Mānoa Faculty Senate Executive Committee
Minutes of September 14, 2009

Present: David Ross, Susan Hippensteele, Martin Rayner, Tom Hilgers, Halina Zaleski, Shirley Daniel

The meeting convened at 2:15. The committee approved the minutes of Sept 8 as revised.

Chair’s Report

The committee discussed the status of the UHPA negotiations.

The budget/prioritization committee met last Friday. VC Cutshaw is scheduling an open meeting, most likely on the morning of Sept 23. There is a sense that the faculty wants more information about budget details.

• With regard to the stimulus funds, the administration seems to think that stimulus funds must be used for instructional purposes. Therefore they are looking at using it instead of g-funds for some expenses. It may also be used instead of tuitions funds. The administration is looking at The right way to use these and stay in compliance.

• People are still asking what stage of the prioritization process we are in. Also, is there enough discussion of quality?

• There was a discussion about whether more data on the efficiency measures spreadsheet should be disclosed. The VC had drafted a memo to explain the data, and portions of that memo may be distributed with the data.

• The committee is concerned that the administration continues to refer to the various stages of the prioritization process. However, there has been much manipulation of earlier data and spreadsheets by the administration without faculty input, so in reality, the transparency at this stage is not in accordance with the agreed upon prioritization process.

With regard to access to email lists for the faculty senate, Ross has contacted David Lassner to obtain the appropriate vehicle for this. He is awaiting a response at this point.

The BOR will meet later this week. We need to review the agenda to see if there are items we need to address. Chair Ross is also going to meet with VP Johnsrud about the ACCFSC.

The campus is also having a campus award ceremony this week.

Agenda for the Sept 16 faculty senate meeting The committee provided feedback about the draft agenda and PowerPoint presentation that Chair Ross had circulated.

Memo to the Chancellor concerning faculty consultation on matters.

The committee provided Chair Ross with feedback about our draft memo to the Chancellor regarding shared governance.

Budget and Prioritization issues

The committee discussed what action the SEC should take in response to the all-campus meeting we had on Sept 2 and to the memo that the Chancellor sent out last week. The committee is concerned that the Administration is coming up with suggestions that may involve program cuts and retrenchments without appropriate faculty consultation.

The committee agreed that we would request that CAB and CAPP review the suggestions from the Sept 2 meeting and make a list of suggestions they believe merit further investigation. These suggestions may be analyzed for the actual cost impact and other important considerations.

The committee agreed that we need to ask that the combined budget and prioritization committee should be separated out again to address short term and long-term issues.

The committee also agreed to specifically send our minutes of September 8 to the UHM Administration.

Committee Reports

CFS is well underway. They will meet with Carol Kellett.

CAPP has met, and a written summary has already been provided to SEC. The liaison will continue to monitor the CAP process and focus.

GenEd met and is carefully reviewing recommendations for changing requirements.

The Enrollment planning committee met. Also the WASC committee met. There were a number of discussions about building new structures and the whether these were meeting the current needs and priorities at UHM and whether we have budget for it. Also on the WASC meeting there was a discussion of the Outcomes committee which was not appointed by the MFS. Although there may have been a lot of work done on this over the summer, these outcomes have not been vetted through appropriate channels. The Assessment Committee has also not approved the Outcomes, and advised the Administration that a proper consultation process and a broad dissemination of the report should precede any implementation.

The CPM will meet tomorrow and begin to prepare for the important issues they may face this year, including potential retrenchment proposals.

The committee discussed again how to get proper student input on the CSA or other committees.

The CSA discussed the proposed strategic plan for international programs. There is no budgetary information included in the plan. The composition of the committee/task force that developed the plan was unexpected. International programs are very dispersed across campus, and there seemed to be little representation of the units most involved in international programs.

Committee on Athletics. The Chair is Rosanne Harrigan. The main issue is what is the proper grade point for the good academic standing. They are comparing with other universities. The Committee on Athletics believes that the policy should be vetted by CAPP before a resolution is brought before the Senate. The faculty representative on the Athletics Advisory Board is Charlie Weems and on the Gender Equity Committee is Julie Patriarche.

The Manoa Assessment Committee (MAC) met with the some members of the Outcomes group to consider the process of developing recommendations for UHM institutional outcomes. MAC advised that such outcomes should be referred to CAPP and MAC and brought through the faculty senate.

New Business

We want to have a Faculty Congress on October 21, and so the faculty senate will need to vote for this at our meeting Sept 16. The committee voted to add this item to the agenda.

The meeting adjourned at 5:30.