The
Regular session –
office: Jacobson Faculty Hall 206
phone: 325-6789
e-mail: facsen@ou.edu web site: http://www.ou.edu/admin/facsen/
The Faculty Senate was called
to order by Professor Mike McInerney, Chair.
PRESENT: Bradford,
Brady, Brown, Burns, Catlin, Cintrón, Davis, Dewers, Dohrmann, Forman, Frech, Havlicek,
Hayes-Thumann, Henderson, Houser, Huseman,
Kauffman, R. Knapp, Liu, Marcus-Mendoza, McInerney, Milton, Morrissey, Newman, Raadschelders, Ransom, Rupp-Serrano, Russell, Scherman,
Schramm, Sievers, Striz, Watts, Wheeler, Yuan
ISA representatives:
Smith
ABSENT: Abraham,
Baldwin, Bozorgi, Caldwell, Devenport,
Ferreira, Fincke, Hartel, C. Knapp, Megginson,
Mendoza, Pender, Penrose, Rai, Sharp, Whitely,
Wyckoff
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Announcements:
Faculty development award guidelines
New senator
Benefit deductions
Information technology services
Senate Chair's Report:
Bonus
Higher education issues—needs budget, raises, academic
integrity, health care
Honor code proposed by students
Athletic department—student athlete academic matters,
academic support
Faculty compensation committee recommendations
Renewable term faculty policy
Faculty development award selection committee
Election, councils/committees/boards
Research Council charge
Password sharing policy
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The Faculty Senate Journal
for the regular session of
President Boren’s response to
the faculty development award guidelines approved by the Faculty Senate at its
Prof. Jos
Raadschelders (Political Science) was elected from
the
Benefits Manager Nick Kelly
reminded the group that benefits are now on a calendar year basis. For people who are paid over nine months,
deductions for any supplemental coverage for themselves or for their dependents
will be taken out over eight months—January, February, March, April, September,
October, November, and December—at 1.5 times the monthly rate. The letters confirming benefit elections show
what will be taken out of an individual’s check each month. Mr. Kelly said he would appreciate assistance
in spreading the word that the amount of money that 9-month individuals take
home in January will change. Prof.
Milton asked how this method differed from the present policy. Mr. Kelly said employees currently pay for
one month. Adjustments were made in May,
and it was complicated. The new method
should make it cleaner. When asked
whether this information was written down somewhere, Mr. Kelly said it would be
on the web within the next week. He said
the arrangement gets a little complicated if someone resigns from the
University, goes on half-paid sabbatical, or adds or drops dependents during
the year. Prof. Burns pointed out that
the deduction for a family is roughly $600 per month. With this arrangement, the deduction will be
around $900 per month.
Vice President for
Information Technology Dennis Aebersold distributed a handout
IT is aligned into three
departments: (1) operations, directed by
Jeralyn Snow, runs the hardware, software,
applications, and network; (2) projects, directed by Eddie Huebsch,
handles requests for new services; and (3) IT service centers, directed by Matt
Singleton. Mr. Singleton said the
service center was a joint effort between IT and the
Dr. Aebersold asked him to
explain what happens when someone brings a computer to a walk-in. Mr. Singleton said the technician would solve
any minor problem. However, for an advanced
problem, IT would tell the customer how to fix the problem and give him the
opportunity to check the computer in or have someone else solve the problem.
Prof. Scherman asked about
plans to address the spam problem. Dr.
Aebersold said IT was testing a couple of things. The problem is IT cannot guarantee that
strong spam software will not take out valid messages. We could subscribe to blacklists that work
very well and allow the user to determine the level that is put on a
blacklist. IT can check domain names,
and if they are known to be sending spam, can block them. A rational solution would be to mark messages
and let the employee decide whether to delete the message or run it through a
filter that deletes it automatically.
About 40 percent of the e-mail we are receiving on campus is spam. Mr. Cochell pointed
out that the new Exchange system would provide some better rules than our
current version. Prof. Forman asked
whether IT could send out information about how to create filter rules. Dr. Aebersold said that information was on
the IT support web site. Mr. Cochell noted that IT wanted to address the problem, but
did not want to reject a message that was valid. He said IT processes an average of 500,000
messages a day.
Prof. Huseman
commented that it is getting more and more difficult to identify what messages
are safe and what are not. Dr. Aebersold
said he never opens an attachment without verifying that the person sent it,
which is terribly wasteful. Mr. Cochell said it is common for viruses to send messages to
someone’s contact list or to forge an e-mail address. Prof. Striz asked why we did not use some
other e-mail program. Dr. Aebersold said
the viruses these days are becoming operating system neutral. Mr. Cochell added
that the student system is not a Microsoft product. Prof. Watts asked about the availability of
the walk-in support and security assessment.
