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Northern Illinois University

President Commission on the Status of Women

Minutes: December 17, 2003

Present: Stacy Allie, Barbara Burrell, Virginia Cassidy, Joanne Dempsey, Stacie Elder, Deborah Haliczer, Sharon Howard, Glenda Jones, Kathy Lockard, Sue Ouellette, Carol Patch, Lise Schlosser, Randi Wolfe.

Absent: Karen Baker, Sally Conklin, Lisa King, Amy Levin, Julie Robertson, Julia Sober, Josephine Umoren.

Guest: Madelyn Nelson

The meeting was called to order at 1:05 p.m. by chair Stacie Elder in Lowden Hall 304. Virginia Cassidy made a motion to approve the minutes from the November 12, 2003 meeting, and Sue Ouellette seconded the motion. The minutes were unanimously approved.

Old Business

AADR has not met and therefore has no report.

Kathy Lockard, chair of the Campus Climate and Quality of Life reported that the call boxes are not being removed from campus. Ten new call boxes were installed last year. The Cell phones will be adding additional services and suggestions for additional call box locations are welcome. Call boxes give the campus a perception of safety.

Bob Self, chair of the English Department, has written Voices to Change/domestic violence as a choice of a writing topic in Freshman English 101. A positive response has been forwarded to Diane Pospisil-Kinney, SOAR co-coordinator.

The Personal and Professional Development subcommittee had no report.

The Research subcommittee has no report. They have had lots of activity but no meetings.

The Awards and Reccognition subcommittee appointed Sharon Howard as chair. They had no report at this time.

Salary Equity Task Force had no report.

New Business

  • Madelyn Nelson addressed her concerns regarding the collection of important statistics at NIU or the lack thereof. In researching for various information she found it difficult to impossible to break out and collect information by gender in various areas such as the length of time it takes women to complete a grad curriculum compared to men; the dropout rate in programs compared to men; the completion rate of women compared to men in grad programs; the ages by gender of students in certain programs; the length of time taken to complete programs. The answers to these questions could indicate improvements in quality of life for students or where the need for resources should be focused. Members asked if Dr. Nelson would be willing to help formulate questions that would give the resource subcommittee a more focused means to pursue numbers. Questions such as Why are we asking these question? What will the data be used for? must be kept in mind.
  • Sharon Howard addressed the members regarding the disproportionate level of funding at the office of University Resources of Women. They currently have a staffing level equal to that of 1986. Twenty years worth of Outstanding Women Student Award data is being housed that is virtually unusable that needs to be placed on some type of data base. Funding will be sought to complete this task before this information is lost. The PCSW members were reminded that University Resources for Women provides funding for clerical support of the commission from their budget as a courtesy.

Announcements

Tim Griffin will be meeting with the PCSW at the Jan meeting concerning women’s issues on campus. An article was distributed to members from The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Faculty, “So Many Committees, So Little Time”, December 19, 2003.

Adjournment

A motion to adjourn the meeting was made by Deborah Haliczer and seconded by Joanne Dempsey. The motion was approved unanimously. Stacie Elder adjourned the meeting at 2:20 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Betty Baugh