Minutes of 11 September 2006
Circulated:  12 September 2006
Re-Circulated:  25 September 2006
Approved:  25 September 2006

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs
6048 Fleming Administration Building
Ann Arbor, Michigan  48109-1340
Phone: (734) 764-0303
Fax: (734) 764-6564
Internet Address: http://www.umich.edu/~sacua/
Approved minutes: http://www.umich.edu/~sacua/sacmin/sacuaminutes.html

MINUTES OF THE SACUA MEETING OF 11 SEPTEMBER 2006

Present:   Combi, Frier, Giordani, MacAdam, Meerkov, Potter,  Riles, Seabury, Smith (Chair); Lehman,  Leu, Schneider

Absent:  none

MATERIALS DISTRIBUTED:

1.         Draft  Agenda

2.         Draft minutes of the SACUA meeting of 28 August 2006

3.        Targeted e-mail to the Faculty and Staff Community from Mary Sue Coleman and Bob Kelch dated 11 September 2006 regarding important information about M-CARE

4.         Letter from Laurita Thomas to SACUA/Senate Assembly Chair Charles B. Smith dated 8 September 2006 regarding the decision to expand the timeframe of eligibility for Medicare Part B reimbursements for certain recent retirees

5.         September 2006 Faculty Governance Update Item for Information for the Regents

6.       Targeted e-mail to the University of Michigan Community from President Mary Sue Coleman, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Teresa A. Sullivan, Vice President for Student Affairs E. Royster Harper, Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Lester P. Monts, and Associate Vice President for Human Resources Laurita E. Thomas dated 8 September 2006 regarding hot issues on campus this fall

7.        Electronic mail message from Teresa Sullivan and Timothy P. Slottow sent to U-M Deans, Directors and Department Heads dated 7 September 2006 regarding New Information Security Incident Reporting Policy which was forwarded by T. Schneider, Director of Faculty and Operational Support Services, to SACUA on 7 September 2006.

8.        SPG 601.25 Information Security Incident Reporting Policy, Issued 7/10/06

9.        " 'Report Card’ Gives U.S. Mediocre Marks in Higher Education," 7 September 2006 article by Sara Hebel in Today’s News from THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION

10.      "Public-College Graduates Accrue Almost as Much Student-Loan Debt as Private-College Peers, Report Says", 30 August 2006 article by Stephen Burd in Today’s News from THE CRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION

11.      Memorandum to Vice President for Research Stephen Forrest from SACUA Chair Charles B. Smith regarding Faculty Governance Involvement dated 6 September 2006

12.       Possible activities of the Research Policies Committee for 2006-07 dated 8/23/06

13.     Subcommittee Draft of Bylaws of the Selection Committee of the Davis-Markert-Nickerson Visiting Professorship on Academic and Intellectual Freedom

14.     Electronic mail message from Keith Riles to SACUA dated 7 September 2006 regarding draft letter to President Coleman and reply from Charles B. Smith to Keith Riles and SACUA dated 8 September 2006

15.     Electronic mail message from Tom Schneider to Provost Sullivan and General Counsel Krislov dated 8 September 2006 regarding Regents Bylaw 5.09 history

16.     Two versions of a draft letter to President Coleman concerning a current Regents Bylaw 5.09 case

17.     Notice of Initiation of Regents' Bylaw 5.09 Dismissal Proceedings dated 31 August 2006 with attached supporting documents

18.     Memorandum to students from a professor regarding fall term classes

19.     SACUA/Senate Assembly Planning Schedule, updated 7 September 2006

 Chair Smith convened the meeting at 2:30 P.M.; the draft agenda was approved. 

CONSIDERATION OF MINUTES
The minutes of 28 August were approved with one correction.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

The chair announced:

