The Academic Senate Tuesday endorsed a Board of Regents proposal that would prevent individual faculty members from appealing personnel decisions directly to the board. The regents are scheduled to vote at their Dec. 14 meeting on an amendment to their bylaws that would prevent the recurrence of what happened last month when the board granted tenure to a UNL chemistry professor who had been denied tenure by campus administrators. Regent Charles Wilson, who reviewed the case, said at the time he was uncomfortable in making a recommendation.
"The right of appeal lies with this senate," said Jim McShane, English. "It does not lie with the individual faculty member."
Leo Sartori, physics and astronomy, agreed, adding that the proposal will eliminate "frivolous" appeals to the regents.
The measure would affect only UNL because faculty in the NU system's other campuses do have the right of appeal to the regents.
In a unanimous voice vote, the senate also endorsed a report by its executive committee on periodic review of tenured faculty.
The document does not reject suggestions for improvement in the current system, but concludes that "in general, existing UNL policies and practices position the university well with regard to the need to negotiate changing faculty assignments and the necessity for rigorous review of faculty performance. We feel those who would challenge the present system should demonstrate inadequacies in existing standards and practices before asking that alternatives be considered."
Some faculty questioned the wisdom of financial incentives that have been discussed for fully promoted faculty who are reviewed.
"The fully promoted faculty in my department say this brings inappropriate financial considerations into the process of faculty evaluations," said Gargi Roysircar Sodowsky, educational psychology. "While we talked originally about giving them recognition with a financial award as something positive, they now think it would actually infringe on their academic freedom."
Sodowsky and Dermot Coyne, horticulture, both expressed the view that periodic reviews of fully promoted, tenured faculty would be a waste of time, money and effort.
Irv Omtvedt, interim senior vice chancellor for academic affairs, said the administration has no plans to eliminate tenure and will not present a plan for a change in the current system at the Dec. 14 regents meeting. He said Chancellor James Moeser will inform the regents that UNL is working on a document to provide for a program for reviewing fully promoted, tenured faculty.
"The chancellor has made it very clear from the start that he has no interest in doing away with tenure," Omtvedt said.
Omtvedt said, however, that UNL needs to take steps to clear up what he said was a misperception that once "a faculty member becomes fully promoted and tenured, there are no (further) evaluations. We know on this campus that we have annual evaluations."
The schedule for the visits is as follows:
Fallon earned his bachelor's degree at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio (1961), and his master's (1963) and doctoral (1965) degrees in experimental psychology at the University of Virginia. He was a faculty member at the State University of New York at Binghamton from 1965-76 and became associate dean of arts and sciences and of Harpur College for Academic Affairs at SUNY-Binghamton in 1969. From 1976-86, he was professor of psychology and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado at Denver, then was professor of psychology and dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University from 1984-93. He was vice president for academic affairs and provost at Maryland from 1993 until earlier this year.
Edwards has been dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Kentucky since 1991. Before that, he was chair of the department of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst from 1983-91. Edwards earned his bachelor's degree at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa (1966), and his master's (1970) and doctoral (1972) degrees at Harvard University. He is the author or co-author of 10 books, most recently "Rights at Work: Employment Relations in the Post-Union Era," published by the Brookings Institution in 1993.
Palm has been dean of Oregon's College of Arts and Sciences since 1991. She was assistant professor of geography at the University of California at Berkeley from 1972-77, then spent 14 years on the faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She was associate professor of geography from 1977 until 1982, when she was promoted to full professor. She began her administrative career as associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Colorado from 1981-84, then served as associate vice chancellor for academic affairs from 1984-87 and as associate vice chancellor for research and dean of the graduate school from 1987-91. She's a 1964 graduate of the University of Minnesota, where she earned both a bachelor of science degree with highest honors in history and social studies education and bachelor of arts degree in history. She later earned master's (1969) and doctoral (1972) degrees in geography at Minnesota.
Perlman has been Nebraska's law dean since 1983. He earned his bachelor's (1963) and juris doctorate (1966, with highest distinction) at Nebraska, then was a Bigelow Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School in 1966-67. He was professor of law at Nebraska from 1967-74, then was visiting professor (1974-75) and professor (1975-83) of law at the University of Virginia. He was Ida Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Iowa Law College in 1981-82. Perlman was interim senior vice chancellor for academic affairs at Nebraska from August 1995 through January 1996 when Joan Leitzel served as interim chancellor between the administrations of Graham Spanier and Moeser.
The senior vice chancellor for academic affairs is the top academic officer at the university and is its highest-ranked administrator after the chancellor. Nebraska seeks a replacement for Leitzel, who resigned last summer to become president of the University of New Hampshire. Irv Omtvedt, vice chancellor for the Institute for Agriculture and Natural Resources, has served as interim senior vice chancellor for academic affairs since Leitzel's departure in July.
