February 2015
Maharishi International University
FACULTY DOCKET
February 24, 2015
Here is this Docket as a Downloadable Document
Calendar
Thursday, February 12, Faculty Personnel Committee, 3:15, Dreier Boardroom, Agenda to be announced
Saturday, May 23, 2015, Commencement
Academic Decisions
Faculty Personnel Committee, January 29, 2015
Special Announcements
Printing on Saturday
The MIU Press has been open on Saturdays before the blocks begin to allow faculty who are late completing their syllabi to still get them printed on time. Since no one has been using this service, it will be discontinued. The Press staff confirms, however, that requests submitted before the first Monday of the block are generally printed before 10:00 am on Monday.
Integrative Wellness Center now open
The Integrative Wellness Center is up and running at the Ladies Peace Palace. Dr. Jim Davis, Vaidya Dinesh Gyawali, and the nursing staff of Deidre Lentz RN and Liza McClure LPN warmly invite MIU full time faculty and staff to utilize this new service. Primarily we would like to serve as a provider of Wellness and Preventative Health Care for the MIU community. All full time MIU faculty and staff are eligible for a Maharishi Ayurveda Consultation and one follow-up meeting free of charge per year.
During the time that Dr. Davis is present in the clinic, you can receive care for acute, non-emergency medical conditions such a sore throat, cough, sprains, minor infections and stable chronic conditions such as high blood pressure, high blood sugar, elevated cholesterol. Over time, this will contribute to the overall wellness of the MIU community.
We cannot be your primary care physician since we do not admit patients to the hospital or provide night or weekend coverage. For this, you should sign up with one of the admitting doctors at one of the other medical clinics in town.
To make an appointment, call 472-3411. We are looking forward to seeing you at the Integrative Wellness Center.
Fine for Late Grades
Academic Council approved a $25 fine per course for late grades. If your grades are not received ten days after a course ends, you will have $25 deducted from your next paycheck. If one month later, the grades have still not been submitted, another $25 will be deducted, and so on. You can see if grades have been submitted going to the Faculty Classes page on your MyMIU page (accessed from the MIU homepage https://www.miu.edu in the Portals menu). This policy will go into effect beginning January 12, 2015 and will be applied to late grades from all previous blocks.
MyMIU
MIU faculty now have an excellent resource available to them on their MyMIU page (accessed from the MIU homepage https://www.miu.edu in the Portals menu). You can see your class rosters, submit your grades, and see if your grades have been submitted on the Faculty Classes page. You can find useful information about enrollment on the Reports page.
How to incorporate Maharishi’s press conferences into your classroom presentations
These guidelines can also be found at SCI_MVS_Resources.
- Go to Oneperiodaday.miu.edu. Use the list of subjects to browse tapes in your field, or use the Search tab, and the search techniques described under the search tab or click on a keyword in the list, to find clips that are relevant to your topic.
- Read the transcript and listen to the video online to be sure that it is completely appropriate for your audience. Clicking on the name of the clip will take you to the screen with the player, main points and transcript for that tape. Click on the transcript tab to see the transcript; press the play button in the middle of the player to begin watching the video.
- Next, when you’ve chosen a title, find your selection in the list of titles under the “Download” tab. Right click (on PC) to bring up the context menu, and choose “Save link as,” to download it to your hard drive. What you get is an “mpg” MPEG file, which is the highest resolution version of this clip that we have, suitable for classroom use.
- (MPEGs won’t play on a Mac without special software:) Play the MPEG file directly from your laptop to the projector using VLC media player, (a free download www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html) which plays all kinds of media for all platforms, Mac, PC and Linux.
- Or, in Microsoft Power Point or in Impress (a free open source rival of PowerPoint, part of Open Office and Libre Office www.libreoffice.org), you can place the mpeg file on a slide by choosing “Insert: Movie and Sound.”
- Be sure to stretch the movie to fill the screen, and (in Impress) also choose “scaled” in the tiny drop-down menu that appears on the Movie toolbar.
- Test the movie before class starts to make sure you have video and sound that everyone can hear.
- Now you can play the video at will in the middle of your presentation with no delays and no waste of time.
Best Communications Practices
1. When leaving a phone message please consider that people other than the recipient may be able to hear you. Many of our offices have shared office space which means phone messages are easily overheard by others. Further, the faculty or administrator may not be answering your call because they are engaged in a “delicate” conversation with the very person you are calling about.
2. When writing emails, do not include anything you would not feel comfortable having anyone at MIU read, or have posted on Facebook!
3. When writing emails, consider cutting off lengthy sections of attached previous communications if they are not necessary to what you are saying.
Guest Speaker Form
Guest Speaker Approvals are necessary every 6 months. Please allow 2 weeks for processing each request. The form is available on the private access area of the resources page. Here is the link: Guest Speaker Form.
Course Textbooks
This is a reminder that the Wiki Textbook is no longer the active online place for students to view their textbooks for courses. The Textbook information is now updated on the miu.edu webpage. The textbook information is updated by each department administrator from information that the faculty give them. Please contact your administrator if you have any questions.
Academic Honesty Policy
All faculty should review the Academic Honesty Policy here:
https://portals.miu.edu/default.aspx?RelID=618444&issearch=academic%20honesty
and the procedure for handling violations in the catalog, page 373. The catalog is available here: http://portals.miu.edu/catalog
2014–2015 Catalog
The new MIU 2014–2015 Catalog is available here: http://portals.miu.edu/catalog
FERPA
Here are sources for useful information about the FERPA policy about disclosing information about students to parents or others:
- http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/faq.html
- http://www.bc.edu/offices/stserv/ferpa_faculty.html
Newsletter
All faculty are encouraged to subscribe to the free newsletter Inside Higher Ed.
