Minutes of the
Fourth Regular Meeting of the Twenty-Seventh Senate
Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne
December 10, 2007
12:00 P.M., Kettler G46
Agenda
1. Call to order
2. Approval of the minutes of November 12, 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 – S. Davis
6. Committee reports requiring action
Indiana University Committee on Institutional Affairs (Senate Reference No. 07-7) – M. Nusbaumer
7. a. Question Time (Senate Reference No. 07-4)
b. Question Time (Senate Reference No. 07-8)
8. New business
Executive Committee (Senate Document SD 07-4) – B. Abbott
9. Committee reports “for information only”
10. The general good and welfare of the University
11. Adjournment*
*The meeting will adjourn by 1:15 p.m.
Presiding Officer: S. Davis
Parliamentarian: A. Downs
Sergeant-at-Arms: G. Steffen
Secretary: J. Petersen
___________________________________________________________________________
Attachments:
“Results of the Election of the Indiana University Faculty Board of Review” (SR No. 07-9)
“Approval of replacement members of the Grade Appeals Subcommittee” (SD 07-4)
“Athletics Report for 2006-2007” (Attachment A)
Senate Members Present:
B. Abbott, N. Adilov, A. Argast, W. Branson, J. Burg, C. Champion, S. Choi, S. Ding,
B. Dupen, R. Friedman, J. Garrison, J. Grant, S. Hannah, C. Hill, P. Iadicola, D. Lindquist, M. Lipman, G. McClellan, K. McDonald, L. Meyer, G. Mourad, K. Moustafa, A. Mustafa, R. Nelipovich, M. Nusbaumer, H. Odden, E. Ohlander, T. Parker, K. Pollock, L. Roberts,
H. Samavati, R. Saunders, R. Sutter, J. Tankel, J. Toole, A. Ushenko, M. Walsh, M. Wartell, N. Younis
Senate Members Absent:
S. Blythe, P. Dragnev, C. Erickson, I. Hack, J. Hersberger, J. Jackson, D. Liu, D. Mueller, M. Ridgeway, J. Summers, C. Thompson, G. Voland, G. Wang, J. Zhao
Faculty Members Present: L. Finke, B. Kanpol, S. Sarratore
Visitors Present: J. Dahl, E. Frew
Acta
1. Call to order: S. Davis called the meeting to order at 12:03.
2. Approval of the minutes of November 12, 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.
M. Nusbaumer: Peace on Earth, good will to all!
b.
N. Younis: Just a friendly reminder to all faculty, when preparing your syllabi, to include the disability statement that this body passed last year. It came to my attention by many faculty that some faculty might have forgotten about it, including last semester. Please include that statement in your syllabi. There is a sample statement that the Faculty Affairs Committee developed, or you can use something similar to it – it does not have to be the same statement. It is basically for students with disabilities and need of assistance to inform them that at IPFW special arrangements can be made to accommodate most of their needs.
I would like to wish everybody happy holidays and happy New Year!
5. Report of the Presiding Officer:
W. Branson: They will be paid in January next year and will be posted sometime in February.
An inscribed gavel was presented to Lucy Hess in gratitude for Dick Hess’s service as Presiding Officer of the Fort Wayne Senate.
6. Committee reports requiring action:
M. Nusbaumer distributed ballots for the election of the Faculty Board of Review. The results are attached. (See SR No. 07-9).
7. a. 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 referred to the handout which was distributed at the door.
W. Branson: The handout is what we could get out of the computer systems, both old and new combined. You have 11 years of information. The original request was for 15 years, but it would be a monumental task to get those other 4 years, if it is available at all.
These are actual expenditures by department for S&E, so it would reflect expenditures of monies that had been transferred in during the year to departments. If a department got money from a central account for computer equipment and things like that, it is reflected in those expenditures.
A. Argast: Money that is one-shot money, such as start-up funds that a faculty member used, would put a spike in this, wouldn’t it? These numbers listed are larger than the department has to plan on at the beginning of the year. In your opinion, are these adequate S&E funds to run an operation of the size and scale of IPFW?
