SOS Steering Committee Minutes

 

February 10, 2006

 

Present:  Voting Members:  Andy Barth (PRES), Steve Randall (BIOL), Barry Muhoberac & Stephanie Sen (CHEM), Mihran Tuceryan (CSCI), Ray Chin (MATH), Marvin Kemple (PHYS), Jane R. Williams (PSY); Non-Voting Ex-Officio Members:  Pam Crowell (Assoc. Dean); Kim Nguyen (Asst. Dean), Andy Gavrin, Jeff X. Watt (Assoc. Deans), Carl Cowen (Dean), Guests:  None.

 

Absent:  Phil Fastenau (Sec.), Kathy Licht (GEOL).

 

AB called the meeting to order at 10:00 a.m.

 

I.                   AB presented the agenda, which was adopted.

 

II.                AB presented the minutes from January 6th. After a typo was noted and corrected, the minutes were accepted.

 

III.              JW introduced the web based administrative review process. A discussion ensued regarding the data collection process. The goal is to ensure that data are valid and responses only represent faculty who are eligible to vote. It was decided that we would use the option that includes a password for each participant and restriction to an IP address from the School of Science. Mark Federwisch will help to implement the process.

 

IV.             AB introduced the P&T policy discussion.  The chemistry department indicated that untenured faculty would like department level policies for guidance. SR indicated that it may help to have guidance about the process for determining policy. Don’t want a document to discourage people to go forward or have a document created that would hinder a particular faculty member’s promotion. Would like to have some mechanism for determining a policy, and also allow for a valid decision to be not to have such a policy. It should be a document that has multiple people providing feedback during its development. Physics department is not in favor of creating a written document at this time. CC brought up the issue of who gets to vote on the document. Shouldn’t just be the P&T committee within that department as some departments only have a small number of Full Professors. But also need to make sure that the policy isn’t at odds with the decision makers. PC suggested that perhaps the Unit Committee should review and accept the individual department policies. CC suggests that this may be an unsolvable problem, because individuals vote during the tenure and promotion process, not the policy. The document can be persuasive about how the vote should be cast, but doesn’t fully determine individual behavior. SR reminded us that the University expects that departmental and school level policies are supposed to be on file. SR suggested having a non-intrusive mechanism. CC wants the SC to make a decision as this is a faculty rather than administrative matter. SS suggested that we need to have a mechanism because of the need to mentor untenured faculty and provide them guidance. We need a source of consistent information for those faculty. PC also raised the issue of providing mentoring and guidance for individuals moving from Associate to Full. AB suggested that we ask departments to have a formalized discussion about policy and mentoring, without asking them to create a written policy or document. This would be a way to encourage untenured faculty to provide their input to the process.  AB proposed that we ask departments to create a P&T policy which would reviewed by the Unit Committee. These documents could be shared yearly with the unit committee, so that as the composition changes, unit committee members could then become educated about specific nuances within each department. AB will send out a series of statements about this process that will be voted. SR wondered if this is at the level of a bylaw change.

 

V.                Deans Announcements: CC addressed the IU reorganization issues. Commented that we owe Bart Ng a great deal of thanks for his terrific work on our behalf. CC believes things are going well for IUPUI. The conversations that faculty have had are helping Bantz, Brater, Froehlich and others to better communicate our points of view and make the IUPUI case. This campus is a unified entity, not just physically united. Our success depends on strengthening all the units together. Each department will be making a response to the life sciences initiative so that we, as a school, can make a response to the Life Sciences Initiative Document so that we can get involved in the conversations. Craig Brater invited us to examine some lab space for chemists.

 

PC also shared that she is developing a list of faculty and research interests/collaborations that faculty can review. PC will be visiting researchers in the School of Medicine to share IUPUI-SOS faulty research interests to identify future collaborations. She will continue with this grass roots level efforts to encourage and develop new collaborations with our colleagues in Medicine. She requested that SC members continue to inform her about ongoing collaborations.

 

SS wondered if we should be having conversations more quickly with departments on the Bloomington campus. PC noted that we have no formalized relationships with the IU departments and so it makes the initiation of these conversations more difficult.

 

The Deans Advisory Council met with the Dean and OS faculty to discuss how to better collaborate with and connect with the community. The Dean’s office will develop some response to the outcomes of that meeting.

 

VI.             Announcements:

 

a.       KN reported that we are doing very well with the recruitment of new students.

b.      Sunday March 5th is the campus day for recruiting student to the SOS.

c.       PC – The architect’s office has now received all of the bids for the renovation. The staff associated with Dean Gavrin’s activities will move to LD 165 on February 23rd. Dean Gavrin will be located in his physics department office.

d.      Next Meeting:  3 March, 2006

e.       Budgetary advisory meeting: 24 February, 2006 (SL118)

            

Respectfully Submitted,

J. Williams, February 13, 2006.

Minutes were approved by the SOS SC on March 3, 2006.