IPFW Faculty Senate to consider alternatives to dividing university

Saturday, February 6, 2016

IPFW Faculty Senate to consider alternatives to dividing university

By Bob Caylor

The IPFW Faculty Senate is scheduled to consider two approaches to opposing a proposal to split the university in two.

According to resolutions the Senate is to consider on Monday, one approach would submit a list of recommendations to Purdue and Indiana universities that together would likely strengthen IPFW’s independence. The other would ask IU and Purdue’s presidents and boards of trustees to give IPFW another 10 years to continue under the same sort of management agreement that now exists between IU and Purdue.

The measures the Senate is to consider are a response to proposal released last month, the findings of a working group convened by the Indiana General Assembly last year. Under that proposal, a majority of the academic programs and students at IPFW would be shifted to a what would become a regional campus of Purdue at Fort Wayne. Indiana University would administer a medical school program and possibly other programs related to health care here.

The working group studying IPFW governance, which included representatives of IU, Purdue, IPFW and Fort Wayne, voted 6-2 in favor of the recommendation. IPFW Chancellor Vicky Carwein and IPFW Faculty Senate President Andy Downs voted against the plan.

The resolution that would ask for another 10 years under the same administration agreement cites as support many accomplishments of IPFW, including:

*Ranking first among Indiana colleges on student social mobility

*1,585 freshmen from regional high schools welcomed to IPFW in fall 2015, a 9.4 percent increase over fall 2014

*National designation as a Military Friendly School for six years running, and ranking as having one of the top three best online programs for veterans in the country.
Downs said on Thursday that the slate of recommendations which would increase IPFW’s autonomy were developed last year by a group of IPFW faculty and administrators, who submitted it to the working group, which later voted to recommend dividing IPFW.
Among the measures the resolution would recommend for IPFW’s future are:

*Allowing IPFW the same authority to develop and approve graduate programs that it now has for undergraduate programs

*Giving the IPFW Foundation more independence and authority over fundraising

*Requiring IU and Purdue to release information on all qualified students who are denied admission so that other campuses in the schools’ systems, including IPFW, can recruit those students.

*Creating an IPFW alumni association that is independent of the Purdue and IU systemwide alumni association.