Minutes of the
Third Regular Meeting of the Twenty-Seventh Senate
Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne
November 12, 2007
12:00 P.M., Kettler G46
Agenda
1. Call to order
2. Approval of the minutes of October 15, 2007
3. Acceptance of the agenda – B. Abbott
4. Reports of the Speakers of the Faculties
a. Indiana University – M. Nusbaumer
b. Purdue University – N. Younis
5. Report of the Presiding Officer
6. Committee reports requiring action
a. Faculty Affairs Committee (Senate Document SD 07-2) – C. Hill
b. Curriculum Review Subcommittee (Senate Document SD 07-3) – C. Lawton
7. Question Time (Senate Reference No. 07-4)
8. New business
9. Committee reports “for information only”
a. Executive Committee (Senate Reference No. 07-5) – B. Abbott
b. Curriculum Review Subcommittee (Senate Reference No. 07-6) – C. Lawton
10. The general good and welfare of the University
Chancellor’s Remarks (Strategic Plan)
11. Adjournment*
*The meeting will adjourn or recess by 1:15 p.m.
Acting Presiding Officer: M. Nusbaumer
Parliamentarian: A. Downs
Sergeant-at-Arms: G. Steffen
Secretary: J. Petersen
___________________________________________________________________________
Attachments:
“Proposed revision of Senate Document SD 88-13 (Procedures for Promotion and Tenure)”
(SD 07-2)
“Procedures for Promotion and Tenure” (SD 88-13)
“Proposal for a minor in Military Science” (SD 07-3, committed to EPC)
“Strategic Plan Year 6” (Attachment A)
Senate Members Present:
B. Abbott, N. Adilov, A. Argast, S. Blythe, W. Branson, J. Burg, C. Champion, S. Choi,
S. Ding, B. Dupen, C. Erickson, R. Friedman, J. Garrison, J. Grant, I. Hack, S. Hannah,
J. Hersberger, C. Hill, P. Iadicola, D. Lindquist, D. Liu, K. McDonald, K. Moustafa,
D. Mueller, R. Nelipovich, M. Nusbaumer, H. Odden, T. Parker, K. Pollock, M. Ridgeway, L. Roberts, H. Samavati, R. Saunders, R. Sutter, J. Tankel, J. Toole, A. Ushenko,
G. Voland, M. Walsh, G. Wang, M. Wartell, N. Younis, J. Zhao
Senate Members Absent:
P. Dragnev, J. Jackson, M. Lipman, G. McClellan, L. Meyer, G. Mourad, A. Mustafa,
E. Ohlander, J. Summers, C. Thompson
Faculty Members Present: R. Barrett, J. Farlow, L. Finke, B. Kanpol, C. Lawton, K. O’Connell, S. Sarratore
Visitors Present: J. Dahl, R. Kostrubanic, P. McLaughlin, K. Soderlund (Journal Gazette)
Acta
1. Call to order: M. Nusbaumer called the meeting to order at 12:03.
2. Approval of the minutes of October 15, 2007: The minutes were approved as distributed.
3. Acceptance of the agenda:
B. Abbott moved to approve the agenda as distributed.
The agenda was approved as distributed.
4. Reports of the Speakers of the Faculties:
a. Indiana University:
M. Nusbaumer yielded the chair to N. Younis.
M. Nusbaumer: As many of you know, I have been raising the question fairly consistently about what it means to be an Indiana University faculty member at IPFW. One of the most common responses I get back to that question is: There are still Indiana University faculty here. Just because Indiana University faculty are paid by Purdue University does not mean that they are not still Indiana University faculty. Unfortunately, in the last 12 months, I have interacted with two chairs of Indiana University departments who seemed to be unaware that they, and the faculty in their departments, were Indiana University faculty as opposed to Purdue University faculty. That is a sad statement, and I think it speaks something about the level of what it does or does not mean to be an Indiana University faculty at IPFW.
N. Younis yielded the chair back to M. Nusbaumer.
b. Purdue University: N. Younis had no report.
