IFO MnSCU Meet and Confer
April 11, 2008
IFO Present: Nancy Black, Rod Henry, David Bouchard, Elizabeth Dunn, Cindy Phillips, Cathy Summa, Bruce Svingen, Judy Kilborn, Cindy Finch, Russ Stanton,
MnSCU Present: Chancellor McCormick, Mike Lopez, Manuel Lopez, Chris Dale, Gary Janikowski, Bill Tschida, Linda Baer, Judy Borgen, Laura King, Jim Dillemuth, Becky Sobolewski, Al Essa, Gail Olson, Craig Schoenecker, Linda Lade, Whitney Harris
Present: State University St. Cloud President Potter
Called to order 8:10 a.m.
Announcements
Sympathy was expressed for Mary Leary who could not be here today due to a death in the family. New IFO President who assumes office on July 1, is Rod Henry.
Chancellor’s Search Advisory Committee Faculty Appointments
MnSCU: I assume we want to talk about faculty positions. This was the product of a group consisting of myself, Ruth Grendal, and David Paskach, and we were guided quite a bit by a Search Advisory Committee. This last search was the first time we had a committee (when Chancellor McCormick was hired). At that time there were three faculty positions, who were the three heads of the faculty unions, Jim Pehler was the IFO rep. We were looking for more ways to have community involvement so we went to two faculty positions, because we have two faculty teaching unions.
IFO: I hear there are only two teaching faculty unions, but how does MSUAAF feel about that?
MnSCU: They were not represented in the original committee. I have to look at that list. Again, even in presidential searches… they are a union of only 500 employees; we have other unions that represent more employees that aren’t represented here. It will be our three largest unions: IFO, MSCF and AFSCME. The last time the search advisory process was used, for the first time, Mike Vekich, who was the chair at the time, and the Board of Trustees spent two months discussing how they should do the chancellor’s search and nothing was ever put in writing or codified about how they did this. The thought was this Board should be ahead of the game and get a process in writing. Again, it could change, but they would at least be starting from a document.
IFO: There seems to be some confusion in the Board of Trustees discussion about who would be on the committee. We’re concerned about procedure. If an FA rep is needed, how do you foresee contacting the union?
MnSCU: That’s a good question. That was not only an issue with the bargaining units but also with all positions on this committee. Again the way it was done the last time, the governor named someone. I think they probably would not be going to the governor or the senate and house to do that this time. I think again the current view would be that they would be asking whoever is in a leadership position. I don’t think they would be asked to name someone else. Again how that will be with the new board 3-4 years from now, I don’t know.
IFO: What was the rational behind going to more community and away from more academic?
MnSCU: I don’t know that I can give all the reasoning behind that. Generally the Board’s view is that it’s a constituency that isn’t heard from. Whether you’re talking about people from business or other people from the communities, there’s a lot of discussion about the three positions that are business/community. The idea of reps from other sources or k-12 were all things they talked about but didn’t specify in great detail and I left it vague.
Chancellor: It’s appropriate for me to be quiet and not have much to do with this process.
IFO: Do they let you talk to the candidates?
Chancellor: They haven’t decided.
IFO: Bill, have you done any surveying for other systems?
MnSCU: No, they looked at what we did last time. The major change was they felt they didn’t need to go to the governor, house and senate. They feel we’re a more stable system now than last time.
Chancellor: The Board is the governor’s appointments.
Enterprise Investment Committee
(A handout was given – Memo from the Leadership Council)
MnSCU: You had a question about the allocation of funds?
IFO: Jim (Dillemuth), are you handling this? I wanted people to be on the same page in terms of specific question. We had a meeting yesterday and questions about the actual categories on this handout were raised.
MnSCU: On the second page of the handout are the eight categories and the definition of each category. On the last page is the break down of the funds that went to the campus. Yesterday you asked how that money was allocated, it was by FY06 FYE. This is a local decision - how it is handled from there.
IFO: Did this come to local meet and confers?
IFO: Yes.
IFO: No, that’s unusual for these issues.
MnSCU: It might have been a timing thing, and maybe it just missed the normal course of budget discussions, but you should expect it this spring.
MnSCU: This memo went out August 8 - it could have been in time.
IFO: One of the concerns we have is when we see categories such as faculty research and development - what do you mean by that? If it comes to the local meet and confer, then we can have an understanding.
MnSCU: It’s also tools, and equipping and managing classroom reporting.
IFO: That’s not research. What is your thinking with this?
MnSCU: It hasn’t been articulated. These are all the categories we’ll continue to work on. Faculty research and development is out farther. There needs to be some conversation in the cross functional teams.
IFO: Here is the Excel spreadsheet that went out in March that we discussed. I don’t have copies for everyone, do you?
MnSCU: No, I didn’t bring those.
