UTMB Faculty Senate

May 13, 2013

4:30 – 6:00 pm

MINUTES

 

Present:  Drs. C. Wiggs, Chair, S. Al-Arabi, P. Boor, W. Braun, S. Clark, P. Crane, S. Croisant, S. Fisher, J. Graham, L. Lawrence, B. Leonard, B. Luxon, J. McBride, N. Mendias, R. Rupp and H. West

 

Absent:  Drs. B. Ameredes, J. Badalamenti, L. Cain, J. Davis, R. Ellis, S. Elsaid, A. Jones, A. Oberhauser, S. Sarna, T. Wen, D. Wild and D. Young

 

I.              The meeting was called to order at 4:35 pm by Dr. Carol Wiggs, Faculty Senate Chair.

 

II.         The Approval of the April 8 minutes.  The minutes of April 8, 2013 were voted and approved by email on April 24, 2013.

 

III.         Provost, VP and Dean’s Report

 

            Executive Vice President, Provost and Dean, School of Medicine – Dr. Jacobs.

·            The Faculty Awards Luncheon was held Friday, May 13, 2013.  The annual event honors endowed faculty members from all four schools and our generous benefactors who have made our many faculty endowments possible.

·            The 123rd School of Medicine Commencement will be held on Saturday, June 1, 2013 in the Moody Gardens Convention Center.  Senator Stephen Ogden will be the keynote speaker.

·            The Ashbel Smith Distinguished Alumnus Award is the highest honor bestowed by the alumni of the UTMB School of Medicine.  The award recognizes outstanding service to the medical profession and to humankind.  This year’s outstanding representatives of our University and the medical profession are: Clarence M. Agress, MD – Class of 1937, Lonnie S. Burnett, MD (Posthumously) – Class of 1953, Deepak Srivastava, MD – Class of 1990, and J. Patrick Walker MD, FACS - Class of 1981. They will receive their Ashbel Smith medallions on Friday May 31st.  

·            The 9th Annual Curriculum Education Conference is taking place at the Galveston Island Convention Center (May 13-14) that includes faculty educators from UTMB, Houston, Austin and Corpus Christi.   The conference offers an effective platform for educators to address the most challenging aspects of their roles as well as exchange ideas with their colleagues.

         VP and Dean, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences – report provided by Dr. Cooper.

         VP and Dean, School of Health Professions – report provided by Dr. Protas.

         VP for Education and Dean, School of Nursing – reports provided by Dr. Watson.

                

IV.          UTMB Proposed Faculty Compensation and Incentive Plan:  An extension of the current faculty comp plan – Dr. Jacobs

            Dr. Jacobs distributed copies and presented a draft PowerPoint presentation. 

            In this Executive Summary, here are some highlights from the presentation:

   Guiding principles

·         Simplicity - each faculty member should understand and be able to explain the principles guiding how he or she is compensated.

·         Positively correlate productivity with compensation.

Key Objectives

·         Provide competitive compensation to attract and retain outstanding faculty members.

·         Higher productivity should result in higher compensation (slope proportionately.)

·         Incentive payment should:  be understandable, predictable and transparent to participants and reflect individual performance, group performance and expectations relative to organizational priorities.

Academic Enterprise:  Incentive Eligibility and Mission Components

·         Faculty members will have a total FTE of 0.5 or higher to be eligible.  Within each mission area, you must be typically be 50% clinical effort, 50 % research effort and/or 20% education effort.  Some faculty members may have significant administration efforts.  These will have to be assessed and validated as regards to level of commitment.

·         Administrative effort up to 10% for clinical, research and education for all faculty members unless serving in a funded administrative position formally approved by the Dean of the respective School.

·         Research salary support assessment begins after last year of ramp-up time (12 month rolling average calculation).

Timing of Incentive Payment or Performance Based Adjustments for clinical mission will be quarterly; research mission will be semi-annually; education mission will be semi-annually and administration mission will be annually.

Questions and Answers – Several questions from the Senators were addressed by Dr. Jacobs in regards to the APT process match up, NIH grants and the three-year average ramp-up time for Research and funding average, the twelve month collecting data and incentive.  He also talked briefly about cost sharing and the Capital Campaign.  If any questions should come up to e-mail the Provost office or you can submit your questions on the Provost’s blog, which will be rolled out soon and an announcement will be sent with the details.

 

V.      You Count Survey – Dr. Robert McKinley, VP, Human Resources and Employee Services and Dr. Ian Barrett, Associate VP, Human Resources, Expert Services

         Dr. McKinley and Dr. Barrett briefly discussed the You Count survey and opened up for questions.  The questions were answered and some of the topics covered were: demographics, sexual orientation, confidentiality/anonymity since they are placed in small groups and the repercussions, and disconnect.  Also a couple of Senators stated that the survey was sent out at a bad time, with recent events about some staff exempt status changing; recent news about domestic partners benefits; and job security. 

         Dr. McKinley and Dr. Barrett stated that there was a need for a new diversity approach and strategy plan and had one survey for all employees to complete.  Dr. McKinley indicated that they will work on improving and communicating this better in the future.

 

VI.    Reports by Faculty Senate Chair

         Dr. Wiggs announced that they attended the UT SysFAC meeting in Austin where it was announced that Don Mahoney, UT HSC will become the new chair and Lisa Cain is co-chairing Health Affairs committee.  The conflict of commitment policy was put on hold due to feedback.  Sunset of the Higher Education Coordinating Board is scheduled for public hearing today.  The merger of the UT Brownsville and Pan America has issues relating to real estate ownership and being discussed among county officials and legislators.                

         Dr. Wiggs announced that Senator Leonard will be leaving UTMB in June.  The Faculty Senate elections will be held soon.  The chair-elect position will occur in July and we have one nomination at this time.  Dr. Wiggs mentioned that the parking garage 4 near the SON/SHP building has become a hot topic.  With all the construction going on around, they changed the entrances on the first floor and if you want to park in a special permit designated space on the first floor, you can pay an additional amount, which somewhat guarantees that you will be able to park there, unless it is full.  Some people are not able to park anywhere else and unable to take the stairs since the elevators are not working.

 

      The meeting was adjourned at 6:05 pm.