Michael Wade Smith, vice president for university relations and chief of staff, provided senators with information on the vice president for diversity and equity search. The search committee evaluating candidates for this role include Wade Smith and 18 other university leaders, faculty and staff, with representation from UofL’s Black Faculty and Staff Association, AAPI Employee Resource Group, Hispanic Latin@ Faculty and Staff Association and LGBTQ+ Faculty and Staff Association.

“We are now at the stage where the committee will be meeting to take in the feedback from those folks who met with the candidates and make a recommendation on the candidates that the committee believes are viable based on our experience, feedback and a provided unranked list of the strengths and weakness of those viable candidates,” stated Wade Smith.

The VP of diversity and equity will report directly to the university president, serving as a member of the president’s cabinet, senior leadership team and other key institutional committees. This position serves to create and maintain a campus environment that reflects UofL’s mission, vision and values as a premier anti-racist metropolitan research university.

“We brought in five candidates, and I think was an incredibly strong pool; two of the individuals are in associate deans for diversity roles at significant institutions, one candidate has been an experienced chief diversity officer in the government sector and two of the candidates are sitting vice presidents of diversity at large top-tier research one, division one athletic institutions,” Wade Smith said.

Interim University President Lori Gonzalez, then serving in her capacity as executive vice president and university provost, provided senators with COVID-19 vaccination rates and an update on the status of university-wide vaccine mandates. Gonzalez reported that UofL’s vaccination rate remains at 91% campus wide.

“We have been transitioning data collection for the health records from public health, so there has been a delay in tracking,” Gonzalez said. “We were talking about the vaccine mandate and to be ready for that, the COVID-19 call center has been contacting the 633 staff, faculty and student employees that we had no records on, and they whittled that number down.”

Gonzalez reported that as of Dec. 1, 2021, a total of 162 university employees were unvaccinated and that the Business Operations COVID Support Team is in the process of confirming vaccination status for 146 other employees. Additionally, senators were informed that vaccines will not be mandated by the university at this time due to a .

“On Nov. 30, we received information about the injunction from the 5th Circuit Court that blocks the contractor COVID-19 mandate. Because of that, we’re pausing our vaccine mandate,” said Gonzalez. “We are still highly encouraging [vaccination], we are still keeping up with our masking, we’re not pausing in the requirement for testing and we will see that’s the mandate for unvaccinated people.”

Senators were presented with a proposal for the addition of a new program in the School of Business, a master of science in accountancy and analytics (MSAA). The proposal included revisions addressing concerns voiced during last month’s senate meeting and received approval from the academic programs committee. UofL’s Faculty Senate unanimously passed the proposal, and the 34-hour master’s program has proposed implementation in fall 2022.

Committee reports and a of the meeting can be accessed on the webpage. The next Faculty Senate meeting is scheduled for Jan. 12 via a hybrid format with the option of remote attendance via Teams, or in-person attendance at Ekstrom Library’s Chao Auditorium.

Executive Vice President and University Provost Lori Gonzalez provided senators with updated information on enrollment, endowments and the recent federal COVID-19 mandate. When compared to figures from fall 2020, enrollment is down 48 students. Although institutions nationwide are experiencing a drop in enrollment, the national average is a loss of only 2.3 students. Gonzalez reported that student retention was also down by 4.3%. Senators were informed that student enrollment and retention will be a targeted initiative for the university and administration for the foreseeable future.

Gonzalez also provided senators with information on the current state of the university’s endowment funding.

“So many of our endowments were previously underwater, but this past year they’re all above water,” Gonzalez said. “Our return on investment for our endowments was 33%. This means endowments will go up for the next fiscal year, since they are done on a three-year rolling average.”

A university-wide informed members of the Cardinal community of a recent federal mandate regarding COVID-19 response. The executive order requires all federal contractors and covered contractors to implement a COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Due to the numerous federal contracts that the university depends upon for operation, this federal ordnance will apply to UofL.

“The federal government allows medical and religious exemptions; however, the state-approved conscientious objector exemption is not allowed by the federal government. It’s my understanding that Kentucky’s attorney general may be challenging this rule, but we must wait for the outcome of that decision on conscientious objector exemptions,” Gonzalez said.

Executive Vice President of Research & Innovation Kevin Gardner gave a presentation on UofL’s impressive fiscal year 2021 research impact. The presentation highlighted the record-breaking $201.5 million in competitive research funding, which was over $30 million more than the previous record set in FY20. Gardner also featured several UofL research initiatives that addressed the three Grand Challenges of research and innovation outlined in the : empowering our communities, advancing our health and engineering our future economy.

