Minutes of the
Second Regular Meeting of the Twenty-Sixth Senate
Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne
October 16, 2006
12:00 P.M., Kettler G46
Agenda
1. Call to order
2. Approval of the minutes of September 11, 2006
3. Acceptance of the agenda – A. Karim
4. Reports of the Speakers of the Faculties
a. Purdue University – N. Younis
b. Indiana University – M. Nusbaumer
5. Report of the Presiding Officer – D. Turnipseed
6. Committee reports requiring action
Student Affairs Committee (Senate Document SD 06-3) – T. Grove
7. Question Time (Senate Reference No. 06-6)
8. New business
9. Committee reports “for information only”
10. The general good and welfare of the University
11. Adjournment*
*The meeting will adjourn or recess by 1:15 p.m.
Presiding Officer: D. Turnipseed
Parliamentarian: S. Davis
Sergeant-at-Arms: G. Steffen
Secretary: J. Petersen
___________________________________________________________________________
Attachments:
“Proposed Amendments to SD 89-28 (IPFW Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities, and Conduct)” (SD 06-3)
“IPFW Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities, and Conduct” (SD 89-28)
Senate Members Present:
B. Abbott, A. Argast, J. Burg, C. Champion, P. Dragnev, B. Dupen, C. Erickson,
R. Friedman, J. Garrison, J. Grant, T. Grove, I. Hack, S. Hannah, J. Hersberger, A. Karim,
L. Kuznar, D. Lindquist, M. Lipman, K. McDonald, L. Meyer, K. Modesitt, G. Moss,
D. Mueller, A. Mustafa, E. Neal, M. Nusbaumer, D. Oberstar, E. Ohlander, J. Papiernik,
K. Pollock, L. Roberts, R. Saunders, A. Shupe, J. Summers, R. Sutter, J. Tankel, J. Toole,
S. Troy, A. Ushenko, M. Walsh, L. Wark, M. Wartell, N. Younis, J. Zhao
Senate Members Absent:
S. Blythe, W. Branson, S. Ding, L. Graham, C. Hill (sabbatical), G. Mourad (sabbatical),
R. Murray, H. Samavati, G. Voland
Faculty Members Present: D. Bialik
Visitors Present: J. Dahl, K. Ferrell, E. Frew, K. Stockman (Journal Gazette), R. Sweazey
Acta
1. Call to order: D. Turnipseed called the meeting to order at 12:03.
2. Approval of the minutes of September 11, 2006: The minutes were approved as distributed.
3. Acceptance of the agenda:
A. Karim moved to approve the agenda as distributed.
The agenda was approved as distributed.
4. Reports of the Speakers of the Faculties:
a. Purdue University:
N. Younis: Good afternoon, colleagues. Today I am going to talk about service and the lack of release time (or some would like to call it assigned time) for faculty to perform service. I believe that, to be a successful professor, the rigors of teaching, research, and service should be balanced with the appropriate amount of enthusiasm and dedication given to each of these endeavors.
According to Fort Wayne Senate Document SD 94-3, Promotion and Tenure Guidelines,
“IPFW faculty are expected to take an active role in the campus beyond teaching and research or creative endeavor; they are encouraged to contribute their expertise to the community, state, and nation and to participate in professional organizations. If service is the primary basis for promotion, it should represent a unique achievement of special value to the campus, community, or profession.”
Yet, there is no release time for service as there is release or assigned time for teaching and research. Futhermore, all university documents related to the criteria for tenure and promotion within the professional realms talk of three distinct categories: teaching, research, and the third separate category, service. Yet, again, we give release time for teaching and research, but not for service. For example, Senate Document SD 97-8: “Faculty Workloads and Evaluation” gives the option of teaching with a reduced load for research or teaching only. No mention is made of reduced teaching load related to service. Hence, we no longer encourage our tenured faculty to be of service to their community.
In addition, the new hires’ letter of employment, part of which can be seen in the minutes of the last Senate meeting, states “Your initial duties will consist of 75% teaching and 25% research/creative endeavor.” This totals 100%. The letter further requests that, along with this 100% effort, additional time be spent in the university and professional service organizations. Again, I would like to know what is the percentage of release or assigned time for service at IPFW?
Thank you.
b. Indiana University:
M. Nusbaumer: I would like to take this opportunity to address increment policies. In my 30 years as a faculty member here, I have fundamentally witnessed three forms of increment policies. For most of my time here, increments were handled where the schools took .25 percent, and central administration took .25 percent to address issues of concern. Then some years back, during Chancellor Wartell’s administration, the central administration started taking 1 percent of the increments. Half of those increments were put towards addressing issues of compression. That still meant that above the department level, only .5 percent was being taken for issues of merit, and I think it was a sound way to address issues of compression, which I think are a concern of the faculty.
