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Minutes for March 29, 2006
A meeting of the University Senate was held at 4:15 p.m. on Wednesday, 29 March 2006, in Maxwell Auditorium.
Present were: Dean Eric Spina; Senators Alston, Anderson, Bennett, Breese, Burak, Cihon, Cleary, Crowston, Diaz, Doyle, Elin, Flusche, Gensemer, Glauser, Hackman, hamner, Harding, Hartmann, Heintz, Hogan, Holzwarth, Isik, Jensen, Kasowitz-Scheer, Khalifa, Klaver, Kornfilt, Letterman, Lipson, MacDonald, MacInnes, Mager, Marcoccia, Masrouri, Middlemiss, Moore, Mugo, Murphy, Newton, Notas, O'Rourke, Pasqualoni, Patteson, Pellow, Potter, Russell, Samson, Scherzinger, Sherman, Smith (C.J.), Smith (Do), Sternlicht, Tankersley, Trento, Tucker, Van Gulick, Vitharana, Wadley, Ware (B.), Webber, Wells, Wilmoth, Zhang.
Presiding Officer: Dean Eric Spina
Dean Spina called a special meeting of the University Senate to order, and recognized Prof. Can Isik, who reported for the Agenda Committee. Prof. Isik told the body that there was one item on the day's agenda, the discussion of the report of the Budget committee, which had been circulated to senators by e.mail. He said that there were extra copies available for any persons who had not brought theirs with them.
The Chairman then explained that any vote taken on the Budget committee recommendations was advisory to the Chancellor, and that the body could take such a vote if it so wished. He called Prof. Jerry Mager, Chairman of the Budget committee, to present the committee's report.
Prof. Mager began his report by thanking the committee for its work, and mentioning the number of hours spent working on the various aspects of the budget. He said that the calendar they followed [i.e., beginning in the summer] the past year might end up being the one they continued with. Prof. Mager went through the 12 recommendations on pp. 2-3 of the report, one by one, and finished by cautioning the Senate not to think of the budget as the centerpiece of the academic mission of the institution. He said that despite all the hours of committee time, and the fact of an entire Senate meeting being devoted to it, that the budget served the academic efforts, not the other way around. Prof. Mager then opened the floor to questions and comments. In the discussion, the questions and concerns raised included:
- a comment that the freeze on operating budgets should be clarified, that it was actually a freeze on the purchasing power of the operating budgets;
- re item #7 (p.3), the enhancement of the plan for addressing salaries of category 3 staff members, senator wondered where the money would come from;
- a senator expressed concern over the transparency achieved by the RCM model; wanted the Senate at large to be involved in the process; thought that the way tuition/discount rate was reported masked rather than showed the reality, that maybe it wasn't the best formula to use;
- a senator asked about the 5% increase in the library acquisitions budget and how it would be achieved; also expressed her conviction that the disparity in faculty salaries must be addressed, saying that SU was losing good faculty members because of it;
- a senator referred to two previous Budget committee chairs, Marty Fried (report in the 1990's), Nahmin Horwitz (the "Horwitz Equation"), and ideas they had come up with or reports made on the disparity in faculty salaries with SU's comparison universities. [The Horwitz "formula" was basically a 'good intention', whereby the Budget committee assumed the comparison schools likely would raise salaries by the same percentage each year, and that whatever that was SU would raise its by 1% more. Thus, at the time, SU was 5-10 per cent behind, so it would take 5-10 years to catch up, presumably. And if the comparison schools raised salaries by a different amount, that would be corrected in the following budget year. This plan did not work out as they'd hoped, for various reasons.];
- an observation that carryover and unrestricted funds were not included/displayed;
- a comment that the incentives could turn out to be good for units, but that it might be dangerous to leave some things (e.g., salary increases) up to the units, since institutional values (i.e., a xx% salary increase) might not be the same when it came time for the responsibility center to allocate money.
Prior to adjournment, Prof. Mager commented that, in the matter of budgets, leadership was all-important. No vote was taken.
The meeting was adjourned.
Teresa Gilman
University Senate Recorder
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