5. Report of the Presiding Officer:
M. Nusbaumer: For those of you who may not be aware, Dick Hess passed away a week ago Friday, unexpectedly. I will be looking forward to a memorial resolution coming from the Department of Communication.
J. Tankel: Our departmental website will be up with a page that will be dedicated to Dick and will have on that page the links to the various charities that his family have designated as the appropriate charities if you wish to donate something in memory of Dick’s service.
M. Nusbaumer: Also today, when this Senate meeting either ends or recesses, Jacqui has a card for you to sign and also will take donations which will go to those charities. Although it will be a few months before we will see a memorial resolution, I would like to have a few moments of silence here. (A moment of silence was observed.)
J. Grant: I do not know if it has been officially announced yet, but there is going to be a celebration of Dick’s life at 11:00 a.m. on December 1 at Plymouth Congregational Church. I think there will be an official announcement.
M. Nusbaumer: I would also like to say one last thing in terms of Dick and starting something that I hope will be a long-term Senate tradition. Chancellor Wartell has been very helpful in this. This gavel is the first of (hopefully) many forthcoming gavels for the IPFW Senate. It was made by a staff member at IPFW, Gary Travis. The plan is that, every year, one of these will be made for the Presiding Officer. There will be a plaque put on the front, naming the Presiding Officer and the IPFW Senate. At the end of the academic year, this will be theirs to keep. We will begin the tradition by getting the plaque mounted on this and presenting it to Professor Lucille Hess. It seems appropriate that Dick is the first recipient of what I hope is a long tradition.
6. Committee reports requiring action:
a. Faculty Affairs Committee (SD 07-2) – C. Hill:
C. Hill moved to approve SD 07-2 (Proposed revision of Senate Document SD 88-13 [Procedures for Promotion and Tenure]).
Motion to approve passed on a voice vote.
b. Curriculum Review Subcommittee (SD 07-3) – C. Lawton:
C. Lawton moved to approve SD 07-3 (Proposal for a minor in Military Science).
Per sentence three (3) of the Senate Document, the motion is made to commit SD 07-3 to the Educational Policy Committee for further review.
Motion to approve (committing SD 07-3 to the Educational Policy Committee) passed on a voice vote.
7. Question Time (Senate Reference No. 07-4):
Question: Please give an analysis of S&E funds provided to academic departments in each of the 15 years since 1992. Limit yourself to academic departments already existing at the start of the analysis period. Do not include S&E funds provided to nonacademic services, administration or academic programs/departments started since 1992.
Anne Argast
Department of Geosciences
W. Branson: We do not quite have that yet. We are working on it. We have ten years’ worth of information. We were just reviewing it this morning and decided we did not want to hand that out before we had a chance to go over it thoroughly and make sure we were completely comfortable with it. It is not as straightforward as we would like for it to be because departments get split, they get merged, and we have now transitioned from an old system to OnePurdue. We are pulling data out of two systems and putting it together. There should be no problem in having it at the next meeting.
A. Argast: I realize it is a lot to ask. I think that at least some of you know the motivation behind it. It is the concern that, if we just look at S&E, it probably shows growth as we have added programs and buildings and so on. But departments that have been around for awhile are truly stagnant, and we are operating our departments on budgets that have not changed much in 15 years. I know that the faculty have to make some decisions, too, because if we use all of the available discretionary funds for salaries and so on, we are hamstringing our programs. I hope that the administration and committees can take that up in the near future. I think that we, as faculty in the Senate, will need to think about this in terms of whether we take every dime available. We really are strangling programs. Thank you for your time.
8. New business: There was no new business.
9. Committee reports “for information only”:
a. Executive Committee (Senate Reference No. 07-5) – B. Abbott:
B. Abbott presented Senate Reference No. 07-5 (Items under consideration in Senate Committees and Subcommittees) for information only.
b. C. Lawton presented Senate Reference No. 07-6 (Proposal for a minor in Informatics) for information only.
