printable versionFaculty Senate minutes - February 9, 2006 meeting
At its meeting on Thursday, February 9, 2006, the Thirty-eighth Senate of the Academic Council took the following action:
1. By unanimous voice vote, the Senate recommends the renewal of degree-nominating authority for the Interdisciplinary Program in American Studies.
EDWARD D. HARRISAcademic Secretary to the UniversityMinutes, FEB. 9I. Call to OrderOn this warm sunny day, in which undergrads were seen basking in the sun on grass that wasn't being watered, more than a few senators were playing hookie. A quorum did accumulate, but not in time. "So," said Chairman Roberts, "what we're going to do is move ahead to the Standing Reports and then come back and get the approval of minutes, which requires a quorum."
II. Standing ReportsA. Memorial Resolutions
There were three memorial statements prepared for today.
1. Henry Taube (1915-2005) "I'd like first to welcome Professor John Ross," said Roberts, "and have him come forward and present a brief memorial statement in honor of his colleague Henry Taube, Professor emeritus of Chemistry. The full text, of course, was included in your Senate packets and will be published in the Stanford Report."
Professor Ross began. "Henry Taube was born in 1915 in Canada. He received a Ph.D. in chemistry from Berkeley in 1940, and in 1962 came to Stanford University. Taube served twice as Chair of Chemistry at Stanford. He taught undergraduate, freshmen, graduates courses with great care and effectiveness. Henry's research interests were in both inorganic and organic chemistry. His work has been central to many different fields, such as electron transfer at semiconductor electrodes, chemiluminescence, solar energy conversion, electron transfer in proteins, in colloids and in and photosynthesis. In his career, he published 380 articles and one book.
"For his great contributions to science, Henry received numerous honors, including membership in the National Academy of Sciences (1959), the National Medal of Science (1977), the Priestley Medal, (1985, the highest award of the American Chemical Society, and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1983. Henry was a caring scholar, deeply respected. He passed away on November 16, 2005. He is survived by his wife, Mary Taube, whom he married in 1952, and by three children.
"Mr. Chairman, I have the honor to lay before the Senate of the Academic Council a statement in memory of the late Henry Taube, Professor of Chemistry in the School of Humanities & Sciences."
Chairman Roberts asked the Senate to stand for the traditional moment of silence, and then he thanked Professor Ross. "Next," he said, "we have Professor Emeritus Leon Rosenberg, who will present a brief memorial statement in honor of his colleague Bruce A.D. Stocker, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology."
2. Bruce Stocker (1917-2004) Professor Rosenberg began. "Bruce Stocker died August 30th, 2005, at the age of 87. He attended Kings College at the University of London, served in the medical branch of the Royal Air Force in India and Burma, and on returning to England in 1947, he joined the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where he initiated what became his life's work, … applying the newfound knowledge of bacterial genetics and biochemistry to the development of better vaccines and to understanding such matters as how bacteria transform chemical energy to motility as enabled by appendages such as flagellum. His approach to vaccine development was novel. He constructed bacterial strains that required certain amino acids known to be unavailable in the mammalian host. Such strains grew sufficiently to produce protective antibodies but could not cause infection or disease. This tactic has become a cornerstone for most of the vaccines currently in clinical trials against typhoid fever and other enteric infections and has already replaced the older vaccines notorious for their adverse effects and limited effectiveness.
"In the course of studies of bacterial motility, he recognized that the bacterial organ of locomotion, the flagellum, provided a site where, with genetic engineering technology, antigens unrelated to the primary immunogen could be placed and elicit an immune response. This 'passenger immunization' is being extensively explored at present.
"Bruce mentored a distinguished cohort of scientists who worked in his laboratory who remember him with gratitude and affection. He is survived by his two daughters, Kate and Clare, and by four grandchildren.
