Minutes of the

NIU Board of Trustees

ACADEMIC AFFAIRS, STUDENT AFFAIRS

AND PERSONNEL COMMITTEE

September 7, 2006

The meeting was called to order by Chair Cherilyn Murer at 9:07 a.m. in the Board of Trustees Room, 315 Altgeld Hall.  Recording Secretary Sharon Mimms conducted a roll call of Trustees.  Members present were Trustees Robert Boey, Manny Sanchez and Marc Strauss, Student Trustee Andrew Nelms and Chair Murer.  Also present were Committee Liaison Raymond W. Alden III, President John Peters and Board Parliamentarian Kenneth Davidson.  With a quorum present, the meeting proceeded.

Confirmation of Open Meetings Act notification compliance was given by Board Parliamentarian Ken Davidson.

Trustee Strauss made a motion to approve the agenda.  It was seconded by Trustee Sanchez.  The motion was approved.

It was moved by Trustee Sanchez and seconded by Trustee Strauss to approve the minutes of the May 25, 2006 meeting.  The motion was approved.

It is the first day of our new school year, Chair Murer said.  It is also the first Board of Trustees meeting for our new Provost, and we welcome him as liaison to his first Academic Affairs, Student Affairs and Personnel Committee meeting with many more to come.

Today’s agenda contains one action item and four information items.  Action Item 7.a. is a request for a new degree program, an M.S. in Family and Consumer Sciences.  The four information items include a program issue; the Fiscal Year 2006 University Performance Report; recognition of those faculty who were granted emeritus status having retired from the university in good standing; and the recognition of faculty and staff who are recipients of professional excellence awards.  It is such a pleasure to recognize faculty both for what they have done in the past as emeritus professors as well as those individuals who are receiving awards for excellence.  The recipients of these awards will also be recognized as they join us for lunch today.  In addition, Information Item 7.e. details the results of NIU’s faculty and staff efforts to acquire external funding for research, public service and instructional projects during the past year.

Chair Murer recognized the representatives of the University Advisory Committee to the Finance, Facilities and Operations Committee, Dr. Joseph Stephen and Dr. Ferald Bryan.

The Chair asked Board Parliamentarian Kenneth Davidson if any members of the public had registered a written request to address the Board in accordance with state law and the Board of Trustees Bylaws.  Mr. Davidson noted that no timely requests for public comment had been received.

Agenda Item 7.a. – Request for a New Degree Program

Dr. Alden asked Vice Provost Virginia Cassidy to present the request for a new degree program in family and consumer science.  This is a master’s program that is structured fairly typically of master’s programs, Dr. Cassidy stated.  To complete the degree requirements, the program has a minimum of 30 semester hours of course work, and students will be required to complete a thesis.  The degree will have two specializations – one in apparel studies and one in family consumer science education.  The degree is being requested to meet the need for two segments of the population, the largest of which will most likely be classroom teachers who are seeking the degree program to meet the professional development requirements to maintain their certification in the state of Illinois.  They will pursue the specialization in Family and Consumer Science Education.  The other segment is a group of individuals who are enrolled or have completed a program similar to our baccalaureate degree in textiles, apparels and merchandising, Dr. Cassidy said.  By completing this degree and the specialization in apparel studies, they will be prepared to move into management positions, particularly in the merchandising sector.  NIU is not in competition with any of the other public universities that offer a similar degree program, and there are no private institutions that offer a master’s degree in this area.

Chair Murer asked for a motion to endorse the request for a new M.S. in Family and Consumer Science.  Trustee Boey so moved, seconded by Student Trustee Nelms.  The motion was approved.

