The University Senate
of Michigan Technological University
Minutes of Meeting 467
15
October 2008
Synopsis:
The Senate
1.
Call to order and roll call. President Sloan called the University
Senate Meeting 467 to order at 5:30 pm on Wednesday, October 15, 2008 in room
B45 EERC. Vice President Pierce called roll. Absent were at-large Senators
Madhu and Cooper and representatives from Army/AirForce ROTC, Chemical
Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, the Library, Mathematical
Sciences, and Admissions. Liaison Anna Pereira (GSC) was in attendance.
Mechanical Engineering–Engineering Mechanics, Academic Services A, and
Auxiliaries and Cultural Enrichment currently have no elected representatives.
2.
Recognition of visitors. Guests included Lesley Lovett-Doust
(Provost), Walt Milligan (Office of Information Technology), and Jackie Huntoon
(Dean of the Graduate School).
3.
Approval of agenda. Hamlin moved approval of the agenda and Hoagland seconded. The motion to
approve passed on a voice vote with
no dissent.
4.
Update on Information Technology presented by Walt Milligan.
IT Reorganization.
The new current structure is similar to many peer institutions and now consists
of four core areas (ETS/Online/Summer, IT Services/Security, AIS/SAS/Auxiliary
Tech, and Telecommunications) that report to Milligan. The reorganization
eliminated two middle management positions allowing salary savings to be
redistributed to IT staff. Patty Lins (ETS/Online/Summer) reports on academic
matters to the Provost and on technology matters to Milligan. The computing
groups have been reduced from 16 to 9. Hamlin asked whom the directors of the
groups report to. Milligan said to the department heads and deans. Hamlin asked
if they have multiple supervisors. Milligan said they usually have one
supervisor for several departments. Milligan said that the reorganization has
resulted in better internal communication and planning, better efficiency and
customer service, additional service of IT needs to the Library and Educational
Opportunity. He added that challenges still exist; more attention needs to be
paid to interactions between central IT groups and academic IT groups;
communication, collaboration, uniform campus standards; equity in levels of
technology support for students and faculty in different departments; funding
models, chargebacks, support for faculty and research. The problem of better
communication is being addressed by an IT strategic planning group formed in
June 2008 and meeting weekly: it consists of Milligan, the directors of the
four core IT areas, and the directors of the 9 computing groups. The goal is to
create a campus-wide strategic plan for IT.
Electronic grade submission. Milligan argued that Michigan Tech should have
moved to electronic grade submission 20 years ago. The current system is based
on WebCT/Blackboard Grade Book, which has the advantage of upgrading class
rosters daily. IT trained “grade facilitators” in every department to help
faculty with the new electronic process and to submit grades if necessary. The
system was piloted by a small group in Spring 2007,
then piloted by all who volunteered in Fall 2007, and finally was required for
all instructors in Spring 2008. In Spring 2008, 1,595
sections (of 1,610) successfully submitted grades. There were fewer missing
sections than there were with bubble sheet submission (15 instead of four or
five times that number) and reduced grade submission errors. Milligan credited
the success to good communication with and efforts of grade facilitators. A survey of
instructors (to which 199 — about one-third — of instructors responded) showed
that about 75 percent thought the process was good or better (outstanding, 14.6
percent; very good, 39.2 percent; good, 21.1 percent) and 25 percent were not
satisfied (fair, 13.1 percent; poor, 12.1 percent). When asked how they felt
about the process looking toward next Fall, 28.1 percent responded that they
looking forward to it; 47.2 percent said not too bad; 11.1 percent said it was
too complex; and 10.6 percent said give me back my bubble sheets. Milligan
reported that those who were not satisfied were extremely unhappy and
complained that the process too cumbersome and not intuitive. He said most
problems were due to unfamiliarity with Blackboard Grade Book. In response, he
is forming a committee to investigate alternatives to our current version of
Blackboard and welcomes faculty volunteers. Also, he reported that IT last week
purchased the “Faculty Self Serve” module of Banner, allowing instructors to
enter grades on a website (which is good for small sections). This will not be
available until Spring. The current process on
Blackboard will have to be used this Fall and it will
remain available in Spring (as it is better for larger sections). He said that
bubble sheets are not coming back.