1. The pending sale of M-Care has been reported in the Detroit Free Press over the weekend. 
2. Human Resources has rescinded its decision to discontinue Medicare Part B reimbursement for recent retirees (distributed item 4).
3. The chair met with Regent White, and she offered to meet with SACUA to increase communication with elected faculty governance. 
4. President Coleman has distributed to the university community a message about “hot issues on campus this fall” (distributed item 6).  Also a new SPG has been implemented regarding information security incident reporting (distributed items 7 and 8).
5. Phil Hanlon will visit with SACUA on 23 October to talk about an upcoming space allocation study. 
6. The chair and Professor MacAdam held a scheduled private meeting with the president this past week.  The president declined to talk about the pending sale of M-Care.  She mentioned a potential role for faculty in responding to the Spelling Commission Report about higher education.  The administration is assembling a committee to assess the quality of education the institution is providing to students; SACUA representation on this committee will consist of Professors MacAdam, Meerkov, and Riles.
7. Professor Seabury will attend a scheduled private meeting with the provost on 20 September.
8. Handouts provided by Professor Seabury are included in the list of distributed items.
9. Monday 18 September will feature Committee Day followed by a SACUA meeting, and then by Senate Assembly.
10. The president has again cancelled a public meeting with SACUA.  SACUA members expressed dissatisfaction with the repeated lapses in these mandated meetings.

VISIT OF VICE PROVOST JOHN KING
            The guest and K. Bauer arrived at 2:40 P.M.  After a round of introductions the vice provost explained the ontogeny of his current position and his plans for the future.  He said that his job is focused on information issues broadly, not just IT.    

             Professor Potter remarked that he receives 80 to 90 unsolicited spam e-mails each day through his membership on administrative lists.  He asked whether stronger filters could be employed.  The vice provost replied that more than half of the e-mails coming to the U-M are omitted immediately by filters, and additional layers of filtering exist.  He said there is a balance between openness and security.  He said that much spam actually is coming from U-M servers owing to attacks by hackers into those servers.  He acknowledged that hackers always seem to be jumping ahead of our security.    

            Professor Riles asked what is foreseen to be the future of the university library, and specifically its print collections of journals, etc.  The vice provost replied that ever more journals and print is being produced, but that there is also a great upswing in digital material that is born digital.  He said there is a great challenge in selecting what to buy.  He added that nobody credible in this business thinks we are going to see the end of print in the foreseeable future.  However, he predicted that the entire repository of human knowledge now in print will likely be converted to digital form within the next 20 years.  He cited technological breakthroughs in storage capacity.  He remarked that visitors to the undergraduate library find few undergraduates in the stacks. Perhaps, he said, storing books may not be the best use of the space.  On the other hand, he acknowledged the intellectual benefits of browsing, if it were practiced. 

            The vice provost said that in the near future it will be possible to supply more information to more people at orders of magnitude lower per unit cost than at present.  He said there will correspondingly be huge effects on higher education.  Professor MacAdam pointed out that the library is now spending about 47% of its material resources on electronic resources.  She explained that within 10 minutes of the first Google material going on line, a faculty member from other institution came in looking for a journal article that was out of copyright, and it was already available on-line.  The vice provost reported that initial projections that Google would digitize the whole U-M collection in a very few years appears to be correct. 

            Professor Maybaum asked how King intended to incorporate the views of faculty into decisions within his office.  The vice provost replied that ultimate stewardship of the university is in the hands of the faculty.  He said an explicit part of his planning is that over the next 1 to 2 years he will be having major engagement with the faculty about decisions to be made.  He suggested that the institution has not done as good a job as it should in franchising innovations.  He cited CTools as a notable success, saying that the infrastructure has become used in over half of U-M courses within 3 years of introduction. 

             Professor Potter remarked that simultaneous with the introduction of CourseTools many previous  software systems were disabled.  He said the changes reeked havoc on one of his major courses with 300 to 400 students.  Great effort and expense had been expended to develop html code with complex links to literary material and critiques.  The links were destroyed without notice.  He said he discovered it was impossible to have a conversation with ITCS personnel about the difficulties their uninformed decisions create.  Instead, they ask for money to fix what they destroyed.  Vice provost King replied that he was willing to work to make sure the discussions occur.  He said that problems with legacy systems are ubiquitous and that they are non trivial problems.  He acknowledged that presumptions are often made in decisions that turn out to be bad presumptions. 

            Professor Giordani asked how faculty should expect to solve problems that are created by IT changes.  He said it was unsatisfactory to be told we will have to pay to fix the resulting problems.  The vice provost replied that university reporting lines are designed to respond to communications that flow upward through deans’ offices.  He also stated that the fiscal difficulties experienced by the U-M in the last 5 years have been the worst since the Great Depression.  He said that staff and faculty support structures are the first to be hit.  Professor Maybaum observed that administrator priorities are not always the same as those of faculty, and that in larger units there is a barrier between faculty and IT decision making. 

