SOS Steering Committee Meeting 2/8/2002

Minutes

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Attending: Ray Chin (CSCI), Pam Crowell (Biol), Kathy Johnson (Chair), Fritz Kleinhans (Sec), Joe Kuczkowski (Assoc Dean), Jon Luke (Math), Kim Nguyen (Assist Dean), David Stocum (Dean), Gautam Vemuri (Physics); Kathryn Wilson (Assoc Dean).

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Faculty Council Report:

The SOS needs a Unit Representative to the Faculty Council (Volunteers?).

Legislative activity was reported. The Borst Bill has been withdrawn. The Trustees were not authorized to issues bonds for IUPUI housing. There may be a fix in the works; re a March meeting. Allied Health is being disassembled. All Depts. save Respiratory Therapy are scheduled to have new homes (Schools) by July 1. The Lecturer Appointment Policy came in for extended discussion. Issues included the promotion and review process for them. With regard to the SOS, DS noted that it will cost on the order of 200k$ to convert part time positions to Lecturer positions. He expressed concern about the creation of a two tiered faculty. Lectures may soon total 20% of the faculty & lecturer teaching cadre in Science. If the Lecturers take on the majority of student credit hours in the SOS there will be increased pressure on faculty to be successful in the grantsmanship arena. Many depts. prefer the 'real world' experience that part timers bring to our teaching program. Lecturers cost about 27 to 36k$ plus benefits. Finally, a resolution was introduced in the Faculty Council calling for parity in percentage raises for Bloomington and IUPUI faculty. For the coming year 6.7% is allocated for Bloomington and 4.1 % for Indy.

Spring SOS Faculty Assembly:

Mark Brenner, VP Research & Sponsored Programs, will be our guest for the spring meeting. The Steering Committee needs to prepare a list of issues for discussion and get faculty to the meeting. The perennial issue of grant processing and deadlines was mentioned. The original plan to have two speakers was shelved when Nancy Chism was unavailable. We also briefly discussed having Mark Federwisch speak on computing issues in the school, e.g. maintenance of faculty computers. It was decided to defer this while the Technology Committee reviewed the issues.

Administrative Evaluations:

This process is moving forward. The Deans and all but two chairs have submitted a list of activities. KJ circulated a draft cover letter to be sent to faculty. The plan is to email the survey to the faculty, for each Dean and the faculty member's chair. These can be completed electronically, printed out, and returned in coded, signed envelopes. Once the contents are removed from the envelopes they are anonymous.

We tentatively decided that the comments should be reviewed by 'committees' of two for each Evaluee. For Dept Chairs, the 'committee' will include a 'chair' from a different Dept and a member from the Dept being evaluated. We would like to complete the process by the end of the semester. There was some discussion of finding a more efficient scheme than evaluating everyone every two years. Perhaps evaluating new administrators within two years and continuing administrators every four years would work.

Misc:

There is a Gateway Course Grant Competition which closes March 1. Significant monies are available from this source. Take advantage! John Kramer maintains a web site for Gateway Courses. The URL is <http://boss.psych.iupui.edu/gateway/>.

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FW Kleinhans

SOS Faculty Secretary

Feb 8, 2002

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