Academic Affairs Newsletter - Message #3

Marvin Smith, Director
Office of Student Financial Services
mlsiii@iupui.edu

"We have opened the doors to higher education," says Cathy Buyarski, of IUPUI. The struggle with poverty "is a societal issue that has come into the college environment."
--Chronicle of Higher Education, March 6, 2016

IUPUI is no different than other college campuses across the nation. Some of our students struggle with poverty. As director of student financial services, I know that we might have enough federal, state, and institutional financial aid programs to help our low income students pay for tuition and fees, but we might not have enough financial aid programs to help some students pay for basic living expenses.

What can IUPUI as an institution do to support our low income student success? What can IUPUI faculty and staff do to help? A group of IUPUI faculty and staff have been trying to address this question.

The Indianapolis-based Lumina Foundation’s Beyond Financial Aid (BFA) initiative has served as a framework to guide the development of some work that has occurred over the past year. Essentially, BFA expands the concept of financial aid beyond grants, scholarships, and loans and describes six college-tested strategies to improve support of low income students.

1. Know the low-income students at your institution.
2. Provide supports to help low-income students overcome practical barriers to enrollment success.
3. Leverage external partnerships for service delivery on campus.
4. Empower low-income students to use available resources.
5. Review internal processes that may have unintended negative impacts (e.g., academic, financial) on low-income students.
6. Implement effective practices to strengthen the academic progression of all students.

I recently had the opportunity to discuss some of that work at the IUPUI Council for Retention and Graduation meeting. I have also had the privilege of seeing first-hand how passionate IUPUI faculty and staff are about low income student success. More than one hundred faculty and staff came to our first seminar last May!

Some exciting ideas and initiatives have emerged. For example, a proposed virtual social services center for IUPUI students is in the works and may be available as early as January 2017. The site will be a place for students to review referral resources and ways to obtain more information on a variety of social service topics. The development of the proposed website and content will be guided by School of Social Work students led by Dr. Carolyn Gentle-Genitty.

This partnership with the world class School of Social Work is an example of the IUPUI spirit of collaboration. A steering committee led by Associate Vice Chancellor for Enrollment Management Dr. Boyd Bradshaw will continue to guide initiatives and partnerships aimed at improving low income student success at IUPUI. Members of the steering committee will represent a cross section of leadership across the campus.

I recognize we need more than a new website to promote low income student success at IUPUI. But I believe that IUPUI faculty and staff passion for helping low income and first generation college students is in the DNA of IUPUI’s history and institutional mission. We know we transform lives and families and generations. There is no doubt that higher education can break the cycle of poverty. And, we owe it to our students to do all we can to help.

I hope faculty and staff will continue to be engaged regarding this topic as we move forward. I welcome your input and ideas that I can share with the steering committee. Feel free to email me at ude[dot]iupui[at]iiislm.

Margaret Ferguson 
Interim Senior Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
ude[dot]iupui[at]osugrefm

IUPUI academic affairs has launched a chair’s leadership academy. Led by Jane Williams, associate dean for academic affairs and strategic initiatives and associate professor of psychology in the School of Science, and Interim Senior Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Margie Ferguson, the academy brings together chairs and program directors from across campus to discuss common leadership needs and challenges and to provide opportunities to engage with chairs from different disciplines, schools and experience levels.

A primary goal of the academy is to build a community for these campus leaders and provide a space to develop new relationships with individuals with similar leadership responsibilities and challenges. The academy so far has included nearly fifty chairs and directors and has built conversations around assessing one’s own leadership strengths and working together to respond to case studies of common (but challenging) leadership responsibilities. 

The next session will be held on January 11, 2017, from noon to 2 p.m., in Campus Center 305. Register here.

This session will be facilitated by Martie Adler of IU Human Resources. The topic is “Fierce Conversations,” and a book by that name will be forwarded to chairs and program directors upon registration. Adler led the first session, and it was an enlightening and thought-provoking discussion. Fierce conversations promise to do the same!

The following is a greeting from former Executive Vice Chancellor William Plater to the attendees of the Plater Institute held on October 31^st.