Luck asked whether the unsatisfied
users were localized in certain departments. Milligan replied that they were
not, and that a couple of them he knows are tech savvy users. Klooster asked
which alternatives will be available to whom. Milligan replied that both
alternatives are available for everyone. Drelich asked whether IT got any
feedback from students. Milligan replied that students don’t care as long as
they get their grades, but that some faculty were upset that students found out
their grades so quickly.
E-mail and calendar. IT decided to move to a new system
because the Huskymail web client was dated, because students have been lobbying
for a calendar, because MeetingMaker and other commercial solutions did not
serve our needs and were expensive, because e-mail quotas were too low and
raising them would require further investment in high availability storage,
which is expensive, and because e-mail is very expensive and painful to
maintain in-house. A survey of students in Spring
2007, with 1147 students participating, showed that 43.2 percent found email
quotas unsatisfactory and 57.4 percent felt access to a scheduling/calendaring
utility was critical or important. Milligan reported that most universities are
considering outsourcing e-mail and some have done so already. IT chose to “near
source” e-mail and calendar to Merit Network, based on Zimbra (Yahoo) technology.
Advantages include: Merit is nonprofit; Michigan Tech has a seat on Merit’s
Board of Directors; they provide internet connectivity to us and most Michigan
universities and K-12 systems; the data is secure because we own it and we know
where it is (in Ann Arbor); there is no advertising or data mining; e-mail
quotas are unlimited. Central Michigan outsourced student e-mail to Merit about
18 months ago (not on Zimbra), Eastern Michigan and Wayne State signed up with
Merit after we did, and Western Michigan is currently testing it and will sign
up soon. It saves some money but not that much. Merit is Zimbra’s largest
customer, so we have leverage for upgrades. Milligan said that IT is very
satisfied with the e-mail system and pointed out that people can still use
Thunderbird, Outlook, and Mac Mail. He said the “briefcase” document sharing
tool is functional, but not stellar, so IT is investigating bona fide document
collaboration tools that integrate seamlessly with Zimbra. Students are
enthusiastic about the calendar, and if faculty are
willing to use it there should be educational benefits from faculty, staff,
academic advisors, and students sharing a scheduling product. The calendar also
facilitates publishing and distributing multiple Michigan Tech calendars
(including Banner course schedules). It is an open-source product that complies
with the iCal standard so it interacts well with other calendars. He reported
some drawbacks of the Zimbra calendar, too. It is less functional in some areas
than MeetingMaker, and IT is working on fixing that. Calendar data is not
available unless the user is online or has installed a program that saves the
data (which is possible with Thunderbird, Outlook, and iCal). Smart phone
synching has been problematic, and IT is hoping to get that fixed in the near
future.
Other issues. The IT strategic planning group has
identified approximately 30 high-level strategic issues which need to be
prioritized and acted on. All the easy ones (and some of the hard ones) have
been solved. The rest of the issues are complex and challenging. Input and
buy-in from many constituents and customers will be needed. Milligan said the
principle they use in making decisions is: What’s in the best interest of
Michigan Tech?
Klooster asked whether any upgrades to
Blackboard are planned. Milligan replied that the Blackboard version we have is
really WebCT and hard to customize, but the grading system will be better in
the next version. He also said that IT expects to change to a new program in the
near future but assured instructors that IT will ensure that content will be
able to be imported into any new system IT chooses. Hamlin observed that the
color scheme on the new mail system is very hard to read and impossible for
those who are colorblind. Milligan replied that he changed colors on his own
computer but that he would pass the comment on to Marketing Communications, who
made the choice. Luck asked how IT will ensure that content can be imported to
a new class management system. Milligan replied that IT will test the heck out
of it. Onder asked about the compatibility of Zimbra and other programs and
operating systems. Milligan replied that it should work if you have the right
versions.
