November 1, 2002
Meeting of the Faculty Council
Friday, November 1st 2002 at 3:00 p.m.
The Pleasants Family Assembly Room in Wilson Library
Chancellor James Moeser and Professor Sue Estroff, Chair of the Faculty, will preside.
Agenda
3:00 Call to Order. The Secretary of the Faculty.
DISC 3:00 Chancellor’s Remarks and Question Time.
- Chancellor James Moeser invites questions or comments.
DISC 3:15 Remarks by the Provost.
- Provost Robert Shelton invites questions or comments.
DISC 3:25 Remarks by the Chair of the Faculty.
- Professor Sue Estroff invites questions or comments.
INFO 3:40 Report on the Gender Salary Equity Study.
- Executive Associate Provost Bernadette Gray-Little.
INFO 3:55 Annual Report of the Faculty Athletics Committee.
- Professor Celia Hooper.
DISC 4:00 Open Discussion of Topics Raised by Faculty Members.
INFO 4:20 Report of the Task Force on the Academic Plan.
- Provost Robert Shelton.
INFO 4:30 Report on the Revision of the General Education Curriculum.
- Professor Laurie McNeil.
ACT 4:50 Closed Session. Distinguished Alumnus and Alumna Awards for 2003.
ACT 5:00 Adjourn.
Joseph S. Ferrell
Secretary of the Faculty
KEY:
ACT = Action
DISC = Discussion
INFO = Information
Minutes
Attendance
Present (59): Adimora, Ammerman, Bane, Bouldin, Bowen, Cairns, Chenault, Crawford-Brown, Daye, D’Cruz, Elter, Files, Fishell, Foley, Gerber, Gollop, Granger, Janda, Kagarise, Kelley, Kessler, Langbauer, LeFebvre, Leigh, Lohr, Malizia, McGraw, Meyer, Miler, Morris-Natschke, Nelson, Nonini, Orthner, Owen, Panter, Pfaff, Pisano, Pittman, Poole, Porto, Reinert, Rippe, Rock, Rong, Rowan, Salmon, Shea, J. Smith, W. Smith, Tauchen, Toews, Tresolini, Tulloch, Vick, Watson, Weiss, Willis, Wilson, Yopp.
Excused absences (27): Allison, Bachenheimer, Barbour, Bollen, Carelli, Carter, Colindres, Elvers, Fowler, Ghosh, Gilland, Henry, Kjervik, Meece, Metzguer, Moran, Nicholas, Parikh, Reisner, Retsch-Bogart, Schauer, Sigurdsson, Straughan, Strauss, Sueta, Vandermeer, Wallace.
Unexcused absences (4): Cotton, Holditch-Davis, McQueen, Sams.
Chancellor’s Remarks
Chancellor James Moeser began his remarks with a tribute to Paul David Wellstone, A.B. 1965, Ph.D. 1969, United States Senator from Minnesota, who was killed in a plane crash on October 25, 2002.
“This past week Carolina lost one of its sons, United States Senator Paul Wellstone — a true man of the people. Paul Wellstone represented the state of Minnesota but he has often been described also as North Carolina’s third senator because of his strong ties to Chapel Hill, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree Phi Beta Kappa in three years and a Ph.D. in political science. He also won the 1964 ACC Championship in wrestling. He is remembered even by his political opponents as a man of uncommon kindness and human warmth. Joel Schwartz, his mentor and lifelong friend at Carolina, relates how he constantly reached out to others, including the very nemesis of his Carolina student activist days, Senator Jesse Helms. Paul Wellstone sharpened and honed his commitment to human rights at this university. Joel Schwartz tells this story: when he was an undergraduate there was a struggle here to desegregate the last holdouts among area businesses. One café still would not admit blacks and there was a protest with pickets, and people on the other side were taunting the pickets. Wellstone and his wife were trying to finish school, they were in a hurry, and they walked about a hundred feet past the protest when he said to her ‘you know there comes a time when if you see injustice, you just can’t ignore it.’ He joined the protest. In 1969 he helped organize support for the volatile Lenoir Hall cafeteria workers strike. As a United States Senator, he reflected those values in all that he did. I met Paul Wellstone only once, on one of his visits to this campus last year when he talked to our students about service. He told them that public service is a lifetime commitment, that college is not a dress rehearsal for life but that they should begin now in becoming engaged and helping others. To all who knew him, he was not Senator Wellstone, but Paul. As Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa said, ‘no one ever wore the title of Senator better and used it less.’” The Council rose for a moment of silent remembrance.
