September 8, 2004

David Rosenbloom called the meeting to order at 1:50 p.m.

Present: Professors Ahrens, Arneson, Bennett, Burke, Cochran, Douglass, Durant, Fantie, Flug, Heintze, Jacoby, Karch, La Salle, Leap, Loesberg, Mardirosian, Richardson, Riley, Rosenbloom, Schaeff, Streitmatter, Vogelsong,Weaver. Provost Kerwin, and Dean of Academic Affairs Broder.

Absent: Professor King.

The minutes of the May 5, 2004 meeting were approved.

Report of the President
Benjamin Ladner began by acknowledging, once again, the many contributions of John Douglass to faculty governance. He said American University owed a debt to Professor Douglass, who currently serves as past chair of the Senate, for his many years of leadership, his spirit of cooperation, and his ability to rally his colleagues around important issues. Dr. Ladner said he was thrilled to see new leaders, such as David Rosenbloom and Tony Ahrens, moving to the forefront.

Dr. Ladner then expressed his pride in the university, in general, and in the faculty, in particular. He said it was clear that the hard work and high quality of the faculty are key leveraging points in the future of the institution. He also noted that in almost every academic unit, there is something to brag about, and he noted a number of specific achievements as evidence of that fact.

• The U.S. News and World Report placed American at 86 among the top 100 universities in the United States.

• The Princeton Review placed American in the top 75 schools nationwide among “America’s Best Value Colleges.”

• Earlier in the year, the Kogod School of Business MBA program was ranked 42nd by the Wall Street Journal.

• The School of Public Affairs is now in the top 10 in the nation, as a college, with the Justice, Law, and Society program ranked 3rd, and Public Administration ranked 8th.

• In the College of Arts and Sciences, the Creative Writing Program is in the top 50. American History and Economics are both in the top 25.

• The School of International Service regularly ranks in the top 10. SIS is still the largest school of international affairs in the country.

• The School of Communication is the third largest producer of journalists, visual media, and public communications professionals in the United States.

• The Washington College of Law is now in the top 50, with its Clinical Law program ranked number 2nd, and its International Law program ranked 6th.

Dr. Ladner also reported that AU had this year the most qualified class that had ever been admitted to the university. He said the class size was hovering around 1211, plus the mentorship program, for a total of about 1260. SATs were up to a mean of around 1250. The average GPA was up to 3.47. Approximately 17 percent of the incoming class is in the Honors Program. And 17 percent of the class are minorities. Dr. Ladner told the Senate that these achievements were due in no small measure to the fact that faculty have become increasingly involved in the admissions process and have been able to demonstrate to students why AU is superior in so many ways to its competitors.

Dr. Ladner then briefed the Senate on developments across campus.

Goals for the academic year
Dr. Ladner reported that his cabinet had identified during the summer the university-wide goals for 2004-2005. The number one priority for the year, and for the next several years, will be the AnewAU campaign. The second priority is to focus on the quality of student experience. Dr. Ladner said the university wants to ensure that services to students continue to improve, not only in terms of operational efficiency, but in terms of academic creativity, access to professors, access to staff, and campus life. A third major focus will be the university’s Washington-based and international programs. Fourth will be a re-examination and reassessment of diversity across the campus community.

Accreditation reviews
Dr. Ladner reported that American had been re-accredited by the Middle States Commission. He said the Commission had emphasized in their report two significant points: (1) the quality of the university across the board; and (2) the progress that AU has made in the decade since the last re-accreditation review. Middle States was also highly complimentary about the self-study report and used that report as a model for other institutions to emulate.

American also received formal notification this year that the university is fully accredited by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Dr. Ladner said that re-accreditation means a great deal to the Athletics program. It also reflects the status of the institution with the NCAA.

Dr. Ladner reported that a re-accreditation review would also be conducted by the Methodist Church, based on AU’s a long history as a Methodist institution. A small team will do an on-site visit in mid-September. The team will focus, for the most part, on AU’s spiritual programs and its spiritual leadership on campus, but will also look at academic programs, the financial structure, and campus life.

International Programs
President Ladner also provided details about the launching of the American University of Nigeria. He said that after an international search, Dr. David Huwiler, former president of the American University of Central Asia, had been appointed as the founding president of AAUN. Dr. James Garofalo, former dean of the School of Education at Acquinas College and a former Peace Corps volunteer in Nigeria, had been appointed as vice president of academic affairs. Dr. Patrick Ukata, who holds a law degree from Oxford University and a Ph.D. in International Studies from AU, will serve as director of the AU-AAUN Washington Office here on campus. The new university will open in Yola, Nigeria, in fall 2005, with at least four buildings ready by September, 70-80 faculty, and several colleges.

