Staff: Michael Mumper, Katherine Tadlock, Anne Walker (substituting for Usha Matta who was in India doing recruiting work).

Excused:, David Drabold, Robert Roe.

Guest: Provost Kathy Krendl

Convened: 2:10 pm   Packets with the agenda, sign in sheet,  and name tents were distributed.

PowerPoint Presentation by Provost Kendl      (See Appendix)

(Duncan)          I wanted to thank Provost Krendl again for agreeing to join us today to explain more about the Vision Ohio Strategic Planning Process and the implications it might have for graduate education across the University. And with that I’ll hand it over to Provost Krendl.

(Krendl)           Okay, thank you. Alright, I thought what I would do, as I look around the room I realize that some of you have actually seen this presentation before so what I’ll try to do is get through this fairly quickly and then if those of you who haven’t been through it have questions we can come back to various points; I guess the real point of today was to have some time for discussion. Basically my goal is to go though the process to date; what I see is the next steps; and to give you some sense of how we are going to go through the implementation phase.

            So to begin from the top; in November of 2004 the task force was appointed and went to work after the break. We did background reading and put together documentation and stuff over the break but didn’t really start meeting until after January.

            Anyway, in June we submitted a draft report and I think I talked with you all around that time and then what we did was in July and August we hosted a series of open forum discussions around budget issues and around undergraduate and graduate priorities. We completed those open forums over the summer and then we went directly into meetings with the academic units.

So as of today, and Maureen and Howard have been pretty faithful about coming to these, and I think I’ve done 5, counting in Arts and Sciences and one more yet to go after this; 2 in I think each of the other colleges, with the exception of Business; Business did it all in one fell swoop. So I think I’ve completed the rounds of meeting with academic units; I’ve made it to 4 of the regional campuses and still need to do Chillicothe the week after next. So I think that I’ve been engaged with all of the academic disciplines and what each of them did before I came to meet with them was submitted a response document and that response document was written at the department or school level, and it focused on what each unit saw as its particular strengths; how it saw its own program and goals fitting in with complimenting the goals of Vision Ohio; areas where they saw significant challenges or barriers; and areas where they had suggestions about the implementation phase.  So we’ve been using those as a beginning point for the discussion, discipline by discipline, but also other things have come to the floor along the way. The goal, basically, is to complete the open meetings and begin to bring the edits into the document and have at least now a working document that we can all begin to look at in the same pages and the same ways and so forth.

Changes to date: several guiding principles have been suggested, and there have actually been two more suggestions this week. One of them deals with campus safety: the sense is that we live in a safe community and we attract students here because of that isolation, small town, residential, campus feel. And so making an explicit statement about that in the guiding principles; taking the language from the undergraduate priorities about responsible behavior and actually making that an explicit statement in the guiding principles section of the document. And then finally, a statement on environmental sustainability; there has been a number of calls for this from around the campus and the community, but the notion that we want to maintain a level of consciousness about energy consumption; trying to build more facilities with green materials; trying to maintain a walking campus as opposed to a parking campus, those kinds of things. The other ones that came up this week: one of them was (well I guess this was actually last Friday) Health and Human Services, we did three in a row there and unilaterally one of the points that came up in the discussion was that we don’t have a guiding principle about being an accessible campus. We are not an accessible campus and I think that’s, I mean I know that when this comes to the floor we’re going to all start thinking about the additional costs associated with facilities planning but I think we all witnessed this with the library when we put the learning commons in, and that was one expense, and we didn’t put a ramp in at the time and then we went back and retrofitted with a ramp and it probably would have been (I mean I don’t know the details) but Julia maybe could tell us but it probably would have been more cost effective to have done that at the same time.

(Zimmerman)    We were trying to get a ramp in for years.

(Krendl)  I started getting emails from students saying “I have to go to the loading dock after hours, and I have to do this and that to do that” and I just think we need to be more proactive about that, so that was one.

