OHIO NORTHERN UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY COUNCIL MINUTES
Minutes, November 17, 2015
Roll: (Absentees Underlined) President Daniel DiBiaisio, VP David Crago, VP William Ballard,
VP Shannon Spencer, VP William Eilola, VP Adriane Thompson-Bradshaw, Dean Catherine
Albrecht, Dean Eric Baumgartner, Dean Steve Martin, Dean James Fenton, Dean Richard Bales,
Rev. David MacDonald, Dr. Alisa Agozzino, Dr. Khalid Al-Olimat, Dr. Joseph Blankson, Dr.
Bryan Boulanger, Dr. Joanne Brant, Dr. Tevye Celius, Dr. Mark Cruea, Dr. Natalie DiPietro,
Prof. Melissa Eddings, Dr. Kami Fox, Ms. Gina Grandillo, Dr. Dong Hyun Kim, Prof. Kelly
Kobiela, Dr. Kelley Reilly Kroustos, Dr. Heath LeBlanc, Dr. Jed Marquart, Dr. Michelle Musser,
Dr. Erica Neely, Dr. Lauren Newell, Dr. Ed Potkanowicz, Prof. David Savino, Dr. Shane Tilton
Melissa Eddings, Chair of Council, called the meeting to order at 5:30 p.m. in Dicke Room 230.
I.
Minutes of October 20, 2015 meeting were approved
II.
Reports from Constitutional Committees (submitted reports are attached)
a. Budget & Appropriations: We are through the final budget process and have
reviewed the report for fiscal year 2015. There is no meeting scheduled until
December.
b. Academic Affairs: See report.
c. Student Activities: See report.
d. Personnel: See report.
III.
Reports from Operational Committees
a. Athletics: The fall season was very successful, notably in football, cross country,
soccer, and women’s volleyball. Things are happy in King Horn.
b. Information Technology: IT spent most of November installing Klondike’s Den –
come see the 12 TVs if you haven’t yet.
c. Cultural & Special Events: No meeting yet this month, so nothing to report.
d. International Affairs: no report
e. Religious Affairs: no report
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f. General Education: We have reviewed the general education requirement status
for those students we know are expecting to graduate in May. If you have
advisees that you know are graduating and they haven’t gotten checked, they
should submit their graduation petition so we know about them and can do this.
We also have 5th year seniors for the first time in Taskstream, and their accounts
have expired. Julie Hurtig will be writing to them about how to submit artifacts
and will work with them one-on-one to make sure everything is taken care of. We
do not want them to have to buy a subscription for one year of Taskstream.
IV.
Other Reports
a. Vice Presidents
i. Academic Affairs: Have been working on sabbatical requests. There were
14 people requesting a total of 18 semesters of sabbatical leave, and we
only have 8 semesters to give. There are some very strong requests that
we haven’t been able to fund. Recommendations have been sent to the
Board who will consider them at the January board meeting. Have also
worked through open position requests and have sent those back to the
Dean; we were able to fund the vast majority of what was asked for. In
other news, there is increasing momentum in our work on redoing the first
floor of Heterick Library. We are on track to have good ideas of what
we’re doing by the board meeting in January, and we should be able to
have the actual construction work done over the summer.
ii. Financial Affairs: The budget has been approved and is mostly loaded
into Banner; a few minor pieces have not yet been. On Thursday there are
two budget forums, one in the morning and one in the afternoon; we
encourage people to attend one if your schedule permits. We are already
working with VPs and Deans on the 16-17 budget as well. There are also
changes in progress with the work on Klondike’s and other construction in
MacIntosh center. Lastly, letters for the new faculty contracts are going
out soon, with salaries applying as of September.
iii. University Advancement: Alumni relations has wrapped up a successful
fall, holding alumni events around the region; this includes one in
Columbus that sold out – there were more people than space could
accommodate. This was helped by participation from the Deans; we had a
great partnership this fall. In terms of Advancement, the year-end direct
giving mailing has gone out, with a few more reminders yet to come.
