Minutes -  UTK Faculty Senate Budget and Planning Committee
meeting of August 28, 2015

Prepared by L. Gross - September 8, 2015 (Revised Oct 5, 2014)

In attendance: Louis Gross (Chair), Vice Chancellor Chris Cimino,
Jennifer Franklin, Michael Fry, Phyllis Thompson.

After brief introductions, the meeting followed in part the 
outline of topics sent prior to the meeting by the Chair.

1. C. Cimino brought up the issue of fiscal policy and faculty 
input to it. This arose from a response L. Gross provided on a 
System draft Fiscal Policy over the summer. The general issue 
is to identify a procedure to ensure faculty input to proposed 
System Fiscal, IT and other policies. As we left it, C. Cimino 
would monitor proposed System fiscal and HR policy changes for 
items that directly impact academic units and provide updates 
to the B&P committee.  This is a short-term solution until the 
Chancellor's Cabinet discusses a governance structure for vetting 
both System and Campus policies.

2. Campus policies - C. Cimino noted that there is no central 
repository of UTK campus policies and governance, nor published
structure to review these. As review of campus policies is developed,
it was decided we should ask the Chancellor to ensure that 
there is faculty representation in the process.

3. Role of faculty in the campus action plan and the new Business
Model development ongoing at the System. It is not clear when a campus 
action plan will be going to the Board of Trustees, and it would be
best for the Senate to request input to the campus plan prior to
any draft release. We should also ask the University Faculty Council
how we and other Senates might provide input to the Business Model
planning.

4. Outsourcing - C. Cimino is on the Statewide Committee on 
Outsourcing and at this point it is expected that each campus 
will have the ability to make its own decision about joining any
proposed outsourcing contract. He will let us know if action
by the Committee may be appropriate. 

5. Athletics funding - Regarding the request about how the $6M
in additional revenue from the SEC contract will be allocated, 
it was note that the current procedure is that the Chancellor 
will make annual decisions about any funding from Athletics that 
might be applied to other UTK needs. We decided to invite Brett
Huebner, Athletics CFO, to another meeting in early 2016 to discuss
funding. C. Cimino noted that the Chancellor is not opposed to
evaluating the possibility of an overhead charge for Athletics, 
but such a charge will not happen this year.
   Regarding Athletics salaries and associated inequities, the 
Committee decided not to invest any additional time discussing it 
this year. 

6. Gender inequity and salary analysis. L. Gross provided an 
update on the Governors Chairs and Chairs of Excellence. There 
are now 15 Chairs of Excellence at UTK, none of which is held
by a female. The Committee decided to formally request that the 
Provost provide the data to again carry out an analysis of 
faculty salaries as was done previously to ascertain whether 
there continue to be other, broader, inequities beyond the
statistical evidence from Chairs of Excellence. 

7. Living Wage analysis - it was decided that this is really an 
issue for the Employee Relations Council to pursue rather than 
the Senate though the Committee will assist as appropriate. 

8. Faculty salary analysis - M. Fry volunteered to investigate 
the differences in salary data in the various reports provided to
the Senate. L. Gross will provide these.

9. Input on campus budgeting - C. Cimino described the current 
campus procedures through which the Chancellor has a Cabinet 
meeting with all Vice Chancellors as well as meetings with each 
VC individually, including one with the Provost after she has met 
with the Deans. Last year the B&P Chair attended one meeting of 
the Chancellor and the Cabinet. The budget document prepared by 
the College of Engineering each year was suggested as a 
possible model for enhanced budget transparency at the College 
level.