S. Hannah: It is never enough. We have made choices.
A. Argast: Are you satisfied with these choices?
M. Wartell: Each year, up until the last year, the Budgetary Affairs Subcommittee has made recommendations for expenditures for the future. That has not been forthcoming in a formal way these last couple of years. In general, the Budgetary Affairs Subcommittee has suggested that we put the bulk of our money into faculty salary enhancements, and that is exactly what we have done. When we put money into faculty salary enhancements, that immediately cuts down on the S&E money that we have because the pie is just so big.
When budgeting, we first fund charges that are unavoidable, things like utilities and health insurance.
The next increase goes into faculty salaries, and then we distribute the rest of it based on the perceived needs within Academic Affairs, as they take most of the money. In prior years, we have put that into new positions. There was not as much money this year, so we put a little bit into S&E, but S&E is what always takes last priority. That is by recommendation of the Budgetary Affairs Subcommittee. Is it adequate? Dr. Hannah had the right answer: it will never be adequate. We can use as much money as we can get.
P. Iadicola: From the information which has been provided, we have no idea what is adequate or inadequate. We have no idea what departments are doing in terms of not fulfilling needs in terms of supplies and expenses. All we have is what the expenditures are over time. It really does not answer the question.
Is the amount provided, either initially in terms of budget as well as supplemental, enough to meet the needs for the supplies and expenses of an academic department? We really do not have that information here. Whether it is the last priority or the first priority, the question is still the same. Is it meeting the needs? I do not think this is answering the question. I think that, if we really want to have that question answered, we have to go at it in a different way, perhaps by surveying departments and asking about the last year. This information does not really provide us with the adequate information the question was asking.
A. Ushenko: Do we not have the information from our own departments? I see the importance of the question. On the other hand, I can also see that some departments might not wish to make public what they feel to be their inadequacies, even if it is not their own fault.
A. Argast: I agree. We need to continue to try and find a way to get to this. This is a first step in perhaps a longer process. We are also fusing the phrase S&E, and it is worth remembering that we are running a university. Are capital purchase and capital repair included in this? Supplies and Expenses implies daily things that you need to do. This is the whole bailiwick for most departments. It seems awfully small. I just really would like to find a way to address the question that Senator Iadicola raised in a meaningful way. I would be interested to know how this compares to our peer institutions on a department-by-department basis. Do our peer institutions run their organizations as lean and mean as this? We do not see these numbers in the every-year summary that the chancellor gives us on priorities and growth. We never targeted this for any kind of target to hit in the future. Since I have been here, I do not think this has been dealt with in any meaningful way.
S. Hannah: I have been visiting with each school and department chair on this very topic about budget priority. I have been trying to get a sense of where folks are and looking at the priority needs that have been expressed to me: S&E, faculty salaries, new positions, Limited Term Lecture rates, and others items. I have gone through and talked with each of the schools that I have met with about where they see their priorities given the tremendous needs in all of those areas. What has been interesting to me is the variation of departments. Those needs touch departments differently. Some departments have been able, through continuing education and other ways, to augment their S&E funds to the extent that this is not a high-priority need for them. On the other hand, high-equipment departments, such as the sciences and engineering and, to a certain extent the fine arts, believe that equipment issues are a very high priority for them. Others look to new positions. English and math want to talk about Limited Term Lecture rates. Departments that have started new programs want to talk about new positions, so what I am seeing is that the priority needs around campus vary fairly significantly among those different needs.
I do not have a recommendation, I am still just in the information-gathering stage, but it is certainly true that a lack of consistent S&E support has affected some departments much more significantly than others.
A. Ushenko: It is an interesting idea. One thing that struck me from listening to our vice chancellor is that perhaps the first thing to do is to get on one’s chairman if you are not getting informed. I had no idea that this was going on. Our vice chancellor said that fine arts put equipment as a priority. That is not true. Some fine arts faculty put a new position as a priority. I think everyone needs to realize collegiality involves a whole department, including the chairman, and the first step is being informed and having everybody in the department on the same page. I am beginning to wonder if that is happening in some departments.
R. Nelipovich: What is the formal process for this kind of investigation? Is it a matter of going around and talking with department chairs? Are there also consequences, like “we need this, if not, then …”? I am curious as to what the process is.