IFO: We don’t know what the faculty research in this context encompasses. We want to be part of the process. The legislature is looking closely at this.
MnSCU: I can go back to the campuses and universities who said they were spending money and do a little research and go back to meet and confer if you’d like.
IFO: (nodded yes)
Potter: We have an open process. People put forward a process. We didn’t get down to the point where we were funding specific equipment to fund faculty research. It would be infrastructure related to enable faculty research, not projects, and probably not funding individual faculty but university-wide systems. We didn’t get down that far, it’s mostly data systems, storage capacity, and other priorities.
IFO: Is it coming down to the faculty? This is the infrastructure, these are the tools…
IFO: Our process is a teaching and learning technology round table that manages the conversation and everyone is invited to the table. Maybe the issue might have been that the discussions weren’t so apparent. We actually talked about the timing last time. We can track through on our campus what happened.
MnSCU: Let us do more survey work and see what we can find out.
IFO: We have an IT Advisory Council, but we didn’t talk about this one. I’m puzzled by this. There is nothing at Metro for security management. This discussion is heading in the right direction. This goes back to things we’ve pointed out that talking to the CIOs is not talking to the faculty.
IFO: I assume this was about $5 million and now were talking about the $7.5 million in the coming year. It would be great if there was some process so faculty can feel they are involved. Student services, online learning -- it is getting funding from another pot, but yet that money gets supplemented, it seems, from many different sources and we aren’t getting the full picture. What would be helpful, when I look at student services/online learning, and now I see this explanation, it looks like all online learning. When we looked at the cost study of online learning (by P. Opatz), we’ve had serious concerns that the cost of infrastructure was not considered. We understand that because infrastructure was not included we are seeing an analysis that doesn’t reflect the actual costs. You said you’ll do more research on this, when do you expect us to have more information?
MnSCU: We’ll want to communicate with the presidents and plug into the current consultation properly. It will probably take a couple of weeks. Does this group meet next month?
IFO: No. Would it be reasonable to say by June 1st?
MnSCU: Yes, I think so.
MnSCU: (nodding yes)
MnSCU: The titles are a tie back to teacher plans and the legislature request a year ago. We’ve been testifying about the infrastructure demands for two years and we have legislative support.
Chancellor: We decided to put that money into the campuses, we didn’t want to micromanage. In this office we seem damned if we do, and damned if we don’t. The Board almost didn’t go for it. We believe we’ve hired effective presidents and have smart faculty. We’re doing well with central services. It ought to be more asking and less telling.
IFO: With all respect, when we see $62 million for technology and then the amount going to the campuses is $5 million, we want to know how this is serving our campuses. We are having a hard time understanding where it’s going and what needs it is meeting, and have heard of a heavy demand for on-line courses. When we talk to students we need more nursing courses, do we need them on-line? Maybe. Not all of them need to be taught on-line, but we would like to see data. Where is there data demonstrating heavy demand for online?
Chancellor: That appropriation from the legislature, the $62 million all goes to the campuses. The IT office is about the services to the system. The universities say if they did it on their own, it would take them 2-3 times more money. We have never gotten that explained in a way that is understood. For IT that is providing services to the system, we just can’t get that story told, the legislature hears it like we have four more floors of big computers running. Help us find a way in the next session to try to help us in a positive way to explain where this money goes. I want to work on that for the next session.
MnSCU: We’ll get back to you.
Policy 2.2 State Residency Requirement
(A handout was given.)
MnSCU: This is a complete revision of the existing board policy on state residency requirements. In the current policy there is reference to state statute that was done away with next year. There was a revision on two things getting confused on the policy on residency and tuition. We are revising the policy to address three things separately and distinctly what makes one classified as a MN state resident or a non-resident. After that determination is made, how do we know the tuition rate to charge a person. There is a new procedure which is the one that deals with the reclassification of the policy. It deals with the initial determination and tuition, and the procedure deals with changing the residency. This has gone through the usual process, the Policy Council met two months ago and was revised based on those comments of the Board for a first reading.
IFO: Under part 2 section B, MN residents who are temporarily absent, is that defined?
MnSCU: No, we rely on things such as the determination of Visa status. For example, the term temporary can be years, for example someone who went to the military.
IFO: Then under part 4, number 3…
MnSCU: This is something that is new in the policy. The group looked at a number of definitions of residency; this is taken verbatim from the state grant program.
IFO: This would apply to the children of undocumented aliens?
MnSCU: No, we cannot override federal statute. This would not apply.
IFO: I’m confused by this. Which students are included and not included?
MnSCU: There are a lot of students from Iowa who attend our schools. State policy cannot override federal statute.
IFO: If that law would change then this policy would allow …
MnSCU: Yes, then they would automatically be included. Right now we only have 10 institutions who charge the two rates any more. If all of our institutions charged one rate then we could do away with 3-4, but we would still need a policy to determine Minnesota residency.
