is with the Board I don’t know.

MnSCU:  The other options, tuition revenues of a higher than the masters level but lower than some of the other doctorate programs.  If the national process goes on and they have their way by 2015, it will be the entry level degree for nursing.

Chancellor:  How will we finance the review?

MnSCU:  Each campus is working on that.

Chancellor:  If we didn’t have a finance plan, I’d have trouble working on that committee.

MnSCU:  It has been developed collaboratively between the faculty and administration.  There are some fine points they are still working on; we haven’t seen the formal proposal yet.

MnSCU: The issue of a business plan is quite serious; tuition wavier applies to doctoral program.  If we don’t deal with some of the issues and tuition, we can’t make the business plan work.

Chancellor:   I’ve had experience with one doctoral institution in Pennsylvania.  We had a different formula adjustment for graduate programs.  I want you to know maybe we’ve done that for the tech colleges and maybe you should put on the agenda the allocation for doctoral.

MnSCU:  I’m pleased to hear that we all agree.  I also heard something this is part of a larger strategy to address critical workforce issues in MN.  I would be best served if we talked about that Minnesota State Universities moving to doctoral study; it’s an essential part of the core of our legislature.

Chancellor:  I’m willing to be convinced there’s a better way than taking it off the top but there may be a fairer way.

IFO:  When you took $600,000 from St. Cloud, what’s the point if we have a plan?

Chancellor:  I disagree.  We asked for $15 million from the legislature, we didn’t get it, and the Presidents joined me and said we are desperate, we decided we better do that  [internal reallocation of $6 million in July 2006 from state universities] than crash the system.  That was a decision made to keep this thing going for a system that is under funded.  In my position, as painful as it was, we respectfully disagree.

IFO: One other reason we are talking is we want to make sure what we approved is the final product.  In addition to the HLC, nursing has its own professional accreditation requirements and that puts a particular strain on resources.  We want to make sure the final product meets the standards and is a quality program.

MnSCU:  We are looking at this very closely.

IFO:  I want to reiterate what I think I’ve heard that we are talking about the desperate need for the state of MN for people with DNP training, that our universities are stepping up to the plate to do this and faculty are taking it out of hide, we have the concern about cost - where those dollars coming from?  It will not necessarily be internal campus reallocations but some systemwide basis.  Is that on the table?

Chancellor:  When universities take on the doctoral mission, it is a different consideration than the norm.  We have to find a way to look at the allocation formula as those come on line that there’s some recognition in the budget for the difference in cost between doctoral and other programs.  You’ll find most programs have a different expectation in terms of cost.  Use of your highest paid professor working on a final product is going to be much more time consuming than teaching classes. I don’t know how to get that rolling but it has to be recognized if it’s going to cost more and I don’t like the idea of taking it across the board in the allocation model.

MnSCU:  We’d like to take these issues to the Graduate Council.

Chancellor:  We want to give incentives in a sense, it would be easier, it takes a lot of work and commitment.  If we do this all of us should do internal allocations all the time in the system.  We’ve had 400-500 course eliminated, and 400-500 started; we may need to make cuts. I think there will be internal allocations, and they might be one of them.

MnSCU:  In fact the pathways for all of the healing professionals are going to create opportunities that we haven’t had before. I feel strong about by it.  We are starting to get benchmarks, leading indicators that allow us to know.  Evidence! I want to say to Ken Niemi, I always believe in a culture of evidence and have been convinced.  We need materials to track.

Chancellor:  As this matures it will give us something to look at.  We asked our Presidents to talk about how they felt about the take back.  This isn’t the way we should do business and I take responsibility for that decision.

MnSCU:  We have 15 more agenda items and an hour has gone by.

Chancellor:  We need to look at how other systems do this and make a recommendation to Laura King to see how we can tweak the formula.   I will speak to Laura. 

IFO:  With all the work the Graduate Council has been doing you, have added on to the workload Chancellor.  The next meet and confer isn’t until November 17, and you  are asking when we can we produce a graduate?  We need to focus on resources from the Office of the Chancellor.  We should also be concerned about nursing retirements from our state universities.

