Minutes of the
Third Regular Meeting of the Twenty-Eighth Senate
Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne
November 10, 2008
12:00 P.M., Kettler G46
Agenda
1. Call to order
2. Approval of the minutes of October 20, 2008
3. Acceptance of the agenda – B. Abbott
4. Reports of the Speakers of the Faculties
a. Purdue University – N. Younis
b. Indiana University – M. Nusbaumer
5. Report of the Presiding Officer – S. Davis
6. Committee reports requiring action
a. University Resources Policy Committee (Senate Document SD 08-3) – M. Walsh
b. Executive Committee (Senate Document SD 08-4) – B. Abbott
7. New business
8. Committee reports “for information only”
a. Executive Committee (Senate Reference No. 08-5) – B. Abbott
b. Graduate Subcommittee (Senate Reference No. 08-6) – J. Garrison
9. The general good and welfare of the University
10. Adjournment*
*The meeting will adjourn or recess by 1:15 p.m.
Presiding Officer: S. Davis
Parliamentarian: A. Downs
Sergeant-at-Arms: G. Steffen
Secretary: J. Petersen
______________________________________________________________________________
Attachments:
“Library Collection Development Policy (supersedes SD 97-6)” (SD 08-3)
“Approval of replacement member of the Graduate Subcommittee” (SD 08-4)
Senate Members Present:
B. Abbott, A. Argast, S. Beckman, S. Blythe, W. Branson, J. Burg, J. Dalby, P. Dragnev,
B. Dupen, C. Erickson, E. Foley, R. Friedman, J. Garrison, J. Grant, T. Grove, I. Hack,
P. Iadicola, J. Jackson, M. Lipman, D. Liu, J. Lutz, G. McClellan, K. McDonald, L. Meyer, D. Moore, G. Moss, G. Mourad, M. Nusbaumer, T. Parker, K. Pollock, T. Prickett,
D. Redett, M. Ridgeway, L. Roberts, R. Sutter, J. Tankel, C. Thompson, A. Ushenko,
W. Utesch, G. Voland, M. Walsh, G. Wang, M. Wolf, N. Younis
Senate Members Absent:
N. Adilov, S. Ashur, S. Dhawale, R. Elaver, W. McKinney, K. Moustafa, D. Mueller,
J. Summers, M. Wartell
Faculty Members Present: O. Chang, S. Skekloff, D. Townsend
Visitors Present: J. Dahl, R. Kostrubanic, P. McLaughlin, K. Soderland (Journal Gazette)
Acta
1. Call to order: S. Davis called the meeting to order at 12:02 p.m.
2. Approval of the minutes of October 20, 2008: 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. Purdue University:
N. Younis: Good afternoon, Colleagues!
Two weeks ago Senator Wang and I attended the Purdue Intercampus Faculty Council
meeting. Representatives from the main campus and the regional ones, including Indianapolis which is an Indiana University campus under the management agreement, attended the meeting. The major issue was course ownership. A course including number, title, and description belongs to the Purdue system. In teaching an existing course, at least 70 percent of the course content should be covered. If a department chooses different topics to be covered in a West Lafayette course, a new course should be developed and Form 40 should be filed with our number and course content. To the senior faculty, this is a reminder; and to the junior faculty, I just told you.
Thank you.
b. Indiana University:
M. Nusbaumer: For those Indiana University-mission departments, any course that happens to be listed on the Indiana University master course list can be offered by anybody on any campus. I do not know that there is anyone checking up on the course list content.
N. Younis: This issue is important for the programs with accreditation. When they come in, they check the Bulletin of the regional campuses to see if the courses are different from the course descriptions of the Bulletin in West Lafayette.
J. Dahl: The larger principle is a declaration by both systems that a given course with a given number and title is equivalent across campuses by definition, and if a student moves from campus to campus the new campus is obligated to take it as if it had been taken on that campus. It is resident credit, it fulfills degree requirements, and it is the same course. It is not just following West Lafayette. The math department here would prefer that someone else not significantly change MA 153, so this is protection of your colleagues and protection from your colleagues. If you want to do something different, find a new number, then do it in a new way.
5. Report of the Presiding Officer – S. Davis:
1) There is a website called pickaprof.com. I think it is important to us in that there are some people who are using it already, and there are some who do not know it exists. I would hope that you would go back to your departments and let them know it exists. Pickaprof is using valid data which is supplied by the university. This is not like rateaprof.com, where everything is self reported. What it shows is grade distributions. I called Patrick McLaughlin first to see how valid this information was, was told that the information was supplied by Jack Dahl’s office, and then I called Jack Dahl to verify.
