Minutes of the
NIU Board of Trustees

President La Tourette reiterated a few remarks made during the Finance and Facilities Committee held on Tuesday of that week. He pointed out that the university was dealing with a number of issues that would ultimately involve construction activities. These issues included the need for more parking; the need for more recreation space for students, faculty and staff; and Title IX, which deals with the prospect of establishing a track program for women's sports. The President said he came to the conclusion that if each of these projects was carried out separately, the impact on student fees and on the cost of parking permits would be close to the estimate of revenues generated by student fees needed to build a convocation center. As a result of a review in the Finance, Facilities and Operations Committee, Chair Boey suggested that university staff do an analysis of these projects individually and compare the results with the cost of a multipurpose facility that would incorporate responses to all of these issues, including 3,000 parking spaces and an indoor track. The President said that he wanted to clear up what he thought was some misunderstanding about the cost. I was not talking about the cost of the construction, he said, but about how much revenue would have to be generated each year from student fees to pay off these separate projects versus a multipurpose facility. Also, this is not the project that has been discussed starting 20 years ago and as recently as 1989 for consideration under a state authority funding arrangement in a partnership with the agricultural and business community, which would involve such things as a dirt floor for stock shows and tractor pulls. This is a project that will stand on its own and allow the university to solve the problems that I have mentioned here, the President said. Though we would welcome partnerships with the county or city or anyone else who would like to step forward, our view is that we have to solve our own problems and do something that will improve the parking, provide more space for recreation and deal with Title IX and also provide the kind of facility that would be an anchor for the West Campus development. As we try to attract more residential students here, there will be benefits not only for the university, but also for the city. We have to proceed whether or not the city or county would be interested in joining with us. The convocation center would be designed to meet the needs of NIU for space to hold conferences, convocations, entertainment, sporting events and, possibly, graduation ceremonies. 

Chair Boey said that in addition to commencement, NIU's Job Fair is the biggest in the country. This year, every single foot of space available in the Recreation Center, the largest facility on campus, was used. Where do we put it next? Given all those other factors, the Board Chair said, if the cost estimates on the individual projects start to add up to even three-quarters what would be needed for a convocation center, it makes good business sense to look at the total package. 
  

Starting in June and July, the Parents' Association was promoted at summer orientation. The Berans alternated coming to orientation so that there was some Parents' representation at the tables, Mr. Shafer said, which stirred up a lot of interest. Over 250 interested parents signed up to volunteer time in the Association to work at events such as Family Weekend. 

The first Parents' Association meeting was held In August as part of the Huskie Bash on the West Campus. Some parents were interested in taking positions on the board. Mr. Shafer said they were able to appoint a vice president, a newsletter editor, a Family Weekend chair, and a recruitment and social chair. The first Parents' Association Newsletter was mailed in late August to parents of all new freshmen. It was our first attempt to send out the information parents were interested in having in their hands, Mr. Shafer said. Many students do not share the information they receive from the university with their parents. We try to compile what we, as a group, think parents need to know about. A Family Weekend brochure was mailed in September along with articles pertaining to freshman issues from various offices on campus. In November, the President hosted a reception for the Parents' Association and other distinguished guests at Family Weekend at the Stevenson complex. Record numbers of parents attended Family Weekend events this year. Mr. Shafer attributed that to the interest parents have taken in the programming and to the fact that the association is getting information that parents want out to them earlier. After Family Weekend, Mr. Shafer said, we evaluated the programs and made improvements. Currently, the newsletter editor is working on the newsletter for the second semester. Chair Grans commented that any time you can get parents to volunteer, as the Berans did, it is a great catalyst and encouragement for everyone to participate and become involved. 

Agenda Item 6.b. — Enrollment Report 
Provost Moody presented a follow-up report to the preliminary Fall 1998 enrollment report he had given at the Committee's August meeting. In Fall 1998, the total number of on-campus undergraduates increased by 477 students, a 3 percent increase over the Fall 1997. The total on- and off-campus enrollment, including graduate students and Law School enrollments, increased by 1.8 percent to an overall enrollment of 22,473. Over the past two years, Provost Moody said, we have been successful in attracting almost a thousand new students. Contrary to what we know some other institutions did, he said, NIU has not lowered admission standards to achieve this. Provost Moody gave some demographic particulars about this enrollment. African-American enrollment was up 153 students this year for a total African-American enrollment this semester of 1,821 students. The percent of African-American undergraduates was up from 10.5 percent in 1997 to 11.1 percent in 1998. The number of Hispanics enrolled increased from 5.6 percent to 5.7 percent, for a total of 926 Hispanic students in the university. The Asian-American enrollment remains stable at about 7 percent. This means that 31.8 percent of the entering class in Fall 1998 were minority students, an increase over last year. The number of Honors-qualified applicants has been going up for several years, and it also increased this year. The number of transfer students also increased this fall. There were significant increases in the Colleges of Business and Engineering and Engineering Technology. The College of Visual and Performing Arts matched last year's numbers, which were very significant increases. 