1B.1.1:

MnSCU:  This is the procedure (a handout was given) that resulted from a collaborative process. Members from the students, IFO, and MSCF were involved in writing the policy and procedure.  This is our first draft of the procedure.  Do you have any concerns?

IFO:  Renee and I have talked about some of these issues.  One is the difference between nepotism in prohibitive conduct and the 1.B.1 procedure reads ... the procedure takes the nepotism one step further.  There is a conflict between the two.

MnSCU: We worded it that way because circumstances change.

IFO:  The Nepotism Procedure recognizes relationships may already exist, but the Procedure appears to prohibit any relationship, even where one already exists.

MnSCU:  As you know it’s hard to get the language to match human behavior in all cases.

IFO:  Another concern is the idea of the conflict of interest with the designated officer and decision maker.  The procedure says the designated officer notifies the president of a potential conflict, but it doesn’t address how the complainant or respondent raises a potential conflict of interest issue with either the designated officer or the decision maker.  On small campuses faculty and administrators know each other in some context.

MnSCU:  That can happen any where.

IFO:   But when you’re an investigator or decision maker that’s different.  Another concern under conflict of interest, it doesn’t limit the role of the designated officer on a campus, e.g. it doesn’t prohibit the designated officer from being the HR director.  The issue can come up on search committees when there is a claim of discrimination.  If the lead investigator was on a search committee, that could be a problem.  At Winona e.g., the lead investigator is the HR director and AA officer.

MnSCU:  Very few administrators play multiple roles.

IFO:  One concern raised by faculty of color is the idea of the consistency for the delivery of a charge of discrimination.  When the lead investigator walks into your office with a piece of paper, people see that.  This is a problem where there is no consistency in the notification method.  Designated officers who served on the committee desired to maintain their discretion with regard to how and when they notify respondents of charges of discrimination.  But the problem is that differing treatment with regard to how a faculty of color receives a charge is in itself a form of discrimination or can be perceived that way.

IFO:  Delivery of a written notice (part 7), there are some time constraints there, especially those written notices that are delivered at 4:32 on the last working day of the year via email.  They should be delivered by registered mail to their home.

MnSCU:  We didn’t want to be specific in the Procedure because each bargaining unit has different notice requirements in the contract.

IFO:  Delivery of the complaint is a critical question.

IFO:  With the issue of timeliness, I am concerned about the timelines for decision making.  As part of a group who complained, it took two years to hear that the complaint wouldn’t be processed. With the lack of timelines there is no policy – the administration can let it sit forever.

MnSCU:  Sometimes there are reasonable causes for delay.

IFO:  There appears to me to be no recourse except to go public at that point.

Chancellor:  Is the fact that faculty aren’t involved in the summer a reason for the delay?

IFO:  (Nodding yes)

IFO: We appreciate all the work you’ve done.  This has been a very productive committee, and we appreciate it.

MnSCU:  We will take your suggestions under consideration.

IFO:  We’ll keep this discussion going.

IPESL:

MnSCU:  Let me introduce to you David Laverny Rafter from Mankato who is serving in the CTL office.

The program is known as the Initiative to Promote Excellence in Student Learning (IPESL).  Here is a status report (a handout was given) this will show you the project prospectuses received so far. The process here is not a review process but it is review for adherence to the guidelines.  You won’t see any university projects here because we haven’t received any.  I though you’d be interested in the projects by title, the focus is on first year experience, college readiness, and focus on the success of under prepared students.  We hope to see exciting impacts and outcomes which leads us to the second part of the draft reporting requirements that we’ve prepared.

IFO:  Will you be using this same mechanism for the state universities?

MnSCU:  Yes, we’ve been working with David Laverny Rafter as well as a number of faculty and administrators systemwide to come up with a simple process that we think will result in having for the first time solid data that shows the impact on student learning.  What you see is a paper representation of what we hope will be web based process.  So far when we take people through what we think might work, the response is from faculty - that may be the easiest way to report a grant, cutting pasting, button clicking, uploading docs.