IFO: The policy says it’s the initial classification. Is there an out for students if they are initially classified nonresidents, and then can they become residents?
MnSCU: Yes, part 5-6. There is an appeal in part 5. In part 6 it says you can have the residency changed.
IFO: I would like to hope that in part two, line 15, that it means what it literally says as I read it (Students who resided in the state for at least one calendar year prior to applying for admission…).
MnSCU: It means exactly what it says there. We needed to establish a date. The word immediately prior to the application the word immediately fell out.
IFO: I would appreciate follow-up knowing which of the 10 who charge resident and non-resident rates, in the dream act it seems like a quick fix, but this might create other problems when you look at state universities like Winona. If you could identify, that would be great.
MnSCU: I’ll send that to you.
Workplan on Workforce of the Future
MnSCU: This is a new goal area we’ve added to our 2009 work plan. We presented an initial report to the Board of all the categories. We are putting more emphasis on this and will include a very careful strategic set of ten visits between presidents and business (per president). We’re going to carefully coordinate where they’re visiting. The first wave will be in manufacturing. We have a big effort in the National Association of Manufacturers. There will be visits the fall to listen to the needs for training and education. We are working with the Centers of Excellence to hear what they’re learning on their needs.
Chancellor: First this isn’t just vocational, it’s engineers and teachers. We don’t meet with for-profit businesses, but for example, hospitals in Albert Lea. When we say businesses, we mean the professionals who hire our students.
MnSCU: We have a response system as business and industry need things from us. Sometimes this means customized training. We are going to work on that more including a module build-out in our ISRS system for the application registration, placement and services to the non-credit people included. We’ve been talking to the U of M. They have a “go-pass” we’ve been connected with them in that and we’ll build that out more. There will be a new Go Places for business needs. Now it’s mainly developed for traditional students interested in our system. We’ll be working more on leverage partnerships.
Chancellor: I’m also pushing that we need to be very sensitive to the “green” and this whole planet cannot continue how it is. We need to be saying how we need more efficiency on our campuses; it’s important for us to begin to think about that.
IFO: I know Manny [Lopez] has started something on this. I want to get back to the work plan.
Remind me, Linda, were the Centers of Excellence, supposed to be self sustaining in three years?
MnSCU: In the proposals, the plan was to be articulated how campuses could become self sustaining. Two reviews were commissioned from the Wilder Foundation to learn about the potential for this. Bemidji has hired an additional consultant to look at this. That report will be done this summer; the Fieldstone Organization is doing that. We want to be careful about continuing to support the Centers. In May we will recommend to continue the funding as it has been for the next couple of years, we have indicators. That’s what Wilder continues to review for us. The sustainable issues seem to be more difficult. This industry around each of the four are not able to assist in the self sustaining, the closest is at Metropolitan State who does have a plan for this.
IFO: It’s going slower than we thought.
MnSCU: I’ve been very sensitive; there hasn’t been enough money in these pools to be Centers of Excellence that are self sustained. This recommendation will come to the Board in May.
IFO: It just seems from a faculty viewpoint the business community is getting a lot from us and what are we getting from them? The Centers of Excellence are subsidizing business. Now I hear we are building out ISRS.
MnSCU: This has been in the plan for years, our customized training…
IFO: The green campus, I don’t know where the Chancellor and Manny are with the initiatives, student generated…
MnSCU: Manny has been working with training our students in construction and they are having a big conference. We are being aligned with our campuses so they can add a green component to curriculum. We’ve gone into recycling, energy issues, etc.
MnSCU: I am engaging interest in further discussions on future curriculum, and about what other institutions are doing. We aren’t trying to mandate curriculum, we just want to know what they’re doing.
IFO: Our students are assessing fees and may be buying a windmill.
IFO: Our students passed a green fee and we are hiring a sustainability coordinator and we won an award for being a green campus!
MnSCU: I know Winona has their own inventory. We are just at the beginning and we are aware that we are behind the curve here. We’ll be looking at some performance targets.
Chancellor: The Board and our system are doing things already, let’s declare victory and measure some things about how we are saving some things.
Legislative Update
Melissa Fahnning gave a legislative update on the health care reform bill and bonding bills.
Budget Update
Chancellor: If we cut $26 million from the system, 446 positions could be cut or a 4% tuition increase, or other cuts from other places. The Board still has a strong desire to keep it at an increase of 3% for 4 year universities and 2% at the 2 year colleges. The Board felt they couldn’t decide until they have all the facts. We just don’t know. I believe the $6 million comes out of here and does not touch campuses, I believe we agreed to that. All Linda’s initiative money goes to campuses and that was cut.