            Professor Meerkov asked the vice provost to share his thoughts about the future.  The vice provost responded that the U-M has little experience with distance learning, and that he thought it was a prudent way to behave.  But, he said, there are some notable successes, for example in the schools of nursing and public health.  He said that the U-M is a public institution and that it now needs to be more experienced with the technology.

            Professor Meerkov said that he has heard from students that excessive reliance on technology is harming education by overwhelming them with material.  He suggested that it would be good to have faculty involved in the vice provost's thinking about the future. 

            Professor Meerkov asked whether impending web-based course evaluations were within the vice provost's jurisdiction.  Meerkov noted that faculty have not been involved in the planning stages and that there are great concerns about how the new system will be used and how well it will work.  The vice provost replied that he needs to learn more about the subject.  He added that mechanisms to engage with faculty expertise are important to him.  He said that if faculty don't see benefits accruing from IT initiatives, they won’t be successful.  Professor Potter suggested that student involvement would be beneficial, as well.

            Professor Giordani encouraged the vice provost to engage with his advisory committees.  King replied that he is completely open to input from faculty governance, and that if SACUA invites him anytime he will come to meet. 

The guests left the meeting at 3:40 P.M.

SENATE ASSEMBLY AGENDA
            Members reviewed a draft agenda for the upcoming Senate Assembly meeting.  Professor Meerkov asked that the chair encourage Assembly members to seek adoption of Shared Governance recommendations within their units.

LIAISON REPORTS
Research Policies-
               Professor Combi reported that he and Chair Smith met with RPC chair, Professor Mary Haan, to discuss RPC activities for the coming year.  OVPR staff provided Professor Haan with a list of possible activities for RPC and stated that the advisory committee should consider OVPR items rather than setting its own agenda as it did last year.  Chair Smith called attention to a memorandum to VP Forrest (distributed item 11) thanking him for his presentation at a recent SACUA meeting and stressing the importance of VPs participating directly in their advisory committee meetings.  There was also some discussion of concern regarding the response received from OVPR staff to the RPC report on recommendations about IRBs.

ROLE OF LIAISONS
            Professor Potter sought clarification of the role of liaisons to Senate Assembly committees.  Chair Smith responded that liaisons participate in committee activities and have full voting rights.  In addition, they report on committee activities to SACUA. 

DAVIS, MARKERT, NICKERSON VISITING PROFESSORSHIP
            Chair Smith reported that a subcommittee chaired by Professor D’Alecy produced a draft of bylaws for the DMN Visiting Professorship.  He asked members to read distributed item 13 and to respond by the end of week with approval or disapproval of the draft.  He explained that under the proposal, administrators appointed to the committee would not have votes, and that the chair votes only in case of ties.  Smith asked Mr. Schneider to collate the electronic mail responses from SACUA members. 

GRIEVANCE PROCEDURES TASK FORCE
            Chair Smith reminded SACUA members that they had identified grievance policy reform as a high priority item at their planning retreat.  He proposed establishing a faculty task force for the stated purpose.  Professor Frier suggested that, in addition to grievance policy reform, the Faculty Hearing Committee needs to be better defined in the Faculty Handbook.

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ACTION OF SACUA 091106-1

Professor Potter moved that SACUA establishes a Grievance Procedures Task Force consisting of Professors Lehman, Masten, Smith, Ulsoy and up to two others to be named, with the SACUA chair as interim chair, and with the goal of delivering a report to SACUA by December 2006 (Meerkov seconded).

The action was approved by unanimous vote.
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RESPONSE LETTER REGARDING REGENTS’ BYLAW 5.09 PROCEEDING
            Chair Smith called attention to a draft letter developed by SACUA members in response to a letter issued by President Coleman.  SACUA engaged in committee of the whole revisions of the draft.

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ACTION OF SACUA 091106-2
Multiple members moved that SACUA endorses a revised draft of its letter to President Coleman and charges the chair to transmit it on behalf of SACUA.

The motion was approved by unanimous vote.
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OLD/NEW BUSINESS
There was no old or new business.

EXECUTIVE SESSION
The meeting entered executive session at 5:10 P.M. to discuss committee members and chairs for Rules, Development, and Secretary Advisory Committees.  

The meeting adjourned at 5:15 P.M. 

John Lehman
Senate Secretary
_________________________________________________________________________________________
University of Michigan Bylaws of the Board of Regents, Sec. 5.02: 
Governing Bodies in Schools and Colleges