[Plsfaculty] PLS Faculty Meeting Minutes

[Donna-Rae Marquez]

On Behalf of Dr. Brian Larkins:

 

 

Plant Sciences Faculty Meeting: February 11, 2011

Minutes:

 

Attendees: B. Larkins, U. Schuch, P. Rorabaugh, C. Kubota, S. McMahon, K.
Schumaker, D. Rhoads, T. Quist, M. Orbach, B. Pryor, R. Mosher, R.
Palanivelu, M. Ottman, B. Fane, H. VanEtten, R. Wing, B. Wang, Z. Xiong, D.
Baltrus, D. Marquez

 

 

1.       Appointment of School Director Advisory Committee: Betsy Arnold,
Bill McCloskey, Cheri Kubota and Ramin Yadegari -

The Committee was established in order to bring action items, concerns and
new ideas to Dr. Larkins' attention.  Historically this committee's
membership was voted on by the faculty.  Brian may consider this for future
committees. 

 

2.       Faculty meetings - probably monthly.  

 

This was discussed - these most likely will be ad hoc meetings as oppose to
scheduled meetings.  But, the plan would be for these meetings to  be held
on Fridays at 12:30 p.m.

 

3.       APROL review

All APROL's have been submitted.  The Peer Review Committee schedule has
been set.  Dr. Larkins has preliminarily met with most of the faculty.  But,
the scheduling for the actual Annual Reviews with Dr. Larkins will be
forthcoming after the committee meets and completes their reviews.

 

4.       Departmental  priorities: 

   A) Increase undergraduate enrollment; enhance our graduate program

1.       Addressing curriculum issues

2.       More aggressive advertising of our programs and undergraduate
recruiting

3.       Curriculum Committee discussion at next faculty meeting

There was a discussion about the number of undergrads that are in the
School, what we would like to grow our program to in the future, and how
many undergrads are in similar programs at other universities.   Some
faculty brought up enhancing our curriculum to include more upper division
courses based on current census in those courses.

 

   B) re-structuring our graduate program

         1.  Departmental funding

         2.  Recruiting and management

         3.  Graduate Committee meeting at subsequent faculty meeting

                

    C) departmental website - David Galbraith

                "Basically, the process of design using CALS-IT has started
and we will be entering a process of iterative improvement when they send us
the first layouts."

Dr. Palanivelu updated the progress on the website, regarding the assistance
from CALS with page layout and Drupal.  Dr. Larkins mentioned that some cost
would be involved.  Some  faculty asked when the new website would be live,
would it be interactive to update their own websites, such as BIOgate, why
was there a charge as there are University resources that will do this for
free.               

 

5.       Administrative training; Capitol and Space documentation -
Donna-Rae

Updated information on the new legacy infrastructure programs with the
decentralization of the duties and responsibilities to the Departments from
Central Administrative Offices.  Plus, she explained the deadlines for the
inventories and the need to receive back information on your capital
equipment items.   Dr. Larkins brought up the fact that we are one of the
largest departments in the College research dollar and expenditure wise but
with one of the smallest Admin staffs.  

 

6.       Budget expectations

Dr. Larkins explained the pending budget cuts proposed by the Governor at
20%, if not increased by the AZ State Legislators, and that she has asked
for permission to remove 239,000 people from the state run Medicaid program.
The President and Provost have been planning this anticipated budget cut for
some time and are making some strategic budget enhancement plans by
recommending increases to tuition over a two year period, rolling over
furlough dollar saving, plus financial cuts to units that could be
approximately 5% or more.   The President doesn't like furloughs but is not
ruling them out at this time.   Dr. Larkins will work with Donna-Rae on
reviewing the departmental budget and expenditures to plan for this and
future budget cuts.

 

7.        Faculty recruiting: Dick Sayre, Mark Beilstein, and Eric Lyons

Dr. Larkins explain the three new potential faculty hires that are in the
recruitment stages at this point:

Dick Sayre, who interviewed for the Director position, has expressed
interest in becoming a faculty member in Plant Sciences.  The details of his
hiring and offer are being worked on by the Dean, Provost, VPR and Dr.
Larkins

Mark Beilstein is a partner hire.  His funding will be split in thirds
between CALS/CLAS and the VPR office for salary and startup funds.   His
field of expertise and research were described  in his seminar, was and were
reiterated at today's meeting. 

Eric Lyons is currently employed in BIO5 on iPlant funding.   NSF did a site
visit in the Fall of 2010 regarding the iPlant grant.  The
reviewersexpressed concern about the amount of resources from the UA in
support of NSF funding of the iPlant grant, which is a 5 year $50M grant
with the potential of another 5 years and $50M.  Plant Sciences has
initiated a targeted search for a bioinformatics faculty member who can
complement the iPlant directive.  Eric Lyons would be a suitable match.  The
Chair of the Search Committee is Ramin Yadegari and the members are Karen
Schumaker, Rod Wing, Steve Goff and Michael Sanderson.

 

8.        Program Investment Funds

The University is implementing a MME (Merit, Market, Equity) salary
adjustment that will not be an across-the-board effort, as that was voted
down by ABOR.  Rather, this will before specific targeted employees.  There
is a limited amount of State funding available for this increase.
Recommendations will be submitted to CALS by each Unit Head.  It was
explained that the MME is a generally accepted program to increase your
staff's salary, but we have to justify and request this on an individual
basis, unlike with this exercise.  We can send a list of employees for
recommendation.

A discussion about the increase in the PLS Graduate stipend was discussed.
This needs to be brought to the Graduate Student Committee first for review.

Also, it was recommended that we have a committee for School-wide grant
submission processes for Training Grants and Major Research Instrumentation
grants.   The training grants are now under the auspices of the Grad Student
Committee - it was agreed that this stays in that committee.

 

The meeting was adjourned at 12:40 p.m.

 

 

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