Mark Running, a professor of biology in the College of Arts and Sciences, was at the meeting to accept the 2022 University of Louisville Trustees Award. The UofL Board of Trustees established the $5,000 award in 1989 to honor faculty who individually impact the future of our students. The award is the highest honor a UofL faculty member can receive.

Read more about 2022 Trustee Award winner Mark Running in UofL News.

Also present at the meeting was Senior Associate Athletic Director Marvin Mitchell, recipient of the George J. Howe Distinguished Staff Award. Mitchell received the award for his contributions as an extraordinary UofL staff member who exemplifies the traits of its namesake George J. Howe (humility, generosity and excellence in leadership) as well as the . The Howe Award is the highest honor bestowed upon a UofL staff member.

Read more about 2022 George J. Howe Distinguished Staff Award winner Marvin Mitchell in UofL News.

Student success was also on the meeting docket. Senior Vice Provost Gail DePuy was on hand to provide an overview of the university’s . Thirty-seven students across the four mentored scholarship programs will graduate this May: McConnell Scholars (10), Grawemeyer Scholars (10) Brown Fellows (10) and MLK Scholars (7). In addition to monetary awards, these scholarships have significant programming components which can include travel, leadership, service, research and more.

In other business:

Trustees approved revisions to the Parental Leave Policy following input solicited from the Commission on the Status of Women, the Commission on Racial Diversity and Equity as well as the Faculty and Staff senates. The policy grants six weeks of paid parental leave in connection with the birth or adoption of a child of the employee or of the qualifying adult. The revised policy allows for regular full-time or regular part-time employees whose status is at least 0.40 FTE to be eligible for the benefit upon the date of hire.

Board Chair Mary Nixon announced that WittKiefer is the firm that will facilitate the search for a new university president. The firm will work with the 13-member presidential search committee, which was also formally named at the meeting. The committee, chaired by Trustees Vice Chair Raymond Burse, is comprised of the following individuals:

• Jerry Abramson, Trustee
• Scott Brinkman, Trustee
• Raymond Burse, Trustee, Chair of Search Committee
• Riece Hamilton, Staff member, President of Black Faculty and Staff Association
• Alice Houston, Louisville Community Representative and Business Owner
• Dr. Christopher Jones, Professor in Dept. of Surgery, Physician at UofL Health
• Diane Medley, Trustee and Alumna
• Ugonna Okorie, Trustee and Student Representative
• Diane Porter, Trustee
• Jim Rogers, Trustee and Alumnus
• Aaron Rollins, Professor & Chair in Dept. of Urban and Public Affairs
• David Schultz, Trustee and Faculty Representative
• John Smith, Trustee and Staff Representative

Interim Provost Gerry Bradley provided an update on the timeline to fill vacant dean positions. The search for the new dean of the College of Arts and Sciences will take place in the summer of 2022, and the search for the new dean of the Raymond A. Kent School of Social Work and Family Science will take place in the fall of 2022.

Senior Associate Athletic Director Marvin Mitchell and Hana Ryskova, a junior who plays on the women’s golf team, asked the trustees for their feedback on who should be the university’s next athletic director. Mitchell and Ryskova serve on the athletic director planning committee and organized several listening sessions on the matter for the university. In response to questions about expectations, challenges and qualifications, trustees noted the necessity to efficiently manage a high-profile, tier-one athletic program amid impending NCAA investigation results and do so with a strong moral compass as well as an understanding of the ever-changing landscape of college sports.

Trustees approved the Endowment Match Program (a.k.a “Bucks for Brains”) combined 2020 and 2021 Annual Report. Since 1998, funding from the Endowment Match Program has been used to support 89 endowed chairs and 18 endowed professorships. Additionally, 54 fellowships and mission support projects have been created under the program to support research at UofL. Endowment Match Program executive summaries are located on the . Highlights from the annual report include:

• Matching public dollars with private donations, the program generated a total of $234.4 million at UofL, providing a perpetual source of funding for UofL research activities.
• During fiscal year 2020-21, awards of external research grants and contracts resulted in a $169 million contribution to the Kentucky economy.
• During fiscal year 2020-21, there were 19 endowments supporting graduate fellowships. As a single endowment may support multiple student awards, 127 graduate students received support from endowment proceeds.

