COHEN: I could do it now or later

AGENDA ITEM IV PRESIDENT'S REPORT - RICHARD FREDLAND

M. COHEN: I could do it now or later

WARFEL: We will have to take them in a certain order.

BLAKE: You are speaking in support of the issue?

COHEN: Yes.

WARFEL: If the first motion we have before us passes, you will officially enter that

for the second? COHEN: Yes.

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SIDHU: My views are that the balanced case has created a misconception among many colleagues. With the balanced case we are trying to lower the standard of achievement by professors. This is not true. If you want to compare apples and oranges, in some cases the balanced case can be stronger than excellence in research and merely adequate in teaching and adequate in service. In that case, if you can compare them to the balanced case, I think the balanced case can be stronger than excellence in research and adequate in the other two. But, no uniform conclusion can be drawn because even excellence in teaching and excellence in research differs from school to school. Research in the medical school cannot be judged on the same basis as research in any other school. From that point of view, I think basically there is something wrong with the interpretation of the criteria. Excellence has been used in general terms but there is no specific thing available on which you can judge excellence in all school uniformly. So, that is a drawback. If you want to clear the hurdle, you have to go in the other direction clarifying or giving specificity to the all the criteria. So, my point of view is that there are many professors -- those who are pretty close to excellence in teaching -- but they are not accepted as excellent in teaching because some people have a very strong idea of what excellence is and that is being used. So, what we are doing in this resolution is, providing the opportunity.

If someone is really good and has balanced case, which is again subjective, giving the opportunity for those people to be considered for promotion. Because they have not achieved excellence according to somebody's criteria or somebody's subjective thinking, therefore they should not be deprived of that opportunity.

KOLESKI: If we ignore the idea of a balanced case, I think we are doing the university some damage. There are a variety of people with a variety of talents that make up the faculty. Some of them are extraordinary in one area. We need them desperately.

But, there are others who are really quite good in a number of areas and we need them as well. I think the balanced case takes care of this kind of situation unilaterally personally.

ROSENTRAUB: I am Mark Rosentraub from SPEA. This issue was discussed in a meeting of our full professors from both campuses. There is a part of that discussion I want to pass along. I don't know if it is the exact same wording. There is certainly a similar resolution toward this group that has already been passed, maybe by the Bloomington Faculty Council. We have several different points to make. Our full professor group is not a legislative body in the school, so therefore it doesn't vote on matters. There were a couple of things that reflects some of the comments here.

First of all, a lot of what we are talking about seems to be problems based in each

school. If, in talking as we just did, that excellence is subjective -- so is an evaluation

satisfactory, some school is unsatisfactory, and, therefore, to argue that we can't aim

for excellence because it is subjective would almost mean that we cannot do any form

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of evaluation because it is all merely subjective. We rejected that notion.

The issue, then, of a balanced case and because somebody can't quantify excellence in teaching -- this is a problem that has to be solved at the school level. We don't seem to have that problem in SPEA, but nor are we particularly well gifted to quantify excellence. We have tenured people. We have promoted people on excellence in teaching, none of whom by the way have received excellent national awards nor have they published basic research on teaching. We simply will want to have student feedback who, by the way, happens to be essential to our consumer model. If the students judge the people as excellent to the satisfaction of colleagues, we have in fact tenured and promoted and, therefore, find no need to think about lowering standards from excellence. Both campuses have people who are expert in measuring teaching performance. There are no shortages of instruments available by which the student feedback can be as unobtrusively as possible monitored and measured and then included in your evaluation process. We have this in the school at least as long as I have been part of the school which is six years and, as I said, stand on the record of tenuring several people, promoting several people for excellence in teaching, again, none of which I can recollect at the moment have any national recognitions distinctions. We reject the notion of a balanced case because of the fact that you cannot satisfy the criteria of teaching excellence. You can. That is a false position.

The third notion. There doesn't seem to be any basis to justify the balanced case for tenure. If the position existed, as my colleague talked about some somebody who is very good in teaching, very good in service, and very good in research, and you still wish to continue them, you are not limited from doing such under several aspects of the personnel system of Indiana University. We have people in the school who satisfies those criteria who are not carried on tenure track lines. We reserve tenure and tenure-track lines for those seeking excellence.

