The OAA Newsletter has been circulating now for three and a half years. We’ve brought you faculty-centered information, funny introductory videos, and information on upcoming events of interest. Sometimes you’ve just got to shake it up a little. It’s time for a change!
With this issue, we’re going to follow what’s happening in faculty governance and bring you information that’s occurring at IUPUI Faculty Council meetings, presentations on topics of interest for all faculty, and an inside peek at what governance committees are doing on your behalf. Oh, we’ll still bring you the funny introductory videos and other tidbits of information we think you should know; it’ll just look different. We hope you like it!
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 Dear Colleagues,
I never could have imagined a semester winding down in the manner that spring 2020 has. With scant warning, we have managed to shift just about every aspect of our academic lives to the virtual realm. Through your collective effort, nearly all of the students who began their classes in January have been able to complete their coursework, albeit with ample doses of Zoom, Kaltura, Examity, and other hastily-learned technological tools.
Some aspects of these days have been unexpectedly pleasant. Rather than dashing from building to building I can “jump” from Zoom room to Zoom room, with my dogs sleeping comfortably by my feet (which are always wearing comfortable shoes) and a tempting view of the garden from outside of my window. At the same time, I’ve found that it can be tough to sit at a screen for so many hours in a row, and it is challenging to think - and compete for bandwidth - in my “social bubble” that includes 8 people ranging in age from 3 months to 91 years of age! Though my children are in college and no longer need much support from me, I can’t imagine how hard it must be for some of you to juggle assisting younger children in learning remotely with your own teaching and research responsibilities.
We’re all in this together, and I do so appreciate how hard everyone is working to ensure that our students continue to make progress toward their degree goals. I’m particularly grateful to our faculty governance leaders, who have provided a steady stream of wise advice, support, and good humor as we’ve navigated through adjustments to policies and procedures. Some of you might have read that we currently have a small army of colleagues reaching out to all of our undergraduate students to check in on how they are doing and to provide care and support before the semester ends. It is no surprise that our registrar, Mary Beth Myers, reported last week that, “We’ve made over 325 calls and along with other interesting observations, almost every person making calls mentioned that students are ‘gushing’ or ‘giving glowing remarks’ about how great the faculty have been.”
So thank you for being great, and for demonstrating such care and support to each other, as well as to our staff and our students. Though it may take a while, we will get through this, and undoubtedly will be wiser and stronger as a result of what we’ve experienced. Stay healthy and safe, and I look forward to seeing you back on campus as soon as possible,
Sincerely,
Kathy E. Johnson, Ph.D.
Executive Vice Chancellor and Chief Academic Officer
Professor of Psychology
evc@iupui.edu
academicaffairs.iupui.edu
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Faculty Council (IFC) Updates
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The Spring 2020 Semester Will Be One to Remember
On March 10, a lightning bolt hit my inbox at 3:51 PM. The subject: “Urgent message from President Michael A. McRobbie.” We’ve all received e-mails from President McRobbie before, but I don’t recall another that began with “Urgent.” We were all expecting big news because of COVID-19, but we were wrong. The news wasn’t big. It was colossal. This news was going to change the lives of thousands of students, faculty, and staff. IU’s response was already underway, but so many questions remained. Action was needed. The impetus for this was an overarching concern for the welfare of our students. Of course, topics came concerning faculty and staff, but the main concern was always for the students, their health and well-being, and their progress toward their degrees.
The administration and the faculty began working together in a way that I’ve never before witnessed, and, yes, that involved creating committees. It’s common for university faculty to joke about all the meetings we go to and how little emerges from them. My experience of the last month and a half proves that this isn’t always the case. Important issues can be dealt with expeditiously, and significant decisions can be made and put into action. In just two weeks we converted 18,000 sections from face-to-face to virtual. We’re now in our fifth week of virtual education, with more than 100,000 Zoom meetings and classes. We’re all doing the very best we can for our students. It’s likely that we’ll look back on 2020 as an inflection point in the history of IU and the world. I want to express my sincere gratitude to the many who have worked so hard on our COVID-19 response. You make this place great.
Health be with you.
