Soren Spicknall
TECH NEWS WRITER

Hosted by Student Government
Association (SGA) just once per semester, the
President and Provost Forum has long served
as abarometer of student satisfaction at Illinois
Institute of Technology and continues to inform
major policy decisions made at the top level of
university administration today The forum
brings together perhaps the most diverse group
of students, faculty, and staff of any IIT event,
engaging in open and frank discussion about
topics ranging from the effectiveness of the
school’s marketing to the physical condition
of its facilities In addition to being a major
source of direct student input without the
hindrance of intermediate bureaucratic steps,
the President and Provost Forum also serves
a role in communications going the opposite
direction, helping top officials at the school
explain the rationale behind their decisions
directly to those who care the most about the
impacts of those decisions Beyond all of that,
the level of turnout at the Forum serves as an
essential marker for student engagement in
general, demonstrating whether the actions of
SGA have effectively catalyzed student interest
in improving their school over the preceding
semesterl

Last Thursday, during the shared
campusewide lunch hour, SGA President
Rahul Wadhwani introduced University
President Alan Cramb and Provost Frances
Bronet to a crowd of about 60 in the MTCC
Ballroom, which soon swelled to a room,
filling two hundred or so, approximately
half made up of students and half of various
professional units of the university Both
Cramb and Bronet are newcomers to their
current positions at IIT, though the former
is no stranger to the President and Provost
Forum, having served as Provost for the last
seven years under former University President
John Anderson Bronet, on the other hand,
is a new face at the school, but her engaging
personality has already solidified her presence
in student minds through appearances at
events like the Sophomore Leadership Retreat
sessions held throughout the fall semester
She carries a considerable reputation with
her as a proponent for interdisciplinary
programs and policy, having worked herself
in architecture (including time as a Dean of
Architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic), dance
(with a particular focus on mixedeabilities
dance companies and incorporation of visual
electronic arts into dance mediums), and in the
academic realm as Provost of the University of
Oregon up until her appointment here at IIT

After a few joking introductions (a
reassurance that nobody up on stage would
bite, etcl), Wadhwani got down to business with
a small set of questions submitted online prior
to the event First up was an issue that has been
quite contentious recently among student life
and academic leaders of IIT: the formulation
of the President’s Student Advisory Council
(PSAC)1 While practically nobody has been
critical of the general PSAC concept (not in
public, at least), there have been a number of
questions raised in recent weeks regarding the
criteria used to determine representation and
the lack of transparency in the application
process for the group In particular, many
students and faculty alike have lamented the
choice to focus the group on student life rather
than academic factions of HT, raising fears
that the group would have too indirect a focus

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President, Provost Forum focuses on core ||T issues

when it came to improving the university
President Cramb, after initially passing off
the question to Wadhwani himself for some
explanation (SGA was the group responsible
for PSAC delegate selection), discussed some
of the steps that had been taken to ensure the
Council’s representativeness of the student
body as a whole, clarifying that each delegate
was selected based on their potential to lobby
for the interests of different groups such as
housing or media organizations, not on the
strength of their own personal policy opinions
Additionally, Cramb discussed the inclusion of
five atelarge members who did not represent
any particular facet of the student body, and
mentioned that each college tends to have
its own advisory group, attempting to dispel
criticisms that PSAC’s focus is too weak when
it comes to academics

Next up, another online submission
posed the question of whether IIT’s topelevel
administration had considered or would
possibly consider establishing a “student
venture fund" in a framework meant to foster
startupestyle creativity with the administrative
protections of the university behind it The
direct answer to that question was no, but
Provost Bronet was quick to expand upon

 

the availability of venture funding and
advising already through the Knapp Center,
which coordinates work with students and
with businesses active in the Tech Park just
west of IIT Towerl She stressed that students
interested in entrepreneurial endeavors could
use the Knapp Center’s services for business
consulting and trademark advising, and that
the Idea Shop and the upcoming Kaplan
Center for Innovation would serve as the sort
of free entrepreneurial space that the question’s
author was hoping for While she did not
indicate that there were any plans for those
two institutions to establish any university,
level venture fi.1nd, Bronet did indicate that
the Knapp Center was looking into partnering
with more external companies for fi.1nding of
studenteled projects and businesses

