The meeting was called to order by Vice Chair Mitchell at 3:02 p.m. in the College of Law, Room 146.

Professor John Warnock, Director of the graduate program in Rhetoric, Composition and the Teaching of English (RCTE) in the Department of English, updated the Senate and said that although some funding has been restored, no progress has yet been made on the threats to the Writing Program. This is an area of excellence that needs to be sustained because it affects everyone in the University. The English Department, he added, has suffered budget cuts of about four times greater than other departments in the college, despite the Dean’s strategy of applying “across the board” cuts throughout the College of Humanities.

Interim ASUA President Hertzog reported that ASUA will hold its elections for new officers later this week. Last Wednesday she traveled to the state legislature to lobby for passage of the $11M Arizona Financial Aid Trust and the $5M state work-study bill. UA’s Arizona Students Association director Andrew Record has resigned for health reasons so GPSC representative Paul Thorn will serve in that position. ASUA lobbied for the students’ proposal at the tuition hearings with the Regents last month.

GPSC President Elaine Ulrich thanked the Senate for its support of the Graduate and Professional Student Appreciation Week and reported that GPSC received 144 nominations for faculty, staff and students’ awards. GPSC Appreciation Week will take place March 27-31 with activities including a kick-off barbecue on Monday, a Family Fun Day open to students, faculty and staff on Tuesday, a speed-dating activity and the awards banquet. GPSC also took part in the tuition hearings with the Regents to lobby for the students’ proposal.

Vice Chair Mitchell reminded the Senate that the Arizona Board of Regents will meet at UA this week, beginning with the Open Session at 1:00 p.m. on Thursday, March 9 in the Student Union.  Tuition and fees are on the agenda. The online Faculty Election results are on Senators’ desks. About 15% of eligible faculty voted in this election, which is a slight increase in the number and percentage over last year. The requests for paper ballots continued to decline from fifteen last year to six this year. Chair Howell advised the Senate that another “emergency preparedness exercise” will take place on campus on April 12, and it may involve students, faculty and staff. Normal activity will resume after the exercise so personnel are not excused for the day. Chair Howell suggested that faculty may wish to refrain from scheduling any research or classroom activities that day that could be adversely affected by an interruption.

Provost Davis reported that President-designate Shelton was introduced at the basketball game on Saturday and sat with the Zona Zoo for about 20 minutes. Turning to the plan for Restructuring for Enhanced Academic Access and Outreach, Provost Davis explained that both Dr. Shelton and UA’s shared governance leaders W. Howell and A. Estrada have approved this plan for expanding its existing academic outreach opportunities more assertively.  The strategy utilizes all of the leverage and infrastructure of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, namely the statewide agricultural outreach offices, cooperative extension and agricultural experiment stations, along with the UA South programs distributed throughout southeastern Arizona and the UA’s continuing education and academic outreach programs, which will be more tightly connected to and driven by the main campus colleges. This realignment will increase academic access to The University of Arizona. CALS Dean Eugene Sander will oversee this enterprise as the Vice Provost for Outreach, and CALS Associate Dean Dave Cox will become the interim director of Continuing Education and Academic Outreach, reporting to Dean Sander. UAS’ chief executive officer R. Groth will continue working with Dean Sander in community development, government relations, advancement, lobbying and fundraising. UA South Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Wayne Lanning will report to D. Cox on all aspects of academic planning, recruitment, retention and programmatic development.  The Board of Regents meeting this week will consider the differential tuition for architecture and engineering as well as increases in other program fees. Provost Davis met the new UA Foundation President Jim Moore and they discussed the importance of a close relationship between the Foundation and Academic Affairs and the Deans to understand where the opportunities and the needs lie. President Likins has invited Mr. Moore to sit on his Cabinet.

President Likins described the state’s legislative budget process. Our lobbyists spend much of their time defending against or trying to get rescinded some of the more errant and misguided bills such as the universities credit threshold that penalizes (defunds) students who have accumulated more than 155 credit hours, a requirement for an American flag to be displayed in every classroom in the state, or an offensive coursework alternatives bill that would allow an individual student to object to course material that s/he finds offensive on religious or moral grounds. The state employees’ salary package is the best to come forward in decades and will be acted up on early in the session. UA is still requesting $10M for key personnel. There is a probability of receiving some fraction of building renewal formula funding this year. Although the governor has embraced to some degree the UA’s decision package proposals, there is no way to know what the legislature will do with them. President Likins believes there is some prospect of success, however, because there is an overabundance of money this year. There is a very important proposal to establish the Arizona Twenty-first Century Competition Fund to support bioscience research. This bill would appropriate $50M for this year, and $25M a year for each of the next four years, with privately matched funding; $100M from the Stardust Foundation, a Scottsdale-based charitable organization and $50M from of the Virginia D. Piper Charitable Trust. Because of the nature of its research, UA will probably receive some portion of these funds.

