Minutes of the special meeting of the MCFC Friday, May 5, 2003 Liam Coffey; Chair, Spring Semester; S. Mostovoy; Secretary (DRAFT May 5, 2003)
The following are raw minutes. Please send corrections to mostovoy@iit.edu . I intend to put the corrected minutes up on the web sometime before May 6, 2003.
Present were; Gady Agam, Liam Coffey, Joyce Hopkins, Sheldon Mostovoy, Marco Saraniti, George Schipporeit, Ken Schug, Jonathan Shi and Judi Zawojewski.
Non-Council members present were; Professors Zia Hassan and Nasrin Khalili, and Dean Gerard Voland.
Minutes of last meeting are updated on our web page. The minutes are automatically approved as uploaded on the MCFC web page a week or so after they are sent to the MCFC members.
The topic was the proposed two undergraduate Main Campus based Business degrees: the Bachelor of Business Administration and the Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Applied Science.
Professors Zia Hassan and Nasrin Khalili from the Stuart School of Business made a presentation in support of the proposed degrees. They pointed out that that though declining enrollment and restricted financial resources caused the cancellation of the undergraduate business degrees at IIT in the early 1990's, the national situation has changed with increasing enrollments in business programs across the nation, and a growing market for degrees combining business and technology. They expect ultimately a total enrollment of about 200 at IIT in the new programs.
Prof. Khalili described a survey of approximately 250 programs nationwide at institutions such as RPI, MIT, Carnegie-Mellon and Georgia Tech, where the ratio of general education, business administration and technical courses is similar to the proposed IIT degrees, along with the feature of allowing an undergraduate to continue on to completion of a professional masters degree with one additional year of study.
Professors Mostovoy, Hopkins, Saraniti, Schipporeit and Shi raised a list of issues. What additional resources are needed for the new degrees? What type of faculty will teach them and will they be conventional tenure track faculty? How will such faculty based on Main Campus be guaranteed that they can develop a strong case for gaining tenure through publication and maintaining contact with the Downtown Business faculty ? The concern was expressed that a type of second-class teaching faculty would result in connection with the new programs. Why the hurry in getting approval of the new degrees ? What would happen if no donor could be found to provide funding for the new programs ?
Professors Hassan and Khalili responded that there is the strong possibility of a donor being found to fund the new programs, and if this does not happen, the new degrees would not go ahead. There is a timetable question concerning getting marketing materials ready at the Admissions Office to be able to recruit students in time for Fall 2004, the expected start date. This is driving the urgency of getting the degrees approved. They are also confident that the faculty involved in the new programs will have ample opportunity to publish and develop their case for obtaining tenure. Dean Gerard Voland added that the faculty would be considered as tenure track faculty in the Stuart School, even though a large part of the administration of the new degrees would be handled on Main Campus, and that down the road, a new Main Campus based department might be created for the new degrees. Furthermore, he thinks that the new degrees will not cannibalize enrollments in existing programs, or act as "parachute" degrees.
The vote was 8 to zero in favor of approving the new degrees.
On a separate issue, George Schipporeit asked that it be recorded in the minutes of the meeting that the College of Architecture is currently involved in a review of its internal governance, but that their review is not yet sufficiently complete to process any details concerning it at the moment.
The meeting adjourned at 12.40pm
The seven MCFC Members in their first year of a three-year term:
Gadi Agam CS
Joyce Hopkins IOP
Andrew Howard BCPS/Biology
Ken Schug BCPS/Chemistry
Kenneth Noll CHEE/EnvEng
Jay Schieber CHEE/ChemEng
Philip Troyk BME
Judi Zawojewski MSED
The seven MCFC Members in their second year of a three year term:
Jeffrey Duan AM
Robert Ladenson HUM
Greg Prygrocki ID
George Schipporeit ARCH
Xian-He Sun CS
Miles Wernick ECE
Michael Young IOP
The seven MCFC Members in their third year of a three year term:
Liam Coffey BCPS/Phys
Paul DeForest SocSci
Sheldon Mostovoy MMAE/MatEng
Phil Nash MMAE/MatEng
Joyce Hopkins IOP
Marco Saraniti ECE
Jonathan Shi CAE