University of Louisville Research Foundation officers were elected for 2022-23. They are: James Rogers (chair), Diane Porter (vice chair), Diane Medley (treasurer), Larry Benz (secretary) and Jake Beamer (assistant secretary).

University of Louisville Research Foundation Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer Keith Sherman presented the foundation’s financials for the eight months ending Feb. 28, 2022. Sherman reported that the foundation’s fiscal health remains strong. Total assets of the foundation remain more than $1.1 billion with the main endowment pool’s market value at $864 million. The foundation has recorded more than $74 million in total revenues during the eight-month period, which has exceeded its budget by 15%.

Dan Durbin, UofL’s executive vice president of finance and chief financial officer, gave a financial update for Fiscal Year 2022 through Feb. 28, 2022. Revenues and expenses were up compared to February 2021. So far, revenues for FY 2022 are $116,510,000 more than expenses with an increase in net position of $30,576,000 compared to February 2021.

UofL Health CEO Tom Miller reported that the health system continues to meet its objectives and is financially sound. Operating revenues are currently at $1.392 billion (14% above the previous year), and net income is $66,902,210 (63.4% above the previous year). Miller also reported that the number of COVID-19 patients decreased from its highest number (262) in January to about 20 patients per day. The decrease has prompted the change in visitation policies to get back to normal operations. Finally, since the UofL tuition remission was extended to UofL Health employees in January, there have been 87 applicants to the program.

“We expect to have as many as 500 team members take advantage of this program,” said Miller. “This benefit differentiates our health systems from others.”

James Begany, vice provost for enrollment management, Carrye Wilkins, associate director of the UofL Resources for Academic Achievement (REACH) program, and UofL student Rawan Saleh presented an overview on the benefits of REACH. The program serves as the university’s centralized academic support unit for undergraduate students. Its goals are to enhance or improve students’ academic performance, help students transition to college life and support the university’s retention of undergraduate students. Saleh, a first-generation immigrant from Jordan, credits the program’s many resources for her ongoing academic success.��

Minutes to the UofL Board of Trustees meetings are available on the .

Interim Provost Gerry Bradley addressed the faculty senate with information on student enrollment and departmental budgets. Data collected through last fall semester revealed student enrollment was under projection for both undergraduate and professional students. For this reason, the university entered the spring 2022 semester with roughly $4 million less than anticipated. Although a similar budgetary loss was anticipated for this spring term, strong enrollment and retention rates mitigated this effect, leaving the spring semester budget at a deficit of $1.5 million.

“All in all, we were down about $5.5 million dollars. The budget teams, especially in the units that have been impacted by lower enrollment than expected, have carried a lot of weight trying to work through that. We also made adjustments centrally and allocated discretionary funds to support those units,” Bradley said. “Overall, we are confident we can go forward, finish out the budget year and break even as we do every year.”

Bradley attributed this confidence to an overall increase in first-year student applications and admits for next academic year. All budgets for the next academic year are currently being developed, and increases to employee pay have been identified as an institutional priority.

“As we are developing our budgets now, we certainly want to build in things we know are important. We need to build in a pay increase, and we are committed to that. That is certainly critical for us to recruit and retain our faculty and staff here in this institution, who we know have gone through a trying two years with COVID-19,” Bradley said.

Faculty members Lauren Freeman and Avery Kolers presented senators with the proposal for a new academic program, the . The proposal moved for transition of the current master of arts in interdisciplinary studies-health care ethics, which is housed in graduate school, to the department of philosophy under the rubric of applied philosophy. The 33-credit hour program offered through the College of Arts and Sciences was proposed for implementation during the fall 2022 semester. Senators unanimously approved the proposed academic program.

Committee reports and a of the meeting can be accessed on the . The next Faculty Senate meeting is scheduled for April 6 via a hybrid format with the option of remote attendance via Teams, or in-person attendance at Ekstrom Library’s Chao Auditorium.

Chief Financial Officer Dan Durbin told senators the university entered the academic year with a balanced budget with expectations to generate sufficient revenue to cover expenses. These costs included last fall’s 1% salary raise and $1,000 bonus for university employees, and the return of retirement contributions to pre-COVID levels.

