09.16.25 Senate Minutes

Establish a Quorum

The attendance vote was opened, and a quorum was established with 52 members present as of 3:32 pm. When the quorum vote closed at the end of the meeting, 79 senators or substitutes had responded present.

Senate Meeting Minutes from August 26, 2025 were approved by unanimous consent. Link to minutes from August 26, 2025.

Remarks and Announcements

University Senate Chair: Virginia A. Davis

Chair Davis announced the members of the Nominating Committee. They are Todd Steury (Chair), Matthew Clary, Andrew Pendola, Stephanie Shepherd, Adrienne Wilson, and Adrienne Marks.

President: Chris Roberts

President Roberts addressed the tragic and shocking loss of Dr. Julie Gard Schnuelle, Professor Emerita in the College of Veterinary Medicine. He also discussed campus safety and our shared services model with the City of Auburn. In August, Auburn was ranked among the safest universities in the Southeastern Conference. Roberts also shared several enrollment updates. We have 6,112 incoming freshman, which met Auburn’s goal of having essentially the same size class as last year. There were also 1,326 undergraduate transfer students. The average ACT score for entering freshman was 28.8 and 550 were inducted into the Honors College. All of Alabama's 67 counties and all 50 states are represented in incoming students. Overall, 61% of undergraduates are Alabama residents. Graduate enrollment remains steady.

President Roberts also celebrated several campus events including homecoming which welcomed thousands of alumni and parents including Octavia Spencer and Governor Kay Ivey. Congratulations were extended to Mallory Hollard, a senior in Industrial and Systems Engineering, for being elected Miss Homecoming by Auburn students. Tiger Giving Day also raised $868,000 for several meaningful projects. The Board of Trustees approved fiscal year 2026-2027 budget, including a 3% merit pool and funding for a due diligence analysis of the Haley Center. There were several facilities projects approved including the Barbara Drummond Thorne Academic and Research Facility which will house the College of Human Sciences, a new airport hanger, upgrades to the Red Barn in Newbern, and initiating a new dormitory project. The BOT also approved a tuition increase (2% in-state and 4.5% out-of-state) for 2026-2027.

On research and institutional matters, President Roberts also shared he is proud of the number of funding proposals submitted by faculty and a more detailed report will be given at the next Senate meeting. Auburn will continue to monitor the national landscape and work towards better communicating the impact of the work being done. Per the advice and request of the University Senate, Dr. Taylor and Dr. Kerpelman have been meeting with small groups of faculty members on the current landscape of research and funding opportunities. Finally, the Insurance and Benefits Committee is reviewing health insurance premiums and looking for ways to provide same quality of insurance and reduce costs. More details will be shared at a later time.

With permission of Chair Davis, Kevin Robinson, Vice President for Institutional Compliance and Security, addressed recent campus safety incidents, including a swatting incident on August 27th, off campus incidents, and the campus security advisory for potential drugging incidents. Dr. Clarence Stewart, Assistant Vice President for Campus Safety and Compliance, was also available for questions. Robinson described the threat assessment process, collaboration with local agencies, and improvements in campus security. The office is actively working to improve alerting the campus community sooner. He emphasized the importance of everyone working together to keep the campus community safe.

Provost: Vini Nathan

Provost Nathan shared that the Board of Trustees approved one action which is a new major from the College of Agriculture and heard two information items from the College of Nursing and College of Engineering. An update was shared on the internal search for the Interim Dean of the Graduate School chaired by Angela Wiley. There was a robust pool of 14 candidates which has been narrowed to five candidates. Interviews have moved forward and there will be an announcement soon.

Nathan shared an update on student performance outcomes. The first-year retention rate is 95%, which is close to our strategic planning peers like Virginia Tech and UVA. The six-year graduation rate is 82%. Finally, our first destination outcome for both undergraduates and graduate is close to 84%. Data collection efforts are led by Katie Boyd and her team on behalf of Auburn. Further information is available through Provost Nathan’s newsletter and a dashboard. Finally, Provost Nathan shared information about the Promotion and Tenure reception and information about Faculty Award nominations.

