Minutes of the
NIU Board of Trustees

ACADEMIC AFFAIRS, STUDENT AFFAIRS
AND PERSONNEL COMMITTEE

May 27, 1998

Agenda Item 6.a. – Request for New Degree Programs 

Dr. Lynne Waldeland, Assistant Provost for Academic Planning and Development, said it was a pleasure to be able to present this action item because it was the culmination of a great deal of hard work. Nearly eight years ago the program in Physical Therapy, located within the School of Allied Health Professions, recognized that the expertise required to be a practicing physical therapist was expanding and requiring ever more credit hours over and above what was typical for an undergraduate program and began studying the desirability of moving the program to the master's level. Those discussions were put on hold when the American Physical Therapy Association decided to require the master's degree for practice as a physical therapist and began to revise accreditation criteria. University program faculty decided to wait until they had information about the program design recommended by the professional organization. After the APTA presented its criteria, the university, at that point with new people in place, moved ahead with the proposal presented at this meeting. Dr. Waldeland emphasized the fact that, although there are two degree programs involved, they really constitute a single program because the students who are applying for and admitted to the professional physical therapy curriculum in the new program configuration are the only ones who will be eligible to earn the B.S. in Health Sciences. This is not a new freestanding degree available to anyone on campus; it marks progress on the way to the M.P.T. (Master of Physical Therapy). It is needed for two reasons. For one, NIU Graduate School policies require students to have a baccalaureate degree in order to be enrolled in a master's program. The other reason, Dr. Waldeland said, was psychological in that parents expect to have students earn an undergraduate degree after four years of full-time study.

To summarize, Dr. Waldeland said, we propose a professional curriculum that will cover a period of three years. Students will be admitted at the beginning of their junior year, as they are now. The degree program is also open to transfer students and to people who have earned a baccalaureate degree and would like to earn a master's degree in physical therapy. There are a number of models that schools preparing for the requirement of the entry-level master's have adopted. Some of them are fairly traditional, such as a baccalaureate degree followed by a master's degree. Some schools have used a 3+2 arrangement. We think our model has many virtues, Dr. Waldeland said. Students can finish the entire program in five years. The model maintains the flexibility that is present in our current program in that it will be open to native students, transfer students and students with an undergraduate degree. Another thing that is attractive about it, she said, is that students who seek entry to the program will know at the same point in their academic careers, at the beginning of their junior year, whether or not they have been admitted. For those who are not admitted, there will be plenty of time left to make an alternative decision. Ninety percent of pre-Physical Therapy students who are not accepted by the current program — probably our most selective program on campus — remain at the university and opt for other related majors. The program does a very good job of advising its pre-Physical Therapy students and letting them know what to expect. Dr. Waldeland said, we think we have come up with an innovative and student-oriented way of meeting this new requirement that the entry level for practicing physical therapy will be the master's degree.

Dr. Waldeland introduced the director of the program, M. J. Blaschak, and the Chair of the School of Allied Health Professions, Sherilynn Spear, both of whom had been involved in the design and development of this degree request. They were present to answer any technical questions the Committee might have about the proposal. She recommended Committee approval of the linked program configuration.

Trustee Raymond asked about the overlap during the last two years between the bachelor's and master's programs. Ms. Blaschak indicated that during the spring semester of the senior year, there would be some hours needed to complete the baccalaureate degree and some hours that would count as graduate courses. Trustee Raymond asked if students would receive a bachelor's degree at the end of their senior year and a master's degree the following year. Dr. Waldeland said that was correct. Chair Grans said she thought the term "linked" was very appropriate. Board Chair Boey asked about the acceptance level, and Ms. Blaschak indicated that a class of 36 students was picked each year from about 300 applicants. Board Chair Boey asked if the small number was because of physical constraints. Ms. Blaschak said the program was also constrained by the number of clinical sites and clinical affiliations. Other physical therapy programs in Illinois are also competing for clinical sites, which must be of high quality. In addition, she said, you can teach only up to 36 students effectively in a laboratory course. Ms. Blaschak agreed with Board Chair Boey who concluded that it is not just a matter of adding faculty members or space but of external factors as well.

Dr. Waldeland noted that the university does not need to request new funding for this program because two years ago funding was received to double the size of the program. At that time, the program was admitting classes of 24, so that at a given time there would be 48 students in the two years of the program. This new proposed configuration will allow the university to serve 108 instead of the 96 students who would have been served by simply doubling the program size, giving the state a little bonus for its money.

Chair Grans asked for a motion to approve. Trustee Raymond so moved, seconded by Board Chair Boey. The motion was approved. 

