Meeting Minutes - April 5, 2007
1. Dean Keller briefly described the make up of
the Graduate Council and introductions were made. The floor was then
given to Dean David Johnsen, Chair of the Presidential Search Committee,
to update the Council on the status of the Presidential Search. Dean
Johnsen stated that one sign of a great university is its resiliency
which is true for the University of Iowa. Even after the serious
upheaval of the first search and the vote of no-confidence, Iowa has
been resilient, and he has received an outpouring of encouraging emails.
Many have informed him that being the President at Iowa is still an
attractive position. The search committee is deliberating whether to
schedule off-campus interviews, the traditional on-campus interviews
spread out over several weeks, or brief on-campus interviews scheduled
closely together. The latter seems to be the option of choice at this
point. However, this type of schedule will not give a lot of time for
questions, so the committee plans to concisely define what the
University is looking for in a President. A top priority is to find an
intellectual leader who will have the respect of the faculty. Dean
Johnsen has been interviewing many faculty and student groups across
campus to find out what is important to them in a President and to put
one question forward for the committee to ask during the interviews. He
opened the discussion to comments from the Council members. Dean Keller
felt that if Iowa aspires to be in the top 20 institutions, it will be
important for the president to appreciate and respect graduate
education. All of the top 20 public institutions have a strong Graduate
College, so the new president should be a strong advocate for graduate
education. It was suggested that candidates be asked how they would
foster graduate education as a fundamental defining characteristic of
this institution. The next president needs to make the State more aware
of the importance of graduate education in and for the state. The
University of Iowa needs to do a better job explaining why it is
different from the other Regent institutions. Also, how do we make the
University distinctive from other institutions with which we compete for
students and top rankings? Other questions to consider would be about
the candidate’s experiences with and attitude toward faculty governance
and how candidates support diversity/cultural inclusion. It will be
important to see how the candidates integrate diversity throughout their
discussion, not just as a direct response to a question about their
commitment to diversity.
2. The minutes of the March 8, 2007 meeting were reviewed and approved.
3. The following announcements were made:
• Dean Keller applauded all the events held during graduate student
recognition week and he congratulated the Graduate Student Senate for
their organization of a very successful Jakobsen Graduate Conference
which was held on Saturday, March 31. Associate Dean Barkan was honored
with the Outstanding Mentor award.
• The reception for winners of the DC Spriestersbach Dissertation Prize
and the L.B. Sims Thesis Award was held on March 30.
• Jonathan Gajdos was congratulated for winning a Hancher Finkbine Award
and will be honored at the Awards Banquet on April 17.
• Organization for SROP is underway for this summer. Typically, about
20-25 undergraduate students have participated in SROP with funds
provided by the Graduate College. This year, the Graduate College is
pleased to have received commitments from 30 highly qualified students.
• A memo has gone out to Deans, DEOs and Directors of Graduate Studies
(and soon will go out to the graduate faculty as a whole) to solicit
nominations and applications for the Associate Dean for Student and
Administrative Affairs in the Graduate College. The College hopes to
have a person identified by July 1.
4. Agenda items 3 and 4 were postponed to the April 19 meeting.
The meeting adjourned at 9:25 a.m.