“We also had a provision for an additional 1% raise in the spring; we said we would revisit that raise based on how we were doing from a tuition revenue standpoint,” Durbin said. “We have looked through the fall semester and through spring registration. The good news is our tuition revenues are higher than last year; the challenging news is that those tuition revenues are below budget by almost $7.9 million.”

Despite this challenge, administration maintained the additional raise would be within the best interest of the university. The 1% raise was authorized by the Board of Trustees and went into effect in March. Senators were informed that a financial plan was developed to ensure adequate funding for the institution-wide pay increase. Tactics of this financial plan included withholding a 3% contingency back from the units to cover unforeseen costs, as well as an increased emphasis on the importance of funding available to colleges and units through the University of Louisville Foundation.

“While we have tactics to ensure that raise, we still continue to work on enrollment not only for spring, but for the fall and beyond. Applications look really encouraging at the moment, but it’s all hands on deck to make sure we can get back to our original estimates on enrollment so the university can be on good, solid footing next year,” Durbin said.

Kari Aikins, director of Total Rewards for UofL, provided senators with information on the . Segal, an HR consulting firm with expertise in higher education, is currently reviewing data collected from the employee survey. The survey closed March 1, and an aggregate report of this data, which Is being generated by Segal, will provide input on remaining aspects of the HR initiative.

“One of the projects that this data will be used for will be our guiding principles and compensation philosophy, which we want to make sure aligns with our employee feedback and incorporates that input. We will also be using the data as we move through benchmarking, development of the career progression, leveling and some other components of the study that are still to come,” Aikins said.

Committee reports and a of the virtual meeting can be found on the . The next Staff Senate meeting will be held April 12 via Microsoft Teams.

President Bendapudi and Dan Durbin, chief financial officer, provided senators with an overview of the . The budget was approved by the Board of Trustees on June 24, 2021.

Highlights of the budget included the return of employer retirement contribution to pre-Covid levels and an additional $3 million in endowment funding for the university. Durbin reported that for the second consecutive year, no increases were made to employee health insurance premiums or to employee parking permit fees.

Senators were informed about three proposed program closures. The Academic Programs committee recommended the closure of the master of arts in French, language and literature and the graduate certificate in translation and interpreting, as well the joint executive master in business administration degree previously offered in conjunction with the University of Kentucky’s Gatton College of Business and Economics. All three proposed program closures were approved and will go into effect on Aug. 1 of this year.

Two new academic program proposals were also presented to the Faculty Senate. The proposed programs include a bachelor of science in general studies through the College of Arts and Sciences and a master of science in health professions education through the College of ����ֱ�� and Human Development. The suggested implementation for the bachelor of science in general studies is the fall semester of 2022 and the master of science in health professions education is suggested to start for the spring semester of 2022. Both programs received approval from the senate.

Committee reports can be accessed on the . Due to technical difficulties, a video of the full meeting is not available, but a recorded portion of the meeting can be found .

The Faculty Senate does not meet in the month of August; the next Faculty Senate meeting is scheduled for September 1 via a hybrid format with the option of remote attendance via Teams, or in-person attendance at Ekstrom Library’s Chao Auditorium.

Senators voted to move the Anti-Racism Committee’s classification from “ad hoc” to “standing.” The formation of this standing committee was part of the presented by co-chairs Leondra Gully and Andrew Grubb in October’s Staff Senate meeting.

M. Rehan Khan, vice president of Information Technology Services and chief information officer, gave an update on the PeopleSoft HR software replacement. Oracle, the parent platform service of PeopleSoft, announced it will stop supporting the HR software in 2031. The system has presented challenges throughout many departments and the recommendation had been made to begin transitioning to a new HR software.

The ITS team worked diligently with the campus community over the last year by engaging over 77 stakeholders across 20 departments for feedback. They also conducted interviews with 14 higher education institutions using other software and negotiated prices among vendors. The result of their efforts showed overwhelming support for Workday HR Software.

Kahn reported that a recommendation to the provost and chief financial officer has been made in favor of selecting Workday as the replacement for PeopleSoft. The cloud-based HR software will be introduced to the university gradually in two-year phases, the first of which is set to begin in January 2021.

The implementation of the modern cloud-based system will improve upon the hiring process, reduce payroll calculation and processing errors, and upgrade security and system availability. Mary Alexander-Conte, director of disbursement services, stated, “it’s going to make our lives a lot easier, both internal to payroll and external to all of our departments.”

