Provost candidate Patricia Hanna reiterated her commitment to diversity, discussed the characteristics of outstanding academic departments and addressed the issue of student retention to about 40 faculty members Tuesday.

A common theme of the forums was the concern of faculty members about President John Peters’ plan to improve regional centers. One faculty member was concerned that a reallocation of funds within NIU’s main campus would be required to fund such improvements.

Hanna said she discussed the various missions of the university with Peters and others, and, although she did not know the context well enough to fully answer the question, she believed that his plans still are evolving.

“I do think that there are great opportunities connected with the external sites to meet this outreach portion of the mission, but I just don’t know the budgeting process and what the constraints are well enough to give an answer,” Hanna said.

Hanna serves as College of Humanities dean at the University of Utah and is the third of four candidates to visit campus.

She said there is no single resource for NIU to live up to its mission but that students, faculty and staff all play a role.

“It’s a balancing act of finding out what works and what doesn’t,” she said.

One faculty member asked about the Illinois Higher Board of Education’s “Illinois Commitment,” which defines educating as “training.” She asked if Hanna considered the two terms to be different, and if so, how people can be convinced of the difference.

Hanna said “training” is different than educating.

“We’re not sending people out there with finite skills,” she said. “We’re trying to instill a sense of civic virtue and an understanding of the world around them.”

Hanna said students can influence the legislature because they tend to be better received when asking for faculty support than the faculty members themselves.

“To a large extent, it’s PR,” Hanna said.

Another faculty member asked about the skill level of students entering the university, such as those who do not meet admission standards, and the issue of retention.

“There are different ways to polarize this issue, which I don’t think are particularly helpful,” she said. “One is to say we’re all in favor of access, and we’re going to let everybody in … the other is to say we’re going to raise our admission standards so that we are admitting only those students who we have reason to believe will succeed.”

Hanna said ethnically diverse students make up a large percentage of a “lower-rank” student body that is admitted to the university as part of commitments to diversity, and they often have difficulty succeeding.

“I have no new solutions to this problem,” she said. “I am very much committed to diversity at the institution, and I’m also committed to having realistic admission standards.”

“We have to start looking at our admission standards in a broader context,” Hanna added.

She said the university must provide support for students who are admitted under lower admission standards but not in the form of remedial courses.

“You have to start working with your feeder schools, your community colleges and with the high schools to ensure that students are adequately prepared,” Hanna said. “I do not think that giving people a passing grade or a degree is an adequate solution.”

Programs such as Focused/ Freshman Interest Groups, or FIGS, and University 101 are working toward the goal of student success, she added, but she said they need more support and public recognition.

Other topics discussed in the forum included standardized testing, shared-governance, the compatibility of NIU’s missions and non-tenure track faculty issues.

J. Ivan Legg, the fourth and final candidate, will arrive on campus tonight.