ISMT Task Force Meeting Notes

November 5, 1999

Present: R. Roberds, R. Amenta, S. Frysinger, J. Herrick, G. MacDonald, R. McKown, J. Sochacki, C. Talley, G. Taylor, T. Wood, P. Henriksen taking notes.

Absent: R. Abel, R. Kolvoord, R. Rice, J. Steele, and C. Welter.

Opening Comments.

· Meetings on November 17 and December 15 will be in CISAT Room 373. The meeting on Friday, December 3 will be in Taylor Hall, Room 309.

· We will try to have coffee available at the next meeting.

· The five principal questions are finished and will be posted on the Web.

Method for receiving and evaluating proposals.

· Agreed to have a format for our proposals. It will be placed on our website.

· Update on Web Board from Jim Herrick. Web Board name was task force www.jmu.edu/acadtaskforce. We will have our own Web Board. One "conference" for each question. Web Board is linked to Faculty Senate. Concern: password protection. Can enter password for all but that is time consuming. Decided to limit to JMU e-mail addresses, but any faculty or student can access it.

· We will have a forum for the university. The best time for this would be late in the semester. Decided upon December 16th, Thursday, at 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. in Taylor Hall.

Receiving proposals and criteria for their evaluation.

· It is important that we receive input. Will send e-mail to all faculty.

· HHS is asking for recommendation and rationale and internal outcome. Questions on the webboard and the proposals are separate items. Some people won't respond in proposal form, so we can either put questions/answers in proposal form or ask them. We also can ask them to write proposals and do it for them if they don't. Could put out an online form and have them fill it out. Electronic transaction could be simpler. Some could just enter paragraph and not discuss questions.

· We need proposals to consider. We could synthesize the five questions/answers. Need to make it clear that discussion need not generate a proposal, but we need a proposal if there is a point to consider. The five questions are to stimulate discussion. Proposals, if they want to make one, should come from the person and not us. Need to direct people to the proposal page. We would pocket the proposals and then put them out later.

· Question: Are we saying yes or no or just prioritizing? Should we recommend some and say others are okay?

· For the moment we will not say what we will do with the proposals. We will be making decisions, though, and not fielding faculty votes. Our discussion process will be valuable, and we could make proposals that are different from what we received.

· We will be recommending many proposals, a range of proposals, analogous to N\SF. Won't put out a statement on what we will do with the proposal. Could make hard copies of proposals for evaluations.

· Should we evaluate cost? We could. Academic Council will take it further and evaluate costs. We don't need to, but we can provide information
if it is convenient to us. Could discuss resources required. Could provide information on costs or relative costs.

· Choosing proposals could be done by voting. Selecting criteria could be done after seeing a few.

Collecting the proposals.

· For now we will collect what proposals we have and pass them out next time. Ask people to submit proposals on line? We should accept hard copies on Web Board. We will copy and circulate proposals next week.

· Are the HHS questions okay? Change signature line to name line. Give from to Christine and use the form. Will appear on the web page. Can ask the form to be printable? Person should be able to print the form. Have MSWord document that people could download to their computer and fill it out or keep it, or print it or e-mail it. Should we have a central address? Should task force have a central address? Processing could be problem.

Discuss how we can evaluate the proposals.

· When should we cut off discussion? December 31st would be proposal cutoff deadline. Committee members could bring up call for ideas at faculty meetings and discuss it with faculty senators. Is there is a University-wide faculty meeting at which we could bring this up? Also, have a forum to meet with people and discuss issues. When would be a good time to hold this? Need to pick a day when we can come. Perhaps we could go to other College meetings. Five to seven p.m. could be a good time. Refreshments would be good. Would have it during finals week. One and a half hours would be enough Thursday, December 16th - 4-5:30 p.m.

· Dick will have Christine put proposal form in MS Word on Web. Jim Herrick will add statements to web page and put place to collect forms and proposals. Dick will set up forum for University. We will take information to faculty. We should all go to task force Web Board page. Should respond to proposals with thanks or ask for clarifications.

Criteria discussion.

· We have the Academic Council criteria. How much do we agree? JMU mission statement is changing. Should we put criteria out to let people know what criterion is going to be used by Academic Council? No, people should not use it. Which of them do we adopt? Should we give guidance to University officials? We should give them the information but not say it is what we will use.

· We will have proposals to look at next week. Will we weight the criteria next time? Probably not good to rank proposals.