Faculty Advisory Council

Board of Supervisors

University of Louisiana System

Report to Faculty Senate: 18 October 2000

The UL System FAC will not meet until next week, in conjunction with the first academic-year meeting of the Board of Supervisors. Recent news, though, tells of success from an initiative that grew informally out of our August meeting but wasn't mentioned in my Sept. report. The Northwestern State rep had announced release of a new edition of the NSU faculty handbook, adding that some observers felt it should be reviewed for consistency with best professional practices and for conformity to official policies of Regents and the UL System.

No easy way was found to undertake the comparison with written management-board policies. But someone did suggest the rep seek AAUP review of relevant sections of the handbook. FAC was able to provide a contact with Louisiana Conference AAUP, which subsequently shepherded the document rapid review at the national AAUP office. In a matter of days the rep received a brief, specific accounting of variances between the new NSU faculty handbook and AAUP standards-and-practice recommendations in its focal areas—faculty governance, academic freedom, and tenure

BOARD OF REGENTS FACULTY ADVISORY COUNCIL Regents-FAC meeting (September 27, in association with Regents meetings at the Pennington Center in Baton Rouge) discussed at length the fate of the Governor's tied-pair of constitutional amendments that will appear on the November ballot. As previously, amendment supporters outweighed the undecided, but R-FAC still didn't and fairly certainly won't recommend joint faculty action. The Governor's office, after stringing along and finally rejecting our statewide teleconference with the Governor and higher ed faculty, reportedly had remembered that idea and hinted that a date may yet open up (meaning, probably, closer to the election). Expect it not to. Meanwhile, even then a few politicians were gingerly testing how constituents might react should they oppose the Governor. We discussed argued about the LSU System's new version of its policy document PM-35, which enacted and has more than once restructured post-tenure review. No consensus, no action.

Afoot among the Regents themselves, very interesting items from the Sept. meeting: • Gleaned from a staff report, these stats show impressive results for UL Lafayette in competition for Bd. of Rgts. "Superior Graduate Student Awards," program beginning to date (i.e., 7/87 thru 6/99): LSU A&M 104 awards $20,570k Tulane 59 awards $ 7,499k UL Laf 48 awards $ 4,100k U.N.O. 26 awards $ 2,620kTech 21 awards $1,575k TUmed 12 awards $2,544k LSUmed 9 awards $1,096k SU-BR 8 awards $ 469k McNeese 8 awards $205k Grambling 4 awards $409k Northwst'n 4 awards $106k UL Monroe 3 awards $110k• If you're thinking to adopt a prof (Endowed Professorship Prog.), do it now. Expect the ante to go up from $60k (to get $40k matching) to $150k (to get $100k). This will be true for us, LSU (A&M, Ag, Med, Pennington), Tulane & TU Med, U.N.O., and Tech. All other schools retain the old rules, except for a new class (Grambling, LSU -A, -E, & -S, SU -S & -NO, Xavier, and all the Community Colleges) who'll only need to find $30k to get a matching $70k. None of this is bronzed yet, but count on it.

Respectfully submitted,

Harry Bruder,

Senate rep to and Chair of UL FAC