The focus of Tuesday’s Faculty Senate meeting involved discussion on new ideas and technology for the upcoming school year.
Faculty Senate Chair Patrick Hrdlicka followed his report with note that the Faculty Senate received nominations for a faculty member to serve on the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities work group. Hrdlicka said nominations are encouraged and will be accepted until the end of this week.
Following the Chair’s report, UI Executive Vice President and Provost John Wiencek included additional information about topics from last week’s meeting discussion about market based compensation and program prioritization. Wiencek again said it will take somewhere between four and six years to get all faculty and staff up to market compensation.
Wiencek also noted that program prioritization reports are being socialized, meaning each of the deans will share individual department score reports shortly. The full university reports will be released shortly, he said.
“A key point after socializing this with deans and vice presidents and the IPEC committee the recommendation is that we move away from the concept of quintiles,” Wiencek said regarding the program prioritization reports, which will be released across campus soon.
The meeting also included various special orders of business including a report from the Vice President for Infrastructure and Chief Information Officer, Dan Ewart, and Brian Cox, director of customer experience and engagement, regarding Information Technology Services (ITS) at UI.
Last year, Faculty Senate obtained input from faculty regarding the need for more personalized services to specific departments needs within the university. In response to faculty, ITS is in the process of transitioning to Technology Solution Partners (TSP) for staff and faculty members.
TSP is divided into eight different regions across campus with the hopes that the staff assigned to the individual regions will develop a relationship with the faculty and staff in those regions and in turn learn better how to serve them.
“The help desk area is being repurposed to focus on students … we’re also trying to emphasize and provide a greater service to the students as well,” Cox said.
The ITS desk will now become a resource solely for students. Cox said he and his colleagues hope the new setup will give students faster and more personalized access to the ITS desk and other ITS resources, in addition to providing better access to staff.
“A baseline of services is being delivered already but that is a baseline to start with this year… By next fall starting the school year we expect to have a greater service level through those Technology Solutions Partners and that those services can better meet even more of your needs,” Cox said.
University of Idaho’s new Vice Provost of Academic Initiatives, Cher Hendricks also addressed the senate. Hendricks laid out her job description and her hopes to improve and expand academic programs, examine and collect data about curriculum and attract more undergraduate students to enroll at UI.
One of Hendrick’s main duties is to help create new programs and assess existing programs for the University. Hendricks said she is now collecting data using a market analysis to examine new programs at UI. She is also aiming to collect data regarding existing programs and current curriculum development at UI.
“Higher education is just different now,” Hendricks said. “There’s not a lot of funding. There’s not a lot of resources so we can’t always be as creative as we were in the past. But we have to protect the creativity that our faculty is so good at in coming up for programs which are relevant to the state … so one of my jobs is a figuring out how to do that.”
Elizabeth Marshall can be reached at [email protected]