He also reported that the American University of Sharjah had become a leading university in the Arab world. After seven years, the university has been accredited by Middle States. It has attracted scholars from all over the world and attracted the best students throughout 47 countries.

Turning to the broader topic of AU Abroad, Dr. Ladner noted that the university had 309 students in study abroad programs this fall, up from 232 last fall. He also said it was clear from a recent analysis of the data on international programs that AU had unfortunately undercounted for years the number of students who are studying abroad through all of the university’s programs. When that oversight is corrected, AU will most likely have 800 students studying abroad in the cycle from last summer to next summer. Through the Office of International Affairs, the university has also embarked on establishing partnerships with some of the best universities in the world. Those partnerships will open up further opportunities for students to study in other countries and will create opportunities for faculty exchange and research projects.

The Patriot League
As a final major topic, Dr. Ladner commented on the university’s participation in the Patriot League. Noting that American had become a real leader in the league, he said AU’s student athletes have won awards for their athletic prowess. They have also been recognized for their intellectual achievements. Dr. Ladner said the university sets high standards for students admitted to its athletic programs. The coaches in the programs are first rate. And the students come to the university knowing they are going to be students, first and foremost.

During his report, Dr. Ladner also provided updates on facilities projects and on plans for the Army Corps of Engineers to bring to completion their work on university’s campus.

Report of the Provost
Elaborating on President Ladner’s points regarding Middle States, Neil Kerwin reported that the recent re-accreditation had been the only unconditional re-accreditation in the institution’s recent history. That means, he said, that there are no requirements for interim reporting on any aspect of process considered by Middle States.

Dr. Kerwin then expanded on the details President Ladner provided about the enrollments for the fall semester.

• For the first time in memory, the university exceeded its target for transfer students, with a rough count of approximately 428 new students. The admit rate for transfers appeared to be as good as the admit rate for freshmen.

• Also for the first time, the average SAT for the University Honors Program exceeded 1410. The average GPA was 3.85.

• The master’s level was on target with regard to budget. The deans were reporting that incoming student qualifications were higher, based on traditional measures, grade point averages and GREs.

• The Washington College of Law exceeded its target for its first-year class. The average LSAT score increased to 161. WCL is now the 8th largest law school in the United States.

• The Washington Semester Program was on target for its credit program but a little below budget for its non-credit international program. The Washington Semester had 410 credit students, a big group, but not unexpected during an election year.

• The doctoral program enrollments were on budget, and the qualifications for the incoming Ph.D. students increased.

Dr. Kerwin commended Cheryl Storie, assistant provost of enrollment, and her team for their efforts on the freshman and transfer classes.

Dr. Kerwin then informed the Senate that the one point in the admissions cycle about which he was concerned was the yield rate, the number of admitted students who decide that AU is indeed the right place to study. He said the critical linchpin in addressing that concern will be for faculty and other individuals at the institution to learn something about the admitted students and then to communicate effectively the message that American has the kind of program from which the students can benefit.

Summer Session Budget
Dr. Kerwin reported that the university had missed the goal on its 2004 Summer Sessions budget by almost 10 percent. He said he was unable to isolate a single source of the problem, since the weaknesses appeared to be across the board, although undergraduate enrollments for summer were especially weak. A small working group has been asked to help develop strategies for the Summer 2005 session.

National Survey of Student Engagement
Dr. Kerwin also spoke about American’s participation in the National Survey of Student Engagement. He said the survey was developed several years ago by the Pew Trusts, specifically to address what the Pew Research Center believes are some of the analytical shortcomings in the U.S. News and World Report survey. The NSSE, as it is called, surveys freshmen and senior students every two years at a select group of universities, including American.

Dr. Kerwin said he had asked Karen Froslid-Jones, director of Institutional Research and Assessment, to prepare a comprehensive report on the survey results. He noted that in the results American is benchmarked against other institutions in the Carnegie Doctoral Extensive classification. Preliminary results show AU has done well, relative to its group, in many, if not most, of the academically sensitive categories of the survey. In particular, AU has done well on those dimensions relating to the relationship that exists between faculty and students on campus.

Continuing, Dr. Kerwin said the point he had made earlier about challenges the university faces is something he will ask the Faculty Senate to deliberate. Specifically, he will ask whether faculty members are satisfied that they are making undergraduates work hard enough. As you raise the qualifications of incoming students, he asserted, you increase the expectations of those students. Incoming students expect to be pushed hard academically, and it may prove problematic if the students feel that the institution does not challenge them to fulfill their potential.