Faculty salary equity report.
The chancellor thanked Dr. Lynn Williford, director of the Office of Institutional Research, for the painstaking work that went into the report of the faculty salary equity study (to be discussed later on today’s agenda). He said, “we need to study and understand these data and then develop an orderly process of dealing with them. Recognizing that we are dealing with individual members of the faculty, we shall have to treat each case on its own merits with appropriate administrative and peer review.”
Black Alumni Reunion.
Chancellor Moeser noted that the 22nd annual Black Alumni Reunion is taking place this weekend. “African-Americans first enrolled at Chapel Hill in 1951 and Harvey Beech, the first African-American alumnus, graduated in 1952,” he said, “but African-Americans helped build this university from day one — October 12th 1793, the day the cornerstone was laid at Old East. It is a wonderful fact that we have more African-American tenure-track faculty and more endowed chairs held by African-American faculty than any other university in this country. But we are not content with where we are, and we are not content with very high ratings from our own students. Our vision is to be the leading public university, and that includes this critical area of diversity.”
Provost’s Remarks
Budget.
Provost Robert Shelton recapitulated the budget reductions that he reported at the October Council meeting. They totaled $11.8 million, or about 3%. A little over 50% of the reductions recommended by the deans to meet their quotas came from vacant faculty positions. These reductions were offset to some extent by $9.8 million in additional revenue received for enrollment increases and from campus-based tuition increases. We have now received our allocation of additional budget reductions mandated by the enacted State budget. The first comes from a mandated “efficiency reduction” of $25 million for all of State government. Our share of that is $765,000. This is a permanent reduction. The second results from a $41.5 million “negative reserve” in the budget; in other words, the amount by which total authorized appropriations exceeds estimated revenues. The governor is estimating a revenue shortfall of considerably more than that and has directed that State agencies reduce current-year spending by 2% in addition to the permanent budget reductions already implemented. For Carolina, this short-term reduction comes to $8.2 million. After consulting the chancellor and the Budget Committee, the provost said he is allocating this reduction to all units on a pro rata basis.
Academic Plan.
Work continues on the academic plan but it is not yet ready to present to the Council and others in the University community. In addition to the topics mentioned at the October Council meeting, the plan will identify metrics to measure success in implementing it. These measures will be consistent with the measures of excellence presented to the Board of Trustees earlier this year and that will be presented to the Board for approval at their November 20 meeting. The goal is to bring work on the academic plan to closure in time to present it to the Trustees for approval at their January 23 meeting.
Tuition Advisory Task Force.
The Tuition Advisory Task Force continues its work with a goal of completing its task in December. At its most recent meeting, the Provost’s Office placed before the members quantitative options and examined how they would address (1) new faculty positions to improve the student/faculty ratio, (2) faculty salaries, and (3) teaching assistant salaries. The estimated amount needed to meet these needs is $27 million. The task force also asked to discuss the possibility of using campus-based tuition for support of SPA staff salaries. The estimated amount needed for that purpose is $7.2 million. The group discussed in detail how the needs might be addressed if tuition were increased by $400 per year for each of three years, and how things would change if the increase were only $200 per year, or as much as $600 per year. Throughout the discussions, it has been tacitly assumed that 40% of the increase would be reserved for need-based aid. The provost said he has been encouraged by the fact that members of the task force have resisted the natural urge to dig in to rigid positions. The group has remained cohesive and seems committed to reaching a consensus.
Chair of the Faculty’s Remarks
Parking permits.
Professor Sue Estroff reported that the Advisory Committee on Transportation has endorsed a scheme for tiered parking permit fees based on the employee’s salary. Those earning less than $50,000 per year will see a 5% per year increase over a five-year period. Those earning between $50,000 and $100,000 will see 10% annual increases for five years, and those earning $100,000 and up will see annual increases of 20% over the same period. No one will get a reduction. After the five-year ramp-up, fees will stabilize. This recommendation is in the early stages. It has not yet been accepted by the administration or approved by the Trustees.
Lowest-paid employees.
The Executive Committee has received from Associate Vice Chancellor Laurie Charest a non-identified list of SPA employees who earn under $20,000 per year. There are more than 230 of them, many of whom are people of color in housekeeping jobs. Many have worked here for less than two years, but some have as much as 30 years of service. This information underscores the fact that the University as a workplace falls far short of providing a living wage to everyone who works here, which is unacceptable. Several units are moving ahead with plans for fund-raising on behalf of their staff. Faculty members in other units can contribute by contacting Human Resources. In view of differing sensibilities among staff about receiving contributions, the Executive Committee decided not to call for a campus-wide campaign. Instead, ECFC proposed a joint working group of faculty and staff to address the topic of living wage. Prof. Charles Daye (Law) will be co-chairing the group with a counterpart from the Employee Forum.
