Chief of Police Gary Lewis provided senators an overview of the current state of campus security. Lewis reported that the number of security cameras across UofL has nearly doubled over the past year. In addition to the increase in number, many of the new cameras are more advanced and offer a wider range of visual coverage. Lewis also informed senators of the continuing effort to standardize access control among all university campuses.

“On Belknap campus, only about 60% of the campus is access controlled. Health Sciences Campus is 100% access controlled. We’re improving some technologies [on Belknap] so that card readers will be able to provide you with the ability to gain access entry into all buildings,” Lewis stated. “Our goal is 100% access control on Belknap campus similar to HSC.”

Senators were also introduced to Kari Aikins, the recently appointed director of Total Rewards. Mary Elizabeth Miles, VP of Human Resources, informed senators that Total Rewards encompasses retirement, compensation and benefits. Aikins will also serve as co-chair for

Keith Sherman, chief operating officer and executive director of the , provided senators with an overview of the foundation’s record-setting portfolio. The UofL Foundation and the UofL Real Estate Foundation boasted combined Total Assets of just over $1.3 billion, the highest in the history of both foundations. Total Endowment Assets also reached an all-time high at $922 million. The main endowment pool, which serves as the source of nearly all available endowment funding across the university, also reached a record $817 million as of July 12.

Sherman stated, “We saw 33% returns in the stock market through May; for perspective, our goal is 6.2% a year. Over the last year, we’ve returned five times what we expect to get in the marketplace, which is unbelievable. That 33% return for an endowment will probably put us in the top 10% of all endowments across the country.”

Sherman credited the overwhelming growth of the main endowment pool to several changes made by the foundation over the past year.

“We made a lot of changes this year. We changed investment advisors, we changed our investment strategy, we simplified things and sometimes it is just important to be good as well as lucky. We made some good, thoughtful decisions and when the market went crazy after the COVID-19 drop last March, we were perfectly positioned to maximize our returns,” Sherman said.

Committee reports and a of the virtual meeting can be found on the .

The Staff Senate will not meet during the month of August in order to provide orientation for the 21 first-time Staff Senate representatives. The next Staff Senate meeting is scheduled for Sept. 8 via a hybrid format with the option of remote attendance via Teams, or in-person attendance at Ekstrom Library’s Chao Auditorium.

Lewis answered questions about the incident for about 10 minutes after a staff senator at the meeting in Chao Auditorium texted him that senators were expressing their concerns about public safety on campus.

The chief said the message appeared on all university telephones in the late afternoon because of an IT error and had not originated with ULPD. ULPD was quickly alerted to the problem and, after confirming no threat existed, sent a text message via the RAVE warning system that the telephone message was sent in error.

Lewis said the evacuation message appeared to have originated from a campus telephone and IT was investigating the incident.

He added that ULPD was planning to hold a tabletop exercise with senior leadership to address public safety in an emergency.    

Staff senators were also given an update on the state of the UofL Foundation’s investments by Keith Sherman, the foundation’s executive director and COO. Sherman used a PowerPoint, “Reforms Pave Way for a Sustainable Future,” to show how changes made since 2017 are helping to restore the university’s endowment after years of poor management.

He said the university’s endowment as of Dec. 31, 2019, totaled $637 million. Stricter spending rules have been imposed that will gradually replenish the endowment, he said.

“We don’t overspend,” Sherman said.

Sherman pointed out that the foundation is not responsible for fundraising – that falls to University Advancement – but noted that donors who had stopped honoring pledges are once again making payments. “Donors are getting more comfortable and realizing it really is a new day,” he said.

Staff Senate President John Smith said during his report that the Board of Trustees had approved new bylaws giving the university president veto power over the UofL Athletic Association board. The move will “give us a lot more institutional control,” Smith said.

The Bylaw Revision Committee presented its first reading and received comments.

Christopher Tillquist, anthropology associate professor, reported that Faculty Senate is looking into the issue of free speech on campus. He encouraged staff senators to read the university’s policy on speech and literature distribution, last revised in 2011.

More committee reports are . The next Staff Senate meeting is March 9 on the HSC campus.��

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.

Sherman, who has been in the role for less than a year, provided an update about the foundation since the state and forensic audits were completed.

“Our problems were simple – the foundation spent more than it made. That is a bad equation for sustainability,” he said. “Our sole purpose is to fund scholarships and endowments for faculty and staff. The goal is to do this in perpetuity, but we weren’t doing that.”

The ULF has been under an audit for nearly 900 straight days.

“I assure you there is no granular of sand that hasn’t been looked at and we have a clean bill of health,” Sherman said.

