Present: Dean Swartz, Associate Deans H. Scott and P. Smith, E. Dobbs, R. Grey, M. Pillado-Miller, L. Sinnett, D. Smith, and B. Voyles

The Dean called the meeting to order at 4:17 p.m. in Nollen House.

Remarks by the Dean

Nathaniel Borenstein '80, the first Robert N. Noyce '49 Visiting Professor in the Physical Sciences, Mathematics and Computer Science, is now on campus. He will be giving the Convocation talk tomorrow. Borenstein will return for more extended periods in the second semester, when he will give two short courses.

The President will meet with Council tomorrow to discuss Fund for Excellence proposals and his document presenting the eight principles which he hopes will provide a framework for making decisions about the funding of proposals. He will hold an open forum for a similar discussion with the full faculty on Tuesday, November 3, at 4:15 p.m. The President will also meet with students and with staff to discuss FFE proposals and the Eight Principles.

The Faculty Meeting scheduled for Monday, November 2, will be devoted to small group discussions by faculty on transcript analysis. Carol Trosset, Director of Institutional Research, has organized faculty into small groups, has sent out the agenda for discussion, and has appointed recorders for each group. Trosset will present results of these discussions at a future faculty meeting.

Dobbs remarked that since there will not be a regularly scheduled Faculty Meeting on Monday, November 3, she is glad that the President and Chair of the Board of Trustees have circulated a report about the October meeting of the Board so that the faculty are informed about that meeting.

The Dean has received three proposals requesting additions of faculty, one from a concentration and two from departments which he will bring to Council at a future meeting.

Personal Leave Request

Council engaged in a lengthy discussion about when it is appropriate to recommend the granting of a personal leave without pay. The Faculty Handbook states:

Leaves without pay may be granted under the following conditions:

1. Leave without pay is ordinarily granted only to applicants who are of the rank of Assistant Professor or higher at the time of application and who have been in continuous service without extended leave during the three years preceding the beginning of the academic year in which the leave is to occur.
2. Leave without pay is ordinarily granted for a period not to exceed one year. By Executive Council action, leave without pay cannot exceed two years.
3. Application for leave without pay must normally be made six months prior to the time the leave is to be taken, and is granted by the Board of Trustees under the same conditions as given for sabbatical leaves.

Council concluded that the granting of a personal leave without pay for a scholarly project should be based on the merit of the project. Such proposals need to be accompanied by departmental support and ordinarily should be made only after three years of continuous service, the half way mark between sabbaticals. However, exceptions to this three-year rule might be made if the college, the department, and the faculty member's teaching and scholarship are being extraordinarily well served by the proposed scholarly project. Outside funding, while it could be used as evidence of merit, is not the deciding factor in the granting of leaves.

Council discussed and made a recommendation about the specific case before it.

Issues Surrounding Personnel Considerations

Council lauded Paula Smith for the extraordinarily fine job she has done in drawing up a document on "Division of Responsibilities: Faculty Executive Council and Faculty Personnel Committee." Smith outlines the history of the creation of a new Faculty Personnel Committee that is responsible for making recommendations to the President on re-appointment, tenure, and promotion. The creation of the Personnel Committee has allowed the Executive Council, formerly responsible for deliberations on individual personnel cases, to give greater attention to matters of college-wide academic policy and governance. Elements of this change, however, have required clarification and adjustment. P. Smith's document delineates the duties of the Personnel Committee and the Executive Council and calls attention to issues which still need to be resolved.

It was decided during several joint meetings of the Personnel Committee and the Executive Council last spring, that policy considerations and recommendations to the full faculty about policy changes should remain in the hands of Executive Council. Personnel Committee would like to confine its duties to the actual consideration of personnel cases. Dobbs and D. Smith questioned the wisdom of this decision. They believe that the faculty, in establishing the Personnel committee separate from the Executive Council, intended that the Committee have the main responsibility for considering and proposing to the faculty any changes in policy and procedures for re-appointment, promotion, and tenure. They also suggested that it is often difficult to distinguish between policy and procedure. Having failed to convince others by their arguments, however, both conceded to the majority view that it would be inappropriate to reopen this discussion since this issue had been so recently resolved by mutual agreement between the two committees last spring.

The first unresolved issue in the division of duties which Council discussed concerned the selection of candidates for review for promotion to full professor. Council concluded that the Dean ought to come to the Personnel Committee with his list not endorsed by any group and that in compiling his list he ought to seek advice wherever he thinks appropriate. Council recommended that in addition to talks with the faculty member, the department, the division chair, it would be appropriate to consult with the faculty budget committee which makes recommendations each year on salaries based on teaching, scholarship, and service. Council also suggested that the Dean report to the Personnel Committee on all faculty members potentially eligible for promotion to full professor, including those he is not recommending, so that no faculty member gets overlooked.

The second unresolved issue discussed had to do with the evaluative criteria used in recommending for promotion to full professor. The College does not have a policy which would permit, in carefully reviewed cases, the promotion to full professor of a faculty member whose teaching is highly regarded, who contributes in valuable ways to intellectual discourse on campus, who has an exemplary record of service, and yet who has been at the associate rank for many years without peer-reviewed scholarship. Does the College want to establish such a policy? The discussion was inconclusive although all Council members agreed that the College, as Sinnett suggested, ought to aim at being an institution where such a case could not arise given our development opportunities and support for research.

The discussion of a number of policy issues will be continued at the next Council meeting.

The meeting was adjourned at 6:15 p.m.

Helen Scott
Secretary