SOS Steering Committee Meeting 11/3/2000

Minutes

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Present: Kathy Johnson (Chair), Pam Crowell (Bio), Gordon Fricke (Assoc Dean), Jon Luke (Math), Gabe Filippelli (Geo), David Stocum (Dean), Mihran Tuceryan (CSCI), Steve Wassall (Physics); Fritz Kleinhans (Sec), Kathryn Wilson (Assoc Dean)

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Agenda:

1. Career Day - revisited

2. Feedback - SOS Budget Exercise

3. Discussion of SOS Strategic Plan

4. Agenda Setting: Fall Faculty Assembly Meeting

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Career Day:

KJ: Career Day in January has traditionally been a Biology, Chemistry, and Psychology effort with major staff input. Other Depts. wishing to take part in Career Day should identify a staff person to spearhead their department's effort. This should be done by December to be ready for Career Day in January of 2001.

SOS Budget:

DS wants faculty to understand how School funds are allocated and offered to answer any further questions we have.

FK expressed concern that the »10$/Cr_Hr formula used in calculating allocations might encourage Departments to drop courses, even though they still contributed to the overall financial health of the School. DS concurred that the departmental allocations are only a small part of the overall budget. We still have to pay our base expenses such as salaries and benefits (47% of budget) and assessments (44% of budget).

PC had several questions/concerns:

· What is the source of the 'Cash' line in the School budget? DS: The 'Cash' comes from various salary savings and open lines, where 'open line' is defined as an empty position which is not currently slated to be filled. DS also noted that we only receive 80% of open lines. The remaining 20% goes explicitly to cover 18-20 expenses.

· Why did Depts. experience a reduction in operating funds this year while the Dean's Office had no reduction? DS observed that the Dean's Office had a bare bones budget, but accepted PC's observation that a 5 to 10% reduction would have been appropriate to share the pain and will try to move in this direction in the future.

DS also noted that a significant portion of his discretionary spending went for Scholarships (50k$) and Undergraduate Research Participation funding. KJ, DS, and KW asked the Steering Committee whether they thought any of this money would be better allocated at the Dept level.

GP thought it was preferable to bring in the best available students to the School, rather than distributing the money to Departments for recruitment. There was general agreement by the Steering Committee that the Scholarship and UGRP money was money well spent and was best coordinated at the School level. DS has a long-term goal of funding more of these Scholarships with external monies (from fund raising). Currently about half the Scholarship money is used to recruit new students to the School and half for continuing students. KW noted that the UGRP monies help student retention and that the sooner we can get students involved in SOS activities/research the better the retention rate.

There were some questions and discussion about departmental allocations for the current year. Some of the more 'self-sufficient' Departments received small allocations from the Dean this year. DS noted that this was done to meet pressing current problems in other departments but that as a general rule the successful Depts. would be financially rewarded for their success. Thus there would be less monies available to the deficit Depts. in future years. There was still some uncertainty among committee members about how this process works.

The problem of dropping student credit hour enrollments was revisited. Several other Schools at IUPUI are reducing their SOS course requirements. Thus we need to find new 'customers'. DS sees us becoming more like a professional school with programs targeted to specific needs of the community to make up for the loss of students from other units. It was noted that Engineering is currently in good shape credit hour wise, with approximately 70 faculty and 2000 majors.

SOS Strategic Plan:

There are several versions of the Strategic Plan in existence and posted on the web. KJ will work to synchronize the web versions and get the latest plan out to everyone.

DS noted that the current plan is being/needs some updating. For instance, it was written before the new community college initiative. DS also feels that some of the 'negatives' expressed in the plan should be removed.

KW noted and DS concurred that the new administration at Purdue seems very interested in strengthening our graduate programs in Indianapolis (as well as elsewhere in the state). To this end, a new strategic plan for graduate programs is being prepared. KW believes that recruitment is becoming an especially important issue at the graduate level.

KJ and KW noted that there were new and improved opportunities for collaboration with the Medical School. The new dean of the School has a research background and there was a general feeling that the climate for collaboration with the Medical School continues to improve. It would be nice if the new medical research building had space for new collaborative efforts involving, for instance, our Tissue Engineering/Regeneration initiative.

There was some discussion of the impact of RCM budgeting on collaborative efforts. SW expressed the view that sometimes RCM seemed to have an anti-collaborative impact. DS noted that bringing RCM down to the departmental level did sometimes lead to parochial thinking, but on balance the benefits outweighed the problems. DS and KW feel that collaborations with other units have been increasing with a beneficial impact on our resources.

Fall Faculty Assembly Meeting Agenda:

DS would like to reintroduce short reports by deans at these assemblies. The Steering Comm. concurred.

DS will report on budget issues, the Campaign for IUPUI, and the task forces on Retention and Recruitment.

KW will discuss the Strategic planing initiative with Purdue as well as Technology and UG research issues.

GF will discuss Outreach and Marketing.

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At the next Steering Comm. meeting we will talk about advising with Joe Kuczkowski.

fwk

11-3-2000

11-10-2000

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