Executive Committee Meeting
Boulder Faculty Assembly
Minutes
December 8, 2003
Attending:
Barbara Bintliff, BFA Chair
Greg Carey, Secretary
Stein Sture, Vice Chair
Andy Cowell, BFA Academic Technology Committee Chair
David Guenther, BFA Administrative Services Committee Chair
Bob Hohlfelder, Budget and Planning Committee Chair
Jerry Peterson, At-Large Board Member
Mike Preston, BFA Intercollegiate Athletics Cmte Chair
Gail Ramsberger, Arts and Sciences Council Chair
Lori Seward, BFA Committee on Women Chair
Bill Waite, Academic Affairs Committee
Martin Walter, BFA Student Affairs Cmte Chair
Stephanie Martin, UGGS/UCSU Legislative Council
Guest Speaker:
President Betsy Hoffman
Media:
Adam Ewing, Colorado Daily
Kate Larsen, Boulder Daily Camera
Jeff Dodge, Silver & Gold Record
Not Attending:
Mel Branch, BFA Faculty Affairs Committee Chair
Mark Dubin, BFA Libraries Committee Chair
Uriel Nauenberg, former BFA Chair
Marguerite Moritz, BFA GLB Affairs Committee Chair
Cathy Comstock, BFA AAP Committee Chair
Dipankar Chakravarti, Minority Affairs Committee Chair
Tom Mayer, Communications Committee Chair
Clayton Lewis, Faculty Compensation and Benefits Cmte Chair
Rodney Taylor, At-Large Board Member
Bill Kaempfer, Assoc.Provost and VC for Budget and Planning
A meeting of the Boulder Faculty Assembly Executive Committee was held on Monday, December 8, 2003, in UMC room 425. Chair Barbara Bintliff presided. The meeting convened at 3:30 p.m. and adjourned at 5:00 p.m.
A. Minutes
MOVED by Waite and seconded by Sture that the minutes of November 24 be approved.
B. Special Report
Chair Bintliff introduced President Elizabeth Hoffman who began her presentation with the acknowledgement that all present were most likely interested in the topic of consolidation of the UCD and HSC campuses. Hoffman told the group that a cost and benefits analysis is underway which will look at taking on a campus consolidation, and the only major change at this time is the installation of Jim Shore who is serving as interim chancellor for both campuses. In every other way the two campuses have remained separate. In referring to a handout she distributed, Hoffman stated that everyone would like to feel that what we are doing is in the general in the best interests of all concerned and that the end result will be a great urban university.
Hoffman went on to say that as ICR rates are up for renewal this year at the Health Sciences Center, we are proceeding carefully. There is a precedent for maintaining separate ICR rates and some institutions have several different rates operating at once. As fiscal harm is already being done to the university as a result of the budget cuts it is critical that we do not create additional fiscal harm during this consolidation process. Faculty, staff and student governments have been brought into the planning process and have representation on the steering committee, as do the Boulder and the Colorado Springs campuses. An RFP was put out to get help and in order to obtain an unbiased view of the process and identify the best practices around the country, and it is anticipated that a final decision regarding the consolidation will come sometime in spring of 2004. The comparably large steering committee has broad representation as opposed to the smaller work groups and work teams which report to the work groups on specific projects like indirect costs. The steering committee reports are scheduled for completion in March, followed by a recommendation to Hoffman as to whether the process should go forward. A recommendation from Hoffman to the Regents will be made at the budget retreat in June to be followed by a Regent decision end of June, 2004. Hoffman concluded her remarks and asked for questions.