MnSCU: That’s right, if it does impact tuition, the board may need to revisit that. We’re hoping in May we’ll know or early enough so we can still come to the Board in May for the 2009 budget, but it may come down to the very end.
Chancellor: We keep cutting…
MnSCU: …while our student population keeps growing and growing.
MnSCU: We’re looking at the 23rd of May if all the stars are aligned for the earliest date of back pay hitting checks.
Update on Common Course Numbering
MnSCU: This didn’t make it into the bills. We have an informal agreement with the students to improve the nature of transfer information to improve our website and work more with the transfer specialists and other transfer tools to make sure they are functioning. We’ll work on that on this end - training transfer specialists and getting web pages up-to-date.
IFO: We were thinking it might be a good strategy to do a preliminary report about just the enormous scope of the number of courses.
MnSCU: We did present that to the legislature, and Monte Bute did as well.
IFO: Common course numbering would not be a good thing.
Chancellor: I still don’t know where that came from.
IFO: We have heard several things. Students are not similarly situated. They assume things, but circumstances are often different.
Faculty Searches – New Form Notice of Vacancy Postings
(A handout was given.)
IFO: We had confusion about a new form for faculty searches. Is the form for budget justification?
IFO: An additional form is being imposed on the search process to provide financial justification for the policy (came from Don Larsson at Mankato). We’re wondering if the state or Office of the Chancellor has added any kind of form or justification involved in the searches.
Chancellor: I think I had a communication with a president, under certain times make sure you’re prudent.
MnSCU: We have not put out a new form. The only form I have is the failed faculty search template, we’ve asked them to collect the data at the start of the year so it’s easier.
[Applause for Gary Janikowski.]
IFO: So you think this is just a local form that was sent out?
MnSCU: Yes. I’ll email this handout to you, Nancy. [Received on 4/11/08 and IFO sent out to FA Presidents.]
IFO: Thank you, Gary.
D2L License Renewal and Patent Infringement Suit
(A handout was given “Dear faculty member”)
MnSCU: You are familiar with the litigation and injunction, right? We are in frequent contact with the D2L attorney and looking at every option we have to make sure that we’re going to be able to continue to use D2L and the time we need for the scheduled upgrade for early June. We have several strategies, but because of the legal issues we won’t get specific. We are feeling confident about our options. We don’t know what the judge will decide. We do feel confident that we have in place both the options we need to in order to continue and the time to implement. In June as you know, Al has scheduled the upgrade to version 8.2 and 8.3 and we’re watching other users’ experience. The US Patent and Trade Office is going to look at Blackboard’s patents. It’s interesting to understand the patent office in line with the litigation and how it could affect it in the future. This area of law needs better provisions. D2L still has an injunction. The injunction expires on May 11th. There is a contingency plan and I can’t talk about it now because as it unfolds we have analyzed all of this and the AGs office is working with us. We’ve identified a ranking of options depending what happens. We’re confident we’ll be able to get through June.
IFO: Does 8.3 meet the terms of the judge’s ruling? One of the reasons we’re pushing so hard for the upgrade is that there are representations that 8.3 takes care of the concerns in the judge’s injunction. Will we have any indication that the judge will say 8.3 meets the requirements?
MnSCU: That’s our concern as well. We don’t have an independent way of evaluating that. Given how things have gone, Blackboard will assume that 8.3 is infringing. They will have to go back to Federal Dist Court and the burden of proof shifts in D2Ls favor. I can’t say that we will have final resolution until that litigation is done. We’ll have to keep monitoring this and then what we need to do in response.
IFO: But you haven’t been told if 8.3 meets this?
MnSCU: No, the only way it will get to the judge is Blackboard’s motion.
IFO: When might faculty…I’m concerned in the worse case scenario how do we prepare faculty for a major down time and when might that occur? Are we looking at summer of fall?
MnSCU: Worse case there are two technical options that we are trying to put in place, we have a standing and alternative system – it won’t do everything. This is an alternate route. Our goal is to have something in place that faculty can use. Another option is there is a long shot that legally we might be okay for D2L to be used in Canada so an option might be to have our servers there.
MnSCU: Tennessee uses their servers in Canada and the junction doesn’t apply in Canada.
IFO: That’s not my question. When do faculty potentially need to be prepared? Can you give us some sense?
MnSCU: The best we can do is say that we have legal options that we believe will get us to that upgrade in June. If things develop in the litigation to change that, we’ll look for the longest timeframe as possible to implement whatever changes need to be made. What we have said to D2L is that we can’t turn on a dime, and we need to be able to have an orderly transition. I understand that is no comfort.
IFO: I’m thinking the worst thing that could happen is people go through the summer and start of fall semester with common start dates anticipating D2L. We need to find something new to transition over to be proactive.
