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Governance Minutes ArchiveAugust 9, 1993
Minutes CALS Council Meeting Monday, August 9, 1993 - 1:30 p.m. 1810 Litton Reaves Hall Dr. Swiger called the meeting to order at 1:30 p.m.. Present: A. Swiger, M. Fitzwater, G. Jubb, B. Allen, J. White, S. K. De Datta, B. Vinson, P. Schultz, S. Wolfe, G. Norton, E. Collins, & J. Smith. J. Myers, J. Riddell, and K. Webb participated via conference call. Absent: B. Cannell, S. Walton, W. Purcell, M. Frazier, B. Hockman, B. Manley, and M. Jones. Guests: L. Moore and V. Boggs. I. Dr. Swiger welcomed the members to the first meeting of the Council and asked everyone to introduce themselves and whom they represent. Dr. Skip Jubb will be attending, representing the Director of the Experiment Station, and will have voting rights. Swiger said this was the first step in the College's new governance system and that the Council would have several additional members as soon as all of the Chairs of the various commissions had been elected. Swiger said that today's meeting would be more of an informative meeting since most of the Commissions had not met yet. II. Agenda: a. Distribution of Minutes -- According to the Constitution, the Secretary will "...distribute copies of the minutes to members of the Council and to all faculty and other personnel in the College designated by the Council." The Council agreed that the minutes should be entered on the Computer system whereby anyone in the College could access them. Since the student members would not have access to this, Dr. White said he would make copies and distribute to the student members. Vernon will work with Martha to get these entered on the computer. b. Approval of Commission on Administrative & Professional Faculty -- This Commission has been added to the Constitution but has not been approved by the Faculty and Staff Associations and the CALS Council. Commission members have been appointed to serve on the Commission, however, the Chair will not have voting rights on the Council until it has been approved by the two Associations and the Council. Dr. Swiger instructed Martha Fitzwater to distribute the information on this proposed Commission to the two Associations as soon as possible for their approval so that the first reading can be placed on the Council's October agenda. c. Report on Diversity Activities -- Larry Moore Last year, Dr. Swiger asked Dr. Moore to assume the lead role of addressing diversity recruitment and retention within the College. A College Committee of faculty and staff has been established to work toward various goals within this area. The group, over the past year, has addressed the recruitment of high school students and undergraduates into the College, as well as graduate student, post-doc, and faculty recruitment. Dr. Moore distributed a hand-out summarizing the seven grants that have been secured to recruit minority and women into the College. Also, the Provost's Office has funded two faculty positions, plus one pending, as well as several post-doctoral positions, in the CALS. d. Faculty and Staff Raises -- L. A. Swiger Faculty Raises: The College received 3.55% for faculty raises this year, and every penny was put out to the Departments, Experiment Stations, and Extension Districts; these raises will become effective December 1, 1993. The Department Head was given 3.55% of the salary base of faculty within that Department, and the Department Head then recommended raises for each faculty member based on merit and not across the board. The recommended raises have been submitted to the Provost for approval by the Board of Visitors at their August meeting. The Provost requested that the recommended raises not be released until they have been approved by the BOV. The promotion bonuses and gender and race corrections and compression corrections went into effect on July 1, however only the promotion bonuses were actually received. The gender and race corrections, as well as the compression corrections, will not be approved by the Board of Visitors until later this month, therefore, they will be retroactive to July 1 after being approved by the BOV. Dr. Swiger said the University did a study of gender and race bias on salaries, and a deviation from expected salary was calculated on certain faculty and a merit neutral number was generated. As a result, the Provost made some money available to the College, out of the increased tuition, to correct these deficiencies in salaries. Also, some Assistant Professors who had been hired several years ago and were at a lower salary than new Assistant Professors being hired today, were being recommended for a special supplement. Another area that was being addressed by this special supplement was faculty whose salary was well below what it should be or out of line with others in their rank. For the most part, the supplements are small and would represent no more than a partial adjustment. Dr. Swiger said that he and Bill Allen and Judith Jones had met with Pat Hyer to discuss the possibility of a similar study for the Extension Agents' salary. A committee has been set up to look at this. Staff Raises: This is