Chair Grans expressed her thanks to the program faculty, noting that the program’s reputation preceded it. Even students who are not admitted at the junior level will come out with good degrees and be able to move into auxiliary fields. Your industry is changing so much, she said, that those auxiliary services are going to be very necessary also. Waldeland added that the next step was to include this new program proposal in NIU's regular submission of program reviews and new program requests to the IBHE on July 1. Action on new programs usually occurs in December or January. 

Agenda Item 6.b. – Request to Delete Existing Program and Specialization 

Waldeland explained that the university was requesting permission to delete two degree program units. Both are in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. The M.A. in Theatre Arts, she said, goes back to the early 1970s and was at one time the only graduate degree in theater offered at Northern. In the early 1980s, we received permission to offer the M.F.A. degree; and, since it has been available, interest in the M.A. degree has declined considerably. Dr. Waldeland said that this is a national pattern. Most people who want careers in theater want an applied degree. The M.A. is of interest either to people preparing for Ph.D. study or, in some cases, to high school teachers who would like to have some additional expertise, but who do not have the time to study for an M.F.A., which is a much longer degree program. Dr. Waldeland said that at the time this request was first prepared, there were only five students enrolled. Two have since graduated, one will graduate in August and the other two will graduate in the next academic year. The School of Theatre Arts has had to face the fact that at this point it really does not have a clientele for the program or the resources to build it. This has been a difficult decision for the faculty, since it is a traditional degree program and one to which they have some attachment; but they have decided to delete it, and the deletion request has received all appropriate approvals on campus.

Turning to the Art Therapy Specialization in the Master of Science program in Art, Dr. Waldeland said this is also a program area that has suffered from limited resources. An art therapy program is required to have a registered art therapist on the staff, and they are hard to find and expensive to hire. They are few in number, and many of them do not want to be full-time faculty members at universities because they have lucrative practices. At the time of the last review of the M.S. program in Art in 1991, the School of Art had only a temporary faculty member with Art Therapy licensure. At that time, it was recommended that the School of Art either make a commitment to the program and look for a full-time art therapist or consider eliminating the program. Due to the budgetary adjustments the university and the School of Art have had to make, it has not been possible since that time to commit resources to art therapy and that specialized position. In setting priorities for the future, the School of Art has decided to eliminate the art therapy specialization. There is no effect on students since none have been admitted since 1996, and the deletion will have no effect on current faculty. This deletion has also received approval by all appropriate campus bodies and has the concurrence of the Provost. Dr. Waldeland said it was the university recommendation that the Committee endorse these deletions and forward them to the Board. Board action on deletions is final; they do not go the IBHE.

Chair Grans asked for a motion to approve the request to delete the existing program and specialization. Board Chair Boey so moved, seconded by Trustee Raymond. The motion was approved. 

Agenda Item 6.c. – 1997-98 Program Review Summary 

Dr. Waldeland noted that the five-page summary in the meeting materials briefly reports on a much lengthier document that goes to the IBHE. The IBHE has a format for the information it receives on the academic programs scheduled for review in a given year. For each program, those summaries average four or five pages. If you multiply the number of programs you see listed in your book by that, Dr. Waldeland said, you know what a substantial package of information the IBHE receives. Further, the IBHE summary is a distillation of the full program review. An average program review is a very in-depth self-study of every degree program, she said. They tend to be at least 25 to 30 pages long. Dr. Waldeland reminded the Trustees that the university reviews its academic programs on an eight-year cycle on a schedule established by the IBHE. The process involves the development of a self-study document which is reviewed once by the Provost's staff in the summer and then again after revision by a faculty committee, the Academic Planning Council. After the committee has made its recommendation, a final version is prepared that becomes the review of record for the subsequent eight years. The summary the IBHE receives is prepared and submitted after the Academic Affairs, Student Affairs and Personnel Committee and the Board of Trustees have received this report in May or June.

This year the programs scheduled for review were all degree programs in the College of Business and in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. The College of Business programs, Dr. Waldeland explained, were last reviewed in 1992-93. When the IBHE came out with its new statewide analysis, the business programs came up in five years instead of on the eight-year cycle now being used. Despite the fact that only five years have passed since the last program review in the College of Business, a great deal has happened, Dr. Waldeland said. Some of this came about because of an extensive strategic planning exercise carried out by the College of Business over the last three years. The other major change has to do with a redefining of the audience for the graduate programs of the college and where the programs can best serve that audience. 