- John Watson
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At the March 3 Faculty Council meeting, the members voted to approve a new structure that will enable faculty members to discuss possible grievances with a team of faculty members called the Ombudsteam. The structure goes into effect as soon as the team is assembled. The five-member team is an elected group of faculty designed to be available to discuss with faculty early on in the course of emerging concerns or potential grievances. It is “designed to provide designated places and persons for faculty to voice concerns and learn about options for channeling criticisms and addressing complaints so that faculty can be fully informed about possible actions and consequences before they make a decision as to what steps, if any, to take next” (IUPUI Faculty Council Constitution). An Ombudsteam member will meet with faculty individually and provide them with possible next steps or resources on campus. The process is confidential with no reporting kept or provided. The Ombudsteam takes the place of the former Faculty Grievance Advisory Panel.
Read more about the Ombudsteam here. Questions? Contact the Faculty Council office at ude[dot]iupui[at]licnuocf or 317-274-2215.
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A new rank has been developed for lecturers to provide a career ladder for advancement. The rank is called teaching professor and is the third tier of the lecturer rank—lecturer, senior lecturer, teaching professor. The Faculty Council approved these criteria at their March 3 meeting and senior lecturers will be eligible to go up for promotion to teaching professor beginning this fall.
Read more about the criteria here. Webinars were held for current lecturers and senior lecturers in late March. You can find more information and materials on these workshops at this web page.
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In collaboration with other Indiana University campuses and following the April 21 Faculty Council meeting, the members voted to adopt a resolution on sustainability for the IUPUI campus. The resolution speaks to the development of a climate action plan by 2023, support of the Office of Sustainability’s work, and to become carbon neutral by the end of fiscal year 2030. The University Faculty Council passed a similar resolution at their meeting on April 28.
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In 2019, the Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health and Healthy IU repeated the third IU-wide survey of employee health and wellness. The survey is anonymous, includes all full-time employees, the results are shared widely. The results of this survey were compared with the results from the 2013 survey and were shared by Tess Weathers, research associate at the Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health, with the Faculty Council at the February 4 meeting.
The survey is designed to address six content areas where change could be measured between the years the survey is taken. These six areas include organizational support, resources and programs, lifestyle, preventative health care, stress, and health and illness.
The results of the 2019 survey, showed the IUPUI had a 27.2 percent response (higher than the IU-wide response rate of 26.6 percent) and some of the following takeaways:
- Improved perceptions of organizational support and greater access to resources
- Significant improvements in employee stress management
- Consistently high preventative health care utilization
View the PowerPoint presentation that was used to display the information to the council. Additionally, the comparison report and full results in survey form are available on the Healthy IU website.
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Senior Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Margie Ferguson shared the current headcounts and demographic characteristics of IUPUI faculty in 2019. View the PowerPoint presentation shared with the Faculty Council at the February 4 meeting that displays the information regarding academic titles, tenure and non-tenure related faculty, gender, race and ethnicity, and retention. The presentation also covered feedback from faculty regarding motivations for leaving the campus.
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Associate Vice Chancellor for International Affairs Hilary Kahn introduced the IUPUI Dimensions of Global Learning to the IFC. The Dimensions “are designed as a tool for faculty, staff, and administrators to help them develop more intentionally global and intercultural learning experiences across the curriculum and co-curriculum.” They address the IUPUI Strategic Plan goal to: Develop curricular and co-curricular activities that enable all IUPUI students to have at least one substantial global learning experience during his or her IUPUI career, either internationally or locally. Use of the Dimensions are not required and will not be assessed, but it is hoped that faculty use the Dimensions in the construction of their courses to provide a global learning experience for students even if they are not studying abroad. Kahn provided teaching examples for using the Dimensions.
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Peggy Daniels Lee, chair of the Academic Affairs Committee, discussed the proposed requirement by IUPUI that a minimum of 25 percent of the credit hours earned for the conferral of a certificate be earned at IUPUI. The campus has policies for the conferral of bachelor’s and associate’s degrees, but none for certificates. The proposed policy will be voted on at the May 5 IFC meeting.