Another one was: we have a statement in the documents now in the guiding principles about, well I’ll read it to you if I can find it here: “Strong undergraduate programs with a Liberal Arts core are a vital and necessary foundation.” And when I met with the Fine Arts faculty their question was, “Why don’t we say anything about the Arts in terms of, when we say Liberal Arts do we mean in an Arts and Sciences kind of an orientation and if we mean an Arts and Sciences, where are the Fine Arts?” And so that is another suggestion that has come up as a guiding principle and so some of the faculty said they would be sending me some language on that one, and I haven’t seen it yet but that’s another change that has been discussed. And that’s all I can think of in terms of guiding principles.

Other changes: Simplify the language in the Vision admission statements so that it doesn’t sound so jargony. Something that would read perfectly reasonably to a prospective student or parent of a prospective student as well as people inside the institution. Whenever we talk about research, talk about research as creative activity. Finally, I think this is probably one that we talked about when I was here last time, though to tell you the truth I don’t know if we did, but we added a fifth research priority theme and that was a general statement about research priorities in the Arts and Humanities. And so now we have a list of Arts and Humanities, Health and Wellness, New Technologies, Energy and the Environment, and Socioeconomic and Cultural Development.  The other change is that it was suggested that we take away the language describing those themes, the sense was that the language made them more restrictive.  There are ten implementation teams and the chairs of those implementation teams sit on the executive team so that there is a lot of cross conversation about what is happening on each team so that we don’t duplicate efforts.  I put them undergraduate and graduate priorities there.  Josie is chairing the graduate priorities, David Ingram is chairing the undergraduate priorities.  It is not co-incidence that David is also chair of UCC.  And, Josie is on Graduate Council.  So, we are trying to match the populations of these implementation teams with the bodies that will be carrying out much of the disciplinary and detailed focus of the work.  There are specific goals for each of the infrastructure quality, diversity, and environment goals.  There is also a specific set of goals for national prominence and everything on the graph seems to relate to that so we do not have a separate group on that.  The process groups on resources, partnerships, accountability I put under the title process because there are many more processes that reside behind the implementation teams.  On resources, that is the working group on the implementation team on the transition to a new budgeting process, there is much work that has to go on behind the scenes.  There is a team but there is going to be a group of people working hard to provide the data, the numbers, the financial information and how it will be presented and so forth.  These are ones that have process implications behind them.  Partnerships, we have talked about it, we have lots of them but we do not have a nice record of them.  I am creating a document, a searchable database, something that records the partnerships that we have and ways to become involved in those partnerships, or the way to identify what the mission of a particular partnership is. 