Colleagues, Friends, Guests,

Thank you for attending this year’s Institute. The subject for your work today, Educating for a Global Community, is a topic especially important to me personally, and one that I firmly believe will be critically important to IUPUI’s continued development as an emerging world leader.

Over the past few years, I have written several articles, reports, and book chapters on the globalization of higher education, including the academic workforce—which is being transformed before our very eyes. And I am currently leading a project among some 70 universities in over 25 nations to develop transnational outcomes designed to enhance graduates’ civic and global learning. I may be retired, but I have not lost interest in advancing this work that was made so important to me by the outstanding commitment of IUPUI faculty and staff—and the positive response of so many IUPUI students.

But nothing is more important to me than preparing for the impact of globalization on our understanding of community—beginning right here at IUPUI and in Indiana. There is now an urgency in colleges’ and universities’ worldwide preparing globally competent citizens who can deal effectively and responsibly with the challenges facing our interdependent yet diverse nations and cultures. Instead of building walls or talking foolishly about stemming immigration—whether from famine, war, climate change, terror, or loss of hope--without first addressing root causes, we should be equipping future leaders with the knowledge, skills, capacities, values, and experiences required to ensure a sustainable global society.

And we should step up to the plate, too, in acknowledging that current leaders need our help just as much—perhaps even more critically, since the speed of globalization appears to have already surpassed many of their capacities to change with the times. Through research and the positive engagement of our public scholars, we can continue to teach and influence the current decision-makers and their advisors.

This is the unique work of colleges and universities whose commitment to objectivity and neutrality for a common good--protected by academic freedom—gives us an unmatched platform to speak truth to power. No one else—not governments, not corporations, not NGOs, not think tanks, not philanthropists—can take the place of higher education—and their individual faculty--in the development of human potential, the education of competent citizens, and accountability for leaders whose duty is to the common good, not personal gain or self-aggrandizement.

It is for these reasons that I truly wish I could be with you today as you prepare IUPUI for its expanding responsibilities. I thank and commend you for taking on this challenge, and I especially thank Darla Deardorff for joining us and inspiring us to persist in the hard work ahead. And I thank Gil Latz for his role in advocating for the Institute’s topic; Susan Sutton for returning to her home university bringing news and ideas from afar to share with her former colleagues; and Ali Jafari for his continuing leadership in making certain that technology serves the global common good. Of course there many others to thank as well—from Kathy Johnson and her team who are so ably leading the campus academically to the planning committee, but no one has made today’s event such a hopeful occasion as Lori Klosterman, whose attention to detail has made today possible.  And thanks to Margie Ferguson for bringing these greetings on my behalf—and for her joining the Johnson Team.

As many of you know, I have been temporarily distracted from our shared work of educating for a global community by attending to cancer, another of those global challenges that need the research and practice of faculty to address. In fact, I expect to be across the street at the Simon Cancer Center during the Institute, where my oncology team--drawn from Syria, India, Jordan, and the UK as well as Indiana and the US--are actually educating and serving through a global community. I’ll be taking part in a clinical trial while you are being inspired and re-energized. Just as I am working toward a personal cure today, I know all of you will be working toward a societal cure for the growing intolerance, ignorance, and fear that threaten our global communities in the many local places where we happen to live, work and learn. May we all succeed!

Best wishes and Happy Hallo’ween!

Bill Plater

Friday, December 9, 2016
11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. – INAD 5022

Friday, January 20, 2017
10 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. – INAD 5022

What’s on your mind? Meet with EVC/CAO Kathy Johnson during open office hours. IUPUI faculty can drop in with no appointment to share your thoughts, ideas, and concerns. Kathy brings dessert! See our website for more dates.

Associate Vice Chancellor for Faculty Diversity and Inclusion
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)

 Advertisement/Position Announcement

Position Overview  

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) is seeking an associate vice chancellor for faculty diversity and inclusion (AVCFDI). The associate vice chancellor for faculty diversity and inclusion is a key member of the campus’s executive leadership team working closely with, and reporting to, the executive vice chancellor and chief academic officer (EVC/CAO), but with deep collaborative ties to the Office of Division of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Primary responsibility is to provide leadership and vision for the recruitment, retention, and advancement of faculty from underrepresented groups, particularly faculty of color.  