David will take us through some of the features.

IFO: I know your committee met.  Is this revised or the same one they received?

MnSCU:  It is revised.

IFO:  But it does not reflect all of the changes.

MnSCU:  Right.  You can access these electronically.

MnSCU:  To build on what Linda said, we have a track record in CTL for administering grants with faculty.  Many of these same sections are the same and similar to what we had in other early grant reports.  What we did there was narrative paragraphs and it was up to us to interpret that.  When dealing with several grants it is very difficult.  We tried to create a new form that is more user friendly.  We met with the CTL Steering Committee last week.  We haven’t integrated all of their changes yet.  Let me walk through the report.  The report is interim (status report), and the final report on page 7 so you can see the structure.

IFO:  I’m confused about the asterisks.

MnSCU:  These items not covered by IPESL funds (salary or benefits), that doesn’t mean that the university might not spend money in those columns.

IFO:  A suggestion:  While that asterisk statement in the note is grammatically correct it is confusing.  “May not” seems to mean maybe will or maybe won’t.

IFO:  The terminology for matching funds really isn’t correct.

IFO:  Faculty salaries

MnSCU:  In the guidelines it is very clear that the mechanism for pay and salary or benefits on these projects are in keeping with the contract requirements unless they are reassigned or overload.

IFO:  You omitted extra duty days, there is a critical…overload is not at full pay.  The extra duty day compensation may be the best.

MnSCU:  The language in the guideline is all inclusive. Chris do you see a problem?

MnSCU:  It’s a report on how you could do it.

IFO:  It is handled locally.

MnSCU:  Absolutely.

MnSCU: We have a question on one of our websites about this.

IFO:  There isn’t anything about fringe benefits.

IFO:  You would put a line to where the IFO is explained.

MnSCU:  Guideline principles. We’re asking the faculty grantee if they would state what is important in a statement.  We’d like a little more self reflection by the faculty on their project/programs.  We’d like to hear more from them.

IFO: The Board of Trustees will love it.  I feel like a trained seal!  I know it’s very difficulty to have a reporting requirement instrument that covers such a diversity of grants and activities but I find this such a business model that some of this detail seems completely unrealistic (pre and post testing/implementing and grades) were about student learning but some of it is so particular.  The Board wants us to check boxes and measure; how useful this will be, I’m not sure.

MnSCU:  This hasn’t gone before the Board.  They are not our intended audience. If we do the reporting in the ways we’ve done and just give faculty these section headers then we have a massive amount of data that we have a huge challenge to aggregate and report.  I turn the question to you.  How do you suggest that we get the info we want so that they have the primary interest?

IFO: I believe it doesn’t matter how you say it if they (Board) aren’t listening. We can say and give them (Board) stacks of what we’ve done, I did that two years ago with faculty accomplishments - what we hear is, how can you measure what we do?  Education isn’t a business.  We don’t do an ROI on every activity we do.  This reduces education and learning to checking boxes to give a narrative and is artificial in many ways.  The Board appears to only want to make decisions and not listen.  This is my reaction to this whole process and has been extremely detrimental to our relationship.

MnSCU:  There are two reasons you collect data you to justify a program and second to learn from it. This document trembles on the verge of becoming a valuable tool. 

IFO:  Part of the problem is timelines.

MnSCU: we acknowledge the timeline issue.  We are as bothered as you are, but we need to face it. We are earnestly trying to find a different way. You’re right we haven’t been successful with teaching and learning reporting out.  We’re hoping this is another way for us to make public what the system is doing.  We are in agreement; we have not been successful with the legislature or the Board.

IFO:  We really appreciate it.  I know what you’re saying, but we are hearing from faculty that this entire process (competitive compensation) could have been avoided.  There are other ways this could have been done given the legislative language.  There is a backlash on the campuses about how this has been handled.

IFO:  It’s unfortunate that the CTL office didn’t have time to build in the scope of the comments from the CTL Steering meeting last week.  We spoke at length to make certain that we provided faculty that there could be more reflection in what they are reporting and a mechanism for faculty to expose challenges that would not cause them any negative impact.  That needs to be revised.