These increases in enrollment are the result of some new activities and a lot of effort on the part of many in the university. First of all, Provost Moody said, we are advertising effectively. The "NIU works" slogan is one that has engendered a lot of interest, and faculty have been involved in recruiting by telephoning students who apply. These are activities that have been typical for private institutions. Open house attendance by high school students and their parents has increased every year. Also, the year before last, NIU started recruiting in southern and central Illinois, Dr. Moody said, and we are already seeing increased enrollment from those areas. This year, the university has begun to recruit in northwest Indiana, southern Wisconsin, eastern Iowa and in the St. Louis area. 

Finally, another innovation is the announcement of Centennial Scholarships for students attending public universities. Just like private universities, Dr. Moody said, the university must make scholarships available to be competitive. These are activities we need to continue, Dr. Moody said, because we know that the pool is going to decline somewhat, and competition for students will continue to be fierce. To answer an inquiry from Trustee Skoien, President La Tourette said that the out-of-state student population at the undergraduate level is miniscule except for students who are attending from other countries. About 90 to 92 percent of NIU's undergraduates come from the Chicago suburban area, and another small percentage of undergraduate students come from the rest of Illinois. About two or three percent are international students or from out of state. 

Trustee Myles asked to be briefed on outreach programs NIU is offering in the Chicago area. Dr. Moody said that NIU has several such programs. A graduate program in Educational Administration is being offered at Malcolm X Community College. Visual and Performing Arts faculty and student teachers are working with public schools in the inner city to develop their fine arts programs, particularly in music. The Department of Instructional Technology has been designated as the institution that will train Chicago public school teachers in the use of technology. Trustee Myles complimented the university on its outreach programs. 

President La Tourette said he wanted to publicly thank faculty and staff and administrative staff that have been involved in this recruitment effort because it has really pulled the university together and resulted in a much better articulation of Northern Illinois University's role here in the region and the quality of the programs and education that we deliver. Our success here, the President said, is not just due to the effort being made by individuals, but to the fact that all of our advertisements and other kinds of radio announcements have been a "call to action" to get potential students to come here for a day to see the university and to visit with faculty and staff. When that happens, there is a much greater opportunity to convince them that this is the place they should attend. One of the things I want to emphasize and keep in front of you, especially Board members, the President said, is the fact that when we look at the statistics on the reasons some students do not attend Northern Illinois University after applying, the most important reasons cited by students for going elsewhere is the availability of a scholarship. That is the most important factor in our competition against all other public universities. We have found that we have a higher percentage of lower-income students entering as freshmen, President La Tourette said, than at the average public university. There is also a smaller percentage of students coming from families of over $100,000. So, NIU has a more low-income and middle-income student body, which goes along with the fact that about 55 percent of our students come from families in which neither the mother nor father has a college degree. So, a thousand dollar scholarship, such as the Centennial Scholarship created here, will make a big difference for many students. It is very important that we continue our efforts, the President said, through Development, the Alumni Association and other university efforts to create more scholarship support to help the university attract students who are capable of completing a college education. 

Trustee Myles said that he would like to see a project begun to start bringing some inner city grammar school students to the university for a basketball game or a volleyball game. He said he had talked to a gentleman who had done that here at Northern, and the man said the children were impressed just with the bus ride to the university. I think once you implant that college feeling inside of grammar school students' minds, Trustee Myles said, then when they are in high school, college is going to be a must — and no better college than NIU. 

Trustee Siegel agreed with Trustee Myles saying that it is hard for children to understand what college means if someone does not take them and show them. To work towards some unknown goal is very difficult. 

