Department Enhancement Program: Maggie La Ware and Meifen Wei;

8:17 Chair’s Cabinet meeting called to order; the minutes of the December 2015 meeting were approved.

In attendance: Wannemuehler, Baum, Constant, Gasta, Jenks, King, Martin, Rao, Ulmer, Wallace, Wipf, Bratsch-Prince, Jones-Johnson, Wickert

Guests: Department Enhancement Program: Maggie La Ware and Meifen Wei; Vice President for Research: Sarah Nusser

Faculty Senate (FS) Updates: the merger of two departments is underway; There are several taskforces underway: 1) Review of VP for Business and Finance, 2) NTE TF evaluating the issues related to review and advancement (will likely continue into the Fall); 3) TF on enrollment management (requested by Leath), manage enrollment and still attract students. This TF will cover multiple areas including admissions, academic standards, areas of differential tuition in more costly areas, A question regarding the goals of the enrollment TF was posed – reply: there are no particular goals for this task force).

Other FS news included an announcement that a new version of the FHB is now on-line; Graduate commencement will be on Thursday evening; brief discussion of the University’s response to the Tier Report regarding the Academic programs,

SVPP Update: Human Sciences Dean search (2/1/16 deadline), the committee has been very active seeking potential applicants and there is an expectation that there will be a very good applicant pool; Board of Regents (BoR) meeting will be here at ISU in Feb. 24-25th, Chairs and faculty are encouraged to attend if possible; During the BoR meeting the Criminal Justice Program (Sociology) will be discussed, Culinary program name will be renamed; Ames Lab will give a presentation to the BoR; Student Financial Aid and affordability will bediscussed as well.

Enterprise Resourcing Planning (ERP) – Advisory Committee with Jim Kurtenbach at the forefront, 3 proposals has been received (TEAC committee) –

Donald Trump will be visiting Ames for a political rally– will rent the Hansen Ag Center on Mortensen; It was made clear that this is not part of the University “lecture series”, ISU PD has met with student groups, to let them know that there will be a designated “protest” area. The rally will be held at 5:00 on 1/19/2016.

There is a planned ISU Police Department Open House once the weather gets better.

Govenor’s budget requested an increase of $8M total; It was mentioned that K-12 funding is a major emphasis for the State Legislature.

Maggie La Ware (English) and Meifen Wei (Psycology): Department Enhancement Program – departmental transformation, grew from the Advance program; The focus of the program is to help faculty to do their best work, to date 10 departments have participated, it was mentioned that this can be beneficial activity prior to an external review, The program can facilitate “certain” conversations that need to be had with faculty groups that may be otherwise difficult for the department to have, the outcome usually includes best practices for departmental advancement.

Development of focus groups in each area of the department (e.g., Asst, Assoc., and Professors; discussions of undergraduate, professional and/or graduate curriculum)

Sarah Nusser: Announced Guru’s appointment to the VPR’s Office, A handout was provided that was discussed in some detail. The discussion focused on the handout (Update on Research Advancement and Supporting Activities0 provided by Dr. Nusser. Topics included: 1) Presidential Initiative for Interdisceplinary Research for Data Driven Science; 2) Seed funding for interdisciplinary research; 3) development of interdisciplinary research groups by the Associate Deans for Research; 4) Hiring a Director for the Grants Hub to facilitate “connecting the campus”; 5)discussed the campus research facility needs; and 6) discussed updating, clarifying, and simplifying policies and procedures where possible.

Dr. Nusser also mentioned that they will be developing the VPR’s Strategic Plan that will be aligned with the new ISU Strategic Plan.

Comment was made regarding the need(s) for more staff to perform computational analysis given the emphasis on generating large data sets. It was mentioned that faculty can generate large amounts of “big data” but often are faced with long wait times to have data analyzed.

Adjorned at 9:37