Sture stated that the two campus faculties in many ways approach research and scholarship as “differently as night and day” and wondered if they would be kept separate and how promotions reappointments and tenure cases would be handled if merged together. Hoffman agreed that consolidation of faculty would take some time, with the good news being that most faculty work takes place within departments and colleges, and already there is a lot of joint work going on at the departmental as well as campus level. Hoffman also agreed that the medical school faculty is fundamentally different in their approach to research. She hoped that the consolidation would bring faculty together despite these kinds of differences. Hohlfelder acknowledged that the merger is in our periphery and we are aware of the ramifications for CU Boulder and asked if “do no harm” also extends to us. Hoffman responded by saying that it does extend to CU-Boulder as well as to the Colorado Springs campus and that she has no intention of taking resources from Boulder to make the consolidation happen. Hohlfelder asked how the merger would improve the Boulder campus. Hoffman stated that Boulder has a partnership with Denver but there maybe ways to partner we haven’t thought of yet, e.g., the School of Public Health. This school would be an enterprise unto itself and a whole new idea which did not exist until consolidation put this idea “on the front burner.” Bintliff stated that keeping everyone informed is critical to this process and asked why study groups been asked to keep their deliberations confidential. Hoffman stated that the steering committee proceedings will be open and numbers can be discussed but that in an effort to give people an opportunity to fearlessly speak their minds, the study committee proceedings will be kept confidential.
Hoffman went on to discuss budget and gave thanks to Steve Golding, the new Vice President for Business and Finance, who started working on this project almost as soon as he arrived on campus. She began by presenting a slide showing the national perspective on deficits in higher education showing state budget funding to higher education shifting from 20 to 11 percent in Colorado in the last fifteen years. State appropriations for CU have fallen from 25 to 9.6 percent of the budget over the same time period. The big gain was in gifts, grants and contracts, with approximately 25% still coming from tuition and fees. In the years spanning 2002-2004, state education budgets were reduced by over 26 percent or $180 million state-wide. In fiscal year 2004 there was no enrollment funding for an additional 13,000 students statewide. By 2006 there will almost 22,000 more students in higher education in Colorado with no additional enrollment funding. CU Boulder could be looking at 30,000 students in the future as a result of a “baby boom echo,” or 70 million students coming through nation-wide up to the year 2008. Bintliff stated that CU currently has plans to reduce the number of incoming freshmen and Hoffman agreed and added that it is difficult to stabilize the freshman class when so many students wish to come to CU-Boulder. Referring to her charts, Hoffman stated that the bottom line was that as a state if we do not address the fiscal juggernaut created by constitutional amendments that both limit spending and require spending at the same time there will be no public money left for higher education by the year 2010. Hoffman has presented three choices to the JBC: one, we deal with the TABOR, Gallagher and Amendment 23 and pass constitutional amendments that free up spending; two, we can institute a constitutional amendment which would take higher education spending out from under TABOR; or three, we can go private.
Walter told the group that at one time the university had the constitutional capability to levy its own taxes and could we consider reinstating that provision. Hoffman said it was an interesting thought and that indeed we could.
She added that we are worse off than we were ten years ago, with Colorado ranking 44th in the nation for per capita public investment in higher education. CU’s priorities in her view were to first defeat the McKeon Bill euphemistically called the “College Affordabilty Bill of 2003” which would penalize any institution of higher education which raised tuition by more than twice inflation over a three year period by loss of federal funds. This bill, in the President’s opinion, would bankrupt higher education in Colorado and would reduce the number of grants in aid to students, thereby hurting the very population the bill was originally intended to help. What CU is facing is happening all over the country in the form of a national abandonment of public higher education, particularly at research universities. Secondly, CU needed support to maintain the second year of Quality for Colorado. Hoffman believes we will get a fair hearing on this concern in the legislature. Thirdly, new funding solutions in the form of an omnibus bill must be considered. Hoffman added that if CU does not address these funding issues through constitutional amendment or get all of higher education out from under TABOR we will have to start refunding tuition. CU is the only institution of higher education that can get out from under TABOR by going enterprise. Any bill crafted would necessarily be written to allow us enterprise status, do no harm to us and allow all other institutions of higher education in Colorado to get out from under TABOR and go enterprise. In addition, Hoffman stated that it would be easier to get the flexibility we need and the support from the public regarding decision making if we subject ourselves to more accountability. The voucher-enterprise-performance contract bill is currently supported by Governor Owens.
