Minutes of the
Eighth Regular Meeting of the Twenty-Fifth Senate
April 10 and 17, 2006
12:00 P.M., Kettler G46
Agenda
1. Call to order
2. Approval of the minutes of March 13 and 20, 2006
3. Acceptance of the agenda – C. Champion
4. Reports of the Speakers of the Faculties
a.
b.
5. Report of the Presiding Officer – G. Bullion
6. Committee reports requiring action
a. Nominations and Elections Committee (Senate Reference No. 05-14) – M. Codispoti
b. Educational Policy Committee (Senate
c. Faculty Affairs Committee (Senate
d. Faculty Affairs Committee (Senate
e. Executive Committee (Senate
f. Faculty Affairs Committee (Senate
7. Question Time (Senate Reference No. 05-15)
8. New business
Senate
9. Committee reports “for information only”
a. Educational Policy Committee (Senate Reference No. 05-16) – J. Tankel
b. Educational Policy Committee (Senate Reference No. 05-17) – J. Tankel
c. Executive Committee (Senate Reference No. 05-18) – C. Champion
d. Executive Committee (Senate Reference No. 05-19) – C. Champion
e. Executive Committee (Senate Reference No. 05-20) – C. Champion
f. Call to Action Ad Hoc Committee (Senate Reference No. 05-21) – B. Fife
10. The general good and welfare of the University
11. Adjournment*
*The meeting will adjourn or recess by 1:15 p.m.
Presiding Officer: G. Bullion
Parliamentarian: D. Turnipseed
Sergeant-at-Arms: G. Steffen
Secretary: J. Petersen
___________________________________________________________________________
Attachments:
“Results of Senate Committee and Subcommittee Elections” (SR No. 05-22)
“Pedagogical Framework for the IPFW Baccalaureate Degree” (SD 05-8, supersedes SD 88-33)
“School of Engineering, Technology and Computer Science: Promotion and Tenure Committee Procedures" (SD 89-2)
“Establishment of Ombudscommittee” (SD 05-10)
“Replacement of SD 90-3, "Criteria for Promotion and Tenure for Librarians"” (SD 05-12)
“Division I Athletics” (SD 05-13)
Session I
(April 10)
Senate Members Present:
B. Abbott, A. Argast, S. Blythe, W. Branson, J. Brennan, J. Burg, C. Champion,
M. Codispoti,
P. Goodmann, T. Grove, P. Hamburger, S. Hannah, C. Hill, P. Iadicola, A. Karim,
L. Kuznar, Z. Liang, D. Lindquist, M. Lipman, L. Meyer, G. Mourad, E. Neal, D. Oberstar, E. Ohlander, D. Ross, H. Samavati, G. Schmelzle, J. Tankel, J. Toole, M. Walsh, L. Wark, M. Wartell, R. Weiner, N. Younis, J. Zhao
Senate Members Absent:
R. Bean, L. Fox, J. Grant, L. Lin, M. Montesino, G. Moss, D. Mueller, R. Murray,
A. Mustafa, S. Tannous,
Faculty Members Present: D. Bialik, J. Clausen, L. Roberts, S. Sarratore
Visitors Present: J. Dahl, R. Kostrubanic, P. McLaughlin, K. Stockman (Journal Gazette)
Acta
1. Call to order: G. Bullion called the meeting to order at 12:00.
2. Approval of the minutes of March 13 and 20, 2006: The minutes were approved as distributed.
3. Acceptance of the agenda:
C. Champion moved to approve the agenda as distributed.
The agenda was approved as distributed.
4. Reports of the Speakers of the Faculties:
a.
N. Younis: Good afternoon, Colleagues. As this is the last meeting of the year, I would like to thank those senators whose terms are ending. And especially, I would like to thank Speaker Fife and Presiding Officer Bullion. They will be missed. Thank you.
b.
