Institute Council Meeting 2/18

At this month’s Institute Council meeting, Dr. Jeremy Haefner suggested possible revisions to summer course offerings, Dr. Christine Licata gave a presentation on the tenure cycle, Dr. James Watters gave a review of the institute’s financial position.

After the approval of minutes, Haefner, provost and vice president of Academic Affairs, introduced the topic of making revisions to summer session course offerings. “Many of you have probably seen or heard that we have lost our mojo in terms of our enrollment,” Haefner commented. “There are reasons for that. We have been rather busy with calendar conversion, strategic planning, etc.”

Haefner believes that opening up registration earlier than past enrollment periods will help bring more students into the program. “We’ve got some really wonderful courses planned. We’ve also helped faculty with some professional development money to develop courses online,” Haefner said.

After Haefner laid out the plan for summer session, Licata, senior associate provost, gave a presentation on the Middle Stats Commission for Higher Education (MSCHE)'s new cycle for tenure accreditation. “This is a major accreditation event. It’s sort of the gold standard among institutions,” she said.

The program calls for multiple universities to collaborate on their accreditation standards as a self-study. Each institution will create working groups to evaluate their performance. Licata believes that this is a great opportunity for RIT to reach out to other institutions and to put RIT on the map.

After Licata’s presentation, Watters, senior vice president of Finance and Administration and treasurer gave a snapshot of the Institution’s financial standing. Watters pointed out areas of interest or concern and proposed solutions to combat these problems, particularly the increase in healthcare costs and merit salary raises.

Overall, Watters has high hopes for the future and forsees an increase in revenue as the economy continues to strengthen.