Moving on from online submissions
to live questions posed by audience members,
the first group to speak was perhaps the most
vocal of the event Approximately six members
of the UMII (United Minds Inspiring
Innovation) Scholarship Initiative, a group

which seeks to establish a financial aid outlet
for undocumented students attending IIT,
stood at once, small flyers in hand reading “I
Support the UMII Scholarship Initiative" An
individual among them spoke at length about
the lack of current scholarship opportunities
for undocumented migrant students, and
the group’s overall goal of convincing the
university to change that reality She also
touched upon hate speech directed toward the
group recently on the semieanonymous social
media platform Yik Yak, drawing comparisons
to threats made on the same application at the
University of Missouri and elsewhere
President Cramb’s response to the
group was initially strong, emphasizing that
UMII had not presented any specific proposal
for their aims, and stating that he could
potentially support the initiative if he knew
exactly how the group intended to implement
the scholarship fund However, Cramb
stumbled somewhat following the first section
of his comments on UMII, drawing ire from
the assembled representatives of the initiative
for using the word “alien" to describe his own
status for a number ofyears in the United States
He quickly backtracked, clarifying that he used
that word to demonstrate how others saw him

Photo by Soren Spicknall

rather than how he classified himself, but his
use of the word still increased tension between
UMII and himself Cramb also responded
unsatisfactorily in the eyes of UMII’s members
when pressed about allegations that the school
had axed an IIT Magazine story about the
group back in 2012, saying he could have been
part of the group that made that decision, but
was unaware of it today He gained back some
ground by emphasizing that such a decision
should have only been made in the case that
it could have hurt somebody’s privacy or
reputation unnecessarily, saying that at times
there were articles in TechNews, as well, that
he wished would not have been published for
such considerations

When asked whether Cramb or
Bronet would be present at a UMllehosted
forum this Wednesday on the topic of
potentially codifying the scholarship more
specifically, neither could immediately respond
in the aflirmative, citing their busy schedules

The next question from a student

involved something that’s more of a

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universal experience for those at IIT: student
engagement and general campus energy A
participant in the Forum spoke to the fact that,
after orientation, the level of direct student
engagement from OCL and other professional
oflices drops off significantly, with student
orgs expected mostly to take up the slack on
their own Acknowledging that this dropoff is
a significant issue facing IIT, Provost Bronet
called upon three individuals in the audience,
including Dean of Students Katherine Stetz,
to provide some insight Their answers on the
topic covered similar territory to each other,
touching on the fact that SGA, professional
staff, and noneSGA student orgs are often
quite disconnected from each other when
it comes to brainstorming and promoting
events, as well as the fact that the school
hasn’t adequately connected Welcome Week
activities to recurring events throughout the
academic year While there were few specific
proposed actions put on the table (aside
from focusing even more on what’s currently
working well, and increasing communication
between SGA and administration), all
individuals speaking seemed to agree that the
University could be doing more on that front
Provost Bronet reeentered the conversation
on a more philosophical note, talking of
improving student happiness on campus by
what she called “making the invisible visible’l
That is, finding ways to celebrate the daily
triumphs of academic life at an institution
whose students are mostly focused on being
part of a school rather than a social center
Drawing from her history in architecture, she
spoke of reorganizing spaces both physical
and institutional to make the mere act of
attending at IIT an exciting, novel experience
for students
Following that broad, perpetual
question of student happiness was a much more
specific query from the audience, regarding the
university’s current income shortfall, which
was announced in the October 23 President’s
Update email sent to all IIT students An
individual in the crowd (fiill disclosure: this
writer) asked President Cramb for some
specific information about what actions had
been taken in anticipation of and in response
to the unexpected financial news Cramb went
into some detail about policies that the school
had adopted over the last half decade, such as
the practice of holding 215% of each academic
unit’s budget in reserve annually in case of
emergency, and the consistent maintenance
of a $1 million cash fund to make up for
shortfalls In addition, he discussed an extra
$1 million that was marked as noneessential in
the school’s budget each year in case cutbacks
needed to be made Cramb said that no actual
cutbacks had been made yet, but the school
was forced to invoke all of the aforementioned
contingencies to make up for this year’s profit
fall
The next few questions of the
President and Provost Forum, while
unquestionably important, were better suited
for department officials than for Cramb or
Bronet First, a student in the Architecture
program asked about the potential for a
number of changes to be made to their lab
fee policy and printing practices, in the hopes
of alleviating the constant cost of printing
for students of that major Ophir Trigalo
and Robert Krawczyk, the department’s CIO
and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs,
respectively, both spoke to the possibility of
making some changes if the question was
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