Inside Iowa State: Iowa State University

INSIDE IOWA STATE
March 15, 2002

Senate decries loss of faculty

by Linda Charles
Based on current trends, by the year 2068 Iowa State will have no academic journals, and by the year 2077, it will have no faculty, David Hopper told the Faculty Senate during the March 5 meeting.

Hopper (who based his predictions on figures culled from the Board of Regents, State of Iowa, Web site) said the loss of faculty has been a "long-term policy" at Iowa State.

"While the recent budget crisis has had an impact on the number of tenured faculty, the problem of the loss of faculty is not a recent one," said Hopper, veterinary medicine and last year's senate president.

According to the regents' January docket, Iowa State had 1,059 faculty members in 2001-02, a 17.5 percent decrease (225 positions) from the 1985-86 year.

He noted that neither the University of Iowa nor University of Northern Iowa had experienced the same loss of faculty.

"Aren't the financial circumstances at UNI and the U of I the same as at Iowa State? Are there philosophical differences in how the administrations face budget cuts?" he asked.

"The policy of not filling open faculty positions to meet budget reductions is seriously flawed," Hopper said. "This is one of the most serious problems this institution has ever faced. We need to stand up as a faculty and get this policy changed."

Hopper also told the senate that there has been about a 25 percent decline in the number of serials purchased by the library in the past five years.

The senate unanimously passed a resolution asking the administration to protect the number of faculty positions and library acquisitions from future budget cuts.

Honors building resolution
In other business, the senate:

Voted 55 to 10 to pass a resolution presented by Carl Mize, forestry; John Robyt, biochemistry and biophysics; and Richard Hall, forestry, to rescind the name of the Honors building, scheduled for completion this month. The building is to be named the Martin C. Jischke Honors Building, after Iowa State's 13th president. The senate resolution calls for the building to be called "Honors Building" instead. The regents have the final word on the building name.
Passed a resolution endorsing efforts to save Morrill Hall as a historic structure. (See Morrill Hall story.)
Approved general guidelines presented by the Task Force on Student Evaluation of Teaching. The guidelines provide the general principles to develop a new system of student evaluation of teaching.

The next senate meeting begins at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 26, in 260 Scheman.