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Minutes

DREXEL/MCP HAHNEMANN MERGER TRANSITION TEAM
Minutes First Meeting
November 29, 2001

The meeting was called to order at 5:10 p.m. The Chair asked everyone to be on time from now on: meetings will begin promptly at 5:00 and end no later than 7:30 p.m.

1.  Introductions. The members of the Team introduced themselves. The Team is very diverse from the perspectives of age, race, gender national origin, area of specialization, length of time with the university, nature of the affiliation, and the like. The Chair encouraged the members now to forget their titles and their affiliations, but think of themselves as leaders, representing no one but the entire university as they considered various issues and proposed solutions.

2.  Charge to the Team. In the absence of the President, the Chair read the President's Charge to the Team (attached). He asked the Team to think about what would make the combined universities into a great university, and not worry whether any particular idea had earlier been rejected. He asked the Team to examine all proposals with care, with particular attention to respecting the traditions of the two universities but building on their strengths and synergies. While not promising to accept every recommendation, the President did promise to seriously consider any recommendation made by the Team, and asked that the Team keep both university communities aware of the work they were doing. He reminded the Team that while the Trustees were going to vote in February and while merger was expected to occur on July 1, the merger would be a process that would not be completed by July 1; and so he asked the Team to work on processes for resolving issues, as well as on resolutions themselves.

3.  Establishment of Ground Rules. The Team next discussed and agreed upon ground rules, including:

• The meetings would be closed to the Members and invited guests.
• Minutes would be prepared and made public. The Chair will explore the possibility of putting information on the web.
• Any Member could speak about what had happened at a meeting and what was being discussed, but no Member could ever identify the source of any particular comment or suggestion. This was formalized in a Pledge which all Members signed. Guests will be required to sign a similar pledge.
• Only the Chair would speak with the press.
• The Team would work through sub-teams: the Chair will appoint other people to help come up with recommendations. At least one Member will serve on every sub-team.
• No recommendation would be approved by simple majority, nor would unanimity be required: a consensus will be needed.
• Once a recommendation was approved by consensus, it would be unanimous; and no Member would speak in public against an approved recommendation.
• Every Member will make attendance at meetings a priority.

4.  Principles By Which To Evaluate Proposals. The process of making recommendations should begin with an idea of what we want to see in the new University -- what principles should we strive to establish. Once we have identified the principles that are material to our vision of the new University, then we can test any proposal against those principles. Only proposals that satisfy the criteria should become recommendations. The Members then worked to identify the principles that should guide the evaluation of specific proposals. Substantial discussion was held on the suggestions, and the Chair was charged with summarizing the discussion for the next meeting.

5.  Process By Which To Approve Recommendations. The Members then began discussion of the steps that should be taken before any recommendation was approved. The points included: whom the recommendation would affect (e.g., people, information technology, systems, management), financial implications, timeline, accountability and responsibility, stakeholders, and whether objective measures could be identified to test whether the recommendation was successful.

6.  Materials. The Chair provided a substantial amount of reading materials to the Team including: the Drexel Faculty Senate's draft Report on the survey it had just taken; the reports from the original four task forces; various materials from Accenture, Drexel's consultants in the merger. A complete list is attached. The Chair asked each member of the Committee to read through the materials to get a sense of the issues that we were going to face and the solutions that had been proposed for some of them.

7.  Homework. The Chair asked the Members to read the Materials and e-mail to him, by Wednesday noon, a list of up to ten issues that each Member thought should be addressed by the Team. Next meeting, we will work to combine issues into sub-Teams and then try to identify others who should participate with us in examining those issues.

8.  Schedule of Meetings. The Team will meet every Thursday evening from 5:00 -- 7:30 p.m., in the President's Conference Room, Main Building, Drexel University. There will be no meeting with week of December 24th. There will be a retreat during the week of January 14. Our report must be delivered to the President by February 4th, so we ought to have a draft set of recommendations by January 28th.

The meeting was adjourned at 7:24 pm.

Tobey Oxholm Chair and Secretary