FC970116 Minutes:

Approved FC970403.

Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis

Faculty Council Meeting

January 16, 1997

School of Dentistry, Room S115

3:30 - 5:30 p.m.

Present: Administration: Chancellor Gerald Bepko. Deans: Lawrence Goldblatt, P. Nicholas Kellum, David Stocum, H. Oner Yurtseven. Elected Faculty: William Blomquist, S Edwin Fineberg, Julie Fore, Paul Galanti, Robert Havlik, Sara Hook, Nathan Houser, Miriam Langsam, Thomas Luerssen, Byron Olson, Richard Peterson, Richard Pflanzer, Rebecca Porter, Gerald Powers, Terry Reed, Frederick Rescorla, Bernadette Rodak, Beverly Ross, William Schneider, Martin Spechler, Stephen Stockberger, Soren Svanum, Jeffery Vessely, Kathleen Warfel, Jeffrey Watt, Robert Weetman, Karen West, Harriet Wilkins, Charles Yokomoto.

Alternates Present: Deans: J. M. Kapoor for Roberta Greene, Shirley Ross for Angela McBride, Julie Fore for Nancy Eckerman. Elected Faculty: Julie A. Fore for Nancy Eckerman, Nancy Badia-Elder for Janice Froehlich.

Ex Officio Members Present: James Baldwin, Steven Mannheimer, Carl Rothe, Rosalie Vermette.

Absent: Administration: Trudy Banta, William Plater. Deans: A. James Barnes, Paul Bippen, Trevor Brown, Robert Holden, Continuing Studies representative, John Rau, Robert Shay, Philip Tompkins, Donald Warren, Charles Webb. Elected Faculty: Charalambos Aliprantis, W. Marshall Anderson, Susan Ball, Merrill Benson, Joseph Bidwell, Ulf Jonas Bjork, Jana Bradley, Thomas Broadie, Lynn Broderick, Paul Brown, William Burke, Kenneth Byrd, David Canal, John Eble, Nancy Eckerman, Naomi Fineberg, Karen Gable, Patricia Gallagher, Bernardino Ghetti, Sanjiv Gokhale, Richard Gregory, Robert Hall, Dean Hawley, William Hohlt, Antoinette Hood, Elizabeth Jones, Henry Karlson, Robert Keck, M Jan Keffer, Michael Klemsz, Raymond Koleski, Colleen Larson, Stephen Leapman, Joyce Man, Rebecca Markel, Najja Modibo, Fred Pavalko, David Peters, Virginia Richardson, Richard Rogers, Mark Seifert, Erdogan Sener, Jay Simon, Marianne Wokeck, Mervin Yoder. Ex Officio Members: Henry Besch, Michael Cochran, Richard Fredland, Stuart Hart, Dolores Hoyt, Juanita Keck, Virgie Montgomery, Bart Ng, William Orme, Marshall Yovits.

Visitors: Mark Grove (Registrar’s Office), Patrick Rooney (Administration), Mark Sothmann (Allied Health Sciences).

Agenda Item I: Call to Order

Porter: I would like to call this meeting to order. I want to thank everyone for getting out in this cold weather to attend this meeting.

Agenda Item II: Approval of Minutes: November 7, 1996

Porter: Our next item of business is the approval of the November 7, 1996 minutes. Are there any changes in those minutes?

Langsam: I move that we approve them.

Vermette: I second the motion.

Porter: It has been moved and seconded that the minutes of November 7, 1996 be approved. All in favor, say “Aye.” Opposed? [none] The minutes are approved.

Agenda Item III: Administrative Report: Chancellor Gerald Bepko

Porter: We will now go to the Administrative Report with Chancellor Bepko.

Bepko: I have a brief report. First, I would like to report on the enrollment. We only have the sketchiest data at this point because it is not far enough into the term to have the full report, but the early returns show enrollment increases. For just Indianapolis we are up about 212 students as of right now over where we were last year. With Columbus, we are up over 300 students over where we were last year which is about one percent. We are up, just for Indianapolis, over 6,000 credit hours above where we were last year at this time which is approaching two percent. With Columbus, we are up abut 7,000 credit hours over where we were last year at this time which is very positive. The only other campus for which I have information is Bloomington which is down about 400 heads; about 1.2 percent and down about 4,500 credit hours; down about one percent.

The applicants were up for the spring term and admissions were up for the spring term so we continue to load the pipeline so that I think in the future we will have more options to reshape and continue to reshape the student body and to encourage higher preparation on the part of the students who are applying.

Apropos of something you may have heard about. I don’t know if it has penetrated much in the Indianapolis market, but there was some sensitivity over an article that appeared in the Sunday Herald Times in Bloomington that reported on the new advertising campaign that Indiana University has launched. Some of you may have seen the commercials. They are on television now. The Sunday Herald Times’ article referenced an $825,000 marketing blitz with television commercials designed to enhance the University’s image and raise its visibility as an institution of extremely high quality which is striving to be efficient, effective, and accountable. The important thing to know is that approximately one-half of the funding for the comprehensive public relations plan has come from private sources some of which was specified by people who are concerned about Indiana University’s image and that it wasn’t as high as it needs or deserves to be. The other portion of the funding was reallocated from funds Indiana University annually expends on recruiting and marketing efforts. So, no money was taken away from academic programs.

One of the things which has generated our good enrollments here is the atmosphere and the ambience that all of you create and that in particular is symbolized by something called “Team - IUPUI.” I don’t know whether you have seen any of the people who volunteered and worked in this effort, but it is something that I think gives students a really good first impression. We have cut down the waiting lines for things like drop and add. We have provided all kinds of services so that people could get what they want, not in academic terms, however. We can’t allow for students’ rights to curriculum or to set the academic standards, but we can provide business transactions that students need in order to get their academic plans worked out. I think we have done a lot to streamline the process. Team - IUPUI is a symbol of the kind of service commitment that we have where students get free parking tags, pens, cups, hot chocolate, maps. All sorts of things that help them get a good feeling about studying at IUPUI. I hope you will congratulate the people that you may know who were involved in Team - IUPUI.

The Edward C. Moore Teaching Symposium is coming up as it always does at this time of year. I have some pamphlets that I hope you will pick up after the meeting. This year’s Edward C. Moore Symposium is devoted to problem-based marketing. It is also going to take place on a number of different dates. This is a topic that is too big for one day so the kick off will be on Friday, February 28, with a national figure on problem-based learning as the principal presenter. There will also be four other dates: March 6-7 and March 20-21, for follow-up sessions on problem-based learning. It is a very interesting program.

