VOLUME XXXI, No. 3
MINUTES
REGULAR MEETING OF THE REPRESENTATIVE ASSEMBLY
OF THE
Wednesday, May 7, 2003
3:00 – 5:00 p.m.
Memorial
1. Minutes of the February 19, 2003 meeting
2. Announcements by the President - None
3. Announcements by the Vice Presidents - None
4. Announcements by the Chief Campus Officer - None
5. Announcements by Deans, Directors, or other Executive Officers - None
6. Special orders
A. Remarks by the Chair of the Staff Assembly, Zack O’Donnell
B. Remarks
by the Chair of the
Reports of special committees
Reports of standing committees
A. Report of the Public Service Committee – announcement of the recipient(s) of the Distinguished Public Service Award
B. Report of the Grade Changes Committee re proposed amendments
to
C. Report of the Executive Council re proposed DD Regulation 554.
Credit for Concurrent Courses
D. Report of the Committee on Research re proposed revisions to
Bylaw 99. Committee on Research Petitions of students
Unfinished business
A. Discussion of the resolution passed at the February 19, 2003
Representative Assembly concerning implementation of a Non-Resident
Tuition Remission Policy (NRTR)
University and faculty welfare – None
12. New business
A.
Consideration of the
Kyaw Tha Paw U, Secretary
Representative Assembly of the
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The meeting was called to order by Bruce R. Madewell, Chair, Davis Division of the Academic Senate at 3:08 p.m.
1. The Minutes of the February 19 meeting are not yet available.
2. Announcements by the President – None
3. Announcements by the Vice Presidents – None
4. Announcements by the Chief Campus Officer – None
5. Announcements by Deans, Directors, or other Executive Officers – None
6. Special orders
A. Remarks by the Chair of the Staff Assembly, Zack O’Donnell
Mr. O’Donnell thanked the Assembly for the opportunity to re-introduce Staff Assembly to the Academic Senate. He then highlighted some of the Staff Assembly issues this year noting that the purpose of the Staff Assembly is to promote the welfare, interests and diversity of staff at UC Davis: Staff Assembly has appointed members on many campus committees and hosts a number of subcommittees that focus on Staff Insurance and Retirement, Staff Diversity, and Scientific and Professional Staff. With these committees, a relatively new web-based electronic quarterly-email newsletter, and with various hosted events throughout the year, Staff Assembly has strived to develop a serious dialogue with campus administration on issues affecting staff. Staff Assembly also assists the campus in promoting staff welfare with our Staff Scholarship Program, Citations for Excellence Program, and all the other TGFS activities we coordinate in the Spring.
Staff Assembly goals are becoming more and more difficult to achieve. Increased staff collective bargaining continues to cut into eligible staff for membership on the Executive Committee, alienates Staff Assembly from an increasing majority of staff, and limits the issues for which Staff Assembly can comment or provide input. To offset these limitations, Staff Assembly needs to create close alliances with other campus organizations that do not share the same restrictions. Such an organization is the Academic Senate. With our strong information dissemination to the staff, Staff Assembly can assist the Academic Senate in addressing issues that affect both faculty and staff. The most recent example is campus parking (and that too is now an issue of collective bargaining) but there are many other areas from which we can develop a working partnership – other examples include the promotion of campus diversity, civility and mutual respect in the workplace, excellence in supervision and management, and the implementation of campus budget cutting programs.
The Council of University of California Staff Assemblies (CUCSA) and the Academic Council of the Systemwide Academic Senate created a Task Force in 1999 called the Faculty/Staff Partnership Program. The purpose of this partnership program is to build awareness of the importance of faculty/staff partnership efforts and to communicate best practices throughout the University that further enhance a sense of community. Most of the examples of such partnerships are individual department programs that team faculty and staff in on-going programs that take advantage of the synergy created when staff and faculty work together toward a common goal. I am hoping that we can take this concept a step further and work together to address the numerous issues that unprecedented growth and changes will bring to this campus. Together we can focus our concerns, express our points of view and accomplish more than we might individually.
I leave you today with an offer of coordination and partnership in those areas in which we share mutual interest. After all, we are all employees of UC Davis and we all believe in its mission of excellence in research, teaching and public service.
Chair Madewell thanked Zack O’Donnell for his comments. Vice Chair Judith Stern stated that the help of the Staff Assembly with the parking issue was particularly valuable.
B. Remarks
by the Chair of the
Chair Madewell called attention to the Academic Senate web page. In particular he said the comments from the participants at the Special town Hall meeting that was held on May 7 to discuss the National Biocontainment Laboratory Project have been posted.
He then stated that since the agenda for the meeting today is full he would not make any additional remarks at this time. He informed the Assembly that a quorum had been certified. (An attendance roster is on file with the records of the meeting in the Academic Senate Office.)
7. Reports of special committees – None
8. Reports of standing committees
A. Report of the Public Service Committee – Professor Margaret Johns, Chair,
presented the report by announcing the recipients of the 2003 Distinguished Scholarly Public Service Award Recipients. She noted that the selection is very difficult because there are so many wonderful candidates to choose from. The Committee did, however, narrow it down to three truly outstanding scholars:
Bill Hing,
Jerold Last, Pulmonary
Medicine: Medicine. Professor Last has a distinguished public
service career in the field of environmental health issues. As Director of the
Toxic Substances Research and Teaching Program for over 15 years, he has
participated in numerous studies addressing public health and environmental
issues. Most recently, he has worked
with the
Eldridge Moores, Geology. For more than
three decades, Professor Eldridge Moores has given continuous and dedicated
service on the international, national, state and local level in the field of
geology. In addition to service on many
of its committees, Professor Moores served as President of the Geological Society
of America (GSA) and editor of its journal, Geology. He has frequently advised national
scientific agencies on matters related to earth sciences. And he has long been committed to serving the
local community including extensive service in K-12 education.
