H-T stories for June 27-July 4
Herald-Times stories for June 27-July 4 (listed reverse chronologically)
Shoulders wins alumni vote as IU trustee; Democrat ran for seat in belief he would not be reappointed
by Steve Hinnefeld
July 1, 2005
Patrick Shoulders will serve three more years on the Indiana University Board of Trustees, no matter what the governor decides.
IU alumni assured that, giving the Evansville attorney 3,200 more votes than any other candidate in the 2005 trustee election.
"I'm truly grateful to our alumni for allowing me to continue the important work the board of trustees does for this university," Shoulders said Thursday after votes were counted at IU's Wells Library.
"To my opponents, I know they ran because they love the university and want to make it a better place. It's those kinds of people we need to find ways to keep connected and involved.''
Shoulders, 52, received 7,308 of the 31,990 alumni votes cast in a nine-way election. The runner-up, Carolyn Gordon of Gary, got 4,092 votes.
Gov. Frank O'Bannon appointed Shoulders to the board in January 2002 and reappointed him in July 2002. As a Democrat, Shoulders figured current Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels wouldn't reappoint him, so he decided to run for the alumni position. Alumni trustee Jamie Belanger chose not to run and backed Shoulders.
According to a preliminary check of trustee records, Shoulders appears to be the first member to be both appointed and elected to the IU board.
Twenty students counted ballots Thursday in an election supervised by IU libraries staff. Shoulders watched, pacing nervously. Two other candidates, Dave Neumann of Dallas and Robert Cummins of Naperville, Ill., stopped by to check on the balloting.
After the counting, Shoulders took congratulatory calls from IU President Adam Herbert, Belanger and several friends and Sigma Nu fraternity brothers. He's been involved in politics since his college days, but he said the trustee election was his first run for any elected office.
"It's a different kind of election," he said. "You have no way of knowing what the thinking is out there. Each rumor takes you way up and way down."
He credited his win to high visibility as a trustee and former IU Alumni Association chairman and support from fellow lawyers and southwestern Indiana residents.
While Shoulders will stay on the board, Daniels is expected to choose new members for the appointed board positions held by Shoulders, Fred Eichhorn and student trustee Erin Haag Breese. The terms end today, but Daniels isn't expected to announce his choices for at least a week.
Shoulders said the big issues facing the board will involve finding money to keep IU competitive while holding down costs.
"The single biggest challenge this and every institution of higher learning has is to try to remain affordable and accessible, yet at the same time to foster excellence in whatever it chooses to do," he said.
Another challenge, he said, is finding strong leaders to permanently fill key positions, including chancellor of the Bloomington campus and dean of the Kelley School of Business.
The votes are in
Indiana University alumni trustee election results:
- Patrick Shoulders, Evansville: 7,308.
- Carolyn Jordan, Gary: 4,092.
- Stephen Springer, Syracuse: 4,033.
- Kari Niblack, Avon: 3,553.
- Dave Neumann, Dallas: 3,333.
- Steven Kellam, Carmel: 3,031.
- Joseph Cameron, Indianapolis: 2,932.
- Robert Cummins, Naperville, Ill., 2,338.
- Michael Fowler, Cloverdale: 1,230.
Longtime dean of journalism Brown retires
by Steve Hinnefeld
July 1, 2005
Thursday was Trevor Brown's final day as dean of the Indiana University School of Journalism, a position he took on in 1984.
It didn't seem like 20-plus years, he said.
"The time just seems to evaporate," Brown said. "It's been, for me, a wonderfully stimulating, engaging and fulfilling experience that seems to have gone by with extraordinary speed."
As of today, the school has a new dean: Bradley Hamm, a former professor and associate dean of communications at Elon University in North Carolina, who was chosen in March to lead the IU journalism program.
Brown, a native of South Africa, worked as a reporter, columnist and sportswriter for that country's Cape Times and has been a faculty member since 1972. He became an associate dean of journalism in 1982 and was named dean two years later.
He was only the fourth head of journalism education in the 94-year history of journalism education at Indiana, following Richard Gray, John Stempel and Joseph Piercy.
Brown said recent trends in media consolidation and technology have confirmed that IU took the right path with its focus on core journalistic competencies, not specialties in print, broadcast or public relations.
At IU, he said, "you don't learn only how to deliver news and information in a newspaper or magazine or on a broadcast station, but you learn how to do it across all platforms."
And he said it's gratifying that students still choose to study journalism, even though it means pursuing careers with low pay and lower public esteem.