"Mr. Chairman, I have the honor on behalf of a committee consisting of myself, Professor Stanley Falkow, and Professor Gary Schoolnik to lay before the Senate of the Academic Council a statement in memory of the late Bruce Stocker, Professor in the School of Medicine."
Chairman Roberts encouraged the Senate to stand for a moment of silence. He thanked Professor Rosenberg, and moved to the last of the three memorial statements. "We have Professor Alice Whittemore, who will present a brief memorial statement in honor of her colleague, Rodney Beard, Professor emeritus of Health Research and Policy."
3. Rodney Beard (1911-2005) Professor Whittemore began. "Rod Beard, a pioneer in preventive medicine and public health, and former chair of the Department of Health Research and Policy from 1949 to 1969, died on July 12th, 2005, at age 93 years.
"During more than 65 years of work at Stanford, Beard was critically involved in improving the public health at the local, national, and international levels. He was instrumental in the medical school's move from San Francisco to Palo Alto, in helping to plan the new medical center and the school curriculum. However, his work went beyond the University, to public service on a host of environ-mental, occupational, and public health issues. He helped draft the first state air quality standards in the United States, helped reform health care in Santa Clara County jails, and provided expert counsel to the surgeon generals of the U.S. Army and Air Force.
"Until just weeks before his death, Beard regularly attended grand rounds and seminars, and remained vitally interested in the welfare of the medical school and the larger Bay Area community.
"Mr. Chairman, I have the honor to lay before the Senate of the Academic Council a statement in memory of the late Rodney Beard, Professor emeritus of the department of Health Research and Policy in the School of Medicine."
Chairman Roberts thanked Professor Whittemore, and the Senate joined him in standing for a moment of silence. He added, "As you know, the memorial statements for these colleagues and for all of our departed colleagues are now available on the Senate Web site. There are so many illustrious people who have helped make Stanford University what it is, and we honor them all.
III. Approval of January 26, 2006 MinutesThese, now that a quorum of elected senators had accumulated, were approved without modification or dissent.
IV. Action CalendarThis was empty today
II. Standing Reports (continued)B. Steering Committee
Chairman Roberts noted first that the Senate meeting scheduled for February 23rd would be canceled. Thus, the next meeting would be on March 9th. He warned that "The steering committee will look at [the agenda] and decide whether it's best to reactivate the meeting on April 6th, which is traditionally canceled, so that we have an every-two-week cycle in the spring term, or whether to schedule another meeting in May, which we also sometimes do. For the last meeting of winter quarter, we'll be hearing from Vice President for Public Affairs David Demarest about his work in terms of putting forward the public image of Stanford and communicating with the larger community. There are a lot of things on the calendar for the spring, including a report from the new Dean of Admissions and a report from the director of Libraries, Mike Keller, on the Google project and how it is progressing.
"Just prior to this meeting the Steering Committee held an Administrative Session. We heard three annual reports (2004-2005) from the Committee on Review of Undergraduate Majors, the Committee on Research, and the Committee on Academic Computing and Information Systems. Unless there are compelling reasons, the valuable and informative annual reports of our committees need come before the full Senate only in alternate years. It was a very good, very easily recorded meeting. My colleague, the Academic Secretary, has completed the minutes of that meeting already, and they will appear in your next packet." There were no questions for the Steering Committee.
C. Committee on Committees
Professor Sheri Sheppard was unable to attend the meeting, but had forwarded the following from Seattle: "The CoC is hard at work undertaking two of its major tasks this year: nominating faculty for Academic Council, University and Trustee committees, and assessing the processes for reviewing undergraduate majors. In addition, at our meeting last week, we responded to a request from the Provost to provide faculty nominations to serve on a committee that would search to fill two positions: Dean of Research and the new Vice Provost for Graduate Education. We forwarded faculty names to the Provost drawing from those on the Commission on Graduate Education, the members of the search committee for Dean of Research in 2002, and other members of the Academic Council."