Agenda Item 7.b. – Fiscal Year 2006 University Performance Report

Provost Alden asked Vice Provost Cassidy to report on the Fiscal Year 2006 University Performance Report.  All the members of the Board can expect to receive a copy of the FY06 University Performance Report with their full Board Report, Dr. Cassidy said.  Although some of the elements of our report are still under modification based on recommendations from the IBHE, the overall format of the report remains the same as it has been for the last several years.  It is divided into three parts.  One part is the summaries of the program reviews that were conducted last year.  A brief report was given on those reviews to this committee at its June meeting.  The second part of the report is a report on effective practices that reflect not only the university’s mission but also the policy areas of the statewide master plan for higher education, the Illinois Commitment.  The third part is a report on common institutional indicators that reflect Northern Illinois University as one of the public universities in the state.  We have also developed our own set of indicators which are called mission‑specific indicators, and we have reported on those indicators in this report.

Agenda Item 7.c. – 2005-2006 Faculty Emeritus Recognition

Universities have had a long tradition of recognizing faculty who have retired as being valued assets of the university, Provost Alden said, and continuing to serve in that role as emeritus faculty.  The word emeritus refers to precious or valued resource.  We certainly believe that is the case of our retiring faculty.  We have 20 individuals who are listed in your Board report, and we want to recognize them as continuing members of our university community.

Agenda Item 7.d. – Professional Excellence Awards for Faculty and Staff

We will have a recognition ceremony during the luncheon following the committee meetings to honor those receiving the Professional Excellence Awards for Faculty and Staff, Provost Alden said.  Those who were present were asked to stand and be recognized.

Agenda Item 7.e. – Fiscal Year 2006 External Funding for Research, Public Service and Instructional Projects

Vice President Rathindra Bose gave a presentation on the Fiscal Year 2006 External Funding for Research, Public Service and instructional Projects.  Every year I take a distinct pleasure in standing before you and informing you of the progress we have made in external funding, research and graduate education in this university, Dr. Bose said, and this year is no exception.  Before I go into the specific data, I should point out that external funding alone does not measure the faculty accomplishments or the reputation they bring to the university.  For example, we cannot measure the enormous publicity that we are getting through books recently published by several members of our faculty including Adapting Minds by David Buller of the Department of Philosophy, a review of which was published in Nature, Science and major professional journals in the world.  Likewise, the contribution from the Department of History of Professor Clymer’s seven books on the Southeast Asian Europolitical situation, starting from John Hay to Indian independence to Cambodia and U.S. relationships, speak volumes.  And when you look at the contribution Professor Gaylen Kapperman is making in the rehabilitation of wounded veterans and their quality of life, you cannot measure that contribution in specific dollars.  There are many projects that go across my desk bringing in maybe $10,000 to $20,000 a year, Dr. Bose said, but they make an enormous contribution to society.  So I think we need to realize that this is not just about dollars; but it is all about scholarship and scholarly work. 

This year we received about $55 million in external funding compared to last year’s $61 million, Dr. Bose reported.  Last year, we reported earmarks for 2004 and 2005 because of the timing of those congressional allocations.  Making adjustments for the 2004 earmark, this year’s funding is actually a million and a half ahead of last year’s funding.

Last year we had over 64 percent federal funding including the 2004 and 2005 earmark contributions, but this is a typical distribution for Northern Illinois University and most institutions of our size.  In terms of distribution in the colleges, Liberal Arts and Sciences is always number one, followed by Education, Health and Human Sciences, and Engineering and Engineering Technology.  The other unit I want to recognize, Dr. Bose said, is Vice President Anne Kaplan’s office where they have been doing a tremendous job in university Outreach with about $7 million of other funding coming through that office.  The top funded departments, excluding any earmarks, are the Department of Psychology at $4.3 million, and the Department of Teaching and Learning at $3.6 million for which two faculty members, Sharon Freagon and Gaylen Kapperman, are responsible.  The Department of Biological Sciences receives $1.23 million and Physics brings in $1.5 million to approximately $2 million.  I also want to recognize the Department of Geography, which has a total of nine faculty members, eight of whom have externally funded grants.  That speaks volumes for a department of that size and the contribution they make both in the undergraduate and master’s programs.

