USA FACULTY SENATE
2004/2005

Chair’s Report

January 19, 2005

Just a few items to report on this month.

The Senate Executive Committee met with President Moulton in early December. We informed the president of our luncheon with the Foundation and our efforts to promote an increase in funding for graduate assistants and we updated him on our quest to gauge faculty support for a university club. We learned that the administration expects to conduct a search for VP for Research and Graduate Dean in a couple of years, though it will be conducting searches for honors director and graduate director this year. Susan McCready has agreed to serve as the Senate’s representative on the search committee for the director of the honors program. We also learned that the administration is unconcerned about a recent change coming out of the Alabama legislature that requires anyone retiring with less than 25 years in the Alabama system to pay a portion of the university’s cost for PEEHIP. This latter concern was raised by the Alabama Council of University Faculty Presidents. Finally, in response to our inquiries about on-campus construction, we subsequently obtained copies of the monthly construction and facilities report. This extensive monthly report will be made available on our web site.

Last week, the Executive Committee met and discussed most of the items on our agenda today, including the Withdrawal policy proposals, so more on that later. The Committee also agreed that we take a new look at Dental Insurance. As you may recall, it was almost 5 years ago that we voted down a proposed Mutual of Omaha dental plan. That, of course, was in the pre-BC/BS days and many believed that the problem was not a lack of support for dental coverage, but a rejection of the details of that proposed plan. Matt Ames has volunteered to help explore the issue and has been moved over to the Salaries/Fringe Benefits Committee to help work on this. We will be reporting back on that in the future.

Finally, a few announcements:

1. David Nelson from the Biology Dept. has been invited by the very active Environmental Quality Committee to briefly address the Senate about University environmental resources during our February meeting.
2. Dr. Joe Busta, VP for Development, will attend the Senate meeting in March. I have asked Dr. Busta to submit a report in writing to facilitate his brief presentation.
3. Since the 3rd Wednesday in March is during spring break, we will meet a week later, on March 23.

University of South Alabama  -  Faculty Senate -  Mobile, AL 36688-0002
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