Senators received budget updates from Chief Financial Officer Dan Durbin. The university currently has a balanced budget and is slightly exceeding previous projections. Despite an overall positive trend, Durbin did express budgetary concerns with Athletics. Current health protocols and occupancy restrictions due to COVID-19 have led to a large decrease in ticket sales and revenue for athletic programs.

“We are working with them to make sure that they can fix their own problems. In other words, we do not want to move money from the academic enterprise to subsidize athletics,” Durbin said.��

Numerous senators posed questions about the retirement cuts made earlier this year. Durbin commented that the recent changes will not be permanent, and that the student success and retention rate for the upcoming spring semester will heavily impact the university’s financial capabilities.

Durbin said, “Until we close the books in December and have a better picture of what spring enrollment looks like, we can’t make a decision on retirement and we can’t make a decision on the contingency.”

Senators also received information on the upcoming Cardinal Cupboard food drive from Senator Melissa Taylor. The Cardinal Cupboard, located within the Swain Student Activities Center, is a food pantry open to all university students, staff and faculty. An update will be provided to senators at a later date with the most requested items.��Taylor stated the pantry accepts food donations as well as gift cards to grocery stores such as Kroger or Walmart. Physical donations are accepted through the mail and in person. Monetary donations can be made through their .

Committee reports and a full video recording of the virtual meeting can be found on the . ��The next Staff Senate meeting will be held December 8 via Microsoft Teams.

The general fund budget is $515.3 million, while the all-funds budget including grants and contracts, clinical and athletics revenue, and other revenues and expenses, is $1.23 billion.

Development of the budget centered on three objectives: providing a stable and predictable financial base, serving as a bridge to the forthcoming university strategic plan, and focusing on inflationary and critical financial needs,

Budget highlights include:

• A 2.4% increase in full-time resident undergraduate tuition. The $272/year increase includes $24 in SGA-endorsed hikes to the student activity, student services and Student Activities Center fees. Those fees will help fund student events and activities, additional student counseling positions and services, and improvements to access and services for student groups.
• A 2.5% increase in graduate, professional and non-resident tuition.
• An additional $1.3 million for student financial aid and enrollment support.
• A 2% salary increase for faculty and staff, to be effective Jan. 1. The salary enhancement will be funded by the tuition increase.

Durbin said the budget is meant to acclimate the Board of Trustees to the university’s priorities, but serves as a “status quo placeholder” this year, since we are on the verge of implementing a strategic plan. The two priorities are to be stable and predictable so we can start the work on that plan.

The proposed budget entails $23.8 million of costs, including a 2% salary increase. Durbin noted that this current year’s budget had $20 million of costs supported by one-time items, which is unsustainable.

“This budget is based on some assumptions, including the assumption that enrollment stays stable. If enrollment stays stable, we’re in good shape,” Durbin said.

There are tuition and fee increases requested to fund some priorities. The proposed face-to-face tuition increase is 2.5% for undergraduates, while the online learning fees have been restructured to match the current per-hour rate plus a $50 tech fee.

“We have been careful not to price ourselves out of the market,” Durbin said, showing a slide of our tuition, which remains lower than the University of Kentucky and Eastern Kentucky. Our proposed rates for the 2020 budget are also lower than UK’s proposed rates, including out-of-state, which is 2.5% at UofL compared to 6.2% at UK.

“We don’t think these fee increases place us at a competitive disadvantage,” Durbin said.

Durbin also noted that 62% of all beds will cost less in 2020 versus 2019, so housing costs will also be lower.

He also discussed the foundation’s spending policy and how it is expected to impact the university. The foundation had to rein in some spending this year to ensure the endowment funds stayed intact and were positioned to grow.

“We looked at every line of the budget. We will have some pain this year, but in the longer term, we will be good,” he said. “We think of this year as a re-set,” Durbin said. “In our current state – with stable enrollment and adjustments and tuition and fees – we have a balanced budget.”

Durbin’s full presentation is .

President Neeli Bendapudi also provided an update for the senate, stating that she feels better about the budget than she did three months ago.

