The Faculty Executive Committee talked student voter IDs and more at Monday's meeting

UNC’s Faculty Executive Committee met on Monday for a two-hour meeting to discuss the progress of the Carolina Excellence initiative, data retrieval, the possibility of UNC Libraries ending a big contract and UNC’s student IDs not conforming to voter ID laws.

Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Robert Blouin started the meeting by reporting on the progress of Carolina Excellence, an initiative with the goal of creating a high-functioning administrative operation. The initiative’s two main projects include streamlining the hiring process and the way the University processes small-dollar purchases, two of the greatest administrative challenges identified by employees. 

“This is not just about HR, it’s not just about procurement, it’s about everything that we do, and so this will be a perpetual project – it will not end – and so we will be hopefully creating a very strong culture, a big commitment to operational excellence at this institution,” Blouin said.

Blouin noted the tremendous progress observed in the HR and procurement pilots, which are now being implemented across the University in three phases.  

Blouin then discussed the University’s focus efforts to restructure the current data warehouse that stores a variety of information ranging from student records to personnel files. He said data is difficult to extract from the warehouse, so the University is looking to improve accessibility by finding a system that will be adaptable and durable. 

“What we would like to be able to do is to have that 95 percent of information that you would like to have access to at your fingertips, whether that be grant information or student information, or personnel information, that you can have it at two or three clicks,” Blouin said.

Since faculty have had problems with the current system, committee member Barbara Entwisle urged Blouin to consult a variety of people, including the end users, before implementing a new system.

“What I want to be sure of now is that the people at the table making the decision are a good representation of all the users,” Entwisle said. 

Vice Provost of University Libraries Elaine Westbrooks then described the financial situation of the libraries as a “future of cuts,” because every year, journal contracts increase by hundreds of thousands of dollars, an unsustainable rise.

This year, one of UNC's largest journal contracts with Elsevier, a journal database that costs the library over $3 million, will end. Westbrooks said this is the time to break the big deals because she does not want to renew the contract and cannot afford to.

“We have to send a message and disrupt this system, which is I think devastating to have one publisher, two publishers control disciplines,” Westbrooks said.

While she admitted that this will be an inconvenient interruption to the faculty’s workflow, she asked for their support. In place of this journal database, UNC libraries will offer expedited document delivery and inter-library loans, though the potential impacts are unknown.

By not renewing the contract, UNC Libraries would be following in the steps of the University of California system, which canceled its journal subscription deal with Elsevier this March.  

Lastly, Tim Ives, who is part of the Faculty Assembly Delegation, addressed the rejection of UNC’s ONE Card as a valid voter ID.

Because students can provide pictures for their own IDs, it is not valid due to a law that requires university identification photos to be taken by the University or by a hired contractor.

Some campuses also run into problems with the law because of the requirement for Social Security numbers and other identifiers. 

Ives noted that the conversation will continue as further clarification is provided on the criteria for voter IDs, which will help universities adjust how they issue student IDs.

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