S. Hannah: I ask the deans to submit to me every year, due March 19 this year, their requests for the following budget year, in a priority order. During the year, we are constantly adjusting that as are they, as things change. Formally, it comes to me in March for the subsequent year. However, there is an ongoing adjustment as situations change. There is a formal way for that to be presented to me. Then I, in turn, participate in the budget discussions on campus to try to share that information. The chancellor has other folks whom he consults.
P. Iadicola: That raises an interesting question in terms of the deans submitting a request for budget money. I may be wrong about this, but I do not ever recall it going from department level to the dean in a systematic way; at least, in terms of talking about the categories and asking that supplemental needs be fulfilled in categories, etc. I do not know how systematic that is. Is it systematic?
N. Younis: I think the key word in this question is the word “analysis.” We have numbers here. I do not know how to go about analyzing it. This report contains a lot of numbers, and I do not know what to make of them. I would like to see an analysis.
M. Lipman: It certainly is never enough, and yet the bottom line is that we manage to get all the work done somehow. I agree that what we have here are numbers. The numbers, by themselves, are not revealing too much because we do not know what was originally budgeted and what was supplemental. Because of the variety of things that supplement budgets I think it would be very difficult to try to compare with peer institutions as the budgeting processes are not identical. Is money that comes in and gets recorded as S&E but is replacement for sabbaticals budgeted in the same way at different institutions? How do you compare? If equipment is budgeted separately, it is a different flavor of money. You cannot compare.
The expenditures are interesting but do not describe everything because, you cannot tell from this how much, for example, of the money was a supplement for instruction because full-time faculty were on leave. You cannot tell whether or not one department got an infusion of start-up funds that lasted for multiple years because they were replacing faculty and that is why in earlier years the numbers were up. It is very difficult to track these things. Even for a single department, for a chair to try to track between different years whether or not the money that was spent for day-to-day operations versus the amount of money that could support special development, would be very difficult. I do not know what analysis is possible from the numbers, to be fair.
H. Samavati: These numbers make me uncomfortable. Within the School of Business, I can see my department relative to the Accounting and Finance Department. Its budget is more than double what we have. They do not have double the faculty in that department. Again, no analysis can be done from these numbers. I do not understand them.
R. Sutter: I have a hard time believing no analysis can be done with the numbers. There must be a manual analysis done in order to make these decisions. Is it possible to view some of that data that explains the analysis? Are there no numbers for the basic S&E budget?
M. Wartell: Budgeting is fundamentally incremental in these institutions. We do not make up a new budget every time. We do not look at individual department needs when we are at the university level. We look at overall budgets and categories, whether it is salaries, S&E, etc. Those decisions are really made first when the Vice Chancellor’s Office may hold back some S&E money to take care of special department needs. Sometimes a dean may redistribute at that level because the Vice Chancellor’s Office or the Chancellor’s Office cannot possibly know about your individual needs. If we try to budget at that narrow a level each year, we would spend our entire year in the budget process. I do not think anybody wants that. The dean and department chair levels are where those decisions are made, except in certain specific circumstances.
With the supplemental budgeting, a piece of equipment may need to be repaired, and then a department may request funds for repair. Somebody will find the money, either at the dean’s level or the vice chancellor’s level to do that kind of repair. Somebody may come in and say that startup money is needed for a new faculty member. That mostly occurs in the sciences, visual arts, or engineering. That is ordinarily at the deans’ and vice chancellor’s levels. Those kinds of things are not necessarily planned; there are pots of money set aside to take care of them, or we take it out of the pot and move it somewhere else. Budgeting is not as much of a science as it is an art in certain situations. I think you have to look at it that way.
With regard to analysis, if you look at peer institutions, does the peer institution in a single department have the same number of majors, the same major-to-faculty ratio? Using the Doermer School of Business as an example, as we just went through the accreditation procedure, we have a business program that has relatively small classes as compared to most business departments across the country. Are we going to budget like they budget in one of those departments which has 60-70 persons or more in an accounting class? Or are we going to budget according to the way we teach? It is a very difficult process to compare one institution to another.