IFO: I think as soon as we have information we need that to go to our campuses. I know there’s talk about pulling out information from D2L – discussion forms, the core of teaching may be on those forms. There may be implications if those are purged on accreditation visits and assessment on faculty (a D2L memo was handed out “dear faculty member”).
MnSCU: We have an IMS Advisory Council, and the dominant voice is faculty. All the major decisions that we’re making related to IMS is a consensus, and I think David can confirm that. As we navigate through these issues, it’s the process of the IMS Advisory Council. My way of thinking is we’re predicting some turbulence around the upgrade, but there’s the remote possibility that there could be problems. At this point the forecast is we are going to have some turbulence and we’ll take seriously the fall status. I circulated a draft communication that will go out to faculty after the IMS Council meets this coming Monday. We wanted to share that with you.
IFO: How long will D2L be down during the upgrade. Is that in here?
MnSCU: No, it’s not in there. 72 hours.
IFO: I am teaching the 9th of June and I want to know how to plan for that.
IFO: We wanted to wait until we had a fairly clear message before we communicate. Our expectation is by the end of Monday’s meeting we’ll have a clear message. We have had some strategic vision with D2L. We look at the relative merits in process and part of the reason this is compelling is that we concur with what Gail Olson says, in 8.3 we are in a safer place for a variety of reasons; if we can remove as many risks as possible we’ll be better. I’ve been pushing this contingency planning. Once we know what we’re doing one of things we did last year was a checklist for faculty to prepare for the upgrade. We have a website now. This is a reasonable risky proposition. This is something we will have to do some careful planning. We are looking at some options to cut down that down time and we’ll have more info on Tuesday. As you know one of the biggest reasons that we have problems with D2L is the scalability issue. As a result, every time you do this, there are huge files. We’ve been pushing hard for tools to purge and we’ve gotten that done now. There will be tools available to help us do that. We need to be careful. We are trying to not just react to putting out fires. One element is the basic configuration of the system. While we are facing the risks of 8.3 we are not going to be making any major configuration changes, but we could do that later. We will look at the regionalization.
IFO: The vast majority of faculty out there don’t know this is going to happen. These are the plans I’m worried about.
Chancellor: Would there be certain days of the week to have the 72 hours of down time?
IFO: We’re going down late on a Thursday and up on Sunday. The other thing we’ve learned on the regionalization. One size does not fit all. There are different schools with different strategies. We cannot accommodate the different strategies of the differences, but one thing we can do is have a different strategy for each of the regions. We’re not going to let us get this off track on being strategic about each of the systems. Our main focus is to make sure this gets done right.
IFO: We need to take a break and we’ll come back to this. This regionalization raises other problems, but we need to come to a consensus about how to effectively tell faculty what’s happening and how they can deal with it.
Break
MnSCU: I’d like to hone in on faculty communication. I think this is critical we’ve done one part to of this, and is what I’ll call passive communication. We put up a website - see draft memo to faculty handout, and that will be the one-stop shop on the upgrade on any other issues around D2L. There’s also a need for active communication. Our model has been that the Office of the Chancellor communicates to the constituent groups. CIOs are supposed to be communicating with faculty. We are setting up a D2L list serve that would be available for faculty. Is this something we should be doing because some of the feedback is that we don’t want the Office of the Chancellor communicating directly with faculty. We don’t want to step on toes.
IFO: I appreciate your using the term “active,” on our campus Rhonda Ficek communicates regularly with the known D2L users. I’ve sent some stuff out on our regular faculty list serve, I think that if you would encourage, I’m thinking about Russ’ email communication model, he sends each of us a report on the legislative activities and asks us to send it to you. If you could be asked for it to be sent out to all faculty, that’s important.
IFO: I want to echo that. On our campus I’m the only person with a faculty list that doesn’t include staff. Different campuses are different.
MnSCU: How about one list that would go to everyone in this group? We would send it to the union.
IFO: I think this is a slippery slope, in terms of the union sending out these lists. But a better route would be to send it to the CIOs and ask them to send it to their FA presidents for a chain of communication.
IFO: I heard you say a list serve; to me that’s different from announcements. I want to make sure people hear it is important to get this out on campus and it’s important to hear how this will affect people. I’m a D2L user, and I was surprised at how many programs use D2L and also for accrediting. If you’re going to make decision, you need to know this. I want us to have a vehicle for us to hear the questions and issues we need. That timely notice gives people the time to back-up substantial files for accreditation.
IFO: Let’s see how we can systematically reach all the people. I hear there are so many uses for D2L, so how are we reaching all the people?
MnSCU: Since David is here, the IMS meeting is on Monday and we can deal with it then.
IFO: We’ve learned that CIOs are not always a dependable avenue for communication. We need multiple chains and that’s the angle we’ll take back from this discussion.
