Academic
Senate
Minutes
December 12, 2001
Present:
M. Baron, F. Clark, W.
Dutton,.J. Gates, N. Hanel (alternate for J. Toscan), E. Heikkila, C. Jacob, M.
Jorgensen, D. Larsen, P. Levine, G. Loeb, W. Mack, J. Manegold, D. Mayer, E.
McCann, J. Moore, S. Murphy, M. Nichol, P.
Nosco, P. Pattengale, M. Renov, M. Safonov, G. Schierle, P. Shrivastava
(alternate for J. Nyquist), M. Stoner, D. Stram, N. Troy,
W. Weber, M. Weinstein, W. Wolf, R. Zemke
Absent:
M. Apostolos, B. Brown, R. Clark, E. Cooper, R. Garet, R. Guralnick, W. Handley, B. Knight, V. Nguyen, M. Omar, M.
Renov, G. Siegel, F. Zufryden
Guests: J. Beierle, L. Bernstein, M. Gundersen, J. Hisserich, R. Jewell, H. Kaslow, R. Kaufman, B. Kosko, J. Landolph, M. Levine, J. Lind, W. Thalmann, Z. Tolkes, M. Wincor, C. Zarow
Senate called to order at 2:46 p.m. by President Peter Nosco.
Meeting adjourned at 4:37p.m.
Agenda
item #1 Approval of November 21,
2001 Senate Minutes
Minutes approved as written without objection.
Agenda
item #2 Announcements by President
of the Faculty, Peter Nosco
1.
Relocation of the Faculty-Staff Clinic
Tammy Capretta from USC
Care has confirmed that she will meet with the Senate on January 16 to explain
how the decisions were make to move the existing faculty-staff clinic.
2.
Downloading copyrighted materials At
the last meeting of the Executive Board, the Provost alerted us to an issue that
has arisen regarding the downloading of copyrighted material onto
University-owned or provided computers, and also onto computers that obtain
internet access through the University’s system.
The Provost will soon be writing to the faculty about this, but for
background in the meantime you may wish to look at the following article in the
Chronicle of Higher Education,“Network Cop: A British company [NetPD] has
besieged dozens of American colleges with notices about copyright violations”
(November 30 issue, pp. A29-30).
Agenda
item #3 Plans and activities of the Keck School of Medicine by Senior
Associate Dean for Administration and Senior Associate Vice President, Ron
Kaufman, M.D., M.B.A. and Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs Leslie
Bernstein, Ph.D.
Senior
Associate Dean Bernstein reported that the Keck School of Medicine has over
1,150 full time faculty or nearly 40% of the entire faculty of the University. Of the over eleven hundred faculty, about 400 are either
tenured or on the tenure track. Her
office processes from 100 to 200 full- and part-time faculty appointments
annually.
She mentioned
that many clinical faculty have trouble achieving tenure within the six year
limit since they have patient care responsibilities in addition to research and
teaching. It often takes a number
of years to establish a practice and/or set up a laboratory. This is one of the reasons that she was in favor of the new
policy permitting schools to establish extended tenure clocks.
Many clinical faculty at the Keck School are conducting scholarly clinical research, and while these scholarly activities are important and help to establish the individual in his or her field, they do not lead to tenure under the University’s guidelines. To recognize the achievements of these individuals, she developed the Clinical Scholar track. This track, which was approved by the University last year, permits the school to grant three-year rolling contracts at the Associate Professor level and five-year rolling contracts at the full Professor level. Dean Bernstein is developing similar tracks for clinical teachers.
Dean Kaufman
provided an overview of the development plans at the Keck School of Medicine. The goal is for the school to become a top ten medical
school. Today the Keck School is 24th
in the Associate of American
Medical Schools (AAMC) ranking of research activities at medical schools.
This is up from 26th place last year.
In order to achieve this goal, the plans are to hire 135 new research
faculty and build out 585,000 square feet of research space within the next five
years. In addition, the Keck School
plans to remodel existing research space so it can be more efficiently utilized
and to help existing faculty to become more productive.
Incentive plans are now
under development.
Dean Kaufman
mentioned that the $110 million gift from the Keck Foundation will help the
School of Medicine achieve its research goals, but that additional funds will
have to be raised through both gifts and research grants if the goal of becoming
a top 10 research school is going to be achieved.
Currently, a new building for neuro-genetics is under construction.
The plans are to build four new research facilities at the medical
school. Further, Children’s
Hospital will be expanding its research space, and University Hospital will be
expanding in the near future as will the Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Finally, with the help of the Keck Board of Overseers, the University
plans to acquire land around the medical school to create a biomedical park.