B. Fife: I would like to express my gratitude for being able to serve in this position again. It has been a very good experience and I have had the opportunity to interact with many fine people. It has been a distinct pleasure working with both Speaker Nash Younis and Presiding Officer George Bullion, who are both strong faculty advocates, are very committed to this institution, and have a wealth of experience about how this place operates. All of us are indebted to Jacqui Petersen, who does an outstanding job on behalf of this body and IPFW in general. I would also like to extend my best wishes to Mike Nusbaumer, who will be engaging in this role again very shortly. Though I will not
serve on the Fort Wayne Senate next year, I will continue to pursue a reform agenda for this campus. Like many others, I care about the IPFW community and would like to ensure that IPFW flourishes and prospers as we all confront the realities of today and the challenges of the future. I bid you peace and good fortune.
5. Report of the Presiding Officer – G. Bullion:
I would like to thank this body for the opportunity to serve in this capacity for the past two years, and I wish you the very best. I will be thinking of you next year as you are going about your business. While I have certainly seen a lot of progress at IPFW in a 35-year period, I believe its best days are coming; so it is to some extent as I reflect on that and note that you have an opportunity be a part of that, so I wish you the best.
6. Committee reports requiring action:
a. Nominations and Elections Committee (SR 05-14) – M. Codispoti:
The Nominations and Elections Committee conducted the election to fill vacancies on Senate committees and subcommittees. (For results, see SR No. 05-22, attached.)
b. Educational Policy Committee (SD 05-8) – J. Tankel:
J. Tankel moved to approve SD 05-8 (Pedagogical Framework for the IPFW Baccalaureate Degree). Seconded.
P. Iadicola moved to strike the last two sentences of the resolution (citing Senate Reference Nos. 05-16 and 05-17).
The presiding officer called the question.
Motion to amend SD 05-8 passed on a voice vote.
The previous question was called.
Motion to approve SD 05-8 (as amended) passed on a voice vote.
c. Faculty Affairs Committee (SD 05-9) – N. Younis:
N. Younis moved to approve SD 05-9 (
Motion to approve passed on a voice vote.
d. Faculty Affairs Committee (SD 05-10) – N. Younis:
N. Younis moved to approve SD 05-10 (Establishment of Ombudscommittee). Seconded.
Motion to approve passed on a voice vote.
e. Executive Committee (SD 05-11) – C. Champion:
C. Champion moved to approve SD 05-11 (Resolution of Appreciation: George Bullion, Amitava Chatterjea, Jeanette Clausen, Larry Griffin, Stephen Harroff, William Ludwin, and Carol Roberts). Seconded.
Motion to approve passed on a voice vote.
f. Faculty Affairs Committee (SD 05-12) – N. Younis:
N. Younis moved to approve SD 05-12 (Replacement of SD 90-3, “Criteria for Promotion and Tenure for Librarians”). Seconded.
Motion to approve passed on a voice vote.
The meeting recessed at 1:13 until noon, Monday, April 17.
Session II
(April 17)
Senate Members Present:
B. Abbott, A. Argast, W. Branson, J. Brennan, J. Burg, C. Champion, M. Codispoti,
S. Davis, P. Dragnev, B. Fife, L. Fox, R. Friedman, P. Goodmann, T. Grove, P. Hamburger, S. Hannah, C. Hill, P. Iadicola, L. Kuznar, D. Lindquist, M. Lipman, G. Mourad,
D. Oberstar, E. Ohlander, D. Ross, H. Samavati, G. Schmelzle, J. Tankel, J. Toole,
M. Walsh, L. Wark, N. Younis, J. Zhao
Senate Members Absent:
R. Bean, S. Blythe, D. Erbach, D. Goodman, J. Grant, A. Karim, Z. Liang, L. Lin, L. Meyer, M. Montesino, G. Moss, D. Mueller, R. Murray, A. Mustafa, E. Neal, S. Tannous, S. Troy,
G. Voland, M. Wartell, R. Weiner
Faculty Members Present: R. Barrett, D. Bialik, J. Clausen, R. Sedlmeyer
Visitors Present: J. Dahl,
Acta
G. Bullion reconvened the meeting at 12:00 p.m. on April 17, 2006.
7. Question Time (Senate Reference No. 05-15) – S. Hannah:
During the last two Senate meetings the
issue of the teaching loads for Academic Administrators has arisen. Attached is a verbatim transcript of the
discussion of this issue from the February 13th Faculty Senate
meeting. It is the administration’s
response, not the substance of the issue, on which I would like to focus.