University College Project Team
Dr. Kerwin then reported that the University College Project Team was working on a set of criteria and topics for a first-year seminar. After the project team completes its work, Dr. Kerwin will ask a working group of faculty to develop an experimental seminar that will be offered to about 10 percent of the freshman class, in a pilot program. The pilot is intended to answer two questions: (1) Is the idea of the University College sufficiently attractive to high-quality students? (2) Does the seminar really deliver on the concept of binding the students to the institution, in terms of American’s history, traditions, and values?

Project Team on Academic Computing
Provost Kerwin announced that he planned to convene a project team on academic computing shortly after the new assistant vice president for information technology, Robert Cape, arrives on campus. The team will be composed of members of the Senate’s Committee on Information Services and will include resource people from the academic units. Dr. Kerwin said the purpose of the working group is to ensure that the new organization is kept informed about the needs of the faculty and the student body, and that the administrative aspects of academic computing are properly understood and rightly attended to. The agenda and the budget of the Office of Information Technology also need to reflect the core academic needs of the institution.

Office of Enrollment
Commenting on another recent reorganization, Dr. Kerwin noted that the enrollment operation was now reporting to the provost. That means that Cheryl Storie and her organization, which includes Admissions, Financial Aid, and Enrollment Communications, is now part of academic affairs. Dr. Kerwin said that over the summer the details of the reorganization were reviewed, with an eye toward enhancing the communication flows between the academic units and the Offices of Enrollment and Financial Aid. He added that the transformation of the freshman class with regard to admit rates and incoming student quality calls for a fresh look at the message AU is using to attract undergraduates. Cheryl Storie will meet with working groups about the marketing pieces that go out to prospective students, to ensure that the academic message is strong, clear, and uncompromised. The results of those discussions will be brought to the Senate, and the Committees on Student Learning and Academic Engagement and Curriculum and Academic Programs will be asked to review the overall recruitment/enrollment strategy.

New Faculty
Dr. Kerwin said he was happy to report that AU had welcomed 24 new tenure-track hires in the fall. Twenty-nine percent of the group is classified as minorities, and 50 percent is female. As the process for the next two-year budget planning cycle begins, Dr. Kerwin said another expansion of the tenure-track faculty will be a top priority.

Other Items
Dr. Kerwin acknowledged Myron Roomkin, Dean of Kogod School of Business, who will leave American to become the dean of the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Dr. Kerwin expressed disappointment that Dean Roomkin was leaving AU, but he said the Weatherhead School is an outstanding institution. He noted that after extensive discussions with senior faculty and staff in Kogod, he was appointing William Delone as acting dean, effective November 1. The Provost will meet with the faculty of Kogod to begin the process of launching a search for a new dean.

Dr. Kerwin encouraged the members of the Senate to visit the University Library, which underwent a major renovation during the summer. He also said that senators could sign up for tours of the Katzen Arts Building by contacting Dean Mussell, in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Report on Course Evaluations
Lyn Stallings, Associate Director of Teaching and Learning, Center for Teaching Excellence, and chair of the Student Evaluations Committee, thanked the committee members for their diligent work on the course evaluation project. The other members of the Student Evaluations Committee are Laura Langbein, SPA-Public Administration; Haig Mardirosian, CAS-Performing Arts and Director, General Education Program; Bryan Fantie, CAS-Psychology; Karen Froslid-Jones, Director, Office of Institutional Research and Assessment; Lynn Fox, CAS-School of Education; Robert Jernigan, CAS-Mathematics and Statistics; and David Fagelson, SPA-Justice, Law, and Society. John Richardson, Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence, also attended all the committee meetings. Professor Stallings noted that while the team had begun its deliberations with a number of goals, they had been able to accomplish only one major objective over the past few months: the redesign of the student evaluation of teaching instrument.

Professor Stallings drew attention to draft revisions of the form, noting several corrections. The drafts are appended to the record copy of the minutes. She said the committee’s intentions, in revising the form, were as follows:

• to address teaching behavior
• to add summative questions, because summative questions, along with behavior questions, produce useful information
• to separate the evaluation of the course questions from the evaluation of teaching questions
• to give instructors the flexibility of addressing three or four questions of their own choosing
• to highlight the directions for completing the form in boldface type

She noted that the committee had agreed on all changes except for one—whether to include the “sometimes” designation.

She then asked for comments, from the Senate, with the following responses.

