1:00pm – 201 Gilmore Hall

Council Members present:

Kellie Bodeker, Daniel Chevalier,Jordan Cohen, Laura Dallas,John Doershuk, Edward Gillan, Carin Green, Robert Kirby, Kevin Kopelson, Calvin Luzum, Yasar Onel, Cheryl Reardon, Catherine Ringen, Paul Romitti, John Rosazza, Alberto Segre, Linda Snetselaar, and Paul Soderdahl.

G​uests:

Richard Hichwa

Agenda Item 1: Welcome and Introductions

Paul Romitti, who succeeds Linda Snetselaar as the Research Council Chair, welcomed the new and returning Council members.

Agenda Item 2: Research Council Charter

Paul briefly went over the charter, including one of the Council’s main charges, which is to advise in the formulation, review, and application of policy and guidelines for University research.

Agenda Item 3: Joint Meeting/Invited University Officials

Paul said that in past years the Council had one joint meeting scheduled with the Graduate Council and one or more meetings with University senior administration guest speakers.  He suggested doing things differently this year. These joint and guest speaker meetings, he feels, take away from the Council accomplishing projects and suggested eliminating them. He asked for the Council members’ opinions. Robert Kirby agreed and said that the joint RC/GC meetings didn’t result in the intended action of collaboration on projects, but was just an exchange of information about what each Council had been doing. Linda Snetselaar agreed.

Agenda Item 4:  Proposed Project for 2010-2011

Paul said that another goal of the Council this year would be to accomplish 2 or more projects by the end of the year and have directives proposed for other projects for the next year. In order to accomplish this, he’s following the suggestion from last year of increasing meeting times to 1 ½ hours. The work on projects needs to happen outside of the meetings with requests for help or advice from the Council welcome at the meetings. The Council can help guide these subcommittee projects.

1. Develop a policy document related to the creation, approval, implementation, review and sunset of Centers and Institutes:

• Last year’s survey resulted in feedback on a number of UI centers and their level of activity.
• There was approximately a 50% response rate.
• Jordan Cohen said that, with the help of the College of Law and Pete Damiano’ s Public Policy Center, they found that there was no social science center. Therefore, the Iowa Social Science Research Center has been established.
• It would be helpful to consolidate several UI centers.
• Jordan Cohen hopes the Council will continue their work investigating UI centers and 1) recommend how a center should be defined, 2) develop criteria for formation and evaluation of centers, and 3) create a white paper.
• Rich Hichwa said that BOR approval is needed for centers that receive any portion of their funding from General Education Funds.

2. Authorship Guidelines

• Rich Hichwa said that the University doesn’t have a comprehensive authorship policy. This leads to conflicts and misunderstandings regarding publishing and reporting of scholarly activities.
• Most CIC/peer institutions have comprehensive authorship policies.
• One size fits all won’t work, but it would be good to have general guidelines. 
• Rich said that, since there are such varying disciplines, the more exact the policy is the harder it will be to get vetted.
• Jordan Cohen said that it would be unrealistic to aim for a ‘draft to Operations Manual’ goal in one year.
• Jordan suggested that 1 or 2 Council members work with Rich to formulate a draft by the end of the year.

3. Approaches to enhancing undergraduate research programs and assessing student, staff and faculty involvement

• How can we have a program that is inclusive and enhances all undergrad research and how can this move forward?
• How can we provide the training and help undergrads be recognized for their effort?
• How do we get students involved earlier?
• Faculty should be recognized for their commitment to undergrad research.
• Robert Kirby said that, in many cases, the question asked by funding agencies to get external funding is, “How many students are going on to graduate school?”, and this is a question that we can’t answer.
• Suggestions for increasing student involvement were giving credits, or paying for the research. Robert said they are currently working with the Office of the Registrar to obtain a zero course credit for volunteers.

4. Responsible Conduct of Research

• The Research Council’s role is to do the reporting
• Kellie Bodeker said there is a need for a ‘real case’ course for new faculty physicians. Jordan Cohen said that this is important, but too narrow for the Research Council. He said that this is an issue for the CTSA. He said he will discuss the issue at a CTSA/VPR update meeting.

Agenda I​tem 5: Subcommittee Assignments

1. Publication Waiver Subcommittee
   •  John Doershuk agreed to continue to serve on this subcommittee. Cheryl Reardon will put a call for additional subcommittee members.
2. Center Policy Document Subcommittee
   • Linda Snetselaar, John Rosazza, Jordan Cohen (ex officio)
3. Authorship Guidelines Subcommittee
   • Rich Hichwa (ex officio), Kellie Bodeker, John Doershuk, Catherine Ringen, and Neil Segal
4. Approaches to Enhancing Undergraduate Research Subcommittee
   • Bob Kirby, Daniel Chevalier, Carin Green, Erin Irish, Calvin Luzum and Yasar Onel

John Doershuk moved to accept the minutes from the May 2010 meeting, seconded by Linda Snetselaar. 

The meeting adjourned at 2:30