Q1 – How does the administration view
the role of shared governance at IPFW, especially those “Senate Documents”
passed in Faculty Senate where the administration was a part of the debate and
the vote for passage?
Q2 – Are there stated, or unstated,
criteria as to which Senate Documents the administration chooses to follow and
enforce and which documents they choose to ignore? If so, what are these criteria?
Q3 – Wouldn’t the administration
wholeheartedly agree that it is not shared governance in a true sense if
the administrators, who are an integral voting part of the Faculty Senate
process, can select/ignore the outputs of the Senate process? For example, in the case of administrator’s
teaching, wouldn’t the proper process be for the issue to be brought back to
the Faculty Senate for action rather than arbitrarily ignored by the
administration?
Respectfully Submitted,
George D. Schmelzle
Department of Accounting and Finance
I welcomed this question because it is a topic I am really interested in and hope that, after I am through talking about it, maybe several others of you will be interested as well. There is a national conversation going on. I am trying to decide whether I want to go to a conference at Harvard next fall about this subject.
1. Shared Governance. (Response to Q1 and Q2) The concept of shared governance in American higher education evolved over the last century and is bound up in the widely accepted understanding that universities have the unique mission of both creating and disseminating knowledge, requiring the protection of academic freedom and tenure monitored by peer review. The argument is as follows:
·
The liberal intellectual tradition of which we are heir holds that, to
paraphrase the National Academy of Sciences, “only the consensus of critical
inquirers has the status of a knowledge claim” (
· Over time, (and that’s another story) the American university came to play a critical role in this tradition as being the one community whose specific mission was to seek, discover, and disseminate knowledge through criticism.
· Accordingly, university faculty became a significant proportion of the decentralized community of inquirers essential for the production of knowledge.
· Faculty claimed special competence for meeting the demands of critical inquiry in an area of study based on their specialized training, information, and skills.
· They also claimed that only other professionals, or peers, could pass judgment on the competence of inquirers or of the adequacy of the inquiry, not prying boards, religious leaders, legislators, or other lay persons.
· These ideas crystallized with the development of the modern research university and the professional disciplinary organizations in the late 1800’s and were first expressed in the American Association of University Professors’ (AAUP) 1915 General Declaration of Principles..
· The result has been a “mutual understanding” – some might say a social compact - concerning the role of university governing boards and of the professoriate in the American university. Boards grant faculty rights of exceptional vocational freedom of speech (i.e. academic freedom) and employment (i.e. tenure) in teaching, research, and extramural utterance without lay interference, on the condition that faculty, individually and as a collegial body, meet correlative duties of professional competence and ethical conduct. In other words, faculty get rights of academic freedom, tenure, and shared governance in exchange for the responsibility of peer review.
· Shared governance principles follow from this “mutual understanding.” Governing boards are recognized as the final institutional authority by law, but boards (and their administrative agents – that would be me) share that authority with the “voting faculty” (defining peer status) on matters central to the core role of teaching, research, and critical inquiry.
· The result is a spectrum or continuum of types of decisions within the university that allocates varying degrees of responsibility to voting faculty depending upon how closely a type of decision relates to the core functions of teaching and research.
·
Distribute handout. (Senate powers will be on one side;
·
As you can see in the list of Senate powers and the
· At the other end, governing boards determine mission, manage budgets and other legal responsibilities, and hire and assess the chief executive –and other administrative agents – although in consultation with other groups, such as faculty, staff, students, and external constituencies.
· A point about evolution here. These relationships have changed over the last 100 years with the greatest shift being the inclusion of more constituencies in the consultative process, and a concurrent expansion of governing board authority. In the various revisions of policy statements from the AAUP and the AGB over the last sixty or so years, faculty have gradually lost their exclusive role as guardians of the traditions of critical inquiry, coming to share their voice with other – dreaded corporate word – “stakeholders” such as staff, students, business, industry, and other interested community groups.