What is most troubling to me in two respects is the shifts that have occurred for increment decisions made last year and impacting faculty this year. First, we are spending less of that money on compression; and second, for the first time in history, most of the increment money and decisions are not controlled at the departmental level. There are consequences to this shift in policy. I would like to at least identify four of them.
· The current policy is inconsistent with promotion and tenure policies where the preponderance of the decision making is at the departmental level under faculty-approved procedures and faculty-approved criteria. None of the process that, once it leaves the department and how the chair of the department makes recommendations is, in any way, shape, or form governed by or influenced by input from the faculty.
· The accountability of the decision making above the departmental level is awkward and inaccessible for faculty.
· Administrative claims of lack of comparability between departments for increment differentiation is contradicted, as such decisions are embedded in the current decision-making process.
· Approximately two-thirds of the faculty for this year received an average for this year of approximately half the rate of inflation. I find the current policy seriously flawed and will begin seeking to create a more consistent, fair, and accountable system of increment distribution.
5. Report of the Presiding Officer – D. Turnipseed: There was no report.
6. Committee reports requiring action:
Student Affairs Committee (SD 06-3) – T. Grove:
T. Grove moved to approve SD 06-3 (Proposed Amendments to SD 89-28 [IPFW Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities, and Conduct]). Seconded.
Motion to approve passed on a voice vote.
7. Question Time (Senate Reference No. 06-6) – S. Hannah:
Question: With regards to the VCAA Memo, August 14, 2006, re: Office of Academic Counseling and Career Services (ACCS) and proposed departmental liaisons,
1. Many career-oriented departments (i.e., those teaching directly employable skills) already have specific career counseling and internship placement procedures. How is this ACCS initiative not redundant with existing services already provided departmental majors and closer to their needs?
2. Was this plan to coordinate/centralize career counseling developed with departments’ input? If not, why not?
3. The request for each department to “confirm” its selected liaison with the VCAA by Friday, September 8, 2006 does not appear voluntary. Can a department vote to opt out of creating such a liaison? Is such a liaison mandatory?
Anson Shupe
Department of Sociology
S. Hannah: The question concerns the creation of a departmental liaison system between academic departments and Career Services. I would like to use this opportunity to bring the Senate up to date on what Career Services does and its programs, and then I will talk directly about the departmental liaison program.
One of the questions asks where this came from. I think those of you who have been around for a while might remember that, initially, Indiana University and Purdue University had separate placement services offices here at IPFW. Those were merged into one office when all the other programs were merged in 1973. So there was one placement office at the campus. In 1980, the term was changed to Career Services. Until Doug Neitzel’s appointment, the Director of Career Services was also the dean of students. Thus, in response to the separate question that Dr. Shupe asked, IPFW has had centralized career services since before it was a university. This is not new. Clearly, its organizational home has moved around as the university has changed and matured. Currently, it is part of Academic Counseling and Career Services (ACCS), and is directed by Dr. Doug Neitzel, who could not be here today.
ACCS has about four academic advising and career counselors who service the Career Services office. Kaycee Ferrell, who is one of the folks in that office, is here today to answer some of the questions. The office is responsible for a variety of programs and services designed to help students make informed career choices. I have brought copies of the career guide, which is paid for largely with student money, and which is illustrative of the wealth of resources available to students. The office makes these available to students. In addition, Career Services staff oversees non-credit, career-related internships, and they teach a career exploration course. David Turnipseed has said he has used their “Don’t cancel class” service to provide career-related information. You also see signs about the etiquette dinners and the Grip and Grin Networking, career fairs, and majors fairs. They have a lot of different activities. Last year they had more than 1000 appointments with students about career issues, almost 100 resume checks, correspondence via e-mail or phone with another 2,000 students, and had more than 2,600 students participate in these career events. I think we are lucky to have such a comprehensive one-stop-service office, which brings me to the point of the department liaison effort.
We have all these programs and services, and it is wonderful. But with the commuter campus, which is a working student campus, getting students to the service is a challenge, and we are always looking for ways to get information out to students. I am showing you this graph to make it clear that our graduate rate is not what it should be. I was looking at some peer data this morning. It is a good 10-15 percent below our peers. We need to do everything we can to get students through this pipeline. We lose quite a few at the first. Those may be the ones who cannot make it academically. If there is anything that any of us can do to flatten out that curve, I am for it; and if it is through hooking students up through Career Services or internships, I think it is a marvelous approach. Now many departments already have programs. The Department of Accounting and Finance has always been very proactive, and has a number of events to hook students up with accounting firms. That is outstanding. A few other departments have programs as well. At one point, the School of Education had online interviews with school systems in Colorado. Whatever you do, it is wonderful and keep on doing it. Partnering with Career Services seems to me only to make good sense.