Hohlfelder stated that any further budget cuts would only diminish further our ability to deliver on our promise to the state. Hoffman stated that at the very least a substantial and growing number of people in the legislature understand this. Carey asked if means testing is something that should be brought to the table, and Hoffman stated that means testing the vouchers and perhaps placing more money into financial aid has been discussed but that adding it to the bill could complicate it significantly. She believes that over time more money will go to needs-based financial aid, which is means testing. Peterson stated that sponsored research is going well and Hoffman concurred. Peterson stated that he has noted a change in roles with regard to pursuit of federal projects which often arise due to faculty connections and initiatives. He went on to say that there is a line between where the faculty can carry things and where the system picks up the initiative and responsibility, and asked if President Hoffman could tell the committee where that line will be and whether it is moving. Hoffman said that she does not believe the line is moving and that the current objective is to facilitate bringing faculty together on proposals such as the Homeland Security initiative as no one faculty person could acquire initiatives of that magnitude on their own. Peterson added that it is the faculty who carry out the work, and Hoffman concurred. Peterson pointed out that the current level of facilitation is something recent. Hoffman agreed and said that an example of the kind of project we have the best chance of getting is in network security, and the faculty expertise in this area is spread across at least three of the four campuses, so that without some way of bringing together the faculty from these campuses the project will not materialize.
Carey pointed out that as educators we have a responsibility to explain educational inflation to the taxpayer and solicited Hoffman’s answer to that question. Hoffman stated that the best person to articulate an answer would be Steve Golding, but that her best analogy was between higher education and industry. Higher education is labor intensive as opposed to industry which has become increasingly mechanized over the last ten years. Industry has successfully sent work overseas, thereby reducing expenses, which is clearly something higher ed cannot do. Industry has also managed to send back a lot of work to the consumer to cut costs, but that is obviously something higher education cannot implement to cut costs.
Chair Bintliff thanked the President for her time and presentation.
C. Chair’s Report
The next meeting of the Executive Committee will be Monday, December 15 and Chancellor Byyny will speak on budget issues. The schedule for both the Executive Committee and Assembly meetings are posted on the BFA website. In 2004 the Executive Committee will meet the first and third Mondays of each month with the exception of January.
A new policy is scheduled to be approved by the Regents regarding home ownership program expansion. For a lower interest loan rate to faculty, first time homeowners will pay interest only for twenty years on the loan, at which time the loan becomes due. This program is premised on the fact that most people do not live in a house for twenty years. The first round of applications will be due in January assuming passage by the Board of Regents. The Chair encouraged everyone to tell faculty interested in becoming homeowners about this new program.
Fall Break has become a big issue in recent weeks with a major concern being the lack of full attendance for Fall Break and Thanksgiving holiday weeks. The mental health impact of Fall Break on students is currently being researched. The Chair solicited ideas from the committee as to how the calendar could be changed. Suggestions included reinstating reading days, adding days to the start of classes in August, and making the Thanksgiving holiday a full week Ramsberger suggested that general principles be made regarding the university calendar, such as “do not break up an academic week,” and then let someone else work out the details as to the dates and deadlines in a given academic year. Bintliff suggested that the Academic Affairs Committee pick up this issue.
The Chair announced that the Associate Deans would like to work more closely with the BFA and that she has had conversations with Jim Sherman, Associate Dean of Engineering, to facilitate this dialogue.
The Executive Committee was planning to bring Rob Davis, Dean of Engineering, Bill Kaempfer and Ric Porreca to discuss the UCD-HSC consolidation process next year. Davis is a member of the consolidation steering committee and could answer questions directly but Porreca and Kaempfer could attend the meeting as “resource persons” as it has been made clear that committee meetings transactions are to be kept confidential. The BFA could think about taking a position on the consolidation and the faculty could prepare a position report for submission.
Bintliff was concerned at the complete lack of information evidenced in the two editorials that appeared in last week’s Colorado Daily. She asked everyone present to engage in an electronic discussion on how best to respond to these editorials throughout the week.
The Chair thanked everyone for attending and the meeting was adjourned.
Respectfully submitted by Martha Shernick, BFA Administrator