The University of Oklahoma (Norman campus)
Regular session – December 13, 2010 – 3:30 p.m. – Jacobson Faculty Hall 102
office: Jacobson Faculty Hall 206
phone: 325-6789
e-mail: facsen@ou.edu web site: http://www.ou.edu/admin/facsen/
The Faculty Senate was called
to order by Professor LeRoy Blank, Chair.
PRESENT: Adams,
Asojo, Atiquzzaman, Ayres, Baer, Bergey, Blank, Bradshaw, Chang, Cox-Fuenzalida,
Deacon, Devegowda, Dial, Gibson, Hahn, Jean-Marie, Kosmopoulou, Lauer-Flores, Leseney,
Marsh-Matthews, McPherson, Minter, Moses, Natale, Palmer, Park, Ransom, Remling,
Sadler, Sandel, Stock, Strauss, Tabb, Taylor, Vehik, Verma, Wyckoff, Yi
Provost's office representative: Mergler
Graduate College liaison: Griffith
ISA representatives: Cook, Hough
ABSENT: Chapple,
Chiodo, Gramoll, Kimball, Morrissey, Morvant, Moxley, Muraleetharan, O’Neill, Weaver,
Williams, Xiao
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Announcements:
Faculty development awards
Schedule of spring 2011 Faculty Senate meetings
Seminar: Gen Y
Faculty deaths
Senate Chair's Report:
Benefits: retirement plans management
OTRS credit for sabbaticals
Dead week
Academic Integrity Code
KinderCare
Research
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The Faculty Senate Journal
for the regular session of November 8, 2010 was approved.
The Faculty Senate sent out
the call for proposals for the Ed Cline faculty development awards on November
12. Proposals are due to the Faculty
Senate office on February 2. Up to $2500
is awarded. Further information is
available at http://www.ou.edu/admin/facsen/facdev.htm.
The regular meetings of the
Faculty Senate for the spring 2011 semester will be held at 3:30 p.m. in
Jacobson Faculty Hall 102 on the following Mondays: January 24 (tentative), February 14, March
21, April 11, and May 9. Prof. Blank
said it was likely that the Senate would meet on January 24 so that the
retirement plans management proposal (see 10/10 Senate Journal) could be
discussed.
OU Career Services and Leadership & Volunteerism are partnering to
present “Gen Y: Are They Ready for the Real World?” on Friday, January 21, 2:00-3:00
p.m. in the OMU Meacham Auditorium. Nancy
Barry, author of When Reality Hits: What
Employers Want Recent College Graduates to Know, will talk about preparing and
working with Generation Y/Millennials. Faculty and staff are invited to attend this
free event.
The
Faculty Senate is sad to report the death on December 8 of retired faculty
member Sidney Brown (History) and on December 13 of faculty member Ming Chao Gui (Modern Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics).
The Faculty Senate Executive
Committee has had a lot of communication with the Retirement Plans Management Committee
and asked the committee to address particular issues. The majority of the information is expected
to be available in January so that the Faculty Senate can discuss the proposal
at its January and February meetings.
The Faculty Compensation
Committee, with the help of Jon Forman (Law), suggested some updates to the Faculty Handbook with respect to service
credit for OTRS during sabbaticals, in particular one-year sabbaticals, in
order to reflect current OTRS policy. The
updates were given to the provost and are likely to be incorporated in the Faculty Handbook very soon.
Student Congress is
disappointed in the Faculty Senate action of March 2009 regarding dead
week. Congress recently approved a bill
asking the Faculty Senate to renew discussion of the pre-finals week
policies. Prof. Blank will meet with
student leaders to discern what they are unhappy with and make sure everyone
understands the restrictions we have on dead week. He will report back at a future meeting.
The Integrity Council put
forth an Academic Integrity Code, which was approved by the Faculty Senate. The proposal has been presented to the OU
regents Norman campus subcommittee and will be on the January regents’
agenda. Shortly thereafter, a committee
will be formed of five faculty and five students. The Faculty Senate Executive Committee
submitted nine nominations for the Provost’s office to consider for the five faculty
positions on the committee.
The annual Norman Christmas
Day community dinner will be held on December 25, 11:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m., in the
Norman High School Commons Cafeteria. Bob
Magarian, the organizer, may be contacted at 364-3273.
KinderCare at OU is offering
a 10 percent discount for newly-enrolling children of OU faculty and
staff. Those who register prior to
January 24 will receive free spring registration, valued at up to $125. The center accepts children ages 6 weeks to
11 years and has limited openings in all classes. For further information, contact Karisa Wilson, center director, at 325-0528.
Vice President for Research (VPR)
Kelvin Droegemeier said he was trying to attend all of the Faculty Senate
meetings this year, regardless of whether he is on the agenda. He distributed a one-page handout of the Aspire 2020
initiatives. Discussing the first point
on research statistics, Dr. Droegemeier noted that we have several multimillion
dollar grants this year, some over $4 million.
We submitted some revised numbers to the Carnegie Foundation in areas
where we had been underreporting. We are
waiting to find out what our Carnegie ranking will be and hope that we will be
in a higher research category.