There being no way to ask her questions, none were asked, and Professor Lunsford and Rev. McLennan, both members of CoC, had nothing to add.
D. President and Provost Report
Neither were able to attend the meeting today.
V. Other ReportsA. Committee on Undergraduate Majors (C-RUM): Reauthorization of degree-nominating authority for the Interdisciplinary Program in American Studies (SenD#5799)
The Chair recognized past-Chair Brad Osgood to present the recommendation of The Committee on Review of Undergraduate Majors to reauthorize degree-nominating authority for the Interdisciplinary Program in American Studies (SenD#5799). He welcomed "…Susan Stephens, the cognizant dean in the School of Humanities & Sciences, and Shelly Fishkin, the new Director of the program."
Professor Osgood began. "Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to say while presenting the recommendations of C-RUM that this is an excellent example of the good things that can come out of a thorough decanal and Senate review of an IDP. When the IDP was reviewed and approved for a certain period of time several years ago, everybody recognized the importance of the program. It had been around for quite some time and had played a central role in much of what we do here in the undergraduate program. But. it was also clear that the program needed some help. After that review, a committee was appointed, led by Roger Noll, who unfortunately is not here today…. I'm sure he'd have something to say, and I wouldn't dream of speaking on his behalf! His committee made a series of recommendations that were subsequently implemented which have had a great positive effect on the program. "Most important, the IDP benefited from the new leadership of Professor Shelly Fisher Fishkin. Everyone is uniform in their praise of Professor Fishkin for bringing new energy and vision to the program. We are very pleased, and the future looks bright. I'm pleased to bring forward the recommendation of C-RUM that the degree-nominating authority for the program be renewed for a period of five years."
Professor Fishkin added, "I'd like to thank the Senate for instigating this process, which has been very constructive for the program. I'd also like to thank our wonderfully engaged faculty and our terrific administrators. Thank you for having me. I'm happy to respond to any questions."
Professor Stephens echoed what Brad said about the process and also to echo what he said about the new director. "I think a great deal of this excellent proposal is the result of Shelly's fine work. We cannot thank her enough for the job she is doing!"
Questions and Discussion
Professor Camarillo added a comment and a question. "I, too, want to congratulate Shelly." Looking back at her he said, "I think you did a wonderful job in resuscitating the program. We know that leadership means everything for these IDPs. I do have a question, though, with regard to advising, because we know that Joe Corn, my colleague in History, will soon retire. Dick Gillam and Joe Corn have really been the twin pillars for decades in being advisors to students in that program. Having been the director of Undergraduate Advising and knowing how difficult it is to have affiliated faculty, those not members of the Academic Council, I am concerned that with Joe's retirement the advising function cannot fall on the shoulders of Dick Gillam. And secondarily, how do we persuade our affiliate faculty in American Studies to take on more of the responsibility for advising?"
Professor Fishkin said, "That's a really good question. I have taken on a lot of that myself, so I think that Joe's departure will not make a big change. I also think that by carefully matching students' interests with those of our affiliated faculty, we can really give them opportunities to advise students whom they enjoy advising. If the program keeps growing we'll have to come up with some additional strategies. I'm sure that's a problem that every IDP faces. And I don't mean to minimize Joe's role in advising, which has been outstanding. I'm just saying in the short run, while we figure out a long-term way of addressing that, I'll be doing a great deal of this."
Professor Gavin Wright had been involved with this IDP for years, and he was among those developing recommendations for its improvement. "My colleague, Roger Noll is not here. And I won't venture to guess what he actually would be saying. He played an important role in this recent history. I don't know for sure, but I think it's possible that Roger was appointed to that review committee because he's known as a tough guy, a guy tough enough to be willing to shut down the program. He did a preliminary survey of faculty interest, and he found there was plenty of faculty interest to support the program. What was needed was an infusion of visibility and leadership. And, fortunately, that came in the form of Shelly a year after the report was completed. It is a success story, and I view it as that from a 20-plus year perspective and not just a three-year perspective."
