September 18, 2012 Academic Council Minutes

Dean Skerrett called the meeting to order at 10:30 a.m. The minutes of the April 17, 2012  and September 4, 2012 meetings were approved.

All proposals on the September 18, 2012 consent agenda were approved.

Admissions Update

Malcolm Hill and Lisa Gentile have been working closely with Admissions and following up on concerns that were raised last year at Academic Council meetings. Malcolm reminded everyone to refer to the timeline provided by Admissions for upcoming admissions events.




Introduction of new A&S Communications Staff

Dean Skerrett introduced the two new A&S communications staff members, Jessica Pittman and Andrea Almoite. Jessica and Andrea both gave brief descriptions of their primary duties. Jessica will work with the administrative coordinators and faculty members to plan and execute communications projects. Andrea will write feature stories and find ways to generate content throughout the school of Arts and Sciences as well as any work relating to department websites. 





Presentation of the FY13 Budget


Dean Skerrett presented Academic Council with the FY13 budget.  The dean said that we would focus faculty governance this year on designing a robust budget process for A & S.  Dean Skerrett, Terri Weaver and Dean Wang have been working closely the budget office to the infrastructure of the A & S budget, while simultaneously developing the budget request and review process.

At the end of last June, A&S had both a salary surplus and an operational surplus. Normally, this surplus be transferred to the plant fund, however, for FY14 the dean has the ability to transfer a portion of the surplus back to operations via the program based budgeting (PBB) initiative.

Dean Skerrett was asked to define a plant fund. The dean explained that the plant fund functions as a reserve fund for capital projects throughout the School of Arts and Sciences.  For example, monies spent pursuant to the Arts Initiative came from the plant fund.

The dean is responsible for decisions concerning allocation of resources in connection with the A & S budget.  However, the Dean’s Advisory Council is charged with making recommendations to the dean about budget requests and faculty and staff positions.  In order to ensure that the DAC can make robust recommendations based on information, the dean’s office has designed a budget request process that involves the department chairs and the Dean’s Advisory Council.  Vincent Wang described this process and reviewed the memorandum and budget request forms with the Academic Council.  He promised to email both documents to the department chairs and program coordinators after the meeting.

Undergraduate research is a crucial educational program that A&S funds. The dean’s office will dedicate funding at the current level.  However, now that Granger funding has been spent, undergraduate research will only be funded through A&S, as well as fellowships and grants sought by faculty.  The dean pledged to use all monies from the annual fund to enhance undergraduate research and faculty stipends.  There is currently no budget for faculty stipends for the undergraduate research program.  This is something that the Dean’s Advisory Council can consider in November.
A question was raised about how the Dean’s Advisory Council would make recommendations on budget requests for programs that cut across departments.  The dean suggested that the chairs and program coordinators employ their divisional representatives on the Dean’s Advisory Council to urge such requests.

There are two restricted endowments that support the science initiative, Kresge I and Kresge II. Psychology and Geology will also be part of the planning process, but there are restrictions on which departments can receive funds from these endowments.  The dean thanked the faculty members and development officers who had the foresight to pursue funds for these endowments.



 Program based budget process FY14 



Vincent distributed a memorandum and budget request forms for the program based budgeting process.   A&S will build its FY 14 budget and budget request according to program based budgeting.   Each department chair and program coordinator has already received a budget for FY 13 that reflect realignment based on a three-year history of spending.  The dean’s office created these histories and worked with department chairs on the realignments last year.  Vincent Wang introduced the new process and the new form.Vincent reminded council of the October 26 deadline for budget requests. If department chairs would like an additional copy of their FY13 budget, they may contact Terri Weaver in the dean’s office.  The dean urged that any requests for additional tenure-line positions should have a “leave-proof” component in the justification.  By this, the dean means that the department is willing to offer a curriculum that its tenure line faculty can teach in the ordinary course of things (not including family leaves.)  There was concern expressed for those departments that participate in interdisciplinary studies.  The dean urged the faculty to be inventive within the limits of our current size; thus, if we say yes to something new, we need to say no to something formerly done. Taken as a whole, we do not want to grow in ways that perpetuate or increase our reliance on contingent faculty. 



Staff and faculty position request process

Forms for faculty and staff position requests are included in the program based budtget process.  For staff position request, there is checklist provided by Human Resources that will allow Human Resources to grade the position. 





The meeting adjourned at 11:45am


Respectfully submitted,

Zandria Ivy