Agenda Item 6.c. - Dual Admissions Agreements with Community Colleges 
NIU has long had one of, if not the largest transfer population from community colleges, Provost Moody said, and many community colleges are located in our service region. The Illinois Articulation Initiative is designed to make it easier for students to transfer without losing credits from one institution to another, not just between community colleges but also between four-year institutions. NIU was one of the first institutions to work out a dual admission program for students who intend to attend community colleges for the first one or two years and then transfer to a four-year institution. NIU's dual admission program allows a student to apply to NIU at the same time they apply for admission to the community college. The students must meet NIU's admission standards. The first dual admission agreement was with Elgin Community College, and the second is now in operation at the College of Lake County. A great deal of interest has been expressed by other community colleges. NIU is very near formal agreements with Rock Valley and Sauk Valley Colleges and is working with Harper and Kishwaukee Colleges. Active interest has been expressed by Moraine Valley and Waubonsee Community Colleges. Before long, Provost Moody sad, we may have dual admission agreements with every community college in this service region. The first thing this does is to get students to identify with NIU. They have been officially admitted. They know they can come to NIU without any further application. For students who know what their major at NIU is likely to be, we can provide specific advisement on what they need to take at the community college to prepare for that major. The real key to this, Dr. Moody said, is student identification with an institution early, and the second is the advising activities that we can provide to those students on those campuses. Chair Grans said she thought NIU might also want to investigate the possibilities of a dual admission program with Highland Community College in Freeport. 

President La Tourette said that when he first arrived at Northern Illinois University as Provost, there was some thought on campus that students who went to community colleges were students who could not be admitted to NIU directly because of their high school records and/or their ACT scores. Now, he said, we know that is not the case. A large number of students who go to community colleges are very well academically prepared, but they have personal or financial reasons why the route through the community college to the senior university is the best for them. Board Chair Boey is unique among trustees in this state, the President said, because he is a trustee of both a university and a community college. We have been exploring the relationship between the four-year and two-year institutions. We have students who leave Northern to go back to the community colleges when they do not find the right kind of fit or there is some personal problem, and then they come back again. What we have here is a very open system so that people can access education at the community college level or the university level or to go back to the community college level to achieve their objectives. I think that is remarkable when you look at what has been accomplished here, at least in northern Illinois, compared to other states. It is a much more open, flexible system, and it is, with the articulation initiative and with these dual admission programs, better designed to meet the student's needs. 

To answer a question from Board Chair Boey, Dr. La Tourette said that in a typical fall, NIU has about 1,600 transfers from community colleges. During the year, there is a significant influx both in the spring and summer. So, in a typical year at Northern, there are between 2,400 and 2,500 new transfer students from community colleges during that academic year, which is almost as large as our entering fall freshman class. 

Agenda Item 6.d. - FY98 External funding for Research, Public Service and Instructional Projects 
Dean Jerrold Zar of the Graduate School stated that it is typical for major universities to obtain funds from external agencies to help support their research, public service and instructional projects. This is true of public as well as private institutions. In fact, he said, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching uses the amount of external funding as one criterion in its classification of comprehensive doctoral-level universities such as NIU. At Northern Illinois University, the amount of funding for externally sponsored projects, grants and contracts has increased each year for many years. For Fiscal Year 1998, total external awards secured by NIU faculty and staff totaled $30 million. This is a $2.5 million increase, 9 percent over the previous fiscal year. The increasing amount of external monies obtained for the benefit of the university is quite striking, Dean Zar said. But also impressive is the great variety of the kinds of projects that are supported by these external monies. Of the $30 million in Fiscal Year 1998 external awards, 30 percent was for research projects, 35 percent for public service projects, 8 percent for instructional projects and 27% for other activities, primarily student support. 

This university's faculty and staff have become quite adept at acquiring external funding from a variety of sources. Dean Zar reported that in FY98, federal external dollars came mostly from 16 agencies for 44 percent of the total. In addition, funding was obtained from 18 state agencies, over a hundred corporations and other business firms, and several dozen school districts and other educational institutions. Over the years, NIU faculty and staff have been successful in acquiring increased amounts of grants and contract monies, even in the face of increased competition nationally and the budgetary constraints of many federal and state agencies and other potential sources of funding. In carrying out their professional activities and in advancing the university mission, Dean Zar said, NIU faculty and staff benefit greatly from these external monies that significantly supplement the university's internal resources. In turn, those served by faculty and staff also benefit. For example, business firms, professional organizations and government agencies benefit from the results of the projects executed with their support. Dean Zar went on to say that students are important beneficiaries of externally-funded projects. Many graduate and undergraduate students are hired to work on research, public service and instructional grants and contracts. The students benefit directly from these sources of income as well as from the rich intellectual experience this kind of involvement provides. By engaging in activities deemed worthy of support by governmental and private agencies, faculty are acquiring new knowledge and developing new concepts that can be transmitted in the classroom to help provide up-to-date learning for NIU students. 