the first time that staff will be given the opportunity to receive a three-step merit raise. However, only approximately one out of every 12 staff members would receive the three-step raise. Between now and October 1, every supervisor and reviewer need to attend at training session; following that, another evaluation of the staff has to be completed prior to October 1. Between October 1-16, from those rated superior, a subset of those to actually receive the bonuses will be chosen. In the CALS, the Department Heads, District Directors, and Dr. Jubb (on behalf of the Outlying Stations) will make recommendations to a committee, consisting of John White, Judith Jones, and Dr. Swiger. e. Report on International Activities -- S. K. De Datta Discussed various projects, Senegal, Mali, Zambia, SARSA, etc., in which the OIRD is involved. A number of projects, including the Zambia project, will be concluded at the end of the year; will know next week if Va. Tech will win the Albania project. At the first organizational meeting of the Commission on International Program Policies, George Norton was elected Chair and Dr. Saacke was elected Secretary. Norton said that a number of issues and topics had been identified at that meeting which the Commission would be addressing, such as: What happens to overhead dollars? What happens to salary savings? etc. f. Status of Allocation Plan -- L. A. Swiger Authorized filling 10 staff positions July 1 which took care of the units which were more than one below their allocation; now have approximately 10 more staff positions to be filled and still have too many faculty, especially in research agency. Dr. White said that the restructuring of the College's Academic Office had been completed. Originally, there were four administrative positions - Assistant Director (Vasey), Director of Ag. Tech (Bell), Director of Recruitment and Placement (A. Smith), and Director of Resident Instruction (White). Two positions are being combined - the Assistant Director and the Director of Ag. Tech. White said he had met with the Ag. Faculty Association about the restructuring of that office, and they had signed off on the new reorganization concept. White also said that Mr. Bell is no longer the Director of the Ag. Tech. program, and that Dr. John Crunkilton is now serving as Interim Director. The position description has been sent to the EO/AA Office for approval and then will be advertised internally. A Search Committee has been set up which consists of Frank Gwazdauskas, Ed Bunce, and James McKenna (elected by Ag. Fac. Assn.) and Wanda Grubb, Robert Wright, and Regina Smick-Attisano (appointed by Dr. White). Anticipate that the position will be filled by October 1. g. Report on Staff Recognition Program -- Joyce Smith Last Year, the CALS Staff Association appointed a subcommittee to look at this and come up with procedures to put the program in place. There will be three awards presented to staff -- a) Dean's Award (presented annually at the staff picnic); b) Exemplary Employee Award (presented monthly); and c) Versatility Award (presented bi-monthly). The first Dean's Award was presented to Leon Alley, a lab instrument maker in Agricultural Engineering, at the Annual CALS Staff Picnic on July 29. h. Budget Initiatives -- L. A. Swiger Last winter, Cameron Hackney, Research Administrative Intern, played a major role in organizing these. Faculty in the four colleges (CALS, MVRCVM, HR, F&W) were given an opportunity to provide input. Five initiatives were then submitted to the Provost. The Provost said that the request was about 10 times more than what he wanted. Two of the five initiatives were resubmitted -- Commercial Seafood Program and Information Systems. A meeting of the Vice Presidents and Deans will be held next Tuesday to approve the University's asking budget. Following that, hopefully, the Governor will include the initiatives in his recommendations to the General Assembly in December. i. Reallocation Process -- L. A. Swiger In order to bring about change within the University, Dr. Carlisle asked the Deans to put 1 1/2% of their resources on the table and explain what they would give up. Then each will propose new programs they would like to initiate if they were to get funds from the pool of money. This will occur in October. j. Phase II -- L. A. Swiger Represents an attempt to restructure the University to fit into the resources that we have left. The theme of Phase II is to work smarter and do more and better things with the same resources. III. Other: a) Dr. Eldridge Collins requested the names of the Chairs of the Commissions after they have been elected. b) Dr. Jubb - the VAES Annual Plan-of-Work which was submitted in the spring has now been approved; Suella Wolfe has a copy of the plan if anyone would like to see it. c) Dr. Allen - discussed last week's tornado which hit Petersburg area; estimates $11.7M damage in Petersburg District. Dr. Allen commended the Extension Agents who helped in getting the reports filed. The meeting adjourned at 3:00 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Martha M. Fitzwater Secretary
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