The legislative activities are under way at the State House. There is a lot of information available now on what has happened to the University’s requests and the recommendations of the Commission for Higher Education. The first reaction is state government which comes in the form of the recommendations that the State Budget Agency makes. As you can expect, the best recommendation was the one we made. The Commission for Higher Education came pretty close this year, as I think was noted at our December meeting, but the State Budget Agency has cut back from that, although I think that sometimes marks the low point for the budget as it works its way through the General Assembly. I don’t think we should be depressed at this point. Just to give you an example, the basic maintenance for our operations was suggested to be 4 percent by the universities; 3.6 percent by the Commission for Higher Education; and now the State Budget Agency has recommended 2.5 percent in the first year and 2.8 percent in the second year for all of higher education. There was a quality improvement request made above and beyond the 4 percent for maintenance of our budget. The Quality Improvement request was for two additional percentage points for the universities; one to be used for technology and one to be used in the case of IU for Strategic Directions. The Commission for Higher Education agreed and recommended that there be two percentage points for quality improvement; one of those for operating, which will be our Strategic Directions, and one percent for technology, but they recommended that be in cash -- one time only -- not built into the base of the university.

The State Budget Agency has recommended even less; nothing for operating. No program improvement money for operating. That is, there will be no money for Strategic Directions and one percent, one time funding, for technology. That is something though.

There is lots of discussion about tuition increases. The University has assumed 4 percent. The Commission for Higher Education recommended 3 percent for resident undergraduates and 4 percent for all other. The State Budget Committee is recommending 2 percent for resident undergraduate and 3 percent for all other. As you expect, the legislature will be the ones that will be least likely to recommend tuition increases because people see that as a form of tax and the legislators are not likely to want to increase taxes.

Finally, one last item. We have three review panels for academic administrators that we have talked about before. We have copies of the proposed membership for those three review panels. Just for general information, the Scott Evenbeck review panel will be chaired by Irene Tajalli from Social Work. The review committee chair for Lillian Charleston [Affirmative Action Officer on this campus] will be Barbara Fischler, and the review committee chair for Bill Plater’s review committee, hasn’t yet agreed to do this, but we are proposing that it be Tony Sherrill from Religious Studies. Those committees are being formed and will be busy at work in very short order.

Agenda Item IV: President of the Faculty Report: William Schneider

Porter: We are going to move on to the President’s Report.

Schneider: There are several things that have happened worth noting since we last met in December. I will try to be brief and mention the most important. The Trustees’ meeting was held here on the Indianapolis campus in December shortly after our Faculty Council meeting. I think especially noteworthy at the meeting was the session that was held between the Trustees and some of the faculty members at IUPUI. It seems by all accounts to have gone very well. There were a dozen faculty members from seven different schools at IUPUI who met with the nine Trustees. They even had a seating arrangement. It wasn’t exactly boy/girl/boy/girl, but it was, for the most part, Trustee/faculty member/Trustee/faculty member to discourage a we/they feeling and to encourage interaction. It worked pretty well. Among the issues that were raised, in no particular order, were undergraduate education at IUPUI, the Division I NCAA athletics proposal, the identity of IUPUI, the proposed teaching awards, student housing, and the hospital merger. I heard pretty unanimous praise for the meeting, interest from all parties ranging from the President of the Trustees down to the individual faculty member. For those members who participated, I thank them very much.

As far as action by the Trustees at the meeting, the revisions to the Student Code were passed unanimously with about 30 seconds of discussion. There was much more discussion, however, on the proposed teaching awards although without agreement being reached. There was a proposal to adopt the recommendation of the President’s committee and the recommendations from UFC. These were discussed at some length, but then tabled in order to give the UFC and the chairs of the President’s committee a chance to see if they could agree on a recommendation jointly at the January meeting. Assuming that something is passed next week, it will then to the campuses for implementation.

There was some discussion of the tenure-ineligible faculty at a subcommittee meeting of the Trustees. We are still gathering data in order to help focus our attention on which parts and which of the many issues would be worth our efforts. The UFC Faculty Affairs Committee will have a recommendation for the February meeting of the UFC. Incidentally, that will be at IUPUI on February 11. I don’t think there will be anything at the January Trustees’ meeting next week on tenure-ineligible faculty.

There are other items that are under consideration by various committees of the Faculty Council here on campus. Two of them are actually subjects for later in today’s meeting -- the review of Boards of Review Procedures and the University College -- and I will say a word or two about that when they come up at that time.

Agenda Item V: Election of Faculty Boards of Review

Porter: The next item on our agenda is election of the Faculty Boards of Review. Unfortunately, we do not have a quorum present for voting. Because the integrity of the Boards of Review process is critical, we will not be voting today.

We do have a case that needs to be assigned to a Board so please encourage your colleagues to be present at our next meeting so that we can elect the new Boards.

Agenda Item VI: Report of Ad Hoc Committee on Boards of Review Procedures

Porter: That will allow us to move on to the report of the Ad hoc Committee on Boards of Review Procedures. Presenting that will be the chair, Carl Rothe.

Rothe: Thank you, Becky. The reasons for revision of the procedures for Faculty Boards of Review are:

1. The number of grievances to consider increased markedly last year;

2. The complexities and length of time of the hearings has also increased, and

3. Starting the process is very time consuming for our volunteer, part-time President.

Faculty Board of Review have been designed to provide faculty members or librarians a peer group to hear and evaluate a grievance concerning an action by the administration, usually a departmental chair or dean, that is considered to be unfair, improper or unreasonable by the faculty member.

The power of a Board comes from gathering information, informally or formally, evaluation and then making a reasoned recommendation to the Chancellor. A Board does not, indeed cannot, make a binding decision. My experience with about a half dozen cases suggests that the Chancellor takes our recommendation very seriously. This is not to say that the faculty member has always been upheld. About half of the cases have been resolved in the Preliminary Hearing, in which mediation via compromises between the Administration and the faculty member lead to a resolution.

This is a preliminary report. Our final report will be in conjunction with proposed Bylaw amendments from our Constitution and Bylaws Committee.

Some changes are needed and can be made now. We are announcing to you some that are minor, but will be highly useful. They are outlined in the handout that we will recommend to the Executive Committee to be implemented immediately. We, Professors Galanti, Hernandez, Powers, and Dean Emeritus Walter Daly, are asking for your comments and possible objections -- now or later.

First: Assign Board Members from an Elected Pool

The first three are related to the selection of assignments and orientation of the boards.

The first proposal: With three boards and two or less cases a year, no problem. With three boards and five cases, we have serious problems. Particularly, we have a problem with resignations or people going on sabbatical, etc. The Bylaws mandate: No members from the same unit as the grievant. No more than two from the same academic unit. No more than three of the same rank. No less than four tenured. We are suggesting that all Board members be placed in a pool from which five would be chosen for a specific case by the Executive Committee.

Langsam: Would there be more people put into the pool than have traditionally been on the three Boards of Review or do you see just the same number of people?

Rothe: There would be the same number; a total of 15. We will elect enough to fill out the pool.

Langsam: Why is that not going to create as much of a problem if you are still maintaining the same number of people that you need for a board? Why, if we go into the pool situation, wouldn’t it perhaps be a good idea to increase by two or three the number of members being elected?