In my remarks, Dean Zar said, I have consistently noted that the acquisition of external funding is the result of the capability of our university's faculty and staff, for they are the ones that conceive of the projects that are important enough and creative enough to attract government, corporate or other sponsorship. They are the ones who write the grant proposals and the project reports, and they deserve the credit for bringing to Northern Illinois University hundreds of millions of dollars of external funding over the years. Dean Zar noted that in order to assist NIU faculty and staff in their continual quest for external funding, the university provides substantial technical support. We maintain an Office of Sponsored Projects, he said, whose expert staff assists in the acquisition and interpretation of sponsor guidelines, in the formulation of grant and contract budgets, and in the intellectual and physical preparation of grant proposals and contractual agreements, often in consultation with our General Counsel's Office. Once a grant or contract is obtained by the university, the fiscal experts in the Office of Grants Fiscal Administration establish and oversee the award accounts and assist in the preparation of reports to the sponsor. Furthermore, when faculty and staff projects involve the creation of intellectual property, most commonly patents or copyrights, NIU’s Technology Commercialization Office can assist in securing the evaluation, legal protection and royalty paying agreements for these results of NIU creativity. Dr. Zar stated that there are currently some 30 to 40 inventions at NIU being evaluated by our Technology Commercialization Office, and several patent applications have been submitted during the past year. 

Agenda Item 6.e. - Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program 
Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences Fred Kitterle reported on a program that allows undergraduate students to work with faculty on research projects. The Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program helps answer the question: "How does a comprehensive Doctoral I university touch the lives of our undergraduates and enrich it?" The program I am going to talk about here at Northern exists at other universities such as Berkeley, Oregon, MIT, Harvard, Michigan and the University of Washington. 

Dean Kitterle said that the University Research Apprenticeship Program (URAP) has as its main goals to create and expand opportunities for undergraduates and faculty to work as collaborators in the search for or application of knowledge. It creates a better understanding for our students of what faculty do and why they do it. The program fosters critical thinking and active learning through the greatest resource this university has, the programs of scholarly activity carried out by research-active faculty. Finally, this program demonstrates and reinforces the synergistic relationship between teaching and research. Our goal, Dean Kitterle said, is to grow this program by creating an undergraduate research culture at Northern, to improve the quality of teaching in learning, to have students share in the exhilaration of discovery. 

Dean Kitterle reported that over 110 students have been involved in this program in the two years since it was begun. Faculty in all 17 departments in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences have participated in this initiative. There is a notice, an application, a schedule, information, a faculty project proposal form, student applications and a contract. The reason why we do this, the Dean said, is to make sure that we are explicit in what is expected and ensure that students are in a quality experience. We have an advisory group that reviews the many proposals that come in and selects a smaller number of proposals that will best enrich the undergraduate experience for students who work with faculty. 

Dean Kitterle reported that the College of Visual and Performing Arts has started an undergraduate research in artistry apprenticeship program, and the School of Nursing in the College of Health and Human Sciences is beginning to look at ways in which undergraduates can be involved in research. That is an important direction, Dean Kitterle said, because it defines Northern and gives voice to the notion of the interaction and synergy of teaching and research. This is truly workforce preparation, he said, because it provides students with a way to communicate, to write, to be engaged in data analyzing and to really understand what faculty work is all about. 

Dean Kitterle introduced Associate Professor Robin Moreman of the Department of sociology, who was a URAP program faculty member, and Cathy Cradduck, who was her apprentice, and asked them to speak on their experience. 

