USGFC Meeting Notes March 20 2009

Professor Bob Marsh of East Georgia College was kind enough to share his notes from the March 20, 2009 meeting of the USGFC Advocates. The draft below is a modification of the notes he sent me. --Craig Turner

Craig,

Since you say there appear to be no minutes from the meeting, you may be interested is what I wrote about it. Following is what I wrote after the meeting and posted to the East Georgia Faculty Association Vista site.

Feel free to distribute it if you think it is appropriate. Or make any use of it you see fit (including ignoring it)

Bob Marsh

East Georgia College.

I attended the faculty council meeting March 20, 2009 in the offices of the Board of Regents of Georgia. The meeting was chaired by Dr. Elizabeth Combier.

The meeting was attended by about 26 faculty members representing about the same number of institutions in the University System.

The agenda said we would have a keynote address by Dr. Susan Herbst, Executive Vice Chancellor & Chief Academic Officer.

Dr. Herbst said that she was going to have a Q & A session rather than an address.

Two-year merger: The first question was about the proposed merger of the two year colleges and technical colleges. One of Dr. Herbst's staff said that transferability was a major issue. There is already a "mini Core" that can be transferred from technical colleges to the University system. It is anticipated that this "mini core" will probably grow to about 30 hours. In other words they are working to have the technical colleges have a core that they can transfer to the University system. I asked how that would impact East Georgia Statesboro. I was told that it would probably impact our enrollment. If local technical colleges are SACS approved they would be able to offer the same courses EGCS currently offers. Notice one of the big points is, "if they are CoC accredited." Dr. Herbst said she will be surprised if the merger actually happens. But that is as far as she seemed to want to go. More about his later.
HBC merger: Merger of some historically black colleges (HBCs): We were also told that there is a proposal to merge some of the HBCs with other colleges. For example there is a proposal to merge Albany State with Darton and there is a move to merge Savannah State with another college. The BOR does not support these mergers.
Core revision: The core revision is in progress. There is an expectation that a draft be posted soon. Perhaps in a week or two. There are concerns about the core from Nursing, Education, and Music. These disciplines think the core is too large and they have trouble getting all the required courses in along with the core.
Faculty development: Dr. Herbst is hoping to have more. There are currently some courses on the BOR web site. For example, there is one about grant writing. There are expected to be more soon. They need ideas of things to be added.
Franchise programs: Some have been approved for this year. Next year no one is sure. It depends on the budget. I have no idea what Franchise programs are. But I am reporting what was said.
Budgets: The question was asked: We were originally told that budget cuts are to be permanent. Is that still true? Dr, Herbst said that no cuts are carved in stone. But do not expect any more money. If conditions change for your institution, it may be possible to move funding from one project to another. One thing previously deleted could be reinstated but it would be at the expense of something else.
Furloughs: Dr. Herbst said that there has been nothing said recently.

At this point Dr. Herbst and her staff left. We broke into two parallel sessions. I went to one about the Two-year merger. It was chaired by Dr. Beth Jensen of Georgia Perimeter College. There were 6 people who attended this meeting

Discussion of the Merger group.

Dr. Jensen made a few points. 1) Two year colleges had no representation on the committee looking into this. The University system had only representation by Dr. Susan Herbst. But she did not represent two year colleges, she represented the 35 institutions of the University System of Georgia. The technical colleges had three members representing them.
As I already knew house bill 294 which would take the decision away from the governor passed the house with all but one member voting for it. The bill went to the state senate. So far the bill has not been heard by the senate. State senator Seth Harp, chair of the higher education committee must release the bill to be heard. So far he has refused to release it for senate consideration. This is far from a done deal!!!!!!
There was quite a bit of discussion. The upshot is that we need to get Senator Seth Harp to release the bill for senate consideration. Or the governor may declare an executive order that merges the two year colleges with the technical colleges. If that happens, the legislature will be powerless to prevent the merger.

We returned to the larger group.

We were asked to summarize our meeting: The other group has a presentation on a proposal to allow all faculty members to move from the ORP retirement group to the TRS group. There is something about a buy in. But since I was not at this meeting it is quite unclear to me. I am on a list serv concerning this. I will pass the info on as I get it. [More information about this buy-in from ORP to TRS is available here.]

Dr. Jensen summarized the meeting I attended. There was quite a bit of discussion from the rest of the representatives (mostly from the 4 year colleges). Everyone seemed to agree that the merger would be bad for the university system.

Approval of the bylaws of the University of Georgia Faculty council bylaws:

The discussion then went to the approval of the bylaws of the USGFC. There was quite a bit of discussion concerning why some colleges have not approved them. It was reported that Dr. Herbst requested that we have endorsement of the draft USGFC bylaws from all USG institutions to support a request for recognition of the USGFC by the BOR. East Georgia College has not yet endorsed these by laws. I intend to try to get this endorsed. I think we need to join hands with the rest of the faculty of the system. There are more of them than there are of us. I will post these bylaws and ask for discussion on our WebCT site. I will also e-mail the faculty members asking for approval.

Finally the faculty council voted unanimously to oppose the merger of the two year colleges. However, quite a bit of discussion followed and some reps said that they did not have the power to make this decision. So we agreed to tentatively oppose the merger, pending discussion by each individual college or university.