Minutes of the Committee on Academic Planning
for April 3, 2001

The Committee on Academic Planning met on Monday April 3, 2001 at 2:00 PM in Greenquist 344A. Members present were Michele Gee, David Holmes, Don Kummings, Ron Singer, Susan Takata, Doris Nice and Gary Wood (Chair). Also present for portions of the meeting were Marwan Wafa, Dean of the School of Business and Technology and Donald Cress, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

The purpose of the meeting was to review position authorization requests. The two Deans presented explanations and rationale for the requests from their respective schools.

I. General Comments

A. Strategic Plans.

The committee noted that while all of the PARs were accompanied by strategic plans, many of the strategic plans were old, provided extremely inaccurate information about the current faculty, staff and programs in departments and contained little or no data that could be used to judge the degree to which goals and objectives are being met. Position justifications should be based on the stated goals of the departments. In most cases they were not.

B. Lecturer Positions.

CAP reviews requests for lecturer positions when the lecturer represents an addition to the full time staff of the department. Requests for lecturer positions intended as one year replacements are not reviewed.

II. School of Business and Technology

A. Business.

The Department of Business submitted four PARs that are resubmissions from the previous year. Two of the positions are in accounting, one is in marketing and one is in management policy. These four searches are in progress but it is unlikely that the positions will be filled from the current pools. Given the need to fill vacancies in these areas, CAP recommends that the department be allowed to continue these searches.

The Department has also submitted a PAR for a position in quantitative methods. The committee deferred making a recommendation on that position until all PARs have been reviewed.

B. Computer Science.

The Department of Computer Science submitted two PARs, one for a tenure track position and one for a lecturer. Filling these positions would have the net effect of increasing the number of faculty in the department by one (Compared to two years ago, before the retirements of Firebaugh, Moy and Luke). The justification for the new position is based on the anticipated enrollment in the new masters degree program in computer information systems. The committee deferred making a recommendation on these positions until all PARs have been reviewed.

III. College of Arts and Sciences

A. Overview.

The following PARs for tenure track positions were received from the College of Arts and Sciences.

Biological Sciences Bioinformatics/Protein Structure Goodman
Retirement
Biological Sciences Science Education New
Position
Chemistry Inorganic/Polymer Chemistry Wheeler
Nonrenewal
Communication Media New Position
Criminal Justice Open New
Position
English American Literature Shucard Retirement
(98)
History Middle Eastern/African Reeves Retirement
HPEA Sport/Fitness Management New
Position
Mathematics Open Carr
Replacement
Mathematics Open Rotenberg
Retirement
Modern Languages Spanish New Position
Music Music Education New Position
Physics Stat/Computational Greenebaum
Retirement
Sociology/Anthro Demography/World Systems Reinders
Resignation
Teacher Education Math Education New Position
Teacher Education Early Childhood Education New
Position
Teacher Education Social Studies Education Olsen
Retirement

The following PARs for Lecturer positions were also received from the College.

Interdisciplinary Studies-Full Time Open New
Position
Interdisciplinary Studies-Half Time Open New
Position
Modern Languages Spanish Vitharana
Resignation

B. Brief Justifications from PARs and from the committee discussion.

1. tenure track positions.

Biological Sciences-Protein Structure. Large number of majors in the program.

Biological Sciences-Science Education. No faculty member currently teaches science ed. courses.

Chemistry. Programmatic consideration. No faculty member with expertise in inorganic chemistry available to teach courses required by ACS.

Communication. Large number of majors in the program and lack of faculty expertise in media.

Criminal Justice. Original plan to limit the department to four faculty. This position represents five, however, the number of majors has exceeded the predicted number.

English. Large number of majors in the program. A third faculty member specializing in American Literature is needed to cover the required courses.

History. Refilling a position vacated by retirement. The department wishes to expand its areas of expertise to include Middle Eastern and African regions. The department's Plan 2008 hire may affect this request.

HPEA. Large number of students in the new Sport and Fitness management program and only two faculty members.

Mathematics-Carr replacement. Needed to teach calculus and advanced courses.

Mathematics-Rotenberg replacement. Same rationale. The committee noted that for the past several years Prof. Rotenberg's schedule did not include more than one section of calculus and no advanced courses.

Modern Languages. Additional position is not supported by any increase in enrollment.

Music. The department desires an additional faculty member to take charge of its music education curriculum.

Physics. Large service course load. Maintaining current level of staffing is critical to continuation of the major.

Sociology/Anthropology. Large number of majors in the program.

Teacher Education. Math ed. No full time faculty member in or out of teacher ed. has expertise in this area. From a workload and scheduling point of view, it may be preferable to have this person housed in the math department.

Teacher Education-Early Childhood Education. Response to increasing enrollment in the EC3 program.

Teacher Education-Social Studies Education. Same as above.

2. lecturer positions

Interdisciplinary Studies. The request is for one full time and one half time position, with the half time position shared with another department. The justification is based on converting the director to a full time position and decreasing the reliance on adjuncts.

Modern Languages. Spanish. Needed to fill position vacated by resignation.

The meeting adjourned at 4:00 PM. The committee will meet again at noon on April 13 to continue the discussion and make recommendations.

Submitted by,
Gary M. Wood