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Minutes

DREXEL/MCP HAHNEMANN MERGER TRANSITION TEAM

Meeting No.9
January 31, 2002

The meeting began at 5:08 p.m. in the President's Conference Room, Drexel University.

        The Chair announced that he had written another e-mail message for all members of both campuses, reminding them of the deadlines under which the Team and its Subteams are operating, and encouraging them to submit their comments and ideas to the Team before we make our final recommendations to the President in three weeks. The Drexel Faculty Senate's Ad Hoc Committee on the Merger is conducting another poll of the Drexel faculty; and the Chair met with the members of that Committee for ninety minutes to discuss the workings of the Team and its intentions for both reporting its recommendations and for identifying and analyzing issues during Phase II (the period between an affirmative vote of the Trustees to merge and the July 1 merger date). The Chair advised the members of the Committee that the Team had not yet identified the issues for Phase II; that he expected them to include issues affecting the calendar (start dates/times; quarters vs. semesters), transportation (physical and electronic), academic affairs (synergies, new course offerings, departmental interactions), research (other than indirect costs), and benefits (e.g., retirement, health, sabbatical); that he intended to coordinate the Team's work with faculty committees studying such matters, rather than run parallel independent courses; and that he expected the Team to continue using Subteams.

        Student Governance. The Team welcomed Anna Bellini, Brian Kerrigan and David Ruth, MCPH Dean of Students, who served on the Student Governance Subteam along with MTT members Justin Mathews and Michael Neyman. The Subteam announced that, after several meetings (including one quite contentious one), they had succeeded in creating a governance structure that all members agreed would work well in a fully-integrated university. The Subteam began by explaining that most of the students at MCPHU are graduate students, and most at Drexel are undergraduates -- for example, there are 10,000 undergraduates at Drexel, and only 563 at MCPHU. The number of graduate students at the two institutions are more similar, but there are several more graduate student government organizations at MCPHU, and only one at Drexel. The Subteam's presentation was enhanced by a series of diagrams that were used to describe the current and proposed organizations.

        The general approach adopted by the Subteam is to integrate the smaller into the larger:

• The undergraduates at the College of Nursing and Health Professions (CNHP) would elect a senator to serve on the Drexel Undergraduate Student Government Association (USGA), just as every other college currently elects a senator of the USGA. (Since the School of Medicine and the School of Public Health are both graduate schools, there is no need of similar representation.)
• All graduate student associations, including the Drexel Graduate Student Association and the CNHP Senate (which has both undergraduate and graduate students) will send two representatives to a new University Graduate Student Association (University GSA).
• Finally, a new umbrella organization called the University Students Council (USC) would represent the entire student body with respect to university-wide issues and meet periodically with the President, Provost and other University officials. It would have representatives from the USGA, the University GSA, and the College of Evening and Professional Studies (the Evening and University Council).

        The Subteam noted that the various graduate and undergraduate organizations at MCPHU have created a MCPHU University Council where they, joined by a representative of the University Administration (Student Life), have benefited from regular meetings to discuss issues of concern to MCPHU students. The Subteam proposes that this Council continue.

       Knowing how disparate all of the interests were before the Subteam started its work, the Team heartily congratulated the Subteam on achieving consensus so quickly on such a well thought-out proposal. Because no representative from CoEPS had been involved on the Subteam (for which the Chair apologizes most sincerely), the Team asked the Subteam to take the plan to the EUC for its information and input, and the Chair will invite the EUC President to the next meeting of the Team. The Subteam was also asked to investigate what other similarly-situated universities are doing (e.g., Penn State and Temple Ambler). The Team was also concerned that continuation of the MCPHU University Council would be an unwelcome vestige of a divided past, and urged the Subteam to consider adding a "sunset" provision to that Council that would anticipate its demise in some period of time less than three years. At the same time, the Team also recognizes that there may be reasons for it to continue, to address specific issues relevant only to MCPHU, just as departments exist to address those issues relevant only to programs within the department.

        Thereafter followed a discussion of student fees. The above proposal was developed on the assumption that the manner of handling student fees would not be changed -- that there would remain differences in the fees charged to students and different mechanisms employed to allocated those fees to events and services of interest to the students being charged the fees. At MCPHU, for example, the fees are charged by school, and allocated by school; and the fees charged to medical students are different than those charged to nursing, health professions, and public health students. There are 125 student organizations at Drexel, as compared with 12 at MCPHU. Will every MCPHU student be charged the same $100 activity fee that is now being charged to every Drexel student? Since the demographics of the student bodies are very different -- the average age of a CNHP student, for example, is 32 -- there are good reasons not to change the fee structures. If the fees are going to change, however, these decisions must be made immediately, since they are being advertised now in catalogues to students applying for admission.