Moreover, the larger public is also questioning the university’s exclusive claim to the dissemination and production of knowledge, asking us to be more accountable and “prove” that we provide the services we claim. A third, and very unsettling shift, is an attack on the core liberal intellectual claim that knowledge is determined by critical inquiry. Abandon that principle and the whole structure falls. Another shift is the dramatic growth in community college and other “teaching only” institutions that do not purport to “create knowledge” and thus, in some interpretations, do not therefore deserve the protections of academic freedom, tenure, and shared governance. Clearly not all faculty are happy about these seemingly unstoppable changes. (What we might do about it is a conversation for another day.)
To conclude my response to the first two questions: My position on shared governance and the criteria for whom does what honors the traditional university social compact. Decision-making authority in the university is allocated based on an understanding of faculty and administrative roles, with faculty holding more authority on matters related to the core business of teaching and research such as curriculum and faculty competence through peer review, and administration, as an agent of the governing board, on matters of mission, planning, and fiscal and physical responsibility. In between, each consults with the other to come to a decision that serves the larger institutional mission.
2. Administrative Teaching. (Response to Q3). My response to the third question about the Senate document 96-4 requiring deans and other senior administrators to teach “as a condition of employment” can be concluded from the position I am presenting here. As noted on the Hamilton table, AAUP and AGB agree that the authority for appointing and assessing executive officers belongs to the board, ideally in consultation with voting faculty (among others per AGB), but clearly on the board side of the line.
SD 96-4, to my mind, crosses that line when it goes beyond the principle, as expressed by AOC at the time that senior administrators should teach because it is important, to the requirement that they must teach one course a year as a condition of employment.
To be blunt, the Senate has no authority to make such a requirement any more than I, as an agent of the board, have the authority to create a course or a curriculum or change a grade. The Senate may, as stated in Section VI.5 of the Senate Constitution and quoted on the handout, “present its views concerning any matter pertaining to the conduct and welfare of IPFW” to the Indiana University and Purdue University boards, but since administrators are in fact agents of the board, it has no authority to regulate their duties.
Since I was not here in 1996, I do not know the nature of the discussion, nor why the administration at the time did not raise concerns. If I had been here, I certainly would have.
In the spirit of critical inquiry, I also have a number of substantive disagreements with the position – from the viewpoint of a peer reviewer – and question whether a full-time administrator has the time to meet the high academic standards quality teaching requires. I will, therefore, bring this issue back to the Faculty Affairs Committee for discussion and, in the spirit of consultation, propose changes in the document that make it a more realistic as well as idealistic statement of intention.
I would also point out that there are a number of other Senate documents that need a fresh look either because conditions have changed since they were adopted or, like SD 96-4, they lay out requirements that are unenforceable. The Goals and Objectives and Dual Credit documents are examples and I am sure that a close review would identify others.
I would be happy to answer any questions.
B. Fife: Is the vice chancellor’s conception of shared governance for this body specifically met by the power to recommend?
S. Hannah: Whose power to recommend?
B. Fife: The Senate, presumably the faculty, but here it is defined as the Fort Wayne Senate. Does our collective ability to recommend meet the requirements of shared governance as you envision it?
S. Hannah: It could, yes. To recommend, as long as that is understood.
S. Hannah: I need to go back
and look at one document (SD 95-3) in particular which deals with the high
school dual credit. It is the notion that we would certify high school
teachers to teach courses bearing IPFW credit. The Senate document makes
that difficult. The legislature, in its wisdom, has made it something
that we should pursue. It is very much a live discussion that will
probably need to come back in order to bring that in line with public policy as
well as good academic practice.
P. Iadicola: I think that this discussion is very interesting in terms of defining the governance issues. I think that coming back and revisiting that particular issue where there are questions in terms of faculty authority is very important. I welcome developing an agreement of expectations on this issue, one that will be used in the future as a guide. Faculty also, as you noted in your handout, do play some advisory role in the assessment of administrators. There is an agreement on the part of faculty and administrators about the expectations and terms of teaching. I think that gives us all a firmer footing in terms of assessments as well.
S. Hannah: I think that many of you just finished filling out the Upward Feedback forms, which is a way to participate in the assessment. I also have comprehensive assessments of deans every five years: Ben Christy in Visual and Performing Arts is going through that right now. Last year it was in Health Sciences. Those would be more in-depth interviews.
