Present: President Osgood, Dean Swartz, Associate Dean P. Smith, Special Assistant to the President J. Brand, E. Dobbs, R. Grey, M. Pillado-Miller, L. Sinnett, D. Smith, B. Voyles

The President called the meeting to order at 7:36 p.m.

The purpose of this special meeting was to discuss the requests for faculty positions. Council members remarked that these requests generally seem to be driven by needs of the core curriculum of the department or concentration requesting the position. In many cases, there is little focus on contributions that a proposed faculty position could make to general education or to the curriculum of the College as a whole. Some Council members are interested in another feature, which was generally missing from these proposals, and yet which could be considered in allocating faculty positions-something that might be described as "incremental leave-proofing." Departments could be encouraged to consider whether a proposed position might permit the department to cover faculty leaves internally. Such a step might require a department to restructure its major and teaching responsibilities so that the curriculum does not depend on specialized courses that only one faculty member in the department is qualified to teach.

The Council discussed each proposal to identify the issues involved, and to determine whether the Dean's Office should collect additional materials to support or clarify the proposals. This discussion gave the Council an overview of the seven departments' requests for faculty positions.

President Osgood expressed his wish to schedule a session of the Executive Council for discussion of the new round of Fund for Excellence proposals. The Council meeting on May 5, just before the Board of Trustees meeting, seems like a good time for this discussion.

The meeting adjourned at 9:45 p.m.

Paula V. Smith
Secretary