Rothe: Are you suggesting that we may elect more for the next time?

Langsam: I am not sure, sir. If, in fact, you divide up the 15 into three boards and you go back to the situation you just described of three boards and five cases, you are right back in the same problem and if one or two of them are on sabbatical, you have the same problem you have now.

Rothe: True, but at least the Executive Committee can rearrange board members more easily.

Langsam: As a suggestion, it may even be worth having 20 people in the pool to avoid the problems you are talking about.

Baldwin: I agree with Miriam. That wouldn’t work. What has actually happened is that we have had such a system anyway because many of the board members disappear and the Executive Committee goes to the other Boards and transfers people. So, this wouldn’t change the current situation at all.

Rothe: What we are trying to tell you is that this is what we are doing and let you at least know.

Baldwin: I suggest 25 people.

Schneider: What Carl is saying is correct. He is really telling you that this is the way things are done in practice. So, I take it that you are suggesting something for the subsequent changes to be recommended later.

Rothe: We will definitely take it into account. Harriet Wilkins, the Chair of the Constitution and Bylaws, Committee, is listening with care.

The second one. The Bylaws are silent as how to appoint a permanent replacement if someone retires, leaves the university, etc. You might look at Bylaw IV.E.3. The Nominating Committee does not have a plethora of faculty members or librarians eager to serve on these boards. The Executive Committee already has the power to appoint a replacement for the President or Vice President or the University Faculty Council representatives. We are just telling you that the Executive Committee will indeed continue replacing members of the Boards. We will get that codified in the Bylaws sometime in the future.

The third item is that orientation is needed to encourage the Board members to read carefully the Bylaws and to ask questions. Therefore, we are planning to have an orientation meeting for all of the Board members soon after the election.

The fourth item relates to action if Preliminary Conference mediation fails. One of the problems is, if the preliminary committee makes a report after the hearing, and if it is not considered satisfactory to the grievant, the grievant will not want to have the same Board for the Formal Hearing because the Board members will have already reached a decision against the grievant. That would mean they would have to go back and start over again with a new Board. This was changed last year. We want this clarification to be sure that the Board at the Preliminary Hearing do not make a report specifying why they do not support the grievant. They can then continue on to a Formal Hearing and have more information brought in and then make a reasoned recommendation.

Preliminary Hearing Not Mandatory

A fifth proposal. The mediation process shouldn’t go on and on. We specify that a preliminary hearing is not mandatory if agreed to by both the grievant and administration.

Dismissal

A sixth item. It is obvious that with dismissal the possibility of an informal mediation is unlikely. The case is serious enough to warrant a formal hearing. The Bylaws are silent in terms of the Board’s review of cases of dismissal. Yet, we, the IUPUI Faculty Council, passed last year procedures that would indeed give the faculty member that is being dismissed the right to have a Board of Review hearing. We say, “Fine, we are recognizing that, but there will not be a preliminary hearing.” We have had one case already.

The final item is in terms of records. They have not been adequately kept in the past. Over the last 10 years of what are the types of grievances considered? How many cases have been mediated successfully that didn’t have to go to a Formal Hearing? Was the grievant supported by the Board? Were the recommendations sustained by the administration? These details are not available. We are going to suggest that more records be kept in the future to handle this.

Finally, a major problem is to find a more efficient and effective mediation procedure to replace these Preliminary Hearings. And, particularly to reduce, but not eliminate, the load of grievances on the President of the Faculty and the Dean of the Faculties. So, we have a list of options listed. We have looked at the proposals that are being used at IU Bloomington, Purdue - West Lafayette, and the University at Michigan as possibilities. The committee met for two hours earlier today and will be meeting in the future to look at this some more.

What we are asking you to do is to look through these proposals. If there is something you don’t like, some other suggestions you have, please let a member of the committee know. Their E-mail addresses are at the bottom of the handout.

Mannheimer: If preliminary conference fails and we keep no report, will minutes be kept? Is there some record? It seems to me that there is something to be learned from failure.

Rothe: If the grievant drops the case, then a report will be made and kept on file. But, if the grievant does not drop the case, and says, “I am not satisfied,” to preclude having to start over again and to allow the same group of people to conduct the Formal Hearing is what we are suggesting at this stage. In the past, detailed reports have been made.

Mannheimer: Would it be possible to maintain a report but seal it?

Rothe: I would hope so, (but the members should not attempt to reach a conclusion at that stage.)

Mannheimer: After the preliminary conference to actually file a report but seal it if you into a formal conference.

Rothe: If you go into a formal conference, you don’t need to seal it because you hear witnesses, accumulate more information and you go forward. The idea is that mediation is not to make a decision. It is to get the administration and the grievant to come together on some mutually acceptable solution. It is the Formal Hearing where a clear recommendation is supposed to be made.

Mannheimer: I understand that, but maybe I am confused. If the preliminary conference fails, what we have is a bunch of unresolved things, where you say “potato” and I say “potato” and we are not going to agree. Presumably that same tension will reemerge in the formal hearing, but perhaps in a different way. Is there potentially, at some point in the future, even after the formal hearing, where an understanding of what failed in the preliminary conference might be instrumental?

Rothe: It is my experience that writing those reports is very time consuming because you have to be very careful how you write them. It seems to me that this is not the time to pull that information together.

Langsam: Steve, I would think that your example of preliminary hearing was really a hearing if what you are saying is accurate. What a real preliminary conference is, is an opportunity to bring two people together in the presence of what is considered a neutral body to work the issue out between themselves. So, there is not somebody asking questions or necessarily gathering information. That is what I think is intended.

Mannheimer: I had an experience in my school a couple of years ago in which we had what we called an “informal grievance hearing” to avoid the formality of a formal grievance hearing. We hashed through a very specific grievance.

Langsam: It probably wasn’t a preliminary hearing.

Mannheimer: Was my experience outside of this and where does my experience fall?

Langsam: I’ll tell you later. [Laughter] I had a second question. If we look at this major change you are talking about under consideration and we create a separate group, doesn’t that, in a funny sense, go against what is in #4? In a sense what #4 says is in the past, because we have done this preliminary thing and we have had a report, the grievant then says “I am not happy. I need a new Board.” So, we now have two Boards involved. This process, if we set up a special grievance committee, the grievance committee would replace the preliminary, then we would turn around and have an official faculty board doing much the same thing as the grievance group. Doesn’t it put us right back to where we are with #4?

Rothe: The suggestion has been made to us, and what we are looking at is to have a group of maybe 5 to 8 people form the grievance committee. But, on a particular case, only 2 or 3 would meet informally with the grievant and the administrator and try to mediate. If they can work something out, fine. The suggestion has been made that the people who serve on this committee have some specific training for mediation.

Langsam: When those of us who are administrators were allowed to be on the Boards of Review, I served on a Board of Review and as the chair of the committee, that is exactly what I did. I am not sure why having the chair of a particular board serve as that initial mediator for preliminary things doesn’t work. So, that is another option for your consideration.