I am somewhat concerned about the number of proposals we have been receiving, Dr. Bose said.  From Fiscal Year 2002 to 2006, they have declined about 25 percent.  At one point, we had close to 500 proposals.  Last year, we had 368 submissions.  In terms of our success, we have a 51 percent funding record, which is quite unheard of.  The success for the federal grants is about 29 to 34 percent during that time period, which is above the national average.  The challenge now is how to get more proposals from the campus. This comparison also shows that NIU has gained significant ground over other public universities during that time.  Dr. Bose stated that one of the reasons we have declined in submissions is due to the loss of productive faculty who have been replaced, due to budgetary constraints, with part‑time or temporary faculty.  They contribute to undergraduate education, he said, but very rarely do they write grant proposals. 

The major concern is not being able to replace productive research faculty while veteran productive grant funded faculty are retiring, Dr. Bose said.  The competition is tough, especially in science and engineering.  For example, to bring in a physicist would require a serious investment; the startup costs for these faculty can go anywhere from half a million to a million dollar.  It is not just the position.  It is the lab space, the startup funds, finding research support for them, developing interest structures.  In reply to a question from a Trustee, President Peters said that endowments might help if the proper individuals with key funding from agencies like NSF or NIH can be attracted to the university.  The metric for external funding is that for those areas for which we have made an investment in their research infrastructure, and for those areas for which there is continuation funding to support research, it should be and is an expectation that those faculty and those departments attract that kind of funding to sustain itself.  Getting funding is not an end in and of itself.  It leads to better research, more publications and discovery.  But it is a necessary condition because the state and the university cannot completely support these programs out of GR or local funds.  Therefore, a research university must have external funding.  But you have to have the infrastructure.  You have to have the space.  You have to find ways of matching money for equipment.  All of those things can be related to endowments and private fundraising.  And many states will match these funds.

Part of the aspect of strategic planning is to get people thinking at the departmental and college levels, Provost Alden said, about how they would see themselves developing over five or ten years, particularly when it comes to multidisciplinary research, which is where a lot of the research funding is going these days. 

There are a couple of things happening in the state that I think permit us to make the case for the state to get involved in matching to insure the state remains competitive in terms of high‑end research, President Peters said.  I will give you one example that Kathy Buettner, Ray Alden and I have been working on very hard recently.  The University of Chicago has shared the management of FermiLab with the Universities Research Association, of which we are members.  The University of Chicago also manages Argonne Laboratory.  In the next few years, in terms of energy physics, a major linear collider is going to be built somewhere in the world and, soon, the Fermi cyclotron will not be the largest machine.  In order to attract that multibillion dollar project, you have to put together a collection of the world’s best scientists and engineers.  So all the local research university presidents, who are on the board, from schools such as the University of Chicago, University of Illinois, Northwestern, Northern Illinois University and Illinois Institute of Technology, are developing a proposal that we will take to the state for a package of matching on, particularly, high energy physics.  Then, obviously, we should make the pitch for a distinguished scientist program in general where, if we raise a half a million dollars or a million dollars in private money for a professorship, the state would match it.  We cannot lose what is happening at FermiLab and Argonne National Laboratory, and the way we have positioned ourselves with our earmarks, Physics, Engineering and Chemistry are able to take advantage of that.  And under Ray’s leadership, when we get to the strategic planning, we would like to be able to identify other areas – biological sciences, the health sciences – where we can make similar investments.  But we cannot do it alone; it has to be a public-private partnership.  And there has to be a commitment throughout the university that we are going to do this.

I am always most interested in seeing this presentation each year, Trustee Murer said, because it really goes to the essence of the university, to scholarship.  And I think that when you look at funding, there are all sorts of reasons why it has been reduced.  But that is going to be the essence of our university in the next five to ten years.  So this is probably one of the quintessential presentations that we receive each year, to look at the outside funding and also the types of research that are being done, because that is reflective of the university.