Academic Council Meetings Days Changed
Academic Council will now be meeting on the second and fourth Tuesdays of each academic block. Other committees can adjust their meeting schedules as appropriate.
Maharishi Global Family Chat
To learn about the most inspiring recent news about the Maharishi’s Movement, Dr. Bevan Morris recommended that all faculty receive the Global Family Chat summaries. You can sign up here to get the summaries and to view previous summaries:http://www.maharishichannel.in/econtact/signup_form2.php
Program Director
A program director is appointed by the Dean of Faculty in consultation with the Department Chair and Faculty Personnel Committee to oversee the integrity and educational quality of one or more academic programs. Specifically, the program director is responsible for setting the curriculum, coordinating, with the department chair, the teaching of courses in the program, ensuring the measurement of educational outcomes, and reporting on those outcomes to the chair. The director must be a full-time MIU faculty and have taken the initial two-week Faculty Training Course offered by the Education Department. If a program does not have a director named, then the Department Chair is de facto the program director.
Visiting Scholar
Visiting Scholars are invited and hosted by a department and approved by Faculty Personnel Committee. Visiting Scholars bring expertise in their discipline specialty to further the mutual interests of the department and the scholar. Visiting Scholars may give lectures, consult with the host department on research and curriculum, and collaborate with faculty and students on other scholarly activities.
Surveys
All surveys given out to students, faculty, or staff must be approved by Michael Farrer, Director of Evaluations. This will ensure that we will not have conflicting surveys sent out and that your survey will get the information that you want.
Maharishi’s Books as Class Readings
We should include reading by Maharishi in our academic courses whenever possible. Most books are available at the MIU Store, many at greatly reduced prices for students. Please have your students purchase these books, which they should have in their personal libraries anyway, rather than have them photocopied.
You may be eligible for a free cell phone.
Check out websites like
- http://governmentfreecellphoneprogram.com/iowa-free-government-cell-phone-providers/. You can see if you qualify here:
- http://governmentfreecellphoneprogram.com/do-you-qualify/. MIU staff who have received free cell phones in this way say that this is a great service.
Policy on Use of Electronic Devices in the Classroom From the new Course Syllabus Template available athttps://portals.miu.edu/RelId/667358/ISvars/default/Course_Templates.htm
Computers, cell phones, and pagers — Please turn off all cell phones and pagers at the start of class, so you will not inadvertently interrupt a lecture or class discussion. Evidence from a variety of studies indicates that by multitasking, you compromise your efforts to learn. Furthermore, carrying on extended texting conversations in class is both inappropriate and distracting to your classmates, so please avoid these kinds of behavior. We will discuss when and under what conditions classroom use of computers is encouraged.
Course Changes No department may add a course without approval from Chris Jones, Dean of Academic Programs. This is a new policy that has been adopted to give students a more reliable schedule to use when planning their year. Chris will be in touch with departments who have courses with low enrollment; such courses may have to be cancelled.
Wi-Fi in Classrooms We now have the ability to put Wife in classrooms, but Wi-Fi in one classroom can overlap into other classrooms. It can also be turned on and off. Please let Tom Hirsch know if you want Wifi in your classroom.
Consulting Policy
Departments may not hire outside consultants or contractors to perform a service that is already being performed within the University or for which the University has a pre-existing contract (e.g. personal counseling with Optimae Life Services). This applies to all departments for all programs. This includes, but is not limited to, the following services:
Web design
Marketing
Personal counseling and therapy.
Any exceptions to this policy must be approved by Executive Committee. This policy is effective immediately.
Dockets are archived on the website
Special announcements, policies, and other information will also now be archived in a document titled Policies and Information stored on the docket webpage.
Committee Minutes ONLINE
Committee Minutes are now ready to be added and viewed on the Committee page of the website. If you do not see the minutes you are looking for please let the Chair of that Committee know.
You must be signed in to view this page.
If your committee has not added the minutes to the site please let Madusha know who will edit your page and she will set it up. She also has a video tutorial to help you edit and format your minutes.
NEW: Textbook Wiki has moved onto mum website
We no longer use the Wikipages for Textbooks listings. They are viewable under Current Students > Academics > Textbooks. Department Admins continue to acquire your textbook information through email or forms (below). If you need to edit the pages yourself, please contact Madusha. dof@miu.edu
Please choose the correct Department Textbook Online Form for each of your courses below (links): Hover your cursor over the name:
- Art – art@miu.edu
- Business Administration / Management – mgt@miu.edu
- Computer Science – Listing textbooks on their own site as they were before.
- Education – eddept@miu.edu
- Literature & Writing – litadmin@miu.edu
- Mathematics / Physics – mathadmin@miu.edu
- Maharishi Vedic Science – sozbudak@miu.edu
- Media and Communications – mc@miu.edu
- Physiology and Health – physiology@miu.edu
- Sustainable Living – sustainableliving@miu.edu
A reminder will continue to be sent to you 4 weeks before your course.
If you have any questions, please contact your Dept. Admin.
Planning Events
Please learn about the new procedures for planning events. New online forms and checklists help departments make sure they contact everyone involved in planning an
Program Attendance at Alternate Flying Halls If you do program at the Downtown Flying Hall or at the Maharishi Vedic City Peace Palaces, please fill out the attached attendance form each month and return it to the Dean of Faculty Office or email it to dof@miu.edu.
Virus Protection Please make sure you have virus protection on all of your computers. You can download free virus software here:
For Windows: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security-essentials-download
For Macs: http://www.clamxav.com