B. Report of the Grade Changes Committee – Chair Madewell reported that the Report of the Grade Changes Committee concerning proposed amendments to Davis Division Guideline 15. The Use of E-NWS and NG needed to be postponed. He said that Guideline 15 was amended in November of 1998 but that unfortunately the change was not updated on the Senate web-site and the current wording appearing in the Meeting Call is therefore out of date. The rational has not been altered but because proper notice was not served, the item must be postponed.
C. Report of the Executive Council – Chair Madewell reported that the proposed
new Davis Division Regulation 554 originated from discussion between the Executive Council and the Registrar. The new regulation will allow students enrolled in a degree program at UCD to count the grades they earn in concurrent courses taken through University Extension in their grade point average.
Prior to moving adoption of the new Regulation appearing on page 3 of the Meeting Call, Professor Joseph Kiskis noted that in the first sentence of Section A, the wording got scrambled and should be replaced with students on leave of absence or regular status students when matriculated or regular status students for a period of one calendar year following the last term of regular enrollment may not enroll in concurrent courses. He then moved adoption of Regulation 554 as amended. The motion carried.
D. Report of the Committee on Research – Chair Madewell reported that the
proposed amendments to Bylaw 99 change the committee
structure to better reflect the scope of the committee’s activities. He said the policy issues were somewhat
different than the review of grants. He
noted that the second part of the change is a procedural change what would
allow someone who is not currently a member of the Divisional Committee but who
is serving as the
Professor Kevin Hoover voiced concern about the massive expansion of the membership of the Committee on Research (from 12 members to 33-37 members). This resulted in a request to re-order the agenda to ensure discussion of the Non-Resident Tuition Remission Policy. By a show of hands, the request was approved.
9. Petitions of Students – None
10. Unfinished business
A. Discussion of the resolution passed at the February 19, 2003 Representative
Assembly concerning implementation of a Non-Resident Tuition Remission Policy (NRTR)
Chair Madewell reminded the Assembly of the resolution passed at the February 19 meeting requesting that the Provost/Executive Vice Chancellor delay implementation of a graduate student non-resident tuition remission policy until such time as appropriate standing committees of the Academic Senate had an opportunity to review the proposed policies. He said subsequent to that resolution he asked three Senate committees for advice. Two of the three responded – Committee on Academic Planning and Budget Review and the Graduate Council. He noted that these reports are attached to the meeting call. He stated that it is his understanding that the Provost will implement a NRTR policy and that the Provost has asked for advice from the Senate. He also mentioned that the faculty had the opportunity to post comments or opinions on the website, hosted by Graduate Studies. He said the second of the two models proposed are favored, in principle, by the Academic Senate with the understanding that additional details are required before the policy can be implemented. The Senate committees would like to be given the opportunity to consider the revisions to the second model, before implementation. He then opened the floor for discussion.
Discussion ensued in which Professors Carlip, Privalsky, Stern, Hastings, and others spoke against the proposed policies. Kevin Hoover opined that there was also the matter of shared governance. He said this issue should be reconsidered by appropriate formal consultation with the Senate. For clarification purposes, Dean Jeffrey Gibeling reported that the NRT Committee was a joint Senate/Administrative committee so there was, in fact, formal involvement with the Academic Senate.
Steven Carlip suggested the following three resolutions:
1) It is the sense of the Representative Assembly that Model 1 should be rejected.
2) We believe that there are serious problems in the lack of flexibility in model 2, in particular in the inability of prohibiting the use of other sources of funding.
3) These proposals need to go back. These models need to be reconsidered by the active involvement of Academic Senate committees.
There was further discussion. K. Hoover then proposed:
1) The Representative Assembly of the Davis Division of the Academic Senate rejects Model l – (Average Cost Model).
2) The Representative Assembly of the Davis Division of the Academic Senate also rejects Model 2 (Cost by Residency Model)
3) The Representative Assembly of the Davis Division of the Academic Senate resolves that neither Models of the NRTR policy is workable and neither should be implemented; and, any new model should be developed in formal consultation with the Davis Division through the Graduate Council and the Committee on Research and other divisional committees as deemed appropriate by the Chair of the Division in consultation with the Executive Council and with the Chair of graduate programs.
The motion was seconded and carried.
6. D. Report of the Committee on Research re proposed revisions to Bylaw 99. Committee on Research – Professor James Murray, member of the Committee on Research presented the proposed revisions. He said he has been a member of the Committee for four years and that this proposal was reviewed by the Committee last year. He said the purpose of the proposed revisions are to divide the committee into two separate committees. One to review policy issues and the other to review grant proposal applications.
Brief discussion ensued in which
it was agreed to table the proposed amendments until further study and
fine-tuning of the proposed expansion of the membership can be undertaken. Professors
There being no further business the meeting adjourned at 4:45 p.m.
Kyaw Tha Paw U, Secretary
Representative Assembly of the