Every year, Dr. Bose said, I bring to your attention what is happening in the nation and how we should be preparing to respond to the future.  There is a trend in the country we call systems biology, integrated biology, and I think this is going to be the way of the future.  I believe people are looking at personalized medicine, and this is the beginning of that.  The new Chair of the Department of Computer Science, Professor Ege, is an expert on cyber security.  Nanomedicine is another up and coming area, STEM education, stem cell research, energy and environment.  The transition to the new technologies for energies is quite inevitable.  Many states are spending a lot of money on energy and changing public policy.  California now has a strategic plan to meet energy needs by getting 25 to 30 percent of the energy from alternative energy sources.  Likewise, New York has adopted that strategy.  And we need to be very careful in developing science and engineering infrastructure and future faculty hires so that we can address the energy research issue, plus fulfill the core graduate and undergraduate mission of the university.

Following the President’s State of the Union address, both the House and the Senate picked up this theme and wanted to make major investments.  Eighty senators actually sponsored this bill, essentially doubling the funding for basic sciences in the next ten years, as we have seen in NIH’s funding increase, and there are many other components in the bill.  A quote from the Chinese President shows they have made a commitment for opening a hundred new universities in China in the next five years, and they are producing more scientists and engineers than anybody else.  India is also moving forward quite fast, so we need to be mindful of being competitive for the next 15 to 20 years, so that we keep the highly productive jobs and the brain power knowledge based economy in the United States.

One of the areas in which we have made significant progress is graduate education.  NIU has the largest minority doctoral enrollment in the state of Illinois.  The national newspapers from Diversity to other outlets, have ranked NIU among the top 50 institutions in the country awarding master’s degrees to Latin Americans and awarding master’s degrees in computer science to Asian Americans.

On the web site of Science in the September 1, 2006 issue, is breakthrough research by four researchers from Stanford, Yale and Colorado who did an intervention experiment assuring the minority students they are integrating their comfort level by reducing the psychological threat.  The result shows those minority students performed very closely to the average white student, and this gap was closed by 40 percent.

Last year we talked about the multidisciplinary Ph.D. program with sciences and engineering, Dr. Bose said.  Dr. Clyde Kimball has been of key help with this project.  The university cannot give a new degree without approval from IBHE, so we have opened up several specialties in chemistry and physics to nanoscience so engineering students can go through that track, and that has been approved through the Graduate Council.  Three students started in this program last week.  The program has been advertised jointly by NIU and Argonne, and they will be recruiting more students next year.  The goal is to bring 20 high‑powered staff and scientists from Argonne National Lab in a joint appointment to the Nanoscience Institute.  I am presently working on a proposal to put forward to IBHE for creating this multidisciplinary doctoral program to create a strong unit not only in Illinois but also in the nation.

Through a very selective process, the NIU Press has published 22 books.  Every year over 500 proposals are received, and last year, 750 were received.  The Chronicle of Higher Education listed several of Northern Illinois University’s books as the best scholarly publications.

Dr. Bose then introduced several people who have been recently recruited to his area.  Dr. Bradley Bond is a new associate dean for graduate school, and came from the University of Southern Mississippi.  Dr. David Stone is the new director of the Office of Sponsored Projects.  David earned his Ph.D. from Boston University and is also a key mover for Harvard public health.  Internally, two individuals were promoted.  Dr. Sandy Arntz has been promoted to assistant vice president and will be handling research compliance issues, and Ms. Gail Mitchell has been promoted to assistant vice president for technology commercialization.

In answer to a query from Trustee Boey regarding nanoscience, Dr. Bose referred to the new proposed Ph.D. program he talked about earlier in his presentation.  Federal funding remains very high, he said, even NIH is looking at nanomedicine, the one subdiscpline of nano.  An allocation of $500 million has been made for nanomedicine research this year.  NIU has made some key hires in a joint appointment with Argonne National Lab in this area.  One of them is Dr. Zhili Xiao, who just received two major grants from DOE and NSF.  He is also the inventor of a hydrogen sensor technology and one of the top hundred inventors recognized by Argonne National Lab and others.

Chair Murer announced that the next scheduled meeting for the Academic Affairs, Student Affairs and Personnel Committee is Thursday, November 16.

There being no Other Matters, Chair Murer asked for a motion to adjourn.  Trustee Strauss so moved, seconded by Trustee Boey.  The meeting was adjourned at 9:58 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Sharon M. Mimms

Recording Secretary