Recorder: Wanda Martin

Participants were five committee representatives, two Task Force members and facilitator, and four other members of the campus community.
The notes below, which begin after the five committee reports, are as complete as I could make them but should not be taken for a verbatim transcript. I've identified participants whenever they gave their names.

Participant Questions and Comments:

Q: Did the committee on Staff recruitment and Retention discuss the difference between a faculty manager and a staff manager? The difficulty of holding a faculty manager accountable vs. staff?

Helen Gonzales: We talked about the fact that we need a clarification of roles and responsibilities.

Tom Cummings: Diversity is under attack nationally and will be attacked here. The good news is that last week's Chronicle reports ideas for supporting diversity, including industry support (e.g. Microsoft) for Native Americans, Affirmative Action, Hispanics, women, the disabled. Arizona's vote to make bi-lingual education illegal is an attack on Native American sovereignty.

Q: (Addressed to Mike Dougher, referring to report on faculty development)

What keeps you here?

MD: My wife has a business here, and I love New Mexico. I've had opportunities to leave.

Bob Leonard, Dept. of Anthropology:

• Faculty see more of staff than their bosses do. I don't know how to forward appreciation and praise--don't know who's their boss. We need methods for contacting upward.
• The report on campus culture as presented is too vague. I hope the recommendations are more specific.
• We need specific recommendations, things we can work with.
• Referring to the Undergraduate Education report: I teach introductory Anthropology. When the retention committee was formed, I wondered if someone would come see me, help me retain students. After the lottery scholarship, test scores in the class are down 15%--the students are not prepared. The task forces are not talking to teachers. I'm not getting help. The same applies to the Core Curriculum. We need more help for lottery students and others. Teaching evaluations are down with less prepared students.
• Regarding student recruitment: I go to commencement at Zuni and hear their valedictorians say they're going to ASU.
• International programs offices don't help, and in fact impede my efforts to recruit students from Mexico.
• The idea of stronger branch liaison is good. Branch catalogs are sometimes misleading. Better contact would facilitate students' transferring.
• Re Diversity: We need to shake things up. How about rewarding bilingual people, who are an asset to UNM, with money?
• But we don't need a big central Diversity office with a Vice Provost and 18 secretaries.
• Minority faculty are those we're losing--e.g. Alfonso Ortiz, a distinguished professor, McCarthy genius grant winner, etc., who has not been replaced. His salary has been absorbed by administration someplace for 2 years.
• Reallocation makes me frightened. It will only be good if structured in a specific way: i.e., dollars that don't contribute to the academic mission. For example, the STC. A former Faculty Senate President estimates that $27 million, mostly IDC funds, has gone down the drain, with almost no return. We should stop pouring money down this and similar ratholes.

Terry Babbitt, responding to Leonard:

Our admission process includes no racial component, which is good news and bad news. Because we offer no race-based financial aid, we lose Native students to ASU, AZ, other regional schools. Also, UNM is known for low Native retention, so students choose other schools.

Mike Dougher: The Noel-Levitz project (reference to its $100 K cost) promised to target top students in NM--what happened to that?

Babbitt: N-L is a consultant, and they provided us some tools. We do use those techniques, but the lottery scholarship has had the desired effect.

Dougher: The lottery scholarship is double-edged: more students, more money. But the funding formula is inappropriate for a research university. And failure rates are up in introductory classes.

Babbitt: Once students make it onto the Lottery Scholarship (one semester with a 2.5) we see 87% retention, versus about 51% for those without the lottery scholarship. The number of ACT takers is way up--there are 3000-4000 more students in the system. Many are newly decided on college, and unprepared. We're limiting the Bridge to students coming in with a 3.0 for 2001, and we'll put the savings into higher-level scholarships. This should raise our academic profile and improve students' chances of success.

Jackie Hood: What's the dropout rate in the Bridge?

Babbitt: 50% of those who enter don't make the Lottery. But 30-40% of those hang in and stay in school.

Q: (referring to recommendations of more recognition for faculty) Staff need more awards too. Staff have even less awards than faculty: fewer f them, and even less money. Recognition doesn't necessarily have to be in money.

Dougher: Speaking of diversity, whetever happened to "Target of Opportunity" hiring? That was a program that supported intellectual diversity, too. It just vanished.

Cummings: Electrical Engineering had a Navajo faculty member who's now in Denver.

Ricardo Maestas: Target of Opportunity Hiring and dual career consideration are coming back. Cf. Willima Gordon's statement on the importance of diversity hiring, and the newly established requirement that deans, chairs, and directors certify the diversity of hiring pools. A Special Assistant to the President to oversee Diversity will be appointed to oversee diversity (and/in?)student recruitment.

Leonard: I still think rewarding multilingualism is a way to promote diversity.

Maestas: It's a good idea, but hard to get through. We should look at rewarding offices that exceed diversity targets. Now, we penalize those that don't meet the tagets, but there's not reqard for exceeding them.

We're not rewarding people enough, across the board. (General assent to this proposition.)