The biggest change at the undergraduate level, Dr. Waldeland said, is the decision of the college to move from admitting students in the junior year to admitting them as freshmen. This came out of the strategic planning exercise when the college realized that it was disadvantaging itself by waiting until the junior year while all the other public universities and most of the private universities in Illinois were admitting students as freshmen. Students who knew they wanted to be Business majors could go to other universities and know that they were accepted in their chosen majors, or they could come here and be pre-Business majors for two years and possibly not be admitted. The good thing about admission at the junior level, Dr. Waldeland said, was that everyone who was admitted tended to finish because the first two years were taken up with tool courses. Students who completed those successfully were very well prepared to finish their degrees. On the other hand, a student who thought he or she wanted to be in one of the Business disciplines sometimes went through all the tool courses and started Business courses as a junior, only to discover that those courses were not as appealing as he or she had expected. That student had to make a change fairly late in his or her college career. This change stretches the college because it has no history of working with students in this early discernment stage of college enrollment. However, it is a positive change that has increased enrollment. The college is developing new ways to advise students in the first two years of the major. 

The other big change, Dr. Waldeland said, is the College’s decision that its best niche market for graduate programs is full-time employed professionals, many of whom are not able to enroll unless the programs are offered at off-campus sites. At the time of the last review in 1992-93, the college was engaged in this analysis and coming to the conclusion that it probably should concentrate its resources on offering the M.B.A. program only at off-campus locations. The reason, Dr. Waldeland said, was partly that there was only enough faculty to cover the three sites at which we have M.B.A. degree authority (the College of DuPage community college district, the Hoffman Estates area and Rockford). Also, the associate dean, who is now the dean of the college, was discovering that students who enrolled in the M.B.A. program immediately after receiving a baccalaureate degree would obtain the M.B.A. and then still not be attractive to employers because they had no work experience. The college concluded that it was not doing students in that situation a service by letting them take the M.B.A., extend their education by two years and still not be competitive in the job market. 

The college has developed three more off-campus programs in addition to the M.B.A., Dr. Waldeland continued, which the Board of Trustees has approved. The Department of Accountancy developed the Master of Science in Taxation, planning to offer it only at Hoffman Estates. The available resources would not allow the department to offer it both there and on campus, and its primary audience of employed professionals is located in the suburbs. The Master of Science in Finance was approved by the Board last year to be offered at the same three sites at which the M.B.A. program is offered. The reason this was possible, Dr. Waldeland said, is that a substantial number of finance courses are already offered as electives in the M.B.A. program. Finally, Dr. Waldeland said, at our last meeting, the Board approved the proposal of the Department of Accountancy to offer its Master of Accounting Science program at Hoffman Estates. Because of the new requirement that students have 150 hours in order to sit for the C.P.A. examination, the department anticipated that there will be a number of people who will want the master's degree. The undergraduate degree requires 120 hours and the master's degree, 30 hours, so students can complete the 150 hours and have a master's degree. Also, the M.A.S. proposal is at the IBHE now, and we are hoping to learn the decision in July.

Dr. Waldeland said that she wanted to acknowledge a few key achievements of the business programs. All of the programs have been recognized for their quality. Accountancy’s C.P.A. examination results are always very impressive. They are in the top ten nationally more often than not, and often are the top one, two or three. The Finance Department was rated by the Journal of Finance among the top 30% of all finance departments in research productivity based on the placement of scholarly articles. That is particularly impressive for a program that does not offer a doctorate. The Marketing program was cited by Sales and Marketing magazine as one of the top six programs from which recruiters should look for sales professionals. The Operations Management and Information Systems Department offers the M.S. in Management Information Systems, and that program was rated in the top 25 "techno-M.B.A." programs by ComputerWorld. ("Techno-M.B.A." seems to mean a business master’s information program that teaches technologies.)

The college plans to take the undergraduate program in Business Administration off campus in the near future. The College of Business is currently involved in a partnership with Motorola that may lead to NIU offering the program at Motorola University although it would not be limited to Motorola employees. Part of the reason for doing it there is that Hoffman Estates is so crowded it cannot accommodate more new programs. The college also will continue to work to find effective ways to serve the students they are now admitting as freshmen. The third major plan for the college, which involves both graduate and undergraduate programs, is to find more ways to integrate new technologies into courses. The C.P.A. review is working on being fully delivered on-line, partly because the C.P.A. exam is going to be offered only on-line in the future and, more or less, on demand. The old idea of offering a C.P.A. review course at given times during the year is going to be irrelevant, Dr. Waldeland explained, because people will be able to take the exam whenever they think they are ready. Some of the support courses for the M.B.A. are also now offered through interactive video because that is the only way that, for instance, the Management Information Systems faculty can make those courses available to off-campus sites while maintaining the on-campus program.

