Minutes of University Faculty Meeting
Friday 24 February 2006

n.b.: All faculty members listed here are category I except those marked with an asterisk, who are category II.

Present at Main Campus Meeting:

• Armour College of Engineering:
  • BME: Mark Anastasio, Konstantinos Arfanakis, Jennifer J.Kang Derwent, David Mogul, Georgia Papavasiliou*, Phil Troyk, Vincent Turitto
  • ChEE: Javad Abbasian, Hamid Arastoopour, Victor Pérez-Luna, Fouad Teymour
  • CAE: David Arditi, Eduardo deSantiago*, Jamshid Mohammadi, Ralph Muehleisen, John O'Leary, Jay Shen, Jonathan Shi
  • ECE: Ali Emadi, Joseph LoCicero, Janfer Saniie, Mohammad Shahidehpour, Donald Ucci, Miles Wernick, Geoff Williamson, Tom Wong
  • MMAE: Mike Gosz, Sudhakar Nair, Francisco Ruiz, David Williams
• Institute of Psychology:
  Roya Ayman, Pat Corrigan, Ruthanna Gordon, Joyce Hopkins, Margaret Huyck, Ellen Mitchell, Bob Schleser, David Peterson
• College of Architecture:
  Peter Beltemacchi, Tom Brock*, Susan Conger-Austin, Dirk Denison, John Durbrow, Frank Flury, Thomas Gentry, Thomas Kearns, Robert Krawczyk, Eva Kultermann, Annie Pedret, Donna Robertson, David Sharpe, Catherine Wetzel
• College of Science and Letters:
  • Applied Mathematics: Fred Hickernell, Art Lubin, Buck McMorris
  • BCPS: Sandra Bishnoi, Grant Bunker, Liam Coffey, Andy Howard, Peter Johnson, Porter Johnson, Daniel Kaplan, Peter Lykos, Raju Mehta, Joseph Orgel, Howard Rubin, Ken Schug, Carlo Segre, Linda Spentzouris, Kathryn Spink*, Ben Stark, Jeff Terry, Chris White, Jialing Xiang, Chun Bo Zhang, Wei Zhang, Yuzhu Zhang
  • Computer Science: Gruia Calinescu, Bob Carlson, Sanjiv Kapoor, Xiang Yang Li
  • Humanities: Glenn Broadhead, Michael Chen, Michael Davis, Susan Feinberg, Kevin Harrington, Jo MacKiewicz, Gregory Pulliam*, Kathy Riley, Warren Schmaus, Jack Snapper
  • SocSci: Bill Grimshaw

IBIS: Elizabeth Durango-Cohen, Dan Ferguson*

Kent School of Law: Lew Collens

Institute of Design: Vijay Kumar

Manufacturing Technology and Management: Keith McKee

Present at the Downtown Campus meeting:


Kent School of Law: Susan Adams, Bernadette Atuahene, Katharine Baker, Ralph Brill, Gerald Brown*, Howard Chapman, Sungjoon Cho, Dan Hamilton, Sarah Harding, Steven Harris, Harold Krent, Gary Laser, Nancy Marder, David Rudstein, Michael Scodro, Jeffrey Sherman, Ronald Staudt, Joan Steinman, Keith Ann Stiverson*, Kent Streseman*, Mary Rose Strubbe*, Dan Tarlock, Richard Warner, Richard Wright.

Public Admininstration: Richard Bonaccorsi*.

IBIS / Stuart: John Bilson

Stuart Graduate School of Business: Mike Gorham*.

Convening and Agenda: The meeting was called to order at 12:13 pm on Friday 24 February 2006 in the McCormick/Tribune Campus Center and, via television feed, from room 174 of the downtown campus. This meeting was called by the University Faculty Council as of its January 2006 Meeting in accordance with Appendix A of the Faculty Handbook. All agenda items were posted on the University Faculty Council website beginning Friday 10 February 2006. The only items on the agenda were consideration of changes in University policies as articulated in the Faculty Handbook and proposals for, and changes to, degree programs. Professor Philip Troyk, chair of the University Faculty Council, presided. He began with a brief description of the plans for the meeting and explained that he use "general consent" as binding in certain instances at the meeting. Joe Locicero asked that the IPro item be moved to be first on the agenda and the reorganization of faculty voting rates be moved to second. After some discussion the motion to reorder the agenda items was disapproved by voice vote.

Proposed New Degree Programs:

All of these proposals had been approved by the Graduate Studies Committee and the University Faculty Council prior to the meeting.

1. BCPS Dept. and NCFST: Professional Masters in Food Safety and Technology
   Phil described this program briefly and referred the faculty to the material on the UniFC website describing this program. After brief discussion, this degree program was approved by general consent.
2. ChEE Dept: Professional Masters in Biological Engineering
   Phil described this program. Joe Locicero asked how many new courses would be required for this program: Fouad Teymour answered "two." The program was approved by general consent.
3. School of Architecture: Master of Science in Landscape Architecture
   Phil and Donna Robertson gave a brief description of this program. Glenn Broadhead and Ken Schug indicated some surprise at the number of semester-hours in this master's program: Donna said it was not particularly unusual, and in fact the Masters of Architecture here requires more than 90 semester-hours. Joe LoCicero asked how many new faculty would be required: Donna estimated three tenure-track faculty and four category-II faculty. After a brief additional discussion the degree program was approved by general consent.
4. Kent Law: LLM in Family Law
   A brief and friendly discussion culminated in approval of this program by general consent.