Professor Wright added that the IDP has become, in addition to a successful undergraduate major, a successful center for campus-wide events. "Go check out the Web site and you'll probably see some things that you attended or meant to attend, and now know that they were sponsored by American Studies. There's one coming up, the Dunbar Centennial, just next month."
Chairman Roberts found no more questioners, and the vote of the Senate was unanimous to approve the recommendation by C-RUM to reauthorize the executive committee for the Interdisciplinary Program in American Studies to nominate candidates to the degree of Bachelor of Arts, the Minor, and Honors, for a five-year period, effective September 1, 2006, through August 31, 2011. Roberts was pleased "…to thank Brad and Shelly and Susan and everyone else associated with the program, for having such a wonderful report which they deserve. That's the kind of thing that we like to see!"
B. Research Administration Software (SenD#5802 and SenD#5803)
Chairman Roberts an introduction.
"One of the things that we heard both at the Steering Committee meeting and at the administrative session that preceded this meeting is that the C-ACIS committee is looking seriously at the very general question of how the University procures software. This has been a controversial topic, and those of you who have been in the Senate for a while will know that I was involved in several of those controversies. Software costs are large, and the effect upon this campus is quite profound. If software procurement is administered well, good things can happen. If software procurement is not done well, then a lot of problems can ensue. The University has had some problems in this area. We are not in this Senate meeting attempting to solve all of them. C-ACIS is looking at the question of how decisions are made, and how coordination is managed among the different groups within the University. C-ACIS will continue that process in their work this academic year and then come back to the Steering Committee and the full Senate next year with a report that will involve changes in that longer-term question of procurement.
"That being said, there are still some short-term issues that need to be considered, issues that cannot wait. The right answer must be to solve them in the short term because of specific exposure that the University faces if we are not in compliance with federal policy in certain areas. A major issue is research administration. We will hear today from Anne Hannigan a report on a specific proposal that is going forward to address the University's exposure on a daily basis to the possibility of being in noncompliance.
"For the first time, this proposal is coming to Senate before it is presented as a fait accompli, but at the same time is a proposal that the University must move forward on before that broad policy is in place.
"There are a number of people here who are involved in that presentation. The director of Research Administration, Anne Hannigan, will lead the presentation. We also have on hand Bob O'Leary, the director of Administrative Systems, and the University's CFO, Randy Livingston. Abbas El Gamal, chair of C-ACIS, will comment."
Anne Hannigan loaded up her Power Point and began. She introduced the senior director of the Office of Sponsored Research, Pamela Web, and Lillie Ryans-Culclager, who is with the research administration in the School of Engineering. Kathleen Thompson, from the research management group in the School of Medicine has participated, but she was not available today.
She said, "…we'll talk today about the background information to this decision, and some of the drivers that necessitate us doing something at this point. Then we can review what has happened up to this point." Ms. Hannigan pointed out that the University has more than 4000 active projects each year and about 5000 protocol reviews in this billion dollar enterprise. Research is not done in a centralized way; there are school partners and partners in the Dean of Research office. The more offices involved, the more opportunities to introduce error.
She pointed out that "The main concern for a faculty member is 'How much money do I have and how do I manage it in a responsible way?' Much of the management of the money happens in the Post-Award process. And that Post-Award process is happening through Oracle. We will not focus on the Post-Award process in this presentation."
She reviewed other faculty concerns related to Research Administration. They include
Inability to manage awards after they are received
Too many offices, forms, processes and delays in grant preparation
Inability to know where things stand in a particular process
Lack of electronic tools to facilitate the research process
Audit risks…exacerbated by all of the systems issues.