Still, administrators did recently discover the $20 million base budget covered by one-time dollars and had to make significant adjustments accordingly. One of those adjustments was in closing the Humana Gym. Doing this, Bendapudi said, saves UofL about $1 million a year.

Bendapudi apologized to the Faculty Senate for the way the administrators handled the decision-making and communication around the gym’s closing.

“I sincerely believe this decision was the right thing for the university. But we failed during the process. I will own that and I promise it will not happen again,” she said. “We’re learning. We’ll do better.”

Bendapudi plans to host a retreat this summer with her senior leadership team to discuss a new rubric for these types of decisions, including who provides input, who approves and how to communicate.

Keith Sherman, executive director of the UofL Foundation, which owns the Humana Gym building, added there was no easy fix to this issue.

“The facility was well under water, so it became a question of how we stop the bleeding as quickly as possible,” he said.

After going through each line of the budget, administrators have also discovered that the same dollars were promised to multiple deans.

“We don’t want this to happen again. We want a budget committee to be actively engaged and for every single person on our campus to be able to pull up our budget and understand it,” Bendapudi said.

Bendapudi provided an update from the CPE, encouraging all faculty members to be mindful of our performance funding model.

“The best thing we can do is make sure our students succeed. It’s the morally, ethically and financially right thing to do,” she said. “What we’re hoping is that no student graduates without an internship, co-op or student learning/experiential opportunity. That gives them the best chances.”

Bendapudi also briefly discussed the recent Passport deal, stating that she is confident it was the best outcome for the university and for the community. Because of non-disclosure agreements, she is still not able to talk much about the negotiations surrounding Jewish Hospital.��She ended, however, by stating that she feels comfortable and confident.

Provost Beth Boehm also provided an update, noting that Vice Provost Mordean Taylor-Archer is retiring. Her areas include international and diversity. Diversity will be moved under the president’s office, and an��open call for applications will be held for the diversity position with a short timeline.��Boehm admitted that our culture needs to be improved so we stop losing faculty of color.

“We have to work on our environment so people don’t even look for jobs elsewhere,” she said.

Meanwhile, the international office will be under the provost’s office.��

Michael Mardis, dean of students, has agreed to take on the international office in the interim and will work to figure out what that office will look like moving forward.

. The next Faculty Senate meeting is July 3 in Chao Auditorium.

The budget, which includes a 4-percent tuition increase for in-state students and a 5-percent campus-wide budget cut, will be presented for final approval to the full Board of Trustees June 20.����The tuition increase is partially offset by a 50 percent reduction in the Student Athletics Fee. As a result, the tuition and fee increase for students will amount to about 3.5 percent.

“This budget is not ideal, but we have to work with the financial resources we have,” said UofL President Neeli Bendapudi. “We are focused on protecting and improving the education and the university experience for all our students.”��

Interim CFO Susan Howarth told the committee that UofL continues to deal with diminishing state funding, a huge budget deficit created by a previous administration and a push from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to improve its liquidity, or cash on hand.��

“I ask for your patience and support as we make changes to strengthen the university while dealing with our fiscal reality,” Bendapudi wrote last week to faculty and staff.�� Calling the current budget a “short-term fix,” she promised that long-term solutions will be developed with the students’ best interests in mind.��

“While the challenges we face are significant, I am confident we are more than up to the task,” she said. “And I am confident that, as a team, we will work through this issue and come out an even greater university.”��

Budget highlights include:��

• $14 million for student-based initiatives, including $5 million for student recruitment, $5 million for student success and retention and almost $4 million for financial aid��
• A drop in state appropriation from $132.8 million to $126.1 million
• A 4-percent tuition increase for in-state undergraduate students. Tuition and mandatory fees for in-state undergrads will rise to $5,730 per semester
• A 50-percent decrease in the mandatory student athletics fee, from $50 to $25 per semester, reducing the total increase in student costs to 3.5 percent
• A 5-percent across-the-board cut in the university’s budget. Bendapudi said each unit head will decide how to produce the 5-percent cut��

��

UofL and Canon have signed a 13-year deal in which Canon will bring a total campus managed print solution to the university. Beginning July 1, Canon will be responsible for all print production and mail services, as well as equipment and supplies. The deal is expected to benefit the university immediately and for the long term, said Mark Watkins, UofL associate vice president of business services.