None now exist in Los Angeles. It
is estimated that this biomedical park will create about 8,500 new jobs in East
Los Angeles and nearly 16,000 in the county.
Key to the development of the park is acquiring the land that is now
occupied by the County Juvenile Hall. Supervisor
Gloria Molina is in favor of the project.
The open
discussion that followed hit a number of topics and issues.
One Senator from the Keck School felt that the medical school will need
to do even more that what was outlined if the school is to become a top 10
research school. For example,
additional resources will need to be put into bioinformatics and computer
support. This Senator also thought
that sharing part of the indirects with the investigator would serve as an
incentive for investigators to be even more productive than they are now.
There was a
question about what would happen if the University could not acquire all the
land it now desires and if the project is really on track.
Dr. Kaufman responded by saying that their estimate is that 100 acres
will be required for a biomedical park to be established.
The park will help to create a medical campus where there is lots of
green space. This model appears to
have been successful. Without sufficient land, Dean Kaufman said there was a
general feeling that a biomedical park was impossible to achieve.
Dean Kaufman
was queried about the patient development policy at the Keck School.
He indicated that the medical school followed the same policy as the rest
of the University but favored the new policy over the old policy.
Several Senators encouraged the Keck School to try to strengthen linkage
with programs at University Park.
Discussion
turned to the distinction among the various faculty tracks at the Keck School. Dean Bernstein explained that the Clinical track faculty
devote most of their time to teaching and/or patient care. Research track faculty devote the majority of their
time to research with no teaching or service responsibilities, even though some
individuals on this track do teach. Clinical
Scholars conduct research while teaching and providing patient care.
Finally, Clinicians on the Tenure track are expected to carry out
research, teach, and provide service.
One Senator
stated that a core principle of tenure was academic freedom and that
in his opinion there is no academic freedom at the School of Medicine because
the salaries of even tenured basic science faculty are dependent upon grant
income. If the research area of a faculty fells out of favor with granting
agencies, the faculty might lose his salary. In such case the faculty would be
forced to direct his research efforts to other topics, which are more in favor
with outside agencies.
Finally, there
was a question concerning pay differentials between tenure and non-tenure track
faculty. The discussion that
followed made it clear that no distinctions were made between the two tracks in
determining salaries. The market is
a major determinate of salaries as well as individual members productivity (i.e.
obtaining grants and/or developing a successful practice).
Agenda item #4
Discussion of full-time non-tenure track faculty
The discussion transitioned into this agenda item. President Nosco asked Senators to report how non-tenure track fit into their individual schools. Architecture uses non-tenure track faculty to help bring in a practical and real world prospective to the program. The representative from Social Work mentioned they could not function without them. In the Business school, there are more non-tenure track than tenure track faculty.
In Engineering, non-tenure track
faculty teach and provide service. In
the Law school, there are a small number of non-tenure track faculty who are
paid what the market demands; they sometimes teach but are hired to supervise
student cases. The Law school uses
five-year rolling contracts.
Non-tenure track faculty are a majority
in Pharmacy, where they teach most of the classes.
They are expected to be promoted through the ranks; when they cannot be
promoted, their contracts are not renewed.
Promotion standards are similar to those expected of the tenure track
faculty. The non-tenure track
faculty feel they are treated as second class citizens in that school.
Agenda item #5
Introduction of proposed incubator policy
Professor
Gerald E. Loeb, Biomedical Engineering, distributed copies of the proposed
incubator policy – “A Technology Business Incubator for USC.”
The document was approved by the Research Committee, December 5, 2001 and
will be discussed at the January Senate meeting.
Vice
Provost for Faculty and Minority Affairs Martin Levine’s announcements
Vice Provost Levine announced the
latest distinguished faculty awards at USC.
Norman Arnheim, Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences, Molecular
Biology and
Biochemistry and Esther Dornsief Chair in Biological Sciences
Brian E. Henderson, Distinguished Professor of Preventive Medicine and
Kenneth T. Norris, Jr., Chair in Cancer
Prevention
Marsha Kinder, University Professor and Professor of Critical Studies,
Spanish and Portuguese, and Comparative
Literature
Stephen E. Toulmin, University Professor and Adjunct Professor of
Anthropology, International Relations
and Religion
Handouts
at the Meeting
1.
Draft Senate minutes for the November 21, 2001 meeting.
2. A Technology Business Incubator
for USC
Respectfully
Submitted,
Jerry
D. Gates, Ph.D.
Secretary General of the Academic Senate