Amplifying the audit risks, she noted, "…we hear particularly from those faculty members who have lived through the period 15 years ago. They're concerned about audit risks and they want to be sure that they're protected. Some others are not as concerned about compliance…but those are largely faculty who haven't lived through an audit!" The government agencies, she explained, are now in "a different place." They are all being encouraged to develop electronic systems. The NSF system is working well. Due to pressure from the Office of Management and Budget, a system named
"So," she continued, "we will be working in a separate exercise to build campus readiness for the deadlines. Now, if you're not an NIH person, you just breathed a sigh of relief. But we don't know when the other agencies are going to make things mandatory. The only good news I have here, is, if you're an NSF kind of person, NSF has basically said, that until
Ms. Hannigan then reviewed the "drivers" in place at Stanford for having a new system.
Changing federal requirements for electronic proposal submission
2005 Internal Audit findings: Stanford's highest research administration risk is lack of an adequate system
SPIRES and SPIDERS are ready for retirement!
Loss of functionality in the past three years (e.g., Oracle, legacy data, eProtocol). SPIDERS used to be connected to the legacy financial system, but is no longer. Now there's a new eProtocol system but that is not connected to SPIDERS either.
Stanford's disparate stand-alone systems require redundant entry and add unnecessary risk in a complex and demanding regulatory environment
She noted that "…the vision summary of where we'd like to be is pretty obvious. We'd like systems to operate cohesively. We'd like investigators and research staff to be able to effectively manage projects. We want to reduce compliance risks, and we'd like to be able to have the protocols and proposals, deliverables, and all of the reports and so on available to the people who need them. And… we'd like them to be easily produced in a logical way."
She then reviewed "…the process of how we got to this day. We started initially with a group of people from all around campus and asked them to begin to look at the sponsored requirements as they were becoming evident. We also wanted to look at our own requirements. We combined those two and then began to look at products commercially available and some institution-built systems. Early on we decided not to try to build our own system. And then we talked to different people. We talked with the Systems Governance Group on campus and then with C-ACIS. We then met with the University Budget group. At each step, we got some requests to do a little more due diligence. We did a review of the product with groups of faculty and staff, and now Bob O'Leary's group has done a technical review.
"What we identified at the end of the day was a product called InfoEd. InfoEd is a fairly small company. It's a niche market. It does only research administration. It is made up of former research administrators from research institutions."
Ms. Hannigan reviewed the choices of other universities. InfoEd is used by Columbia, Northwestern, UCLA, University of Illinois, and the University of Pennsylvania. COEUS and Peoplesoft are used by few, and some have their own legacy systems and are planning to change.
It then was time to present InfoEd to faculty and staff. "The clinical trials group in the medical school showed a real interest," she said. They've now seen the products several times. Health and Safety is another that has seen the product several times and is interested. In response to another request for volunteers to examine the system, 8 faculty and 103 research administrators reviewed the product. The majority said yes, they could live with the system as it was presented. Nobody said no. Among the administrators 83 percent basically said, yes, start this and do an implementation. We got lots and lots of positive comments on that one.
"What did the users say?" she asked. "They basically loved the idea of having bio-sketches. They liked being able to get information directly from co-investigators. They liked that it was Web-based and Mac and PC-supported. They liked its portability; they can work at it from at home or traveling. They found it intuitive. All of the groups said ' Gee, it's good to have multiple people be able to work on different sections at the same time with security so that somebody could be working on the budget or on the bio sketch or on the statement of work, any of those pieces, and they could work on it at the same time!' They liked the automatic population of data to the forms. They liked the lack of redundancy. They liked that there was rule-checking. Finally, they appreciated the ability to have multiple affiliations and to track things by organization."