“During a time of increasingly tight budgets, the university must look for ways to operate more efficiently,” Watkins said. “Most importantly, this deal will ensure that we continue to offer a high level of customer service to our faculty and staff. But it also will guarantee an income stream that will allow us to keep up with the latest technology and trends in these areas.”

Canon will quickly implement several changes, including:

• Placing new multifunction copying devices in offices, libraries and public spaces that will increase availability of color and reduce cost per print
• Opening a new print and mail center in the Herman and Heddy Kurz Pavilion in the Student Activities Center
• Offering the ability to access any Canon device from a tablet, laptop or cell phone

The deal will save the university about $300,000 in the first year. Future savings are expected to approach $700,000 per year.

The transition will directly impact 19 current print shop and postal services employees. Canon representatives met with the staff last week to discuss the transition. According to Bob Knaster, UofL executive director of business services, the Canon representatives “highly value” the institutional knowledge of the team and have expressed interest in hiring as many current employees as possible.

“The anxiety the employees are feeling is understandable,” Knaster said. “But Canon has made it clear that they want to work with current staff as much as possible. And the university has made it clear to Canon and to the employees that we will work with them to make this happen.

“Canon has expressed a strong commitment to a long-term partnership,” he added. “Our faculty and staff can expect outstanding service while gaining the technological advances Canon will provide throughout the contract period.”

For more information, send email to: Wlbarn01@louisville.edu.

.

According to , Postel’s term began with 19 top academic and administrative positions filled with interims. That number is down to eight, not including Postel’s own role or any athletics positions.��

Postel said UofL hopes to name a new AD by the end of March or early April, which is at least a month before a permanent president is expected to be chosen. Once an AD is in place, a search for a men’s basketball coach will take place.

Other roles expected to be filled soon include dean of the Speed School of Engineering, dean of the School of Nursing, the head of health affairs, research and innovation, HR, communications and marketing, and advancement.

Postel also provided an update on the campus climate survey. Both the 2014 and 2017 surveys have been released so employees can all see the issues that must be addressed. Dr. Mordean Taylor-Archer is undertaking the development of an Action Plan and will host a series of forums around the survey to gauge the work that needs to be done.

Finally, Postel discussed where we are in the budgeting process, noting that February’s budget forums provided an abundance of information on priorities and how to improve. The budget survey yielded 1,699 respondents and hundreds of narrative comments, he said.��

Other budget considerations include: CPE’s decision on tuition caps; recommendations from the Tuition and Fee-Setting Task Force; some kind of raise for employees; a matching pool of funds for deferred maintenance; and, the potential of another round of state appropriations cuts. All these pieces must come together by May to be presented to the Board of Trustees.

John Elliott, interim VP for HR, introduced Todd Kneale, director of Total Rewards. Kneale provided updates: an audit of the ��FLSA determinations will be conducted by an outside source, the JDF process is being reviewed, a committee is being constituted to oversee the administration of UofL’s retirement plan and his 2019 objective to launch a Total Rewards study.

Dr. Joseph Han, UofL’s new COO, was introduced to the senate. He began his role two weeks ago, and said the operations unit is working on a 5-year plan that includes making data-based decisions, improving communication within units and getting staff involved in decisions.

The Vice Chair’s report is .��

Credentials and Nominations provided a list of seats expiring in 2018, . Also, Senators John Smith and Marian Vasser were elected to the Presidential Search Committee. Senator Sandy Russell has been placed on the Retirement Committee.

The Policies and Economic Development Committee put the telecommuting policy up for a vote to present it to leadership and it was passed unanimously. The purpose of the policy is to meet the changing needs of a diverse workforce. The entire policy suggestion is .��

In other reports, no grievances were filed to the Staff Grievance Committee within the past month, and no applications for SHARE assistance have been submitted. An article highlighting the SHARE program was published in February on .��

According to the treasurer’s report, the Staff Senate SHARE account has an uncommitted balance of $16,910.27; the Staff Senate operating account has an uncommitted balance of $5,073.77. The Staff Morale and Community Outreach Committee reminded senators about the UofL Day of Service, which is April 13 and 14.

The next Staff Senate meeting is April 9, 2:30 p.m. at Ekstrom Library’s Chao Auditorium.