Keen asked how IT rationalized
violating the Senate policy that I grades require a signature by the department
chair. Milligan replied that IT talked to deans and department heads who said
electronic grade submission was important enough not to let this policy hold it
back. He promised that soon there will be an electronic process for approving I grades. Keen commented that the reason for the policy was
to protect the students so that if somebody left there would be a record of
what they needed to do to remove the I grade and argued that it would have been
wise to officially revise the policy; otherwise you have administration
arbitrarily revising policy that has been approved by the faculty. Kern
explained that one solution that was considered was including a box on the
electronic form where instructors would sign. Milligan added that in Spring, IT will ask for more information in a box, and that
IT will be adding an electronic approval process, so the process will be in
compliance by Spring. Keen asked about computing fees for courses no longer
being submitted in the white binder process. Milligan answered that the only
change in the process is that instead of the fees going into the binder and
then to him, the fees are now going directly to him.
5.
Strategic Faculty Hiring Initiatives presented by Lesley Lovett-Doust.
For the first round of hiring last year, a website was
developed including a description of research themes, how to apply, what
research and education and outreach was already here, and information about the
community. Information about the materials needed for application was very
explicit, asking applicants specifically about how they would be involved in
teaching sustainability and research on sustainability. The pool of 230
applicants was diverse, judging from the 23 applicants who self-disclosed
information about their identity. Ten of the 23 were women and 9 were minority
group members. Many people were involved in the review process, and online
processing of evaluations made the process efficient. The 230 applicants were
first screened to 80, then 35, from whom the final 10 offered positions were
chosen. The first screening was done on the basis of the detailed applications;
the second screening was conducted by three faculty
for each faculty who were chosen because they were working in cognate fields
with the applicant. Criteria included: demonstrated work in sustainability,
interdisciplinary work, and other valued attributes, such as working in
industry or government labs. The 10 finalists were chosen for their ability to
supervise doctoral work, to teach at the graduate and undergraduate levels, and
to collaborate with and complement colleagues already at Michigan Tech.
The three endowed chairs went to John
Sutherland, MEEM (Robbins Chair in Sustainable Manufacturing), David Karnosky,
SFRES (Robbins Chair in Sustainable Management of the Environment, and David
Shonnard, Chem Eng (Robbins Chair in Sustainable Materials). In the search
process, the committee discovered that there were relatively few people at the
senior level with a lot of work on sustainability who were not already at
Michigan Tech, which is why all three chairs came from current faculty. The
seven faculty positions went to Rupali Datta (Bio), Paul Doskey (Civil and
Env), Wenshen Li (Chem Eng and Chem), Audrey Meyer (SS and SFRES), Claudio
Mazzolini (Physics), Shiliang Wu (Geo and Civil and Env Eng), and a faculty
member who cannot yet be identified who is currently working with a White House
committee on climate change (MEEM and Civil and Env Eng). Of the seven new
hires, 2 are women and 3 members of minority groups.
SFHI II. Themes are chosen with an eye to areas
that are interdisciplinary and support the strategic plan and to areas that can
attract endowed funds to help finance the program. Next year’s research theme
is advancing computational frontiers. David House has contributed $10 million
for support of computational sciences and engineering and its applications,
some of which will be used toward the hiring of 3 endowed professorships and 7
faculty positions. Desired candidates may work both in core areas of computer
engineering and science and systems analysis and in areas of application of
advanced computation. Two people have been asked to co-chair the search
committee, and departments, institutes, and centers have been asked to suggest
members for the committee.
Future SFHIs. Preproposals are posted on a website
for comments; so far topics include advanced materials for biological systems;
alleviating global poverty; arts advancement; computing; health-related science
services, and technologies; human-centered technology; energy; and
transportation. The URL is
http://www.admin.mtu.edu/admin/prov/mtu_only/SFHI.html
The next 4-5 themes will be decided on by Spring 2009 to
facilitate searching for endowed funding.