Bob O'Leary reviewed his technical review. "What we've learned is that a lot of the key mistakes that are made happen early in the process by not doing the right level of due diligence and not thinking about the data that has been gathered. We looked at key areas. We think these are areas of vulnerability. We want to reduce the risks to the institution, increase the probability of a very positive experience and decrease the risk of a long-term, dragged-out, high-cost implementation. The scope included:
Vendor viability
Product architecture
Vendor model for supporting implementation and maintenance
Institution process for validating solutions
Peer preferences
Community buy-in to the proposed solution
Usability
Cost/schedule expectations"
In summary, InfoEd did well in being assessed by these criteria. Mr. O'Leary admitted that "…all of these products have pluses and minuses in each of these categories. So there's things that are good and things that are bad about every vendor and every option. Once we believe we have a fundamentally valid vendor, the next level of importance is how do we implement the product? How do we start a project that seeks to mitigate the risks. I think that we have done this with InfoEd. We've looked at this and seen what's weak. We've structured a process of engaging with this vendor and implementing this product in a very safe and measured way with lots of exit ramps if things aren't going the way we think they should be going."
Using a complex metaphor he said, "So that we limit our exposure, we don't buy the whole farm going out of the chute, and hope that it works, but that we have a measured way of moving through this process."
Before closing Anne Hannigan showed a slide that detailed what would happen after InfoEd. InfoEd would handle
the funding search
proposal development
routing/approval
75% of submission tasks
All of these are Pre-Award tasks.
The crucial Negotiation phase with funding agencies would be handled separately as would grants management, one of the crucial Post-Award tasks. Reporting and Closeout of grants are tasks that would be shared by InfoEd and Oracle.
Questions and Discussion
Eric Roberts started things off. "We'll take questions for Anne and Bob. It was very gratifying to see many of those criteria that we hadn't seen in past acquisition processes. It's always important to make new mistakes as opposed to making the old ones!"
Dean Pizzo thanked the presenters and then asked a 'validation' question. "I'm struck by the small number of faculty (eight) who reviewed InfoEd in comparison to the numbers of staff, and am worried that if it's not a representative opinion, whatever happens is not going to be well received. So do you have plans to address that?"
Anne Hannigan replied. "Not at the current point, although, obviously, we'll be bringing on faculty to assess the program at different times. We did hear from more faculty than that. Most seemed to think that if their administrators were happy with it, that they would be happy. Many, in fact, expressed the deep desire not to touch the system! They hoped that it would not be theirs to deal with." "Unless it doesn't work…"noted Pizzo.
Ms. Hannigan noted, "But, again, I think that if the administrators are unhappy, they will pass that angst to the faculty and the faculty also will be unhappy. One anecdote for you: John Brauman was one of the faculty who took the time to be there. He is unfortunately out of town today. What he thought was that the faculty with larger research programs would have their work done by an administrator. But where he saw the benefit in InfoEd from a faculty perspective was that there are a number of faculty who have two or three small projects and probably don't have full-time administrators. And he thought that those were the people who would very much benefit from InfoEd because it was an intuitive system that a person with very little experience could just go in and get their grant out the door."
Professor Fortmann, proud to be one of the eight faculty who reviewed the program, said, "…it's principally a benefit for the administration. If our administrators are more efficient, the faculty will be happier. It looks to me like it is something relatively easy to interact with and it would make the process of putting the front pages of the grant together much simpler and quicker."
Professor Prober was concerned about the breakdown of Post-Award task allocation outlined above. It gets confusing, because 'management' was in the 'gray box' not being covered by the InfoEd." But in their buffet of opportunities for which we could purchase, I suppose, there are a number of management elements that look like they're pretty key, depending what you mean by management. So, for example, I think human subjects management is a huge issue at the medical school. Dr. Cork can speak about animal safety management. So where does 'management' start and stop?"
Ms. Hannigan admitted, " That's a hard question." Some of the modules for these issues are developed and mature, others are not. She emphasized that Stanford did not want to be a first, second, or even third buyer of an untested product. As for management, she said, "It was the University's initial judgment to basically do Post-Award through Oracle. That was the decision that was made. And so we have now asked InfoEd for a review of their Post-Award product. I haven't seen it personally. We're going to have a conference call and they're going to bring it up on the Web and walk us through."