"It requires, I think, of students some commitment to a calling," he said.
While Brown is retiring, he'll keep busy with ongoing duties in journalism education and at IU.
He serves on the board of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction and is working with the institute on a project to promote effective communication through the media about sex research.
He is on the boards of IU's Center on Philanthropy and the Poynter Institute journalism-education center in Florida and is active with the national Accrediting Council for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications.
Most significantly for IU, Brown chairs the committee that's screening candidates to succeed IU Bloomington Chancellor Ken Gros Louis, who plans to retire after the 2005-06 school year.
"That's obviously going to go on through some portion of the fall semester," he said.
IU trustees in for a change
by Steve Hinnefeld
June 30, 2005
Change is coming to the Indiana University Board of Trustees, starting today with the counting of votes in the alumni trustee election.
But the bigger transformation will take place next month when Gov. Mitch Daniels makes his first three appointments to the board.
"The governor and his staff are working hard on this," said Harry Gonso, Daniels' chief of staff and himself a former IU trustee. He said the appointments will be announced "hopefully in early July."
The alumni trustee election brings together nine IU graduates who are seeking the seat now held by Jamie Belanger, who isn't seeking re-election.
They include Patrick Shoulders, an Evansville attorney who was appointed to the board in 2002 by then-Gov. Frank O'Bannon. Shoulders figured he wouldn't be reappointed, so he's running for the alumni trustee position.
Other candidates are Joseph Cameron of Indianapolis, Robert Cummins of Naperville, Ill., Michael Fowler of Cloverdale, Carolyn Jordan of Gary, Steven Kellam of Carmel, Dave Neumann of Dallas, Kari Niblack of Avon and Stephen Springer of Syracuse.
Ballot-counting will start this morning at the Wells Library. Doug McKinney, the librarian supervising the election, said he expected counting to be done by mid-afternoon. Alumni can vote until the count is completed.
Trustee terms of office end July 1. Also leaving this year are Fred Eichhorn, a retired attorney who's been on the board since 1990; and Erin Haag Breese, who's finishing a two-year term as student trustee.
Eichhorn, like Shoulders, is a Democrat and isn't expected to be reappointed by Daniels, a Republican.
"There used to be two things that were certain," Shoulders told Eichhorn at a meeting last week, "and now there are three: death, taxes and the fact that the governor isn't going to find room in that RV for you and me."
Ten candidates are under consideration for the student trustee appointment. They were chosen from a pool of applicants by a committee made up of students, IU staff and officials - and Daniels' representative, James Bopp, a Terre Haute attorney with a national reputation as a conservative advocate on right-to-life and campaign-finance issues.
Bopp, treasurer of the Indiana Republican Party and counsel last year to Daniels' campaign, is an IU graduate who has remained involved with the university. But Gonso, the governor's chief of staff, said it would be a mistake to read into Bopp's screening-committee assignment that he might be in line for a trustee position.
"There should be no reading into that at all," Gonso said. "He volunteered to play that role. The governor highly respects Jim and took him up on his offer."
Bopp wouldn't say whether he would like to be an IU trustee. But he spoke enthusiastically about the student candidates, saying they include leaders of several IU campuses.
"They're certainly of the highest quality and capability," he said. "Beyond that, it's a matter of picking the one that hopefully will be sympathetic to the governor's policies."
Bopp graduated from IU in 1970 and was active in campus politics, heading the student senate. He ran for student body president in 1969 but placed third in a five-person race.
"Too conservative," he said.
The winner that year: Paul Helmke, later the Republican mayor of Fort Wayne.
Fresh faces
As many as four of the nine Indiana University trustees could be brand-new when the board next meets Aug. 18-19 in Indianapolis.
And two-thirds of the board could be relative newcomers. Clarence Boone of Gary and Jeffrey Cohen of Carmel were appointed just a year ago by then-Gov. Joe Kernan.
"You'll have a majority of the board that has one year to no experience," trustee Steve Ferguson said.
Ferguson, chairman of Bloomington's Cook Group and a trustee since 1998, said it takes time to learn IU's budgetary complexities and grasp the subtleties of its system of shared governance by trustees, administrators and faculty.
"I learned some things last week (about the university) that I didn't know," he said. "But that happens all the time - there are things you don't know."