When the idea came up of creating a communication network for Career Services to contact departments which, in turn, could make information readily available to students, it seemed to me to be a relatively low-cost and efficient way to do things. I talked with the deans about it at our retreat in August and they thought it made sense. They promised to have some names to me by the time school started. Some of them got those names to me right away. I finally had to tell the others that I had to have the names by a certain day, and the reason I wanted them by a certain day is because there was going to be a career fair on September 28. It was quite something, and we wanted to get the word out. So, yes, some people in the end felt a little coerced about it, and I am sorry the timing did not work out. On my end, I think we gave plenty of fair warning.
Another question was whether this is mandatory. I am not sure what in life is mandatory anymore, but I believe this is a really, really good idea. I would like to know why a department would not be interested. It is pretty close to mandatory in the sense that I think we should care. I think we have wonderful resources; again, this is not to replace what you have in your department, but it is a wonderful support, and I hope that we do everything we can to take advantage of it. I think that answers those questions. If you have other questions for me, I would be happy to try to answer them.
M. Nusbaumer: Is this kind of rate of decline in terms of retention typical of other institutions as well, or is this unique to us?
S. Hannah: We keep losing them a little more than most institutions. This is not unusual in many institutions. But their curve gets a lot shallower, and ours keeps going. That is what we are struggling to understand: how do people with 100 hours not finish? That is a whole other project for another day. If getting them hooked up to employers, many of whom will help them pay tuition, is part of the answer, then that would be a great answer.
Also, our full-time students increasingly become part-time because they work. Then those retention rates drop by a good 15 points between full-time and part-time. So how can we keep them full time? Co-ops are wonderful. They have approximately a 94 percent graduation rate. It is just unbelievable, and so anything we can do that really ties those students to graduate, whether it is through employment, I am all for it.
T. Grove: We frequently see people, once they start hitting their junior or senior year, want to go to West Lafayette.
S. Hannah: It is so small. We get more students coming this way than going that way. There are a few. (Jack Dahl stated that it affected our graduation rate by 2 percent). When we count those, we come up with 2 percent. I wish it were that easy to explain.
L. Kuznar: Rick Sutter and I were looking at the website a week or so ago, and it was very shocking. Is there any accounting for admissions policies that could help explain it?
S. Hannah: Against our peers, we have virtually the same admissions policies.
M. Wartell: The one issue I wanted to add is that this graphic is similar to that for any commuter institution with significantly large part-time populations. Similar campuses in Indiana show the same graph. If you look at the six-year graduation rate, you are looking at a similar phenomenon.
S. Hannah: It is a challenge for all of us. It is a national challenge, not just uniquely us. Quite frankly, graduation rates are stalled nationally.
A. Shupe: What makes us assume that these are four-year cohorts? There was a study done when David Cox was chair of Arts and Sciences. Kathy Trier led it. It was a massive study of about 10,000 students which was funded by the university. One of the things discovered was a typical IPFW student is not a four-year student. Six years is the norm. It was very typical for students to drop out in the spring, earn money, and come back in the fall. This assumes the same people are being followed all four years. I am wondering if we are measuring the same people.
S. Hannah: The national measures are six years. When you look at our students who graduate from here, it is amazing that those who stay on track get out of here in six years. But that is only 30 percent of those who graduate. Another almost 20 percent come in and out. Even in eight or ten years, we do not raise our rate as high as we would like to. This is a wonderful topic, and we can discuss this another time. It is a good thing for faculty to talk about and really get into this data and try to understand what is happening.
J. Hersberger: Chancellor Wartell referred to this graph as being similar to IUPUI and commuter campuses. You said that we are lower than our peers. Who are you referring to?
S. Hannah: I am referring to strategic plan peers.
M. Wartell: Those are institutions such as Northern Kentucky, Boise State, University of El Paso, and Portland State. There were a set of aspirational peers.
S. Hannah: They are public schools with similar entrance requirements, similar size, similar housing; similar in many respects. If you look at the other Indiana University regional campuses or Purdue University ones, we look a lot like them, but that is not really our goal.