Committee reports and a of the meeting can be accessed on the . The next Faculty Senate meeting is scheduled for Dec. 1 via a hybrid format with the option of remote attendance via Teams, or in-person attendance at Ekstrom Library’s Chao Auditorium.

Executive Vice President and University Provost Lori Gonzalez provided senators with updated COVID-19 vaccination rates for the university community. As of Oct. 5, 2021, students reported the highest rate of vaccination at 86.1%, followed by 82.7% for staff and 82.1% for faculty at UofL. During the month of October, vaccinated students have the option to enter a drawing for a variety of prizes including priority registration, a blue parking pass, a year of free coffee from the campus Starbucks or a semester of undergraduate tuition.

Gonzalez also addressed enrollment figures. Gonzalez encouraged senators and their constituents to aid in the retention effort by submitting progress reports to identify students in need of academic intervention.

“Last month, I shared that our budget was built on the expectation from the colleges that we would increase our enrollment by 200 students. In fact, we were down 194 students. That means we have 394 less students than our budget was based on,” Gonzalez said. “We are working with the colleges to true up those budgets, but there are some things that can happen at the college level to impact retention from fall to spring semester. The main thing faculty members can do is to complete progress reports for students who aren’t performing well so that we can start academic intervention efforts.”

Executive Vice President of Research & Innovation Kevin Gardner reported that the university received a record breaking $201.5 million in awards during the 2021 fiscal year. Gardner shared additional record-breaking figures from the university’s research, innovation and commercialization efforts.

“Our total award volume in 2020 was $170 million and this year, it was $201.5 million,” Gardner said. “This fiscal year, we’ve had 80 patents issued, $27 million in innovation income and 482 other agreements, such as material transfer agreements.”

Faculty Grievance Officer Cedric Powell provided the to senators. Powell reported that a total of five grievances had been filed from Oct. 1, 2020 to Sept. 1, 2021. Two Type 1 grievances were filed, as well as three Type 2 grievances.

Two grievances were filed from the School of Medicine; however, neither met the jurisdictional requirements for a formal grievance and the complaints were dismissed. Two grievances were filed from the College of Arts and Sciences, and the College of Business and the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law each had one grievance filed. A Type 2 grievance from A&S, a Type 2 grievance from the College of Business and a Type 1 grievance from the School of Law each went forward with the formal process and appeal with the opinion of the Faculty Grievance committee ultimately being affirmed by either President Bendapudi or Provost Gonzalez.

Committee reports and a of the virtual meeting can be accessed on the . The next Faculty Senate meeting is scheduled for Nov. 3 via a hybrid format with the option of remote attendance via Teams, or in-person attendance at Ekstrom Library’s Chao Auditorium.

Faculty Senate Chair David Schultz presented senators with a recent recommendation made by UofL’s COVID-19 Coordinating Committee. Faculty are encouraged to develop student seating charts for in-person courses and provide this information to . Accurate seating charts will make the contact tracing process faster and more efficient and can limit the number of unvaccinated students required to quarantine in the event a classmate tests positive for the virus.

Executive Vice President and University Provost Lori Gonzalez updated senators on the status of student enrollment. Gonzalez reported a decline of 194 undergraduate students and 16 professional students, as well as an increase of 232 graduate students.

“Overall, we are down 194 [undergraduate] students. The issue with that is our budget was built on being over by 200 students,” Gonzalez stated. “The data that we’re looking at right now is how many of those students are out-of-state or non-residents. The budget is still fluid until we know that.”

Gonzalez also reported that data on the vaccination status of students, faculty and staff are currently being analyzed to provide accurate vaccination rates for individual colleges and programs. As of Sept. 3, roughly 67% of UofL students had received the COVID-19 vaccine. Gonzalez encouraged Cardinals to take advantage of the 28 pop-up vaccine clinics that are being offered across the university by Campus Health.

Lidiya Grote, a social sciences librarian with UofL Libraries, presented senators with information on Open ����ֱ��al Resources and the benefits of their use in college academia. High textbook prices lead many college students to forgo purchasing required course materials, and the quality of their education suffers as a result. Expensive textbooks also disproportionally affect students from historically underserved and financially disadvantaged backgrounds. One alternative to high-priced textbooks are OERs, freely available materials that reside in the public domain or are licensed for free use and repurposing.

“A 2016 review of all the published literature found that OERs are comparable to commercial course material in quality and save students, on average, about $1,000 per year. Research also shows that ‘D,’ ‘F’ and ‘W’ grades decrease when a regular textbook is substituted for an open textbook – there’s improved learning performance,” Grote stated.

Faculty were encouraged to identify and incorporate high-quality OER material into their courses when possible. Individuals can also contribute to the initiative by creating or revising existing OERs. Additional information and guides to and are available on the Ekstrom Library webpage.

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