GEORGIA
INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
SPRING MEETING OF THE
GENERAL FACULTY
and
GENERAL FACULTY ASSEMBLY
MINUTES
1. The President opened the meeting at
The President lauded Dr. Meredith’s rational
approach to budget allocation, which has benefited Georgia Tech by accounting
for our enrollment growth; he indicated that the funding formula for continuing
education is also under review, which will benefit institutions involved in
such educational activities, including Georgia Tech.
The Chancellor began his remarks by congratulating
Georgia Tech (the ninth best public
university in America), its faculty, and administrative team on their
outstanding performance and commitment to excellence, which benefit the
students, the University System, the State, and (through education and
research) the world. He highlighted several of Georgia Tech’s accomplishments
and contributions, as described by President Clough in a recent presentation to
the Board of Regents: 26 faculty members belong to the National Academies; 74
NSF CAREER Award winners; third in the Nation in research performed with
industry; winner of the 1999 Theodore Hesburgh Award for undergraduate teaching
and learning; many undergraduate students involved in research; extensive
partnerships; ATDC State-wide outreach and impact on the State’s economy
-- a reputation of excellence and “engagement”
with the State, the Nation, and the World.
Dr. Meredith provided an overview of the current
challenges faced by the University System as a result of the State budget cuts
and revenue shortfalls. He indicated
that, for the current fiscal year,
The Chancellor outlined some of the arguments being
presented to the Legislature in order to limit the extent/impact of budget cuts
on higher education. The State has
invested a great deal of money over the past several years to build the
nation’s best higher education system; we should protect that investment. Higher education is a “reputation-driven”
industry -- if our reputation declines; it would take a long time to
recover. The State’s investment in
education has paid off, as evidenced by:
higher rankings (ninth best public university in America); attracting
the best faculty in the world to Georgia; $800M in outside research grants and
contracts which benefit the State -- the State spends $1.5B/year on the
University System; it costs $4.6B/year to run the System; a three-to-one
“return on investment.”
Dr. Meredith discussed some of the reasons behind
the recent increases in enrollments. He
indicated that while the current state of the economy has forced some people to
return to school, there are additional factors which will continue to increase
the demand for our services even after the economy recovers. He indicated that children of “baby-boomers”
are now going through the higher education system, and that such a large
“bubble” will continue for nearly the next decade. Additionally, student retention has
significantly improved throughout the System -- Georgia Tech has done an
outstanding job in that area through initiatives such as mid-term grades and
enhanced advising. Now, nearly three
fourths of our students move from their freshman to their sophomore years in
all institutions (80% if they are tracked through all System institutions; the
corresponding number for GT is nearly 91%).
Currently, there are 233,000 students enrolled in the System -- nearly
7% increase from last year (equivalent to attending
an institute the size of Georgia Tech); full-time-equivalent enrollment has
also increased by more than 8%. At the
same time, quality continues to improve; average System-wide freshman SAT of
1030 (versus 1026 last year and 1352 for Georgia Tech).
The Chancellor described some of the initiatives he
has recently undertaken to address the challenges ahead. A task force is currently engaged in a study
to determine what
Dr. Meredith indicated that our primary objective is
to create a “more-educated
The Chancellor concluded by commending Georgia Tech for
its well-earned reputation of quality, effectiveness, and service -- through
the efforts of its faculty, students, and staff, Georgia Tech has become an
internationally-renowned institution helping to create a more-educated
A question
was raised regarding the fate of the HOPE scholarship program, and how that may
impact the goals stated in the presentation.
The Chancellor responded by stating that to many around the State, the HOPE
scholarship program is sacrosanct; its growth has been phenomenal; for example,
85% of the incoming freshman class at Georgia Southern was on HOPE; many other
institutions are also drawing heavily on HOPE.
While the lottery income has slightly increased, the draw on the HOPE
program has increased at a much higher rate.