Rothe: You are saying to have the chair of the board serve as the mediator?

Langsam: That is right. Then, if in fact that person is unable to bring the parties together, then it goes to the full board.

Vessely: When you talk about the chair serving as the mediator, isn’t that the role that the President is serving now?

Rothe: One of the problems with the President now is that this has taken so much time in terms of Bill, and particularly Kathy [Warfel], that we need to have some mechanism to reduce that load.

Vessely: But, it is not because that system didn’t work?

Rothe: I think you are right. One of the problems is that, if a President comes in and has never served on a Faculty Board of Review or a promotion and tenure committee . . .

Vessely: Then we should make all of those qualifications for being President. [Laughter] I am just going back to the plan when I was in that position in which it seemed to me that having a group of people do this is where the problem is. Having a person do this, a person of Bill’s stature having been elected to that position, is the best possible solution. Now, you have a problem in that it is too time consuming. It doesn’t seem to me that you need to now replace him with a cadre of people. It seems to me that you need to have a President’s assistant for grievances or something, and, a person of a similar stature do that as opposed to compounding the problem by having another whole group of people. All you are doing is creating another mini board of review. What is needed most at that point is somebody with a clear head to sit down between two or ten people who don’t agree and sort out what they are really saying and make it happen as opposed to having another group of people do it.

Yokomoto: A faculty member, not in the School of Engineering and Technology, consulted me on his Board of Review [process]. I was shocked to hear that not only is there the preliminary hearing and the formal hearing, but the reconciliation hearing with the Dean of the Faculties which turned out to be, in opinion, as complex as a preliminary hearing. The amount of work that confronts a faculty member just to go through the Boards of Review process is one thing, but it seems as it now, because of the complexity of cases, that the discussion with Dean Plater who tries to resolve the issue is becoming as complex as the preliminary hearing. Maybe you could look into merging the preliminary hearing with the reconciliation meeting that takes place between the grievant and the Dean of the Faculties.

Rothe: One would hope so. If we had a group of people who are trained in mediation and two or three are assigned to a case, but they indeed would work with the Dean of the Faculties as well as the grievant as well as the dean.

Yokomoto: If the discussion behind closed doors with the Dean of the Faculties and the parties who are involved becomes a long drawn out process, it will become essential to look again at the preliminary hearing before the Board of Review. For the faculty member, that becomes a tremendously long and very difficult process.

Rothe: They skip the preliminary hearing. This would substitute for the preliminary hearing.

Spechler: I think we are really getting somewhere in this discussion. Steve Mannheimer is right in that we should have a mediation effort that wouldn’t prejudice the eventual hearing. We need some kind of ombudsman. I do think that it is quite unfair and unreasonable to expect a presently serving President or Vice President of the faculty assembly to do this too. I think the natural thing would be to ask some past president, all of whom have achieved recognition and have accumulated experience, to assume this role of mediation. Such an ombudsman could then report orally to the chair of the Board of Review. This would expedite things. It would provide an experienced, respected, senior colleague to do the mediation -- someone who has seen these sort of things before and who is not deeply involved in many of our present activities. It might be some president of the faculty assembly who has recently retired, as has been the case in Bloomington. That would be a real contribution and a good use of the experience that these people have accumulated.

Galanti: I am on the committee with Carl. One of the concerns that we had -- Charlie’s point about combining the preliminary conference with the Dean of the Faculties -- was to avoid the perception that someone, in fact, has become administration. The ombudsman, in theory, I think it might be difficult to get someone to say, “Yes, I am now willing to do this on a voluntary basis. I am willing to help faculty members.” But, if we have someone who is hired, that person becomes an administrator and then the issue comes up, “Is this person representing the faculty or is this person directly or indirectly, perhaps unintentionally, representing administrative interests?” We are trying to streamline and cut down the time involved. It seems a little complex to be adding more people, but it really does, in my mind, lean towards streamlining the process while still protecting our interests as faculty members.

Hook: For one thing, having served on several board of review over the past few years, mediation has to be distinguished separate from the formal hearing. It hasn’t happened a lot sooner because by the time, at least I have found, you get to that preliminary stage, a lot of times the parties are so far apart it is really a wasted effort. Also, you have the Board trying to really do two different things: trying to mediate and yet having a distinct impression it is not going to work. So, you are trying to almost accomplish two roles. I think with the number of grievances going on, we should address the issue that it is time consuming. The cases, at least the ones I have had an opportunity to serve on, are extremely complex. They require a lot of time, not only in terms of the meetings, but also in terms of gathering information, digesting information, talking amongst each other to try to proceed, even finding a meeting time is almost ridiculous. I wonder if, since time is money, we might be better served for the mediation -- a whole host of people in the community trained in mediation, and it might not be willing to have a jump start process where a professional mediator would be brought in. That could be offered very early when the problem develops. Then, if that continues, it is time for the formal hearing. I really see a need to separate that.

Mannheimer: Is there any indication of why these review cases are increasing? Are there types of cases that are coming to the floor that five or ten years ago were not or are we simply a more litigious society and so we accept that as the cost of doing business? Has there been any sort of review of the reviews that can provide an overview that might allow us to take preemptive measures to solve our problems?

Rothe: This is partly a question of records. We don’t have the information certainly for 10 years. There is the problem of lack of adequate funding to support faculty research. Changes are here. We hope the trend is not rapidly increasing. The possibility exists that it may trim back down again and we will not have the problems.

Porter: We also have more faculty than before.

Bepko: I am not sure that this trend is going up. In fact, I think it has been up and down. We may have more right now than we have had for several years, but there was a time over the last few years where we didn’t have any for a while. So, I think it goes up and down. I don’t think there is any similarity of grievances. They cover a whole range of problems. We need to look at it further but, I don’t think there is much there right now. I do think that Becky’s point is a good one though. There are more faculty. Whatever increases there have been in grievances taken to Boards of Review may match the growth percentage of the total faculty over a period of 10 years.

Warfel: I think that bringing in a professional mediator could address some of the problems. But, even before you get to the well thought out case mediation phase, what a lot of the faculty members need is somebody to talk to, to say, “This is what I think is going on. How does it sound to you? Is this the way it is supposed to be?” So, whether there is the grievance committee, whether it is made up of elected individuals or all the past secretaries or whatever, I think that if there is a group of experienced people who can just listen that would give some more preliminary effect. I think we also need to exclude the lawyers. No lawyers allowed. [Laughter]

Rothe: One of the things the committee has looked at is in terms of this process is, indeed, ex-secretaries, ex-board members, who have had experienced and also the Senior Academy -- people who are interested in the institution, who are retired.