Proposed Changes to Faculty Handbook:

Phil announced that he would seek general consent on the less controversial of these changes, and would seek full votes on the others.

1. Appendix L: Research Misconduct
   Phil explained that this change in language is designed to bring IIT's research practices into accord with federal regulations. Ken Schug asked if the changes were extensive: Mary Anne Smith said new text had been added using language derived from federal guidelines. Fouad Teymour noted some typographical errors. Dan Kaplan asked about the relationship between this item and one other section of the Handbook. After this discussion, the Faculty approved, by general consent, the proposed new version of Appendix L.
2. Paragraph H of Faculty Handbook main body: Teaching of Relatives of Faculty Members
   After Phil described this proposed addition to the Handbook, Ken Schug noted asked whether this policy belonged in appendix A, as had been claimed on the website: Mary Anne Smith replied that it is actually a revision of paragraph H of the main body of the Handbook. She noted that the intent is to leave the language deliberately vague as to what constitutes a "family-like" relationship. Dan Kaplan, Joyce Hopkins, Fouad Teymour, and Vince Turitto offered suggestions as to appropriate wording and the degree to which the individual faculty member could make the decisions about his or her own impartiality. Additional discussion centered on questions of the ability of an individual faculty member to assess his or her own impartiality and the utility of a more precise definition of a family-like relationship. In the end the Faculty approved the new policy by general consent.
3. Appendix K: Patent and Copyright Policy
   Phil and Carlo Segre explained that this proposal provides for financial rules regarding re-offering courses via IIT Online. The administrative aspects of this issue were handled at the University Faculty Council level over a year ago, but portion related to intellectual property requires handbook language, and that is the point of these revisions. After a brief discussion the amended Appendix K was approved by general consent.
4. Appendix B, Section F: Makeup of the Undergraduate Studies Committee
   Phil described the proposed reorganization of the Undergraduate Studies Committee and asked Joe Locicero, who had been involved in drafting the reorganization, to explain it. Fouad Teymour asked why 8% is used as a criterion in paragraph 2 of the new document. Joe said that worked out to produce a committee of approximately the right size. Paco Ruiz and Dan Kaplan suggested that the language describing the formula for deciding which academic units would have two representatives was confusing. Joe was asked to produce an algebraic formula to buttress the English description: after a bit of experimentation the following formula was put forth: Let
   a₁ = 100 * N_major^AU / N_major^TOTAL   and
   a₂ = 100 * N_SCH^AU / N_SCH^TOTAL
   where N_major^AU and N_major^TOTAL are the number of undergraduate students majoring in a specific academic unit and the total number of undergraduates, respectively; and N_SCH^AU and N_SCH^TOTAL are the number of undergraduate semester-hours earned in a specific academic unit or in the entire university, respectively. Then:
   if (a₁+a₂)/2 > 8, then the academic unit gets 2 representatives.
   Otherwise, the academic unit gets one. Currently the academic units that will receive two representatives are ECE, MMAE, BCPS, Computer Science, and Architecture. The amendment defining this algebraic clarification was moved and seconded; it was approved by voice vote. At that point Ken Schug moved for approval of the amended proposal and Geoff Williamson seconded; the question was called, and the amended proposal was approved by voice vote.
5. Appendix P: Faculty Voting Rights and Procedures
   Phil explained that the purpose of this proposal was to simplify and speed up the approval process for new degree programs and other relatively non-controversial curricular issues at faculty meetings. Glenn Broadhead asked whether the word "approval" in the proposal (viz. "Upon request of at least 20 Category I faculty members, the UFC shall withhold approval of the curriculum change") could be changed to "implementation"; this proposed change was not adopted by the faculty. Donna Robertson asked whether the references to "Category I" faculty in this passage could be changed to "eligible voters," since in many instances the category II faculty will have voting rights on other issues. Accordingly Glenn Broadhead moved and Don Ucci seconded an amendment modifying the first instance in the changed paragraph from "to each Category I faculty member" to "to all eligible voters." After further discussion this amendment was approved by a counted vote of 65 for and 16 against. Subsequently Mike Davis moved and Mohammad Shahidehpour seconded a motion to change the other instances in the paragraph from "Category I faculty members" to "eligible voters"; this proposal was approved by voice vote. The faculty then discussed the proposal itself . Joe Locicero moved and Dan Kaplan seconded a suggestion to table the proposal and postpone discussion until the next meeting; the move to table was ruled out of order, but at that point the statutory time limit for the meeting was reached, and the meeting adjourned without a final vote on the proposed change to Appendix P.

Unaddressed issues on Agenda: Proposed Change in IPRO Policies:
The University Faculty Council approved a Change in IPRO Policy approved at its February meeting. This issue was not addressed at the faculty meeting because previous issues had occupied all the time.

Adjournment:  The meeting adjourned at 1:34pm.