Chair’s Written Report to the Faculty Steering Committee, October30, 2012

At the meeting of the Faculty Senate on October 25, 2012, the Provost gave a presentation on Academic Analytics, it history, how its compiles and how the data may be used.

Academic Analytics

The Comparative Database:

The Academic Analytics Database (AAD) includes information on over 270,000 faculty members associated with more than 9,400 Ph.D. programs and 9,800 departments at more than 385 universities in the United States and abroad. These data are structured so that they can be used to enable comparisons at a discipline-by-discipline level as well as overall university performance. The data include the primary areas of scholarly research accomplishment:

  1. the publication of scholarly work as books and journal articles
  2. citations to published journal articles
  3. research funding by federal agencies
  4. honorific awards bestowed upon faculty members
  5. The portal offers more than 40 different tables, charts, and data cutting tools facilitating rapid answers to common questions that our data can help solve, as well as unique visualizations that provide an opportunity for the discovery of previously unrecognized data, trends, patterns, and centers of strength and weakness at your university.

Academic Analytics' unique "flower chart" affords the viewer a visualization of the overall productivity of the faculty within a given academic discipline. Variables on different scales (per capita, per grant dollar, per publication, etc.) and measuring different areas of scholarly productivity can be viewed simultaneously on a single comparative scale based on national benchmarks for the discipline. This powerful graphic facilitates rapid identification of the strongest and weakest areas in a given academic discipline on your campus.

The Provost expressed the view that the database does not take into account grants from state institutions and that other methods of evaluation may have to be found. It should be noted that the departments may assign their own weighting system on the data rather that use the weighting system used by Academic Analytics.

This topic requires further discussion and should be forwarded to the Research Committee for evaluation.

The Provost also presented a report on the parking issue, but due to time constraints, we will have to take up this discussion at a later date.

The Provost will be asked to provide additional information on FIU’s plans for MOOCs.

The SGA motion on FIU 2013 will be forwarded and discussed at the Steering Committee’s next meeting.

The BBC Committee continues to express their frustration with getting information about the campus. At their last meeting, the Committee continued further discussion on issues regarding the BBC campus. They have shared information that was discussed at the Faculty Senate Steering Committee. In the minutes of their meeting this frustration bemoans the fact “There continues to exist a lack of information that is shared with the faculty by the upper administration. There is a lack on input from faculty on matters that impact the university faculty”.

Additionally, BBC Senators, while agreeing in theory to pursue updating our BBC Strategic Vision Report, shared reservations about the practicality of investing time into this project. Nonetheless, they have agreed to create a report that will, as best as they are able to, reflect the possibilities that could occur here even within the ever changing Master Plan.

The Sun Sentinel is reporting that:

“A state task force created by Gov. Rick Scott has released its preliminary recommendations on how to revamp higher education. The proposals end the one-size-fits-all way of funding universities.

Highly distinguished universities, such as the University of Florida and Florida State University, could charge more than others. Tuition would be lower for students pursuing degrees most needed for Florida's job market, including ones in science, technology, engineering and math, collectively known as the STEM fields”

The committee is recommending no tuition increases for them in the next three years. But to pay for that, students in fields such as psychology, political science, anthropology, and performing arts could pay more because they have fewer job prospects in the state.

We will try to ascertain the source of this information and determine its accuracy. This could have far reaching implications for non-STEM programs.

Regards,

C Delano Gray

Chairman