Steps—The goal was really to have three levels of documents so you will see the February 15^th and May 31^st dates on there.  The goal was to bring the institutional strategic plan to a close, and begin the editing process.  The Colleges meanwhile are working with their internal faculty to develop a College strategic plan by the middle of February and then working with their Chairs and Directors to have the Schools strategic plans by May 31^st.  The January 17^th date is there kind of as a heads up to get people thinking about this.  We are going to have an academic celebration on January 17^th and that will be to recognize academic excellence and outstanding achievement by faculty, by students.  I hope it will be a symbolic way of recognizing the entrance to a new period of the history of Ohio University.  And these are just other projects that have to work in parallel with the implementation teams, pieces that are housed primarily in my office but there are lots of other people involved as well, for example, in enrollment management. We now have an enrollment management faculty committee.  This was an agreement forged with Faculty Senate to move away from what had been an admissions and financial aid committee, into a committee that works with the enrollment management team on enrollment management.  So, talking about recruitment, but not only thinking about recruitment of freshman, but also recruitment of graduate students and of transfer students, and to relocate students.  So that we are looking at the full picture of enrollment and not pieces of it.  We are trying to coordinate those resources to the extent that when someone goes on an international trip, take some materials with you, talk about the programs at Ohio University, do some international recruiting.  So, we are trying to leverage the investments that we have across the institutions and to work more as a team on those fronts.  Subsets of that are recruitment efforts, but also once we recruit students to make sure that they have a first year experience that makes them want to stay, so finding an academic home, getting engaged with faculty, getting engaged with their fellow students in academic activity.  So that our retention improves rather than it continues to erodes slightly each year. We are now at 81% of freshmen coming back for the sophomore year and when asked it is not about academic probation, it is about students feeling that they have not found a comfortable place while at this institution.  We had 200 students who have a 3.0 or better and did not return for their sophomore year.  That is something we need to work on.  We should not think about the graduate and undergraduate capacity separately, we need to think about where we can grow and if not then do we need to change the way we are operating.  For example, I know in Education and Health and Human Services, Early Childhood continues to just increase in terms of demand and yet, because of the state mandate and because of the job situation, so there is plenty of work to do in those situations as well.  Looking at the capacity studies in combination so we are looking at what are the implications if the College of Education increases its enrollment in the Masters and Doctors programs. So what are the implications across the institution as well as looking at the balance between the graduate and the undergraduate.  And, regarding the budget planning, there is much back office work that has to be done to transition to the new budgeting process.  So, this will be targeted to providing data that it is timely and it is responsive to people’s needs and do the training and development that will be necessary for the implementation team while working on resources.  That really is what we have in terms of an overview, how we got here and what the next steps are.  The implementation teams were not designed to say that we are going to move forward with an unfinished document.  The implementation teams were designed, so that the minute the guidelines were done, we go right to implementation, we don’t have a gap in terms of the momentum that has been gained through the discussions and the interests that people have.  Writing these documents got the individual academic units pretty involved and talking about this and setting their own goals and it has been a wonderful exercise.  We now have 140 pages of departmental responses so that people can see these wonderful, excellent lots of very good activities going on, but again I do not know that everybody knows about them.  So, we are sharing all of that with the implementation teams, getting those into people’s hands, suggestions for implementation, areas where people see barriers, will be widely shared.  Actually it will be a good idea to post those to the website, so everybody else can see it.  Each implementation team will have an activity that they will be working on.  They want to do some focus group scenarios where they need information from students, faculty and staff, they want to do some work with Chairs, Directors, and Deans, they want to do open forums just as an education for everyone.  There will be a lot more community discussion as we go into the implementation phase.  There are about 15 people involved in each of the implementation teams, so we have 150-160 people working on this.  Some times we have made changes on implementation teams because people have felt they will be better on a different team and so on. 

(Axinn)   Given the nature of this process do you see a specific role for this organization?     {Graduate Council]

Answer: I absolutely see a role for this organization.  One of the huge opportunities for Ohio University is to be clear in its identity as a graduate institution.  And I think Graduate Council is absolutely essential to that process.  We are trying to be realistic about projections and as we go about setting enrollment targets.  I saw the numbers and we were not making them so I called Michael right away and asked what is going on.  He did a census of all academic units and came back and said that things were going to be fine.  Then things continued to get worse.  I think what happened was that graduate students under pressure from their advisors, chairs, and directors registered earlier than usual and since we did this on a calendar year to calendar year focus, so what seemed like a drop was not a drop.  We are off again in terms of international students, that continued to drop.  We want to do more and we have been doing more but it is not paying off yet.  We know that it is going to take time.  In addition we cut thousands of dollars in fee waivers, so we are looking for that balance in terms of what are the cost benefits of the size, but it is not just about that.  It is about how do we want to define ourselves as a graduate institution, how large do we want our graduate programs to be? What we want our mix of graduate and undergraduate students to be and where do we have the demand and capacity to accommodate more graduate students.  If we say it is a good idea then we have to go for it, we cannot say it is a good idea and then not meet the target, so it seems to me that this is a representative body, whose job it is to help us set the mission and define the goals for graduate education and I think that you are the body that should be speaking as advocates for graduate education.  Mike am I off base here, Duncan?  Duncan: No you are correct, the charge says we are advocates of Graduate Education.  And I would like Graduate Council to speak with a central voice.  I see it as essential.

(Pach)  Implementation is a major process.  Are there comparable experiences at peer institutions where we can learn from their experiences?