Questions:

Ali Krzton, a guest from Libraries, asked President Roberts about protecting intellectual freedom, “what actions will Auburn University take to ensure the free and open exchange of ideas proceeds without obstruction either by violence or by other forms of the heckler’s veto, such as threats and physical disruption of events?” President Roberts expressed appreciation for the question and responded that Auburn would continue to stand for “respectful and civil discourse consistent with the law.” He emphasized the importance of fostering a campus where members of our community are welcomed, valued, respected, and engaged including through civil discourse. With that said, he reiterated that actions and speech that endorses violence do not represent our university values and are considered unacceptable. President Roberts ended with reminding everyone “we have a tremendous responsibility as educators to make sure students have a healthy educational environment, one in which they can engage in multiple perspectives and express themselves civilly, and we take that very seriously.”

Business Items

Rules Committee Report

Presenter: Rachel Prado

Secretary Prado introduced the 2025-2026 Rules Committee and noted the representation from five colleges across campus. She presented an overview of the Rules Committee, the committee structure, information on Senate and University Committees, and answers to frequently asked questions about the volunteer process. She encouraged everyone to consider volunteering in the spring when the volunteer portal opens. Anyone with questions was encouraged to reach out to usensec@auburn.edu.

Academic Standards Committee

Presenter: Damon McIntosh

Damion McIntosh shared the proposed revisions to the undergraduate course load policy. The proposal is to increase the maximum credit hours allowed by one hour from 18 to 19 in the fall and spring semester and from 14 to 15 in the summer, remove mini-term distinction in summer, revise overload eligibility requirements, allow a dean’s designee approval, and clarify the timing of overload registration. McIntosh then moved that senators request feedback from their units regarding the proposed revisions to the Undergraduate Course Load Policy, and that this feedback be discussed at the October Senate meeting.

Chair Davis clarified since this was a motion from a committee it did not need a second and that voting would be opened since this was a request to gather input not to approve policy.

Voting Results: 62 Yes / 2 No / 6 Abstain

The motion passed and further discussion will occur in the October Senate meeting. 

Information Items

Digital Accessibility Working Group

Presenters: Kristin Roberts, Mark Bransby, and Ed Youngblood

The Digital Accessibility Working Group presented the background on the accessibility requirement and that the Department of Justice’s update to Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act specified that all public institutions, including Auburn University, must ensure that web content, mobile applications, and digital resources meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 AA standards by April 24, 2026. The scope of the requirement includes websites, web applications, group emails, online courses and presentations, registration systems, third-party software, and social media posts, with limited exceptions for archived and password-protected individual documents. They emphasized the importance of universal design which benefits all users. The working group, which includes representations from multiple campus units, has developed resources and toolkits to support faculty and staff meeting these requirements including future workshops, accessibility checkers, and document remediation services.

Questions:

Sara Wolf, Senator from Educational Foundations, Leadership, and Technology, asked about the undue burden of costs and what degree has central administration committed to providing central resources for the tools that could be broadly applied across campus? Provost Nathan responded that they are trying to get an understanding of what the costs will be and if they are one time, on-going, or combination of one time/on-going costs. The administration has begun the conversation with the deans, and their hope is to move fairly quickly.

Since no other Senators or visitors had a question Sara Wolf, Senator from Educational Foundations, Leadership, and Technology was able to ask a second question. She asked about fundamental alteration of the content and to what degree will the ability to have picture books, children’s literature or other extremely graphic primary source documents be able to be remediated or used? Ed Youngblood responded that it depends on how it is being used. If someone used a picture book in a lecture, if it recorded you would need to describe what is going on in the pictures. It is a good idea to integrate that into the actual lecture rather than having to come back and add descriptions. Physical textbooks are not covered under this mandate, but his understanding is that electronic books are going to be covered. Faculty may have to write descriptions for some electronic children’s books; it depends on what students need to get out of the image. There are vendors who create e-book versions of picture books.

David Miller, Senator from Philosophy, asked that since this mandate is applicable to digital content will this has a “perverse incentive to remove digital content” instead of making it accessible which creates labor overhead? Mark Bransby replied that the working group hopes this is not the case. There have been other cases with open courses at MIT and Berkeley that took down content instead of captioning. These were unintended consequences that caused everyone to suffer. Auburn has had an accessibility policy for 10 years, and hopefully everyone has been working toward being more accessible.

New Business

None.

Adjournment

Chair Davis adjourned the meeting at 4:51 pm.

Attendance