William Leap, CAS-Anthropology, expressed a concern that questions that focused on “using time productively,” “clearing up points of confusion,” “providing feedback,” and “requiring high levels of performance,” do not capture what a faculty member does in the classroom.

Professor Stallings replied that the committee had struggled with exactly that issue. She said the members had agreed to look for core questions that would address every type of class at American and every instructor. They also purposely kept the number of questions to a minimum to allow an instructor to add other questions, if he or she wants to address a particular dimension of teaching.

John Douglass, School of Communication, offered the following suggestions:

• Eliminate the “sometimes” designation
• Revise “The instructor provided useful feedback on tests, papers, discussion, etc.” to read: “The feedback on tests, papers, discussions, etc. was useful.”

Referring to the statement, “I am safisfied with the amount learned in this course,” Gail Mardirosian, CAS-Performing Arts, questioned the use of the word “amount,” which she said implies volume of learning, rather than quality of learning.

Bryan Fantie and Bill Leap both commented on the policy of using the evaluations in the tenure and promotion process. Professor Fantie said that student teaching evaluations are always, by their nature, customer satisfaction surveys. While it correlates highly with evaluation of teaching, the results are not the only piece of information one would need in evaluating the work of faculty. Professor Leap added that unless there is a change in policy and practice at all levels of the university administration, the results will continue to be used for rank and tenure decisions and for merit increase decisions.

Professor Stallings then reported that the committee did indeed want to address the issue of how the evaluations are used. She said the committee was therefore requesting the Senate’s permission to continue to meet, in order to draft a policy statement on how the Student Evaluation of Teaching is to be used. Moreover, she said the committee wanted to pilot the revised instrument during the fall semester.

Action: John Douglass introduced a motion to authorize the committee to pilot a new Student Evaluation of Teaching instrument for two semesters, Fall 2004 and Spring 2005. He proposed that the committee also be encouraged to continue their deliberations. The Senate voted unanimously to approve that motion. Professor Stallings indicated that the committee would take as a friendly amendment the recommendation to delete the designation “sometimes,” as one of the anchor points on the form.

Report of the Chair
David Rosenbloom reported that he had received e-mails over the summer indicating that some of the senators would like to have more Senate-initiated discussion. He said the preliminary agendas were not set in stone, and he would be happy to hear about other items the senators would like to talk about.

He then announced that the Ad Hoc Committee on Course Load had been appointed: Albert Cheh, CAS-Chemistry; David Fagelson, SPA; Teresa Larkin, CAS-Computer Science, Audio Technology, and Physics; Jonathan Loesberg, CAS-Literature; and Robert Losey, KSB. Professor Loesberg will convene the committee.

Professor Rosenbloom also announced that an Emeriti Lunch had been set for November. He said Jim Thurber, Department of Government, had agreed to do a post-mortem on the election. Allan Lichtman had also been invited to join in a kind of point-counterpoint.

For the Good of the Order
Janice Flug, chair of the Committee on Instructional Budget and Benefits, reported that the Summer 2005 Working Group had met at noon that day. She urged the senators to return to her or to Bob Karch, Chair of the Committee on Faculty Development, by September 15 the questionnaires that were distributed about summer initiatives.

She then distributed an update/summary from the University Benefits Advisory Project Team, noting that she would also distribute that the summary electronically, to allow the senators to share the information with colleagues in their units.

Robert Karch, CAS-Health and Fitness, announced that there would be a bipartisan presidential healthcare forum in Butler Board Room on Monday, September 13.

John Douglass, past chair of the Senate, reported that there were several committee vacancies that needed to be filled. He asked that the Senate take the following actions.

• Re-elect of three members of the Committee on General Education.
• Elect a replacement for Ruth Lane on the Committee on Faculty Equity and Grievances.
• Nominate two other faculty to serve on the General Education Committee.
• Nominate an SPA faculty member to serve on the Honors Advisory Committee.

There were no nominations at that time. The Senate elected Jack Child, CAS-Language and Foreign Studies; Deborah Payne-Fisk, CAS-Literature, and David Rodier, CAS-Philosophy and Religion, to two-year terms on the General Education Committee. The Senate also elected Paul Williams, SIS, to serve out the balance of Ruth Lane’s term on Faculty Equity and Grievances.

Polson Kanneth, President of the Student Confederation, announced that Arthur Dewey, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, would speak at AU on Thursday, September 16, at 8:00 p.m., as part of the Kennedy Political Union line-up for 2004-2005.

The meeting was adjourned at 4:15 p.m.