You are asking detailed questions about budgeting, and a lot of us feel that we do not have enough money. All of us feel we are not paid enough, so, on an individual level, you are going to have a set of feelings about how things are done, and we are going to have to make some decisions.
The first budget decisions, about how much you put in the general categories, are made at the highest level. Then you are going to have to work with deans and chairs to determine how much is in the individual budgets. I do not see any other way to do that which would not be incredibly inefficient. This discussion, while very interesting, really needs to occur within the schools, and deans need to make their arguments for a bigger piece of the pie. Once again, I will say that the pie is limited and always has been at this institution.
P. Iadicola: One thing that could be looked at is you have what is budgeted initially, and you obviously have what is spent. Is there an analysis that shows any pattern whereby departments regularly have to request more money after the fact in order to take care of additional travel, publications, etc.? Are there departments who continually need to ask for money because the amount allocated is inadequate?
M. Wartell: I think the best example occurred in the Department of Engineering years ago when extra money was put into the equipment budget. There had been a consistent problem. Those kinds of things certainly occur. Nobody asked for the budgeted amount. You asked for the expenditures.
S. Hannah: One complication is that, in each school or college, deans now and in the past have had slightly different attitudes in the sense that, for example, engineering and education have held a great deal at the dean’s level. Engineering, because of the equipment issues, saved it to use as a reserve when they really needed it rather than give out all that there was. There would not have been enough in reserve if a large amount of money was needed to fix something. In other schools, the dean does not have as much as most of it is given away. That will complicate the way you read this. You need to understand what the distribution has been from the deans, to the school, to the different departments, and why. I know that the School of Education is in the process of changing the way they help out with their money.
M. Wartell: One other issue that I think is very important is that in some state systems, the money is fenced in certain areas. You can only use travel money for travel, expense money for expenses, etc. We do not have that problem here, and so again a department is given a budget, and the department chair can determine how much money goes into each item. We are very fortunate that we have a lot of flexibility in that regard. That flexibility is at the department level. The department chair does not have to ask to move money around.
b. Question Time (Senate Reference No. 07-8)
Question: Per Senate Document SD 06-09, which requires the Faculty Affairs Committee to send questions concerning faculty salary increment distribution to the administration:
1. Of the 1% faculty increment monies retained by the central administration for special merit and compression, what percentage of those monies were given for each?
2. What was the range of monetary awards for each category?
3. How many faculty received special merit monies, compression monies or both?
4. Was any consideration given in the allocation decisions to balance recipients by colleges, the number of faculty in each college, or the number of faculty recommended by each Dean?
S. Hannah:
1) 68 percent went for merit awards, and 32 percent for equity awards. That is pretty close to the 70-30 percentage that I had talked about with the Faculty Affairs Committee. We had some fairly lengthy discussions about those proportions because, for several years, we were running about 50-50.
2) Merit awards ranged from $500-$1500. The equity awards ranged from $1895-$5000.
3) 115 faculty members received merit awards, 19 faculty members received equity awards, and 3 faculty members received both.
4) Every dean was constrained to nominate no more than 33 percent of their faculty for merit awards. Overall, it sort of evened out. I do not have those numbers by school, but, since they were constrained to 33 percent, it worked out roughly between 33 and 35 percent over all the faculty. The equity was constrained not by school, but by some criteria that are under discussion every year, such as where we should put the few dollars that we have. As you recall, we have focused the last several years on full professors who have 5 years or more in rank and who are at least 15 percent or more below the national average for their discipline. That has been our focus. We added compression in the sense that we also asked deans to identify some associate professors who were making less than new hires and looking at why was that true. If it was not a performance issue, then we have made some awards to try to address that issue.
P. Iadicola: What was the reason for restricting departments to have no more than one-third?
S. Hannah: It was schools. With the concept of merit, if you do not restrict the percentage, at some point you would end up giving people $.50, which is not much. We worked out 33 percent as roughly a way to have an award that meant something to people.
P. Iadicola: Would that not seem to lend itself to a situation in which, if you have very different numbers of faculty within the schools, such that you have one school with 60 faculty and another with 15, it makes it a lot more competitive in that one larger school? I realize we are dealing with proportions here.