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Anne Mitchell, director of the Office of Equal Opportunity (OEO), provided a report at the April 21 Faculty Council meeting on the current faculty demographic counts and how those counts are represented compared to an expected count for our campus. For data integrity, OEO has also taken time in the past year to define the Latinx and multicultural communities within their data, increase reporting of veterans and individuals with disabilities, and accurately characterize the workforce.
Mitchell also discussed the ways OEO monitors the search and screen process as well as their expectations; exit survey information; accommodations and accessibility; and nondiscrimination and sexual misconduct. In addition to sexual misconduct, Mitchell also reported on changes to the sexual misconduct policy and aggregate data on the result of sexual misconduct cases on campus.
OEO offers educational and collaboration services. To find out more about their services, the office, and information reported on, you can review the PowerPoint presentation.
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Academic Affairs Committee (Peggy Daniels Lee, Chair)
The Academic Affairs Committee report their work as follows. The complete report can be found here.
- The committee has been working on a new grading policy document under review by the UFC.
- They are working with the Faculty Affairs Committee on an associate faculty policy.
- They are looking at Canvas so that IU Online faculty can review attendance. Boost is under review and is an app on the left side of the Canvas menu bar. It is no longer optional and is an app students receive that reminds them that assignments are due.
- The Student Engagement Roster – they were asked to write a recommendation to encourage faculty to use the roster. They will be passing on that recommendation to the EC.
Distance Education Committee (Gina Londino Smolar, Chair)
The Distance Education Committee reported their work as follows. The complete report can be found here.
- Teaching online resources
- Teaching resources to build online courses
- Support structure for students in online programs and individual courses
- Visually impaired students and course resources (online especially)
- Quality Matters
- IUanyWare and Kaltura
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As recently as the 1970's, women's history was virtually an unknown topic in the K-12 curriculum or in general public consciousness. Women’s experiences and achievements and contributions to the growth of our nation were absent from textbooks and curriculums. Out of this realization, the annual Women’s History Month celebration was born. In 1987, after many states had declared March as “Women’s History Month”, Congress declared March as National Women’s History Month in perpetuity.
As part of the IUPUI Women’s History Month celebration, the IUPUI Office for Women and the Division of Student Affairs recognizes the outstanding contributions of women-identified faculty and staff and students on campus through the annual Women’s History Month leadership awards. The selection committees met in March and made their choices among candidates nominated by the campus community.
Due to the coronavirus public health crisis and the subsequent measures taken by IU to protect the health and safety of our campus community, the annual awards reception scheduled during Women’s History Month was cancelled. It is intended to be rescheduled at a future date.
In the meantime, please reach out and congratulate the winners of the 2020 Women’s History Month Leadership Awards.
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The 2020 census count will have implications on federal funding for a decade. There are 132 federal offices that use census data to distribute $675 billion in federal funds, including Pell Grants.
COVID-19 has created a challenge in what was already a difficult task of gathering student information for the census. Help inform students that they should complete the census for where they would have been if they hadn’t relocated due to COVID-19, even if their parents have mistakenly reported them on their census response. Students living in university housing do not need to complete the census as they will be reported through group quarters count.
IU has created a website, census.iu.edu, to provide answers to students about the census. There is also a PowerPoint slide in Canvas Commons that faculty can include in presentations.
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Are you considering a phased retirement arrangement? Keep in mind that IU Human Resources needs to review and approve the application ninety days before the start of the phased retirement. You’ll need both the IU form, and an agreement with your chair (dean) about what exactly your responsibilities will consist of during the phasing period (e.g. course load, mentoring, and research or service activities).
In 2019, IU extended phased retirement to all full-time faculty (not just tenured), at least 62 years old and with certain years (at least 10-16) of university service. Learn more about qualifications and process at this website.
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Carol Anne Murdoch-Kinch was named the first female dean of the School of Dentistry on July 1, 2019. You may also recognize her for leading the School of Dentistry to earning the highest tips at the IUPUI United Way Campaign Kick-off Luncheon in September.
In this video interview, you'll get the chance to learn even more about Dean Carol Anne Murdoch-Kinch!
