Department Faculty Meeting - September 17th, 2007

Call to order - John Hayes, Chair called to order the regular meeting of the Wildlife Ecology and Conservation Department at 2:00 PM on September 17th, 2007, in room 376 Newins-Zeigler Hall.

Roll Call – Elaine Culpepper registered those attending as: Ana Ball (quest) and Lucas Maxwell (guest); Peter Frederick, Bill Giuliano, Mel Sunquist, Perran Ross, Matt Shirley, Wiley Kitchens, Monica Lindberg, Claire Williams, George Tanner, Madan Oli, Robert Fletcher, Mike Moulton, Lyn Branch, Susan Jacobson, Emilio Bruna, Ray Carthy, Katie Sieving, Debbie Miller (PC), and Steve Johnson (PC)

ACTION ITEMS:

Obtain final version of proposal on collaboration of PhD program with the College or Porto Rico - Hayes and Moulton
Send out votes for Didier Courtesy Faculty position - Culpepper
Check into procedures for Courtesy Faculty send out info – Hayes
Mike Moulton to follow up on the Soils Science course.

Welcome and Review - The meeting was called to order at 2:00 pm.

Congratulations extended to Elaine Culpepper for passing one of the phases of the Pro-3 Training.
Dr. Ball and Lucas Maxwell, came to give overview of teaching resource center. Dr. Anna Ball, Assistant Professor in Agriculture Education and she is the Director of the Teaching Resources Center. A needs assessment survey was passed around to faculty for completion. There is the Teachers College which is new and it is a twelve week course for faculty and students and the meetings are on Tuesday nights. Inaugural class was this fall with approximately 22 faculty involved and Dr. Fletcher is participating. Grad students can participate if interested in teaching, so encourage them to enroll. Another hand-out was an invitation to join the TRC listserv and instructions as to how to join, this will be a bi-weekly or monthly posting, so you will not be inundated with emails. General discussions about the program ensued. Any emails or questions, feel free to do so. Willing to meet one on one to help develop courses.

Monica Lindberg – Residual funds – Minimums for fixed price close outs. Our residuals funds remaining after you have completed the research grants and the arrangement with the funding company was a fixed cost. When notice of award comes in from the UF we know if it is fixed cost or cost reimbursable. These are fixed cost If for some reason you were not able to spend all of the funds on your project and the balance that is left over is available, once the financial institute pays up, to be transferred to a residual account. That account number is under 47705 is the project number. Learned recently that on projects there is less than $500 remaining, those funds will not come to faculty, but go to joint account that will be used to assist IFAS when a funding agency has been neglectfully in providing funding for someone’s research projects.
General discussions ensued. The 47705 Residual account funds are current are showing on the T drive where they can be reviewed.

COOP Unit and funding opportunities - Opportunities available for a way we might work with the Coop unit for funding. The Coop unit has access to federal agencies in two different ways. The traditional way is through our Coop agreements, which houses us here at the UF. You can do a research work order with USGS, and thru that Cooperative agreement it carries a 15% overhead rate, which is 15% of the direct overhead cost. That would be with USGS or any of the centers or however they might have funds. Also any fed agency with funds who might want to fund your project, and it’s a legitimate wildlife conservation oriented project; they can transfer the money without RFP’s, without soul source justification to the USGS. There is a 6% toll on that, so 6% percent of whatever the agency transfers to them; and then USGS would write a research order with the UF to get the funds here. These are quarterly reimbursable contracts that mean that every quarter you submit a report and the UF submits a quarterly report for however much you spend and you will want to spend it all. It is not fixed price, any money left at the end goes to the General Fund, not the agency. Downside is that it takes a while, it normally takes at least two months if all goes well to process and get the money, by the time we have the proposal and cover sheet DSR-1, for you to have money. More like three months.
The second way was a hand shake deal made with the deans office; sometimes the Fish and Wildlife Service or USGS might have short term projects that under a year and under $30,000 to do a short term job, surveys, literature searches that are not really research but stretching it; UF allows the federal operates to write a Purchase Order to do this. This is at the 15% total-direct cost. We are trying to put this in the next Coop agreement. This eliminates having to acquire a grant. This is a lot quicker, but it is a fixed price contract so you would have to watch what you are spending. General discussions ensued.
If you have a project you need to talk to Joan and Franklin.

Other - John sent a note around that at the next faculty meeting – Karl Havens, Chair of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences will join us – member of task force on metrics and publications. They produced a document that was sent around for review. Please read through the issue is from multiple directions, IFAS, the departments, and faculty members are being asked to document IMPACT. One area is what our research programs are, what is the quality as a department and as individual to impacts we have, what are the metrics. Playing around with H index rating, used by the Conservation of Biology. Karl will talk to us about this. His goal is to inform and for us to give him feed back on this.

Mike Moulton attended an IFAS Curriculum meeting. He provide information where there is a collaborate PhD program with college of Porto Rico that would be beneficial. General discussion held. He’ll get a copy of the finalized copy of the proposal and provide to interested parties.

Ray Carthy – sending around memo for next semester seminar speakers. If there are any students available please let them know.

Outstanding Alumni Awards - Dr. Hayes needs nominations for the Outstanding Alumni Awards and there will be more than one award. Idea is to recognize the most outstanding contributions.

Mike Moulton – Discussion held in regard to the Soil sciences vote to make the physical science requirement for the Wildlife Ecology specialization to be SOS 3022 and SOS 3022L. Claire commented undergrads are favorable on the program. George felt a basic course in soils was essential for all programs for a program in natural resources. General concensous was all faculty in favor, motion passed for courses

VOTE: Mike will contact forestry - General consensus—The motion passed.

Karl Didier courtesy appointment - Courtesy Appointment - Lyn Branch has nominated Karl Didier as a courtesy faculty member to WEC. General discussions held. John agreed to make some space available to him thru January and we would re-evaluate the situation after that time frame.

ACTION ITEM – Send votes out for Courtesy faculty.

General discussion ensued as to procedures of adding Courtesy faculty to the WEC department. John will check into the procedures and review and send out a document on the procedures.

ACTION ITEM - check into the procedures of checking on courtesy faculty and send around the procedures to faculty.

TENURE AND PROMOTION - Full professors met – Kitchens, Hayes, Sunquist, Tanner, Jacobson, Branch, Frederick. General discussions held in regard to the promotion packets of Katie Sieving and Marty Main.

Adjourned: 4:00PM