Dr. Moreman said that she and Ms. Cradduck represented just one example of the many apprenticeships that have been conducted through the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences that represent a unique opportunity for faculty members to do collaborative research with undergraduates. When this opportunity presented itself, Dr. Moreman said, the challenge I faced as a faculty member was to decide what kind of a project would be reasonable to carry out within the specified one-semester timeframe. I wanted it to be one that could be linked to teaching in the classroom. Dr. Moreman decided to do an update of a classic study on death and dying done by Kastenbaum, Peyton and Kastenbaum in 1977. My students had been conducting a mini-update of their classic study on gender discrimination after death, Dr. Moreman said, and I felt that a more complete replication and extension of their work was called for. When the opportunity to do the apprenticeship came up, I thought this was the ideal project. It can be linked to classroom work directly; it is discrete; and it is something that is potentially publishable and presentable. Kastenbaum, Peyton and Kastenbaum looked at two East Coast metropolitan newspapers to see if there was gender discrimination in the publication of obituaries. What they found was that men were four times more likely to receive obituary recognition; their obituaries were longer; and they were ten times more likely to be accompanied by a photograph. Given women's inroads into the paid labor force, Dr. Moreman said, it was my belief that if the woman's movement had accomplished everything that it had set out to accomplish, this ought to be reflected in less obvious measures, such as obituary recognition after death. I wanted to see if anything had changed fundamentally in the twenty years since the original project had been conducted. I had been receiving several hints in my classroom miniprojects that this was not the case, but I felt that a more systematic assessment of the situation was needed. Cathy Cradduck applied for the apprenticeship, and she was clearly the best applicant, Dr. Moreman said. She had also taken my Death and Dying course and was already familiar with some parameters of the project. 

Ms. Cradduck was involved in every aspect of the project from the initial conceptualization through the data collection phase, through the analysis phase and through the writing phase. Within several months of collecting our data, Dr. Moreman said, I had the opportunity to submit an abstract to the regional chapter of the American Sociological Association. I asked Cathy if she could have the data worked up in its preliminary phase for this presentation, and true to form, she was right there on the spot. I suggested that Cathy present the methods and the results of our project at this forum. I did the introductory phase and then concluded with the discussion. Cathy did a masterful job of presenting at this regional conference. After we presented our preliminary results, Cathy and I wrote up the final analysis and submitted an application to present our research at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in San Francisco. That paper was accepted for presentation, and we presented it to a national audience last August. Again, Cathy presented the methods and results, and I presented the rest of the paper. Additionally, this paper was submitted for publication to Omega, the Journal of Death and Dying, which is where the original study was published some twenty years ago. It was accepted with very minor revisions. Dr. Moreman said that she was extraordinarily proud of Cathy and the efforts she put behind this. I do not know many undergraduates who have two professional presentations and a publication to their credit. 

Dr. Moreman asked Ms. Cradduck to say a little bit more about the project and her experience from the student perspective. She thanked Dean Kitterle and the college, the Sociology department and Dean Zar in the Graduate School for their support of the trips to the regional and national conferences for presentation of the findings. 

Ms. Cradduck said that Dr. Moreman became a mentor to her long before she began working on the URAP project. She taught me to think, read and write critically. I always considered myself somewhat of a liberal, but I soon realized that I often looked at the world in black and white terms. She taught me to look at the gray areas as well. She taught me about what is good in our society and also what plagues it. I learned what stratification truly is and how race, gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic status play an enormous role in everything from health care delivery to the subject of death and dying. The things I learned from her were not simply facts that I would recount on an essay exam but knowledge and awareness that I would carry with me always. 

Robin was very supportive of me and my desire to learn from the very beginning. She nominated me for Mortar Board, a senior honor society committed to scholarship, leadership and service. I was selected and served actively on Mortar Board for the 1995-96 school year. Robin knew that at the time I was juggling a full-time job, raising a family and also going to school, but she always encouraged me to add more to my resume. 

As Robin already mentioned, our study was a more in-depth examination of obituaries than the abbreviated study I had done in my Death and Dying class, so I was able to gain further experience in research, literature review and subsequent analysis of the data. Our study consisted of a one-month analysis of four major metropolitan papers in four regions of the country. Robin and I met periodically to discuss the methodology so we were certain to replicate important aspects of the original study done 20 years ago. In all, I counted nearly 6,000 death notices, 500 obituaries and literally thousands of lines of text. To further analyze the 500 obituaries, I noted age at time of death and also recorded descriptions of why the deceased received obituary recognition. Those descriptions were then put into 18 categories that were used in the discussion portion of the paper. 