Cross Functionality Advisory Group
IFO: We talked with Jim Dillemuth and the consultants and discussed the issues we had with the timing of the meetings and getting things together. We don’t need to go into that. We want to discuss the feedback that resulted from the meeting that went to the investment committee and the results. How was it helpful and how can we improve?
MnSCU: I thought it was very meaningful and I came to the group and thanked them for time. I think we reported back how we used the results and I like the idea we are expressing how to make that better the next time around.
IFO: In terms of funding recommendation and comments on high demand online courses, we’ve alluded to it before, we want to see that data on these high demand courses. Who’s telling you this because this isn’t what we’re hearing. Under the business case funding online course, Linda you took full responsibility on addressing the intellectual properties issue. We want to set a firm date with Tim Price before these things go ahead we’ve been saying this for two years, let’s sit down. Tim expressed he wanted to know more specifically what things might be of concern to faculty and we have several concerns and that haven’t been addressed by the Academic and Student Affairs Policy Council even though it was on the agenda this year for the five year review.
MnSCU: I asked him to come down today; he’s saying he’s ready to meet with you. He thought you had a meeting and it was rescheduled or cancelled.
Potter: In addition to a campus perspective, I’m sitting on the MnOnline Advisory Council. Southwest Tech has the largest number of credit hours of any MnSCU organization. I think the number is 27,000 from last year. There are wide variations. Some have very little. It’s interesting the variation does not correlate to the institution. Growth rate is significant. It’s very understandable if various people would not see the down turn or growth. The data are there you can look at the trends and rates, if that information was shared you can see what we’re talking about.
MnSCU: That information has been shared with the Board.
Potter: The environment suggests growth and the potential for growth and faster growth, there are significant crucial strategic issues and more understanding on campuses. Past decisions need conversations with faculty about those choices and what it means a decade in the future. What the system will look like as those changes take place. It goes back to the conversation about cost structure about the system and systems that will be needed in the future. Current investment decisions are just a small piece.
IFO: Thank you, President Potter. We couldn’t agree more. The key word you said was strategic. We have concerns about what exactly the strategy should be and it’s not the same for all students and institutions. In terms of the faculty we don’t feel the intellectual property policy and procedure are being carried out on campuses. As more and more online courses are being used, this issue gets larger and larger. Specifically the Reusable Learning Objects - and we still haven’t straightened this out. Faculty have no idea what they’re giving up in terms of their rights. We don’t feel there has been adequate communication. Sitting down with Tim will be helpful. I am on the technology list serve. The latest round of emails is as if people are speaking Swahili. I have no idea what they’re talking about. There are specialists, when Cindy refers to Rhonda and David who teach IMS, but the vast majority of faculty have to retrain themselves to teach online.
IFO: To follow up on concerns, President Potter, the programmatic coherency within the online platform, simply making courses available, does not ensure integrity. One concern is that students seeking courses for programs from different institutions whether for convenience or avoidance, this makes it very difficult to ensure the coherency of a program. That’s a major academic concern.
IFO: Another concern was the whole idea of scheduling -- the ability of departments to have control over the number of courses and variety of courses offered, without consulting other departments.
IFO: At Metro the online course would not be offered until it went through the department.
Accountability Taskforce Update
(A handout was given.)
MnSCU: Here’s a copy of the revised implementation plan given to the Board in March. We’ve been working with the Accountability Drafting Team the last time they met we talked about the public launch. The pilot test, working with that group and we’ll schedule sessions around the state with these experts identified by the president. Linda Baer and her staff are working on the implementation of the plan and a draft should be available at the end of April. Our goal is by mid-May to have a plan and experts and training done so that the college and university staff has the knowledge and plan and can formulate their own activities that we’ve targeted for the second week in June.
IFO: I’m confused about the discussion by the Board about the audience that we’ve talked about a lot. It seemed they were of two minds (management tool and the other sticker-shock for perspective students and parents). There would be two different versions.
MnSCU: We believe we were clear from the beginning that they had asked us to do a management tool. I clarified the indicators were for we had those conversations in the Board meeting and they said we thought this was sticker-shock. We never brought a sticker-shock measure to them, but we did show them the consumer based web site in the state and left it with them that our assignment to date was to move this to a level and should we return to it they would have a companion piece. We had a component we were finishing up at this point.
IFO: What’s going on with public relations? What are we going public with?
MnSCU: The management tool.
Chancellor: Legislature, accountability transparent, to be an advocate for the system the words might be putting people off a little but I’ve always thought this is about public funding.
IFO: Who, at least in terms of general credentials, are the resident experts and what do they do?
MnSCU: They are research directors. With some exceptions, they have been involved in the development of these measures for some years.
IFO: But the reporter from The Forum is going to call me.
MnSCU: The public relations plan will be shared with key communicators on each campus.
Chancellor: The point Cindy is making is that she is a key communicator.