P. Iadicola: With the
situation that happened at
S. Hannah: I think that it is
a very interesting exercise in exactly what we are talking about. It
makes it clear that the consultation role of all of the stakeholders is
important. It is very difficult for a president to continue to govern in
the face of the opposition of those he has directed to supervise, such as the
faculty. Very interestingly, Adam Herbert down at
P. Hamburger: I hope I am not out of line because I had a question and this is question time, and I have a question for the Presiding Officer. My concern is that in these last Senate meetings, I am getting a lot of additional documents, and they are not in the agenda. So I do not have any idea of whether we will discuss those that were handed out. My concern is why do we get these handouts and documents so late when we do not have any time to read them? I read in the newspaper that the Senate and Congress do this and nobody has time to read it. Is this the policy here, that we will not be able to discuss this? Why are we doing this if I cannot read what is in this document but then have to discuss and vote on this document?
G. Bullion: I cannot answer that question. I think it is an appropriate question to raise for discussion as an item comes to the floor, and perhaps there is a very good reason for having the item deferred for action.
8. New business:
a. P. Iadicola moved a resolution (Division I Athletics – see SD 05-13, attached to minutes), which was distributed at the door. Seconded.
The question was called.
Motion to approve passed on a voice vote.
b. P. Goodmann moved to approve SD 05-6 (Proposed Amendments to SD 89-18 – IPFW Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities, and Conduct). Seconded.
P. Goodmann withdrew his motion.
Voluntary withdrawal passed on a voice vote.
9. Committee reports “for information only”:
a. Educational Policy Committee – J. Tankel:
J. Tankel presented SR 05-16 (Learning Outcomes and Types of Evidence for Pedagogical Framework) for information only.
b. Educational Policy Committee – J. Tankel:
J. Tankel presented SR 05-17 (Pedagogical Framework for the IPFW Baccalaureate Degree Implementation Plan) for information only.
c. Executive Committee – C. Champion:
C. Champion presented SR 05-18 (Senate Membership, 2006-2007) for information only.
d. Executive Committee – C. Champion:
C. Champion presented SR 05-19 (Senate Attendance Record for 2005-2006: September-March) for information only.
e. Executive Committee – C. Champion:
C. Champion presented SR 05-20 (End-of-the-Year Committee Reports) for information only.
f. Call to Action Ad Hoc Committee – B. Fife:
B. Fife presented SR 05-21 (Preliminary Report of the Call to Action Committee Assessing the Costs and Benefits of Independence for IPFW) for information only.
10. The general good and welfare of the University: (The remainder of these minutes is not verbatim. The tape ran out.)
C. Champion presented individual plaques on behalf of the Executive Committee and the entire Senate to George Bullion for his contribution as Presiding Officer, 2005-2006 and to Brian Fife for his contribution as Speaker of the Indiana Faculty, 2004-2006.
P. Hamburger stated he had major concerns about the extra documents being handed out before the meeting. More time is needed to look over documents in order to discuss the information contained in them. He asked to have the extra items (for information only items) put on the agenda in the fall 2006 semester.
G. Mourad asked how new programs are decided upon.
S. Hannah stated that the decision goes to the faculty.
The parliamentarian read from a section of the Bylaws:
“Upon completion of this examination, the Subcommittee (Curriculum Review Subcommittee) shall:
Report to the Senate "for information only" its finding that the new program requires no Senate review; or Advise the Senate of its finding that the Senate should exercise its right of review.
G. Mourad: When the new program comes up, are all the other departments consulted?
M. Codispoti: The proposals for new programs are sent out to all departments and then the feedback is brought to the Curriculum Review Subcommittee for consideration when reviewing the proposals.
J. Tankel: There was a handout with regard to the sample scheduling patterns for classes. This is just a proposed plan for discussion. Have a pleasant summer.
G. Bullion: It has been a pleasure working with all of you this past year. Thank you!
11. The meeting adjourned at 1:15 p.m.
Jacqueline J. Petersen
Secretary of the Faculty