Mr. Singleton said those services were not available last year but are
this year.
Prof. Marcus-Mendoza said she
was confused as to what services were covered for leased computers. Dr. Aebersold replied that the hardware is
under warranty, so those kinds of problems are fixed at no charge. There is a fee for a software problem that
the user caused. With the walk-in service,
IT can tell the customer for free what the problem is and how much it will cost
to fix it. Then the customer can decide
who should fix it. For leased desktop
machines, IT can come to the office and provide the estimate for free. Prof. Marcus-Mendoza noted that her account
was charged for IT service without her authorization. After a brief discussion, Dr. Aebersold said
IT could contact the department to get authorization if there is going to be a
charge. Prof. Marcus-Mendoza asked
whether IT had enough staff to provide service for both university computers
and personal computers. Dr. Aebersold
explained that Dell pays IT to fix the machines under warranty, and customers
with personal machines pay a fee, which IT uses to hire the staff to
accommodate that business. Mr. Cochell said the number of private machines serviced is
very small. Some home machines have
levels of access equal to university machines.
Dr. Aebersold said it was important for students to have the support. Prof. McInerney pointed out that a number of
faculty had personal computers at home that they use for university business
and that it would be helpful if they had some place to go to fix problems. Mr. Cochell
mentioned that home machines can bring viruses on to our campus, so IT has some
level of responsibility to ensure that is taken care of. Prof. Marcus-Mendoza said her
When asked about the new
limit on attachment size, Mr. Cochell said the
Information Technology Council had set the size at 20 MB, and that seems to be
running fine. The average size in the
Big 12 is 10 MB. The University has
about four messages a day with illegal attachments, which usually involve
students trying to send movies. Prof.
McInerney said if we did not have a limit, then virus problems could slow the
network down. IT is working on a way to
make exceptions for very large legitimate files. Mr. Cochell
remarked that to keep users from getting viruses, IT needs a realistic
attachment size and uses a software program to scan files.
Prof. Havlicek
commented that it is possible to use programs other than Microsoft to read
e-mail and avoid viruses. Dr. Aebersold
said the IT support web site had information on how to use other products to
connect to the Exchange e-mail server.
Prof. Yuan asked how she
could get information about connecting to the wireless services available in
the buildings. Dr. Aebersold said most
of the new machines come with wireless cards; otherwise, she could have one
installed. Prof. Yuan asked whether the
user had to have a password. Mr. Cochell said a password was not required at this time, but
IT was looking at security issues. With
wireless capability, users can walk in a campus building, the computer will say
wireless access is available, they can click on yes to connect, and they are on
the network. Prof. Yuan said she had
recently e-mailed a question to IT support and got a very good response except
that she received a message before the problem was solved saying the case was
closed. Mr. Singleton said he would
check into that. The procedure should be
that a follow-up e-mail asks whether IT has solved the problem and includes a
link for the user to indicate it is okay to close the case.
“We thank President Boren,
Vice President Hathaway and Provost Mergler for their efforts regarding the
upcoming bonus for faculty and staff at the university. I think that sends a
message that they consider faculty compensation a critical priority. We will
continue to work with the university administration to develop a permanent
compensation package for next fiscal year.
“I attended the Faculty
Advisory Council to the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education on November
1. Chancellor Risser gave a brief presentation. He
discussed the need for increased funding for higher education and gave us his
thoughts for a needs budget for next year. Part of the needs budget would
include a $1500 raise for faculty at all institutions. The council passed an
academic integrity policy that is intended to serve as a model policy that
institutions can adapt to their particular needs. In addition, we discussed
problems with health care. The council will set up a forum with Health Choice
this spring to discuss these problems. This will allow higher education to
speak as one voice to Health Choice. We will keep you updated on the forum.
“On a related development, I
would like to commend the
“The executive committee of
the Faculty Senate met on November 3 with Mr. Joseph Castiglione,
Director of Athletics, to discuss the progress of our student athletes. We also
received a tour of the academic center. The university is providing our student
athletes with many services, including continued guidance and training on a
variety of issues such as nutrition, substance abuse, and career planning as
well as on academic matters. There are about 480 student athletes on campus.