It was my responsibility to write and present the methods and results sections of the paper. Analysis of our data revealed that even after the inroads women have made in our society, men are still receiving more public acknowledgment from the press at the time of their death. Not unlike the original study, men received significantly more obituaries than women in each of the four papers, and with the exception of one of the publications, their obituaries were on average longer and accompanied by significantly more photographs. Men's accomplishments were deemed more worthy by the publishers who selected the obituaries than were the accomplishments of their female counterparts. 

We determined that the overall mean age at death of those who receive an obituary in the study was consistent with the life-expectancy data nationally. This finding may suggest a possible cohort effect; that is, men and women born in the early 20's came of age in the 40's and 50's, prior to second wave feminism. Most middle-class women of that generation were homemakers, performing tasks that did not register in the economic sphere. Hence, this generation of women is dying with very little public recognition of their accomplishments. We also considered a period effect for these findings; that is, obituary reporting in the '90s may be suffering from a decade of conservative ideology promoted by the New Right and Fundamentalist Christian groups. 

The result of our collaboration was two professional presentations at the Midwest Sociological Association (MSA) and the American Sociological Association (ASA) and a publication in Omega: The Journal of Death & Dying. In addition, Robin and I have discussed future collaboration, and I am presently working on an idea for research of my own.  

In closing, Ms. Cradduck thanked Dr. Robin Moreman for her tremendous support and Dr. Kitterle in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dr. Zar in the Graduate School, and the Department of Sociology for their generous support of her travel to the ASA conference in San Francisco. She said that the URAP program is to be commended, and she expressed her certainty that the students who participate will benefit as much as she did. 

Agenda Item 6.f. - Request for Degree Authority at Off-Campus Sites 
Dr. Lynne Waldeland, Assistant Provost for Academic Planning and Development, reported that the university is requesting degree authority at off-campus sites for three programs. The first request is to offer the Bachelor of Science in Industrial Technology at Elgin Community College. This program was previously approved for Rockford. It is an undergraduate degree completion program that capstones the Associate of Applied Science degree in Technology. After we began the program in Rockford, several community colleges — DuPage, McHenry, Elgin and Waubonsee – contacted the department and asked if it would be possible for NIU to offer this program on their campuses. The faculty resources of the Department of Technology do not permit it to offer this program at all of those sites, but the department has determined that it could offer at least one more rotation of this program, and it settled on Elgin Community College as relatively central and having very good resources. 

The second proposal is to offer the M.S.Ed. in Instructional Technology at the Hoffman Estates Education Center in the Elgin Community College District. The Board previously approved the offering of this program in Chicago. There is a huge demand for this program. In the western suburbs, the demand is coming not only from K-12 teachers, Dr. Waldeland said, but also from people who work in training roles in corporate settings. The Instructional Technology program prepares professionals for both school and nonschool settings. This program offered at Hoffman Estates would be targeted for both audiences. 

The third proposal is a little unusual, Dr. Waldeland said, because we rarely ask for degree authority in six community college districts at the same time. It will require a fair amount of faculty resources, even if we are able to use some distance education, which is our intention. This proposal responds to a change in federal regulations, Dr. Waldeland said, that will require rehabilitation counselors who work for state agencies to have a master's degree in the future. At present, a considerable number of people in those jobs do not have master's degrees, and the Department of Communicative Disorders has decided that it will try to serve those professionals by making the M.A. in Communicative Disorders with a specialization in deafness rehabilitation counseling available off campus. Illinois is currently trying to negotiate a ten-year timeframe before the requirement is enforced. That would be longer than federal regulations suggest, but the states do have some flexibility. In order to help states meet this mandate, the Department of Education has announced a grant opportunity to help the states find ways to bring those practicing professionals up to this new level of preparation. In the light of these developments, the department proposes to offer the program at the six sites mentioned. If NIU gets the grant, we can serve all of those sites. These sites have been selected not only because they will serve our densely populated western suburbs as in DuPage and the Elgin Community College District, Dr. Waldeland said, but they will serve people across the state borders of southern Wisconsin, eastern Iowa and northeastern Indiana. There is a small problem in timing, Dr. Waldeland said. The grant should be announced in March or April. It would be very awkward if we were to get the grant but not have degree authority at that time; then we would be unable to advertise to potential students that we have this program up and running. On the other hand, we are fairly certain that if we do not get the grant, we cannot serve all six sites. In light of this, Dr. Waldeland said, I have contacted Kathleen Kelly, a Deputy Director at the Illinois Board of Higher Education, and explained the situation. She advised that we ask for all the sites at this time. If we do not get the grant and feel we have to scale back, we can inform them then. In order to try to meet this rather tight timeframe, we are bringing this proposal to the Board today. 

