Faculty Senate Meeting
Attendees:
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Minutes from
Reports from Standing Committees
2004 Performance Plan – Provost Bud Peterson
Expanding the Research
Expanding the Research
Expanding the Research
Expanding the
Research
Enhancing Undergraduate Education
Strengthen Graduate Recruiting
Institute Core Curriculum – Gary Gabriele
Releasing Actual Number of Votes
Student Rep for Promotion & Tenure Committee
Reports
from Standing Committees
President Persans called the meeting to order at
President Persans introduced Provost Bud Peterson who presented the 2004 Performance Plan for the Office of the Provost, a report on the Academic Affairs of the Institute. (PowerPoint presention)
The Provost expanded upon the "Enabling Functions" of his Office, and his Portfolio's Highest Priorities, first the Research Enterprise. One of the key initiatives in trying to expand the Research Enterprise is to complete the searches for the six constellations; three in the Biotech area and three in the IT area. Two of the senior constellation positions have been filled, Fred Schubert and Bob Linhardt, in IT for future chips and biocatalysis in metabolic engineering, respectively. Candidates are being interviewed for the junior constellation chairs in the IT area. The Department of Physics, and ECSE are also interviewing candidates for those positions. Progress is being made in the terms of the additional senior hires. However, one candidate withdrew, and are realistically are looking at three of the senior constellations being filled by July 1st.
Expanding
the Research
The Provost noted that a policy was distributed to the Deans regarding Tuition Waivers. Tom Apple and his office administered a total of 550 tuition waivers and a hierarchical process for allocating those tuition waivers has been established. The number of tuition waivers provided has substantially increased in order to fully support all the graduate students.
Expanding
the Research
The Provost has asked the Deans to review the composition of their faculty, to determine if that composition is appropriate and if the balance is correct for tenure-track, clinical, research and adjunct faculty. Over the course of the past two years, seven clinical positions have been transitioned to tenure-track positions. It is important to recognize that “positions” are being transitioned, not people.
Expanding
the Research
These are grants that are administered out of the Provost's office. The goal is to help faculty who have a desire and ability to become actively involved in research through some initial support, and that support is focused primarily on the support of graduate students. This is not to be confused with Vice President of Research, Art Sanderson's seed funding program, which is administered out of his office, interdisciplinary and programs that are strategically focused on biotech and IT. This program is directed at faculty members who are not currently active in research, but would like to reenergize or revitalize their research programs.
Expanding
the Research
Over the course of almost three years now, the contributions and support for cost sharing on proposals has greatly expanded.
Enhancing
Undergraduate Education
These are Vice Provost Gary Gabriele's initiatives, which
will be discussed later in the meeting during the Core Curriculum update. There was a task force this year on the
advising process that prepared a report that has been accepted by President
Jackson. The task force has been asked
to take steps to implement those recommendations. There is a search underway for a Vice Provost
for Entrepreneurship across the curriculum.
We have a search committee working on that, and a candidate is coming
back for a third visit. Some progress is
being made in terms of how entrepreneurship can be infused throughout all the
programs so that every undergraduate has some exposure to entrepreneurship
during their stay at
In expanding the role of Graduate Education, as indicated in the Provost's response to the Faculty Senate's response regarding the Graduate Tuition Policy, the outcomes of the policy (both intended and unintended) will continue to be monitored to track our students to see how they are progressing through their programs. Hopefully by this August, a better, automated tracking system, being developed by the CIO, will help staff in the individual departments to go to a common database and enter a graduate student's name, and funding source, and spreadsheets and worksheets will automatically give more complete history on students. At this time, this information is being done by hand for 1500 graduate students.
Ron Gutmann noted the Provost mentioned a number of 5000 steady state under-graduates, and wanted to know what the steady state plan for Graduate Students is; what the number is today; and how long it will take to get there. The Provost replied that the only number he could quote for Graduate Student steady state is what is posited in the Rensselaer Plan, and that was to double the number of Ph.D. graduates. At that time it was about 125 per year, so it's looking at a steady state graduation rate of about 250 Ph.D. students. He does not think that a target number for steady state graduate students has been targeted because it so heavily dependent upon the research volume. One thing that has become apparent is that when the goal of doubling the number of Ph.D. graduates every year was established, there was also a concomitant goal of $100 million dollars in terms of externally funded research. Now there is a realization now that $100 million dollars won't allow us to graduate 250 Ph.D. students a year.
Tom Apple added that as a first milestone there should be at least as many students supported externally as internally. There are 263 graduate students supported on externally funded research programs. Apple furthered that the first goal should be to try to shoot for 550 external supported to match the 550 internal. In order to do that, our funding needs to be near $80 or $90 million external. To be honest, to meet the goals of the plan, which was to double the number of Ph.D.'s to 200-250, schools that do that have typically about $180 to $200 million in external research funding.
Gutmann responded, could "part of the reason be that we also have very ambitious graduate goals and objectives, plus a very wide undergraduate program compared to some of the schools that may be in your comparison list, at least within Engineering?"
Provost Peterson replied, “The student-to-faculty ratio is something that we are working on. At Carnegie Mellon it's maybe 11/1 or 12/1 in terms of undergraduate student/faculty ratio. Here it's 16/1. It's going down, but not terribly fast. But it is going down because we are growing the faculty, and that is an issue. But what Tom is saying is the external support drives the number of graduate students; and the number of undergraduates student/faculty ratio, may drive the faculty's ability to attract external support.”