J. Dahl: Every semester pickaprof.com gives us a public-records request for the grade distributions for every class. This was sent to the lawyers, and they said we had to comply. We provide this information every semester to pickaprof.com. They compile the information by course, professor, and also do some linking that allows them to do historical grade awards by faculty members. Their request to us, and thus our answer to them, does exclude small classes, classes under ten students, so there is no risk of privacy issues. The data that they get is a reasonably good representation of the grade distributions for a course. It is not skewed by the people who happen to sit in a small classroom, all of whom might have been advanced majors in the program.
S. Davis: (S. Davis gave a demonstration via the website, using his courses as an example.) Once you get into it, you have to sign in. It is free up to this level. After this, the students use it a lot because they can set schedules by it and also know what courses their friends are taking. It has a lot more capacity than this. For the grade distributions themselves, it is free up to the professor’s history.
When you put the name of the course instructor in, it breaks it down by undergraduate and graduate courses that one has taught. It brings all ones courses up in charts by what percentage of grades were given in each of the courses. This is based on information supplied by the university. It also lists the average GPA for courses, which one may like better than the bar chart.
If you go down to the undergraduate classes that I teach, you can see in A202 that they combine three classes representing 75 students. You can see my grade distribution for those students in that course. They also give you the average drop rate. If there is only one section, then they average the one section. Mine, for example, is the average over the three sections. Also, the students can rate you, but this has not caught on like rateaprof.com.
You can also go to the tab “Profs & Courses.” This should be good for department chairs. This will show the grade distribution by all the faculty members who have taught a specific course and compare the grades awarded.
I am pointing out Pickaprof.com because I think that it is out there and is being used. Take this information back to your department so that everyone knows it exists. It is another part of the transparency and accountability that we say we are striving for. The site is pickaprof.com.
2) We had a meeting the other day with Randy Woodson who is the provost at Purdue University. Two issues came up. One of the issues that came up was textbooks. I asked him what Purdue is doing with regard to textbooks. He said that there is not much we can do, but their requirement now is when teachers give the listing of books they are going to use to the Bookstore, they give a copy to someone in his office, and it is put on a website. The Bookstore does not like this, as you would imagine. Students can get the books on sites like Amazon.com, but they are always two or three weeks behind because it takes time to get there. He said by putting them on the website mid-semester the prior semester, this gives students time to go and work out deals through Amazon.com and other such sites which gives them the ability to perhaps lessen their textbook costs. Maybe the Educational Policy Committee would be the ones who would talk about this. It sounded like a good idea, and it is what they are doing at Purdue University.
3) The second issue we discussed was about special-merit pay. There are some changes which will occur. The one thing that will impact this campus is that we used to be able to give a distribution up to 25 percent of people in each classification: administrative, clerical and service staff, and faculty. That has been changed to 15 percent. The plan is that same amount, $200,000, will still be distributed in increments of $3,000, $2,000, and $1,000. This shift of fewer people getting the bonus will put more people up in the $2,000 and $3,000 level and fewer people in the $1,000 category. That is about the only major change that seems to impact IPFW faculty.
W. Branson: We do not believe it will have much of an impact at all. Jack Dahl and I looked at the numbers before we put out the guidelines, and we think that 15 percent will not really cause any problems or too much inflation in the bonuses.
S. Davis: This does come from Purdue University. Dr. Woodson noted that adherence to the policy would be very strict. He said the new president does not favor this program, but he said she is buying into it. I do not think there was a lot of interaction with the people who were affected as far as the campuses.
6. Committee reports requiring action:
a. University Resources Policy Committee (SD 08-3) – M. Walsh:
M. Walsh moved to approve SD 08-3 (Library Collection Development Policy). Seconded.
Motion to approve passed on a voice vote.
b. Executive Committee (SD 08-4) – B. Abbott:
B. Abbott moved to approve SD 08-4 (Approval of replacement member of the Graduate Subcommittee). Seconded.
Motion to approve passed on a voice vote.
7. New business: There was no new business
8. Committee reports “for information only”:
a. Executive Committee (Senate Reference No. 08-5) – B. Abbott:
Senate Reference No. 08-5 (Items under consideration by Senate Committees and Subcommittees) was presented for information only.
b. Graduate Subcommittee (Senate Reference No. 08-6) – J. Garrison:
Senate Reference No. 08-6 (Proposal for Graduate Certificate in Systems Engineering) was presented for information only.
9. The general good and welfare of the University:
There were no items discussed for the general good and welfare of the University.
10. The meeting adjourned at 12:25 p.m.
Jacqueline J. Petersen
Secretary of the Faculty