The university recommends that this Committee endorse all three proposals, Dr. Waldeland said, and ask that the President forward them by means of the President's Report to the full Board at its next meeting. Chair Grans asked for a motion to approve off-campus degree authority for all three programs. Student Trustee Sosnowski so moved, seconded by Trustee Skoien. The motion was approved. 

Agenda Item 6.g. - Compensation Policies for Promotion in Academic Rank 
Steve Cunningham, Associate Vice President Human Resource Services, reported that at the last Committee meeting, the university announced a multiyear faculty salary equity initiative. An important component of faculty compensation is promotional increments for faculty. Every year, the university seeks Board approval for an average of 30 promotions in rank. These usually occur at no less than six-year intervals for faculty and represent important milestones in their careers. Associated with these promotions are promotional adjustments in salary, which the university last reviewed in 1989. Mr. Cunningham said a survey was conducted and the university recommended the implementation of new promotional increments that would bring NIU well above the average rates in the survey. Most universities have a flat dollar amount associated with a promotion rank. Starting in the next academic year following your approval of the promotions in the spring, the university would like to initiate a new policy increase of $83 a month for an assistant to associate professor promotion and $105 a month for associate to full professor. That would bring NIU 14% ahead of the median average flat rate promotional policies in the survey, Mr. Cunningham said. Then, over the next three years, the rates would be phased in to increase $55 for associate to full professor promotion and $50 for an assistant to associate professor in academic year 2001-02, leading to a periodic review of the rates then on four-year cycles. Whenever we initiate new policies that change rates of compensation substantially, you always have the problem of faculty employees who had similar personnel transactions in prior years. And to help resolve this issue, the Provost is establishing a fund and will be working with the colleges to blend this change in with high meritorious faculty who were recently promoted. The university asked the Committee's endorsement of this plan. 

President La Tourette said that Dr. Moody's retirement decision was a very difficult thing for him to accept. I think I did not take a chance in hiring Dr. Moody for the Provost's position, the President said. You exemplified the best that I have seen here at NIU in dedication, commitment and loyalty to the university, he told Dr. Moody. Really, Carroll is a person who always puts the university's interests before his. And I think that is why he has had a very satisfying experience here at the university because he was always carried forward by his dedication to the university and a vision that we could make this a better university. Because he was so dedicated to the institution and its mission, to its growth and development, the President continued, he gained a great deal of personal and professional satisfaction out of being a faculty member, a chair, head of the University Council, the first president of the Faculty Senate, and now as its chief academic officer. Carroll, I hoped you might change your mind, President La Tourette said, but I do respect your wishes. It has been a wonderful voyage with you, and it has been a real pleasure for me, not only professionally but personally. The President said he would present his thoughts to the Board about a replacement and the transition period at a later date.  

The Board Chair said that since Dr. Moody was not retiring right now, the full Board of Trustees would wait to articulate its support and respect for him at the proper time. Suffice it to say right now that even though my association with you is relatively short compared to many here in this room, Board Chair Boey told Dr. Moody, you have won my admiration and support for the job you have done. Thank you for all you have accomplished for our university. 

Trustee Siegel said that he had had the privilege of working with Dr. Moody for over four years — first on the Board of Regents and now with the Board of Trustees. I appreciate your professionalism in providing us advance notice of your retirement, Trustee Siegel said, but then you have always exhibited the highest level of professionalism. Since you still have several months to go, I will save most of my comments for a later date, Trustee Siegel said, but I just wanted you and all who are listening to know that you made a difference at NIU, and I thank you. 

Student Trustee Sosnowski added on behalf of all the students who had ever worked with the Provost's Office, including himself, that they had always been greeted with a very professional, very responsive and, more importantly, friendly atmosphere. I think that is a direct reflection on who heads the office, Student Trustee Sosnowski said. Let me just say that you have done an excellent job, especially with the Student Association. 

There being no other business before the Committee, Chair Grans asked for a motion to adjourn. Trustee Skoien so moved, seconded by Student Trustee Sosnowski. The meeting was adjourned at 3:05 p.m. 

Respectfully submitted, 

Sharon M. Mimms 
Recording Secretary