MSU-BOZEMAN FACULTY COUNCIL MEETING MINUTES October 18, 2000 PRESENT: Giroux for Sherwood, White, Peed, Linker, Leech, Benham, Stewart, Larsen, Jost, Harkin, Nehrir, Mooney, Lefcort, McClure, Lansverk, Levy, Bogar, Bond, Jelinski, Kirkpatrick, McKinsey, Lynch, Fisher, Prawdzienski, Scott. ABSENT: Young, Hatfield, Morrill, Miller, Anderson, Kommers, Howard, McMahon, Locke, Butterfield, Griffith, Carlstrom. The meeting was called to order by Chair Ron Larsen at 4:10 PM. It was determined a quorum was present. The minutes of the October 4, 2000, meeting were approved as distributed. Chair's report - Ron Larsen. - Two Strategic Planning and Budget Committee (SPBC) working groups are being organized. Faculty Council members are encouraged to call the chair of one of the two and volunteer to be part of the group. The groups and chairs are: - Strategic Planning - Chair: Bruce McCleod (x4145) - Enrollment and Enrollment Management - Chair: Sara Jayne Steen (x3768) - Geoffrey Gamble will be on campus full-time as MSU's President beginning December 4. - Ron has prepared a graph which shows general funding for MSU-Boozeman as well as in-state and out-of-state tuition. One-half of the tuition comes from out-of-state-students. In-state tuition is growing linearly while out-of-state tuition shows exponential growth. Until this past year, the university's contingency fund was $200,000, equivalent to the tuition paid by twenty out-of-state students. The contingency fund has been doubled, but is still a small part of the budget. - Candidates for Montana's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives will debate this evening at 7 PM in 103 EPS. On November 1, there will be a forum for local candidates for Montana's legislature. One question to ask each of them is whether they are in favor of the $500/student additional funding for the university system proposed by the Commissioner's Office. - Interim Provost Dave Dooley will attend Faculty Council on October 25 to report on the status of SPBC and plans for it this semester as well as on the reversion of faculty lines. Background information for the two issues was distributed (attached for members absent). UGC Nominating Committee report. - Donald Mathre's name was presented as a nominee for a faculty position on the Athletics Committee. Jack Jelinski moved the nomination be accepted by Faculty Council and forwarded to President Roark for approval. The motion was seconded and carried. Faculty Affairs Committee report - David Scheerer. - The Committee is continuing to review Faculty Council standing committees for inclusion in the Faculty Handbook. Working group on budget. - It has been suggested this be called a "budget information working group". - During discussion, the following consensus was reached: - The budget information working group will be organized through University Governance Council rather than Faculty Council, only. - Overlap with the SPBC budget working group is desirable to promote interchange of information. - Nominations for membership should be presented to UGC Steering Committee and should include faculty and contract professional employees (some of them from SPBC, if possible), and members of the administration. The working group will be established by UGC Steering Committee from the nominations received. The group should be as inclusive as possible, without becoming too large to do its work. - The charge is to find a comprehensible way to present MSU's budget and to identify the major issues that make the budget planning process such a problem. The group will report its results to University Governance Council, SPBC, the administration, and the public. - The working group is not intended to work toward resolution of the issues that make the budget so difficult to understand and budget planning problematic but to identify what these issues are. This working group will move toward making greater transparency in the budget and the budgeting process. (Working groups are intended to have a very narrowly defined scope and short time frame. Additional working groups may be created to push the work forward.) - The work of this group should be completed by the end of Fall Semester. - Jack Jelinski moved the above-mentioned points of agreement be accepted. The motion was seconded and carried. Discussion with Vice President for Administration and Finance Tom Stump. - Topics the Vice President was asked to address include: using the current authorization by the legislature to award faculty 3% raises during FY 01, building a better budget, and improving faculty involvement in the budgeting process. - MSU-Bozeman FY 2001 Budget Priorities and Status Executive Summary and MSU-Bozeman Preliminary FY 2001 Budget Development Plan and Priorities were distributed (attached for members absent). - For FY 2001, there was an expectation of $2.7 million in new revenue ($2.2 million, actual), additional obligations totaling $3.3 million, and $3.5 million in proposed enhancements. - On the general fund side of the budget - even though authority was given for faculty raises, the funding for it was not totally provided. The non-faculty personnel budget assumes a 3% vacancy savings, so this amount is removed from the legislature's funding of the university system. - During discussion, the point was made that there appears to be no review of prior year base allocations. Instead, the focus is entirely on additional revenues and new proposed spending. - Lump-sum funding is given to the Board of Regents by the legislature. The Regents then use a "cost of education" allocation to fund the units of the university system. It is applied to resident enrollment, only. Depending upon the enrollment mix at all schools at a given time, a unit may receive more or less funding. The enrollment mix considers the student/faculty ratio of each curriculum and graduate enrollment, in addition to other factors. - The ratio of out-of-state to in-state students affects revenue from tuition, as does the number of credits each student carries. - During discussion, it was stated that faculty agreed to do more work through the PQO agreement, money for FY 2001 faculty raises was authorized by the legislature, and additional tuition was charged students. The issue is priorities of the university. - It is implied in the distributed materials that the entire $74 million budget was entirely obligated before budgeting began. - It appears the new MSU president is very keyed in on budgeting. As there was no further business, the meeting adjourned at 5:10 PM. Joann Amend, Secretary Ron Larsen, Chair