Minutes of University Faculty Meeting, 19 April 2006

• Attendees: The list of attendees is available.
• Call to Order: Prof. Philip Troyk (BME), chair of the University Faculty Council, called the meeting to order at 11:45am on Wednesday 19 April 2006. He proposed that, owing to the large number of items on the agenda, debate would be limited to two minutes per speaker and two remarks per person per issue; he also reserved the right to pre-set limits on overall debate on an issue. A two-thirds majority could vote to continue debate; otherwise the question would be called at the end of the pre-designated time limit. These operational rules were agreed to, as were time limits of 20 minutes for discussions of Appendix P (see below) and 40 minutes for IPros.
• Minutes: The Minutes of the faculty meeting on 24 February were agreed to by acclamation.
• University Faculty Council Report: Phil offered a summary of University Faculty Council business during the previous two months. He said that the most important recent issue to was the upcoming restructuring of the Undergraduate Studies Committee. The University administration has objected to certain specific provisions in the planned reorganization, and the UniFC will endeavor to reach a compromise on these issues.
• Degree Programs:

  Phil introduced four proposed degree programs: three Professional Masters programs sponsored by the Electrical and Computing Engineering Department, and one bachelor's completion program hosted by the Center for Professional Development. All had been passed at 10 March 2006 meeting of the University Faculty Council.

  1. Master of Power Engineering: This proposed program was approved by consent.
  2. Master of VLSI and Microelectronics: This proposed program was approved by consent.
  3. Master of Biomedical Engineering and Signals: This proposed program was approved by consent.
  4. Bachelor's Degree Completion Program in Healthcare Technology and Management (HTM): This proposal engendered considerable discussion. A faculty member asked whether this program has acquired an actual Academic Unit as its sponsoring entity, given that the Center for Professional Development is not currently an Academic Unit. Bob Carlson replied that the undergraduate business program, BCPS, Humanities, and Computer Science have all been involved in the creation of this program and that he would expect continued involvement by all of those units. Provost Myerson commented that, for CPD's other programs, sponsorship by a single academic unit enables the CPD to offer degrees. Numerous questions arose, including question as to why this problem of undefined sponsorship had not been pursued more vigorously at the level of the Undergraduate Studies Committee or the University Faculty Council. Joe LoCicero observed that the Undergraduate Studies Committee had been satisfied with the type of oversight that Bob had described.

     The question of accreditation of this HTM program was raised. Bob said that IIT would seek accreditation from the American Health Information Management Association for this program. Ellen Mitchell asked where students in this program would go for guidance if they encountered problems in its operations. Bob said he would expect that the University would appoint a Director, similar to the Director of the ITM program, who would be responsible for issues of that sort. After additional discussion the question of approving this program was called. The final vote was 33 in favor of approval and 41 against, so the program was not approved.

• Adjournment: Shortly after this vote it became evident that enough faculty had left that there was no longer a quorum present, and the meeting was acccordingly adjourned around 1:15pm.