The Arts and Sciences Council, October 17, 2013, 3:30-5:00, UMC 247
Meeting Minutes
Representatives present:听Michela Ardizzoni, FRIT; Reece Auguiste, FILM; Daniel Barth, PSYC;听 Paul Beale, PHYS; Deane Bowers, EBIO; Cynthia Carey, IPHY; Cathy Comstock, RAPS; Bert Covert, ANTH; Damian Doyle, PWR; Vanja Dukic, APPM; Francoise Duresse, AAH; Amma Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin, THDN; Jon Hughes, ECON; Catherine Labio, ENGL; Bhuvana Narasimhan, LING; Greg Odorizzi, MCDB; Mark Pittenger, HIST; Mike Radelet, SOCY; Matthias Richter, ALC; Elisabeth Root, GEOG; Greg Tucker, GEOL
Representatives not present:听Giulia Bernardini, HUMN; Jack Burns, APS; Brian Catlos, RLST; Diane Conlin, CLAS; David Grant, MATH; Weiqing Han, ATOC; Asunci贸n Horno-Degado, SPAN; Alison Jaggar, WMST; David Jonas, CHEM; Chris Kopff, HNRS;听Susan Moore, SLHS;听 Alastair Norcross, PHIL; Beverly Weber, GSLL; Bianca Williams, ETHN
Also in attendance:听Christopher Braider,听Steven Leigh; Merrill Lessley
The meeting was called to order at 3:30 PM.
Catherine Labio welcomed and thanked Merrill Lessley and Christopher Braider who were invited to this ASC meeting to give an update on the state of implementation of the new College of Media, Communication and Information.
Implementation of the Proposed College听of Media, Communication and Information (CMCI),听Christopher Braider, Director, Media, Communication and Information听and听Merrill Lessley, Chair, Implementation Committee
Christopher Braider passed out a copy of the Mission Statement for the proposed College of Media, Communication and Information (CMCI) that will be given to the Board of Regents in the spring for approval. The new College would include seven academic units, mostly departments with a couple of graduate programs. These would include the programs that are currently in the Journalism and Mass Communication Program, A&S鈥檚 Department of Communication and three new departments: Information; Intermedia Arts, Writing and Performance; and Media Production.听The College would be a point of convergence for all the arts.听Given the growing role of digital media, students need a place听not only to learn how to participate in it but how to think critically and historically about it.
It is hoped that the CMCI will constitute a new, interdisciplinary model. Students would be able to take classes in any department, while a collaborative atmosphere between departments would avoid inefficiencies. The goal is a 鈥減orousness鈥� that would enable faculty, student and resources to move freely between the various units without insisting on the autonomy of the units.
The new college should be a campus resource.听Professor Braider has visited every chair, director and dean in any area that is relevant to the college with a view to deciding how to develop collaborations.听The Implementation Committee has members from all over the campus, with a majority from A&S.
Professor Lessley鈥檚 involvement began as chair of a group convened by Russell Moore to consider the first iteration of an information program on campus.听He was motivated, in part, by watching his students struggle with the tremendous output of information coming at them concerning world events and realizing that CU offered no program to help our students gain some fluency in the media world and to determine what is good or bad information.
Professor Lessley is convinced that an interdisciplinary approach is the way to offer students this education.听There has often been talk on campus about the benefits of interdisciplinary work but little seems to happen.听Interdisciplinary work is often marginalized when professor come up for promotion and tenure.听Professor Lessley is working on CMCI鈥檚 bylaws with John Frazee with a view to include standards and criteria for interdisciplinary efforts and to reward faculty members who choose that path.听They are trying to create a model for collaborative, interdisciplinary work for the entire campus.
All the curriculum, bylaws, proposals, college documents, internal governance documents, mission statements for each department, certificates, and administrative structure need to be completed by the end of the semester.听The proposal will be written in January and February in order to be ready to go to the Regents in spring 2014.听There are 11 subcommittees putting in a lot of work. The website has recently come online; all documents will be posted as they become available.
Professors Lessley and Merrill took questions from the representatives.听Among the issues discussed were the advantages of having a separate college rather than an interdisciplinary program inside Arts and Sciences.听One advantage is having a dean that meets with the Provost.听Another is the issue of scale; the size of the proposed college is too big to be subsumed in a pre-existing structure.听Dean Leigh mentioned that journalism programs need certification that A&S isn鈥檛 in a position to provide.听He also feels that starting from scratch, the university has an opportunity to do something differently and right; if it doesn鈥檛 work, it can be changed.听There are aspects of the new college that will positively affect A&S as well.听Dean Leigh encouraged the representatives to look at the documents on the website and note any redundancies they see.
Other advantages of the new college include: increasing the number of Technology, Arts and Media courses and creating an atmosphere where each college can be involved.
The new college is not approved; it still must receive approval from the Regents.
The only department that is moving in is Communication.听The new college is about electronic media so there is no need for a department like Art and Art History to move into the college and bring faculty and students who are not interested in electronic media.听There will be collaborations between the A&S departments and the new college.听Appropriate A&S faculty and faculty from around the campus would be able to roster temporarily in the new college for work on projects.
