Present: Mahmoud Abdalla, William Arrocha, Avner Cohen (Vice President), Andrea Hofmann-Miller (Zoom), Pushpa Iyer, Sabino Morera (Zoom), Katherine Punteney, Thor Sawin (President). Guest: Jeff Dayton-Johnson. Staff: Stacie Riley. 

Updates from VPAA Dayton-Johnson: Thor welcomes Vice President Jeff Dayton-Johnson. Prior to the meeting today, Thor sent Jeff a list of topics the Senate would like to discuss. Due to limited time, the Senate’s would like to start with the recognition series for faculty not returning next year and an update on the equality audit from last year. 

Recognition Series: Jeff states that the recognition series has been discussed at previous ILG meetings. One of the questions has been who should invite these faculty to participate, the Vice President’s Office or the ILG? Jeff also does not want to pressure anyone into taking part in this series. He has been hearing lately that some faculty may not want to take part in this, as it is painful still. Pushpa feels the invitation should come from President Patton and the other Senators agree. Thor suggests that the letter be couched as an offer, explicitly mention that Middlebury would like to recognize your service even if this was not the way you wanted to leave the Institute. Jeff thinks it’s feasible for Laurie to send the invitation from her office and will email her about this idea. Thor asks who will be the point person for logistics – Patricia Szasz or the VP’s Office? Pushpa feels that the VP’s Office should not be involved in this process and offers to handle the logistics out of the CDO Office.

The next question is what is the best way to honor these faculty, a lecture series, panel, party at the end of the year, a letter from Laurie, etc.? Katherine feels that is should not be a “choose one” but “check all that apply” type of invitation so faculty can pick the way they want to be recognized. Jeff feels that the invitation should go to all faculty who are not returning next year, i.e. those who took the ISP, retiring faculty, non-renewed faculty, and the three visiting MBA faculty (whose tenure ends this semester). The Senate agrees and thinks that the series could start at the end of the fall semester with the three departing MBA visiting faculty. 

A discussion followed about the mood on campus. Pushpa states she has reached out to faculty to join her focus groups and has received feedback from some that they are not interested in speaking about this in a public space. They have, however, offered to meet with her one-on-one. Jeff agrees that there is some anger and shares that one faculty member does not even want to leave a forwarding address when they depart. Avner feels strongly that we should not continue to bring up Workforce Planning since people are still hurt and this could reopen wounds, that the letter from Laurie should be very sensitive in its approach. William agrees and clarifies that he doesn’t see what’s happening as cynicism, it’s pain, people are in pain after last year and it’s time to heal. 

Equality Audit: On June 27, 2018, Jeff sent an email to all faculty stating a faculty salary equity audit would take place over the summer. There has been no follow-up on that email prompting several T&I faculty to reach out to Pushpa and Thor about the results. Thor and Pushpa each contacted Cathy Vincent, who told them to discuss the process and outcome of the audit with Jeff. 

Jeff explains that in the summer of 2018, after everyone received their salary adjustment, there was a remaining salary budget of 0.5% that was to be used for merit based salary adjustments, which is how that money was used in Middlebury. However, HR made the announcement after staff had completed their annual performance evaluations, so it was not felt that we could do merit increases on this campus. Instead, Jeff proposed to HR that the remaining pool of money be used to adjust discrepancies in the faculty salary pool. Jeff Dayton-Johnson, Jeff Cason, and Cathy Vincent meet in Middlebury and reviewed 81 faculty salaries (not including visiting or adjunct faculty) looking for any kind of inconsistencies in the faculty salary scale. This was not a gender equality audit although gender was one of the criteria looked at, along with how far faculty were into the salary range, length of service, and years at rank. Of the 81 faculty looked at, 16 (both male and female) were adjusted for an average adjustment of $8,300 annually. While this did not entirely eliminate all inconsistencies, it did make a big difference. Jeff understands that our faculty salaries are out of proportion with the labor market (people can go to the corporate world and make more), but that was not what was being addressed with the audit. Jeff states that Middlebury does not have the kind of discrepancies found on the MIIS campus. In Middlebury, most college faculty hires are newly minted PhDs who are hired at the same salary and progress in a similar way. Jeff points out that he did notify the 16 faculty members whose salaries were adjusted, however, he agrees that he should send out a notice to all faculty to summarize the process and outcome. He will send his draft email to Karen Miller to review prior to sending it out.

A discussion about the faculty salary scale followed. Katherine points out that since the current scale was put in place about 8 years ago there has been no update. The Senate feels like this scale should be periodically reviewed and revised. Jeff states that Mercer (the company who created the current level and band structure) has been contracted to revisit the salary structure for MIIS and Middlebury staff. Jeff knows that Middlebury faculty will not be part of the new Mercer study, but he is unsure if MIIS faculty’s pay structure will be addressed. A brief discussion about bands and salary between the two schools followed.