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Reviewed by Rachel Applegate, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Faculty Affairs
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance can be a good choice, or a bad one. It’s a memoir and sometimes the author and, more often–other people, over-generalize the observations as if they speak for all of Appalachia*. I didn’t read this book like that: it talked about a person’s story that I hadn’t heard about before: poor, struggling, small-rural-town, fraying family and community networks.
I’m suburban through and through. As an army officer’s daughter, I lived in suburb…after suburb…after suburb…
Depending on your own circumstances, it may be eye-opening, or “No, it’s not like that,” or, “Really?” It’s a part of the conversation that suburban white America doesn’t talk about much.
*I was a Minnesotan when the movie Fargo came out. Um, Minnesota isn’t overrun with desperate and inept killers…but there was still a lot that rang true to us!
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The Office of Online Education, in collaboration with the Office of Collaborative Academic Programs and eLearning Design and Services, invites you to participate in the fifth annual IU Online Conference on Friday, October 30, 2020, at the Sheraton Indianapolis Hotel at Keystone Crossing.
Faculty, administrators, advisors, success coaches, and staff are encouraged to submit conference presentation proposals on the conference web page. The team especially welcomes proposals that relate to this year's conference theme: Sustaining Student Success.
Proposals should address the following areas:
- Building a practice in online teaching and learning
- Transforming and sustaining online teaching and learning
- Advancing online education through technology and design
- Enhancing student services
- Collaborating and sustaining online courses and programs (marketing, admissions, and recruitment)
Proposals are due by Friday, June 5.
If you have any questions about the proposal process, contact ude[dot]ui[at]tneveoui.
It is your participation that makes this conference a success. Results from the 2019 conference survey show that more than 90 percent of attendees were highly satisfied with their experience, and agreed the conference expanded their understanding of IU Online and provided a welcome opportunity to network with colleagues.
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SupportLinc Employee Assistance Program is a confidential resource that provides 24/7 access to professional counseling and referrals for short-term assistance with mental health.
Services include unlimited 24/7/365 telephonic counseling with a professionally licensed counselor, up to six face-to-face counseling sessions per year at no cost, and access to content and tools through their website and app.
Learn more about connecting with this resource, eligibility, and full range of their services at the HR website.
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Do you have questions about your own promotion and tenure progress? Get in touch with Assistant Vice Chancellor for Faculty Affairs Rachel Applegate via email at ude[dot]iupui[at]agelppar, or by individual appointment at ude[dot]iupui[at]rhdaca.
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The Forum Network supports faculty collaboration and creativity by providing resources to spark innovation in teaching and research. This website hosts resources for work/life balance in the Indianapolis community, career advancement opportunities, and other developmental resources for faculty. Check it out!
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Dear Colleagues,
On March 10, a lightning bolt hit my inbox at 3:51 PM. The subject: “Urgent message from President Michael A. McRobbie.” We’ve all received e-mails from President McRobbie before, but I don’t recall another that began with “Urgent.” We were all expecting big news because of COVID-19, but we were wrong. The news wasn’t big. It was colossal. This news was going to change the lives of thousands of students, faculty, and staff. IU’s response was already underway, but so many questions remained. Action was needed. The impetus for this was an overarching concern for the welfare of our students. Of course, topics came concerning faculty and staff, but the main concern was always for the students, their health and well-being, and their progress toward their degrees.
In 2019, the Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health and Healthy IU repeated the third IU-wide survey of employee health and wellness. The survey is anonymous, includes all full-time employees, the results are shared widely. The results of this survey were compared with the results from the 2013 survey and were shared by Tess Weathers, research associate at the Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health, with the Faculty Council at the February 4 meeting.
Associate Vice Chancellor for International Affairs Hilary Kahn introduced the IUPUI Dimensions of Global Learning to the IFC. The 
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance can be a good choice, or a bad one. It’s a memoir and sometimes the author and, more often–other people, over-generalize the observations as if they speak for all of Appalachia*. I didn’t read this book like that: it talked about a person’s story that I hadn’t heard about before: poor, struggling, small-rural-town, fraying family and community networks.