Counsilman's son dies after cardiac arrest in IU pool; Brian Counsilman, North's assistant swim coach, was exercising in facility named for his late father, 'Doc'
by James Boyd
June 30, 2005
The Bloomington North swim team will don shirts with a frog on one sleeve, a Buddha on the other, in memory of coaches whose lives came to early ends.
Brian Counsilman, 49, North's assistant swim coach, died Tuesday night after suffering cardiac arrest in the Counsilman-Billingsley Aquatic Center, the swimming facility named for his late father, "Doc."
Brian's mother, Marge Counsilman, said her son had undergone an angioplasty just a week ago, but had received medical clearance to begin exercising.
"He swam Monday, which went fine, then he went back Tuesday morning and said it didn't feel so good," she said.
Brian Counsilman went back to swim Tuesday afternoon.
"I would've discouraged him from doing that," Marge Counsilman said. "Swimming twice a day didn't sound like a good idea to me."
But as part of a family renowned for its aquatic capabilities, Brian Counsilman went into the water one final time.
At 5:40 p.m., emergency personnel were dispatched to the pool after Brian Counsilman went into cardiac arrest.
"It was bad enough that he essentially lost consciousness and drowned in the pool," Marge Counsilman said.
Indiana University Police officers, SRSC employees, and Bloomington Hospital ambulance personnel used CPR and a defibrillator after Brian was pulled from the pool.
He eventually regained a pulse and was transported to the hospital and admitted to the critical care unit. But just before 9 p.m., Counsilman took his final breath.
"There is no kinder, gentler spirit than Brian Counsilman," North swim coach Dave Tanner said.
"We've been friends for 38 years, and we always celebrated our birthdays together since they were only a day apart."
The son of James "Doc" Counsilman, an innovative and highly successful IU and Olympic swim coach, Brian Counsilman didn't take the traditional swimming route that his brother and sisters did. Instead, he opted to anchor the University of Cincinnati's defensive linebacking corps in college.
Nearly blind from a degenerative eye condition, Counsilman served as an assistant to his father for nine years before coaching at Perry Meridian High School in Indianapolis.
After Bloomington North's swim team lost assistant coach Stephanie Porter Janssen to breast cancer in late 2003, Tanner called and asked Counsilman to join the staff.
Janssen loved frogs, which now adorn a sleeve on the North swim shirts. Brian Counsilman's love for Buddhism will now also be represented by the swimmers he helped teach.
"Brian had the philosophy to treat each individual with respect and care, and as a person," Tanner said.
"We were blessed to have him here, it was a dream to have him with us."
Tribute tonight
Swimmers, divers, friends and family will gather tonight at the Lower Cascades Park shelter house to remember Brian Counsilman.
Bloomington North swim coach Dave Tanner said the 8 p.m. tribute is open to the public.
"Anybody is invited if they want to come," Tanner said. "It will basically be a time for us to get together and remember Brian. It's not a memorial service, just a chance for us to be together."
New focus on fraternity row; Banned fraternities now returning with revised priorities
By Steve Hinnefeld
June 28, 2005
At least eight fraternities were booted off the Indiana University campus a few years ago, with several shut down by their own national organizations.
But some of the groups are now returning, starting new chapters and recruiting new members.
"Right now, what we're seeing is the chapters that left campus for behavioral reasons are coming back - and being welcomed back by the university," said Steve Veldkamp, IU assistant dean of students.
And it's not your older brother's frat house that the groups are trying to organize, Veldkamp said. With structured programs called "Men of Principle" and "Balanced Man," they're emphasizing leadership, academics and service.
IU is known as a campus where Greek life is important; 17 percent of its undergraduates belong to its several dozen fraternities and sororities. But the organizations have gone through cycles: rapid growth in the 1950s, contraction in the 1960s and '70s, then another boom in the 1980s.
In the past decade, national fraternities, in particular, have been reassessing the role they want their college chapters to play. Driven by public scrutiny, liability concerns and a simple desire to live up to their own rhetoric, they have tried to move away from the "Animal House" image fraternities had acquired.
"We'd lost focus," said Pete Smithhisler, vice president for media and community relations with the North-American Interfraternity Conference, an Indianapolis-based organization of 64 national fraternities.
"We lost identity when the definition of fraternity was focused more around socializing and partying than around brotherhood, leadership, service and academic success," he said.
At IU, two students died -- in 1998 and 2001 -- after drinking at fraternity parties. Several chapters were disciplined for violations of the university alcohol policy, but in most cases, it was the national fraternities that revoked charters and closed the houses.