It was asked how the new college would affect ATLAS.听ATLAS is now officially an Institute focusing on research.听The two degree programs it has are administered by the College of Engineering and will probably stay there.听ATLAS will retain its autonomy; the interim director is interested in collaborating.
Dean鈥檚 Remarks, Steven Leigh
In his latest address the Chancellor adopted the target 6-year graduation rate of 80 percent proposed in the Undergraduate Quality Initiative drafted last year by the Planning Committee and approved by the ASC.听Dean Leigh and Professor Labio have been discussing the Core Review Committee; this committee will decide if the core needs revising and will also recommend a core review cycle.听Norman Pace (MCDB) has agreed to chair the committee and a list has been drafted of possible members, including ASC members and senior as well as emerging scholars.听The ASC will look at the report this committee generates and accept/reject or modify it.听If the recommendation is to revise the core, a new committee will be formed.听Dean Leigh will send out a charge letter soon.
Dean Leigh recently spoke with the ROTC Commander Bradley Thompson and received a glowing review of CU鈥檚 faculty and their work with ROTC students.听
Minutes of the September 19, 2013 meeting
Minutes were approved, 20 yes, 0 no, and 1 abstention.听In the future, a draft of the minutes will go out for a vote by e-mail within a week.听If they are approved, they will be accepted and posted on the ASC website.听This will allow representatives to take approved minutes to their departments in a more timely fashion.听Should it not be possible to approve any particular minutes via e-mail, the vote will be postponed until the next meeting of the ASC.
Chairs Remarks, Catherine Labio
Professor Labio thanked the members of the standing committees, most of which have met and selected a chair.听She asked ASC representatives to suggest speakers and subjects to discuss at regular ASC meetings.听This can be done throughout the year, either on an individual basis or through a sub-committee. Professor Labio suggested inviting a library representative to the next ASC meeting to discuss the state of the Universities and current plans, especially since the University Libraries are currently undergoing an internal review.听Representatives agreed.听Representatives also agreed that, as per the Academic Quality Initiative, the ASC Chair should contact Campus Communications to discuss the desirability of having faculty input as to what goes out about the campus.听Professor Labio would like to see a full weekly list of all academic activities (lectures, conferences, exhibits, performances鈥�) included in a weekly CU 麻豆官网 Today, not just a chosen few.听There was no objection.听She will therefore also take up this听 matter with Campus Communications.听Kelly Fox, Sr. Vice Chancellor and CFO of the university will be invited to speak to the ASC after she meets with the Budget Committee.
Committee Reports
Budget Committee, Vanja Dukic, chair
The Budget Committee will meet with Kelly Fox to discuss the dynamic budgeting model, which should give the departments more certainty in budgeting.听They plan on looking into hidden costs in the college for instance, the number of similar courses.
Diversity Committee, Damien Doyle
Jack Burns has been elected chair.听This year the Diversity Committee will be working on the retention rate of underrepresented students, special opportunity hires and framing diversity.听Chris Pacheco will come to the next meeting to discuss the Pre-Collegiate Outreach program.
The Grievance Committee hasn鈥檛 met. Asunci贸n Horno-Delgado has been elected chair.
Online Instruction, Dan Barth
David Jonas is acting chair. They met once, prior to the last ASC meeting and have nothing new to report.
Planning Committee, Greg Odorizzi, chair
The committee has begun brainstorming about retention and graduation rates.听They met with Shelly Bacon and Peter Freitag who are acting together as the Interim Dean of Academic Advising.听800-900 students are put on academic probation yearly; of those, about 50 percent are expelled for their grades.听The overwhelming majority of these are first-year students.听There are ways to stay in school after an academic expulsion that are not well publicized. The committee wants more data; trying to find out who gets expelled for disciplinary reasons; when do students leave for financial reasons, are they mostly in-state or out-of-state, and so on?听Once the data are gathered, they will work on proposing solutions and plan to issue a report in the spring.
In the discussion that followed, it was noted that the campus wants to grow by 500 students a year; wouldn鈥檛 it be just as good to retain 500 students a year?
There doesn鈥檛 appear to be any problem with the availability of classes needed for graduation; the 4-year graduation guarantee instituted by Dean Gleeson appears to have been working well.
Christina Gonzales, the Dean of Students, has asked faculty members to accommodate students who reach out to faculty for help with their coursework because they have been affected by the floods.听Professor Labio suggested that faculty members may want to consider being more proactive and try to identify and reach out to students who may have dropped out or are (or will be ) experiencing difficulties because of last month鈥檚 flood.听At the Planning Committee鈥檚 meeting with Academic Affairs, Peter Freitag mentioned a well-known study by Vincent Tinto according to which the single best predictor of retention/graduation is whether or not a student feels there is one person in a position of authority on campus who cares about the student鈥檚 presence.
The meeting was adjourned at 4:51pm.
Minutes submitted by Janice Jeffryes