When/if those two lines converge, we would not want the Legislature to
take money out of our appropriations and put it directly into the HOPE program. The program has expanded to include
additional benefits beyond tuition (e.g. books, fees, etc.); some of those
benefits need to be examined. The
increased draw on the HOPE program, vis-à-vis the lottery revenues, causes a
ceiling to be imposed on our tuition. As
a result, our tuition increases have been near the bottom of all the SREB
States -- if we were to go to the average tuition among the SREB states, our
tuition would need to be increased by 19%, which is unrealistic to expect. We are examining other options to get more
revenues to run our institutions without severe adverse effects in the face of
budget cuts and tuition constraints. For
example, we are examining the possibility of adding a “quality surcharge” (name
undecided) for the research institutions, since such institutions cost a lot
more to run than the tuition we are allowed to charge. Such an approach would increase revenues to
those institutions without impacting the tuition ceiling imposed due to the
HOPE program. However, in order for that
to work, it must be for something other than “tuition,” since, by Law, HOPE
pays all tuition.
A follow up question was asked as to whether the
Chancellor’s office has any evidence of State- wide grade inflation due to the
HOPE scholarship program. The Chancellor
responded by indicating that while such claims have been made, there is no
obvious evidence to support them. The
number of students who are taking remedial courses may be viewed as an indirect
measure of such an effect; that number has fallen off dramatically -- it has
been mostly eliminated from four-year institutions and is only done by the
two-year institutions. The decline of
those numbers goes against the suggestion of grade inflation.
A question was asked as to whether the State of
A follow up comment was made that with the $211M
system budget reduction, one would assume that since it is expensive to run
engineering programs, this may not be the best time to propose new engineering
programs. A comment was made that the
UGA web page claims that they already have about a dozen engineering programs;
the Chancellor indicated that whenever claims are found which can not be
substantiated with facts, those claims are pulled out -- there was a lot of
inaccurate/misleading literature out in various schools around the state; all
of which has been pulled back. The
institution issuing such literature had to sign off that they have retrieved
all of it. We are doing our best to stay on top of such problems; so, if anyone
finds inaccurate or misleading literature, please let us know.
A question was raised regarding the implications of
the data presented earlier on the percentage of 18-24 year olds enrolled in
higher education, and what needs to be done during K-12 to correct that
imbalance. The Chancellor responded by
indicating that several efforts have been initiated to address this problem,
and that we need to approach the State Department of Education to see if they
would be a part of such initiatives; there are programs that recommend
intervening in the seventh grade; some are successful, while others are not. He
indicated that 40% of the State’s high school students drop out between ninth grade and graduation. We are losing a large fraction before they
reach the end; a large fraction of those who graduate from high school continue
their studies. So, we have to start
early; we need to raise aspirations and expectations. There are many social factors/barriers involved;
for example, in some parts of the State, the thing to do is to get married
before getting out of high school, and to have a child as soon as you
could. Faculty in two community colleges
in the southern part of the State have relayed their frustration because they
are losing many bright kids because of such social barriers -- parents do not
encourage their kids to get out of the area and pursue higher education out of
fear that they may never come back.
The Chancellor indicated that we also have an African American male
initiative underway to find out why they are
not finishing high school, and why many who finish high school are not going to
college. Among the issues identified by
focus groups is the students’ concern about the economic impact of four
additional years of “being poor.” He
also pointed to the increasing number of Hispanics in the State (e.g. the
He stated that Georgia Tech has a “good product;” it
is easy to sell to the State leadership; we will do all we can to make it
successful.
The
President thanked the Chancellor for his insightful remarks and for taking the
time from his busy schedule to meet with the Georgia Tech faculty.
2. The President offered the following comments on
matters of interest to the Georgia Tech community:
a. Applications for this year are down approximately
4%; the drop is nearly all accounted for by a drop in applications to the
college of computing -- a national trend because of the “dot com burst;” that
may not be a bad thing -- it will give our College of Computing time to “catch
their breath” after the very rapid recent increases; we are looking at the
trends to see if there is anything that we need to be concerned with; our admissions
staff are also looking at ways to enhance our application materials; the
quality of the applicant pool is even higher than before; so we are in very good shape in terms of the
quality and size of the freshman class we expect next fall.
b. We do not know what our tuition increases will be
(will know in April or May), and how such increases may impact the enrollment
decisions of applicants. There have been
significant tuition increases across the country, e.g. Purdue has increased
tuition by 37%. We have recently
completed a study of tuition at our benchmark group; the group was selected
about three years ago from among our public institution peers; the study
indicates that we are thirteenth out of fourteen in that group in terms of the
tuition charged to our students; we are $2000 below the average tuition for
that peer group.
c. We are in the process of moving to
d. Our graduation speakers for this term have been
selected; in celebration of the fiftieth year in which women have enrolled at
Georgia Tech, we have selected two outstanding women with some connection to
science and technology to be our speakers.