Professor Cork noted that, "As you know, I did a good bit of contacting people in three major institutions, Hopkins, Yale, and UCLA about InfoEd. What troubled me most about the product is something that you never reflected in your comments, namely that there is no one vendor that can suit everybody in this field. It does not exist. What was most troubling to me in my conversations with the people at Penn, UCLA and, to some extent, Hopkins was the fact that there seems to be a lack of quality assurance from this company. They send out multiple upgrades within relatively short periods of time, and I was told by every individual that you need to have a huge amount of IT support before you can implement this project. So I was very relieved to understand that you did not plan to do anything with the e-Protocol system, which we have just completed and has just been implemented this year. Because based on what I have learned, that seems to be almost entirely 'vaporware'. I would love to wait and see for six months how UCLA and Hopkins and Penn follow along with this. Because those are comparable institutions, and it seems to me that it was really designed with small institutions in mind, where you would just bring it in and give it to them. I gave you all of those contact names and numbers. I'm sure you'll get in touch with them."
Anne Hannigan assured her that the contacts were made, and that "We also spent a lot of time with the University of Illinois, which is another fairly comparable institution. And as we said, there were pluses and minuses. And I think that's where mitigating actions are important. I've observed that the more complex the security, the firewalls, the authentication, and so on, these are the areas where some people are having difficulty initially. I actually went to all of the institutions that you've mentioned, plus a whole bunch of others, and asked every one, if you had it to do again and you had to make another decision, what would you decide? And every single businessperson said that they would make the same decision.
"It is interesting the module used most frequently is the Proposal Development. Everybody's installing it right now, but nobody's gone live. They haven't been able to submit anything because the government hasn't been ready. Now they're all moving ahead very quickly."
Vice Provost Bravman started with thanks. "Anne, great presentation! I think anyone who is involved in research understands that we're running out of time to do something very significant. I have known Anne for a long time from her engineering days and her word about engineering administration means an awful lot to me. I just want to get that on the record. But my question is … how much is this going to cost?
Anne Hannigan noted that she had avoided this with the Steering Committee, and now had to answer it. "This is about $10 million for the pieces that I said that InfoEd would be used for. That's not the purchase of the modules. We don't have the numbers right yet." Mr. O'Leary chimed in, "$10 to $12 million." Ms. Hannigan clarified that is to include, …"the implementation piece, purchasing the three modules, implementing, doing the conversions, and some interfaces with Oracle, and also some interfaces, just probably downloads, from the eProtocol systems."
Vice Provost Bravman continued. Over time, would you anticipate that there's simply a transfer of head count to additional IT support? Or is there at least a realistic hope that some downward motion on head count in this area might be realized?" His follow-up question was about hardware costs.
Anne Hannigan answered that IT personnel would be added, and that she could not answer for departments that might expect to save FTEs when the system was fully operative. Bob O'Leary added, regarding hardware, that there will be significant hardware costs, as well as a need for significant storage space. VPUE was congratulated by Ms. Hannigan for "…asking the right questions."
Abbas El Gamal, the C-ACIS chair, said that his committee was comfortable with the planned acquisition, but asked whether the presenters were "…comfortable with the interfaces that will need to be developed to make this work across campus?" Mr. O'Leary replied that, "We've made a bunch of initial assumptions in this initial pricing and we're putting together a discovery phase which is where we bring the product into Stanford and work with it for some period of time. We don't know the details yet."
Professor Knight asked, "Is it going to be fully Mac and PC supported?" The first answer was yes, but VPUE Bravman noted that Microsoft is not supporting their browser on Macs anymore.
Additional questions revolved around whether other InfoEd users were able to interface effectively the grants management part of the equation with the Oracle system that Stanford has, and the answer was that "…there are very few universities that have Oracle, and certainly not in the configuration that we have it; not with the same modules." In a similar vein, Professor Bambos wanted to be reassured that, "I would like to be able to go in at 3:00 in the morning and see which grant had how much money? Will the system allow that easily?"
