CFUN Meeting
February 14, 2012
Sandra Neese Room SB 104
9:00 am to 11:00 am
David Ryfe, David Zeh, Gary Blomquist, Patty Charles, Chris Coake, Kelly Corrigan, Ana De BettencourtDiaz, Dana Edberg, Janita Jobe, Trudy Larson, Steve Maples, JoAnne Skelly, Reg Stewart.
Absent: Amy Childress, Stacy Gordon
1. Committee Business and Follow Up:
The commission has 9 more meetings this semester; they would not meet in July, but may have some work to
do over the summer. Ryfe sent out a schedule of the meetings and areas of discussion and work for each
meeting. This could be revised based on need.
The commission would begin looking at the student applicant pool and needs help getting information from
Washoe County School District. Also included in this section, could be graduation and retention, and the type
of experience we would like our students to have at the university. David expected that we would be reading
draft reports in November.
The commission needed to be able to release information. Also have a time to get responses from faculty prior
to submitting the final report and recommendations. Some suggestions for this to happen: Town Halls, Focus
Groups, integration of the concepts from the book into the discussions, have some scenarios (budget based) to
see what resonates best with faculty, and to make this process as simple as possible. Ryfe would work with
Zeh to revise the schedule.
Discussion on Bruce Shively’s spreadsheet:
Based on his spreadsheet there should be an extra $3 million dollars. However this is based on some
substantial assumptions: that we get to keep our fees and that we have a stable state response. If we get to
keep our fees, then will the state reduce our money from general funds? If tuition and fees are increased every
year, won’t that have an effect on enrollments? Where is the affordability then? There are many units that
experienced deep cuts and other units that had very little in cuts.
Four years ago, 17% of our students were Pell eligible, and now 30% of the students are Pell eligible.
Increasing the admission standards would eat away at the bottom of the pool, but it would increase our
qualified applicant students.
Out-of-state tuition is about $ 18,000 per year. Last year we had 650 out-of-state students and we are shooting
for 1,000 students this year. NSHE and the legislature would like us to limit the number of WUE students.
Ryfe was skeptical of the amount of additional money. Zeh and Ryfe will work with Bruce Shively on the budget
scenarios.
Faculty play different roles, they are voters too and they need to be aware of the importance to the university to
keep the fees. It appears that we will at least get control of our out-of-state tuition, which would come with
responsibilities.
Reports:
(OSPA) Office of Sponsored Projects Administrations – Patty Charles:
Patty Charles met with the new Director of OSPA Charlene Hart who has been on the job 13 days.
OSPA revenue comes from F & A or indirect costs. Last year awards to UNR totaled $157 million dollars and
F & A recovery was $ 15 million. The job of the office was to help Principle Investigators (PIs) and to keep
them out of jail. Challenges for OSPA include staffing shortages, updating grants software, keeping the
webpage current, and supporting PIs.
OSPA provides 50% funding to grants management liaisons with some of the colleges and they are trying
to add some for Engineering, Science and the School of Medicine. OSPA might want to look at the way
they market themselves with the faculty. It would be helpful for the commission to evaluate the financial
benefits of the grants brought in, by comparing to other peer institutions.
Ryfe stated that a full professor would need to bring in $800,000 per year to be self-supporting.
All of the social sciences and humanities are very expensive regarding grants; CLA is driving the train as
more students are enrolled in that unit. Research brings many things to the university, but it cannot be the
engine of our growth.
Gary Blomquist offered to share an article called “The Toxic Professor.”
Division Health Sciences – David Ryfe for Amy Childress:
Dr. Schwenk said the goal for the School of Medicine was to produce more Doctors and Nurses. This
would require an increase in the number of undergraduate students. The issue with increasing research for
SOM was the need for a hospital to treat patients this would increase the clinical practice which would
increase the number of grants. The school needed to increase their presence in Las Vegas. The goal with
the current facilities was to increase the number of graduates in both the medical and nursing programs. In
order to do that the school would need to hire more faculty. We utilize a community practice plan, where
they are located throughout the community.
Entrepreneurial Reports:
Alumni & Development - Ana de Bettencourt-Dias
Vice President John Carothers has been with the university for a long time and the unit seems to be a well
oiled operation. One of the challenges with donations was that donors want to be able to decide where the
donated funds are used. His biggest concern at this point was that many of the directors of development
have been in their positions for a long time and there may be a mass retirement.
Alumni and Development have meetings with the deans, president and vice presidents to discuss fund
raising goals and each college has a director of development.
The university needed to look at conducting a capital campaign.
Endowments were usually tied to alumni and we haven’t typically generated wealthy alumni. It takes about
30 years for alumni to accumulate enough wealth to be in a position to donate.
Business Development – Dana Edberg
Dana Edberg met with Dean Greg Mosier who is the head of the business council which has only met
once. This is just a preliminary report and she will have more at a later date. At this point there has not
been a lot of coordination between businesses and strategic partnerships. They have discussed creating
strategic partnerships to increase visibility of the university with the business community, to form
partnerships with business community to facilitate economic development and to a partnership to bring
revenue into the university. They have spent most of the time increasing university visibility with the
community. They are working with EDAWN and WIN and some other organizations. They are also looking
to participate in economic development efforts such at Economic Development 2020 and come up with
ideas to how we are going to develop and attract businesses. Strategic partnerships that bring money back
to the university. Intellectual Property has not brought a lot of money back into the university; however
there may be other strategic partnerships that could do that, such as the Center for Regional Space, or the
Hoop Farm plan and other small initiatives that could bring money into the university.
Technology Transfer Office – David Ryfe:
Ryfe met with Ryan Heck who has been the head of the Technology Transfer Office for a couple of years.
Many of the patents that Heck helps faculty secure are not commercially viable and many faculty do not
see their patents in commercial terms. The Federal Government wants to fund research that will have
some payoff. Faculty and business people need to communicate and work better together. Heck is
currently working with out-of-state businesses hoping that they will move to Nevada. Businesses think in
terms of utilizing the university from their previous state. It was challenging to build a culture of
collaboration between businesses and the university.
Extended Studies – David Ryfe:
Ryfe said that Fred Holman was a big player in entrepreneurialism. His eyes have been on two directions.
Online education was one of them. Most major units don’t have the administrative infrastructure for online
education and it has been hard to get faculty interested in this. The commission could help create a set of
university policies and infrastructure of how to grow online education. We have about 3% of our courses
online while NSC has 10 to 15% online courses. We are behind on this technology. There was an online
taskforce last year that did a report. The second direction was Graduate education; we have a big
opportunity and have not done much in that area. The new online MBA is a prototype of this. Holman
thought that we should look at blended graduate programs that speak to the interest of those professionals.
We would have to leverage our graduate programs and would need to strategically build across programs.
Some of the issues regarding graduate programs is the graduate school requirements such as taking the
GRE, however, some could be certificate programs. We need to have a university plan to move forward.
There is some frustration from the dean level folks about an overall vision of where the university is
headed.
Other issues included: recruitment for the graduate schools, hybrid models of teaching, that many faculty
do not know how to teach online, space issues, how to disburse financial aid if a third semester (summer)
semester, students desire for the college experience, and how to involve faculty.
The commission would need to keep an eye on this.
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New Business: None