Schneider: Another thing about the use is, in some ways if you look at the number of faculty and the increase of the number of faculty, the question is why isn’t there more use? Do we have no problems? Are there no grievances? In some ways, this mediation group might allow grievances that might come in other ways to be heard. Another reason for ups and downs has to do with the just plain knowing abut it. It is amazing how many faculty do not know about the possibilities.

Bepko: Just to go the opposite direction for a second. Did the group consider not being involved in any way at this preliminary hearing? We used to have a Board of Review system that worked pretty well. Along the way, we decided to have a “first step” in that Board of Review.

Rothe: Then we had what was called an “initial hearing” before the formal hearing. As I recall, it got codified about 10 years ago. So, I don’t think we ever went immediately to only an informal hearing.

Bepko: I think long ago we did. For 10 years we have been doing something like saying that we ought to have a chance before that very Board to see if it wasn’t something that could be resolved in a summary fashion. I don’t know any case where that has been true. Do you know of any case that has been settled where some value is added by having this preliminary process?

Rothe: As I recall, there have been about three of them that did.

Porter: We need to be bringing our comments to a close.

Yokomoto: Concerning the suggestion of a grievance committee, in the literature from the employment segment of our student placement activities, we find out that what makes a company highly prized for recent graduates is existence of a non-threatening, non-punitive grievance system within the company. The companies that don’t have this are seeing what has to be. I recently heard from a faculty member of our school regarding the lengthy mediation meeting that he went through prior to a board meeting. I was shocked to hear this, but if it is true, then I can see the value of a grievance group. I also heard a belief that, if you come up for the Board of Review hearing, your name is mud. If we can develop a non-threatening, non-punitive grievance system, we may just develop a healthy system.

Porter: Are there any other comments? [None] Thank you, Carl.

Agenda Item VII: Proposal for Establishing the University College - Plan for Faculty Council Consideration

Porter: The next agenda item is to provide us with an opportunity to discuss the proposal for establishing the University College. You should have picked up on your way in two items. One is an information, facts, and questions and answers on the proposal that is attempting to answer some questions that have begun surfacing very frequently. We also want to point out to you the flyer that announces the town meetings to discuss the University College and provide you with more information. I would also like to point out that at the bottom there is a list of individuals who are charged with listening to questions, comments, and suggestions on how to make this a better proposal and will be involved in writing the next version. Jeff Watt who is the chair of the Academic Affairs Committee is on that group and is here today. I am also on the group. Before we start this discussion, Bill, did you want to talk about what Faculty Council will be doing?

Schneider: I want to make sure you understand what is going on today and what will be happening in the future as far as the procedures are concerned. We have worked backwards assuming that the matter will come before Faculty Council at its meeting on March 6. There is a very lengthy proposal on the Web. It is currently before several of the committee of Faculty Council. There will be a series of town meetings held to get some feedback so that when it comes before Faculty Council there will be as much chance of anticipating questions as possible in order to reshape it into a form that seems to be in agreement with what seems appropriate.

In March the revision committee will not bring a 45-page document for us to deliberate on, but rather a shorter version which outlines the principles or the operating assumptions as far as the University College is concerned and then we will begin deliberations and vote expressing our views. I will be surprised if we finish in March. If we do, that is fine. That is essentially the procedures and I wanted to make sure you understand it. Today, if there are questions, it might be useful to point them out especially since Becky and Jeff are here.

Porter: As I mentioned, Dean Plater is at a meeting in San Diego -- the AAHE -- as well as Scott Evenbeck who are the individuals who are probably the most knowledgeable about most of the aspects of this. We asked Pat Rooney to be here if we have questions related to the financial aspects. We do have some resources available to answer questions.

Baldwin: Just something that came up as I was going through the longer document. It was in reference to this future thing. Are there plans there for creating university colleges a degree granting school, particularly with the associate degrees? What is the thinking on that? We offer current associate degrees in various schools but they are sort of general plus there is that new system wide IU two-year degree. In my mind, it might make sense to put these in something called “University College” for coordination and conformity. How realistic is that?

Bepko: That is not part of our plan right now, but I wouldn’t say that possibility should be ruled out altogether. It is something that the University College could grow into. But, right now that is not contemplated. We have a lot of units that grant associate degrees.

Spechler: This comment comes from someone who is very much for this proposal in principle. I think it is long overdue and I think we are well served by this initiative. Indeed, I think it doesn’t nearly far enough in some respects, but, we will have a chance to discuss that. My question has to do with the relationship between the objectives of University College, which I applaud, and the budget for University College, which I think is way too small even for the minimal objectives. Since Pat Rooney is here, who has expertise on this, I would like to ask: it does appear as if all the money for this is coming out of Strategic Directions which we heard from the Chancellor is not assured. And, that most or all of the money is directed towards the mentorship aspect of University College. The mentorship aspect certainly is a very promising initiative. I don’t think it has been evaluated quantitatively in a proper fashion. It is surprising to put all the money into an initiative which has not been evaluated in a quantitative way. We are talking here not of a few thousand dollars, but a lot of money. It does appear to me, Pat, that there is no provision for money for buyouts of professors of medicine, professors of law, etc., who may be interested in participating. No money for the Honors aspect of it. No money for the general education aspect. These are all aspects which I personally applaud, but there is no money for it. So, I would like to ask: where is the beef? I like the objectives, but I don’t see the money. How can we approve a very far reaching and very positive series of initiatives without the prospect of the money to carry them out farther?

Rooney: Marty, you are the first person to say there is not enough money there. Most of the negative comments are that we are probably doing too much too fast in terms of projecting the budget. I would like to preface my remarks by saying that the proposed budget is not necessarily what we would start out with next year. That is a budget that is proposed and it is more likely that something that we would work on over a course of a couple of years. It is really not the case that all the new money is from Strategic Directions Charter money or Campus Reallocation funds. There are a couple of pools of money that we are borrowing from. Basically, we have consolidated the three existing budgets for the UEC, the Peer Mentoring Programing, the Orientation -- is what we are already spending on these things. We also have to allow for the fact that, if we are going to make the University College an academic unit, that now it goes from being a support center financed by assessment to being an academic unit paying assessment, to create a hold harmless situation, we have to infuse some state appropriations so that the assessments that would be paid by science, liberal arts, and the other schools, that is now being paid by the University College. These funds, when transferred to the University College’s budget, are not new funds, that is just hold harmless.

The sources of new funds that are proposed are a user fee for the peer mentoring programs so that if a chair or a dean says, “We want to introduce peer mentoring to a new course or a new section” that there is some accountability for that and there is some funding for that. We are proposing a $25 headcount tax per student per section that is covered by peer mentor. This would allow directly for funding to that use of funds and would then allow chairs, deans, and faculty to do some type of implicit and explicit costs benefit analysis as to whether or not they thought the peer mentors were increasing the effectiveness of those courses, which would in turn then generate additional resources for that school if the mentoring actually increases retention rates.