MnSCU:  One of the challenges we all have right now is to make this process better for the next biennium in the future.  When we get past the time crunch in this biennium, we want to improve.  I fear how well we’ll justify how we use this money.  I feel the pressure and where do we go from there to make this a better process.

IFO:  This is much like the applied doctorate process with the timeliness process from MnSCU.

IFO:  Linda, will this IPESL process continue on?

MnSCU:  We all know this money came from a legislative allocation and that allocation says.. It’s quite specifically defined….

Chancellor:  Could this be a matter for bargaining?

MnSCU:  We aren’t discussing bargaining.

Chancellor:  This is about this year. Now the outcomes might give us other things.

MnSCU:  We hope this will measure successes.

IFO:  The point about this taking a research approach, this is a long term strategy - this isn’t a one shot deal. Many of these things says preparing graduates for the future, one class doesn’t do it.  It’s how we look at our system of education broadly; it would be incumbent of us to work together.

D2L Lawsuit:

MnSCU:  Blackboard sued D2L for patent infringement in July and are seeking an injunction against D2L - the platform we use.  We’re concerned.  It is way too early in the litigation to predict at this point whose arguments are better.  Blackboard has a very broad patent that it says is being infringed by D2L and they are looking at other products as well in their patents.  One of the unusual things in this litigation is Blackboard did not go to D2L before the suit to negotiate a resolution which is actually more of the industry process.  Patent litigation tends to be slow and complicated; we’re not likely to see a court resolution for some time.  Whether Blackboard or D2L will talk about some other resolution, we don’t know but this is possible. On the other hand there is kind of a feeding frenzy on patents right now.  There is a wide-spread notion that the patent office has abandoned the understanding what the patents mean.  There are other litigations on other basic functions in the software.  The set up is the patent office issues a patent indiscriminately not knowing what it will encompass, and everyone fights about it.  There are entrepreneurial companies buying up as many companies as they can.  If we look to the future and see Blackboard has an argument against D2L the results would be licensing and if Blackboard is found not to have a patent on the process of D2L, there would be no negative effect on us. If Blackboard has an argument, it could come back to us in terms of licensing. It would come back to us ultimately in terms of licensing.

Chancellor:  One year ago you were very concerned about D2L. I’ve been out to a few campuses and get the feeling it’s been great.

IFO: There are some communication issues.  Ken Niemi will say that we still have concerns about the system crashing.

IFO:  One thing people perceive we did was fix the structural problem.  We took an issue with the design and we increased our capacity. With the D2L lawsuit, we need to consider pandemic planning.  We need to see the same likelihood in terms of D2L.  You need to consider that Blackboard is taking an aggressive position and one reason they can do that is they made acquisitions from Web CT.  What are the scenarios if this goes forward?  If, for example, D2L was acquired or not able to continue an alternative to the new Blackboard standard would be significant on fees, conversion issues, design issues, expensive to D2L – and they will assess fees on us.  You can look to us on issues that we have insight.  In terms of D2L generally, online education, one thing we are interested in looking at is how D2Ls growth is affecting the increase in the capacity on the system generally - the need to have a greater investment policy or revenue implications. How much has the requirement of D2L affected the cost pressures we are facing?

MnSCU:  I want to let you know a request has either been received or come your way to constitute a new IMS committee that will be addressing many of the questions you’ve brought up.

IFO:  One of the things we’d be interested in since online is so important, we’d like to have a good early warning system in terms of any other issues.  In general, are there any elements in D2L that may affect our ability to affect online in the future?  We want to be more proactive to make sure we don’t fall into things we could prevent if we worked with you.

MnSCU:  We should put this on the next meet and confer agenda so Ken Niemi can address some of these issues.

Chancellor: These mergers occur and they just put all their customers together and roll ahead. We shouldn’t assume this is all bad until we know.