Planning has started for Giving Day on April 6, which coincides with
Founder’s Day. We are hoping that it will be even more successful than
the last one!
iv. Admissions and Financial Aid: Fall semester recruitment focused on
increased outreach to get more applications for admission. Total
undergrad applications have increased by about 270 over last year at this
time. Pharmacy has extended offers to 86 students from their early
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interview date in October. This year we are also participating in the
Common Application. Lots of students are using this as well as the ONU
online application; about sixty percent are coming from the Common
Application and about forty percent from our application. We’re putting
in a lot of effort reaching out to students to make sure they complete the
application to continue the process to get financial aid etc. We have also
done lots of telephone outreach to prospective students – all the colleges
have been active with this. We have been focused on students who have
visited but not applied; now we are also going to focus on those who have
applied but not visited. We have also filled an open vacancy in this office
for the Director of Enrollment Communications; Chris Jebsen will be
joining us in this position. Lastly, we have started our first mailing for
prospective applicants for Fall of 2017.
v. Student Affairs: See report.
b. Deans
i. Arts & Sciences: See report. Also, to add: the end of semester
performances are starting, with the Holiday Spectacular opening on
Thursday. Also, the University Singers will be performing 12/6 at the
United Methodist Church.
ii. Engineering: We are working within the College to look at our new
building design again; we’re working on the design with university
advancement, picking up the work from where it was a couple of years
ago. This time around we have involved more people – students, faculty,
etc. We are getting to a point where we’re settling on the floor plan and
overall plan of the building, then we’ll work on each individual room. So
the design phase is going well.
iii. Pharmacy: See report.
iv. Business Administration: No report.
v. Law: On Friday we cut the ribbon on new tech upgrades for our small
moot court room. We can now do cool things like videotape our students
and show them how they’re presenting. If anyone would be interested in
having students use it for one of their classes, we’re happy to make it
available. Thanks to Communications for helping us with it. This evening
we’re meeting at the Inn to celebrate the retirement of Lou Lobenhofer.
c. Student Senate: See report. In addition, the pool tables are a huge hit, as well as
the TVs. Also, last weekend we handed out foam paws at football game – those
were a huge hit. We will be supporting football team as they head into playoffs.
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d. Health Services Advisory Committee: The third Workterra session was today; we
will be monitoring enrollments through holiday week and will decide whether to
have another session. So far it is going well. Our next meeting is 12/4.
V.
Chair/Faculty Comments:
a. Megan Kraynok: voiced concerns from faculty about a variety of health-related
issues: for instance, this year the Healthy Campus program was rolled out 3
months into the year, which caused a lot of distress. Similarly, there hasn’t
seemed to be a lot of transparency on some of the other changes (such as
switching to Workterra etc.) People contacted Jeff Allison and he said he wasn’t
involved with those roll outs. There are concerns about timeliness and lack of
transparency in these decisions.
b. Response from Bill Ballard: We aren’t trying to avoid transparency – will pass
this along to the Health Services Advisory Committee. Someone asked whether
the minutes of the committee were available; he said if not, we can definitely
make them available to the faculty.
c. Khalid Al-Olimat: when will those who applied for sabbatical hear?
d. Response from VP Crago: Have sent recommendations to Dan; the official
decisions are made at the Board’s January meeting (around the 29th.)
VI.
President Comments/Questions:
First, would like to echo Bill Ballard on encouraging attendance at the forum on
Thursday – there will be an update on finances, along with strategic enrollment
planning (both in terms of upcoming initiatives and what we’ve done so far for the
next year.) There will also be some updates on academic program development.
Thus this forum will go beyond financials a bit to continue the conversation we had
earlier this fall on SEP.
Want to acknowledge work of academic affairs and all involved on UMC and
university senate accreditation visit. Thanks to Julie Hurtig and Academic Affairs
again. According to Dan, we won’t have much to do for the next 10 years.
The College of Business Dean’s search committee will be appointed by next
Wednesday; we have been coordinating this with the Provost search.
As mentioned earlier, we had a great fall athletically, and winter is looking good too.
We had a great college ranking season as well. The last 8 rankings that have come
out have had us on the top. While no one ranking is perfect, the collective result
looks good for us. There was an article in the Lima paper today that quoted the
Economist in saying that students hoping for return on investment should consider
ONU. You’ll be hearing this quote over and over again… (It’s sad that so many
people are reducing degrees to economics lately, but we still want to emphasize this
because ROI does matter.)
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Submitted question: Is the report about the suggestions for cutting costs that was to be
distributed by the end of September completed yet? When will that be available to
the campus community?
Response: the President is holding the penultimate draft in his hands now – it’ll be
out Thursday/Friday. One more edit and it’ll be out.
VII.
Unfinished Business: none
VIII.
New Business: none
IX.
Announcements: The ONU Marching Band is leaving Thursday and will be travelling
to London and Dublin; they’ll be gone for 9 days. Reminder: there is no Council
meeting in December; our next meeting is January 19th.
X.
Adjournment, 6:05.