This year, the graduation rate of all athletes was 74%. Next year, it will be
about 56%. This is due to the coaching changes that occurred in football
several years ago; a number of students left the university due to these
changes. Retention of student athletes is very good, about 80%, so graduation
rates are expected to be very good in the upcoming years. Some of the funds
from the sale of OU licensed items are going into a fund to support the
library. In addition, a number of coaches have also contributed to this fund.
Also, the sale of football tickets contributed another million dollars to the
university’s operating fund this year. We certainly appreciate this support.
Mr. Castiglione emphasized the importance of building
champions on and off the field and the importance of continued dialogue and
communication with the faculty. He has volunteered to give a report to the
senate every year on our athletic program.
“The faculty compensation
committee discussed a number of issues/questions that came across my desk this
year. Regarding the possibility of switching TIAA/CREF funds to salaries, this
would represent a pay cut since the retirement funds are pre-tax monies and
taking these funds as salary would make them taxable. The committee strongly
recommends against this option. Since a dependent tuition program would be
difficult to define and would benefit only a subset of OU employees, they
recommend that this be handled though a scholarship program. They recommend
that faculty receive awards for service in increments of five years after 10
years of service have been completed. Examples could involve pens, clocks, and
chairs, and after 25 year of service this could be announced at commencement
exercises with special seating. Lastly, they mentioned that loyalty and equity
adjustments (compression and inversion) be considered in the salary
compensation program along with merit. Specific allocations would depend on the
size of the salary program.
“The executive committee met
with Susan Marcus-Mendoza to discuss the renewable term faculty policy. The
simplest way to do this may be to change the definition of regular faculty in
the faculty handbook to include individuals who are ranked assistant professor
and above. The committee to review the regents’ manual has met. They will meet
with the Provost in the near future to discuss issues that have arisen with the
combination of the various handbooks for the three campuses. We will keep you
updated on these activities.
“Jim Davis has agreed to
serve as chair of the faculty development award selection committee. He will
work with Hugh Benson of Research Council to establish the committee and send
out the request for proposals. We will probably have one round of requests this
year given that the fall semester is almost over. In the future, the goal would
be to have two solicitations.”
The senate approved the
following nominations of the senate committee on committees to fill vacancies
on the Research Council.
To replace Yiqi Luo (Botany & Micro.), 2003-06 term: Lee Krumholz (Botany & Micro.) [biological sciences]
To replace David Sabatini (Civil Engr. & Envir. Sci.), 2003-06 term:
Shivakumar Raman (Industrial Engr.) [engr.]
The
Research Council proposed the following changes in its charge.
[1] Add a 13th faculty
member to be appointed by the Senate from the
[2] Add the following sentence immediately after the first sentence of the last paragraph. "If a member of the Council is nominated for a research professorship considered by the Research Council, the member must either have his/her name withdrawn from nomination or resign from the Council for the remainder of his/her term."
Prof. McInerney explained that
the council currently has 12 members, with two members each in six
categories. The
The Information Technology
Council proposed the following policy on password sharing.
Introduction
The value policy to falsely represent oneself as
another individual, to use the name or identity of another person without
authorization as that individual's delegated agent, or to present oneself as
the spokesperson of an organization or unit without proper authorization to do
so.
Password Policy
Accounts and passwords are given to individuals for
individual use and should not ordinarily be shared, except when necessary to
accomplish the mission of the University. If a password has to be shared, it
should be changed as soon as possible.
Disclaimer
Observance of this policy and adherence to the rules of good
practice in use of user IDs and passwords does not imply or suggest privacy in
use of the information resources included in University computing systems and
networks. The University policy on privacy in electronic communication is found
in the Policy on Email
Use at the University of Oklahoma and in the Policy
on Information Systems Security. Enforcement of this policy is detailed in these documents.
Prof. McInerney noted that
last year the senate had approved a policy on the acceptable use of information
resources, which included a reference to a policy on password sharing. Because the wording was not worked out, the password
policy was deferred to this year. We
need to have a policy so we can take action if someone steals a password, yet
allow an individual to share a password if there is a good reason. The policy is rather simple. Sharing a password can occur, such as giving
a password to an IT employee in order to fix a computer problem, but then the
password should be changed. Although not
part of the policy, the ITC also developed some recommendations for password
sharing (http://www.ou.edu/committees/itc/policy/Password_Recommendations.html). ITC
leadership will come to the next meeting to answer questions.
The meeting adjourned at
____________________________________
Sonya Fallgatter, Administrative Coordinator
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Karen Rupp-Serrano, Secretary