Senator Warnock asked whether the University has legal standing to be able to sue the legislature to force it to provide the formula funding. President Likins acknowledged that, while there are many situations when the University might be tempted to sue the legislature, forcing the body that provides our budget isn’t the best strategy because money might then be taken away from another part of our budget.

                Senator Witte asked why, when a recent incident necessitated dialing 911 from her office telephone, the call was intercepted by the University of Arizona Police who showed up at her door, which was an inappropriate response. She would like the administration to look into this campus police department’s interception of 911 calls made from campus telephones. An emergency situation like the College of Nursing murders of 2002 would necessitate calling 911 from an individual’s cell phone.

The minutes of February 6, 2006 were approved with two abstentions.

Consent agenda item 1, detailed at the end of these minutes [Motion 2005/06-45], was approved.

Vice Chair Mitchell explained to the Senate that this is a second reading of the seconded motion [Motion 2005/06-43] to amend UHAP Section 3.12.08, “Appeals to the President, by adding the following phrase, “within three months of notice of appeal” to the end of the first sentence in the third paragraph of UHAP Section 3.12.08. that was postponed at the February 6 meeting. The motion is returning unchanged because it is hoped that the Senate will agree to approve this amendment to UHAP 3.12.08. He understands that there may be some legitimate questions about UHAP 3.12.07 but they are not relevant to this passage. He will ask APPC to review that passage but he fears that the time involved for such a review may delay this faculty-friendly motion indefinitely. There was no discussion and the motion passed unanimously.

Graduate College Dean Comrie reported on a proposed new National Research Council study to help universities assess and improve doctoral programs. The last survey was done in 1995 and was based mostly on perceptions of reputation. This new, broader focus, anchoring study will be conducted primarily through questionnaires to universities, programs, faculty and students to gather quantitative data about doctoral programs and faculty. Sample factors include “scholarly productivity and impact of program faculty; effectiveness of doctoral education; research resources; demographic characteristics of students and faculty; resources available to doctoral students; characteristics of each doctoral program.” The data will be used to create a database of fields of study to permit comparisons among universities and to provide a variety of approaches to ranking doctoral programs across numerous dimensions. Dean Comrie urged faculty to report accurately and immediately any students who have passed comprehensives because this is a number that will count toward the survey. Data will be collected every year or two and the database will be ongoing. The survey list will be available in April, and the Graduate College will hold working sessions on the survey, possibly in the fall. Senators’ questions and comments included 1) This new taxonomy is not conducive to the graduate interdisciplinary programs that are one of UA’s strengths. For the GIDPs to really count, the faculty would have to be double-counted. Dean Comrie agreed and said Provost Davis intends to provide funding for institutional research personnel to manipulate the data so it can map to the taxonomy without penalizing the GIDPs. 2) It would be interesting to categorize the criteria according to size and scale. Dean Comrie commented that the NRC committee is aware that there may be some “games” played, like changing graduate school protocol to include eight faculty on every graduate committee. Dean Comrie commented that it is not known how accurately the old perception-based rankings will map to the more accurate database predictors. 3) How was this taxonomy arrived at? Dean Comrie explained that a national committee wrote the taxonomy and the survey and that members are nominated to sit on it.

8.                    REPORT FROM LESLIE TOLBERT, VICE PRESIDENT FOR RESEARCH

Vice President for Research Leslie Tolbert gave the Senate an overview of the broad range of functions of her office and the changes that have occurred following the retirement of former Vice President Powell. A search committee identified Andrew Comrie to replace the now-retired Dean Tom Hixon, and Sherry Esham is currently serving as interim Director of Sponsored Projects, following the retirement of Janet Hornung. The VPR’s office provides support services for research including Sponsored Projects and the Office of Technology Transfer. Areas for which the office is understaffed is enforcement for local, federal and agency compliance in areas such as Radiation Control, Human Subjects Protection, Biosafety, Chemical Safety and International trade and arms reduction, for graduate programs including the GIDPs, emergency funding for graduate students in distress, resolving conflicts between students and advisors, and interfacing with the GPSC. Other responsibilities of the office include interacting with the deans to help them excel in the areas of focused excellence, interfacing with state, city, county, tribal, federal and business leaders, overseeing KUAT, the state and art museums and the UA Press. Dr. Tolbert explained she has some strategic initiatives that are intended to provide the fairest and greatest possible return for the indirect costs funds for areas of high complexity. Some of these initiatives include 1) expanding the graduate college and finding funding for endowed fellowships for graduate students, 2) streamlining the business of compliance and financial support, 3) improving space classification and facilities use, 4) assessing risk, 5) managing the Prop 301 (TRIF) funds. UA is among the finalists for an “advance grant” from the National Science Foundation to enhance and promote the careers of women in science, engineering and math. Vice President Tolbert invited Senators to provide her office with feedback and suggested solutions for any problem areas.

9.             EXECUTIVE SESSION: DISCUSSION AND ACTION ON HONORARY DEGREE NOMINATIONS

The Senate recessed at 4:34 p.m. to go into Executive Session.

                There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 5:07 p.m.