Research Council Meeting

Friday February 26, 2016

Attendance – Ed Gillian, Barbara Eckstein, Carolyn Colvin, Kate O’Brien, Lance Heady, Kevin Kelly, Paul Soderdahl, Johna Leddy, David Cunning, Claire Sponsler, Bob Kirby, Elizabeth Constantine, John Nelson, George Hospodarsky, Faryle Nothwehr, Nicholas Borcherding

Others – Cheryl Reardon, Ann Ricketts, Dan Reed, Kristy Nabhan-Warren, Nathan Cook, Rich Hichwa, Jane Garrity

Item 1:  Welcome and Updates (Ed Gillan)

• Two staff terms on Research Council will be ending in 2016, Gillan has been contacted by several staff interested in replacing them. 
• As an FYI – the Faculty Senate will soon vote to approve a new UI instructional faculty track to complement tenure-track, clinical-track, and research-tracks.

Item 2:  Approval of January 29, 2016 Meeting Minutes

• Please review and send any corrections to Mike

Item 3:  Updates from OVPR & ED (Dan Reed)

• OVPR has received over 40 nominations for its upcoming research awards
• Hosting an “Ideas and Intersections” dinner titled “Profiling: Race, Reason, and Reality” on March 22
• The Unmanned Aerial Vehicles group has completed a draft policy for campus drone use
• Reed attended the APLU Council on Research meeting in February.  They discussed how to tell the story of research and are working to draft a best practices document
• Reed attended the AAAS meeting and they discussed the proposed federal budget.  All professional societies are disappointed despite the larger research budget.  However, the proposal is politically dead on arrival.
• OVPR is looking at new applicants for its Faculty Fellow positions (Tom Scholz and Gigi Durham’s terms are up)
• Creative Matters series will continue after great success.  Hoping to add more dates next year
• OVPR is meeting with UI investigators who will be revealed through a FOIA request regarding the escaped goat

Item 4:  Research Metrics (Cheryl Reardon, Jane Garrity, Nathan Cook)

• Reardon introduced the metrics sheet which is compiled and shared with different OVPR groups quarterly.  Garrity spoke about the UIRF numbers and talked about reducing costs/increasing productivity through bringing in a permanently staffed patent attorney
• Cook spoke about the award dollars which are tracking slightly higher than last year and explained the contract metrics.

Item 5:  Humanities Advisory Board (Ann Rickets, Kristy Nabhan-Warren)

• Humanities Advisory Board was created in 2013 under the advice of Dean Chaden Djalali and VP Reed.
  • Charge: The Humanities Advisory Board, comprising 13 faculty and 2 ex-officio members who will meet twice per semester, is charged with advising the Vice President for Research and Economic Development and the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences on humanities issues including: leveraging existing and future resources in support of scholarship in the humanities; raising the visibility of UI humanities programs in Iowa and beyond; and exploring new forms of scholarship and possible areas of interdisciplinary research among the arts, humanities and sciences.
• Nabhan-Warren presented the web site and spoke about the direction of the board, both recent activities and long term direction.

Item 6:  President Harreld Visit Planning (Gillan)

• Past presidents have visited Research Council (tends to be an annual visit, common to charter committees)
• Visit will be on March 25 and will be a 30-minute roundtable discussion
• Ed will circulate some discussion points prior to the meeting
• RC members should send a couple sentences about themselves and their research focus prior to the meeting to Mike so that we can provide the background to President Harreld.