INDIANA STATE UNIVERSITY

Student Affairs Committee

SAC 16/17-02Approved: 10/17/16

9/19/16, 9:00 a.m.

CN 416

Present: Dan Coovert, Steve Hardin, Mary Howard-Hamilton, Sandra Kohler, Jessica Nelson, Nancy Nichols-Pethick

Absent: Bassou El Mansour (cannot meet at this time)

Ex-Officio: Robert Guell (Faculty Senate), Joshua Powers (Academic Affairs), April Hay (Registrar), Linda Maule (University College)

Guests:

  1. Call to order
  2. Chair J. Nelson called the meeting to order at 9:00 a.m.
  3. Revision of agenda if necessary
  4. No revision was made to the agenda.
  5. Approval of minutes of the previous meeting
  6. D. Coovert moved, and S. Hardin seconded, approval of the minutes. The minutes were approved 6-0-0.
  7. Old Business
  8. R. Guell noted that the University Handbook, §246.9.1.2 specifies that the Committee include one administrative representative from Academic Affairs, Registration and Records, Admissions, Financial Aid, Student Academic Services, Leadership, Student Activities and Greek Life, Residential Life, the Hulman Memorial Student Union and Intercollegiate Athletics. In addition, §246.9.1.3 states that four undergraduate students be included, two of whom are voting members of the Student Government Association Senate. Action item: Secretary S. Hardin will contact representatives of these offices and inform them of the Committee’s meeting schedule.
  9. [S. Hardin has emailed Kim Cates from Academic Affairs, April Hay from Registration and Records, Richard Toomey from Admissions, Crystal Baker from Financial Aid, Vicki Banks from the Office of Campus Life (which oversees Student Organizations), the generic email for Residential Life, Mark Adkins from the Hulman Memorial Student Union andAngie Lansing from Intercollegiate Athletics.]
  10. S. Hardin did not email Joshua Powers from Student Success (which oversees the Center for Student Success, which has subsumed Student Academic Services), because of his attendance at the meeting
  11. New Business
  12. SAC Charges
  13. Charge 1: Submit recommendations from the Advising Task Force – finalize report from last year
  14. Task Force Report and Response from FAC (attached)
  15. J. Nelson said her understanding is that this was sent to FAC last year; we have FAC’s response.
  16. R. Guell said the final report went to the Provost and Faculty Senate, who farmed it out to last year’s FAC and SAC. J. Powers said it didn’t get voted on because there wasn’t a quorum at the last meeting. R. Guell said it was disseminated and when the president and provost saw the implied price tag, they weren’t motivated to go any deeper into it. The report recommended centralizing the advising training and having the people who want to do it actually do it. Other questions include whether advising is part of teaching, service, or something else. The conclusion is that it’s part of the function of faculty members to advise, so when they don’t advise, there must be some extra weight they’re pulling – extra service, etc. The FAC report essentially is the “report lite.” S. Kohler said she thinks it’s the provosts’ positon that advising is creating a beneficial relationship between students and faculty. J. Powers said we won’t have a shift in efforts to advising beyond University College, although other universities have done that. Graduate advising has also been decoupled in this discussion. R. Guell said Rusty, Cheryl and he met late last semester, but they reached no conclusion. It could be worth a conversation with Rusty about what their recommendation was. It was largely around those workhorses in grad programs who do the bulk of thesis advising. They focused on release in teaching time, equating to a certain number of final events, such as the number of dissertation/thesis committees they’re on, and that translates into release from teaching. R. Guell said we must come up with an expectation of what the job of “instructor” is. L. Maule noted that high quality advising won’t happen if someone’s already teaching five classes. Is there a policy that says you can’t give release time? J. Powers and R. Guell both said no. J. Nelson said the policy sort of micromanages the department.
  17. J. Nelson said the report’s already been pushed forward. She doesn’t want to send it again. R. Guell said if you want to have impact, give it a shot, but ensure there’s a conversation between FAC and SAC which includes Susan Powers or Josh Powers or both about not getting to a place the administration can’t support. L. Maule suggested FAC should look at it from the perspective of faculty; SAC should consider it in terms of what’s best of students. You may want to start fresh; lastyear’s work was pretty divided in terms of perspectives. Cheryl Blevens will have those reports from SAC last year. The mission of SAC is to speak on behalf of students.
  18. J. Nelson said that for the next meeting, she will get the other information from last year’s SAC. She will also meet with Rusty and see where they are. For the next meeting, we’ll focus on the international students and special populations with Chris. Last year’s report is robust, but her experience is that no one reads reports longer than two pages. Make it as succinct as possible. Make it clear we understand what the administration has said and take their ideas into account.
  19. J. Powers said if we’re not going to move to a professional advising model, we need to do more training for our faculty. But it still doesn’t change the equation on how you think about loads. J. Nelson said that as a chair, she wants to ensure she’s following the rules. Faculty want to ensure they’re being treated fairly. If we can get consistency with the guidelines it may help.
  20. Charge 2: Review history of Student Success initiatives and assess effectiveness (with AAC)
  21. Charge 3: Identify a faculty member to serve as representative to SGA Senate meetings
  22. Dan Coovert volunteered to serve at the last meeting
  23. Update
  24. We tracked down the SGA representative and got the list of meetings for the semester. They meet twice each month.
  25. Charge 4: Monitor international student enrollment
  26. J. Nelson proposed Chris McGrew join the SAC meeting October 17th for data and report of international student enrollment. He will give us his report. We can determine how we will report that. There have been some issues with enrollment. R. Guell said the rules changed dramatically for the Saudi Cultural Ministry – we’ve gone form hundreds of 1st-time students to single digits. If we do nothing we will lose about 1000 students over the next few years. L. Maule suggested looking beyond international students; we may want to report on 21st-centruy scholars, etc. J. Nelson will try to get the two recruiters to the meeting along with Chris. L. Maule said we’re also down in terms of weak/non-weak admits; we’re also down overall about three points. Some of these students may have made decisions based on financial considerations. J. Powers noted nearly every college/university in the state saw an enrollment decrease this fall. L. Maule said that in June, IU-Bloomington began inviting people to attend who typically would come to ISU first and transfer to IU later. They went deeper into their pool than they usuallydo, which took students from us. R. Guell noted the financial problems in Illinois have really hurt higher education there; Eastern Illinois University was down 25% in freshman enrollment this year; you can assume some of the missing students would come here. A. Hay said 126% of ISU tuition is still less than EIU tuition.
  27. Charge 5: Review admission/scholarship standards and retention statistics; consider making recommendations regarding adjustment to admission and/or retention standards.
  28. Charge 6: Review and assess effectiveness of current student evaluation model (with FAC)
  29. Task Force Development. Seeemail handoutattached.
  30. Lindsay Eberman is FAC chair this year. Lindsey outlined her ideas to J. Nelson; FAC will address this charge with a subcommittee.