8. New business:
B. Abbott moved to approve Senate Document SD 07-4 (Approval of replacement members of the Grade Appeals Subcommittee).
Motion to approve passed on a voice vote.
9. Committee reports “for information only”: There were no reports.
10. The general good and welfare of the University:
M. Nusbaumer: I realize normally that in the good and welfare section, we do not normally ask questions, but, given the weather report, I wanted to get some information and spread it around this weekend about what happens when we have weather problems. In particular, there are three questions:
1) What will happen if, during finals week, the university closes? What will the shift in the schedule be?
2) It is my understanding that if there is a Level 1 emergency in Allen County, we automatically close. What are we supposed to do as faculty if Allen County does not have a Level 1 emergency, but outlying counties do? How does that get handled by the university or how should the faculty handle that?
3) If we have large numbers of students who cannot make exams, what options do we have?
S. Hannah: Jack Dahl discovered a procedure that had been developed December 12, 1997 for precisely this situation. It proposes that we move everything one day. If the university is closed tomorrow (Tuesday), the exams would be Saturday. If it was closed on Saturday as well, then they would be on Sunday. The rest of the week’s schedule would remain the same to have a minimal amount of disruption.
If there is a change as grades are due Monday at 5:00 p.m., most likely the Registrar’s Office would move that a day to allow for that shifting.
W. Branson: If the city said that if you drive on the road and you will be arrested, then we would close. We would have to look and see what the situation was in the county. Part of the confusion is that many counties issue these levels of emergency, but really the level is only “don’t go out if you don’t have to.” We have never used that as a criteria before.
S. Hannah: So, the second question’s answer is, if a student cannot come for whatever reason and you accept that, then you and the student need to make an arrangement. I talked with Dr. McClellen earlier, and he has consulted with the Testing Center, and they would be available to provide a proctored exam situation for a make-up if a student cannot come. My question to you is if we should issue this today as a contingency plan, just to let people know what we are thinking about, or, as happened in 1997, not issue it until we close. I can go ahead and send this out today.
M. Nusbaumer: I think it would be helpful for faculty to have it available.
L. Meyer: How would the students find out?
S. Hannah: We will put it as many places as we can think of. The worry is that people will say it has happened. I am concerned about that. I can understand why this was not issued except in an emergency.
N. Younis: I would like to suggest that everyone knows about it in case anybody asks questions about it.
S. Hannah: It will be issued everywhere we can think of, but do we issue it before it happens or will that confuse people?
K. McDonald: I would argue not to distribute it to students unless it happens. I am afraid so many of them will say, “It’s happened.” I think that we have to have as many ways to distribute it as possible. But I am a little concerned about issuing it to students.
S. Hannah: We will write it as policy without dates on it.
A. Ushenko: I want to support that, because I know exactly what will happen with my students.
M. Wartell: 1) The gavel which was given to Lucy Hess as a memorial to Dick was made by Gary Travis. Gary will make a gavel each year with each new presiding officer so that person will take away with him or her some sort of thank you for doing this job.
2) The athletics report which I make available each year at this time will be attached to the minutes. Grade-point averages of athletes are once again over 3.0. Last year and at the beginning of this year, the athletes performed incredibly well. We were picked to finish 5th in Women’s Cross Country. In fact, we were co-champions of the new Summit Conference. The grade-point average of those particular students was even higher than the average of our regular athletes. The women’s volleyball team, which was picked to finish first in the conference, finished second. They were disappointed by that, but they played very well, and it is another over-20-win season for them. We are quite competitive, and, if you have been following basketball, we have a surprising team. We are not in any difficulty in any sport in terms of graduation rates. You may have read that, across the country, there are many institutions that are having issues with their graduation rates, and we are not one of those. For those of you who are serving on the Subcommittee on Athletics, I really appreciate your service. Faculty input into that process is extremely important, and Kim McDonald has done years of service on that particular committee.
3) Enjoy your holiday break. Right now we are 9.5 percent ahead on enrollments for spring, so you will have more students to look forward to.
11. The meeting adjourned at 12:54 p.m.
Jacqueline J. Petersen
Secretary of the Faculty