10. The general good and welfare of the University:
M. Wartell: There was some concern with OnePurdue financial reporting issues. Walt Branson has been involved with a committee at West Lafayette which, within the next month or two, ought to have a whole new set of reports which I hope will clarify your budgets and keep them more up to date. It will hopefully also make it easier for you to keep track of your expenditures. There is no promise, just a hope that that will happen. Walt is getting more comfortable with the structure of the reports.
Probably most of you have heard about the generous donation from Betsy and Howard Chapman to form the Chapman Scholars, which will help four new students each year who also qualify for the Chancellor’s Distinguished Scholarship. The students will be chosen out of that scholarship group, and then receive an additional amount of money which will cover room, board, and books. It will be a completely paid-for education. Susan Hannah and a group of folks are working on both the criteria for the front end and the kind of program we would have for the Chapman scholars. Little by little we will get that together, because the first ones will not come until 2009, and we will have that to share with everybody.
Each year we have reported on the results of the Strategic Plan that everyone put together. As you know, we have a new president at Purdue University, and her approach to strategic planning will be different than the previous presidents’. Several things have changed since then. You might remember that at the beginning of the last strategic plan, we were able to increase student fees by approximately $500 – an increase of $17 per credit hour, and that $17 translated into a reasonable amount of money that we were able to focus in the areas of the strategic plan that we felt were appropriate. You also may remember that we have SPARC (Strategic Planning and Review Council) that is working to update the strategic plan and then will begin to work on a new strategic plan within a rubric that the Purdue system will work out. We will have our own strategic plan once again. It will not be a Purdue University strategic plan, it will be an IPFW strategic plan. That is very important. This will be the last report on the previous strategic plan. Actually, it is not going to be reported in the usual form to the Board of Trustees. The Board of Trustees decided that they were going to wait until the new strategic plan came out before they started receiving oral reports. However, I wanted to continue to report to the Senate about it because I think the progress that we have made is important. In some cases we have fallen back a little, and in some cases we have moved ahead.
(Chancellor Wartell presented a PowerPoint presentation on the Strategies for Excellence: The IPFW Strategic Plan [Annual Report for Year 6: 2006-2007]. See Attachment A, attached.)
N. Younis: Now we are in a conference, and usually when you compare peer institutions, you compare to the people in the conference.
M. Wartell: In terms of the types of institutions, our conference is really anomalous. Oral Roberts University and some religious-based institutions are not like us. Western Illinois University, although that is a very rural university, is a state university. Oakland University is a state university closer to what we are. It is very hard to compare to our athletic conference universities. The Big 10 is a different story. We cannot compare very well because our conference affiliates are so different from us. I can get that data for you.
In some areas we are doing very well, and in some areas there was not a whole lot of improvement. The places where there is real room for improvement are in retention and graduation rate and the number of dollars per student. We continue to work on all of those. The Offices of Academic Affairs and Student Affairs are focusing much more strongly on graduation rates. Attention to all of those things will make us better. We will continue with the strategic planning process this year. A number of you are on the SPARC committee which is working on that. As I stated before, it will be our strategic plan. We do not have to fit into some massive model because we are very different institutions. Of course we are very different also from Calumet and North Central. North Central has 3000 students and Calumet has 9000 students. They are closer to what we are, but they are really different from this university.
N. Younis: You just outlined our success and everybody should be proud of IPFW and the successes that we have. However, we always end up with this phrase: “One University. Two Great Names.”
M. Wartell: We are slowly discussing it.
N. Younis: We have wonderful people on this campus, and staff, faculty, and administrators are working to move this campus up, and at the end of the advertisement on TV, it says “One University. Two Great Names.” How about “One Great University. Two Big Ten Names”?
M. Wartell: How about “One Great University. Two Great Branches”? We will work to change that. The one weight on the other side of that is that students tell us over and over again that they want the Indiana University and Purdue University degrees. It is an important issue to them. Your comment is really important. I think we have had that tagline for a while; it is about time we had a change. The university has changed massively since we came up with that tagline.
11. The meeting adjourned at 1:09 p.m.
Jacqueline J. Petersen
Secretary of the Faculty