University of North Carolina
136th Session of the Faculty assembly
April 7, 2006

• President Bowles sent his regrets that he would not be available to address the assembly because he was participating in a Sexual Trafficking Conference.   His Chief of Staff, Jeff Davies, reported in his stead.
• A complete list of faculty assembly delegates (and alternates) for 2006-2007 should be sent by each campus to the executive committee of the Assembly by May 1. Please include email and phone contact information. This information is necessary so that committee assignments can be made over the summer.
• President Killingworth recognized those delegates who were in their last term of service, including two who are retiring or entering phased retirement. (Nancy Fogarty, UNCG and Fred Corbin, NCSU).
• The Executive Committee is meeting monthly with President Bowles and recommends that the entire assembly meet five times during the 2006-2007 academic year, with three additional “special issues” meetings at selected campuses. 
• President Bowles is requiring chancellors to hold crisis management meetings to develop plans to deal with potential disasters such as terrorist attacks, chemical spills, and weather disasters.
• A draft of the “day in the life of typical faculty” initiative coordinated by Cat Warren, is nearly complete, with 26 out of 32 profiles submitted. Delegates were asked to remind volunteers who have not yet submitted their profiles to complete them as soon as possible. Once all materials have been received and edited, they will be compiled by Sue Carpenter and provided to President Bowles for distribution to legislators.
• Judith Wegner has completed a faculty workload survey entitled Faculty Work in The University of North Carolina that concludes that the average faculty work week comprises approximately 55 hours. Over 200 responses have been collected to date, representing both tenured and untenured faculty in a wide range of academic fields.
• President Bowles has also requested information about faculty who have left the UNC system or candidates who refused offers of employment because of pay or benefit issues. This information will be sent to Betsy Brown, who will compile it for the president.
• The inauguration of President Bowles will take place on Wednesday, April 12, 2006 at UNC Greensboro. Faculty Assembly delegates and Senate Chairs should have received invitations and are invited to take part in the processional. 

• The “short session” of the legislature will convene May 9.
• Budgets are already being considered, with a public meeting scheduled for April 17. 
• House leadership should be stable for the short session, but political issues may dominate the house. The Senate should be supportive.
• The two key issues of focus will be the shortage of public school teachers (particularly in science and mathematics) and of nurses.
• Governor’s budget will be printed May 9 and he will hold a press conference May 11. President Bowles has frequently met with the governor to advocate for UNC’s priorities.
• The proposal to train and involve faculty in advocacy was welcomed and considered very important.   Talking points are being developed.
• For the short session, campus events and personal contacts will be especially important.

• Best Practices for Promotion and Tenure will be rewritten for the Fall, 2006, including a discussion of the inclusion of collegiality in the criteria for P&T.
• There was considerable negative reaction to the position paper from the US Commission on Higher Education, which posited that the “problems” in academia can be traced to tenured faculty and proposed a greater reliance on part time instructors. An informational position paper will be developed.
• A Textbook web page has been posted on the Assembly website that includes best practices in textbook adoption.

• Key Budget Committee discussions were presented earlier in the discussion of changing from a revenue system based on FTEs to one based on SCHs.

• The new option to be offered by the State Health Plan meets many of the concerns of faculty and staff.
• The committee does not support the resolution addressing collective bargaining by state employees.

• The committee plans to complete a survey of a sample of department chairs to assess funding for faculty professional development, including travel.
• Issues involving institutional support for graduate assistants and reassigned time were discussed.
• A resolution advocating a competitive analysis of the University’s ability to attract and develop excellent faculty was proposed and, after minor amendments, passed without dissent by the Assembly. The resolution is on the Faculty Assembly web site at:

• The committee plans to move beyond what has already been done with the Best Practices in Shared Governance document by developing a survey that assesses where individual campuses are with respect to the these practices and determine whether mentoring is desirable. 
• The Historically Minority Institutions (HMI) committee will hold a workshop on faculty governance with President Bowles delivering the keynote address. Faculty Assembly         Committee members will be asked to participate. The Governance committee is actively seeking other ways to assist the HMIs, including the possibility of offering leadership training.
• Past resolutions passed by the Assembly will be reviewed with the help of past committee chairs, and their status will be discussed with General Administration.
• A resolution was proposed urging the President of the University to ensure that the senior administrators of the sixteen campuses be committed to and comply with the “Standards of Shared Governance” approved by the Assembly in April, 2005. After some additions, the resolution passed without dissent. The resolution is located on the Faculty Assembly web site at:

• The committee met with Jim Sadler and addressed four key issues
  • The need for shared governance between the committee and the UNC General Administration.
  • On-line programs
    • Currently the UNC system has 90 approved programs, larger than the University of Phoenix.
    • Issues include the quality of the programs, the development of the UNC on-line portal, transfer of courses, the cost of the courses, collaborations with community colleges for on-line programs, and infrastructure issues.
  • Articulation with Community Colleges for campus and on-line programs
    • Issues include assessment of the quality of courses designed for transfer to universities, the problem of transferring lower level CC courses for upper level credit, the need for continual monitoring of courses, preparation of CC faculty, and accreditation of programs.
  • Residency hours required for campus and on-line courses
• For the next meeting, the committee will discuss a comparison of the GPA and retention statistics for native and transfer students. 

• The committee held a joint meeting with Faculty Development during which Synchronous Learning Management Systems were discussed. The TLT Collaborative conducted a comprehensive study of four systems and will report the results in the coming weeks. Details of the study were presented during the recent TLT Conference. An electronic version has been posted at the conference website. 
• A pilot study of a Content Management System designed to permit users to share teaching, research and assessment materials will be carried out in the coming year. It is likely that the system to be studied will be leased by the Community College System. A report of the results of the study will be presented at the next TLT Conference in Spring, 2007.
• The meeting included two participants, Andrea Eastman-Mullins   and Hillarie Nickerson, who attended virtually by conference call and the Synchronous Learning Management System Eluminate.
• The TLT Conference held in March, 2006 involved 433 attendees in over 150 presentations and workshops.

• The Task Force statement of purpose is available at: http://uncfacultyassembly.northcarolina.edu/html/minutes/2006/april.htm.
• During the next year, the task force will develop a plan to reorganize the Assembly to make it more flexible and able to respond. 
• The committee will first obtain information about how Faculty Assemblies at other large University systems function.
• Committee chairs and other present and former Assembly members with institutional memory will be consulted to determine what they liked and disliked about the current structure.
• All delegates are invited to provide input to the process.
• Future meetings might be theme oriented, with experts invited to inform the proceedings.