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Time: 3:15 p.m.
Place: HMSU, Dede III
Officers: Chair S. Lamb, Vice Chair B. Evans, Secretary C. Hoffman
Senators: C. Amlaner, E. Bermudez, J. Buffington, D. Collins, J. Conant,
S. Davis, J. Fine,
B.
Frank, A. Halpern, P. Hightower, J. Hughes, K. Liu, M. McLean, M.
Miller, G. Minty, T. Mulkey, L. O’Laughlin, S. Pontius, J. Powers, S.
Shure, T. Steiger, C. Stemmans
G.
Stuart, S. Wolf, D. Worley, G. Zhang
Absent: S. Allen, K. Bolinger, H. Chait, S. Ghosh,
T. Hawkins, S. Phillips, R. Schneirov,
J. Wilson, D. Yaw
Ex-Officio: Provost Maynard
Visitors: R. English, D. Findley, R Gennaro, E. Kinley, J. Janz, K.
Wilkinson
I.
Memorials
A Memorial Resolution for William M. Clary was read and
accepted by acclamation.
II.
Administrative Report: Provost Maynard:
1)
The presentation to the Commission of Higher Education was well
received.
ISU requested an overall increase of 3% for the biennium (1.5%
per year).
2)
The proposal for the new Recreation Center was approved and ground
breaking will occur
in the Spring.
3)
The Senate is encouraged to be involved in the interview process for the
Vice President of
Human Resources.
4)
A new president for the ISU Foundation has been selected and will be
announced soon.
5)
Interviews are in progress for the position of Assistant VP and Director
of HR.
Stability and vision are important in the position.
6)
Events next week: Thurs: Retirement Tea; Trustees' Enrollment Seminar;
dinner honoring
retiring Trustee Don
Smith
Fri: Trustees' Agenda meeting,
preceded by an executive session.
III.
Chair Report: S. Lamb:
As of February
1, applications from new freshmen and transfers for Fall 07 are up 9 %
over last year and
10% over
2005. Admissions are doing even better -- up 17% over 2006, and up 13%
from 2005.
Confirmations, however, are way down — at 229, which is 56% of last
year's and only 32% of 05’s
confirmations
at this point in time. Again, Kevin Snider has assured us that
confirmations have never
been a
reliable predictor of enrollments at this early stage, and that the
ratio between admissions and
enrollments
has been a much better indicator. I do, however, hope that the
Administration does all that it
can to change
admissions into confirmations.
Given that we have
the Spring 07 enrollment numbers, we can employ simple ratio analysis to
predict the
Fall 07 FTE
enrollment from the Spring 07 enrollment. Using the average of the
ratios from the last four
years, which
have been fairly steady, the predicted enrollment is 8,621, which is
less than 97.6% of last
year's fall
enrollment. Please remember that ratio analysis assumes that what
occurred in the past will
occur in the
future. Projecting the recent past into the future produces a prediction
of disaster.
We must do
better. We have our work cut out.
UFS #7, 2/15/06,
Page 2
Chair
Report
-- S. Lamb (con't):
The
Enrollment Task Force met on Monday, February 12 and is again
considering initiatives. Denise
Collins is on
this task force at the request of the Executive Committee. Also, another
faculty name has
been sent to
the Provost from the Executive Committee for consideration for service
on this committee.
I am
pleased that both the College of Nursing and the College of Health and
Human Performance are
going to, or
have, voted on the formation of the College of Nursing and Health and
Human Services.
Due process
must be followed, especially in the domain of primary authority. I know
that CAAC and the
Graduate
Council will give this issue the highest priority.
I met
recently with a set of knowledgeable people who are partially
responsible for coordination of the
Web pages.
They were not aware of an existing WEB advisory committee, nor were they
aware of a
marketing
advisory committee. I thought we had come to an agreement with the
administration that
these
committees would be formed. One of the concerns of this set of WEB
experts was the
navigational
difficulty which potential students experience trying to obtain
information about
departmental
units. The experts at this meeting were saying that our web sites are
not “recruitment
friendly.”
Are we doing everything we can to effectively use our web sites as a
recruitment tool?
The January
meeting of the Board of Trustees was cancelled. The February meeting is
about to be
held. I
expect the Trustees to discuss the 360-degree review of the president in
executive session.
The Executive
Committee of the Faculty Senate is advising Board members of its
concerns.
I am pleased
with all the discussion about the importance of the physics and
philosophy majors and have
some reason
to hope that this issue will be resolved. I am pleased to have
individuals present who will
speak to this
issue today.
