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HE.07.02
4 December 2006

University of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign Senate
Final; Information

HE.07.02 Report on the IBHE Faculty Advisory Council Meeting, 20 October 2006

The FAC met in the Morris University Center on the campus of Southern Illinois University - Edwardsville (SIUE); Chair Curtis White (ISU) called the meting to order at 9:00 a.m. Special guests were Greg Fields, (SIUE) and Leo Welch, member of the EIU Board of Trustees. Julian Bueno (SIUE FAC representative) introduced Paul Ferguson, Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, who welcomed the FAC and conveyed regrets from Chancellor Vaughn Vandegrift who was not able to attend. Ferguson said that SIUE is ranked by U.S. News & World Report as being a “top tier” university and as having one of the most outstanding senior-assessment programs in the country; the program is an integrative learning experience that is required of seniors. He described SIUE as a masters-level public comprehensive university, with an enrollment of about 13,500 students: about 11,000 undergraduates and about 2,300 graduate and professional students. The campus is the second largest in the country, with more than 2,600 acres. There are currently four main initiatives on campus: review of general education requirements, implementation of a freshmen seminar experience by Fall 2008, development of the Strategic Advancement of Graduate Education (SAGE) program, and discussion with faculty of the expectations for a Teacher-Scholar Model.

Following the welcome, a draft of the FAC position paper on teacher preparation, “Breaking the Cycle of Teacher Inequality: New Standards for Teachers in a P-20 Education System in Illinois,” was distributed and discussed.  The position paper was prepared by Tim Scherman (NEIU), Julian Bueno (SIUE), and Marie Ann Donovan (DePaul) with input from FAC members. The FAC recommends that four new standards be put into effect as soon as practicable: teachers should complete the major for which they were hired to teach, education majors should pursue an “enriched major” to prepare them best for a teaching career in a given area, teacher candidates should have a GPA of 3.0 or higher, and entrance requirements for graduate programs should equal or exceed requirements for undergraduates. Following suggestions for changes, the document was approved as amended.  It will be forwarded to Judy Erwin, Executive Director of IBHE.

Rebecca Wojcik (GSU) reported on the IBHE Institutional and Program Approval Working Group. The group is discussing several questions: how much “physical presence” educational entities should have in the state if they want to provide higher education, how much “quality control” should controlled by accrediting agencies and how much by IBHE, and how similar should the “process” for program review and approval be for the various sectors of higher education in the state. As FAC representative to the group, Wojcik will keep FAC informed of the group’s work.

Greg Fields and Julian Bueno reported on the work of the SIUE Faculty Senate Salary Equity Task Force, which was established at the request of Chancellor Vandegrift and charged to recommend methods (and sources) to study market and gender equity in SIUE faculty salaries. They invited FAC and others to communicate with the Task Force “to exchange concerns, resources, and ideas that will support the assessment, attainment, and/or maintenance of salary equity at our respective institutions.”

Following a break, there was an update by Rick Pearce (IBHE) and reports by the Student Debt Committee [Ken Andersen (UIUC), Allan Karnes (SIUC), and David Bardack (UIC)] and by the Quality of Life Committee. The FAC discussed establishing a committee to review the report of Secretary Spellings’ Commission on the Future of Higher Education.

Following lunch, FAC reconvened for a conversation with Leo Welch, who talked about shared governance, public perception of higher education and the Solutions for our Future project, private gain versus public good of higher education, and efforts of the Higher Education Legislative Coalition.

Chair White called the Business Meeting to order at 2:00. The minutes of the last meeting (8 September 2006) were approved with changes.  Resolutions of appreciation to Julian Bueno, Paul Ferguson, and Leo Welch were approved unanimously. The next meeting of the FAC will be 17 November at ISU, Normal.

There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 2:15 p.m.

 

Michael Grossman,
UIUC Senate FAC Alternative Representative