Senator Elizabeth Dole of
e. We have been
working hard at the State Capitol to help keep our budgets up, and avoid severe
repercussions of the projected budget cuts. The President spoke to the Senate
Higher Education Committee and the House Higher Education Subcommittee on
Appropriations; pointed out the seriousness of both past and new proposed
budget cuts; was also asked to speak on the state of the “High Tech Economy” of
the State of Georgia to a committee of the House and Senate; in 2001 (data for
2002 not yet available) Georgia had the highest growth rate of high tech jobs
in the country -- those were not large absolute numbers, but many other states
lost jobs; the gains were in the Biotechnology and software areas. There are many GT interns now working in the
State Capitol; our students are our best “ambassadors;” their efforts speak for
us and what we do; we are very proud of them.
f.
The
President indicated that upon the Governor’s request, he currently serves as
chair of the State’s Telecom Task Force.
The State had previously attempted to consolidate the offering of Telecom, computing, and data access services;
it was bid twice -- both times received
only one bid; the State could not accept one bidder, particularly for such
ubiquitous service and the length of the contract (ten years); had the State
signed the contract, it would have lost
about $12M per year. The task
force is looking at different ways of bundling these services; Georgia Tech had
some concerns about the original way of consolidating the services, because it
would have bound us into a uniform services arrangement that would not have
been good for a unique organization such as our institute.
g. Tonight we will hold a “legislative reception;”
about 60-70 members of the General Assembly are expected to come to the
President’s home for a reception and informal discussions -- the expected
turnout is very encouraging.
A question was asked as to whether the number of
applications to the
3. The President called on Marc Smith, Chair of the
Statutes Committee to present recommended changes to the Statutes.
a. Smith presented a “second reading” of the proposed
changes to Sections 2.8.1.7.(e)(1) through 2.8.1.7.(e)(3) of the Bylaws which
deal with increasing the size of the Student Honor Committee and the formation
of Hearing Panels to hear and decide on individual cases. He indicated that there was minor wording
change in Section 2.8.1.7.(e)(2) as recommended during the first reading
(changed “heard and tried” to “heard and decided” by a Hearing
Panel). Smith also presented a “second
reading” of Sections 2.8.1.7.(p)(1) through 2.8.1.7.(p)(6) of the Bylaws which
deal with the creation of a new standing committee on Academic Integrity, and
outline its composition, and functions.
He indicated that there have been no changes to those sections since the
first reading. It was moved that the
General Faculty approve the second reading of recommended changes to Sections
2.8.1.7.(e)(1) through 2.8.1.7.(e)(3) and 2.8.1.7.(p)(1) through 2.8.1.7.(p)(6)
of the Bylaws as presented. (See Attachment #2 for
the exact wording of the approved changes). The motion was approved without dissent.
b. Smith presented a “first reading” for the
recommended change to section 2.8.1.7.(b)(1) of the Bylaws. The change deals with increasing the size of
the Faculty Honors Committee from four to six elected members. The change was requested by the Faculty
Honors Committee and recommended by the Executive Board; it was motivated by
the recognition that the range of expertise among the current small committee
membership may not be sufficiently broad to evaluate candidates for the various
faculty awards. He indicated that
similar to the current committee, no specific distribution of membership from
the various units is being requested. It
was moved that the General Faculty approve the first reading of the recommended
change to Section 2.8.1.7.(b)(1) of the Bylaws.
(See Attachment #3 for the exact wording
of the approved changes). The motion was approved without
dissent.
4. The President called for any other business; there
was none. The meeting adjourned at
Respectfully submitted,
Said Abdel-Khalik
Secretary of the Faculty
Amended
Attachments to be included with archival copy of the minutes:
1. Brief Biography of Dr. Thomas
C. Meredith, Chancellor, University System of
3. Statutes
Changes related to increasing the size of the Faculty Honors Committee.