MnSCU:  We shouldn’t assume anything. It’s too early to jump to any conclusions in thinking.  The prospect of financial implications is out there but it’s too early. Even if we develop all of our own internal software we’d be in the same kind of litigation. There is so much contention and is the wave of the future.

IFO:  We just want Bemidji to be able to receive our emails.

Failed Faculty Searches:

MnSCU:  I sent Nancy Black a copy of the report.

IFO:  Yes, what I’m passing around is the report we’ve been given prepared by Gary Janikowski every year. We talk about refining the report.  The top sheet is a list of suggestions to improve this report. (Two pages handed out.)

MnSCU:  I’ve been working with the AA on each campus and want to know if they are capable of collecting different types of data.

IFO:  We’ve learned we have wide variations in data, and I guess we think this information would be useful to all of us to the extent it isn’t too burdensome.  There is an issue of when the time of some searches are authorized.  Some campuses don’t authorize the search until January which may not be so successful.  We’re concerned with the tracking and getting a sense of those other critical factors.

Chancellor:  Wouldn’t the Presidents know by October 15 when they know their budget?

MnSCU:  Yes.  Faculty who make decisions late end up in the market too late. We need a category of surprise openings.

IFO:   I don’t think this report reflects the magnitude of the issues.

IFO:  Having served on a lot of search committees, most of this information is collected on the campuses.  We serve on search committees because we know they ask for this information. We always wonder why we have to report so many answers when they don’t show up again anywhere in this office.

IFO:  I have seen in some areas where we couldn’t hire our first choice and we hire new people in the high 70-80k who don’t have their doctorate completed and we go far into the pool. There may be statistically or anecdotally fewer of them who are tenured than people who are at the top of the pool when they are hired.

IFO:  When there is a failed search in American History there is a problem.

MnSCU:  I gave you a copy of the Cal State findings.

IFO:  We were perplexed about budget figures ($2,400), is this only reflecting travel?

MnSCU:  No, Winona filled the form out incorrectly.

MnSCU:  In Oregon there would be side studies.  Have we had any shared studies or efforts in our system?  If we do that then that’s fabulous we might want to consider this in the future.

Pandemic Planning:

(A handout was given by Laura King.)

IFO:  Our State University president said he wouldn’t share this information with us. Our HR Director said they were instructed by MnSCU to not share it with us until it’s been reviewed here.

MnSCU:  I don’t know where that came from.  I’ll go back and pursue it. The plan isn’t final until you have had a complete conversation with faculty and staff - that’s what I’ve been saying.

IFO:  I have a procedural concern.  On campuses they may not be trying to keep a secret but they still aren’t asking us to be involved.

IFO: I’m a disaster mental health supervisor for the Red Cross and when I saw the system was working on a pandemic plan, one question I had was what kind of expertise do did you draw on at the system level?

MnSCU:  Let me take you through the presentation first. This whole effort is under the Governor’s Agency for Homeland Security.  They have by the Governor’s executive order, if an event would occur it would be managed nationally. It takes a whole bunch of stuff out of our control. We came into this discussion in this context, further we are subject to control by government’s executive order, it had nothing to do with who appoints our board, with the business we’re in, and the government has very broad authority in our industry.  Further about 1/3 of our employees are state workers and we get plugged into DOER.  We’ve asked all the colleges and universities as routine if they have hazard planning; you may have or not been involved.  It’s a management requirement and has local committees.  We asked them to add the pandemic plan as a chapter to their over all hazard’s plans.  The State has public health and safety resource coordinators.  The Board has policies and the presidents have responsibilities for staff and faculty.  The State has some authority to the board and the presidents. We have assumed that when we started we’d have nine months and that worked out.  We started talking in February and there has been much less coverage in the media in the last 90 days.  We also made the assumption we would hold and exercise discretion prior to the government declaring an emergency and taking our discretion away from us.  We made one other assumption for planning - we assume the World Wide Web would have limited availability if we get into a wide-scale event.  A lot of folks were thinking we’d go online; every piece of advice has been the internet will have very limited resources. That plays into thinking about academic and instructional planning. As far as plan development is concerned…

IFO:  So you started this planning in February 2006 but we just heard about it in August 2006 when we got back to campus.

