UNH Faculty Senate

Summary Minutes from 23 September, 2002

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UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
2002/03 FACULTY SENATE

SEPTEMBER 23, 2002 - MINUTES SUMMARY

I. Roll - The following Faculty Senate members were absent: Becker, Burger, Calculator, Craycraft, Miriam, and Ward. Excused was Frankel.

II. Minutes - The previous Faculty Senate minutes were unanimously approved.

III. Communications from the Senate Chair - Harvey Shepard will chair the senate's Finance and Administration Committee, and Mark Wrighton will chair the senate's Student Affairs Committee. The senate chair asked that the other standing committees tell her as soon as possible who the committee chair will be. The Ad-hoc Committee on the Discovery Program has met and is committed to ensuring that each interested party has a clear voice in the discussion on the Discovery Program. This committee will select its chair soon.

IV. Communications with the President - President Hart said that she spoke with the Student Senate yesterday and also with the town of Durham about excessive alcohol consumption and loud parties on or near campus and especially at certain fraternities and sororities. In addition to parties inside, there are huge gatherings on the lawns that last most of the night. More than half of the young adults arrested are not university students. The president has met with officials from the police and the town and is gathering information and suggestions from university students, faculty and administrators, on changes that could be put in place to alleviate this situation. Faculty are asked to agree to act as advisors to fraternities. The president said that Mark Wrighton, who is a fraternity advisor, and the Faculty Senate's Student Affairs Committee will be included in these discussions. Please give your input on this matter.

A professor said that students in her class had suggested that the buses from Portsmouth should run later than 11:00 p.m., so that students could attend plays and other events there. Many students would like to have interesting alternatives to late parties, which may affect academic performance because of both the alcohol and the sleep deprivation. A professor suggested that faculty should be given UNH hockey tickets so that the faculty would have more contact with students. Another professor suggested that there should be a multi-disciplinary approach to the problem, including educational sessions for the faculty on how they could approach the subject in their classes or when talking with students. The administration plans to get input from the whole university community and the town and develop a structure that can be enforced.

V. Faculty Luncheons - Four faculty luncheons are planned for the fall semester and four in the spring. Elizabeth Hageman will coordinate the faculty luncheons during the fall semester. She will invite some new faculty members and ask each new faculty member to bring an established faculty member to the luncheon. A member of the Agenda Committee will attend each lunch, and the luncheon coordinator also plans to give the president a list of the luncheons and invite the president to drop by if she wishes to do so. These lunches are paid for by the university and are intended to improve faculty communication and Faculty Senate responsiveness and to develop a greater sense of community at UNH.

VI. Faculty Contract Negotiations and the Negotiation Process - Steve Fan said that he has participated in the negotiation of all four faculty contracts and is now beginning the fifth negotiation. The current contract will end this coming summer and was agreed upon in November of 2000 for five years; but the contract was overdue; and the term was about half expired at that time. A state statute says that employers must start to negotiate three months ahead of the contract closing date, but both sides have agreed that the negotiations will start this fall rather than next March.

Since the contract was signed, there have been discussions on the negotiation process itself, on the list of comparator institutions, and on merit and equity raises. The faculty negotiators asked if the university intended again to hire an outside lawyer who would be expensive and who might not understand the needs of the university community. In past negotiations, the faculty union wanted the comparator schools to be the New England state universities, but USNH wanted to use a list approved several years ago by the trustees, that included schools such as Utah State and Mississippi State. After a great deal of discussion, fourteen schools were agreed upon as comparator institutions. Based on FY 01 data, UNH salaries are below the mean of this group by 7.2 % for professors, 5.5 % for associate professors, and 10.9 % for assistant professors. These numbers have improved somewhat for FY 02. No agreement was reached on merit and equity. They will be among the issues to be included in the coming formal contract negotiations. Medical insurance benefits will also be an important issue, and the union negotiators have been meeting with the system benefits people every couple of months. The union wants to look into the number of HMO organizations available and what they offer. The faculty negotiators will be the same as last year: Professors Beverly James, Steve Fan, Chris Balling, Dale Barkey, Deanna Wood, and Curt Givan. Union members are asked to attend an AAUP caucus meeting at 2:10 p.m. on September 27 in 312 McConnell Hall.

VII. Adjournment - The meeting was adjourned.

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