Academic Senate Minutes

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

(Approved)

 

 

Call to Order

The meeting was called to order by Senate Chairperson Dan Holland.

 

Roll Call

Senate Secretary Susan Kalter called the roll and declared a quorum.
Attendance and Motions

 

Approval of Minutes of May 9, 2007

Motion XXXIX-3:  Motion by Senator Borg, seconded by Senator Alferink, to approve the Senate Minutes of May 9, 2007. Correction to Minutes, page 3, paragraph 9, Senator Armstrong’s remarks: Replace “faulty” with “faculty”. The minutes, as revised, were unanimously approved.

 

Chairperson’s Remarks

Senator Holland: Jed Day is filling in for Dagmar Budikova, who is on a fall semester sabbatical. Ron Gifford is the new AP representative, replacing Senator Mwilambwe, who is now chair of the AP Council. Also, Senator Zhang joins us from CAS. Senator Carlson of Mennonite College of Nursing will replace Caroline Mallory, who has received an interim administrative assignment.

 

Jan Murphy of the Provost’s Office is seeking nominations for the University Service Awards. Applications are due on September 14. Provost Presley is also seeking nominations for the rank of Distinguished Professor.

 

Student Government Association

Senator Horstein: The Student Government Association is looking for a student from the College of Applied Science and Technology to serve as a senator on the Academic Senate. It is an eight-hour per week, paid position. The SGA is also looking for a technology director to maintain its website, which is under development. Please contact David Horstein or Kevin McGuire at StudentBodyPresident@ilstu.edu or StudentBodyVicePresident@ilstu.edu.

 

SGA will be taking a trip to Washington, D.C. in September for the national Student Government Association Conference. SGA will also travel to the University of Florida and Florida State University at which they will review housing, the student government structure, dining and, rec services, among other things.

 

SGA will team up with the Office of Off-Campus and Non-traditional Students and the Service and Leadership Department to try to find ways in which off-campus students can reestablish connections to the local community.

 

President Bowman’s Remarks

President Bowman: The state appropriation for ISU will be $82.9 million, an increase of $1.5 million over last year’s budget, which is a 1.8% increase. That is still less than one third of our total budget. Since 2002, we have picked up the state’s share of group health insurance and we have paid about $3.1 million a year for the campus. In spendable money, we are down to $79.9 million. Merit increases will be retroactive to July 1 for people on 12-month contracts and to August 15 for people on 9-month contracts.

 

The Governor vetoed the $200,000 appropriation to have a task force on higher education that would do long-range planning. It looks like they will still go ahead with a planning process, but it will be a scaled-back version.

 

We have raised $7.1 million, a little over $6 million of which was in cash, for our endowment and, as of June 30th, our endowment stands at $90 million. Our short-term goal is to raise between $10 and $12 million per year.

 

You may have seen the changes to the rankings in U.S. News and World Report. Though they are not a valid indicator of academic quality, some of our numbers did increase, particularly our retention rate and the percentage of classes that have less than 20 students in them.

 

The Provost Search Committee is busy reviewing vita. The Academic Senate will sponsor my State of the University Address at 2:00 p.m. in the Center for Performing Arts. We will follow the same format we have in the past, with a shorter speech, followed by a question and answer session.

 

This is a special week for me. I start my 30th year at ISU and my fifth year as President. We have a very bright future ahead of us due to our location, our reputation and the quality of the institution.

 

Provost Presley’s Remarks

Provost Presley: At the last count, the new freshmen enrollment was 3,149; 1,733 new transfers enrolled. We have 116 students that we will be counting later. That places us only two students away from our target goal. The latest count of total students on campus is 20,121: 17,683 on-campus undergraduate and 2,438 on-campus graduate students. The off-campus, cohort classes are not in these totals, but we will get a count of those later in the semester.

 

Every institution that collects federal dollars is required to celebrate Constitution Day. We will celebrate Constitution Day on Monday, September 17, from noon to 1:00 p.m. There will be a presentation from Project Vote Smart, which is a citizens’ organization that has developed a voter’s “self-defense system”.

 

Vice President of Student Affairs’ Remarks

Senator Adams: There are about 6,800 students in the residence halls this fall. That is down about 200 from last year. Wright Hall, which holds 400 students, came back on line. Hewitt Hall, which houses 800 students, has come off line. There were about 150 students who were in supplemental housing at the beginning of the fall semester. Those 150 will move out as quickly as we can get them into permanent spaces. With Hewitt coming off line, it does create a problem with 800 students displaced from that area. Those students will take their meals at Watterson. We continue with the long-range housing and dining plan, and, in the end, we hope that the outcome will be one that this campus will be very proud of.

 

·         Vice President of Finance and Planning Steve Bragg - Absent

 

Committee Reports:

Academic Affairs

The committee elected Senator Waterstraat as committee chairperson. Senator Gudding has volunteered to serve as secretary and Senator O’Malley will serve as the Academic Affairs Committee Representative on the Academic Planning Committee.

 

Administrative Affairs and Budget Committee

Senator Poole agreed to serve as the interim chairperson until the committee can meet to discuss the topic further.