Respectfully submitted,
Erica L. Neely
Secretary of University Council
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Submitted Reports
II.b Academic Affairs
Academic Affairs has a first draft written of the program review part of Appendix 5. We are now
working on editing the draft. If anyone has any questions or concerns about that, you can talk to
your college rep and they can bring those concerns to the committee. Academic Affairs also has
a draft completed of a proposal to create a new committee that will review the program reviews.
II.c Student Activities
A written proposal has been submitted to the Secretary of the Faculty to amend the Faculty
Constitution by including the Director of Student Involvement as a member of Student Activities
Committee. The proposal will be sent out to the faculty in the next few weeks and discussion
will be held at the next University Faculty Meeting about an appropriate date to hold a vote on
the proposal.
Additionally, the next Student Activities Committee meeting will be held at 9am on Thursday,
November 19. We will be discussing the proposed student group, the ONU Disc Golf Club.
II.d. Personnel
The University Personnel Committee has met, discussed and ranked all applications for
sabbaticals, according to the criteria set forth in the University Handbook, Appendix 10. This
ranking has been transmitted to the Provost. The Committee continues to work on handbook
language relating to faculty appointments for a fixed term (2.29), tenure-track (2.4), and
employment of relatives (2.26).
IV.a.v Student Affairs
The final 2015 University Placement Reports reflecting the numbers 6 Months After
Commencement are now available on the P drive at P:\Polar Careers Reporting\University
Placement Reports\2015\6 Months After Commencement.
Our graduates reported at 98% and placed at 93%. Participation is up by 1% from last year.
Placement is down by 2%. All but 11 students responded.
It looks like the NACE (NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF COLLEGES AND EMPLOYERS)
2015 results will not be available until March of 2016 through the NACE website. However, if it
is helpful, I have the figures from the 2014 results.
Nationally:
80% of students Participated (ONU had 98% participation)
71% of those were Placed - either employed full time or attending Grad School (ONU had 93%)
The Average salary was $48,190 (ONU $66,938)
The Median salary was $45,478 (ONU $59,000)
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KLONDIKE'S will be open on Saturday for viewing of the ONU football team in playoff action
from Noon until the game is over (BYOS)
Multicultural Holiday Celebration Tuesday, Dec. 8th from 6 - 8 p.m. Affinity Commons
Holiday Host Family Info. Session tomorrow at 6 p.m. in WW (9 families signed up & 9 students
signed up) Deadline tomorrow
Christmas Extravaganza @ the Chapel planned by students on Dec. 10th 11 a.m.
Merry on Main (3rd Annual) Monday, Dec. 7th 5:30 - 7 p.m. Reslife and Ada Chamber
IV.b.i Getty College of Arts and Sciences
The College of Arts and Sciences hosted All-Ohio Choral Day on October 30, High School
Model UN on October 31, and Social Studies Day on November 11, bringing over 300 high
school students to the ONU campus.
ONU students and ONU Music Director Travis Jurgens performed with the Lima Symphony
Orchestra on November 7. The joint concert received very strong reviews. This year's
performance of the Holiday Spectacular will be held on campus November 19-21 and at the
Lima Civic Center December 4-6. The Department of Music will host a Chamber Music concert
on December 1 at 8 pm in Presser Hall. In addition, the ONU Jazz Ensemble will perform
Thursday, December 10, at 7:30 pm at the Freed Center, and the ONU Symphony and ONU
Wind Orchestras will present a joint holiday concert, Gaudete, on Saturday, December 12, also at
7:30 pm.
Finally, the initial call for proposals for the Student Research Colloquium has been sent out to
faculty and students. Please encourage students to submit an abstract for the colloquium, which
will be held Friday, April 22.
IV.b.iii. College of Pharmacy
1. We underwent an accreditation visit last month, that served as the culmination of 24 months
of preparation and self-study. The preliminary report from the accreditors is that the college
is in compliance with all standards, but needs to account for introductory pharmacy practice
experiences in a different manner. There are several areas which we will be asked to monitor
over the next few years, given the university's financial situation, the open/unfilled faculty
positions in the college, and the provost search.
2. The College Professional Commitment Ceremony occurred this past Saturday. 154 P3
students were paired with mentors, and received the white coat at the ceremony. The white
coat signifies entry into professional practice. More than 100 college alumni participated in
the event.
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IV.c. Student Senate
Officially DONE with all budget appropriations-if any organizations have not received their
appropriated funds, please contact us so we can ensure there was no error
Klondike’s Grand Opening-great turnout, students are ecstatic for this new space.
Dining Committee meets every Wednesday at 5pm and is successfully addressing student dining
concerns
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