K. McDonald: Are you planning to try to track those that come into the student housing?
S. Hannah: Yes, we already are looking at those. But the question was about Career Services, and I hope that the lucky liaison in your department appreciates the liaison with Career Services. Thank you so much.
A. Ushenko: As I understand it, there is a department person in liaison with Career Services. I have a bit of a question with regard to smaller schools. For example, in our school, our sister department has people who are academically overloaded. We have a very small school. We have a dean who has two or three assistants. I am wondering if it would be possible for the deans themselves or their non-academic personnel in the smaller schools to provide the liaison.
S. Hannah: I am sure that each department and school can work out what is most appropriate for them. You folks are the most important people in your students’ lives on campus. It is the classroom that is sacred ground for our students. That is what they come for, it is your work with them in that moment, virtual or face to face, that is absolutely critical. So, yes, we can give other responsibilities to other people to make things run smoothly. If they hear it from you – if it is a faculty member who has Career Services come in and make a presentation to his students – then that is worth its weight in gold, because then they might actually go on their own.
A. Ushenko: So this is what you are talking about, somebody actually making the presentation.
S. Hannah: That is one possibility of many.
K. McDonald: This is an issue of ACCS versus co-op. I have just had a student who wants to do an unpaid internship and get college credit. Co-op does not deal with them and neither does ACCS.
S. Hannah: It is up to the academic department to decide. If you want to supervise it in such a way and have requirements in such a way that you are willing to give academic credit for it, the pay issue is irrelevant. Most internships on this campus are not paid. Co-op is unique in that they are. Many of the ones in political science or history are not paid. Whether they carry academic credit or not is determined by the department. Then they set the requirements around it. I know that many departments have requirements and papers, etc.
K. McDonald: I understand that, and I understand the academic unit determining the credit hours. I do feel that, as a person who has not done this, I did not really have any place to go to get some guidance in terms of how many credit hours for what.
S. Hannah: You could talk to some of your colleagues, other department chairs, who do have those. Some of you can share your guidelines with Kim.
M. Wartell: The question is, “Do we now not have a definition of who handles which kind?”
S. Hannah: No one handles that. Departments do.
M. Wartell: I thought that all credit-bearing experiences were handled by co-op.
K. McDonald: It is a college credit, yes, and co-op told me “no.”
S. Hannah: That is up to you to define, and we can give you lots of models. Co-op handles and oversees some credit-bearing internships for some departments.
M. Wartell: We will bring you a better answer next time. That was an appropriate question.
M. Nusbaumer: As someone who saw the request for the department liaison, the concern here seemed to be more with the tone, not so much the principle. It sounded like in order to serve ACCS, departments had to give up their additional time in committee service to service ACCS. The concern and history is that ACCS serves the departments and faculty.
S. Hannah: The whole point is really to serve the students by getting better information to them.
K. Ferrell: I just want to say that this is not intended to add to your workload at all. That was not our intention. It is really just to get the word out to the students. We will continue doing what we do in Career Services, and we are just asking for assistance in getting word out to the students. I would say that if you ever feel that we are asking for too much or that you prefer that we change our method of contacting you, we are definitely open to suggestions and your feedback on that. Thank you.
8. New business: There was no new business.
9. Committee reports “for information only”: There were no reports.
10. The general good and welfare of the University:
M. Nusbaumer: I am still waiting for a ruling by legal counsel regarding what students can and cannot control in terms of student elections.
D. Turnipseed: Last time we talked about it, Edna Neal was going to talk with the counsel about it. She is ready to speak now in this regard.
E. Neal: Thank you. Just as a reminder, the question had to do with whether the student government election rules are in conflict with First Amendment rights. We sent that to our legal advisor, and the response we got was a response that was not very definitive. What we found out was that the 7th Circuit Court and the Indiana courts have not ruled on this issue, so there is no definite answer. I believe, however, we have a reason to work with our students to ensure that all students’ first amendment rights are being safeguarded. Our counsel has stated that our question is a legitimate concern with regard to ensuring that First Amendment rights are protected for everyone on campus. To that end, I will be meeting with the students, and we will review those rules and ensure that there is compliance with First Amendment rights.
M. Nusbaumer: Based on what you have just said, it sounds like the university is still abrogating its responsibility, protecting these issues if indeed you are looking to ask the students to consider it rather than taking a stand by the university. Am I reading that right?
E. Neal: No. We are recognizing our responsibility to ensure that all students’ rights are protected. In order to do that we want to work with the Students’ Government election board and ensure that the appropriate language is included in their rules and guidelines for that purpose.
11. The meeting adjourned at 12:40 p.m.
Jacqueline J. Petersen
Secretary of the Faculty