There is some
discussion about the possibility of the Executive Committee forming a
joint General
Education
task force with the administration. If this occurs the Executive
Committee would provide input
into the
charge to this task force. The primary emphasis should be on creating a
General Education
Program that
will give our students a quality liberal arts education.
IV.
SGA : A.J. Patton:
-
All of the
projects mentioned in the last meeting are continuing.
-
The Commission of
Higher Education meeting went well.
-
Looking forward to
the Events Calendar being online today.
-
SGA elections will
be held before the next Faculty Senate meeting. If a new SGA president
is elected and this is his last meeting, he thanked the Senate for a
wonderful experience.
V.
Fifteen Minute Open Discussion
1) Rocco
Gennaro, Philosophy (Interim Chair), read the following statement:
On behalf of
the Department of Philosophy, I respectfully ask that Provost Maynard
and President
Benjamin
seriously reconsider the currently proposed action of eliminating the
philosophy major (and
physics major
for that matter). My understanding is that nothing is definite yet and
I take Provost
Maynard’s
word on that. I also ask for the strong and unambiguous support of the
Faculty Senate.
UFS#7, 2/15/07, Page
3
R. Gennaro
Statement (con't)
It is one
thing to reduce the large number of programs within a department, but
quite another to
eliminate the
only Physics and Philosophy degree programs in existence. As Interim
Dean Sauer and
Provost
Maynard know, we have made significant efforts to try to combine with
five other departments,
so far
without success. Part of the problem, of course, is that we have no
leverage and the larger
departments
have little incentive, not to mention the fact that there is no longer a
Humanities
Department
(we now teach the only two remaining Religion courses). We have no
objections to
continuing
those discussions and to try to find a creative solution along those
lines. We continue to talk
with such
departments as History and Political Science, and we have been
discussing yet another
possibility
with Charles Amlaner (i.e. some kind of Environmental
Sciences/Philosophy/Ethics
program). We
have also approached the Dean’s office with the idea of a new
“Philosophy and
Interdisciplinary Studies” unit (based on Dean Sauer’s idea) which would
house AFRI and Women’s
Studies, but
no progress thus far. I will follow up on this very soon. Any help
from faculty or
administrative leaders to facilitate such discussions would be
appreciated. At the very least, we ask
that we be
given time to make one of these options work, much like many other
programs have been
given time to
work something out with other programs/departments. We are, in any
case, still
determined to
maintain our major program; we could not live with ourselves if we gave
it up
“voluntarily.” Any responsibility to end our major program must
ultimately rest with the administration.
We think it
is unjust to eliminate programs that were not recommended to be
eliminated by the Task
Force and
that are the only programs in current stand alone departments. Our
department
unanimously
opposes this. Moreover, no rationale has been offered as to how or why
the
recommendation changed. Our Task Force average score (609) is over 20
points above the average
score within
category 3, the category above elimination. And our College score was
even higher.
To be
virtually the only 4-year “non-technical” institution in Indiana (or
maybe the country) without a
Philosophy
program (or at least some combined Philosophy and Humanities program)
would have a
terrible
impact on the reputation of the entire University and diminish the value
of an ISU degree for all
students.
Comparison with other “peer” institutions is already embarrassing with
respect to philosophy
faculty
resources. Such a decision could also be professionally damaging to
department members who
deserve
better treatment after what we have put into our careers here.
Very little
money, if any, would be saved unless even more radical cuts are made,
such as the eventual
elimination
of most philosophy faculty positions. And satisfying any external
sources of pressure to
reduce the
number of programs (e.g. ICHE, NCA) can be achieved in other creative
ways. I find it hard
to believe
that they have in mind eliminating programs like Philosophy and Physics.
The number of
our majors has also increased over the past five years. We had 10
graduates over the
five year
Task Force period (2001-2005). We expect even higher numbers over the
next few years.
The number of
philosophy majors has increased to 20 as of now. We do not see why it
matters that
about half of
them are “second majors.” We also have an active Philosophy Club: three
of its members
finished so
high on the regional Ethics Bowl debate competition that they were
invited to participate in
the nationals
on February 22nd.
Having a
Philosophy program is an essential liberal arts outlet for interested
ISU students and central
to the
University mission. The major is only 30 credits and many philosophy
majors go on to Law
school. The
philosophy major can also help prepare students for many careers (not
just one); it is
perhaps more
similar to History or English in that respect. ISU is already getting
the reputation of being
a vocational
school, and eliminating the philosophy and physics programs will surely
only add to that
perception in
a damaging way. It is difficult to think of too many other disciplines
that are more central
to the very
idea of a university, both historically and in today’s world. We think
such “centrality” should
count heavily
in our favor in the final analysis, regardless of any particular
statistic or quantitative
measuring
stick.