Strengthen
Graduate Recruiting
In terms of strengthening enrollment, there is a key focus on trying to recruit a freshmen class of 1200 students, which would keep us on target for our steady state value of 5000 undergraduate students. The quality of the freshmen applicants is up substantially this year. We will have a much higher number of Rensselaer Medalists in the fall. We had 222 this past fall, and we should exceed that by a significant number next fall. The reason for this is the increase in the funding for the Rensselaer Medalist from $10,000 per year to $15,000 per year; so it is a $60,000 scholarship, a substantial increase. The response from the students has been very positive.
By the start of the fall semester it is hoped a new Vice
Provost for Institute Diversity will be selected to strengthen the Office of
Institute Diversity, and enhance overall diversity at
Vice Provost, and Dean of Graduate Education Tom Apple, stated "very late in the process we decided that in order to get the best candidates possible we ought to employ an external search, and that slowed us down a little bit. But on the other hand we are likely to get far better candidates." Provost Peterson added that within two weeks candidates will probably be brought in, so our schedule is about two months behind. Geisler asked if there would be an open presentation or some opportunity to meet or interact with the candidates. The Provost suggested that possibly there should be an open forum to the faculty, and he will discuss it with Dean Apple.
Linnda Caporael, Chair of the Faculty Senate asked if the Provost expected the Institute Diversity position to be filled by a person who is a faculty member or has been a faculty member, or someone with Human Resource or Personnel type of background. Tom Apple asked to make a comment that, originally, the thought was to use a faculty member in a tenured slot, with a lot of proposal writing experience, and they are still considering this. However, there are a lot of people that do this position very well that don't come from that background, Georgia Tech being a classic example. It has not been made an absolute requirement. The Provost added that the ad refers to the appointment as 'tenured full-professor is preferred.' Sandra Nierzwicki-Bauer put together a proposal that was not funded, two years ago, and we invited in a panel to help us. There were probably about six people on that panel that were met with reviewed our new submission which is currently under review and they were people in these types of positions at other institutions. Initially someone who would have a faculty appointment was being leaned towards. My opinion changed substantially after interaction with this group when only one of which was in a faculty position. “There are pros and cons to both but we are going to find the person who can do the best job.”
The Provost considers the most important function of his office is the ability to attract, develop and retain the very highest quality faculty possible. The Provost has been extremely pleased that over the course of the past several years very few faculty have been lost. Large numbers of very highly qualified faculty are being brought in and the current faculty are being worked with to expand the opportunities for those who are already very successful and provide opportunities for those who wish to become more successful. Faculty is not being lost to other institutions, and that is a very positive sign.
Regarding oversight of Academic Portfolios, President Jackson
mentioned at her Town Meeting, it is moving forward on many fronts.
One of the reasons this is possible is our very effective and very
efficient process by which resources are allocated.
At times it seems cumbersome, at times it seems overly restrictive,
but if looked at nationally regarding what type of faculty renewal is going
on at other institutions and what type of faculty growth is going on, there
aren’t many institutions where it has reached the level of
Linnda Caporael pointed out that the FS has recommended that Chairs have some discretionary funds that could be built into their budgets. She asked, "How is it that the Administration is now able to take advantage of funding opportunities that are not part of the Performance Plan, but that emerge, and that require some kind of quick action to exploit that opportunity?"
Provost Peterson answered that the Faculty Senate has talked
about contingency funds at Faculty Senate meetings and a recommendation was put
forward that each Dean have 5% of their annual budget in terms of discretionary
money. For the
Gary
Gabriele - Institute Core Curriculum
Geisler added, "Is there a reason the
Provost Peterson added that what is advantageous about this approach is that it would have been easy for this committee to come up with a series of courses...but what they've done is an approach that says figure out a way that you can meet the outcomes that we expect and come forward with proposals. There is obviously some oversight from a curricular content and there is also some oversight from a budgetary perspective. "If H&SS wants to hire a biologist to teach a biology course, then the Dean is going to have to somehow justify that that is an optimal use of resources, and there are some other factors that come in here and the Core Curriculum Committee would hopefully have some input, too." (PowerPoint presentation)
Linnda Caporael motioned to accept the results of the election as submitted by the Vice President of the Faculty Senate. Seconded by Achille Messac. The motion passed.
Releasing
Actual Number of Votes
There was some discussion regarding whether or not, in the future, the policy should be that actual number of votes for candidates be released, as there is precedent both ways for announcing election results. No decision was arrived at, but this and other issues regarding the actual voting procedures will be taken up next semester.
Student
Rep for Promotion & Tenure Committee
The Provost mentioned an issue that has come up in terms of the Student Representative to the Faculty Senate Promotion & Tenure Committee. There is one representative to the FS P&T committee that is elected by the students. This year that was Al Wallace; he is finishing his second year and is stepping down. The students contacted the Provost's office and they contacted a number of individuals, and some individuals agreed to run in that election. However, the Student Senate neglected to include the names of the individuals on the ballot. So the options were to hold a special election, or as alternatively suggested by the Provost (and discussed with the Promotion and Tenure committee) the Student Senate Executive Committee could interview the candidates and then make a selection or recommendation to the Faculty Senate. The interviewing alternative was accepted.
Ellen Esrock mentioned that she would bring a proposal concerning a revision to the grading system to the next meeting. She did some research already and will continue to contact a few people. If anyone would like to share thoughts with her she would be interested in further comments. President Persans added that it was the intent of the Executive Committee to invite student representatives to the next meeting in order to address this question.
Provost Peterson asked what the process is. President Persans answered that the FS is only thinking about the initial stages where the senate will discuss it and make a recommendation. Linnda Caporael added that it is written in the constitution that the Faculty Senate makes the recommendation to the Provost, and the Provost takes to the President, and to the Board of Trustees.
The Provost wanted to know if there might be a motion and a vote on this at the next meeting, because it may be that it requires some significant amount of discussion among the faculty. Further discussion about the anticipated motion was left for next week's meeting.
The meeting adjourned at