Anne Hannigan provided a 'yes and no' reply. "What I think at this point is that you should be able to get it through the Commitment Management System. But if you wanted to work on your proposal in the middle of the night or you wanted to put it together or you wanted to see where your funding was coming from, or how many grants you have outstanding or how much of your time you had already committed or any of those kinds of things, you would be able to do that at 3:00 a.m. What you wouldn't be able to do is that Post-Award piece, at least not as we currently have planned the system. But I do understand the desire to be able to do that."
Chairman Roberts joined in to "… remind people that we do have, going forward, this push in C-ACIS to look more generally at that question. The problem, as we all know, is that today the existing financial systems are not adequate to the task. It's not that you can't find out that information at 3:00 in the morning. It's that sometimes you can't find it out at 3:00 in the afternoon, seven business days after you made the request… or you can find it out and get seven different answers. So there's a lot of work to be done!
"One of the things that has impressed me about the presentations that I've heard is that Anne is not trying to solve all problems at once. I think we're seeing a more mature approach, using a number of criteria that were not considered heretofore. I hope that we can slowly put together things, starting with those things in which there's a compliance risk, a legal risk, from which the University faces exposure."
Professor Knight had been listening carefully. She was not clear about whether the Post-Award management, e.g., knowing where the money is, would be done through modifications currently being made in Oracle.
Anne Hannigan answered, "It's not really a modification to Oracle, but it is two things. What's being worked on right now is getting accurate commitments for students and for salary onto your statements. When we can get those accurately onto your statements, then that will be the beginning. But then there's a second part, which is replacing a product we used to call DEMS, department expenditure management systems, which allowed people to do 'what-if scenarios'."
Dean of Research Bienenstock also wanted clarification. "Is it correct we are proposing a system that will allow us to submit proposals in an expeditious fashion in a form that will soon be required by the government?" The answer was yes. Bienenstock continued. "And, at the same time, we're proceeding with attempts to provide more information to the faculty via the Oracle system. But, we retain the option of going to a Post-Award management system within InfoEd should at some later time we decide that that's appropriate." Anne Hannigan could reply, "That's right."
Chairman Robert recognized this as being a very good summary of what had been presented. He thanked "…everybody for a lot of work on this project!"
VI. New BusinessFor the first time in recent memory, there was some new business. Chairman Roberts said that Dean Bienenstock "…has a quick presentation on the new budget request that was submitted by President Bush and how research fares under that."
Bienenstock noted that "…This is a complex budget, and this is a very early analysis by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In all cases, I'm comparing this budget to recent appropriations. Basic and applied research in the Department of Defense would be down by about sixteen percent. NIH is essentially flat, which means there will not be compensation for inflation. NASA claims that funding for the parts that are relevant to us will increase, but AAAS perceives them as down in basic research by 3.4%, and if you take basic plus applied research together, close to 18%. Good news is that the Office of Science at the Department of Energy projects basic science up by 11%, and basic and applied research together also up by 11%. That has a big impact for us because we are proceeding with an x-ray free electron laser at SLAC. That's well-treated in the budget, as is the operating budget of the synchrotron radiation lab. The NSF funding is up by about 7%. The big pluses are the Office of Science in DOE, which has long been dormant. This is a welcome increase, as are the increases in the physical sciences and engineering part of the National Science Foundation. On the other hand, other agencies that support the physical sciences and engineering, like the Department of Defense, are down. And that will influence primarily our School of Engineering, but also our physical sciences in H & S. As I have said, it's hard to tell about NASA, but we perceive that programs in which we're really interesting will be slowed down as a consequence of this budget."
VII. Unfinished BusinessNone was found.
VIII. AdjournmentThis happened, by unanimous acclaim, at 4:40 pm.
Respectfully submitted, Edward D. Harris, Jr. M.D. Academic Secretary to the University