The Foreign Languages and Literatures programs were also reviewed this year, Dr. Waldeland said. They include four undergraduate majors in French, German, Spanish and Russian. The programs have seen some enrollment decline in the last five or six years that parallels, in many ways, the decline in the undergraduate population generally. One important thing to note about those programs, she said, is that nonmajors take 90% of the credit hours produced by the department. Service to majors in those languages is a very small part of the department’s work. Everyone who earns a B.A. from this institution needs two years of a foreign language. Many other students opt to take some foreign language course work. Over this period, the department has created or strengthened business translation options within the undergraduate degree programs so that people earning a degree in foreign languages do not have to be planning teaching careers or becoming translators for the U.N. The business translation emphases are logical for this region because there are so many international businesses. Furthermore, the department offers undergraduate course work in several other languages, including Thai, Japanese and Chinese, which are very important in support of NIU's Center for Southeast Asian Studies. The programs have also been much strengthened by a new state-of-the-art learning laboratory that, at the time of the program reviews, was rated the best in the world. This equipment came from the Tandberg Corporation, which specializes in this sort of equipment. It is an amazing multimedia learning facility open to all students in language classes.

At the master's level, Dr. Waldeland continued, what we originally had was a single M.A. program in Foreign Languages designed to allow students to specialize in one of the four languages in which we have undergraduate degrees — French, German, Russian or Spanish. When P•Q•P began, the IBHE treated these as separate degree programs and recommended the elimination of German and Russian because they were extremely small, which would have been expected. The problem from our point of view was not so much that the IBHE was wrong in their analysis, she said, but that the program was only two years old and had had very little time to build its clientele. Nevertheless, with all of the demands on the department, the university had to conclude that it was not realistic to expect that those programs would ever be large enough to be really cost effective. Therefore, the master's specializations in German and Russian have been eliminated since the last review, prior to the creation of the Board of Trustees. However, the university still has French and Spanish master's programs. They primarily serve teachers. Those programs are relatively small but healthy, Dr. Waldeland said, and serving the purposes for which they were designed.

Chair Grans thanked Dr. Waldeland and commented that she thought there were good opportunities during recruitment and orientation to make sure that the ramifications of freshman admission to business were explained to students as a positive. She then asked for questions from the Committee. Trustee Raymond noted that the ranking of the Techno-M.B.A. seemed quite remarkable. Dr. Waldeland said she had copies of the article if the Trustees were interested in further information. The M.S. in Management Information Systems is a very strong program that attracts good faculty and students. We were very pleased, she said, because one of the drawbacks of being a part-time program serving employed professionals is that such programs do not usually receive the kind of visibility that earns national rankings. The college made a calculated decision that it was never going to compete with the Kellogg School and the University of Chicago's M.B.A. program for full-time students and that it would be more effective if it chose a different niche. Such a focus generally means that the programs are less visible in traditional rankings and the faculty is more notable for interactions with industry than for publications. So the College has earned very good recognition, given how applied the programs are and how many of the students are full-time professionals.

Trustee Raymond asked if this was the program that would be taught at Motorola. Dr. Waldeland said that was the undergraduate program in Business Administration. The problem with taking an undergraduate business degree off campus is that we offer accountancy, finance, marketing management and operations management, and there would not be a critical mass of students interested in any one of those programs individually, but the Business Administration degree is a general interdisciplinary business degree. It draws on all the disciplines and prepares people for a variety of positions. That is the only undergraduate business degree program that we think is cost effective to take off campus, Dr. Waldeland said. It will be a good capstone degree for people who have an associate’s degree from a community college.

Trustee Raymond asked if Motorola had asked for the degree or how that came about. Dr. Waldeland indicated that it had grown out of discussions between the College of Business and Motorola. NIU now has many alumni in Motorola, and they are moving into leadership roles. The university is working on a broad-based strategic alliance with Motorola, Dr. Waldeland said, and one of the mutual benefits that was identified as part of the alliance between Motorola and Northern was an undergraduate program that could serve Motorola employees. Motorola has done a survey of its employees and identified a substantial number who think they want the degree. The university has not yet been able to analyze transcripts in order to know how many are ready to start the degree program, or how many have any undergraduate course work at all, but it is a good place to offer the program. It is a centrally-located, professional setting and will help with the crowding at Hoffman Estates. So, it serves Motorola's interests and ours at this point to consider offering it there. The Motorola people know about the gift of land, Dr. Waldeland said, and they assume that, at some point, when we have a bigger site at Hoffman Estates, the program would probably move. Trustee Raymond said he thought Motorola was a great corporation with which to have an alliance. I am just surprised it is an undergraduate program, he said. Dr. Waldeland said they wanted that more than graduate programs. They have many people in the workforce who have associate’s degrees or some undergraduate course work but not baccalaureate degrees.

