Present: R. Osgood, J. Brand, J. Swartz, B. Grey, D. Kaiser, K. Kamp, J. Mohan, J. Mutti, B.Voyles.

The meeting came to order at 4:15 in the Nollen House Conference Room.

The minutes and excerpts of the December 19, 2001 and January 23, 2002 meetings were approved.

President's Remarks

The President noted the opening of the Iraqi art exhibit and urged everyone to visit.

He noted that discussions with the Luce Foundation had revealed that the best fit between the two institutions with regard to a request for a new junior faculty member is in the area of human geography. To that end, he had signed a two page letter of intent to submit a proposal (if invited) to make such a request.

B. Grey noted a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education regarding endowment performance at the nations colleges and asked the President about the health of the College's endowment. The President responded that the endowment is quite healthy at $1.1 billion at the end of the reporting period, which is up approximately 22%.

Dean's Remarks

The Dean noted that the Curriculum Committee will be meeting on February 12th and 26th to discuss the Mentored Advanced Projects program.

He has distributed a graphic representing spring 2002 course enrollments which shows the average enrollment is 16.5 students per class.

The President stated that he plans to do research on the new Williams College experiment with reduced faculty loads and larger class enrollments announced last week. He believes that this information will be instructive as we move forward with academic planning.

The Dean announced that Heather Lobban-Viravong has accepted our offer as a tenure track assistant professor in English. He also stated that the English Department will be finishing interviews for their second tenure track position this week.

He noted that Council will need to be prepared to consider the Consortium for a Strong Minority Presence proposals from departments next week.

The philosophy department will be coming forward with a proposal next week. There was discussion of a position announcement provided to Council by the department and it was approved.

J. Brand left the meeting at 5:00 p.m.

B. Grey moved, K. Kamp seconded, to approve the German Department request for a one-year replacement position. The motion was approved.

B. Grey noted that D. Smith has had the mission statement draft placed on the web and solicited written comments prior to next faculty meeting.

The Dean reported that the numbers of admissions applicants is up in all categories. We have 52 early decision students who have paid deposits at this point compared to 38 last year.

Discussion of Honorary Degrees

B. Grey reported that he had received quite a few nominations for honorary degree candidates. The strongest candidates are Ray Horton '62 and Vera Rubin. Horton has spent a significant portion of his career as the head of the Citizens Budget Commission in New York. Rubin is a renowned astronomer who began her career at a time when women were not represented in her field. B. Grey moved, D. Kaiser seconded, recommending to the faculty that the college give an honorary degree to Ray Horton and Vera Rubin. The motion was approved.

Discussion of the Fund for Excellence

The President asked Council how they would like to structure a discussion of the various activities and programs which were initiated by the Fund and have been rolled into the base budget.

Discussion of the Faculty Salary Process

B. Grey reiterated from last week that the Faculty Budget Committee is very unhappy with the process. D. Kaiser noted that this issue appears repeatedly and it is time to move forward with resolving it. He suggested using the Dean's proposal of August 30,2001 as the point of departure. B. Grey noted that there are two issues: what to do about the current year dilemma, and how to set a long-term strategy and policy for setting salary adjustments. There was extensive discussion. B. Voyles finally asked for some progress in discussion and offered the following points for discussion: moving to multi-year review; assessment of teaching, departmental scholarly expectations, excluding certain categories of faculty, and continuous vs. discontinuous ratings. It was decided that these items would be discussed individually next week.

The meeting adjourned at 6:10 p.m.

Secretary
Karen Wiese