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Faculty Senate Minutes, February 14, 2020

February 23, 2020

Purdue Northwest Faculty Senate

MINUTES

February 14, 2020

10:00 a.m., Portage Meeting Facility Room 113

 

Voting members present:

Ali Alavizadeh, Lee Artz, Ricardo Calix, Chien-Chung Chen, Ralph Cherry, , Marianne Curia, Janet  Davis, Cheryl DeLeon, Gayla Domke, Tony Elmendorf, Mohammed Errihani, Roy Evans, Omer Farook, Lindsay Gielda , Wei He, Kenneth Kincaid, David Kozel,  Michael Mick, Colette Morrow, Mike Pelter, Libbie Pelter, David Pratt, Sheila Rezak, Julia Rogers, Michael Roller, Geoff Schultz, Kim Scipes, Anthony Sindone, Pitparnee Stompor, LaVada Taylor, Florian Vauleon, Xiuling Wang, Dan Wilbur, Xiaoli Yang, Wangling Yu, Hairong Zhao, Michael Zimmer

Senators absent:

Michael Connolly, Joan Dorman, Robert Merkovsky, Dushan Nikolovski, Neeti Parashar,

Non-Voting members present:

  1. Keon, N. Latif, J. Colwell, D. Underwood, O. White, S. Turner

Visitors present:

No list available

 

  1. Determination of quorum.
  2. Call to order.
  3. Approval of the agenda.
    1. Schultz moved to amend the agenda to table item 9D (Proposal for administrative reorganization). Second, D. Wilbur.
    2. Schultz argued that budget items that have not been vetted by the senate earlier should not be brought to the floor. Others argued that any item can be brought to the floor with approval of the chair.
    3. Move to amend was rejected by vote of the senate.
    4. Agenda as stated was approved
  4. Approval of the minutes from January 17, 2020. Approved
  5. Remarks by the Senate Chair (T. Elmendorf).
    1. All faculty are encouraged to do midterm grades to support retention. Retention issues drive enrollment decline
    2. The new chair of Faculty Affairs is Omer Farook
    3. All standing committees will elect new chairs today for next year
    4. Election for the Vice Chair Elect will be held in April. The Vice Chair becomes the Chair of the Senate after serving a year as vice chair.  The Senate has ranked choice voting system. The preference of the people doing the voting is improved by more candidates.  Tony Sindone, Dan Wilbur, and LaVada Taylor will be running.  Others interested in running should contact G. Domke.
    5. Question arose in Executive Committee on whether or not faculty would still be eligible to serve on the senate if they had a sabbatical, grant, or other release which brings them below a 5 FTE teaching load. The senate bylaws are not clear on whether or not this is allowable.  The executive committee will be bringing forth an amendment for discussion at the next senate meeting.
    6. A faculty convocation will be held on February 28, 2020 at 10:15 AM in GYTE107. The purpose of the convocation as defined in the senate constitution is for the chancellor to meet with the faculty.  The following items will be on the agenda:  Budget, Westville situation, commencement rotation, and program suspensions.  Faculty are able to bring forth other issues at this meeting.  Any previous senate decision can also be discussed at this time.
    7. Roy Evans has agreed to be the senate representative on the University’s Master Plan planning committee.
    8. Pelter reported on the VCAA/Provost search. Pelter commented that the turnout of senators at the meetings with the candidates was very low and stressed that it is important that senators show up at these meetings. All four candidates have been in for interviews and given presentations.  Comments will be reviewed.  The search committee’s report will be reviewed by the leadership.  Chancellor Keon stated this process should be completed within the next two weeks.
    9. Maureen Mascha (faculty representative on the strategic plan writing committee) stated that the committee will finalize the draft of the themes and goals at their next meeting. This will be published on March 6, 2020.  There will be a 5-business day comment period.  Action items will be attached to the final draft that will be delivered at the end of the semester. There will be no comment period following the final draft.  Provost Latif stated that the goal is to have the strategic plan in place before the end of the semester.  The strategic plan is part of what is being submitted to the HLC.

 

  1. Remarks by the Chancellor (T. Keon)
    1. C. Turner and Keon met with faculty senate budget committee. The report of that meeting will be given later in today’s senate meeting.
    2. Latif stated that a request had been made and was granted for a rebuttal option for the strategic plan. Latif also stated that the strategic plan would be shared with senate leadership before it is shared with the entire faculty.

 

