CAPRA Meeting Minutes
Apri 12, 2013

Attending: Paul Bingham, Michael Chiarello, Jackie Collier, Dale Deutsch, Deb Dwyer, Bill Godfrey, Norm Goodman, Meg Schedel

Discussion with John Lutterbie, Chair of Arts and Theatre Arts

• Shared services for the two departments are working well. Its actual organization or responsibilities was suggested by the staff of the two departments. Each department has its own Assistant to the Chair.
• John Lutterbie reported that the loss of the graduate program at the Stony Brook campus because of the transfer of the MFA in Theatre Arts to Southampton has greatly reduced the department’s ability to offer both DEC D courses and courses for its own majors. However, he believes that the recent hires of four new faculty members and a pending Ph.D. program will re-invigorate the department. The programs in Theatre Arts are in dire need of additional studio and rehearsal space.
• The MFA in Theatre at Southampton and at Stony Brook are currently operating independently, and it is not clear whether or how that situation might change. Students in several of the programs at Stony Brook have expressed interest in having MFA courses taken at Southampton count toward their degree, but no mechanism for that is currently in place.

Discussion with Matt Whelan, Interim Vice President for Strategic Initiatives

• Matt Whelan was Associate Provost for Enrollment and Retention Management prior to his current appointment.
• In this new position, he reports directly to President Stanley.
• He is currently meeting with the vice presidents and the deans of the various schools and colleges to review their strategic plans and to extract from them those issues deemed most important, which he will then meld into an actionable campus strategic plan to submit to President Stanley. He agreed to consult with CAPRA on this task—specifically, to meet with it in September when he expects to have a draft of such a plan.
• Another task he sees is to rebuild the Office of Institutional Research, which currently has only 2.5 FTEs rather than the 6 it had earlier—and, as a result, is not able to provide adequately the institutional data required for campus planning.
• He will also work with President Stanley to obtain targeted gifts for the strategic initiatives planned for the campus.
• One of the goals of the campus’s strategic initiatives is to make Stony Brook one of the top 25 public institutions in the country.