The Instructionally Re-lated Activities (IRA) committee held an open forum on Jan. 30 to discuss the committee’s guidelines draft. This committee is involved in determining how much and which department, club or activity will receive funds provided by the federal government. The guidelines draft states the purpose of the IRA committee and dis-cusses criteria that the IRA will follow to determine the allocation of funds.
A top issue discussed of the draft was the word-ing behind part of the Award Selection Criteria which states, “degree to which proposed funding would benefit a large number of students.” The phrase “large number of students,” is not defined in the draft, which left many participating in the forum confused. It was unclear as to what a “large number” consists of. According to Dr. C. Roxanne Robbin, Department Chair of Art, the phrase “large number” was “discriminatory towards smaller programs.” If a program does not have the opportunity to benefit this “large number,” then that program could lose funding.
Another issue that was found by Dr. Robbin was that the draft does not state the IRA objectives. Although the opening dissertation given by Dennis Shimek, Vice President of Faculty Affairs and Hu-man Resources, implied that the drafting of the commit-tee guidelines involved all of the deans, department chairs and administrators, two Department Chairs, including Dr. Robbin and Dr.
John Mayer, both claimed to have been left out of this process.
They explained that, “neither of us were included in these discussions” until they received the invitation to the open forum. Ultimately, the draft received many critiques and the IRA committee stated that they would be going over the comments in order to settle some of these issues. If there are any substantive changes, students, staff and faculty can expect to receive an invitation to the second open forum.