MnSCU: We as a public employer have to be careful as how we categorize your role, recognizing that you’re a key communicator is different than key communications. Who is key communicator to represent management, those are two different things.
IFO: All I’m saying is we are going to be called.
Chancellor: I want you to say great stuff.
IFO: Are we still going with the 10 indicators?
MnSCU: Yes, six have data, the seventh is underway, and the last three are still under development and we are working with a number of groups in the system.
Chancellor: This is a work in progress and we are not locked into changing this.
IFO: We obviously don’t have the dashboards in front of us, is one on student learning?
MnSCU: That’s the intent.
IFO: What’s the relationship between this and the VSA?
MnSCU: The VSA is a tool for prospective students and their families. The primary audience for this is system leadership (the legislature, Board of Trustees) where we’re able to align measure we’ll do that.
IFO: Is there any indication on the system version that sends people to the VSA?
MnSCU: Yes. At the launching going of this dashboard there will be links to other websites with information that will be useful.
IFO: Since you said you’re working several months on the measures that we haven’t been able to count, you’re going to push this out without them. Will they be on it and saying “in progress”? Are you removing them?
MnSCU: The thinking from the Board committee was those kinds of measure are really critical and we want something that feature that they are an important factor.
Proposed Policy 3.35 and Procedure 3.35.1 Credit for Prior Learning
IFO: When we left this at the last meet and confer we had raised objections to it going out for a first reading. You’re proposing it goes out in May?
MnSCU: Yes.
MnSCU: The report we got back was the meet and confer was in March there wasn’t enough time to get adequate review in the campus level. We wanted to bring this out on campuses because it will have important curricular impact on students. There is still time between now and the first reading in May. We are in a strong partnership with veterans services. Part of the reason we have a timeline issue is we want returning vets to have this available.
MnSCU: This was revised on part 3 as a result of the last policy council meeting and the IFO meeting in February. One main thing was to revise the language to be very clear on the portfolio review as a competency demonstration. It is a option that each institution decides so that has changed. I just revised the architecture of that section to be clearer. In subpart a. it breaks it down in types of prior learning assessments in national learning exams and the credit by portfolio review. What was basically a concern brought forward – that it was not clear – has been revised.
IFO: Yes, we acknowledge that another concern was that it did not review the requirement for campuses to accept credit for campuses for prior learning for transfer – this is one issue the universities have concerns. We acknowledge this is a sticky issue at the legislature.
MnSCU: Sub b of line 43, there are several related policies referenced there and it notes transfer. It’s on number 4. I am sure we had that discussion on the two policies with undergraduate transfer, the courses that are transcripted would transfer as such all other courses would. We didn’t want to redo that.
MnSCU: That’s also reflective of the legislature.
IFO: I thought there was a separate policy of military returning outside of prior learning?
MnSCU: Credit for military training for service is in there. We also referenced the statue in the policy and the statute says that military experience and training will be reviewed according to ACE guidelines or its equivalent.
IFO: Going back to transfer of credits, is it the entire packet transfers?
MnSCU: That would have to be a case by case, if a student earned a course, basis. The rest is according to transfer by course and the package.
IFO: Credit by portfolio review question on lines 49-30, if a system college or university offers not to, the institution has to make available a list. If my program chooses not to offer a portfolio list, I have to look at the list of institutions who do?
MnSCU: I know those. I know which uses portfolio review. It would have to be reviewed periodically and could make that available to you. It’s an early complaint we hear from veterans; they don’t feel they get good information.
IFO: Are you are saying you will take care of that and it will not fall on the faculty?
MnSCU: It will be on a website. It’s pretty easy.
IFO: This could get sticky once it gets out on the campuses. We’ve discussed this in the committee. When this is presented to the Board it always has the information about when it was reviewed. We would like it to say it was “reviewed with reservations” when it goes to the Board when it goes ahead for the first reading.
MnSCU: This is the procedure. There aren’t any issues with the policy. As you know it’s not until after the second reading with the policy that the procedure comes forward.
IFO: Are you saying we’ll have enough time to talk about this on campus before the next meet and confer?
MnSCU: Yes.
Orientation of New IFO President
MnSCU: We would be happy to do an orientation at any time.
Chancellor: I’ve enjoyed working with Nancy. She is outstanding and has strong core values and states them. We’ve been together more than you realize. I look forward to working with new leadership. I want to suggest one thing to start with. I think that Bill (Tschida) and the two of us, Linda, we could host Nancy out at the Town and County to talk about what would be helpful and I’d like to schedule two hours to decide what we want to do. I really enjoy these meetings.
The wonderful thing about meeting with faculty, is that we are constant learners. Cathy (Summa) gave me a new way to think about things - saving us not just the earth. I like the debates and talking to David about the IT. It’s easy to be critical. The capital budgets $300 million in capital $850 million, while we’re critical, everyone who works with this budget says we did well. We did get the largest in history.