Answer: One of the pieces of the charge to each group is to review best practices related to these initiatives at our peer institutions and that is kind of piece by piece.  Some of our peer institutions have gone through the strategic planning processes.  I have spoken to some people at our peer institutions and at other institutions that have gone through this.  I will give you the extreme cases.  At the University of Florida, they hired outside consultants to do a strategic plan and they did it very quickly and what it said was that there were four or five favorite colleges and everybody else was supposed to continue to work in positive ways but they were cut off in terms of new directions and new investments.  It wreaked havoc in the organization.  So, they threw away that strategic plan after spending a lot of money on outside consultants and now are starting over again.  So, that was not a model I wanted to follow.  At Indiana University, it was a very small group of people and they almost met with no one during the process.  The process was very much a manifestation of the culture there.  The task force was not representative in any way in the sense that ours was representative.  For an institution twice our size, I will guess they had 10-12 people on the task force.  They did off the record interviews with people who had retired from the institution, with people who had been at the institution for many years and with outside people they did not do much at all.  Looking at the situation, I felt that we needed to have a lot of conversations and a lot more people involved than any of these institutions I had looked at.  I think that is just part of our culture.  The President appointed 46 people, which seemed like a logistical nightmare, but I promptly added 120 more to expert advisory groups because it seemed to me that we had various people on the task force, but they were not always the people who were going to understand the mechanics of how something was being done.  That was the role of those expert advisors.  So, when you talked about diversity, we had faculty and representatives who are engaged in diversity efforts, but the real people who know about diversity are the people out doing the recruiting, people who are in our academic units, people who are the multi-cultural coordinators.  So, we try to populate the expert advisory groups with folks who know what barriers they run into, what issues they have encountered and know what the resource needs are.  I sort of felt the same kind of pressure when I went into the implementation thing.  I don’t think we have been through an institutional planning process.  The last date I can find is in 1980s, something like 1987.  A lot of us who are here now have never been involved in an institutional level conversation and it just seemed to be that we needed to invest the time in having that kind of conversations at the disciplinary level, at the College level, and at the university level.  I don’t know if that was the best decision, but it seems to me that we had to have a conversation about how the pieces of the institution fit together and how to work effectively with the limited resources that we have to the best effect.  That means, better collaborations, better decisions, better information in the hands of people making those decisions.  Institutions do it differently and most institutes do rely on some outside consultants.  Like when we brought in consultants there was pressure at the outset to brand Ohio University into a big marketing campaign.  I just felt that I don’t think we want a marketing company defining who we are, I think we want to define who we are.  I think now we have had lots of conversations about who we are, and who we aspire to be, and what those goals are.  And, now we can turn that document in an edited form to the marketing company and say that this is who we are and this is what we are striving to be.  This is how we think about ourselves and now you turn that into something that is snappy.  One of the things that kept coming up in the task force was the special history that we have.  We do have a unique history and it is a part of who we are today.  Our location, our mission are closely tied to our history.  I like that phrase, Ohio’s first and finest, though I know it sounds esoteric, but I just in my mind think about Ohio’s first, Ohio’s finest and Ohio’s future and I think we want to carry on the traditions that we have as we look to the future.  We are not abandoning our past, we are extending that mission and identity into a world that is changing and that will continue to change.  We want to position ourselves as an institution that respects our history that respects tradition, but responds to the demands of the current situation and tries to respond in the ways higher education will continue to serve the needs of our society.  I don’t know if our current students understand that, we need to find ways to communicate that, not just for our own edification but for our student body and for the population of the state of Ohio. 

(Rota):  In my opinion the process has been open, consultative, and participative and very involved.  This week alone, I have had conversations with several faculty who say that the process has been top down, has been too controlled by Cutler Hall and the voice of the faculty is really not heard.  What would you tell those faculty members?

This week in fact I heard three conversations and each were complaining that the voice of the faculty is not heard.

Answer:  I ask Grad Council if they see any validity in this.  The document was written by committed faculty members. I can tell you that as a scholar of communication, there is always room for better ways to communicate. The sessions were well attended and people used the internet to work on it as well but not “engage” in it. I myself have heard many times that the Provost office itself created the draft, then gave out the draft, when in actuality, it was done the other way around.  