Another source of funding is charging an orientation fee. Bloomington, I think, charges $55. We are proposing a $35 student orientation fee. That is a net new fee to students. Another source of funds is an exit tax so that as students leave the UEC or the University College, as they move to a school they would pay $100 tax. This was a recommendation from the Resources Tax Force from the CCPC which has apparently ceased to exist. But, one of the recommendations from them was to tie the performance of the UEC advisors to additional funding, so that we weren’t just throwing money into an organization that was growing exponentially without some kind of accountability. So, this was an effort to link resources to accountability.

The other thing I would say, in terms of your comment about the clinical professors and the law professors not being invited, is that there is about $500,000 in the proposed budget of net new funds to be used to pay for the faculty to be involved in the College. They would teach in the COAS courses or serving as advisors or serving during orientation in summer which is the busiest period preceding each fall. These funds would be used in a variety of ways, but primarily to pay for the opportunity costs to pick up a full-time faculty member’s course release so they could work with the College or teaching or advising (not the full salary). That is not a lot of money in some sense, but it is a lot of money in this context. It is money that will be going from the College back into the schools and the schools can use that in a variety of ways.

The other aspect to this budgetarily is the fact that we have bad first-year retention rates or less than desirable first-year retention rates. If you look at our retention rates for the second, third, and fourth years, we are pretty normal actually. There are pretty decent retention for those years. But, the first-year is where we are really hurting. What we are going to say to whoever becomes the dean of the University College is for there to be increased fiscal support is that there is going to be some accountability measurement. What we are proposing is a one percent per year increase in the first year retention rate. Basically, what the budgetary appendix shows is that, if we keep the normal retention rates for subsequent years but increase the first-year retention rates by one percentage point per year, then that would generate over five years about $2.5 million. By the fifth year it would increase funds by $600,000 or $700,000 a year. That would be a permanent increase in our overall university budget in terms of both the new fees and the enrollment change funds strictly from this increase in first-year retention rates. If you increase the subsequent retention rates for subsequent years, you can increase that pool of funds as well. We just said University College would only focus on that first year retention rate and that is the accountability that we are going to incorporate into its funding model and assessment. Many aspects of this become self-financing.

Fineberg: Have University Colleges elsewhere been successful in increasing retention rates?

Rooney: Scott Evenbeck is the best person to comment on that. I am not saying that to pass the buck, but I don’t want to undermine anything he would say, but I think in the proposal there is some reference to the research literature. I think what that suggests is that interventions on the part of the school in that first year are crucial for increasing retention rates generally for the campus. I can’t cite what other universities have done per se, but there is some reference to the research literature in the proposal itself.

Fore: I wanted to restate something from my understanding. It sounded to me as if you were saying that you were going to charge a student $100 to go into the school.

Rooney: The proposal is not to charge the student, but to charge the

Fore: I have been taking some undergraduate classes and the students looking at that fee courtesy wouldn’t be able to pay that.

Rooney: The only new proposed fee paid by the students would be the orientation fee and that is substantially below what most other universities charge.

Mannheimer: Would that affect schools that have their own admissions?

Rooney: Yes.

Mannheimer: So, you would be charging us $100 for the people coming directly out of high school into Herron?

Rooney: In the proposal we will still maintain direct admits, but all students will also be admitted into the College.

Sothmann: You charge $100 for each student?

Rooney: That is right.

Sothmann: The University College proposal will not affect retention in Allied Health. Three hundred students at $100 per student is $30,000 that we could use. Is there any provision for that?

Rooney: I think the check and balance in all of this is that the proposal is to have a Board of Advisors or Board of Directors that will have representation from all of the schools, both administratively and faculty. That unit will be chaired by the Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Education. It will be convened and meet regularly and that will be the policy review and analysis supporting committee for the University College. I think that those types of issues would be best addressed in that group.

Sothmann: Is the unique aspects of a school brought up in the draft of the proposal and discussion? I didn’t see it on the proposal as I was reading through it and that obviously causes us a lot of concern. We are a school that really has professional students, juniors and seniors. So, the College is really not going to have much of an impact on our retention because we have capped enrollments. We do have pre-Allied health students with direct admissions and a concern was raised in our program meetings. Is this going to have a significant impact on these students?

Bepko: I think that is the reason for having this discussion. I think that this is a concept. It is not a definitive plan that we want to defend in all its aspects. I think you have raised some good points. Both the Herron situation and Allied Health, with respect to this financing mechanism, deserve some attention.

Rooney: What we proposed was a general model and that is why we are having Jerry’s commentaries because I am not familiar with the specificity of the issue.

Fineberg: This is a fairly large entity and I am not sure that it should be taken up in full scale. I think perhaps we should consider creating a model program and doing a pilot program in a subset of students to see whether in fact we have the kind of feedback that we would like to have. Otherwise, we may be undertaking something that really won’t fly and that would be a tragedy.

Vermette: We do have a type of pilot program going on now -- the first-year initiatives -- which is already in place. I am involved in one called COAS; Science has one on Windows in Science; and there are some others going on. I don’t know much about statistics, but we are only in our fourth semester at the moment and I don’t know if it is too soon to get important data to justify what we are doing. But, these are, in effect, pilot programs as far as dealing with incoming students. We try to see if we can help them become good students and see what the retention rate is based on our work. I don’t know what the statistics will show regarding the retention rate for that. We haven’t talked about that much yet.

Rooney: Vic Borden and I are working with a team from his office and the UEC to conduct analyses for some of these pilot programs to determine whether or not you can say in any statistically significant manner if they have had an impact. I am not predicting an outcome, but I just got this charge last week. That was one of the responses to the proposal which was, “Well, we have had several interventions. What has been the effect?” There is anecdotal evidence that they have been positive, yet there is not very strong statistical analysis. We are just beginning that process now. We hope to have that soon. That is the high priority at this point.

Stocum: I am a big supporter of this concept and at the same time I can say that I think we have to watch out for the way we do this. We have to be very careful. There are two big dangers. One is expanding the functions of the University College to the point where it isn’t focusing on what it is really intended go to do which is to raise the retention and graduation rates. I recommend for your reading an article by Diane Stromer from the University of Rhode Island who describes which university colleges work and which ones don’t and why. The basic result of that analysis is that the ones that focus on the retention problems specifically are the ones that work. When they start expanding out [offering degrees, honors programs and undergraduate research, etc.,] they fail because they are too diffuse.

The second danger is that we are trying to develop the University College, focusing on it specifically, and entirely outside the context of the schools. If we can avoid those two major dangers, I think we can make this work and we can probably also solve the funding problems. If we let this get out of control, the funding problems are going to get out of control and everything is going to get diffused and then we are in trouble.

Vessely: Could I ask Dean Stocum to clarify that second one?

