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

Remarks by the President

The College has completed the purchase of the Morrison Glove Factory. The building will be renovated to provide temporary space for personnel other than students and faculty while we engage in building projects on campus.

An offer went out today to candidates for the Director and Associate Director of the Art Gallery after a very thorough search process.

Resumes are being solicited for Director of Human Resources and for Dean of College Services. One Council member will be asked to serve on each of the selection committees.

Remarks by the Dean

Offers have gone out to candidates in Chemistry, Neuroscience (post-doctoral), and Music.

During their last visit, campus planners met with the Campus Planning Advisory Committee, with small groups of faculty, and with SGA Joint Board. During their next visit, May 13, they will present planning to date in an open forum for faculty members. They will do a similar presentation for the Board of Trustees while they are on campus May 6 and 7.

Proposal for Lecturer Status

Council discussed grounds for granting lecturer status.

Requests for Faculty Positions

Council continued its discussion of requests from departments/concentrations for faculty positions. Since Council members will be making recommendations to the Dean and the President, they asked for some guidance concerning the administration’s priorities. Some of the position requests are based on enrollments and others are based on continuation of the program and some on both rationales.

The Dean responded that one guiding principle might be that of maintaining close interaction with students in small classes, tutorials, and capstones. We already have a low student/faculty ratio so if we wish to add more positions this would need to be defended in the context of providing a different kind of educational model from our peers. A second guiding principle might be that of maintaining a defensible liberal arts curriculum. Enrollments are important but we do not want to just follow popular cultural whims. We might want to maintain or add certain areas of our curriculum even if enrollments are low or not add them even if there is a high student demand. Finally, we will need to sort out our institutional goals in terms of concentrations. When concentrations were first established they were based on courses already offered by departments. As new concentrations have been added, some have followed the model of Gender and Women’s Studies creating introductory and senior seminars which exist outside departments but which require staffing from departments.

The President commented that compared to other liberal arts colleges we have a lot of departments and concentrations. When we create concentrations we are in effect making future staffing decisions. Some concentrations are approaching the status of departments with majors. We might need to consider limiting the number of concentrations in order to support this area of the curriculum adequately. Other staffing tensions are created by our very small classes and by departments which build requirements into their majors to compensate for lack of general requirements.

Council members also commented on the staffing tensions created by concentrations and also by general education staffing needs (i.e. statistics, humanities) which must be met by departments but without adequate planning for resulting departmental staffing needs. Capstones will certainly create staffing needs which we will have to address as we look at our institutional priorities.

The President stated that our current staffing tensions have resulted from everyone acting appropriately to create an excellent curriculum. As we move into the future, we will need to sort out our future priorities and ways to adequately support these. He added that it might be helpful if he and the Dean were to draft a document outlining general issues for further discussion by Council.

The Dean commented that one of the strengths of our open curriculum has been the flexibility it has provided us in terms of faculty curricular development. This has caused us, however, to create areas in our curriculum which are difficult to manage. We need to look at the big picture in terms of our institutional goals as we attempt to sort out the issues we have been discussing and as we review and make recommendations about the current position requests.

Council members commented that we need to find ways to engage as many faculty members as possible in thinking broadly about our institutional goals. Because we have not found ways of doing this, too many faculty members believe that we are dealing with a zero sum game and are not, therefore, willing to think beyond their own corners.

Council members decided to hold an extra meeting of Council Sunday, April 25 at 6:30 p.m. in order to finish their initial discussion of each of the position requests.

The meeting was adjourned at 5:55 p.m.

--Helen Scott
Secretary