December 11, 2006
President Wilson convened the fifth SPBC meeting of 2006-07 at 3 pm. He began by reporting that he had had a conversation with the Health Care Advocacy Committee (HCAC) regarding his comments about retiree health care benefits that appeared in the October 31 SPBC meeting notes. He noted that the SPBC has a constitutional role in the budgeting process, and that he will always want to use the group as a sounding board on issues related to current and future operating budgets, of which salaries and benefits are clearly a part. The SPBC also has a role in helping to decide what investments the University should make as a results of proposals arising from the strategic plan. The President said, however, that his conversation with the HCAC had impressed upon him the need to be sure that reports from other committees are available to the SPBC when those reports have budgetary implications. In some cases, representatives from other groups might even be invited to meet with the SPBC before the SPBC is asked to make a recommendation on budget priorities.
Several members suggested ways that the President might clarify the role of the SPBC in decision-making. For example, the President might distribute a chart that outlines the typical paths that various types of decisions take. In his meeting with faculty and staff groups, the President might also re-emphasize and reinforce the SPBC's role in budgeting, since the role is a new one for the campus. It might also be helpful to indicate how and to whom members of the campus community should communicate their thoughts on issues they read about in the SPBC's meeting notes.
The President then turned to a discussion of the search for a new Director of Institutional Research and Planning, which will begin in January. He reminded the Committee that this position had responsibility for three distinct functions: (1) traditional institutional research (reporting statistical and other information about the University to external parties accurately and consistently, making sure that on-campus users of information have access to accurate and consistent data, and conducting special studies that administrators or faculty, staff, trustee, and student groups request); (2) assessment (with an array of duties outlined in the University's assessment plan): and (3) strategic planning (helping the President facilitate the planning process and developing and reporting benchmarks and other measures of progress). The President reported that he would be asking several faculty, staff, and student groups (including the SPBC) and administrative offices to provide representatives on the search committee; he also indicated that Associate Dean Frank Boyd had agreed to chair the search. The SPBC decided to wait to learn the names and positions of other search committee members before selecting its representative.
The President next turned to Provost Cunningham to indicate progress on the Teaching and Learning goal. She distributed her charge to the group that will be conducting a strategic curricular review (the url for the charge is http://www2.iwu.edu/provost/Strategic_Curricular_Memo.shtml), noting that the first phase of the review, in which current curricular strengths and areas in need of enhancement are identified, will be conducted in Spring 2007. A second phase, wherein specific curricular changes are proposed, resource implications identified, and a process for ongoing curricular review is developed, will occur in 2007-08. In response to a question, she assured the group that department chairs would be consulted as part of review activities.
The Provost further stated that she believes this review will have an effect on all remaining strategies in the Teaching and Learning goal. She provided additional information on initiatives related to some of the other strategies, however, such as a proposal to get external funding for an academic advising center to operate in conjunction with the Registrar's Office. Such a center would be a locus for training faculty, developing special programs for students who haven't chosen a major, and so forth. The strategy that calls for strengthening teaching is being addressed by attempting to find additional resources for May Term and considering how better advance planning for May Term offerings can be accomplished. She also feels that the practice of external reviews of departments and programs that will begin next year will help to strengthen teaching as experts from other campuses offer advice to our faculty on curriculum and pedagogy. Finally, the Provost reported that she is addressing another strategy--supporting faculty scholarship--by collecting information on faculty publications for distribution to the campus community, thinking about an expansion of the junior leave program, and encouraging student-faculty collaborative research.
The President then asked Professor Gardner to talk briefly about an Executive Summary of Illinois Wesleyan first-year and senior students' responses to the 2006 National Survey of Student Engagement that had been distributed in advance of the meeting. (This document is linked off of the following url http://www2.iwu.edu/instres/assessment/nsse1.shtml, which is accessible from on-campus computers only.) After agreeing that our students' reported level of engagement is not as high as we might like it to be compared to several peer institutions, the SPBC expressed interest in reviewing other assessment information as appropriate to its work. Professor Gardner and Provost Cunningham reported that these and other assessment results had recently been shared with department/program chairs and that the Ad Hoc Assessment Task Force had scheduled an all-faculty forum on assessment for the afternoon of Tuesday, January 16.
Wiping the crumbs of holiday brownies from their lips, Committee members exchanged good wishes for the upcoming break and adjourned for the semester.
Distributed to all faculty and staff: January 17, 2007