Report on Faculty Salary Equity Study
Executive Associate Provost Bernadette Gray-Little spoke to the report of a study of faculty salary equity by gender and ethnicity that has recently been completed by the Office of Institutional Research (OIR) under the leadership of Dr. Lynn Williford. The OIR has monitored faculty salaries on an ongoing basis for many years, but a number of factors this year heightened interest in gender/ethnicity issues both on this campus and across the nation. Several major universities and several professional and disciplinary organizations have conducted reviews of gender equity among faculty and in disciplines. Two general conclusions have emerged from these studies: (1) in some disciplines the number of women faculty is increasing without necessarily leading to equity in salary or status, and (2) in other disciplines the number of women faculty remains low. On this campus, several groups including the Status of Women Committee, the Association of Professional Women in the Medical School, and the Association of Women Faculty and Professionals, have been especially interested in this issue and have asked for a study of the status of women faculty on this campus. In response, Provost Shelton and Chancellor Moeser asked Assoc. Provost Gray-Little to work with Dr. Williford in designing and conducting such a study.
The goal of the study is to determine if systematic salary differences by gender and ethnicity can be detected after controlling for a number of other variables that might reasonably be expected to be related to salary. The study differs from many previous studies on this campus and most of the studies on other campuses in two ways: (1) it covers all academic units, including those in which clinical income is an important factor, and (2) it includes fixed-term faculty. The data for the analysis were taken from University personnel files, updated and corrected by the relevant departments and units. A special effort was made to understand policies and practices with regard to salaries in the School of Medicine and the School of Dentistry because of the importance of clinical income in those units.
The procedure used in the study yielded a number of multiple regression analysis models. This statistical method is used in most studies of this type and is the method of choice because it provides a means of estimating the impact of gender and ethnicity on salary while holding constant a number of other variables such as rank, time in rank, discipline, highest earned degree, and tenure status. The models were able to account for 80% of the variance in salaries. Productivity and quality variables were not included in the models. The analyses were conducted by Dr. Williford in consultation with Professors Kenneth Bollen (Sociology), Daniel Caplan (Dental Ecology), Keith Muller (Biostatistics), and Abigail Panter (Psychology).
Assoc. Provost Gray-Little presented the principal findings of the study (which can be found, along with an executive summary, at http://www.unc.edu/faculty/faccoun/selecteds.htm on the Web). In Academic Affairs, after controlling for all other factors used in the model, female faculty are paid on average $1,332 per year less than white males, while minority faculty are paid $1,680 more than white males. In Health Affairs schools other than Medicine, women are paid $3,440 less and minorities $2,552 more. In the School of Medicine, women receive $6,976 less overall and $9,293 less in the clinical departments. The study supports two major conclusions: (1) females have lower salaries than males in all models attempted, the average dollar disparity depending on the unit of analysis, and (2) minority faculty have higher salaries than white faculty in all areas except Medicine, where a negative disparity was noted in two of the analyses.
In concluding her remarks, Assoc. Provost Gray-Little said that the most important factors accounting for salary are rank, market value of the discipline, number of years in rank, and rank, and whether or not the person holds a distinguished professorship. Gender and ethnicity were relatively minor predictors in the model. The models used are very reliable. The question before us now is to gain a better understanding of what steps to take in response to the findings.
Annual Report of the Faculty Athletics Committee
Prof. Celia Hooper (Allied Health Sciences) presented the annual report of the Faculty Athletics Committee and briefly summarized how the committee organizes to do its work. A Council member asked why the graduation rate for women athletes is better than it is for men. Prof. Hooper replied that in her experience female athletes are highly motivated and have good time management skills. Another member noted that graduation rates appear to vary considerably from year to year and that the number of observations is small. He asked whether the data represent all student athletes or only a portion. Prof. John Evans (Business School), a member of the committee and our ACC faculty representative, explained that data in the committee’s report represents all participants in all athletic programs. Graduation rates are reported to different entities in different ways. We report to NCAA with respect to scholarship athletes. This is the smallest group. We report to the Board of Governors with respect to all recruited athletes, a slightly larger group. The committee’s report to the faculty covers all participants. It is true that the data vary from year to year. For that reason, Prof. Evans said he surveys the data over a rolling five-year period. This discloses slightly more stability. For male student athletes, the graduation rate hovers in the low 70% range. For females, it is in the mid-80% range. Looking at the data over a five-year period is especially important for individual programs in which the number of participants is small. Prof. Hooper added that the committee also reviews exit interviews in order to get a feel for the culture of a particular sport.