Excessive drinking and partying produced a public backlash, Smithhisler said. But possibly a bigger factor has been the changing outlook of college students, the so-called "Millennials" who have entered college since 2000 and are more achievement-driven and success-oriented.
"I think the strongest difference is the cohort of students in college right now -- what they're interested in, what they value and how they've grown up," Smithhisler said. "Because of that, I think we need to emphasize different aspects of the fraternity experience."
Veldkamp said students who want to join a fraternity for the party scene can still find what they want.
"There's a group of organizations operating that way and a group of organizations not operating that way," he said.
But he said fraternities that left campus and are returning -- "recolonizing" in the jargon of Greek organizations -- tend to recruit students who are looking for a different kind of experience.
Members say that's the case with Beta Theta Pi, which had its IU house shut down in 2001 and began recolonizing in 2003. Its members now live in various locations off campus, but the organization is making plans to build a new house, which would be occupied in 2007.
It's also the goal for Sigma Phi Epsilon, according to officials with the Richmond, Va.-based fraternity.
Sig Ep closed its IU chapter without warning in December 2002, angering students and leaving them scrambling for housing during finals week. Officials said they closed the house because of "behavioral and financial issues," including declining membership and a $1.3 million debt. A bank foreclosed on the house at 815 N. Jordan Ave., but the national organization bought it back at a sheriff's sale.
Delta Kappa Epsilon leased the boarded-up house last year. This fall, DKE will share the space with Kappa Sigma, which is building a new house on North Jordan.
But Sig Ep will start recruiting for a new chapter next spring, planning to eventually move back into the house, said Bayard Gennert, director of residential life for the national organization.
The new chapter, he said, will dispense with the "pledge" model of recruitment, in which new members are expected to prove themselves to become active members.
"Instead of creating a culture of entitlement -- where it's, 'Hey, I joined and I can do whatever I want now' -- it's a culture of achievement," he said. "You're continually challenged throughout four years of school."
Gennert said the organization's "Balanced Man" program calls for students to focus on academics, set personal goals and work with older peers and adult mentors.
"It's a lot more than just a social experience," he said. "It's really about how to have the best life experience."
A kinder, gentler Beta Theta Pi; 'We don't stand for anything that we once did'
By Sarah Morin
June 28, 2005
Alex Shortle moved into a fraternity house as soon as he came to IU his freshman year. He dropped out a month later, disenchanted with the lifestyle, and headed for the dorms.
But a year later, he returned to the greek scene.
He found what he was looking for in another fraternity, which, like him, was coming back for seconds.
Beta Theta Pi started its recolonization or reformation in 2003 -- two years after the national organization yanked the chapter's charter at Indiana University for repeated violations of its policy involving such things as alcohol and hazing. Started in 1845, it was the oldest fraternity on campus.
"We don't stand for anything that we once did," said Shortle, president of the Indiana University Student Association.
The reforming chapter fit his nostalgic vision of a fraternity and core values such as leadership, academic and athletic excellence and brotherhood, he said.
Even his take on the fraternity house is a throwback to an earlier time.
A place where the members throw dinners to attract girls, not sticky-floor ragers or theme parties such as "CEO/Secretary Ho." A place with nice furniture not stained by puke or urine.
Beta Theta Pi is thinking big picture by thinking smaller.
The new Beta house will have about 55 live-in members, half the population of some of the larger fraternity houses on campus.
And that means they can be more selective about who joins -- not worried about filling a quota, according to the members.
Recruitment of guys that are interested in more than partying ensures that the focus on traditional values doesn't fade away in a few years, said Shortle and Matt Goar, Beta president.
Shortle gave the engineers and people on the building committee the following advice: "Don't make it easy to party in that house."
Instead, he wants a great hall, study room and a senior honor wing.
But the Beta members say its tough to change the keg-party culture of Greek life.
"People are going to have to change eventually," Goar said.
It may start with the ladies.
Shortle said fraternities have to break that image of throwing keg parties to impress the ladies with a good time over cheap beer. There is a pressure to have the best parties, he said.
Once the new house is built, they said there will be no parties in the house but instead at off-site locations.
With their old fraternity house still boarded up at 919 E 10th St. -- it's now owned by IU -- the members meet potential pledges for coffee or pizza and then invite them to a larger social event.
Shortle and Goar were part of the "founding fathers" class of about 40 new guys in February 2004, the first to be initiated since the recolonization.
The 74 active members live in various locations around campus.
"It's a challenge that's strengthening us," said Shortle. "It's very difficult not to have a central location. It's a symbolic image at IU."
