VCAA Newletter

Dear Colleagues,

Happy Holidays and a prosperous and peaceful New Year to you and your families.

Budget: I've been working with the deans and members of the Senate Budget Committee to respond to the challenge of reducing our base budget by approximately nine hundred thousand dollars for fiscal year 2003-04. As you know, we have already substantially reduced the university's budget for fiscal year 2002-03. Our work involves extensive meetings with the deans and the senate budget committee. Additionally, the deans will be meeting with each of their respective faculties for consultation. As we proceed, the faculty will be kept informed through this newsletter, through meetings with their deans and through the deliberations in the senate. It is my hope to make final recommendations to the chancellor by mid-spring.

Deans Searches: As the chancellor has announced, the searches for the deans of Education and Nursing and Health Professions have been suspended and will resume in the fall semester. Larry Garber and Gwynn Mettetal have graciously agreed to continue as interim deans. I am grateful for their leadership and their service.

Annual reports: The deans have approved a revised annual report form for faculty and administrators. The new forms, which can be accessed on the w drive (w:\forms\acadaff\faculty\ann-rpts), add advising as a major component for evaluation. This is an important step in recognizing and rewarding the efforts of those faculty and administrators who will be actively involved in the advising of our students. The LAS faculty have chosen to use this revised form for this academic year. Beginning in the fall of 2002, the form will be required of all faculty and administrators.

General Studies: For the spring semester, Linda Fritschner will provide leadership to General Studies. Mike Keen will teach the introductory and capstone courses. An internal search for a permanent director will begin early in the spring.

Best wishes to Ted Hengebach and Judy Graf on their retirements. They have served IUSB well and the entire IUSB community is deeply appreciative of their industrious work and their dedication to our students. I wish to add personal thanks to Ted for his creative leadership and for his counsel and support as a member of the Academic Cabinet.

General Education: About a year prior to my arrival, President Myles Brand requested a review of general education by the regional campuses. When I arrived in the fall of 1999, I immediately began to think about general education and its impact on what it means to be educated at IUSB. I consulted with several faculty leaders and deans about the composition of the committee. The committee received its charge in the spring of 2000 and began its work in earnest in the fall of 2000. Initially, we had hoped that a new general education curriculum would be in place by fall of 2003. As you can appreciate, the consultative process to assure that we have a general education that we are proud of requires extensive campus conversations. Although we are behind schedule, the committee continues its deliberative work. A progress report from Jerry Hinnefeld, chair of the committee, follows:

The Task Force on General Education spent the fall semester soliciting responses from faculty colleagues to the three sample general education curricula we developed in the spring. From September through November representatives of the task force attended meetings of seventeen different academic units, to answer questions and listen to comments about these sample curricula. Predictably, there was no consensus on which of the three curricular structures would best fit the needs of our academic community. There were, however, many frank and open discussions of the goals of general education in the University and the practicalities of meeting those goals in our particular university. There were strong arguments, from more than one quarter, to treat "critical thinking" as a fundamental academic skill; there was discomfort with labeling writing as a "skill"; there were questions about the meaning and significance of "visual literacy", and the opportunity for members of the task force to offer some explanation and defense of the concept; there were both enthusiastic and skeptical responses to the idea of an interdisciplinary core curriculum; and there were pleas to keep in mind the practical concerns of student advisement in developing a campus-wide general education curriculum.

The members of the task force are grateful for all the opinions shared in these meetings, and we believe that we will be able to proceed now with a better understanding of the hopes and concerns of our colleagues. The task force plans to meet bi-weekly during the spring semester. While we are wary of imposing any strict timelines on our deliberations (and grateful for the absence of externally imposed deadlines), there is strong sentiment to move forward purposefully and deliver a proposal to the campus community as soon as we can.

Colloquia: In early October, Professor Jacques Martin, from the Universite de Toulon in Toulon, France, visited our campus and met with several faculty and students interested in teaching and study abroad exchanges. IUSB and the Universite de Toulon have signed a document of friendship and collaboration. Since then Professor Martin has sent me information regarding his university's annual colloquium to which faculty from across the globe deliver papers. Papers may be in English; proceedings from the conference are published. If you would like to deliver a paper on the announced theme, please contact me or Professor Gabrielle Robinson. Information about the colloquium follows:

15-16 mars 2002 : " La revue Sud et la création poétique contemporaine ", organisé par Michèle MONTE, dans le cadre du printemps des poètes.
21-22-23 mars 2002 " Le Voyage initiatique ", organisé par Daniel Aris, en collaboration avec Michel Mestre. Michel Mestre émet le souhait de répartir les communications consacrées à la montagne au cours des diverses approches du " Voyage initiatique " plutôt que de consacrer une demi-journée complète au thème de la montagne.

Assessment: The members of the Campus Assessment Committee are pleased to announce that they received a number of excellent applications for Assessment Grants. The Committee has awarded grants to the following departments:

Congratulations to all of the successful applicants. These projects should help in the important work of excellent assessment of student learning at IUSB. The Assessment Committee hopes to offer Assessment Grants in future years when funds are available.

	Office of Academic Affairs VCAA News December 2001 / January 2002