MnSCU: I brought you a website.  The presidents were able to decide who was on the committee.

IFO:  Did you have these committees?

MnSCU:  We had a small number of people with a special interest.  No, we don’t have a separate committee for pandemic planning.

MnSCU:  We asked all the campuses to build their plans around the WHO guidelines.

IFO:  That’s not what I was asking.  When you’re planning for disasters there should be consultation with the entities involved, I don’t see or hear anything about that.

MnSCU:  That’s the key role of the Steering Committee as the liaison to state governments.

IFO:  IT disaster recovery plan…

MnSCU:  That’s the key effort in this, data centers, universities data centers and the campus plan is being put together as part of this effort.  If we lose 2/3 of our operators we have a network.

IFO:  We were recently involved in our campus and didn’t get any kind of response on IT from our campus.  They didn’t know.

MnSCU:  I’ll circle back and make sure it’s communicated.  The campuses have worked their way through this document.  We recognize that because we started this most intensely in the summer and stated that it couldn’t be completed until faculty and staff are consulted and that consultation needs to happen.

Chancellor: we obviously have a coordinating committee…were there any faculty reps?

MnSCU: No, that’s not the way we’ve done it. People serving on the committee are Linda Baer, Ken Niemi, Gail Olson, Steve Franz, Linda Skallman, Donna Beckery, Linda Kohl, Bill Tschida and no state university presidents.  The work gets done on the campus.  Campuses have their own committees with their own reps.  There are no campus people on the system committee and no system people on the campus committees.

IFO:  You said something about hearing less in the media lately.

MnSCU:  Last spring there was a scary show on TV - it’s faded.

IFO:  Our public health people are saying it’s (bird flu) coming this year.

IFO:  It’s important we have the plan but it’s unfortunate there’s a plan implemented at a campus level and not all of them have had clear instructions.  We are employees and faculty have a particular expertise. You took exception to my Katrina remark, the people are in Winona, and Mary Kesler works with the Red Cross it’s the connection between the campus and the Red Cross.

Chancellor: I hear you say some of them are not involved.

MnSCU: (A handout was given.)  DOER is doing a similar kind of planning which will affect all of the classified workforce so it’s informal from Jim Lee the rep from MnSCU on this committee; it’s just released on their website.  Each campus is unique but we need to be somewhat consistent.

IFO:  The leadership faculty in St. Cloud didn’t hear about it until August.

MnSCU:  That’s possible.  We didn’t start until you were leaving the campus.

MnSCU:  I’m sensing some other faculty presidents are less familiar to the All Hazards program on our campuses.

IFO: I’m not sure that’s true.

IFO:  When is the local report due?

MnSCU:  It’s open; we’ve been waiting on DOER.

IFO:  Nothing has happened on our campus and there is no communication.

MnSCU:  Have you had a meet and confer on your campus yet this year?

IFO:  Yes.

MnSCU:  I’m assuming this is where it would have happened. I’ll communicate wit the coordinators and encourage them.

MnSCU:  We know this is critical. We’re doing a small HR conference next month.

IFO:  Russ Lee, a local expert in Bemidji, needs to be contacted.

Summer communications:

IFO: We’ll revisit that at the next meet and confer.

HRA (Health Reimbursement Plan):

MnSCU:  We’ve over on the time; we wanted to say last year there seems to be some confusion with faulty with respect to where the 2007 contribution is going?  Your HRA account or HSP, depending on how much money you have on December 31 of this year it directs where the 2007 contribution goes.

IFO:  Make sure the people in HR understand - they are getting the calls.

MnSCU:  We are having a session at the HR conference and will discuss this.  It is a concurrent session so other sessions are competing with us.

IFO: I want to suggest the greatest solution is revision of the plan so you have until February to submit as you do with the flex account.

MnSCU:  You do have until February to switch but the funds go in on December 31.  We have to give people their money at the beginning of the year.