Chimes of IU ringing again
By Steve Hinnefeld
June 28, 2005
The chimes in the clock tower at the Indiana University Student Building are again ringing out the hours.
The signature chimes went silent June 18 when electrical power was shut off to much of the IU campus to allow Cinergy Corp. to replace a failed circuit.
"We had to manually go up there and set the proper time," said Mark Menefee, IU assistant director for utilities. "Then, it takes a 24-hour period for the bells and clock to synchronize themselves again. It's a fairly complex operation."
Three of the five circuits feeding electricity to the campus were shut down for a 12-hour period June 18-19 to allow workers to replace one of the circuits. Essential operations, such as science laboratories, were switched to circuits that stayed in operation for the shutdown.
The chimes are in the landmark tower of the Student Building, which was built in 1905 and houses the geography and anthropology departments and maps and zooarcheology libraries.
The building and tower were heavily damaged in December 1990 by a fire that may have been ignited by sparks from welding equipment. Most of the tower, including the 11 bronze bells, which were said to have inspired Hoagy Carmichael's "Chimes of Indiana," had to be replaced.
The building was repaired and rededicated in 1991.
Just what IU needs: a new $350,000 logo
Commentary
By Michael Koryta
June 27, 2005
Indiana University's operating budget of more than $2 billion was up for approval this week when the trustees met at IU Northwest in Gary.
And, in view of $2 billion, I suppose $350,000 is completely insignificant. Certainly not worth writing a column about.
But I can't help myself.
Last week, IU announced a multiyear, $350,000 initiative to design a new logo. This base price doesn't reflect the salaries of the IU staff who will be working on the project. So let's ballpark it at around half a million.
Sounds pricey.
The idea is solid enough - have a standard logo for all of IU's campuses and bring a uniform look to the school's brand.
This, I understand. The price tag and the multiyear aspect of it, I do not.
We've already had a complete farce over the IU logo in recent years, when the athletics department, led by then-director Michael McNeely, invested $69,000 in a California firm that turned out a logo hardly different from the original.
I remember that people weren't too impressed with that new logo initiative. IU took note, it seems - this time around, they're wisely spending even more money and using yet another out- of-state firm.
Chicago-based Noble BBDS has agreed to handle the bulk of the new logo and branding initiative, for what appears to be a flat rate of $289,000.
Thank goodness IU didn't agree to their hourly charge. I'm sure that flat rate is a real steal.
The Noble BBDS firm is in Chicago, however, not California, so with each try we're getting closer to having an Indiana company design the logo of Indiana's largest public university. Two or three years from now, we might actually send some of that cash back to an in-state business, whose taxes help fund the school.
We hear regularly about how IU is in a budget crisis, how the school needs more tax dollars sent its way from the legislature, how it has lower-paid faculty than competing universities, how it might have to cut jobs in the services departments in the face of tight funding.
And you know what? It's all true. Talk to anybody at IU and you'll hear about budget problems. So to pay $350,000 for a new logo, and then to contract the work out to an out-of-state company, raises this writer's eyebrows, if nobody else's.
We are sending $15,000 to an Indianapolis firm to "help" with the marketing, a token gesture that should be regarded as nothing more. The college has produced some outstanding designers itself. Why can't they look internally for the logo design?
Hold a contest, open to students, for a new, university-wide logo. Offer a $10,000 prize. I'd be willing to bet that a student design would come out every bit as good as Noble BBDS, or better. Then send maybe $100,000 to an Indiana firm to help with the marketing and branding elements. The school would still save more than $200,000, and it would have someone involved who actually has some pride in the school. If designed by a student, the new logo would get more attention, better publicity.
But what do I know? Not much. And maybe IU will get its money's worth out of the logo. School officials certainly have high hopes. Last week, Lisa Townsend, who is leading the initiative from the IU staff end, said of the new logo: "It helps us recruit students. It demonstrates our value to the state. And it may even help us bring fans to football games."
Well, I recently spent four years on campus at IU. Met a lot of out-of-towners and out-of-staters, too. We'd routinely talk about what led them to the school, and, surprisingly, nobody ever mentioned the logo.
But maybe that's about to change. As for the logo bringing fans to the football games, wasn't that exactly what McNeely said before unveiling his new design to record-low attendance figures?
I think I'll put my faith behind coach Terry Hoepp-ner and his team to bring in the fans, personally.
