UNH Faculty Senate
Summary Minutes from 23 February, 2004
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UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
2003/04 FACULTY SENATE
FEBRUARY 23, 2004 - MINUTES SUMMARY
I. Roll - The following senators were absent: Black, Burger, Farrell, Herold, Mulligan, and Niesse. Excused were
Dillon, Hanson, Krysiak, Quinn, Shea and Stone. Guests were Bruce Mallory, Bob Cape, Petr Brym, Phil Hammond, and
Claudia Morner.
II. Communications with the provost - Responsibility center management is scheduled to undergo a review after the
fifth year, to start in the fall of 2005. The university has begun to plan what should go into the review, and
the administration will ask the Faculty Senate's Finance and Administration Committee to participate in this planning.
Then by the end of the current semester, a draft of the plan should be available; and input will be requested next
year from many campus groups, so that the review can start up strongly in the 2005 fall semester. RCM is based
on five or six core goals, and any review must refer back to those goals. The review should also deal with those
aspects of RCM that were not anticipated. RCM should not be a barrier to interdisciplinary programs for example.
The provost said that the purpose of the review is to ensure that RCM works appropriately in the future, and he
added that the review will not be a discussion about whether the university should have a decentralized budget
system. The provost said that the design of the review should include a mechanism for faculty input.
The previous provost, the Deans Council, and Don Sundberg designed a process for university institutes. A set of
guidelines were developed and approved, so that certain research entities can be identified as different from the
others and given institute status. The deans intended that in the future the university will only have a limited
number of institutes and that the institutes will not take on the aspects of a school or college. The Institute
for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space has made a formal proposal to become a university institute, and the process
requires that various entities review the proposal. Also, Provost Mallory said that Professor Paul McNamara is
heading a group working on a statement from faculty on the value of diversity to the university. This statement
is needed so that the university can continue to use targeted financial aid.
Regarding the state budget, the latest expectation is that there will not be a rescission in the state appropriation
to the university in the current fiscal year. The university is scheduled to receive a three-percent increase for
fiscal year 2005. If the university were to receive only flat funding in that year, this would have the effect
of reducing funding to programs, since certain expenses will increase and are not in the control of the university.
The review of COLSA is now under way, and representatives from the Faculty Senate have been named as members of
the joint review committee. A formal letter announcing the review was sent to the AAUP and the Faculty Senate,
and COLSA faculty will receive a similar letter in the next few days. The provost said that the review committee
will not recommend significant changes to occur in less than one year, that the process will probably take twelve
to fourteen months from now, and that it will include financial analysis. The COLSA Joint Review Committee will
consist of three faculty representatives named by the senate's Agenda Committee, three faculty from COLSA, and
Leigh Anne Melanson who is appointed by the President's Office. Faculty will pose the questions that the review
committee will consider. There will also be an external review of the biological sciences by the end of this spring.
In addition, the administration is working with other units which have short-term budget shortfalls. For example,
in CEPS a hiring freeze has been instituted for tenure-track faculty, including on-going faculty searches. It is
difficult to raise tuition further, because the UNH tuition is high compared with other similar universities. A
professor said that the senate's Academic Affairs Committee would like to applaud the appointment of Lisa MacFarlane
as the new director of the Honors Program. The provost said that he will also report soon on the leadership of
the Discovery Program.
III. Wireless policy - Bob Cape said a draft UNH policy has been prepared to manage wireless and frequency spectra
use and that the policy can be reviewed on line at http://www.unh.edu/cis/wpdoc.html. The Wireless Spectrum Policy
Committee is a sub-committee of the Technology Policy and Planning Group and includes faculty, technical experts,
service providers, and administrators. The committee has prepared this plan in order to prevent conflicts and also
establish guidelines to deal with those which occur. Since many types of devices may use wireless technology, the
potential for conflict is high. The plan also deals with potential security risks when wireless access points interact
with wired networks. The draft policy begins with a rationale and then discusses recommendations in sections E,
F and G. Those who wish to establish wireless services must register and clear their plans with the appropriate
central authority before any funds are expended. Installation and management of wireless services connected to
the UNH network would be provided by UNH Telecommunications, and exceptions to this must be approved by the UNH
Technology Policy and Planning Group.
UNH will maintain a web page that includes the wireless policy, educational material on wireless issues, and contact
information for a central authority on these matters. Devices and installations that are in conflict with this
policy must be removed within one budget cycle (twelve months). However, the policy adds that, if any devices or
installations actively cause problems, the owner must discontinue the use immediately or work with providers to
resolve the problem in a timely fashion. Campus clients should report problems to the CIS help desk, at 2-4242.