Agenda Item 6.d. – FY99 Salary Increment Guidelines 

Mr. Steve Cunningham, Associate Vice President for Administration and Human Resources, said the increment process is a major event at the university every year and reminded the Trustees that at the last Committee meeting, President La Tourette sought approval to increase the underlying merit component of the increment pool from 3% to 3.2%. We would want to consider that amendment in this informational item as well. Every year increment guidelines are developed, largely driven by the state appropriation process. The increment administered on campus depends on what we receive in increased appropriations for personal services. The guidelines pertain to nontemporary, nonnegotiated employees who are in continuing appointments. As has been reported previously, Mr. Cunningham said, a number of competing priorities are involved in the increment decision. We want to maintain a well-balanced merit program, and this is reflected in our operating guidelines for the increment and our division of employment categories into pools. Four pools were described in this information item and within those pools, the colleges and the divisions work with their faculty and staff to determine the merit increment. This year, it will be in a range between one and six percent, depending upon the relative determination of merit for a given employee. Human Resource Services, coordinating with the Budget and Planning Office, administers the increment. Worksheets are produced and distributed to all divisions and departments. The merit increments are entered on the worksheets and returned to Human Resources where they are entered into the Human Resource information system. Summary reports are done to confirm that there has been no overspending or underspending of the increments. It is a process that involves most of the offices on campus during the months of June and July in any given year.

Special attention, Mr. Cunningham said, should be drawn to the clerical increment. One of our other priorities is market sufficiency of salaries as well as the effect of the Cost-of-Living Index in the DeKalb area, which is changing somewhat faster than in most other areas containing public universities in Illinois. The clerical increment is targeted to address the cost-of-living and market equity issues affecting the clerical population because among our Civil Service staff, Mr. Cunningham said, 85% of the classifications that are below the statewide average are in the designated clerical classifications. So, we are able to move the distribution of comparability to the statewide average very effectively among our Civil Service employees with this program. That way, it is a very efficient program. With the underlying 3.2% merit adjustment, the total adjustment for the pool will be 10.2%. In one year, that fully exceeds any three-year programs that have been conducted in the state for similar groups of employees, so it is a very aggressive and targeted program. As the President mentioned at the Finance, Facilities and Operations Committee Meeting, Mr. Cunningham said, we are also increasing the pool for graduate assistants to about 4.4% total to meet market equity issues there as well. The increases for temporary employees and negotiated employees will be subject to the outcome of those negotiation processes.
 

I know that there were some signals from Bob Kustra when he chaired the IBHE that at least he was not hostile to the idea of the university going ahead with this proposal, the Provost said. Then, with the appointment of Keith Sanders, the IBHE itself has asked the university to reactivate the proposal. We are now working with the Department of Physics and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to update the proposal submitted in 1991, Dr. Moody said. The basic proposal, which emphasizes high-energy physics and materials science, the major strengths of the department, and also central to the work that goes on at Argonne and Fermi, has not changed. In updating it, we will include information about the new facilities we have, the equipment we have been able to obtain and the partnerships we have with the national laboratories, such as the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne. The Provost said that we would submit an updated version of that proposal sometime in June. The IBHE will then select consultants to review the proposal and make a recommendation to the staff on whether or not the university has the ability to deliver a high quality Ph.D. program in Physics.

Board Chair Boey said he thought the timing was good. Committee Chair Grans indicated that no action was required of the Committee because the proposal had already been approved by the Board of Regents, but they did want to give it their endorsement, to show interest and keep the process moving. Board Chair Boey also noted that he and President La Tourette had spoken to the new Executive Director of the IBHE about the program when he visited. Trustee Raymond asked if any action was required of the Board. Dr. Moody said he did not think so, but the Board might have a different view of that. The proposal was approved by the Board of Regents at one time and it has simply been tabled. If P•Q•P had not come along, he said, perhaps the proposal would have been approved by now, and we would have a Ph.D. program. We have been treating this process, at least on campus, as simply updating an existing approved program request. We are updating the proposal so that the consultants and the IBHE staff will see where we are today instead of where we were several years ago. Board Chair Boey said he thought that made sense. Committee Chair Grans asked that the Committee be kept informed of the proposal's progress.