What I'm more interested in is a slogan. Sure, a logo could help. People notice it. But a catchy slogan? That would really be something.
And you remember slogans. We can all list off a dozen of them right now, effortlessly: "Breakfast of Champions; A diamond is forever; Just do it; Uncle Sam wants you."
Everybody knows the brands or organizations attached to those slogans. So maybe what we really need is a good Indiana University slogan. A writer could do it. I'm a writer. Kind of. And, I'm available if IU needs me. For the reasonable rate of $100,000 per sentence, I'll be happy to craft the slogan.
Not the way to balance budget
To the editor:
June 27, 2005
I just read in the Indiana Daily Student that Indiana University was considering outsourcing food service and maintenance jobs (5,200 in Bloomington) by contracting with private business. Vice President Clapacs is quoted: "Because of the kind of people we hire and the culture itself, our benefit program is a very expensive program. We have lots of paid time off; we have very good health benefits; we have very good retirement benefits." Private contractors don't have to pay benefits, so they are cheaper.
Indiana University is supported by Indiana taxpayers and employs Indiana taxpayers. Balancing the budget by contracting out and thereby cutting the employees' benefits just passes the costs on to Indiana communities. The employees will still need health care.
There are better and more equitable ways to balance the budget. Those whose jobs are about to be outsourced can probably think of ways that have not occurred to those doing the cutting.
Tomilea Allison
Recalling the end of slavery; Juneteenth event celebrates African-American culture, past and present
by Nicole Kauffman
Hoosier Times
June 26, 2005
BLOOMINGTON - Indiana University graduate student Akuba Dolphyne and fellow members of the IU African Student Association wore colorful "boubous" as they sat among several African artifacts Saturday in Bryan Park.
A quilt depicting animals and a map of Africa hung behind them, and they spoke with passers-by about their association.
Dolphyne, who comes from Ghana, said the association was there "to give out fliers and introduce people to the things that we do."
The booth was one of many at the seventh annual Juneteenth Celebration, sponsored by IU and the Neal- Marshall Black Culture Center.
Juneteenth observes the end of slavery in the United States; it falls on June 19 and marks the day the furthest corner of southern Texas finally heard about the Confederate surrender, more than two years after the end of the Civil War.
The celebration started out with a parade from the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center to the park. Volunteers set up tables there, representing various African and African-American groups, including the Bloomington Black Business Association, the Black Student Union and the African studies department.
After listening to keynote speaker Leroy Robinson, the author of several books about issues facing African-Americans today and an Indianapolis educator, children made crafts, and visitors shopped for African necklaces, wooden carvings and clothing.
Chicken, cornbread, collard greens and more also were for sale.
Speeches, singing and drumming, as well as a dramatic performance about the anti-slavery Underground Railroad, took place on a covered stage.
"It's going very well," said Oyibo H. Afoaku, director of the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center.
The turnout was comparable to recent years', she said. And that's despite sweltering heat that had several visitors grateful for the hand-held fans given out by Ivy Tech State College representatives.
"People are kind of in and out. There's a staple audience that always stays until the closing," Afoaku said.
Web-based teaching method at IU being used for high school chemistry
by Steve Hinnefeld
June 25, 2005
Romualdo de Souza created the Web-based instructional system known as CALM almost a decade ago as a way to teach introductory chemistry to large numbers of Indiana University students.
But he thinks it is even better suited to high schools, where its individualized approach can turn students on to the challenge and sense of accomplishment of learning about science.
"You want them to come out of high school excited about learning and with the tools to learn new content," said de Souza, a nuclear chemist and professor of chemistry at IU.
CALM - an acronym for Computer Assisted Learning Method - lets students sit down at a computer and work on science problems at their own speed. They get immediate feedback on whether they're solving the problems. Typically, they can keep working until they get it right.
Guided by IU faculty and staff, a handful of high-school teachers began using the method three years ago. Last year it had spread to 40 schools across Indiana and was used by 3,000 students.
Additional teachers were on campus this week to learn about the system. CALM veterans were also there, learning new features and helping align the database of problems with Indiana's standards for high-school chemistry.
"Our hope is we will be expanding this," said Brian White, a Lawrence North High School chemistry teacher who brought two colleagues to a CALM workshop.
De Souza developed the approach in 1996, when he was teaching introductory chemistry at IU. Other chemistry faculty soon began using it for their intro-level courses.
Students log on to the system and work through a list of problems assigned by their teachers. Teachers can select the problems and questions to fit with the topics and level of difficulty they've been teaching.
