Meetings/Events

Honors Ceremony

The ceremony honoring students who received RCOE scholarships this year attracted a total audience of over 200 people and was received extremely well by parents and students. Special thanks to Associate Dean Doris Jenkins and Elaine Berry, Tammie Gelderman and Dolly Farrell for their efforts in putting together this fine ceremony.

Doctoral Cohorts Research Symposium

Under the direction of Kelly Clark-Keefe, Vachel Miller and Jim Killacky, an all-day research symposium featuring the work of current doctoral students from on and off-campus was held Saturday at the Hickory Center. The presentations and discussion were informative and lively, and the day was well spent in intellectual discussion. Special thanks to Susan Musilli (Dean’s Office) for supervising the logistics of the day.

Budget Update

Some movement has occurred on some items:

• Summer contracts for tenure track faculty and for adjuncts can be processed; chairs are asked to be very careful about insuring strong enrollments in sections covered.
• Contracts for tenure track faculty, one year fulltime appointments and part-time adjuncts can be submitted for fall; however, how rapidly those will be processed remains to be seen.
• Graduate assistants who signed their contracts or for whom you have written acceptance prior to April 9 may have their contracts processed; all others are on hold at the moment.
• Spring commencement expenses are to be kept to a minimum and need to be filed as an exception.
• Matching funds for grants must be submitted as an exception request with detailed documentation.
• Minimum monthly fee for any motor fleet vehicles must be paid if the vehicle is not turned into Motor Pool immediately.

Other items detailed on my memo sent to all RCOE faculty and staff remain frozen. Other suspended actions:

• The search for a new dean of the Health and Allied Sciences has been suspended.
• P-cards cannot be used for state fund purchases.
• No state funds may be used for purchases from the Warehouse; this includes paper, general answer sheets, teacher evaluation forms, etc.
• Small check requests cannot be used for State Fund purchases.
• Petty cash reimbursement cannot be made from State Funds.
• Recruitment travel based on state funds is frozen.

Travel caution

If people choose to travel at their own expense for professional reasons (i.e., conferences, workshops), they must understand that because the university is funding no professional travel, other than for student supervision, such travel is undertaken completely at the risk of the individual and the university can not be held liable; nor should there be any expectation of future reimbursement since the travel was not approved. Be sure you fully understand the implications of this situation.

Further information about grants and contracts:

For all grants and contracts where travel is a necessary part of fulfilling the obligations associated with the work to be performed in the grant or contract, travel is permissible as long no state funding is used to support any part of the travel. If the grant or contract had an agreed to matching component that did involve the use of state funds other than salary and benefits that has not been expended to date, the University will be required to ask for an exception to current budget restrictions to honor the matching component. These items will have to be submitted in advance prior to the expenditure of funds and should be submitted to Business Affairs for consideration.

Units and individuals responsible for grants and contracts should not use the funds in these awards to cover travel unrelated to the objectives of the grant or contract. We need to be careful that any travel authorized with the use of these funds can clearly be tied back to the objectives of the grant or contract. In all cases, we need to avoid any perception that the use of grant and contract funds was done to work around current travel restrictions involving state funds. Units and individuals are encouraged to check with appropriate contacts in Special Funds and the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs before committing to an expenditure of grant or contract funds that may be deemed questionable.

Financial Aid

Offices of financial aid are experiencing a definite increase in request for aid. Although we have no specific figures as far as ASU goes, we have noted an increase in applications for scholarships, a number of which have financial need as a criterion. The federal Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) recently released initial results from the 2008 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study. This study supplies the most comprehensive and up-to-date look at postsecondary student characteristics and student financial aid for the 2007-08 school year. Some findings:

• Almost two-thirds (66%) of all undergraduates received some type of financial aid.  For those receiving such aid, the total average amount was $9,100.
• 52% of all undergraduates received grant aid, and more than one-third (38%) obtained student loans.  The average grant amount was $4,900, and the average loan amount was $7,100.
• 47% of all undergraduates received some type of federal student aid.  About one-fourth (28%) received an average of $2,800 in federal Pell Grants, and more than one-third (35%) obtained an average of $5,100 in federal student loans.
• Among undergraduates financially dependent on their parents, 28% came from families with incomes under $40,000, and another 28% came from families with incomes of $100,000 or more.
• Nearly three-fourths (74%) of all graduate students received some type of financial aid, with an average amount of $17,600.

For more information, please go to  http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2009166

Also: QuickStats http://nces.ed.gov/datalab/quickstats/ a new NCES data tool, makes several postsecondary education datasets easily accessible to the public.

Creativity and Education

At a time of greater standardization in education, hearing someone discussing education and creativity in the same breath is refreshing. Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity. A visionary cultural leader, Sir Ken led the British government’s 1998 advisory committee on creative and cultural education, a massive inquiry into the significance of creativity in the educational system and the economy, and was knighted in 2003 for his achievements. His latest book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, a deep look at human creativity and education, was published in January 2009. The video of one of his speeches (about 20 minutes) can be found at the following url: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Visualizing the Economy

Reading about the economy, especially the loss of jobs, is informative, but visualizing the loss puts the situation on a different plane. It would be hard to match the impact of the following map with mere words: http://www.slate.com/id/2216238/