SOS Faculty Assembly meeting

Faculty Present: Bill Bosron, Pam Crowell, Andy Gavrin, Steve Randall, Jane Williams, David Stocum, Ellen Chernoff, Bart Ng, John Kremer, Jesse Stewart, Bonnie Blazer-Yost, BD Rao, Snehasis Mukhopadhyay, Michal Misiurewicz, Will Geller, Ben Boukai.

Monday, Feb 4^th, 2008 – 10- 11:40am

1) President Steve Randall called the meeting to order at 10 am. The stated agenda for the meeting was to first, have the faculty vote to endorse the letter sent to the Executive Committee of the IUPUI Faculty Council on behalf of the SOS Steering Committee and second, to develop discussion issues for the meeting the EVC Sukhatme on Feb 6^th.

2) Questions were asked about the impetus for the letter, for the hard facts that led to the failed Dean’s search, and whether any coordination has been attempted with the School of Liberal Arts.

3) Discussion points raised for the meeting with Dean Sukhatme included: how monies are spent and moved around campus, how the CTE funds were spent compared to Bloomington, and how decisions are made about dividing appropriations. A sentiment was made that we need to clearly communication that what we have received is not nearly enough to meet the demands. That start up funds will always be an issue for the school of science and perhaps they should be separate from the budget.

4) A motion was made to vote on the letter, the vote was unanimous.

5) The discussion came back to the meeting the Dean Sukhatme on the 6^th. We need to communicate that we are looking forward, we need to break out of the current financial structure, we need to ask for a detailed response from Dean Sukhatme – exactly how is he going to address our situation. We need to stress that our goal is to maintain the integrity of our academic programs and to do so we need more faculty.

6) The issue of who we are as a campus and a school was raised. Is there a desire to keep IUPUI the community college rather than a research intensive University. Many faculty expressed that we need to project our own vision for ourselves – one of research and academic excellence.

7) Barth Ng shared some information he had about what the Faculty Council is doing in response to the letter. There will likely be an extra meeting in Feb to address budget issues in general, not specific to the SOS.

8) Faculty were asked to send any further discussion points to Secretary Williams to be included in Wednesday’s discussion.

9) The meeting was adjourned at 11:40.