Minutes of the University Committee
for September 7, 2001

The Committee met at 8:30 in D135 MOLN. Members present were Walter Feldt, Susan Haller, Peggy James (Chair), James Kinchen, Don Kummings, and Greg Mayer. Also present were Larry Duetsch, Marwan Wafa (Dean of the School of Business and Technology), and Ken Watters (Interim Provost).

Members of the Committee introduced themselves to Provost Watters, who said that he would welcome input from members of the Committee on issues that arise. He brought four matters to the Committee at this time.

First, regarding the 2002 Winterim session, the Provost distributed a list of eight courses that have been proposed at this point. He asked whether Senate approval would be required to proceed with Winterim. The consensus of the Committee was that the matter would not need to be referred to the Senate. Dean Wafa asked whether there has been any systematic effort to determine the level of student demand for courses in this time period and was told there has not. Professor Haller noted that no general education
distribution courses have been proposed for the this Winterim. Professor Kinchen asked whether guidelines were needed to identify what kinds of courses might be suitable for such a compressed timeframe. He and other members of the Committee thought that guidelines should be developed during the course of this year (by the Academic Policies Committee or the Committee on Academic Planning, or both) for use in planning future Winterim sessions. The Committee was in agreement that, for this Winterim, the departments should again be encouraged to test the market for various kinds of courses.

Second, regarding accountability indicators, the Provost said that representatives of the UW System Office of Policy Analysis and Research would be visiting the campus later this month to (among other things) begin a process of developing agreed-upon measures of institutional performance. This is being done with each of the System institutions. Professor James will attend the meeting that is being held here.

Third, the Provost reported that the UW System has decided to participate in a national study (sponsored by the University of Delaware) of instructional costs and productivity. To obtain data for this study, a random sample of faculty members at all UW institutions will be asked to respond to a survey about how they use their time.

Finally, the Provost expressed his strong support for the student success initiative that Chancellor Keating announced at Convocation and said he hoped that members of the Committee would encourage faculty/staff members to join in discussions on this topic during the year. They assured him that they would.

At this point, the Provost and the Dean left the meeting and Tim Fossum joined the meeting.

Professor Fossum, the developer of our web-based Annual Summary of Academic Activities, described the spreadsheet that he has created from the annual summaries that are filed by faculty and staff members. He also circulated a list of the categories and subcategories in which entries are filed and can be extracted. Professor Duetsch said that, to substantiate claims we wish to make in the accreditation self-study, it will be necessary to document the research and creative accomplishments of faculty/staff (especially those involving students) as well as the extent of their community engagement. This will be most easily done if lists of
reported activities (by category) can be extracted from the Annual Summaries. The consensus of the Committee was that the information reported in the annual summaries (except for descriptions of work in progress and information about particular grant proposals that have been reviewed for granting agencies) should be accessible in an aggregate form for the purposes of accreditation. Professor Duetsch agreed to oversee the extraction of aggregate data for use in the self-study.

The meeting adjourned at 10:15.