The final point. We know of no organization that achieves the next level if seeks by publicly stating, "We do not focus on excellence." The school SPEA, at least for its tenure track, will not accept nor will we implement programs that pursue anything but the achievement of excellence. We ask that you join us in that pursuit. Once you engage in that pursuit, then you must develop measuring tools within your schools to measure excellence. But, do not stop a search for excellence because you are not willing to invest the energy to measure excellence. We ask that you reject this unilaterally. This is a school issue. It does not involve actions of the Faculty Council.

BYRNE: A point of clarification. I think there are still differences between criteria for tenure and for promotion, and this is absent criteria with regard to promotion.

Discussion from almost the first to the last has combined the two. There is some

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reason to anticipate that efforts along these lines will progress in the years ahead, especially if promotion and tenure committees are combined as many people seem to favor. But, may I ask anyone in a position of authority at the front table to clarify this. Pat has already done this once. It ought to be made very clear for purposes of this discussion, "Is this not a discussion on criteria with regard to promotion, and could not one be promoted on these criteria and still be denied tenure for other reasons?" Is that not the case?

BLAKE: This is promotion criteria alone.

BYRNE: Is it not somewhat out of order, then, to introduce questions about who should or should not endure forever in our midst as though we are in fact talking about tenure criteria?

BLAKE: Yes, it is. We can have tenured faculty going for promotion on a balanced case.

LEAPMAN: I would like to echo the remarks from the gentleman from SPEA and bring to you the assessment from the School of Medicine. In many of the standing committees in the School of Medicine this concept of the balanced case has been discussed. In two of the committees: 1) promotion and tenure, and 2) faculty steering committee -- it was overwhelmingly felt that we should not embark on a balanced case. In the Executive Committee of the School of Medicine it was discussed and the overwhelming majority also felt that the balanced case should not be adopted by IUPUI. In our Faculty Steering Committee, which is a committee composed of elected members from the entire medical school community, the unanimous vote was that we should not adopt this recommendation. I think that basically the feeling was that it would be somewhat of an embarrassment for a school, with the stature of IUPUI, to, in fact, lower standards for the rest of the community. In fact, the perceptions are at times equal to reality. I think that is what we would be doing. I don't speak for everyone in the medical school because we don't vote as a block, but through those committees I have to tell you that the overwhelming majority felt the resolution was unacceptable and the "Balanced Case"

should be defeated.

PETERSON: I think I need to make a comment related to the words that we currently have in our handbook. First of all, it goes through this very explicitly. It says,

"promotion considerations must take into account, however, differences in mission

between campuses, and between schools within some campuses, as well as the

individual contribution to the school/campus mission." There is a lot of flexibility in

there as to what we need, as faculty, within our schools.

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The other point that I would like to strongly make, unless I am misunderstanding this,

"A candidate for promotion should normally excel in at least one of the above categories and be satisfactory in the others." That may be even too flexible. You have the opportunity with that "normally" in there to make a case for whatever.

Anybody can make a case on whatever basis they want, but it doesn't mean that it is going to be approved by the committee. If you are a valuable faculty member and you make that case, whether it is a balanced case or whatever, you will go through the system and get your promotion, I feel. But, you have to make a case.

FREDLAND: I think it is all well and wholesome that not everybody should speak but that every idea should be heard. I think I have a small new idea to contribute to the discussion. By adopting the balanced case, it seems to me that what we are doing is avoiding coming to grips with the issue of evaluating teaching effectively. This whole notion emerged out of what was the Commission on Teaching established by the Bloomington Faculty Council. Their report was issued in February, 1992. Let me read you a couple of fragments from it.

Our reward system is perceived to have come to privilege research above all other endeavors. ... We insist upon one primary and presiding recommendation -- that excellent teaching be accorded the same status and rewards as are allocated to research ...

What we have not done in this or other institutions is devise mechanisms for evaluating excellence in teaching with the same skill that we think we evaluate excellence in research. With the pressures that are upon us from outside agencies these days, we are going to have to come to grips with that. I think the sooner we do it the better off we will all be. By adopting this, I think what we are suggesting to ourselves is that we really don't have to come to grips with that. I think it would be a mistake to adopt the balanced case because we are sending to ourselves, internally as importantly as any place else, the wrong message.

ALiPRANTIS: I would like to report two votes. A vote of the department of mathematics which is probably the largest department. We discussed this matter and the department overwhelmingly opposes the balanced case. The vote was 26 against, 1 for, and 1 abstention.

We also discussed the balanced case in the School of Science. The majority opposes the adoption of this resolution.

