NOTE: At times, issues of confidentiality may require that some items discussed in meetings be excluded from these minutes.

PRESENT: Bill Barnes, Dave Caudill, Joyce Mills, Mike Murphy, Dawn Ramsey, Michele Shauf, Zvi Szafran, Andy Wang

ABSENT: Tom Currin, Nikki Palamiotis, Steve Hamrick, Ruston Hunt

Item 1. Summer Meeting Schedule

During the summer semester, the Deans Council will meet every other week at the same time/same place on Wednesday afternoons. The Academic Planning Steering Committee will meet once during the summer on the same day as the general faculty meeting on July 12 and will also be an Academic Leadership Council meeting. The time and location will be announced.

Joyce Mills shared the Library’s hours for the summer semester.

Item 2. Prioritizing Programs

Dean Gabrielli talked about ETCMA’s proposed Masters in Instructional Design. This new degree could use many of the existing courses in place making the department more efficient, would require few new resources, and would draw from a broader pool of students. The degree has been endorsed in concept by the Faculty Senate with a formal proposal to go to the Academic Planning Committee for further discussion.

Dean Barnes talked about his proposed Masters in Architecture. They have been working with the Board of Regents for approximately ten years and are still modifying the curriculum. This degree could produce graduate assistants and faculty for the department. He stated that these two examples of new programs may not produce large numbers of students, but would be of value to the University and could draw in our undergraduate students.

Dr. Szafran responded that new programs don’t necessarily have to produce large numbers of students. He asked the Council if we should be looking at older programs and departments without Master’s programs and asked for suggestions for prioritizing new programs. Comments from the Council included:

there is no collection of proposals to prioritize
some proposal suggestions are in the minutes of the AP Taskforce
grow the ones (programs) we have now before adding new ones
any new programs should play into the overall strategy for the University
need process, cost analysis, and demand for any new program
come up with rubric for comparing programs
go with the two proposals being considered and consider Master of Education and DPS and see how they do. Encourage collaboration between departments especially at the master’s level. Consider collaboration with other universities.
Academic planning has always been from the bottom up without good overview – need to do things differently especially if considering education degree. This must be a University priority and then implemented.

Dr. Szafran summarized comments from the Council:

concentrate on master’s programs
DPS
work on DTAE
go forward with psychology and chemistry – which we’re doing
come to conclusion about short-term engineering planning
come forward with another ET program, perhaps at the masters level

Other items discussed included the possibility of renaming the AET degree to Architectural Science to help retain Architecture students who don’t do well in Architecture. The Council also talked about consolidating courses that are duplicated across campus but because course content is different from discipline to discipline it was suggested to offer a general course to cover the common material and then have a more specific course offered in the departments. It was also suggested that there is a need to relax the requirements for students, to double count some courses to free up hours and give students more free electives, and to review programs to see if some courses could be eliminated to reduce the number of required hours. Dr. Szafran will review these issues with the Council once the new deans are on board.

Item 3. Outreach to Industry

Dr. Szafran talked about how important it is to review curricula with industry to prioritize courses and needs. He also stated that we must be clear to differentiate between engineering technology and engineering and should use IAB’s to move forward with planning programs and to raise money for the university in the way of sponsorships for student projects and donations both monetary and in the way of equipment, etc. Other suggestions from the Council included:

we need more involvement from our Foundation – better communication and accounting of donated funds
it is difficulty to understand the new reporting from the Foundation
need to look for corporate sponsors to support our labs – need to focus on this and make it a priority
not sure IAB’s are the best place to solicit funding because they are already providing so much support to the programs
need help from the Development Office on how and to whom to make contacts for donations and need a collaborative effort between the Development Office and the departments
departments should be coming up with a plan for funding needs with Dempsey to match potential donors
Should fundraising be a faculty expectation and responsibility? Should they be showing an effort to accomplish this?
We should encourage faculty when called on but they should not be required to solicit funding.
Proposed that each school have an entrepreneurship or fundraising committee to set up strategies and interact with Deans Council and Foundation.
Dempsey’s job should be teaching us how to do fundraising at all levels especially now that we will be required to fund some of our own building projects.

Dr. Szafran will invite Ron Dempsey to a future meeting to discuss these issues.

Meeting adjourned at 4:00