A member of the Council asked whether there are differences in graduation rates among the races. Prof. Evans reported that NCAA data for Carolina for the most recent four cohorts combined show the following graduation rates: black male student-athletes, 49%; all black male students, 57%; black female student-athletes, 83%; all black female students, 68%. The rates for all students were 79% for males and 80% for females.
A member of the Council asked about recent NCAA legislation that seems to eliminate a minimum SAT score requirement for scholarship athletes. Prof. Evans replied that NCAA legislation previously set a minimum SAT score of 820 which could be offset by a high grade point average (GPA). Thus, the legislation has embraced a sliding scale concept. The new legislation simply extends the concept to embrace the lowest possible SAT score of 400. The effect is that there is no SAT score that cannot be offset by an appropriately high GPA in order for a student to qualify for admission under NCAA standards. Meeting NCAA standards does not mean that a student meets the qualifications of any particular institution. The number of students who have low SAT scores but high GPA’s is quite small. The former truncated sliding scale was thought to be vulnerable to legal challenge on the basis of arbitrariness. He added that neither Carolina nor the ACC favored extending the scale because it leaves the impression that standards are being lowered and creates a temptation to recruit and admit students who will not be able to succeed academically. Our position did not prevail on a vote of 50 in favor, 15 opposed. Prof. Hooper said that the committee had discussed this matter and is concerned at the potential pressure that it may bring to bear on high school teachers.
Topics of Concern
Prof. Laura Janda (Slavic Languages and Literatures) expressed frustration at not being able to gain approval for meaningful salary increases for EPA personnel whose positions are fully funded from grant funds, even though the underlying grant provides for such increases. She said this policy has been in place for three years. Council members from the School of Medicine and the School of Social Work said that they have been able to pass on grant-funded salary increases. Prof. Janda said that she has received different advice from officials in the Office of the Dean of Arts and Sciences. Provost Shelton said he would look into the matter.
Council member Elizabeth Chenault (Academic Affairs Libraries) pointed out that Wilson Library is one of the few academic buildings open for business on Saturday mornings, yet the pre-game pep rally takes place on the front steps and is distracting. She hoped another more suitable site might be found.
General Education Curriculum Revision
Prof. Laurie McNeil (Physics & Astronomy) briefed the Council on the status of the undergraduate general education curriculum revision that she is heading. Work on revision of the curriculum began with the formation of a Steering Committee in the fall of 2000. In the fall of 2001, the Steering Committee formed a set of subcommittees made up of faculty, staff, and students involved in undergraduate education. About 160 people are involved in those subcommittees. Each of the subcommittees is charged with reviewing a particular area of the curriculum. The Steering Committee received the initial reports of the subcommittees and integrated them into one coherent curriculum after imposing certain constraints, such as a decision that there would be no increase in the number of credit hours required for graduation. The first draft of the proposal was presented to a faculty forum on April 22, 2002 and a revision prepared in light of the discussion. The revision was then presented and debated at another faculty forum on October 7, 2002, and at a student forum on Oct. 15. The proposal has now been revised in light of those discussions and has been officially submitted for comment to the Administrative Board of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Educational Policy Committee. Council members who wish to comment on the proposal should contact one of those bodies. When this part of the process has been completed, the Steering Committee will prepare a final report that will be brought forward for debate and formal approval by the Faculty Council. Prof. McNeil hopes that this will take place at the February Council meeting, an admittedly ambitious goal, but in any event before the end of this academic year. Once approved, the revised curriculum will take effect in due course, possibly as early as the Fall semester 2004 but probably more realistically in the Fall semester 2005. The revised curriculum would affect students enrolling for the first time on or after its effective date. Thus, for a number of years, we would be administering two sets of requirements as students first enrolling under the current requirements would continue to be governed by them.
Prof. McNeil then led the Council through a detailed survey of the specific requirements of the proposed curriculum.
Distinguished Alumna and Alumnus Awards
The Council went into closed session to hear the report of the Committee on Honorary Degrees and Special Awards with respect to Distinguished Alumna and Alumnus Awards to be presented at University Day 2003. The Council approved the committee’s nominees.
Adjournment
Its business having been completed, the Council adjourned at 5:00 p.m.
Joseph S. Ferrell
Secretary of the Faculty