Discussion ended at 3:01 pm.

2.      Approval of Minutes: A motion was made to approve the September 9, 2005 minutes, they were approved unanimously with no objections.

3.      Chair’s Report: Duncan Brown

1. Introductory remarks: There are a couple changes in the Graduate Council Membership list that I will send you electronically.

a)      Would like to see the Planning and Strategy Standing Committee of Graduate Council act more like a congressional oversight committee regarding the vision Ohio process.

b)      Regarding the recruitment process: US and Britain are superior educators and Australia is now more popular among students.

c)      Last year we took a look ahead at the roles of Graduate Council’s standing committees

d)      Sent drafts back to the Chairs of these committees and how it fits in to the future of  Ohio University

4.      Michael Mumper:  Associate Provost for Graduate Studies

1. Introductory remarks: Anne Walker is substituting for Usha Matta this month, as she is in India recruiting.

2. Enrollment: Overall enrollment is down from last year. Often he is asked about what can be done to increase enrollment. The number of new students that arrived this fall increased, but the retention rate seems to be the problem. For example, Master’s students not staying their second year to complete their work. This is the first year that domestic enrollment exceeded international enrollment.

3. Recruitment Update: Carla is back from her trip. Usha is presently in India. Beth leaves in early November for Turkey, Central America and S.E. Asia. I am hopeful each recruiter will enter the information on to the electronic forms, which goes by email to the Grad Chair and Graduate Studies send other information to the department to follow-up on.

4. Multicultural Visitation: Multicultural visitation weekend begins 11/3 – 11/5/05. Contact Eddith Dashiell for more information or visit the web-site.

5. Stipend: Enhancement Competition proposal is due November 2, 2005.

Catherine Axinn:  Is there an exit interview for students who did not get funding or left the university for different reasons? Would it be perhaps that a particular course in the Graduate Catalog was not offered anymore? We need to find out why the students left and I will volunteer my help.

Michael Mumper:  The first issue was of course the numbers, but I agree.

Mark Mecum:  Brought up the topic of yoke courses. The only difference between undergrad and graduate is that the only thing required by graduates is submitted two extra papers. The Curriculum Committee would be very interested in hearing this.

Catherine Axinn:  I could see Graduate Student Senate playing a very valuable role in this.

Carolyn Cardenas:  Faculty Senate could develop a new language for the handbook.

Dr. Mumper:  They could also be instrumental in changing the existing structure.

Catherine Axinn:  The curriculum program reviewed by the Curriculum Committee showed every 500 and above class was a dual class.

Liz Miller:  Is it in the graduate catalog that a particular class has the potential to be a yoke class? My concern is the quality of education I wonder how much information is getting to the student.

Chester Pach: Need to have goals of quality. For some a yoke class will work. To others plain graduate courses will work. I think the VISION of OHIO gives us a reason to discuss this.

Josie Bloomfield: We need to look at quality and quantity differently regarding the two pages added.

Lee Cibrowski:  Don’t have a regular curriculum review. That should be done by the departments.

Katie Tadlock, Director Graduate Student Services

a)      The Graduate Catalog is at the editors. The paper version should be available before Thanksgiving, six weeks from the day they have the final revision. The electronic version should be available a few days to two weeks earlier.

b)      Two samples of the Fellows brochures were passed around. Before we print the updated versions, is there an interest in shifting voting for winter and spring? Should we go to February or March? Want to complete before departments decide on their funding. Want to discuss and have to the sub-committee before January 6, 2006. The one brochure is an information piece and the second brochure replaced the cover letter from Human Resources. An email was sent to Graduate Chairs describing the process.  

c)      MAGS: The Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools Outsanding Master’s thesis award is coming up.  The deadline is November 4^th, 2005.  Students who have received their Master’s degrees since June of 2004 to September 2005 are eligible to compete.

