SOS Steering Committee Meeting 2-2-2001

Minutes
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Attending:  Kathy Johnson (Chair), Pam Crowell (Bio), Dennis Devine (Psych), Pat de Caprariis (geology), Paul Dubin (Chem), Joe Kuczkowski (Assoc Dean), Jon Luke (Math), Andrew Olson (CSCI), David Stocum (Dean), Steve Wassall (Physics), Kathryn Wilson (Assoc Dean); Fritz Kleinhans (Sec).
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Agenda:  Faculty Council Issues, Enrollment Report, Graduate Fellowship Block Grants, Spring Faculty Assembly.

KJ opened the meeting at 10 AM with a report on Faculty Council Issues. Faculty Affairs is charged with reviewing the number of sub-levels under the category of 'Lecturer' appointments.   Bloomington wants two sublevels (Senior Lecturer and Lecturer) while IUPUI wants 3 levels (Lecturer, Associate Lecturer, and Assistant Lecturer).
The T ERA Award has become the Trustees Teaching Award.  It is for full time employees, but Medicine would like to extend to clinical people and the SOS would like to extend to part time lecturers.  The award will be for $2500 and is limited to 7% of the eligible teachers.
Parking Update: The new garage by the Mary Cable building should be done next August .  The three-tiered parking permit will be retained but probably represent three levels of cost, open to anyone. 
The SOS needs to nominate two University Faculty Council candidates by Feb 6.

JK reported on enrollments and an advising questionnaire.  The three-year enrollment data show that the SOS is down 4.82% from three years ago, although SCSI and Geology are up.  Reasons for the drop were discussed, including reduced science requirements by other schools and more students taking classes at IVYT.  PD thought the increase in Geology was attributable to the distance ed classes in Geology. DS urged we examine the needs of our customers and mentioned the certificate pgm in SCSI.  He feels we can control many of the issues which effect our enrollments.  JK suggested we needed more science courses accessible to the non-science majors and mentioned the changes in Ed Pgm requirements for science courses.  JK presented a draft questionnaire for evaluating SOS Undergraduate Academic Advisors.  (The objective is to garner more recognition for outstanding advisors.)  The survey would be completed by graduating seniors as part of their exit process.  FK (as always) objected that it was too long.  PD suggested including a question on how often the student actually saw their advisor.

PC initiated discussion on the Graduate Fellowship Block Grants which are also known as the RIF block grants.  This proved a hot topic and was passionately debated.  In the past the SOS submitted a RIF proposal allocating fellowships to each dept.  This year DS felt the best course was to request ten fellowships in high priority focus areas for the SOS (informatics /applied math , regenerative biology and medicine/biomaterials,  earth and environmental science , and rehabilitation / psychobiology) and to award these on a school wide basis rather then at the departmental level.  It is his feeling that if the money is spread around in small amounts to everyone, less will be accomplished then by focusing on key areas.  Bio, Chem, and Psych expressed the concern that these focus areas excluded many well qualified students.  With graduate funding perceived as being critically tight in many departments, it was suggested that the new plan represented a major change and that perhaps a middle ground would be to allocate a portion of the fellowship money to the focus areas and a portion to the best students, independent of their research area.   DS ( primarily) and KW argued that the history of funding initiatives on this campus demonstrated that focused initiatives were much more effective then unfocused ones.  DS felt it vital for the SOS to focus on key areas which are considered important at both the campus and national level and that essentially all the SOS departments could participate in these key areas.  KW reiterated the need to put graduate student funding in grant proposals whenever possible.  PD noted that the Chem graduate program now depends critically on the chem co-op program.
The problem of how to move into important new areas while supporting existing successful programs appears to have no easy or generally accepted solution.
KW reported briefly on Purdue's continuing work to develop long range plans for the 'Regional' campuses.

DS reported on an important memo from Bill Plater on retention issues.  This is a matter of major interest to the Trustees which will require a campus wide response.  DS is concerned that it will distort the SOS's efforts to deal with our own specific problems.  This will be considered further at our next meeting.

KJ will invite Nancy Chism to an SOS Steering Comm. meeting and Purdue President, Martin Jischke, to the Spring SOS Faculty Assembly meeting.

The meeting was adjourned at noon.

fwk, sec, 2-3-2001