Academic accreditation is common in colleges and universities, but this program is the first to focus solely on certification of athletic programs. Following a 1990-91 pilot project that included Nebraska, the NCAA Division I membership overwhelmingly supported the program and its standards at its 1993 convention.
The certification program's purpose is to ensure integrity in the institution's athletic operations. It is designed to open up athletics to the rest of the university community and to the public. Institutions are expected to benefit through increasing awareness and knowledge of the athletic program campus-wide, confirming its strengths and developing plans to improve in areas of concern.
The committee responsible for the study includes Moeser, university faculty and staff and athletic department personnel. Joan Laughlin, associate dean of the College of Human Resources and Family Sciences is the steering committee chair.
Subcommittees will seek input from the campus community on a variety of areas. Subcommittee chairs are:
The program has set standards, called operating principles, within each subcommittee area. The operating principles were adopted by the NCAA to place a measuring stick upon which all Division I institutions will be evaluated. The university also will examine how the activities of the athletic program relate to the mission and purpose of the institution.
Once the university has concluded its study, an external team of reviewers from conference offices and other colleges and universities will conduct a three- to four-day evaluation in a visit to campus. The reviewers will report to the NCAA committee on athletic certification. The committee will then determine the university's certification status and announce the decision publicly.
The three options of certification status are "certified," "certified with conditions" and "not certified." Universities will have an opportunity to correct deficient areas. Those that do not take corrective actions may be ruled ineligible for NCAA championships.
The NCAA is a membership organization of colleges and universities that participate in intercollegiate athletics. The primary purpose of the organization is to maintain intercollegiate athletics as an integral part of the educational program and the athlete as an integral part of the student body. Activities of the NCAA membership include formulating rules of play for NCAA sports, conducting national championships, adopting and enforcing standards of eligibility, and studying all phases of intercollegiate athletics.
Chancellor James Moeser will preside over the 9:30 a.m. ceremony at the Bob Devaney Sports Center. Approximately 1,350 students will receive degrees.
As a scholar, researcher, author, teacher, administrator, consultant and civil rights crusader, Hale has created many new programs, including graduate and professional schools visitation days and the minority scholars program. Nearly $15 million in graduate fellowship awards were granted to approximately 1,200 minority students. Eighty percent of these fellowship recipients earned graduate degrees.
During Hale's tenure, the minority scholars program attracted more than 500 undergraduate minority scholars to Ohio State. In his honor, the Ohio State University board of trustees named the Frank W. Hale Jr. Black Cultural Center and designated the building in which it is housed as Hale Hall. An endowed scholarship was also established in his name.
Hale earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Nebraska and his doctoral degree at Ohio State.
An honorary doctor of humane letters degree will also be awarded to Melih Sipahioglu, the founder and chief executive officer of the Tamek Holding Co. in Istanbul, Turkey. Tamek owns eight major food and beverage companies in Turkey that process and distribute all of the canned foods, fruit juices and soft drinks sold in the country. Tamek also owns the Pepsi franchise in Turkey.
Sipahioglu earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Nebraska in 1953. A drop-off area for graduates and disabled guests will be available on the north side of the Devaney Center, at 17th and Court streets. Golf carts will be located at the ramps on the exterior north and south sides of the building to assist disabled guests.
The Nov. 24 webcast of the "Evening with Emily Dickinson" concert at UNL was a hit. Or perhaps hundreds of hits.
David Hahn, president of Internet Service Providers International, the company that provided the audiostream for the concert, said as many as 166 hits (tap-ins to the webcast) were recorded simultaneously. Over the course of the two-hour webcast, hundreds of hits were scored. In addition, at least 14 country domains were recorded, meaning computers in 14 countries logged into the program.
Dec. 3, the website was named "Internet Site of the Day" by Academe Today, an on-line edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education.
The concert was webcast using the same technology that Pinnacle Sports Broadcasting uses to webcast Husker football and basketball games in real time. That has proven a popular use of the technology. For example, 102,000 hits were recorded between Sept. 7 and Sept. 12 to sample the NU vs. Michigan State feed.
ISPI created the Dickinson concert homepage on its server but students in an English class taught by David Hibler, associate professor of English, created other pages that included the texts of the poems that were set to music, information about Dickinson, information about the performers, a snippet of a quick-time movie made at the dress rehearsal, photos of artworks, information about the Carlton Lowenberg Collection of Dickinson materials held in the UNL libraries and other tidbits that enriched the concert experience.
During the webcast, a participant's computer would jump from servers at ISPI to servers at UNL and elsewhere depending on which links were opened, Hahn said.
