Meeting Minutes

December 13, 2022

Research Council Meeting

Tuesday, December 13, 2022

Members Present: Fatima Toor, Yasar Onel, Queena Lin, Jason Rantanen, Joshua Carrizales, Natalie Denburg, Anthony Panos, Connie Berman, Mihaela Bojin, Rebecca Taugher

Members Absent: Sai Kumar Ramadugu, Anny Curtius, David Drake, Amanda Haes, Ariel Aloe, Paul Dilley, Kailey Cash, Jenna Yang,

Others in Attendance: Ali Salem, Kristy Nabhan-Warren, Teresa Mangum, Mike Weaver, Lauren Galliart

Call to Order

    • Meeting was called to order at 3:41 PM
    • Minutes from the November 17, 2022 meeting were accepted with no edits

Item 1: Intro of New Council Member (Toor)

  • Fatima Toor introduced Joshua Carrizales to the council, who has been approved by the Graduate and Professional Student Government to fill the open position on the council. He is from the department of biomedical engineering and is a second year PhD student. He wants to help bridge the gap between grad students, faculty, and staff.

Item 2: OVPR Updates (Salem, Nabhan-Warren)

  • Ali Salem updated the council on ongoing discussions with the Associate Deans for Research regarding institutional areas of strength and emerging areas of opportunity. ADRs were given draft metrics from the Strategic Plan Action and Resource Committee assigned to this topic and asked to provide edits for how to better tailor them to their disciplines. ADRs were encouraged to work with others in their college on this process and will be asked to use the metrics to identify several strengths in their colleges over the next few weeks. Kristy Nabhan-Warren is ensuring that Arts and Humanities metrics are included and that nuances for this type of scholarship are considered.
  • The Council discussed the process and expressed concern about a lack of transparency regarding who is involved in the process. No council members had been contacted by an Associate Dean and were essentially unaware of the project. The main concern is that the process is not receiving ground-up feedback from faculty and that the process is heavily influenced by the strategic vision from administration. The draft metrics will be shared with the Research Council for feedback following the meeting. This will be the primary topic of discussion at the January Research Council meeting.
  • Salem suggested that it would be valuable for the Research Council to look at specific policy issues, i.e. research track faculty/staff classifications in colleges. Toor will work with Yasar Onel to put together a proposal regarding research track faculty.
  • Mike Weaver summarized recent announcements regarding the Discovery and Innovation awards. The nomination period has been announced via campus-wide email. Nominations are due Tuesday, February 7th of 2023. Any questions can be directed to Leslie Revaux.

Item 3: Obermann Center Presentation (Mangum)

  • See attached Power Point slides

Item 4: Research Council Website/Newsletter updates (Toor)

    • The current Research Council website is on the old Drupal infrastructure. Low traffic to the site places us lower on the priority list for updating by the OVPR communications team. The website will be updated, but the council should focus on what they would like the website to say, and the content they would like to feature. Toor showed examples of other websites that she feels are more interactive and effective. The council would like volunteers to help with content development. Carrizales volunteered as he has previous experience with websites.
    • The Research Council will be included in the Research newsletter, potentially more often around upcoming events or deadlines, but content will drive the frequency.

Item 5: Research Council Membership (Toor)

  • Fatima will share the data representation at a later date.

Meeting adjourned at 5:08pm

Past Meeting Minutes