Devices that may cause problems include cordless phones, microwave ovens, and certain lights and access points.
Any problems requiring policy interpretation should be brought to the Technology Policy and Planning Group, which
will consult with UNH leadership and interpret the wireless policy.
Suggestions for the draft policy have included making it more readable, providing timely access for temporary wireless
needs, changes regarding external vendors, and providing a mechanism by which a department might install, operate
and maintain its own wireless service. Temporary installations might take one week and would cost two hundred dollars
for installation plus five dollars per day. Long-term pricing is available on the telecommunications web page at
http://www.unh.edu/telecom/data/wirelessrates.html. There are now about thirty wireless access points on campus.
Departments or colleges would fund wireless in their spaces, and CIS may be able to fund wireless in some shared
spaces. At the present time, wireless connections may be slower and more expensive than wired connections, and
so wired connections are preferable in many situations. There is no wireless service in the student residence halls,
and new university buildings will continue to need wired connections until technology advances further. Professors
expressed concern that, if wireless connection were available in classrooms, students might not concentrate on
the classroom instruction and also bandwidth problems might occur which could interfere with the instructional
presentation. Bob Cape said that the university could explore this issue in a pilot situation, to see what kind
of control might be made available to instructors. Technology evolves, and the policy may need adjusting as time
passes. The Master Plan does not refer specifically to wireless policy. The draft wireless policy should be reviewed
by many representative groups for input. When a final draft is prepared, the Technology Policy and Planning Group
will review it and then take it to the president for approval as university policy.
IV. Minutes - The minutes of the last Faculty Senate meeting were unanimously approved.
V. Communications from the chair - The senate chair announced that the senate's representatives to the COLSA Programmatic
Review Committee are Karen Graham, David Richman, and Barbara Krysiak. Also, the February 13 Campus Journal has
published a correction expressing regret that an article in the February 6 Campus Journal had incorrectly stated
that the Faculty Senate supported a communications framework. The correction states that "while the strategic
communications framework was presented to the Faculty Senate by Vice President Jennifer Murray as part of an overall
communications update, there was no action requested of or taken by the senate."
VI. Library Committee report - Lynn Kistler, the chair of the Library Committee, reported on three charges to the
senate's Library Committee. The first charge was to review the effect of responsibility center management on library
funding. As of this year, the library has been operating under a new RCM formula, in order to have a broader funding
base. Total revenues have increased and are sufficient to meet the continuing collection obligations for periodical
subscriptions and staffing. Any new subscriptions have to be balanced by dropping other subscriptions. However,
many of the computers are old and in need of replacement. The university librarian said that the library can continue
with the new funding formula until the upcoming overall RCM review. Secondly, the library distributes its resources
to the UNH colleges based on historical numbers but is redefining that formula based on the cost and use of the
materials. When the distribution formula has been defined, the library will bring the proposal to the Faculty Senate
for input.
To accommodate Kingsbury renovations, in January the engineering, mathematics and computer science branch library
moved to the back of New Hampshire Hall for the next three years. Some less-frequently-used materials were moved
to the basement of Dimond Library. Also, the UNH library has formed a committee to determine the effects on library
activities of the USA Patriot Act, under which the government could demand access to any library records. The committee
will consider whether or for how long records should be kept, to protect the confidentiality of the library users.
The UNH library is meeting with other New England land-grant colleges and universities to consider joint implementation
with shared resources for the use of dSpace, which is a digital institutional repository that captures, stores,
indexes and redistributes in digital formats the intellectual output of a university's research faculty. Also,
Infotrieve is a document delivery and table of contents alert service which allows library patrons to order single
articles from journals, to be delivered by postal mail or electronically, and tables of contents to be delivered
electronically. This service might replace the need for certain journals at a fraction of the cost. In addition,
Virtual Catalog provides a single, searchable catalog of books from libraries in the Boston Library Consortium.
Books ordered from those libraries will be received in two to five days.
Some students have expressed interest in extending library hours to provide a place to study after midnight. The
students are more interested in a study room than in accessing the entire library facility, but the library does
not have an area that can be easily isolated from the rest of the library. The library has already cut Sunday hours
in order to save money, and it is not clear if late hours are more important than additional Sunday hours. The
library will survey students and faculty from March 20 to April 16, to assess if there is broad support for longer
hours, and will inform the senate's Library Committee of the results. Today the senate unanimously approved a motion
that the senate has heard and understood the Library Committee's report.
VII. Adjournment - The Faculty Senate meeting was adjourned.
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