I ask all of
you to help save the Philosophy (and Physics) program. Thank you very
much.
UFS#7, 2/15/07, Page
4
2)
A.J. Patton asked what projects and promotions are being offered to
increase the number of
majors and minors in philosophy. R. Gennaro mentioned letters,
working with other majors,
and
the targeting of open-preference students.
3)
K. Liu read
the following statement:
I am
dismayed, disappointed and disturbed by the International Affairs
office’s way of handling
international
student organization sponsored activities.
Students from
Asia, especially students from Taiwan, China, and Southeast Asia
Regions, have
sponsored the
Chinese Lunar New Year celebration at ISU campus for near 30 years.
Several offices,
such as the
Union Board, the President’s office, the Alumni Office, the Office of
Diversity & Affirmative
Action and
the City of Terre Haute Mayor’s office have provided funds to support
this year’s event.
Local
restaurant owners have donated food and other resources to support
international student
organizations’ New Year celebration event. Faculty, staff and students
at ISU as well as people in the
Wabash Valley
Community all enjoyed the Asian cultural events in the past and are
eagerly looking
forward to
attending the 2007 New Year Global Night event scheduled on Saturday,
Feb. 17.
Unfortunately, a group of faculty has used political propaganda and
proposed five guiding principles
which
indicated that only the Chinese Student and Scholar Association (CSSA)
as the “leading”
organization
to host the New Year celebration event. Other organizations can only
participate in the
event under
the “lead” of CSSA. When IAC received this information which is totally
in violation with
university’s
affirmative action policy that all students from diverse cultural
background are equal and all
international
student organizations are equal, IAC did not inform this group of
faculty that their proposal
is in
violation of university policy. Instead, IAC tried to comprise the
situation and left 120 students from
Taiwan in
limbo.
There were
several planning meetings scheduled between those two groups, but CSSA
were NO
show. The
decision was supposed to be made on Monday, Feb. 12 at 10:00 am, but
until NOW, I have
no word from
IAC whether we will have the New Year celebration or not this Saturday.
120 students
from Taiwan were very upset with their unfair treatment and concerned
with IAC’s inability
to protect
and speak on behalf of them.
The
provost noted that the situation has not been resolved and that, at his
direction, the Chinese Lunar New Year celebration had been postponed
indefinitely.
3)
Mergers – Other points / questions raised:
CAAC has been charged to examine all proposals
.
Are we giving up on advanced students?
Will Physics still serve other majors / programs such as
premed?
"Departments" are different from "programs."
If the number of majors is reduced, how will we market ourselves?
Three universities which do not have philosophy departments
have been identified;
perhaps we can exist without philosophy.
UFS#7,
2/15/07, Page
5
4)
Other matters:
Faculty Annual Report: If a faculty member does not turn in
digital measures what will the
punishment be since this is a non-pay
increase year?
Library reorganization: Changes were to have been considered by
the appropriate library
governance bodies, but no
documentation of discussion and votes has come
forward to the Senate office, as
required by the University Handbook.
Dean McCallister advised that the
required discussions and votes did occur and
that she had assumed that the
information had been forwarded. She will follow
up to be sure that the information is
forthcoming.
VI.
Minutes #6 – 2/18/07 – APPROVED (Davis, Frank 30-0-0)
VII.
Information Items – CIRT – E. Kinley, K. Janz, K. Wilkinson
E. Kinley reported:
1) A week-long summer workshop will assess what is important to
faculty.
2) Because snow kept people away from the Center For Visualization, the
event will be rescheduled.
3) CIRT and the Library will increase collaborations. He thanked Dean
McCallister for her help.
4) Two Web design staff have resigned. Replacements are being sought.
Salary is a problem.
Funds to hire a suitable person may be recouped through the
elimination of another OIT position.
5) Faculty orientation programs (regular faculty and T.A.) are being
established. The intention is to
customize as appropriate for individual departments and
situations. Faculty input is sought.
6) Speakers Series: Four speakers are scheduled during the spring term.
7) IBM
representatives will be on campus discussing 2010-2012 and beyond, and
will also meet with
local civic and government groups.
IX.
Old Business:
AJ
Patton requested assistance from CAAC and the Student Affairs Committee
concerning the proposed SGA Online Evaluation of faculty.
S Lamb
suggested that SGA send a request to the Executive Committee.
X.
New Business: None.
XI.
Standing Committee Reports : None
XII.
Adjournment: 4:46 PM (Stuart, Evans - acclamation)
Respectfully submitted,
C.
Hoffman, Secretary
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