Stocum: The way the proposal is currently written, the schools are basically ignored. The whole university is University College. The schools are viewed just as ancillary things and a source of faculty and financial resources. I was part of the team that went to Breckenridge to talk about this, and the way this was originally conceived by Scott Evenbeck and a number of others who wrote drafts on this, it was a triangle between Science, Liberal Arts, and the UEC transformed into the college and they were all working very tightly together. But, in this proposal, the concept has gotten sharply away from that, and the college has now become the “intellectual center” of the university. The intellectual center of the university is much more than the University College. It is all of us.

Wilkins: One of the most exciting things that came out of the Gen. Ed. discussion some years ago was that in as complex a university as this one, General Education shouldn’t be something that we pawn off on one school or another and say that students can get done in their first year at the university which has been a very traditional and, I think, growing out of that discussion, is a very old fashioned way of looking at what General Education is. What came out of those discussions was that it was everybody’s responsibility and it had to continue throughout the academic career of individual students. We come to think of Gen. Ed. being the responsibility of the University College, then what does that do to what happens to students during their professional training? That may be seen by faculty and professional schools as taking that responsibility away from them. So, I would hope that we would not lose that theory of particular vision that came out of the Gen. Ed. discussions that I think was very creative, innovative and very appropriate for this particular campus.

Baldwin: To answer Dean Stocum: my question focuses on the associate degree. I spent some time at another university which had something similar. To a lot of students who come into a university from rather bad backgrounds academically a four-year degree seems a long way off. One of the benefits of an associate degree is the “carrot” effect. Two years -- I can do that. When they got their AA degree, it was a lot easier for them to say, “I can do the next two years.” They had a realistic goal in a reasonable amount of time. I would like to think that maybe an AA degree would be the prelude to further study.

Fore: Is there any data on, since we have a different sort of student base, how many times a student may change schools or majors in the course of their time here? And, what is the student fee? Does the student pay $100 every time they say they want to change schools or majors or does that not happen on this campus? [There was no response to these questions]

Schneider: Given the hour I think this has been very useful and I hope it sets the tone for us to urge you to, within the next month and one-half, attend the town meetings, do your reading and your homework, and see what we can do to answer the questions and over the issues that have been raised here.

Porter: Dean Plater is acting as the funnel for comments going to the group listed as the Coordinating Committee, but please feel free to contact any one of us. It is very helpful that ideas come forward at this point so that the changes can be made and this becomes the best proposal possible.

Agenda Item VIII: Question and Answer Period

Porter: Are there any questions to be addressed?

Vermette: I would like to ask a two-part question, partly on behalf of myself and partly on behalf of the students at IUPUI. The first part is why were the classes called off so late in the afternoon yesterday? It caused major problems from about 4:45 to about 6:00 p.m. The second question is why did we have school today? There were faculty who were unable to come in and students are complaining on the telephone. They don’t know what is going on or which end is up. The public roads are bad, the parking lots have not been cleared out so it makes parking difficult for students. We don’t seem to be responding to our students’ concerns about danger on the roads.

Watt: I don’t know whether this is true or not, but I heard that at 2:30 today the staff offices would close in the Lecture Hall.

Bepko: Yesterday or today?

Watt: Today. Classes were being held but the Registrar’s office and other offices were closed. There was a general announcement made in the Lecture Hall at 2:00 p.m. that all the classes were being held but all of the office staff could go home.

Bepko: Who made this decision?

Watt: I was in Lecture Hall 101 and someone came in and gave me a note.

Bepko: This is not an exact science. I guess we could easily ask the question, “Why did we have classes?” You said, why did we have classes last night? If you would turn those things around, some people thought that we should have canceled classes last night. The sun is out today. You say the roads are difficult, but the actual reports we received from the people who are on the scene, the Chief of Police here, the reports were that the situation had deteriorated by about 3:45 p.m. yesterday so that they were frightened. If it continued to snow even for another 45 minutes -- in fact it snowed for another two hours after that -- the parking lots would be inaccessible. You could get some cars in and then it would be a terrible traffic jam. The Chief of Police recommended that we cancel classes.

I don’t like to cancel classes. It is against all of my instincts, but when the Chief of Police recommends it and tells you what is happening in the parking lots -- it is chaos, it is snowing, raining, there is ice under the snow -- it was convincing. We had more telephone calls yesterday. All you need are flurries and people start calling with rumors. Rumors start somewhere and travel at a speed faster than the speed of light. So, we decided that last night we would cancel classes. But, for this morning, the weather reports were that the snow would be over, that it might get colder but the sun would come out.

We do have one thing that was a problem beyond what you have already mentioned, Rosalie. Bob Martin, who is in charge of all of this, is on a cruise in the Caribbean. [Laughter] His office was closed yesterday so we didn’t have the usual mechanism for the phone tree so we decided to cancel classes at 3:45 p.m. The policy says we have to decide by 4:00 so at 3:45 we decided. The phone tree wasn’t effective. We got the word to the media just after the announcement was underway, but we didn’t get everyone called until 4:15 or 4:20. It was at least one-half hour after we had made the decision. I think that puts people in an awkward position. The media had been alerted a couple of minutes before 4:00 p.m. Some people didn’t hear about it until after the media did. Students began calling as soon as it was on the media. I apologize for that.

Vermette: I think today the calls which I have been taking are not from the Indianapolis area. Our constituency is the nine county area. I received calls from Hancock County and Hendricks County that have snow emergencies. They have not come in. Are we supposed to dock them for not being in our classes? It is just the idea that they are going to fall behind. If I am teaching my class to five people who show up, the other 15 are going to be “penalized.” Our constituency doesn’t rely on the Chief of Police in Indianapolis. That is the problem. It is a bigger area than that.

Bepko: That is right and my answer to all of that has been my answer to the questions of snow emergencies in the past and that is that we don’t shut down for any reason. If the students are in Hancock County or Hendricks County where they had a snow emergency today, I think the faculty ought to be compassionate -- whether you reschedule the lecture or not, I don’t know. I don’t think you should have to, but you shouldn’t penalize those students by saying it is an unexcused absence. I grew up in Chicago and went to public schools for 12 years. We had blizzards all the time and I never lost one hour of school. I believe that there is no reason, short of a real emergency, why we should cancel classes because learning is more than anything else that people do when they take a snow day. The worst thing that happened to us was a couple of years ago when it was very cold. People wanted us to cancel classes because it was cold, but it turned out that we yielded to that at one point just by a narrow window because it was so cold overnight. We didn’t start classes again until 10:00 a.m. the following morning. People kept calling and saying that West Lafayette is shut down so why are you not shut down? After all, West Lafayette is a great university and if they decide to shut down, uppity IUPUI has classes. But, the basketball game that was scheduled in West Lafayette that night was played as scheduled. So, we said, “Not everything in West Lafayette was closed.” [Laughter] Our learning is more important than their basketball.

Galanti: I vaguely recollect that you sent a notice a few years ago on snow emergency and when the people were to be called. Could we get that as a regular matter sometime at the beginning or the end of the fall semester so that it might be available? If there is some documentation, could we possibly get copies of it? It is not going to solve the problem, particularly like yesterday, where the snow started in the afternoon and came down in such a tremendous rate at 4:00 p.m.