At it's best, CALM makes use of the Socratic method, offering leading questions to guide students through problem-solving exercises.
"Math and science is problem- solving," de Souza said. "If you don't solve the problems, you haven't learned the material."
The problems include everything from multiple-choice and true-or-false questions to multistage problems in which students must get each step right before moving on.
Teachers say it's the instant feedback that makes the method effective. Under the pencil-and-paper system for doing practice problems, students must wait for feedback until their teacher finds time to grade and return their work.
"In the old system, they might be taking a test without having had any feedback on their homework," White said.
The program generates individual problems for each student, so students can't copy someone else's answers. They talk with classmates about how to solve problems, not just what the answer is, said Cheryl McLean, a Westfield High School teacher who has used the method for three years.
While many students like the method, not all do. "Some students don't like it because it holds them accountable," White said.
De Souza said CALM doesn't replace teachers. In fact, in empowers teachers by helping them keep track of how students are progressing. Teachers can customize the program, even write their own problems.
IU provides the program to schools free of charge, but there are costs - covered so far by the chemistry department, the College of Arts and Sciences and the Bloomington campus - to developing and maintaining it and training teachers. The development team includes chemistry department instructional programs and lab coordinators and two computer programmers.
With the effort now under way to align the problems with state standards, de Souza hopes the state finds a way to fund the program so it can expand further.
CALM requires access to the Internet, but teachers say that's less and less of an issue. Students who don't have computers can print the problems at school and work on them at home. And de Souza said the number of chemistry students who don't use the Internet has declined significantly.
"The day is coming," he said, "when these guys will be able to do this on their cell phones."
Trustees OK $2.24 billion budget; Rise in costs to students translates into 3.7% budget increase
by Steve Hinnefeld
June 25, 2005
GARY - Indiana University will spend $2.24 billion next year under an operating budget approved Friday by the IU Board of Trustees.
That's up 3.7 percent from the budget for the past year, an increase that, according to university officials, doesn't keep pace with the 4 percent inflation rate for higher-education spending.
"You can see that Indiana University's budget will grow less than what we anticipate for the higher education market," said Judy Palmer, IU vice president and chief financial officer.
That there's an increase at all is because of IU's students. State support for the university will decline by almost $4 million in 2005-06. But revenue from student tuition and fees will grow by $48.4 million, thanks largely to the 4.9 percent increase that trustees approved in May.
The $2.24 billion figure includes not only IU's general educational fund but also grant-funded faculty research and auxiliary enterprises such as campus housing and athletics.
The budget for IU Bloomington is $941.1 million - including $638.9 million in the campus general education fund.
Trustees approved the university budget by a unanimous voice vote after administrators fielded a few questions about the impact of IU's financial circumstances on the retention of top faculty.
Palmer said that, after several lean years, academic positions are being affected by budget constraints. Some faculty have left for better offers from other institutions, and some positions are being held open to balance academic budgets, she said.
The budget contains $35.5 million for "Commitment to Excellence" initiatives, including $22.1 million at IU Bloomington.
The initiatives, funded by a tuition increase that took effect in the fall of 2003, were the topic of a report Friday by Ken Gros Louis, the IU Bloomington chancellor and university vice president for academic affairs. The Bloomington tuition increase was $1,000.
Gros Louis said the IU Bloomington tuition increment has been used to add 41 top faculty in targeted fields, in some cases hiring professors away from such institutions as Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and the Los Alamos and Oak Ridge national laboratories.
But other universities have also successfully raided IU faculty, Gros Louis said. In the College of Arts and Sciences, the campus's largest unit, 68 faculty received outside offers and 21 chose to leave.
Keeping leading faculty at IU became a priority for the budget. While the trustees approved salary guidelines calling for average raises between 1 percent and 3 percent, exceptions were made for faculty who had competing offers or who were promoted to higher ranks.
Eighty-eight faculty will receive raises of more than 10 percent; half of them had outside offers, Palmer said.
Overall average pay increases for 2005-06 will be 3.6 percent for faculty, 2.4 percent for nonacademic professional staff and 2.5 percent for service, maintenance, clerical and technical workers.
Commitment to Excellence
Indiana University has allocated $14.3 million for "Commitment to Excellence" projects on the Bloomington campus in the first two years of the program, according to a report to IU trustees.
The program is funded with a $1,000 tuition increase that trustees approved in 2002 and that took effect for new students starting in the fall of 2003.