  1. New Business
    1. Curriculum documents and updates (Curriculum, L. Taylor). All 85 curriculum documents were moved for approval and approved.
  2. New Business: Documents for discussion.
    1. On waivers of program requirements (Gen Ed and Assessment, D. Pratt). FSD 17-21 REVISED  The document was revised to make it stronger in terms of the faculty’s responsibility.  The language was changed from “articulation and waiver decisions SHOULD be made with faculty consultation” to “MUST be made with faculty consultation.”
    2. Document FSD 17-21 REVISED was moved to action and approved.
    3. FSD 19-15: Revision of the General Education course list. CGT-101:  Introduction to Computer Graphics Technology was moved and approved to be added to the General Education Course list.
  3. Discussion items.
    1. Presentation on Admissions and Recruiting (Joy Colwell) EMSA Budget Update (see link 1 and link 2).  EMSA has reduced staff by 14 positions and 6 partial positions.  We now have an enrollment projection model for PNW.   There is a demographic cliff coming.  There is a gradual decline in the number of high school students until 2025, when there will be a steep decline.  Campuses across the state are down on enrollments with the exception of Purdue University and Indiana University.  Karen Stachyra (Director of Undergraduate admissions) gave a presentation on the recruiting efforts.  A PNW recruiting video was also shown.  This video is on the PNW YouTube page at this link .  Stachyra is cautiously optimistic on enrollment growth.  There is also stronger brand recognition. She encourages faculty to make stronger connections with students.  A question was asked if the move by IU away from SAT/ACT as an admission requirement will impact our campus.  Stachyra said that she did not believe that this would make an impact on our admissions at this time.
    2. Lee Artz stated that there has been more than 15% cut to higher education in Indiana in the last 10 years. There is a relationship between rising tuition costs and decreased funding from the state legislature.  Artz asked that the faculty senate consider contacting faculty senates from across the state to collectively put pressure on the Indiana legislature to put the money back into higher education.  He also stated that population in Porter county has actually increased and not decreased.
    3. New Academic Program Review proposal (D. Pratt):  There is a draft proposal for program review and a place for comments the senate website at this link.  Please review and submit your feedback.
    4. Update on suspension of programs and FSD 18-20 (approved 3/9/18) (Executive, L. Pelter). List of suspended programs is found on the faculty website at this link.  Provost Latif said that suspended programs can be brought back by the faculty by notifying ICHE.  Currently, there is no written process in the VCAA office to reboot a program.  There is also no senate process for suspending a program, because no approval is currently necessary.  Provost Latif stated that each unit must have the approval the faculty before the process moves forward.  Detmer stated that he was told that this process was not followed in Biology and Physics.  There was a follow-up vote in Biology to suspend all of the subprograms in Biology.  R. Kramer said that there was no faculty vote on the Physics suspensions, which was verified by others.  Schultz stated that there was a discussion with the faculty and data was presented about suspending the early childhood program due to low enrollment, and there was consensus that the program be shelved until there was more demand for it.  Schultz was surprised that it wasn’t communicated to the Provost.   The Provost stated that the Early Childhood program is one of the programs that is part of the 16 programs that will be kept at Westville.  All suspended programs are subject to a teach-out.  Elmendorf reminded all senators that the faculty voice in suspensions should be communicated by the senators to the faculty in their units.  K Scipes stated that there should be a formal process through the senate for suspensions. This will now go to the Educational Policy committee.  The senate constitution does give the authority to the faculty senate to discontinue programs.  This is also in FSD 18-20.
    5. Proposal for administrative reorganization (D. Nalbone ) at this link
    6. The new budget model (IBBM, Incentive Based Budget Model) Elmendorf, G. Schultz.  The model is a 65/35 split.  This means that for every student enrolled in a program, 65% of the dollars from that student goes to the college where the course is being taught and 35% goes to the academic unit where the student is enrolled.  Next year will not be a roll out year.  It will be a double-booking year, meaning that while the old model will be used in distributing funds, the new model will be used to track how the distribution would roll out had the new model been used.  Historically we have budgeted forward on previous year’s budget.  Declining enrollment creates an automatic deficit using this approach, which is what we have been experiencing for the past 4-5 years.  We carried a 3.5 million dollar deficit in the Fall 2019 as a result of enrollment this year. Givebacks occurred on the academic as well as the administrative side.  The director of institutional research has created an algorithm for projecting enrollment next year.  There is another projected decline resulting in a deficit of 4.3 million dollars next year.  CHESS and CES are overspending by about 2 million dollars this year.  In addition, 90-95% of all courses have enrollments of less than 20 students.  There are too many sections being offered and the class sizes are too small.  The implication is that we have too many Faculty.  We also have one of the lowest tuition rates in the state.  The administration might start monitoring the units in terms of loads, which is currently not being closely monitored.
    7. Maureen Mascha clarified her understanding of this model. Each college is going to get “credit” (i.e., revenue) assigned to it based upon enrollment in the sections it teaches.  From that number—direct expenses will come out of it (overhead and support) What remain is for the dean to allocate how he/she is appropriate.  The effect on the small programs is going to be exacerbated.
  4. Remarks by the Student Government representative (O. White, SGA President). Three different projects are being discussed by the Student Government:   Having free sanitary products in all bathrooms. 2.  Baby changing stations in all first-floor bathrooms.  3.  Impossible Project—This is a production on Mental Health that will be brought to campus on March 25.  SGA has taken the stance that they need to project a positive light on the commencement rotation between Westville and Hammond.  This rotation was done because of budget restrictions.  While students in Hammond don’t feel a connection to Westville and students in Westville don’t feel a connection to Hammond, the merging of graduation will help bring the students together.
  5. Report of the University Senate/IFC representative (J. Pula). Pula reported on the question of Intellectual Property.  If you do something for your work and put it on Blackboard—the university owns it and has the right to modify it.  If the university uses your work, your name is on it.   In other news—The Purdue University college of liberal arts is adopting a tool called Academic Analytics to measure faculty productivity.  No word if it will be adopted on other campuses.  Pula also reported that journal costs have increased 567% in 20 years.  There is a push for Purdue to join other universities to form a consortium to lower the cost.
  6. Open Discussion: Nothing was brought forth for discussion.