SIDHU: I would like to address a concept that a friend of mine has developed because

the idea of the balanced case is not to lower the standards. You can have any

language you want. The problem is when you start getting teachers' teaching

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evaluated on the same criteria as research and you want to make teaching as research. We should discuss that and tackle that problem. You can have any language you want, but unless you solve this problem, you are going to have professors who are going to suffer because of that. Those days are gone when you could get promotion on excellence in teaching just the way your school had judged you that they can be excellent teachers even though they don't have the national recognition.

GALANTI: I would like to report a vote from the Law School. Both the P and T committees here, which consist of all tenured, full professors and the full faculty, have discussed the balanced case and, unlike other schools here, the faculty from the Law School has overwhelmingly favored the concept of the balanced case. My own thoughts on this are that, yes, I see flexibility in the word "normally" as in the present language. I don't think the word "normally" is underlined in the handbook as it is on the handout, but to me this is not a question of lowering the standards so much as the emphasis has only been on the excellence in one of the three areas. I am troubled with the idea that, "Well, if you are very, very good, we could sneak you through even though technically you have not met the standards that Indiana University expects for promotion -- just promotion, not tenure." It is very possible for someone who is not quite as aware of the actual wording of the language to say, "Well, I am not going to make it" or perhaps be discouraged by a promotion and tenure committee for whatever reason -- you are not demonstrating the excellence that is required for promotion" and there is no pointing out of the alternative of a very good person being promoted on the basis of balance across the board in all three areas. So, I am personally in favor of the balanced case. I don't think it is begging the question of trying to develop an access for excellence in teaching. I think that is a challenge that we are all faced with. I don't think that we can sit back and say "We now don't have to worry about standards. We have lowered the standards. We are going to let anyone who gets on this faculty, under any guise, we are going to promote that person." I don't think that is the intention of the balanced case. I don't think that is going to be the consequence of adopting this language. If it is, then the schools themselves have fallen down. I don't think a school should admit, "Well, we are just taking the easy way out. We are copping out. We have a difficult task to do and that is trying to judge teaching. What are we going to do about it? We will just say the balanced case lets in everyone." I think since the 1990s, with the budget restraints that are going to go on, I don't see people getting promoted and tenured on the basis of being a nice person. I think the case is going to have to be established by the person seeking the promotion and I think, I personally would look very carefully at a file that comes across my desk as a member of the P and T committee, saying "I should be promoted from assistant to associate professor or from an associate professor to a full professor on the basis of my overall balance. I am a little skeptical.

I would look very carefully to see whether there has been a strong case. I think

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someone presenting a balanced case is going to have to present more evidence to me of being fairly close to excellent across the board. I can't see myself voting for someone who thinks we are talking about someone who is adequate. I do favor the adoption of the balanced case. I am not too keen on the actual language of the UFC proposal. The Law School faculty agree that the language that comes from UFC is satisfactory to us.

KARLSON: I think the language here has a restriction on the word "normally".

Presently, promotion is being with excellence in at least one of these categories normally. That doesn't tell us what other circumstances under which a person can be promoted. I feel that this language then defines the exception to the general rule.

This is more restrictive than it otherwise would be without this language. That is why I think this language is beneficial because it defines the exception which "normally"

otherwise creates and restricts it to what it could otherwise be.

MIRSKY: I am from the School of Science and, as Roko mentioned earlier, the School of Science did vote a majority in opposition to this and I am repeating that here. That is not my main point. My main point or concern is that I was somewhat amazed that the view of the Law School and lawyers in particular. The balanced case has passed that there will not be a lowering of standards. In fact, there will be an improvement.

That people won't go around voting just for a nice guy and gal. I see exactly the opposite of that. I find it difficult to see the opening of what I would call "countless loopholes". That is why I said I was surprised that lawyers wouldn't see that sort of thing. I see countless loopholes in a balanced case where you are not going to be mediocre because everyone here that supports the balanced case says, "That doesn't mean we are saying publicly that we accept just good. That is not what it is. But they are also saying it is excellence. So, what it is then is something in between those two. My point here now is that we can handle the in betweens under the current system, I believe, in all schools, of course, I am more familiar with the School of Science and IUPUI in general. We can handle that as a border land for people who show some accomplishments in a second area. What I see over the next few years is that, that level will become lower and lower and we will be creeping into mediocrity as an acceptable measure for promotion. So, I wish to second, third, or fourth, whatever the right word is, to urge opposition to this particular balanced case.

WARFEL: We have heard support and defense against this. Are we getting close to being ready to consider this?

MORREL: I call the question.

WARFEL: Do I hear a second? UNKNOWN: Second.