The AVCFDI assumes primary responsibility for directing the following: 

1. Recruitment and retention of less-represented faculty, particularly faculty of color
2. Expanding the pipeline of graduate students of color, particularly to IUPUI
3. Supporting leadership, advancement, and networking among underrepresented faculty 4. Scholarship related to faculty diversity and inclusion
4. Acting as liaison to key committees and councils

In addition to the above areas of responsibility, the associate vice chancellor responds to needs and initiatives as they arise, while also initiating programs or activities that will enhance faculty diversity and inclusion on the IUPUI campus. 

Qualifications

The successful candidate for this key academic leadership role will have the following qualifications:  

• A terminal degree and a tenured faculty appointment on the IUPUI campus
• Expertise and multicultural competence to support faculty of color, women faculty, LGBTQ+ faculty and faculty from other underserved groups
• Extensive administrative experience in a complex organizational context or at least three years of successful administrative experience that involves faculty leadership
• Able to work collaboratively across academic units, as well as the Division of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, the Graduate Office, and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research
• Vision to recommend innovative strategies that enhance the success of faculty of color, as well as attention to details. Familiarity with faculty policies and procedures
• Excellent written and oral communication skills
• Emotionally intelligent and demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively with faculty, staff and administrators
• Demonstrated ability to build collaborative working groups to identify and pursue projects and implement policies
• Flexibility to adapt to changes in a dynamic campus environment, open to innovation and change
• Attentive to details and able to see the big picture
• Ability to disseminate scholarly reports of the many initiatives going on at IUPUI
• Ability to engender respect and trust from many constituents

Terms and Compensation

This is a new executive leadership position at IUPUI and it is anticipated that for the first several years, duties and responsibilities will comprise at least .75 FTE. Terms and compensation will initially be determined based on the qualifications of the successful candidate and in collaboration with the candidate’s academic unit, and will be reviewed after 2 years.

Application Instructions  

Priority applicant review will occur after November 14. Interested applicants should create one PDF file containing the following: (1) a letter of interest highlighting relevant administrative experience, (2) curriculum vitae, and (3) contact information for six references. Interested applicants, please apply through PeopleAdmin - http://indiana.peopleadmin.com/postings/2829.

Indiana University is an equal opportunity employer committed to building a culturally diverse intellectual community and strongly encourages applications from women and underrepresented minorities. 

• IUPUI Faculty Council Meeting: December 6, 2016, 3-5 p.m., CE 450A. You do not have to be a member to attend!
• IUPUI Holiday night at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis: December 9, 6:30-9:30 p.m.
  Start your holiday season off with some fun and cheer! IUPUI faculty and staff are invited to attend and will save $5 off the ticket price (for up to four guests). See this flyer for event details and how to register.
  Questions? Contact htarlIcM nayR.
• Associate Faculty Orientation: January 7, 2017, 9 a.m.-12 p.m., CE 409
• Chairs’ Leadership Academy scheduled for Wednesday, January 11
• Additional Activity Insight training sessions: January 17 and January 23
• 2017 Joseph T. Taylor Symposium: February 23, 8:30 a.m.-2 p.m., Campus Center
• LEAPIndiana Faculty Collaboratives Conference: April 7, 9:30 a.m.-3 p.m., Ivy Tech Conference Center
• Academic Affairs Events Listing – Use this link to view and register for upcoming Academic Affairs workshops, training, and important events that pertain to YOU!

• Curriculum Enhancement Grant Request for Proposals
  Deadline: January 27, 2017 - The Curriculum Enhancement Grant (CEG) provides faculty with technical and instructional support, time, and funds to implement projects designed to improve student learning and successes at IUPUI and IUPU Columbus. In addition, the grants seek to enhance the conversation about scholarly teaching on campus and increase the practice of the scholarship of teaching and learning.