Wilmington College

Wilmington College IDRC Committee Meeting: August 31, 2006 Boyd 219 1 – 2 p.m.

Attendance: Kendra Cipollini (Clerk), Russell Kincaid, Catherine Roma, Jean Mulhern, Stan Caine (Interim VP for Academic Affairs)

Agenda Items: 1. Kendra supplied a calendar of IDRC seminars scheduled for Tuesdays or Thursdays each week for Fall 2006 semester (many openings need to be filled). Most seminars begin at noon in Pyle C/D in conjunction with brown bag/cafeteria lunch. Goals are to provide an open forum for sharing scholarly research results and other interesting intellectual topics among interested faculty and administrators. IDRC members are encouraged to present. Students may present in conjunction with faculty/student research projects. 2. Kendra is still collecting reports from faculty members who received IDRC funds for research or conferences during 2005-2006. A written report is a condition for receiving IDRC funds. 3. Kendra obtained consensus that $1,000 of IDRC funds would be made available to support attendees to GCCC and SOCHE consortium conferences held in the region. The Academic Affairs office will use these funds to pay registration fees. 4. The IDRC committee members viewed on screen an Excel spreadsheet that outlined the 20 faculty proposals for the August round of IDRC funding recommendations. In two previous meetings (August 17 and 24, 2006; held in Boyd 219, 1 – 2 p.m.), the committee had reviewed the proposals in order to clarify the details of each one and to explore strategies for distributing a limited amount of money among so many proposals. In fact, the total amount requested in the group of proposals far exceeded the approximately $13,000 that the IDRC had intended to distribute in the Fall 2006 distribution. Following deliberation and discussion that centered on fairness and equity, the IDRC reached consensus and agreed to recommend the approval to distribute 44% of the funds available for the 2006-2007 funding year. The IDRC recommended that about $17,870 be approved, providing broad support for faculty research and conference participation. 5. Faculty members not receiving all the funds that they requested will be encouraged by the IDRC to submit proposals for additional funds for the same projects and/or additional projects in either or both of the remaining funding cycles for 2006-2007.

Throughout the IDRC deliberations, as per the committee charge to make recommendations to improve the funding process, the committee identified issues and factors that could have impact on evaluating proposals for funding. The committee agreed that it would be inappropriate to apply priorities or values that had not been approved through faculty process. The consensus of the committee was that the extant guidelines were perhaps too informal; the committee also agreed that the existing guidelines could be clarified without exceeding its authority. An IDRC committee meeting was scheduled for Thursday, September 7, 2006 to review and clarify the existing documentation and forms for faculty proposals to receive IDRC funds for the remaining two cycles of funding 206-2007.

The following, without order or priority, are the issues and factors that are sometimes identified and evaluated in more formal faculty granting processes. This list is not inclusive and is recorded here as a prompt for further faculty discussions.

. Using funds to provide stipends to student researchers? Flat stipend? Pay at all? . Caps on total amount an individual can receive in IDRC funds annually? . Support for sabbaticals? . Quality of the proposal document? - Complete information? Clarity? Thoroughness? Followed guidelines? . Days of lost instruction? . What is IDRC priority for professional recertification/continuing certification support? . Differentials for conference attendance, presentations, poster sessions, discussants, interviews, officer, planner. . Priority of student/faculty research? . What equipment and supplies are eligible? . Does the $300 general faculty support figure in? . Can faculty share expenses if attending the same conference? . Is the stipend cap of $1000 for one project or one individual per year? . Fulfilled requirements attached to previous funding grants – back how many years? . College policies for travel expenses, per diem, mileage? . How are various types of activities valued for contribution to college, to teaching and learning? . Should recipients during the previous year have a lower priority during the current year for funding requests? . Should funds be distributed across disciplines or between research and conferences according to a formula? . What do the IDRC funding recommendations say about what is valued in faculty development and research? . Should IDRC funding follow a historical pattern of awards? . How often will IDRC guidelines be reviewed and by what process? . August-September activity proposals present time/forward or time/lag problems? When should such proposals be submitted? . How should IDRC committee member proposals be handled? Should the IDRC have written procedural guidelines? … to be continued.

Minutes prepared by J. Mulhern, IDRC committee member August 31, 2006