IFO: I know that your door has always been open, and that makes a big difference.
FY 2010-2011 Biennial Operating Budget
(A handout was given.)
MnSCU: With the economic condition, we felt having a large group to get together might not be so successful. We thought we would have better success asking the individual stake holders group who have ideas. We’ll be in contact with Nancy and Rod to get your input. We’ll see where we come out of this session.
Chancellor: Lyndon Carlson wants to get this one, has this idea of free public higher education. He’s proposing the idea that all of our students across all systems if they’re poor we’ll find a way to have something for everyone, that goes right to the financial aid program. We can’t take Lyndon’s thinking quietly.
IFO: I was wondering, is the process going to be different from the last summer when we worked to develop the budget?
MnSCU: Yes.
Chancellor: Even though we might disagree we go out of here not liking everything and want to support when we can, we do well on the capital budget.
IFO: The earlier you can get us dates the better. Last year you did pay for duty days.
IFO Request for Office of the Chancellor Support for Anti-Racism Training for Board of Trustees
IFO: The IFO thinks the Board of Trustees should model behavior for the rest of the system and we’ve heard there is some movement for such training.
MnSCU: We have the diversity committee of the Board, and we can begin that discussion with the Chancellor also with the diversity committee chaired by Trustee Benson. We can talk about that as part of some ongoing training.
IFO: Is there anything we can do to support that?
Chancellor: You’ve always been right out there and if you write him a note suggesting this would be helpful in a positive way and you understand we’re going to be discussing the diversity committee. Or, knowing David Olson, you may want to circle by him a one-to-one maybe even a telephone call, to approach this. You could say this would be helpful to set an example of what we need to do when a top leadership can set an example. They have workshops from time to time, and study sessions. There’s no reason why you couldn’t make a study session like this.
Fleet Vehicles
IFO: There’s one thing we didn’t talk about today. Cathy Summa participated in a conference call about the training for the fleet vehicles. We’re of the opinion there are some really unexpected teaching and learning consequences as well as safety and data privacy issues we think it needs to be looked at. There is a serious concern over this starting in July without an infrastructure in place.
Chancellor: Did a problem occur with your members when they drove their own vehicles?
IFO: There were also issues about the community colleges using this as a revenue stream and the costs for student to take the course.
MnSCU: We’re paying all those costs.
IFO: We heard the costs would be borne by the departments.
MnSCU: I meant to say we weren’t charging the students.
IFO: But if you’re charging my department, how will they pay?
MnSCU: That’s why we want to get it out, to plan for it. I don’t think we can wait. We’ve already had an extension from the state. I thought we were moving forward.
IFO: This conversation took place on Tuesday this week. If you’re having a field trip and need six drivers, first you need to get…
MnSCU: The whole thing is complicated, but I don’t know that we can avoid this any longer. We’ve already had a year long extension.
IFO: The Motor Vehicle Use (MVU) Agreement statement is an issue of data privacy.
IFO: The NOV asks if you’ve gone through the training process and includes reviewing driver records and an annual review of their driving record.
MnSCU: I don’t think that’s right. There would be an annual verification if you have a valid driver’s license.
IFO: The material I saw in the appendix is much more restrictive than having a valid license it indicates they will check your record and although you may hold a valid license, but the employer can still make determinations about whether your driving record is “acceptable,” “conditional,” or “unacceptable”.
MnSCU: We don’t have much room to negotiate.
IFO: If this goes through in July it will have an impact in terms of academic curriculum.
MnSCU: We negotiated some differences with the state.
Chancellor: I think we need to have one person from each campus who knows everything about this and then get them in here and find a way to make this work.
MnSCU: I agree.
Potter: The challenge is facilities equipment issues the changes - consequences are involved.
Chancellor: Faculty that’s the consequence.
IFO: Students are already taxed, we don’t have the budget to do the field trips, the cost of those trips just increase.
MnSCU: What solutions do we have?
IFO: Don’t make it an unfunded mandate on us.
IFO: We don’t know how much the money is and it just hit me that we might have some cost saving we could use. Do we outsource training if we have facilities on training in our campus?
IFO: One aspect of not knowing the funding in the past when we increase the standards we use for requiring these things is that there are often cuts in the rates on insurance that could be used to offset. If we’re not getting cuts in our rates, then maybe something isn’t right. Actuarial rates are based on the qualities that go into that.
MnSCU: The insurance companies are saying if you don’t do this we won’t insure you. I’m concerned about the long term emergency procedure and I’d like to get this out. I know you don’t meet until September. Think about that and let me know, MSCF is fine, MAPE is fine…
IFO: We’ll get back to you.
MnSCU: 18 we are going to be audited and we’ll keep you informed.
MnSCU: I sent you information.