  31. R. Guell said the potential number of reviews under the new system is up, but the total number of reviews is down; conscientious faculty are upset about the new system. The only real suggestion the administration will seriously consider concerns efforts to boost the response rates within the current system. J. Nelson said she had some biennial employees who didn’t get any student evaluations. R. Guell said the Handbook requires evaluations, but doesn’t specify who does them. So the absence of student input isn’t necessarily a stopper. J. Nelson said that it’s a departmental policy. R. Guess said there is considerable skepticism among key faculty senate members about student evaluations. L. Maule said she was also concerned about the response rate. Will we get to the point that a faculty member going up for tenure will argue about the validity of student evaluations? R. Guell said the senate executive committee would favorably look upon SAC recommendations for policy changes to enhance participation rates. J. Nelson said we need to include in our report some way to enhance those reports and make them more user-friendly. She called for two persons to serve on the task force. Bassou can’t make this meeting time, so he said he’d help with other things. She assigned him to this task force. N. Nichols-Pethick volunteered to help too. J. Powers suggested inviting Molly Hare to help. J. Nelson agreed. Action item for J. Nelson: contact Molly.
  32. Charge 7: Administer the Faculty Scholarship
  33. Charge 8: Produce and submit an annual report in time for the final Senate meeting of 2016-17.
  34. J. Powers handed out fliers on student success conference, as well as copies of the undergraduate academic advising handbook.
  35. M. Howard-Hamiltonasked if anyone has talked to students who decided not to come to ISU. J. Powers said he was unaware if there’s a regular process for doing that. But about every three years a professional study is done. You can see a copy of the most recent report – from 2012, he believes. M. Howard-Hamilton said she knows several students who applied and didn’t come. She knows some of the African-American students didn’t come because of climate issues.
  36. R. Guell said he thinks it’s common knowledge that John Beacon is in his last year as dean of enrollment management. It would be useful for J. Nelson to email Tim Hawkins to request that a SAC member be a member of the search committee. This is an action item for J. Nelson.
  37. J. Powers aid President Bradley will speak about the new strategic plan this week in his report. Powers hopes SAC will focus on Strategic Initiative One.
  38. L. Maule said new dean searches will be spread out over two years.
  39. The next meeting will be October 17th.
  40. Adjournment
  41. M. Howard-Hamilton moved, and D. Coovert seconded, adjournment. The meeting was adjourned at 10:01 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Steve Hardin

Secretary