Dr. Droegemeier thanked the
faculty members for their engagement with the Aspire 2020 plan. Many of the ideas came from faculty members. Their input was extremely valuable.
A goal of Aspire 2020 was to
establish a Center for Research Program Development and Enrichment. Alicia Knoedler, from
Penn State, was brought here to be the new director. Dr. Knoedler said
she had been at OU about six months and had spent time talking to the faculty
about what they wanted to accomplish with their research programs. The center used to be focused on proposals
and external funding but now is focused on helping faculty accomplish more with
their research programs. That might entail
pursuing external funding, finding partnerships for research endeavors, or leveraging
what already exists at OU to help a faculty member accomplish more of his/her
own research. The center also can help
with post-doctoral research and graduate student research. She invited the faculty to contact her to
discuss research programs and external funding.
Dr. Droegemeier noted that
Dr. Knoedler had met individually with all the
deans. She understands that research is
not just physical science and engineering, so she has spent a lot of time working
with faculty in education, history, classics, and fine arts. She is engaging all aspects of the university
and is here to help with the initial idea all the way to submitting a
proposal. Money has been set aside to
help individual faculty members achieve their goals.
The Strategic Initiative in
Defense, Security and Intelligence (DSI) is up and running. The VPR office is working with a Washington, D.C.
consulting firm to put faculty together with agencies such as the Department of
Defense. Many of these agencies are very
different than NSF and NIH, so the VPR office is helping faculty to navigate
this different environment. He is setting
up a center for applied research and development that will house non-faculty
researchers and use an inverted SRI model.
It is not just for physical science and engineering, but also for other
areas. For example, the DOD is
interested in understanding how people drift toward extremist views, so this is
an opportunity for those who study cultures.
Prof. Verma asked how he could get engaged with Washington, D.C. Dr. Droegemeier said interested faculty could
send him an email, and he will provide the information.
The Research Liaison Program
is a counterpart to the graduate liaison program. Every academic department will have someone
in the VPR office who can help faculty members succeed
in their research. The Faculty Research
Challenge Grant Program will provide seed funding. The amounts of money are beyond what faculty
can get anywhere else in the university, and the focus is on strategic,
long-term development of research programs.
Two grants at $100,000 are being given for a one-year period, four at
$50,000, six at $25,000, and 10 at $10,000.
Provost Mergler has been incredibly supportive of the Aspire 2020
initiatives. The VPR Research Awards Program
was established to better reward scholarship and faculty achievement. Four awards at $2,500 apiece will be given. The amount of the Regents’ Award for Superior
Research and Creativity was increased from $2,000 to $10,000. In addition, his office will put some
resources forward to help deans, chairs, and directors nominate faculty for
national and international awards. He is
trying to find ways, through the Faculty Research Incentives and Rewards
Program to incentivize faculty to think big in the area of scholarship.
One of the key plans for 2011
is to create an environment at OU that is effective in terms of multi-disciplinary
collaboration. With assistance from the consulting
firm in Washington, 2-4 major initiatives will be identified in that arena. A new VPR web site is coming that will
include policies and highlights of research.
Currently, the research services web site is more about writing
proposals. The new site will have descriptions
of our research centers. Dr. Droegemeier’s office also is redoing the Research Council
portfolio to streamline and simplify it and make it much less proscriptive. An additional $50,000 will be added to the money
available from the Research Council this year and another $50,000 next year. This is in response to faculty members saying
they needed seed funding and that the Research Council portfolio needed to be
changed. Dr. Droegemeier thanked the
senators and asked them to thank their colleagues and to ask them to continue
to be engaged in the Aspire 2020 planning activity. With the support of the administration and input
from the faculty, we can continue to move everything forward. We have made some pretty substantial advances
the past year, and next year will be even better.
Prof. Sandel commented that
the searches for strategic hires associated with a center generally do not go through
the normal procedure, and the new hire may get a 1/1 teaching load. He asked whether strategic hires are
evaluated, whether the appointments are permanent, and whether strategic hires
will continue. Dr. Droegemeier said to
his knowledge, every faculty member who is hired, strategic or not, goes through
the standard process. The strategic
initiative hires are evaluated the same way as other faculty; there are no
special cases. What is important is to
think strategically about the faculty we do hire. He thinks every faculty hire ought to be a strategic
hire. We should think in terms of
cluster hires. Initially the individual
may have a reduced teaching load. It is essential
to have a careful evaluation of credit hour production and research
expenditures to make sure we are doing things the way we ought to be doing. We will see a lot more emphasis put on
accountability, which is important for the University to have.
Prof. Taylor asked if we are
still trying to solve the problem of funding collaboration between the Norman
and Health Sciences Center faculty. Dr. Droegemeier
said he is looking at meaningful ways to facilitate collaboration. We have lots of challenges, but we have made
enormous progress in the last five years.
A lot more can be done, however.
The meeting adjourned at 4:00
p.m. The next regular session of the
Faculty Senate will be held at 3:30 p.m. on Monday, January 24, 2011, in
Jacobson Faculty Hall 102.
____________________________________
Sonya Fallgatter, Administrative Coordinator
____________________________________
Amy Bradshaw, Faculty Secretary