Restructuring Task Force Meeting Notes - Nov. 10, 2003

Present: Larkin, Nunes, Starks-Martin, Hansen, Bayerl, Cogdill, Rundquist, Dobey

Absent: Lawrence, Murphy, Spaude, Kang, SubbaNarasimha

Andy Larkin distributed a list of proposals to consider.

Proposal #1 is to create a College of Health Sciences.

• Communication Disorders is not strictly a medical area; the college should be called allied health sciences.
• It's premature; unrelated departments would be cobbled together.
• Have we talked to the Counseling Center about their being included? No. There are both advantages and disadvantages to adding the Counseling Center to this area.
• There are several counseling programs – community counseling, school counseling, rehab counseling. Students generally will be in a single program but may occasionally overlap. School counseling is tied more to education. There's also a behavior analysis program.
• We're assuming that the Counseling Center out of Student Life deals with students in a counseling mode; there has also been talk of making that more mental health/psychiatry oriented. There's also been talk of linking counseling with Career Services.
• We've heard other comments that we should permit the units to go where they want to go.
• The proposal should be reworded, i.e., ‘some programs that would fit might be...' ; this would allow people's input.
• The proposal as written overlooks bio technology, nuclear medicine, medical technology – these should also be in an allied health college.
• We're not telling any departments where they should go, we're making a recommendation. We need to get campus discussion talking about this area.
• We need to take the next step, going back to our original charge – do we need to suggest how these recommendations would help meet the needs of the students, etc? First we have to decide what we're going to recommend and then what the pros and cons are.
• One recommendation could be to develop a college of allied health without saying what departments would be included, it would be up to the provost to decide. We want to provoke a discussion about the concept, not about who should be included.
• Can discussion be turned to address some of the questions we're supposed to answer? How will it accommodate student services, general ed, etc.
• We could do a parallel recommendation with a College of Science and Engineering and with a College of Fine Arts and Humanities.
• We might recommend dividing COFAH into two colleges, maybe moving the History Department. It we did that, Fine Arts would be a very small college. If we don't go there, we might recommend that there's a second Associate Dean in the Fine Arts & Humanities.

Proposal 2 is to create a School of Engineering in the College of Science and Engineering.

• How about making it parallel and recommending a College of Engineering? Engineering is eager for its own college, Nursing may not be.
• For purposes of a listserv discussion, we should present one proposal at a time. There needs to be time for people to read it and respond before moving on. Can we put out two at once, since the proposals are going to be parallel? Some may respond to both.
• What about a larger question – ‘we're looking at smaller colleges, and here are some of the choices we might make'.

Proposal 3 is to create a Council of Undergraduate Studies.

• We need to define ‘council.' It should be all the stakeholders, and the issues of strategic planning, budgeting, hiring, and evaluation need to be addressed. What would the council do? – it wouldn't have positional power. The DGS committee is a university committee that has a lot of say when things are going right. Most of the people would want to be rostered in an academic college; DGS is not rostered in an academic college. There's something not healthy about faculty not being in regular academic units. Feedback gets disrupted. Who would be in charge of First Year Experience?
• Should there be somebody in charge of this council? We should make a decision about having a person responsible. A dean, or whoever, would have to get all the stakeholders together, but there needs to be an academic place for those not already rostered. Should we put it out as discussion with recommending a dean? What about a faculty director who's assigned – could that person do strategic planning, budgeting, evaluation? We need a dean in between.

Proposal 4 is to create a Council of Student Equity Services.

• Again, what is a council? Are we marginalizing or are we giving them power by their not having to come together under an administrator? The council needs to be advisory in specific ways.
• There's a connection between this and Provost's suggestion that the Affirmative Action Committee needs to be beefed up.
• In terms of structure, they're different. The Affirmative Action Committee pretty much dissolved because of not including them in any of the activities going on. Could this council be parallel to the Affirmative Action Committee? Maybe we should call it committee instead of council.
• Are we defining council as an advisory committee? It needs to be defined as a university committee, i.e., comprised of representatives of areas in addition to FA members.
• We've said many times that student services should be aligned with academic units, but didn't Semya feel strongly that they shouldn't be?
• When faculty are separated from their disciplines, there's a disruption that's not good. Most of the people Semya's talking about are not FA; to fold them into academic units is going to make them, in effect, disappear. How about units that have both? A home in two places?
• Multicultural Student Services has a significant social function and also has tutoring. The American Indian Center is another example. That's why those people would need to be on the council. They should be in both because they have dual roles.
• What about Athletes for Success? They work on helping with resumes, preparing for a career. There's a study hall for first and second year athletes, and there's also a tutoring program. Life Skills also has an academic component.
• What is the Intensive English Center? It's a program for students to take English classes if their English is not good enough for them to get into the university. It is not credit generating.
• Some people feel that they may experience retribution if they make a recommendation, such as that a department be moved, if others don't agree. Most likely a person does not have to be identified – people can respond anonymously via the website.

Proposal 5 is to reorganize the Office of Academic Affairs.

• We need clarification about the suggestion of consolidating the associate position for curriculum with the position for faculty relations and diversity. We have an Associate VP for Curriculum, and an Assistant VP for Faculty Relations now. The thought is that it would be more efficient to combine them into one position.
• Where does assessment fit in now? It should go in the consolidated Associate VP position. Curriculum and assessment probably belong together. This is also the person who does accreditation, program review, adjudicating student concerns and appeals. Not sure that these two positions could be merged into one.