DeKALB | Two incidents spurred the Faculty Senate Wednesday to clarify NIU’s processes and policies for dismissal of faculty members at the semester’s first meeting.

The first incident occurred Oct. 20, when associate chemistry professor Qingwei Yao was arrested in an Internet sex sting by Kankakee County police officers. Yao was charged with six counts of indecent solicitation of a child on the Internet.

On Dec. 4, NIU associate technology professor Radha Balamuralikrishna was arrested on the charge of assaulting a colleague with a metal pipe in Still Hall.

Although Paul Stoddard, president of the senate, said the proposed changes in the dismissal policies would not affect the cases involving the two aforementioned faculty members or any other undecided cases, he did recommend the policies be changed.

“The language currently in the bylaws is very vague and ambiguous; probably intentionally,” Stoddard said.

Stoddard also added that NIU Provost Ray Alden recommended the bylaws’ language be clarified.

“Either we, the faculty, can take the lead in trying to determine what appropriate causes and procedures for are dismissals are, or we can let administrative types do that,” Stoddard said. “I suspect the former option is better.”

The senate also shared updates on the progress of the Strategic Planning Task Force. Stoddard said in the past month, the Task Force interviewed 55 people on campus, consisting of the Task Force and the president’s cabinet, and took the gathered information to develop points to use toward the strategic plan.

Stoddard said the Task Force had a meeting last week in which they discussed the priorities of the university as well as what makes the school unique.

“Part of what we were able to accomplish was to move away from the either/or competitive model of ‘either it’s a teaching or it’s a research University,'” senate member Diana Swanson said. “Let’s talk more about how these two can be synergistic and that we don’t have to approach it as a competition.”