 

Faculty Affairs Committee

Senator Preston will serve as committee chairperson for the fall semester. He will go on sabbatical in the spring and, at that time, Senator Borg will serve as chair.

 

Planning and Finance Committee

Senator Fazel agreed to chair the Planning and Finance Committee.

 

Rules Committee

Senator Alferink will serve as chair of the Rules Committee.

 

IBHE-FAC Report

08.22.07.01     College Student Mental Health – A Crisis Underway

08.22.07.02     Higher Ed and the Public Good

Professor Curt White, IBHE-Faculty Advisory Council Representative: I have attended Faculty Advisory Council meetings at Kankakee Community College last spring and at DePaul University in June. I have attended two Illinois Board of Higher Education meetings, one in Springfield and one in Chicago. I had the opportunity to have lunch with the new chair, Carrie J. Hightman, and Executive Director, Judy Erwin. I think that they will make a good team. The real progress that FAC has made in the last year is that we have gained the confidence and respect of staff of the Board and they are using the papers that we are creating in very productive ways.

 

You have in your packets two of our most recent papers. In the spring, we passed the Higher Education and the Public Good paper. Some representatives of the higher education community and even the Board, itself, has gotten into the habit of only using economic arguments in order to defend the good of the university. This paper has the intent of reminding them that there are other very important purposes of higher education.

 

In Chicago, I attended the working session of the Board, which is the meeting that they have the day before. They actually meet publicly. I was very pleased to hear them refer to our paper a number of times, The title that had been given by the legislature to the strategic planning process for next year refers explicitly to higher education and the economy. That was the title that the legislature gave to the bill authorizing the Board to go through a strategic planning process. The Board members pointed out that this was an unfortunate title. So, they are going to change the title of their strategic planning document based upon the work that we have done.

 

The second paper from the FAC is a draft paper called College Student Mental Health – A Crisis Underway. In the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy last spring, the Governor’s office moved very quickly to convene a task force on security and student mental health. The Faculty Advisory Council has a seat at the table on this task force and we are very determined that the work of the task force not only be about surveillance and security, but that it also be about issues related to student mental health. This paper will not only be sponsored by the Faculty Advisory Council, but the IBHE-Student Advisory Committee as well. The Board will take note that the faculty and students are advising it with a unity of voice. The new chair of the IBHE Student Advisory Council is a student here at ISU, Jason Wallace.

 

One of the things that I would like everyone to be thinking about is that certain forces and perspectives within the state, notably in the Governor’s office and also, until recently, on the Board itself, believe that the best thing for higher education is that it expose itself to market forces. One of the things that this has caused is a sense among universities that everyone is competition with everyone else. President Bowman and his staff have done a very good job of managing that competitive atmosphere. Essentially, places like the U of I are going to have to convince people that their competition is the elites, ivy leagues and the big research schools. Then everyone in the middle, especially the publics, which are the most vulnerable, is going to have to convince their own constituency of who they are competing with. We have done a good job of convincing our constituency that we are competing with schools like the U of I. I can assure you that not every school is having this kind of success. Southern Illinois is finding that they are basically in competition with their local community college.

 

The community colleges, too, are seeing that their competition down the road will be the proprietary schools like Phoenix University. So, in some ways, the community colleges are now trying to compete with the public universities by offering the first two years of college experience to students who have every right to be in four-year schools. For example, they have national merit scholars spending their first two years at a community college. The community colleges feel that they are just as good at offering the first two years of general education. I think that that is an alarming thing, not that I mean to demean the quality of instruction in the community colleges, but it is alarming that in some places they are becoming the de facto providers of general education for an increasing number of students. In my position as chair of the IBHE-FAC, I do spend more time than I used to thinking about the conditions of higher education in the state and these are some of the tendencies that I am seeing.

 

07.02.07.01     Surveillance Equipment Installation and Use Annual Notice

President Bowman: This is an annual document that notifies the university community that we will engage in surveillance in areas of the campus, either because of criminal activity or the functions that take place in these areas. The surveillance is done in a limited fashion and only when absolutely necessary. One of our new charges for this fall will be to upgrade network computer security on campus, which today falls short of some state and federal law enforcement standards.

 

College of Fine Arts Events

Senator Borg: I would like to make my annual invitation for all of you to attend the events of the College of Fine Arts. We have a very fine theatre season that will begin with the musical Tommy. We have already had three faculty recitals and we have an exciting season of guest artists. In October, there will be a special exhibit in the art galleries featuring the 30th anniversary of the Normal additions workshop.

 

University Club

Senator Preston: I am president of the University Club. It is a faculty and staff organization wherein faculty and staff get together and chat. We also have sponsors and guest speakers. President Bowman will be sponsoring on September 21st.  All faculty and staff are welcome to attend whether they are members or not. We have a website, so please consult the calendar. It still has spaces available for people who are interested in sponsoring.

 

Adjournment

Motion XXXIX-4:  Senator Anders, seconded by Senator Griswold, to adjourn. The motion was unanimously approved.