apologies. It wasn't for lack of desire to have it done.
COMMENTS BY SIDNEY MCPHEE, VICE CHANCELLOR FOR ACADEMIC
AFFAIRS AND STRATEGIC PLANNING
Dr McPhee announced TBR's budget priorities, as presented
to the Education Subcommittee. These include
1)Improve faculty salaries; Dr McPhee is optimistic
that the word about loss of faculty is getting through, as
evidenced by 15 million dollars in the governor's budget
earmarked for retention and recruitment of faculty.
Guidelines for the distribution of this money will come out
of the board, but individual campuses (read this as
"presidents") will have a large say in how it is used.
Legislators are aware that the state is being "raided" by
surrounding states, and even by private schools from within
the state.
2)Improved operating expenses for the campuses
3)Special allocation for research (research
allocations will NOT go to community colleges)
4)Facilities maintenance/buidling projects
Dr McPhee feels that most legislators are coming around to
the notion that the budget can't be balanced any longer on
the backs of higher education.
Geier is funded by a 10.2 million special allocation in the
budget.
The governor's budget includes a 3% increase for state
employees, with 2% to be funded by the state, and 1% out of
the operating budget of the employee's institution.
There WILL be tuition increases again.
Dr McPhee offered this as an interesting aside. The
president of MTSU just left for greener pastures, but when
he first came to MTSU, he found the salaries of faculty and
staff so abysmal that he committed 30% of ALL of MTSU's
discretionary funds to funding equity studies until such
time as the equity targets were 100% funded. More
importantly, he stuck to that pledge.
Dr McPhee admitted that Tennessee's reputation has gotten
out to other parts of the country as "not the place to be"
in higher ed.
He closed with a brief history of how we got to where we
are with the equity studies. The equity studies now in
place were prompted by emeritus issues, administrator
salary questions, and specifically UT's midnight hour
raising of salaries 3 or 4 years back. There was such an
outcry from the public that an amendment was attached to an
appropriations bill stating that no future higher ed salary
changes could ever be approved without being a part of the
campus' equity plan. That's what led, for example, to PSTCC
hiring Mercer to fund our latest study. (I don't know how
you fared in that equity study, but by my best estimates,
a 40% increase was required to lift me to the middle of a
reasonable salary range for my position; maybe I will get
the 25% still needed to get me up to mid-level, but I am
not holding my breath.) McPhee closed by saying that there
is an effort towards a statewide equity study; opinions on
the helpfulness of this approach seem split.
PROPOSED REVISIONS TO TBR POLICY 5:01:06:00 PATENTS AND
COPYRIGHTS
A document was distributed regarding intellectual property
rights. Concern was expressed by the CSTCC rep suggesting
that the document focussed on universities to the exclusion
of community colleges, specifically with repeated reference
in the document to "university" rather than "institution".
These changes will be addressed by non-editorial revision.
ADDITION OF ASSOCIATE OF FINE ARTS DEGREE
Our own Dr Bruns heads a committee to look at the prospects
of offering such a degree. Work is just starting.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION REQUIREMENT TBR POLICY 2:01:00:00
There is some concern that TBR's PE requirement is not
possible inthe Regent's Online Degree Program (RODP).
(Biology and chemistry faculty complaints about similar
misgivings in lab courses seem to continue to be
ignored.) TBR is looking into replacing the PE requirement
with a wellness course. SubCouncil reps questioned the
possibility of monitoring any course with physical
requirements. This issue is being studied.
PROPOSED CALENDAR GUIDELINE REVISIONS
There are newly approved calendar guidelines in place.
Apparently, the major changes are the inclusion of two new
sentences. The first is "Institutions may offer terms of
alternate length in addition to the 15 week semesters". The
second is "When providing alternate class formats, the
institution is responsible for documenting equivalence in
terms of classroom instructional time, student effort,
an/or student achievement".
These were added primarily to allow for easier
implementation of online coursework.
CAN COMMUNITY COLLEGE FACULTY WITH A MASTER OF FINE ARTS BE
CONSIDERED FOR PROMOTION TO A FULL PROFESSOR?
Dr McPhee's reaction to this question was "There should be
no question" that the MFA, specifically in art, IS the
terminal degree in art. After looking at the wording of the
policy, Dr McPhee admitted that he could understand how it
could be misinterpretted otherwise, but he was really
shocked at the thought that anyone could be denied
application for promotion because they "only" had an MFA in
art.
SICK LEAVE OWNERSHIP
Faculty complained that sick leave is counted as salary,
but not credited upon retirement. Dr McPhee responded that
current state law prohibits giving dollars to employees for
sick leave. The only recourse would be to get a legislator
to champion the idea, and sponsor legislation. Dr McPhee
said that in light of other needs, this would not be
considered a priority item for TBR to pursue.
REGENTS ONLINE DEGREE PROGRAMS UPDATE
The RODP was approved.
There's some confusion about how compensation works for
faculty developing RODP courses. TBR sends $6000 to the
campus developing the course, then the campus determines
how the money will get spent. At the meeting of the
Academic Officers, it was determined that most campuses
were paying faculty $2500-$3000 for the development of new
web courses, and $1500-$2000 for conversion of courses to
the web.
Campuses absolutely can NOT use the money to buy computers.
There are a couple of immediate perks of the approval of
the RODP. Soon, TBR will announce a deal with Dell
Computers; in return for being the official computer
company of the RODP, all PSTCC students, faculty, staff,
and alumni will be able to purchase new Dell computers at a
discount that was described as "terrific". Specifics
weren't announced, but it sounded promising. Also, RODP
development required licensing of the Virtual Library,
which will then be available free of charge to everyone
associated with the TBR system.
ARTICULATION INITIATIVE UPDATE
I seem to always report the same thing here; work
continues, problems exist, more later.
REVIEW OF PERFORMANCE BASED SCHOLARSHIP AS APPROVED AT
MARCH 2001 BOARD MEETING
At the January meeting, Faculty SubCouncil overwhelmingly
disapproved of tuition waivers of out-of-state fees for
many performance-based programs. Predictably, the board
approved the waivers anyway. So that will teach us.
UPDATE ON FUNDING FOR SALARY ADJUSTMENTS RECOMMENDED BY
SALARY EQUITY STUDIES
Forget about it. There's no money. There's not likely to be
anytime soon. Although, just in case you didn't catch it
earlier in this message, I will repeat my earlier...
Dr McPhee offered this as an interesting aside. The
president of MTSU just left for greener pastures, but when
he first came to MTSU, he found the salaries of faculty and
staff so abysmal that he committed 30% of ALL of MTSU's
discretionary funds to funding equity studies until such
time as the equity targets were 100% funded. More
importantly, he stuck to that pledge...
So, maybe there's hope, given a high level of
administrative support at the local campuses.
WHEN AND HOW ARE SUPERVISORS/ADMINISTRATORS EVALUATED?
TBR says it MUST be done, but does not say how.
Ciao!
dave
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DAVID VINSON
Email: dvinson@pstcc.cc.tn.us
"Pellissippi State Technical Community College"