Bepko: I am not sure, but I believe ironically that the instructions on snow emergencies are going to be in the next Campuscape or Sagamore. I am not sure which one. But, they were just distributed at the end of last week. Our timing wasn’t very good. Since the administration, by virtue of the constitution of all universities, takes the blame for all bad things that happen, I am sorry about the snow.

Peterson: I have a question about the budget. You had mentioned decreasing amounts of funding based on who was looking at the budget this year. I got some information in the Medical School the other day that yet again we are going to be asked to give four percent increases in all salaries and two percent increases in our overall budget. Will this just lead to deterioration? Eventually, even now this is leading to downsizing of departments. I am not sure how long we can maintain the same kind of activity, the same kind of teaching, the same kind of student input in our departments if we continue to do that and are not allowed to increase student tuition.

Bepko: With Medicine, tuition is not capped so it has been raised at much higher percentages. I think you have a good point, Dick, the fact that it has been expressed in a little different way by deans because school harvest work at the margin. Marginal resources make all the difference. It is that money that you can move around to invest into a few things and do something beyond just keeping the lights on and paying everybody that make a difference in making schools and departments better. But, in recent years, starting with the budget problems that the State had for four years -- from 1991 through 1995 -- and then taking into account some of the things that have happened because departments have redecided that they should have it, like the fringe benefits have gone up dramatically, the 18/20 costs are going up very rapidly, the healthcare costs have leveled off now, but for a number of years they went up quite dramatically. The Strategic Directions process has taken some of those marginal dollars away. Then, there are extra costs for overhead within the university. That soaks up more of the marginal resources. On top of that, if you say you have got to give four percent salary increases, it means that the academic units are no longer in control of their own destiny. They are sort of the end of the conduit. All of the decisions are made elsewhere. It takes away the opportunity to make schools and departments better and to do the creative things that make a university great. I think that is an issue for the whole university right now. I think it is predicated on the assumption that the state would provide the money this time around.

Peterson: If you have to fire or not hire a faculty member, in about two years our department will be down one position if we continue at that rate.

Bepko: If it is the choice of the people and it is done humanely by a scheduled attrition, it may be even the right thing to do for the department, but it should be mandated from afar. I think that is the point.

Porter: Are there any remaining questions?

Langsam: Our school has tried very hard to prevent people from bringing their children with them to class. When all of the school districts in the area are closed, we have serious problems for the students that arrive because there are children in the classes. And, those children can be disruptive. We have substantial numbers of faculty who are part-timers who did not arrive because of either being in snow emergency communities or coming up from Bloomington where the roads were very difficult. I didn’t grow up in Chicago. I grew up in Brooklyn and we didn’t close school very often, but then I was only seven minutes away on the bus and could walk to elementary school. We had subways and lots of busses. But this is Indianapolis. Even for those people who arrived it was difficult to teach a meaningful class when you have people bringing three and four little children with them because they can’t get to babysitters. It is a hard call to close, but we have had chaos in Liberal Arts. We have had people who had 80 students in their class and 10 of them showed up. They will repeat the material. I had colleagues who created special lessons because so many of their students were not there and to miss the introductory lectures is just not acceptable because there is no way for them to catch up. I guess I appreciate what you are saying, but I think at some point too many factors come into play. If the schools hadn’t all closed, if we hadn’t had three of our feeder neighboring counties closed by snow emergencies -- I would tend to agree with you. But, I don’t think that we had a very productive day today because there were just not many people here today. Several of my Chairs told me they had less than 50 percent of their students and less than 50 percent of their faculty here. I guess I have some serious questions about whether or not this was a productive teaching day for those people who arrived and those people who didn’t. And, to say that we are not going to repeat the lessons of the very first part of the semester so students know what our expectations are is something I couldn’t support from a faculty member in my school.

I do have very serious concerns about closing. On the other hand, things do look pretty good in Marion County, at least part of Marion except for people who don’t live on main roads. I think there is one thing that is more important than education and that is damage to people who have to come in. I am glad you, or Bob Martin from the Caribbean, had to make that decision. I would like to see us consider, for the future, some of these factors such as the closing of our major feeder K-12 in show emergencies, the neighboring counties where we have students, faculty, and staff where it is against the law or they could get ticketed for coming here, as determining whether to close. For years people used to say that IUPUI never closed, or very rarely, (because you and I both have been here when we have closed) because we had responsibilities for the hospitals. We are not attached to those hospitals anymore and so maybe this is the time to rethink the policies. I am just providing feedback about how successful a day it was in terms of teaching and I don’t think it was at least for our school.

Bepko: Those are all good points, Miriam. I can’t disagree with anything you have said. We should take those things into account. I think what you are basically saying is we ought to have a little more sensitive “trigger finger” for cancellation because it is easier to make it up if you have the whole thing to make up than it is to do it in piecework or patches the way they are doing now.

Vessely: If you began classes this Thursday, you would have canceled when a substantial number of our students were affected in their area by snow. We would have had class one day. There have been school corporations in our area closed every day except for maybe two days -- Tuesday and Wednesday -- of this week. If we were using the neighboring schools, we would have been out more than in.

Langsam: That is not exactly what I said.

Vessely: I was using that as an example. I wasn’t sure what you said so I was making that point. I didn’t direct that at you, Miriam. That statement by itself could stand alone.

Galanti: I didn’t think we were in the snow belt anyway.

Mannheimer: There is a publication by Indiana University Press called Snowbelt Cities in Indianapolis.

Unknown Speaker: This is a no win situation. But, I think what would help the situation is, if a policy that we do have, and I know we have a policy regarding closing, is made available to all of the faculty and the students. You might put it in the schedule of classes, for example, so all students could read it. Also, make a request to faculty to make such an announcement in their class. I do so my students know exactly where to go to listen to see if their classes are closed. A point that hasn’t been made is that it is a serious matter to cancel classes because we have a legal obligation to students who pay money to take classes. So, it shouldn’t be taken lightly in terms of canceling classes. That is important too. When a professor cancels a class on his/her own and a student trudges through 10 feet of snow to get here, when they get here and there is nobody here, they get pretty hot about that. They get just as mad as the students who are irritated because you didn’t cancel classes. So, there are lots of facets to this. I don’t think anyone is going to solve it easily, but notification would help.

Bepko: With lawsuits by both groups of students -- the people out of the county who say “If you make me drive in and I get into an accident on the way” and then there are students who show up and there are no classes who say, “I am going to sue because I risked by life to get here.”

Porter: I think our time for the Question and Answer Period has expired.

Agenda item IX: Unfinished Business

Porter: I know of no unfinished business.

Agenda Item X: New Business

Porter: I know of no new business to come before this body.

Agenda Item XI: Adjournment

Porter: This meeting is adjourned.

[Minutes prepared by Bernice Chumley]