5.      Josie Bloomfield, Admissions Requirements Committee

Josie presented the report on the Conflicts of Interest reviewed by the Academic Requirements Committee.  The key is as follows:

Name, degree pursuing, college

OU position (Unit)

GS Comments

Committee Comments

1. Colleen Cobey, Master’s Physiology of Exercise/Rec & Sport Sciences (Health & Human Services) Approved/No Conflict

Left to Graduate Council to discuss at this meeting and decide. If reapplying to finish in the fall of 2006-1, would that be a conflict? If this student was re-applying to defend and admitted without conflict the first time, I see no conflict.

Carolyn Cardenas:  This fits into Faculty Senate. It defines a Senior Administrator in supervisory capacity over an entire department. The solution would be at this point to just assign another faculty member.

Lee Cibrowski:  You could do this, as Carbone is leaving and will not be on a committee.

Josie Bloomfield: I would have it stipulated that Gary Chleboun is leaving and will not be on a committee and then suggest no conflict.  This was approved with the proviso that no faculty from PT serve on her graduate committee.

2. Carl Hawes, Non-degree, EECS (Russ College of Engineering & Technology) Approved/No Conflict

This case did present a problem but it was decided that as long as he stays non-degree, there would be no conflict. If however, he ever intended to seek a degree, this would need looked at again in the future. This was approved with the proviso that he not take classes with the Principal Investigator of the grant under which he is employed. Also, a change in academic programs, degree-seeking status, or employment would necessitate a new conflict of interest review.

3. Kevin Johnson, Non-degree, EECS (Russ College of Engineering & Technology) Approved/No Conflict

This case also presented a problem, but it was decided that it would not be a conflict since he was non-degree, but it would need to be reviewed in the future is he decided to change to a degree seeking status.

4. Timothy Hogan, M.Ed., Higher Education (Education) Approved/No Conflict

Approval was based on that if there is a change in academic programs, degree-seeking status, or employment, this case would open another conflict of interest review.

5. Christopher Lewis, Ph.D., Biol Sciences/MCB (Arts & Sciences) Approved/No Conflict

6. Marne Grinolds, M.A. Latin American Studies (Center for International Studies) Approved/No Conflict

6.      Chris Mattley, Curriculum Committee

Program Review – School of Art.   Approved to Chair for review and send through today 10/14/2005.

Concerns were regarding the physical facilities at the School of Art. It was recommended a report be done of the program review.

Chester Pach:  Why was it three years? Because it got lost between the dean’s office and the UCC?

Josie Bloomfield:  This has happened before and is a very big problem.

Carolyn Cardenas:  Part of the problem is that it is a lot of work for one individual and does not seem to be supportive for the actual individual doing the reviewing.

Patricia Beamish:  What is the Graduate Council role in all of this?

Duncan Brown:  Can use information as Graduate Chairs can prompt the Deans make changes in areas that are problematic regarding safety. Some problems were corrected, but require more resources and we can see where those are through VISION OHIO.

Carolyn Cardenas:  National accreditation occurred synonymous with the UCC report. The report had some very key points.

Duncan Brown:  Overall average may have been low due to environment. For example: The Siegfried building with students standing in water using electrical equipment.  Shall we at this point accept the review? 

New Business:   (none)

Meeting adjourned at 4:05 pm

Next meeting: Friday, November 18, 2005

(because the 11^th is Veteran’s Day)

Time: 2pm—4 pm, 104 Walter Hall

APPENDIX

Provost Krendl’s Power Point Presentation and Remarks following:  

Provost Remark:  The goal was to complete open meetings, bring the edits and at least have a working document.

Provost Remark:  Some of the language used for campus safety actually is from language currently used in undergrad documents and policies. The language needs to be simplified.

As far as environmental sustainability Ohio University needs to maintain a walking campus. It is still not an accessible campus. It will take additional costs for facility planning and we need to be more pro-active.

Provost Remark:  The goal was to have three levels of documents. Please refer to Institutional Planning below. An example of strategic planning: when someone is going on an international trip, check with others and take some materials. This is a better use of our financial resources and we are not duplicating our efforts.

Provost Remarks:  In terms of graduate and undergraduate capacity studies: after their first year experience, we need to work on making sure that the students do have a pleasant year and want to stay. I am not currently happy with those numbers.