        After discussion, the Team agreed that any merger of the two universities should not affect student fees -- either the amount or the manner of distribution -- at least in the first year. However, it is of critical importance that students at MCPHU know that they are welcome to participate fully and without charge at Drexel-campus events, and that Drexel students know that they are welcome to participate fully and without charge at MCPHU-campus events. The operative assumption for this first year will be that the costs of any increase in participation/demand will be monitored, will be assumed without objection by the paying organization(s), and will be analyzed half way (or so) into the first academic year so that any changes can be made in the admissions materials for the second year. If the cost increases are material, then redress should be available at the University level.

        Research (Indirect Costs). The more accurately named Subteam on Facilities and Administration (F&A) Cost Return submitted its report and recommendations to the Team. (No member of the MTT served on this Subteam.) It was charged with considering two issues: (1) Should there be return of F&A costs to the units and principal investigator (PI); and if so, (2) what distribution model(s) should be used? As an introduction to these issues, the Subteam reported that the two universities employ different models in addressing the issue. In the MCPHU model, all of the recovered F&A costs are returned to the university administration, and portions are allocated according to needs determined by university and unit administrators -- that is, there are no pre-determined mechanisms ensuring any return to the units and PIs, which depend fully upon central funds to support the research enterprise. In the second model, which is employed at Drexel, a set percentage of the recovered F&A costs are returned to the units and the PIs. The cost return supports only a portion of the cost of supporting the research enterprise, however: additional support is provided by central funding.

        The Subteam analyzed the benefits that come with a system of returning F&A costs: the PIs are rewarded for their successes, which provides direct, personal incentives for obtaining other funded research initiatives. Because limits are being placed on the level of grand funding requiring additional support to carry out the project, discretionary funds are becoming increasingly more important to PIs, who also use the returned costs to fund preliminary studies that would otherwise not be funded. Similarly, returned costs give the units opportunities to foster collaborative activities and to develop new research initiatives that are beyond the purview of individual investigators (e.g., "center" proposals and seed funding for multi-disciplinary activities), while providing financial recognition that it is departmental resources that are most heavily used in support of the research operation.

        Because the return of F&A costs has proven to be a very effective incentive, and because the University's interest is in growing the research enterprise, the Subteam recommends that the Drexel policy of returning 32% of the recovered F&A costs to the units, with the distribution of 12% to the college, 12% to the department, and 8% to the PI, be maintained for the new merged university. It recommends that this new policy be applied to the MCPHU schools with all new grants beginning on July 1, 2002, which will permit the policy of F&A cost return to be gradually implemented over the 2-5 year grant cycle. In making this recommendation, however, the Subteam was very concerned that the incentives the policy is meant to provide would be neutralized if the MCPHU units were also required to assume responsibility for a greater percentage of the costs of research. For this reason, the Subteam recommended that if replacement of central funding was a possible result, then department chairs and college administrators be intimately involved in, and have to approve, the process of developing mechanisms to implement such a change. The Subteam also recommended the creation of a committee involving faculty, chairs and administrators to develop mechanisms to assist programs experiencing periods of difficulty or growth (e.g., a stated procedure to bridge between successful periods to cover unsuccessful ones).

        The Team discussed this report at length, and accepted it with only a few reservations. The Team believes that the Administration ought to provide as many incentives as it can to fuel the research engine. For that reason, the Team disagreed that there ought to be an expectation that cost returns will simply replace central funding. It agreed that the Report's second recommendation should be modified to read as follows:

We recommend that the returned F&A Costs to the units be used for the purposes of developing new research enterprise. If it becomes necessary to identify current sources of funding to be replaced by the returned F&A costs, then before that occurs, mechanisms for that purpose must be developed with a consensus of department chairs and college administrators.

       The Team also expressed its unwillingness to accept, without further examination, the assumption that the university-wide return rate should simply be established at the Drexel rate of 32%. The Team understands that, generally, the rates prevailing at other research universities center around 15%. To grow the research engine here, it may be appropriate to have our rate exceed that median, but doing so should be a decision made explicitly; and the goal of the program should not be to create a "bank account" for departmental use in addition to departmental budgets. At the same time, the Team also appreciates the genesis of the consensus: common concern with the method and results of Drexel's budgeting process, and for the university's academic mission. If the actual budgeting process is perceived to be fair, then there will be more acceptance for reducing the return rate from 32% to a more appropriate level (e.g., 20%). For that reason, the Team agreed upon two courses of action: first, to undertake a review of other, similarly situated research institutions, to determine the rate of return used there (taking into account charge-backs made against those returns); and second, to recommend that the return rate remain at 32% and not be reduced unless it can be demonstrated that the academic mission is not harmed thereby.

       The Team applauded the work of the Subteam on a job very well and speedily done.

       Next Week. The Faculty Governance Subteam has been meeting, and has reached a recommendation, which it will present to the Subteam at its meeting next week.

The meeting was adjourned at 7:15 p.m.

Tobey Oxholm
Chair and Secretary