Changes that have been made to clear the investigations and restore donor and stakeholder confidence include:

• New leadership from top to bottom
• Revised bylaws
• A separation of the UofL president and the president of the foundation
• Transparency and compliance with open records requests
• New independent executive
• Specific board resolutions
• Established compliance process to ensure funding to the university is consistent with donor intent
• A more robust conflict of interest policy
• Changed auditors and law firms

“I know this has been painful for a lot of areas on campus. But if we didn’t reign in our spending, it would have further unintended consequences,” Sherman said. “We are looking at the next 200 years, not the next 24 months.”

In addition to reigning in spending, Sherman added that the foundation is looking at other ways to grow the endowment. This includes an end to the deferred compensation plan, an end to “tax gross up” payments to staff, the development of the first ever line-item budget, a review of all real estate holdings to determine their value, and more.

Sherman said the changes have been noticed and September marked the best month for donations in a year.

“Donors are starting to come back because they see the reforms,” he said.

Sherman’s presentation is .��

Lee Smith, interim COO, provided an update from his area, which includes about 800 employees across campus in facilities management, business services, public safety, IT, performance improvement and business analytics.

When the $48 million budget shortfall was announced, Smith’s area was tasked with saving $20 million in operations and procurement.

As of today, savings of $4.5 million in operations has been identified, and $3.4 million in procurement. These savings have come from energy, software/hardware licensing changes, reduction of off campus leases, improved contract negotiations and more.

“For example, for software, we found that products across campus in aggregate cost more than an enterprise system, so we’re continuing to look at these types of cost reductions,” Smith said.

Smith’s team has identified five goals to achieve across the unit:

1. Optimize resources by maximizing cost efficiencies and strengthening fiscal controls. This means moving some systems online, for example, to save both time and paper.
2. Increase revenue streams. There are three major RFPs underway to help: banking, managed print and wireless services.
3. Improved customer service. More training and surveys will be put into place to achieve this goal.
4. Protecting the university’s infrastructure. IT, for example, launched a new Phishbowl resource to identify phishing scams. This also includes improved disaster recovery capabilities and prioritizing deferred maintenance.
5. Focus on data-driven decision making and, as a result, producing user-friedly reports.

Senate votes to suspend Paralegal program

In other Faculty Senate business, the Academic Programs committee put forth a proposal to suspend the university’s paralegal program, which is an associate’s degree program. The program is housed in the Political Science department, which has been affected by the budget crisis. The Paralegal program is the only associate’s degree program at UofL and it requires American Bar Association accreditation. This accreditation will be lost the program does not have a devoted director, which the department is unable to hire at this time because of the budget.

In consultation with the A&S Dean’s office and the Provost’s office, a 5-year suspension of the program was recommended. This was done to provide more time to see if any other departments want to pick up the paralegal program, such as Law or Criminal Justice. It is rare for this type of program to fall in the Political Science department.

Department Chair Rodger Payne said the impetus behind this proposal is completely driven by budgetary issues. There is a teach out plan that runs for the current students through 2018. The program averages anywhere between 11 and 28 students a year.

Joe Gutmann, who teaches courses in the program, provided a gentle rebuttal on why UofL should keep the paralegal degree. The program began in the 1980s, so UofL has a nearly 40-year investment, and there is strong job growth in this field, especially for women and minorities. The biggest competitor in the city is Sullivan and “their program is thriving,” according to Gutmann.

A motion was brought forward to suspend the program and that motion was passed.

Other reports

The Student Government Association report is . The group suggested that course fee evaluations be placed on syllabi or online so students know where their fees are going.��

Also, the SGA is looking at ways to centralize the advising system so it’s more consistent across campus.

Faculty Senate Chair Enid Trucios-Haynes provided the Chair’s report, noting that the presidential search discussion will continue in the next Board of Trustees meeting later this month. The presidential search process is expected to include listening tours at some point, and Trucios-Haynes said she has been ensured that the senate will be involved in that planning process.

She also released a general statement to some media outlets disagreeing with the lack of transparency involved in the presidential search.

“The concern for me is we are a community, not a business. But we have to let the process move forward and the process of doing this work is important,” she said.

The Provost report from Dale Billingsley is .

The President’s report from Greg Postel is .��

The Redbook committee held a first reading of new bylaws that included “cleaned up” language and clarifications. A second reading and vote will be held during the December meeting.

Additionally, the discussion item on the presidential forum and suggested priorities has been delayed until the December meeting, which is scheduled for Dec. 6, 3-5 p.m., Chao Auditorium.