Hibler said he thinks the webcast was the first time any university has used its technology infrastructure for sportscasting to broadcast a cultural event. He hopes other universities will take the plunge as well.
Hahn said Pinnacle swapped two hours of its contracted sports webcast time for the concert webcast. ISPI provided its services, worth $2,000 to $3,500 per hour, free of charge because, Hahn said, "it seemed like a nice thing to do."
Paul Aaron, president of Pinnacle Sports Broadcasting, said he was excited to be part of an event that helped enhance the university's academic reputation and helped demonstrate UNL's leadership in the use of new technologies.
Hibler is happy with the concert production and is looking for other venues to use the technology of webcasting, such as the university's E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues, a lecture series.
The Dickinson event has been archived at
http://www.unl.edu/mama/dickinson/emily.html.
ISPI is a developer and integrator of Internet technologies for business and institutions, Hahn said. The company, founded two years ago in Florida by Hahn, was moved to Lincoln about 18 months ago. He has 12 full-time employees and several part-time employees in Lincoln, a full-time employee in Holland and alliances in London and Munich. The company is located at 237 S. 70th St.
Hahn, who holds a law degree from UNL, became interested in cyberspace law while working in Santa Fe where he represented some software companies and did work for high tech firms.
"The Internet looked like a huge change in how businesses would do business," he said. "I like this because it's a business that's largely mindshare. We often go head to head with MCI and AT&T and we come out on top because we are dedicated to fully understanding and using the technology.
"This is a business that's filled with glitz and hype. But it looks like it's going to swing back to fundamental business practices based on technology, training and service. Our goal is to hire bright people and do the best job."
The controversial National Security Education Program (NSEP) has been kept alive by compromise legislation which now allows recipients of NSEP funds to fulfill a service obligation in any federal agency or office with national security responsibilities or in higher education.
The program, funded by the Defense Department, is designed to promote specialization in less frequently studied languages and world regions deemed critical to U.S. national security.
Scholarships and fellowships support the study of languages such as Azeri, Mandarin, and Kurdish, as well as the study of places such as Bosnia, South Africa, and China. Funds are not awarded for study in Western Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. A controversial service requirement sponsored by Congressman Bill Young (R., Florida) was added to the Fiscal Year 1996 Defense Appropriations bill in December 1995. It required that students "agree to be employed in the Department of Defense or in the Intelligence Community" as a condition of accepting NSEP funds. The provision was based on the idea that Defense and intelligence pay for the program and should therefore benefit from it.
This controversial service obligation has been altered by compromise legislation sponsored by Sen. Paul Simon (D., Illinois). The Simon amendment is contained in the Fiscal Year 1997 Defense Authorization Bill and was signed into law on September 23, 1996. It stipulates that NSEP scholarship and fellowship recipients must now "enter into an agreement to work in a national security position or work in the field of higher education in the area of study for which the scholarship was awarded."
The new provision is based on a broader definition of national security that encompasses more than defense and intelligence. A list of government agencies meeting this definition will be compiled by Secretary of Defense William J. Perry and the National Security Education Board. They will include offices within the Departments of Defense, Commerce, Energy, Justice, State, and Treasury.
Prior to the compromise, the Institute of International Education (IIE), responsible for undergraduate scholarships, and the Academy for Educational Development (AED), administering graduate fellowships, had threatened to withdraw from the program unless the service requirement was amended. Ethics and student safety are at the heart of the controversy.
Although the Simon amendment saved the program, ethical and safety issues remain. According to Joseph Stimpfl, NSEP representative at UNL, the controversy associated with work in the Defense Department or intelligence community has been remedied by the new wording. However, students still face the danger of being labeled as U.S. government intelligence agents because their funding originates from the U.S. defense community. As a result, some universities are rethinking their position on NSEP. The University Committee on International Studies at the University of New Hampshire has decided to continue offering the program, although students and faculty will now be advised about the controversial aspects and the committee's reservations about the service requirement. According to Sheila McCurdy, NSEP advisor at UNH, efforts to "drum up interest" will be discontinued following the new legislation.
At UNL, students eligible for NSEP scholarships and fellowships can obtain information and application materials from Stimpfl at the International Affairs Office. Students will be advised of the service requirement at that time.
Faculty at UNL play a key role in the promotion of NSEP. In the past, the majority of student applicants have been referred by instructors. Recognizing students with outstanding ability and interest in infrequently studied languages or areas is important in ensuring eligible students are aware of the opportunity provided by NSEP.
Students need not major in the language or cultural area they wish to study. They only need to demonstrate the relevance of the proposed study program to their degree or professional aspirations.
For more information, contact Joseph Stimpfl at the Office of International Affairs, 472-5358 or jstimpfl @unlinfo.unl.edu.
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