Contract Non-Renewals and ISP: Thor asked Jeff to explain to faculty the way the ISP and contract non-renewal processes unfolded. Thor has been trying to explain it to faculty based on his understanding, but he’s not quite sure he has the timeline correct and some faculty see in this process some kind of conspiracy. Jeff states he is less than enthusiastic about going back over this story because it is painful for everyone. If people think there is a conspiracy, there is not much he can say to change that. Jeff understands that there is a history of trust being broken here which did not start with him, but also has not ended with him. He does point out that there will not be another ISP process; this was a one-time program designed to help ease our acute financial deficit. 

Jeff said many times during the process that the ISP for faculty and staff would have a different timeline and different characteristics. The Council was told that for faculty who accepted the ISP they would have the right of refusal. In the end, that turned out not to be legal. On the same day that the new language policy framework (April 15, 2019) was announced, Jeff had a phone call with several senior administrators in Middlebury who informed him that the faculty and staff communication and timeline now had to be the same. They insisted that this announcement needed to go out by the end of the week. The Council tried to put extra guardrails in place to limit the number of faculty who could take the ISP from a single program, but that didn’t work as planned. Workforce Planning was not a process that we were prepared to undertake and based on the change handed down from Middlebury, it was designed more quickly than it should have been. There was no malice or ill will on anybody’s part, but unfortunately, a number of things happened that we did not intend to happen (i.e. decimation of the French and Japanese programs). Jeff acknowledges that we are going to have to fill some of the positions that will be vacant, which was an unintended result of the process. Laura Burian and Patricia Szasz are putting together a taskforce to address the holes in the language programs. 

Avner feels this is a painful topic and we should not continue to rehash the past, we need to move forward. He does not think a formal communication about the Workforce Planning process should go out from the VP’s Office. He is grateful Jeff provided the information so that the Senators can talk to their colleagues informally about what transpired. Everyone agreed, and Jeff offered to sit down one-on-one to discuss this with people.  

Although the current handbook language says that non-renewal of faculty contracts can take place based on financial constraints, it was not a practice before last year. Many faculty felt there was a strong chance they could complete their careers in Monterey, but now with non-renewals and the Institute Council’s new priority on market reactive degrees, faculty feel that when the market changes they’ll be asked to leave. The Senate would like to try to revise the handbook to include language that would make contract non-renewals less arbitrary and less sudden. Some suggested ideas are:  

• A warning system. This would put a program on notice and give them 2-3 years to come up with a new curriculum to meet market demands.
• A temporary alteration to employment terms. This would allow faculty to go to part-time for a three-year period to get through the lean times. 
• Another option would be allowing faculty to go to Associate Faculty status for three years mid-career. 
• Give three-year rolling contracts to faculty, which are renewed every year to allow a faculty member who is not renewed for non-performance reasons time to find a new position elsewhere.                      

Jeff thinks these are creative ideas and would like to work with the Senate to find other creative ways to address possible non-renewals. 

Avner does not think calling contract non-renewals the “new normal” is a good phrase. He understands that occasionally non-renewals for non-performance issues will happen, but saying it is the “new normal” does not reflect reality and will hurt faculty recruitment and retention. Jeff understands this, but states that if we don’t make financial adjustments we won’t be recruiting any new faculty. 

The current handbook says that individuals whose contracts are not-renewed because of financial constraints should be given an opportunity to be hired in another role by Middlebury. Was this explored for those faculty who were not renewed? Jeff responded that this was discussed within the Institute Council and with Hannah Ross, Middlebury General Counsel. The short answer is that when talking about faculty, compared to staff, the flexibility to find alternative spots is small. It was then asked if faculty were eligible to take positions on other Middlebury campuses? Jeff says yes, but for that particular case last year, anyone who had accepted the ISP and took a position on another campus would not receive their separation package. Jeff also mentions that some faculty on the MIIS campus have the background to teach in other areas and the Council is exploring “faculty flexing” as an option here. 

Enrollment: Jeff shared that the official 20 day report on student enrollment was just released. The total count for fall is 656 with new degree seeking enrollment at 303. T&I and TLM have 242 of the new degree seeking students. Next fall our goal is to keep enrollment stable. 

Faculty Senate Updates: Jeff left the meeting at 1:45 and Thor quickly informed the Senate about a few issues. 

• ILG. This group is being expanded to include more people and will be meeting less frequently. The President and Vice President of the Faculty Senate will be meeting with Jeff Dayton-Johnson once a month. William asks that Thor and Avner send an update to all Senators after each meeting. 
• Handbook. Thor has been compiling a document with the proposed changes to the handbook so he can manage the workflow process. Thor suggests that this fall he move the minor changes through the process to clean those out, leaving the big changes to be discussed more thoroughly in the spring. Sabino asks if it’s possible to come up with a list of big issue priorities, i.e. how program chairs are appointed. The Senate agrees with Thor’s proposal to move the minor changes through and all agree to divide the work of the major changes.