IU Bloomington projects include:
• Comprehensive Program in Human Biology, $4.06 million. Adds six faculty, pays for lab renovation and equipment, creates new undergraduate degree programs in human biology and biotechnology.
• 21st Century Interdisciplinary Science, $3.75 million. Adds seven faculty including researchers to collaborate with IU Cyclotron Facility and Crane Naval Surface Warfare Center; creates undergraduate degree program in applied physics.
• Cognitive Science: New Frontiers in the Interdisciplinary Study of Mind, Learning and Intelligence, $1.4 million. Adds nine faculty, launches new learning sciences degree program, pays for office renovation.
• The Second Era in the School of Music, $745,675. Adds four faculty, including pianist Andre Watts and violinist-conductor Jaime Laredo; adds performance opportunities for students.
• Understanding the Two-Thirds World: At Home and Abroad, $658,500. Adds 12 faculty with expertise in Middle East, Indian subcontinent and Latin America; creates undergraduate degree in international studies.
• Interdisciplinary Environmental Sciences, $383,750. Adds two faculty and builds a field laboratory facility at the IU Research and Teaching Preserve.
• Renewing Leadership in Arts and Humanities, $10,000 to recruit three senior scholars in literature and religion.
• Scholarships and Fellowships: $950,044 to leverage matching scholarship funds for "high-achieving students and academically meritorious students from needy families;" $1.68 million for need-based undergraduate aid; $435,441 to leverage matching funds for graduate fellowships.
Decision on background checks deferred
by Steve Hinnefeld
June 25, 2005
GARY - Indiana University trustees and faculty representatives remained far apart Friday on whether IU should require criminal or financial background checks for new academic appointees.
With no consensus reached during a meeting at IU Northwest, trustees decided to wait until fall to try to approve a background-check policy.
"It will take some discussion," said Fred Eichhorn, president of the board. "They - or we - have to decide how broadly (the policy) should apply."
The University Faculty Council proposed limiting background checks to newly hired faculty whose duties call for them. It approved a policy that would require criminal background checks for faculty who work with "vulnerable populations" and financial checks for those who handle university funds.
Ted Miller, an IU Bloomington public affairs professor, said the proposal is in line with what's recommended by national higher-education organizations and with what's done by most universities. He said an across-the-board policy requiring background checks could make it harder to recruit faculty.
"If the university approaches this situation with a policy that is outside the norm, there will be negative consequences to the institution," he said.
The university began requiring criminal background checks for all new nonacademic employees a year ago, but policies on academic employment are subject to input by faculty.
Some legal experts think IU needs to have policies on background checks for all new employees to comply with a state law that took effect last year. And some trustees believe faculty should be subject to background checks the same as non-academic employees. Several IU campuses - including Indianapolis, Kokomo, East and Northwest - already require background checks for academic appointees.
IU Bloomington has been conducting criminal background checks on newly hired faculty under an interim policy that's in place until the trustees decide what to do. It doesn't do checks on other academic appointees, such as assistant instructors.
Eichhorn said he doesn't want to adopt a policy that prevents campuses that now conduct background checks for faculty from doing so in the future.
There was also disagreement on who should decide if a background check was needed. Under the faculty proposal, the deans of schools and colleges would decide. But trustees want a uniform approach.
Also, the faculty proposal called for background checks for all finalists for a position, so any negative results would be considered in deciding whether to make a job offer. But Dorothy Frapwell, the IU counsel, said doing a background check requires knowing the subject's date of birth. And asking for that information from job applicants, she said, could be taken as evidence of age discrimination.
Trustees asked faculty representatives to make revisions to their proposed policy and try again for board approval in September.
More action
In other business Friday, Indiana University trustees:
• Approved permanent and temporary easements for 18.3 acres, allowing the Indiana Department of Transportation to widen the Ind. 45/46 Bypass around Bloomington's northeast side.
• Approved a revised Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities and Conduct. The revisions greatly shorten and simplify the code and allow campuses to develop their own procedures for student discipline.
• Approved a new master's degree program in biotechnology for IU Bloomington.
• Heard about a new Hoosier Presidential Scholars program that uses $10 million from a Lilly Endowment "intellectual capital" grant to lure top Indiana high-school graduates to all IU campuses.
• Said goodbye to board members who were attending their last meeting. Terms are ending for Fred Eichhorn, Jamie Belanger, Erin Haag Breese and Patrick Shoulders, although Shoulders is seeking to be elected to the board by IU alumni.
