Standing charges

1. Hold monthly meetings with the Provost to receive information and provide input regarding budgetary and reallocation decisions in all sectors of the university. Include discussions of the budget rollover policy, tuition accountability, and the utility payment policy.

2. Participate in the university's budget formulation process and provide committee representation at hearings where units present their budget plans.

3. Inform SenEx promptly and regularly about developments in planning and budget activities. Regularly report to SenEx regarding the activities of the committee as the chair feels appropriate.

4. Utilize the technical support of the Office of Institutional Research and Planning and communicate to OIRP any SenEx concerns about issues of measurement, standardization, and analysis of higher education data, including teaching loads, class sizes, and faculty salaries.

5. Submit to SenEx : a) the approved minutes of each meeting; b) a summary of issues discussed at the monthly meeting with the Provost; c) recommendations for action as they are approved by the committee d) final report by April 15, 2002. The final report should make clear what was and was not done about each of the charges as well as make recommendations for SenEx action. The report should also include suggestions for changes to next year's committee.

6. Keep abreast of Smart Card implementation and related problems.

Additional Charges

7. Keep abreast of and provide input to implementation of the Campus Master Plan. Specific attention should be paid to transportation issues and how the comprehensive landscape plan relates to campus use and access. Attention should also be paid to new building construction to determine a mechanism by which parking can be included as part of any new construction.

8. Stay informed about building and program developments of the Edwards Campus and the Capitol complex and provide input as circumstances warrant.

9. Continue to study the impact of recent changes in the tuition and fee systems: their effects on academic programs and how the tuition and fees (e.g., the technology fee, linear tuition, library and differential fees) are allocated. Consider whether University Governance should recommend a policy on the development and evaluation of special and differential fees.

10. Stay informed about the university's Initiative 2001 planning process and implementation.

11. In coordination with the Library committee, consider the effects of rapid increases in periodical prices on the quality of library collections and service.

12. To insure that professional staff have the autonomy and job normalcy they need in order to perform their duties, explore the possibility of establishing a free-standing formal structure for the Unclassified Professional Staff, parallel to the existing structures for faculty and for classified staff. (see attached rationale)

13. Review the process of raising private funds with the goal of determining the positive and negative effects on the University. (see attached rationale)

14. Determine the extent and impact of recent and anticipated faculty retirements, including phased retirements, upon academic units. (see attached rationale)

Attachment to P&R Charges

Rationale for Charge #12 from Mohamed El-Hodiri:

In most universities outside the US, professional staff are recognized as performing substantive services to the university in the same way as their colleagues on the faculty and on the classified staff. Perhaps going all the way back to the times where all US higher education was adjunct to religious institutions, the functions performed by professional staff had an aura of volunteerism and transience about them. This, while faculty and administrators are increasingly professionalized and commensurately remunerated.

Rationale for Charge #13 from Mohamed El-Hodiri:

With a US polity which is increasingly reluctant to increase spending on higher education, perhaps under the mistaken belief that benefits and costs of such an education are purely individual, leaders of higher education have intensified their efforts to obtain funds from alternative sources in order to finance this collectively produced and consumed service. At times it would seem that the quest for additional funding becomes an end in itself, a perception that leads to gathering funds for the sake of gathering funds. At times this is done without careful consideration of the positive and negative effects on the main missions of the higher learning institutions. P&R is charged to review the process of "raising money" with the goal of establishing a clear connection between the funds raised and the way the funds are used to achieve the goals of the institution.

Rationale for Charge #14 from Lloyd Sponholtz:

As an example, in the history department, as many as one-third of the faculty will have retired in the decade ending in 2009. Some sub-units of the department (medieval history) have been devastated; and others (Russian and Eastern European history) have faculty all of whom are of retirement age. Permanent replacements are delayed even further by phased retirements. Is the situation in history a unique case, or is the problem more pervasive?