Lovett-Doust emphasized that the
success of the SFHI program depends on colleagues thinking about colleagues
elsewhere who might be a good fit for these positions and making
recommendations. There were no questions from the senators.
6.
Approval of minutes from meeting 466. Approval was deferred to the next
meeting of the Senate as there were questions and the Secretary was absent.
7.
President’s report. There was no president’s report.
8.
Old business.
a.
Elections for University standing committees.
There are two nominees for the Academic Tenure Committee: Bob Keen and Steve Carr. Sloan asked for
further nominees, and Fick? nominated Mark Johnson from the School of
Technology. Sloan asked whether the Senate wished to vote this week, or wait.
Klooster suggested that she would like to know more about the candidates before
voting. Sloan decided to ask each candidate for a short statement to help the
Senate in the process of electing members of the committee, and to defer the
election to a later meeting. Sloan asked if there were any nominees for the Faculty Distinguished Service Award
Committee, and there were none. On the Faculty
Review Committee, Kern reported that Pat Gotschalk, who is currently
serving on the committee and is involved with two ongoing cases, is willing to
continue on the committee. Sloan added that Pat is an attorney and thus has a
particularly valuable perspective on the cases, and she suggested that, unless
anyone objected or had further nominees, Gotschalk be elected to another term.
Hamlin moved that Pat Gotschalk be
elected to the committee. Johnson seconded. Kern pointed out that the idea was
that Gotschalk be elected to a single-year term ending in Fall 2009. Hamlin and
Johnson agreed to amend the motion to elect Gotschalk to a term ending in Fall
2009. Passed on a voice vote with no
dissent.
9.
New business.
a.
Proposal 1-09: A Proposal To Allow the Reuse of Some Michigan Tech Credits in
the Pursuit of Multiple Graduate Degrees
Sloan explained that in this meeting the proposal would only
be discussed and that the vote would take place at the next Senate meeting so
that senators could consult their constituencies before voting. The discussion
was led by Senator Gregg, representing the Curricular Policy Committee. The
proposal is a simple one, allowing students to double count a small amount of
credits (1/3 of coursework credits) for a second masters degree for while they
are completing a masters or a doctoral degree It will not apply to second
doctoral degrees. Only Michigan Tech credits can be double counted. 3000- and
4000-level courses taken under senior rules can also be double counted. Gregg
stated that the policy would probably also apply to returning students and to
students who wish to complete a third masters.
Drelich asked if the credits must be
approved by the student’s advisor. Huntoon said that yes, credits would be
approved by the advisor in the primary degree, but students should talk to
advisors in both programs to make sure there are no conflicts about funding.
Boschetto-Sandoval asked whether the title of the proposal was misleading. Huntoon agreed that the Graduate School
wrestled with this. Gregg stated that the policy, however, is very clear.
Provost Lesley-Doust suggested that the word “multiple” be replaced with
“additional,” and Huntoon agreed that would be a good change. Gregg suggested
that the proposal should make clear that practicum credits as well as research
credits cannot be double counted. Luck asked why students cannot transfer in
credits from other institutions. Huntoon replied that common practice is that
if credits have been used toward a degree they can’t be used toward another
degree. This is a proposal for current students in our university and we need
to follow standard best practices. Luck asked about undergraduate students who
have gotten bachelors degrees and are moving on to a masters degree. Huntoon
replied that if the credits counted toward their bachelors degree, they
couldn’t count them, but if they took the courses under senior rule, they could
count them. She explained that there is interest in BS/MS programs in the
future, however, and the rules for those will have to be worked out. Sloan
reminded senators that this proposal will be up for a vote in two weeks, and
senators will want to get feedback from their departments.
10.
Adjournment.
Sloan adjourned the meeting at 6:39pm.
Respectfully submitted by Marilyn Cooper
Secretary of the University Senate