SOS Steering Committee Minutes

December 3, 2004

Present: Voting Members: Pamela Crowell (Pres.), Carl Cowen (Dean), Steve Randall (BIOL), David Malik (CHEM), Ray Chin (CSCI), Andy Barth (GEOL), Owen Burkinshaw (MATH), Marvin Kemple (PHYS), Jane Williams (PSY); Non-Voting: Fritz Kleinhans for Phil Fastenau (Sec), Kim Nguyen (Asst. Dean).

PC opened the meeting at 11 AM.

I. The Agenda was accepted and the Minutes from 11-5-04 accepted. PC reported that our meeting would be somewhat abbreviated because of a scheduled fire drill.

II. P&T Guidelines:

DM submitted and reported on the work of the ad hoc committee to review and revise the SOS P&T guidelines. Revisions were needed to deal with Lecturers, Scientists, and the new requirements for third year reviews. In addition, an outline of the key steps for P&T was added. No major changes were made to the basic guidelines. DM feels his subcommittee is done and wishes to turn the document over to the SOS SC for final review and polish.

CC reported that CSCI has requested a change in the allowed composition of the Primary Committee. They would like to open it to the entire IUPUI community, rather than just the SOS. Their sense is that sometimes other members of the IUPUI community may be in a better position to evaluate their candidates than others in the SOS. All this is driven by the need to add full professors from outside the home department when the home department does not have enough to populate the Primary Committee. Logically, this requested change would apply to all the departments in the SOS. Currently the Dean has approval authority for non-departmental appointments to the Primary Comm.

PC was concerned that the SC might not have the authority to make such changes to the P&T Guidelines, since we are not all full professors. A review of past history revealed that the current guidelines were implemented by David Stocum, but never voted on by the faculty. Additionally Platter has issued guidelines that presumably supercede the SOS guidelines. Nevertheless the SOS guidelines are deemed important because of some of the specific issues related to SOS promotions. The general consensus was that the SC should submit the revised guidelines to the SOS faculty for a vote (after all revisions and polishing are completed).

III. SOS Committees:

PC wants to review the existing SOS committees to develop a coherent view of their responsibilities, representation, reporting requirements, etc. She has asked each of the committee chairs for this info. She wants all of them to make a report at the Spring Faculty Assembly.

IV. Chair and Assist/Assoc Dean Reviews:

These reviews are to be completed by July 1. Practically, this means by the end of the semester. Kim Nguyen from the Dean's Office will be reviewed and Frank Schultz's start date will be checked to confirm his eligibility for review. The question was raised whether program directors should also be reviewed, such as Jay Siegel from Forensics. The subcommittee for these Administrative reviews is drawn for the SOS SC.

Once again the committee will reinvent the wheel and develop a new instrument for the evaluation process. OB wisely suggests we start with the old instruments. John Hazer has experience with developing such instruments but will be on sabbatical spring semester. JW also has experience and offered to help. CC desires input on the instruments. The Chairs and Deans should have an opportunity to include questions they would like input on. PC will contact the reviewes for their CV's before the next SC meeting.

The usual discussion ensued as to how to increase faculty participation in the review process. The usual culprits were paraded: e.g the sense on the part of some faculty that the reviews made no difference and the fear on the part of others for reprisals to negative reviews.

The SC requested and CC wholly concurred that CC should stress to the faculty the importance of the reviews to him and that he takes them seriously and will read them.

V. Research Space:

CC considers lack of research space (one of) the most serious impediments to the growth of the school and wants to double our available research space. This is a major priority and has been addressed in the Chairs meeting. CSCI will be getting more space outside of the SL-LD complex. There may be possibilities for Geology also. CC proposes moving the non-student portions of the Dean's office out, also, to make more wet lab space. Various aspects of the problem were discussed including costs of renovation from dry to wet versus converting under utilized classroom wet space to research wet space and the availability of room in the crawl spaces for adding additional utility services.

The fire bell adjourned the meeting shortly after 11 AM.

Submitted by

F.W. Kleinhans, Physics

Resident Astronomer and SOS SC Substitute Secretary

12-6-04

Approved 01/14/05