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

Minutes of the meeting of August 25 were corrected and approved.

The President called the meeting to order at 4:20 p.m. in Windsor House.

Remarks by the President

In light of widespread conversations about the College's relationship with the community, the President expressed the desire to clarify our objectives. The College is interested in the following:

1. the appearance and economic health of our near environs, including the downtown area
2. the health and vitality of the major public institutions, such as the library, the hospital, the public schools
3. the environmental health and general well being of the larger area in which we are living, including the county
4. our relationship with the higher educational community in the state of Iowa, the Midwest, and the nation.

The President is preparing a statement which will go out to everyone on our campus sometime next week.

Remarks by the Dean

The Dean welcomed Jonathan Brand, Special Assistant to the President, and H. Scott and P. Smith, Associate Deans, to the 1998-99 Executive Council.

The Dean reported that the professional campus planning group hired by the College would like to meet with Executive Council before meeting with a broadly based campus advising committee. Council agreed to invite this planning group to its September 23rd meeting.

Scott Baumler has been appointed Senior Research Analyst in our Institutional Research Office. He will begin work on October 1. Baumler has a B.S. in Agricultural Business from Iowa State University and an M.S. in Policy Analysis from The Pennsylvania State University; he has a strong background in quantitative data analysis. Sinnett commented that she hopes Baumler's expertise will help us with our assessment of our evaluation of teaching and with validity studies concerning these evaluations, with departmental assessment plans, and with program evaluation so that we can clearly articulate our goals and how we intend to measure our success in meeting those goals.

The Dean has asked Dobbs to lead the discussion on the floor of the faculty at the September 3rd Faculty Meeting this Thursday on changes in the Faculty Handbook with respect to personnel policies. D. Smith asked what we would do if there was low attendance and/or significant controversy involving the proposed changes. Council resolved that the motions for change could be tabled but that in that case we would need to adhere to the old guidelines since it is imperative that the guidelines for reviews go out to department chairs prior to our next Faculty Meeting.

Grey expressed concern that in the suggested change in the Faculty Handbook about promotion to full professor, teaching, scholarship, and service are mentioned with no reference to relative weighting of these three factors. He wants to assure that the Personnel Committee does not assign undue weight to service given this lack of relative weighting. Sinnett pointed out that there are other places in the Faculty Handbook where it is made very clear that teaching is pre-eminent so that the proposed change in the Handbook could not be construed as giving service greater weight than it has been given in the past.

The Dean reported on the Transcript Analysis Workshop which he organized this summer. Twelve faculty members expressed an interest in meeting with the Dean and Carol Trosset, Director of Institutional Research, to consider and assess the curricular choices of students by examining actual transcripts. The workshop gave the participants the opportunity to think about our curriculum as a whole and about how we are advising our students. The Dean stated that it has been a long time since the faculty has talked collectively about our curriculum and about advising and asked for Council's advice on how we might extend this kind of discussion to the whole faculty. In initiating this discussion about the curriculum, he emphasized that he has no agenda other than that we be deliberate and intentional about how we are advising and about what we consider to be important in a liberal arts education; we need to communicate better amongst ourselves and with the outside world about this. The President endorsed the initiation of this discussion commenting that the faculty spends an enormous amount of time on advising, and we need to be sure that this is a wise investment of faculty time. He added that he sees clear benefit to a non-distributional curriculum in that it provides students with lots of guidance from faculty in finding a well-thought through path to the major which makes most sense for each individual student. At institutions with distribution requirements, oftentimes such advising simply does not exist.

Sinnett commented that, however we organize the discussion with the full faculty, we should make it clear from the start where such a discussion will lead, that is how we intend to proceed with the information once it has been gathered.

Election of Representative to the Affirmative Action Committee

L. Sinnett was unanimously elected to serve a second year as Executive Council representative to the Affirmative Action Committee.

Remarks by Council Faculty Members

Dobbs thanked the President for his comments in the Grinnell Herald Register about the College's ranking as 11th in the US News and World Report annual survey, specifically for the fact that while he acknowledged the influence of rankings on prospective students' interest in Grinnell, he also expressed the hope that students "learn more about the academic opportunities and other details of attending Grinnell College than can be gleaned from rankings."

Pillado-Miller asked when Council would receive for its approval announcements of faculty positions to be filled. The Dean responded that he intended to bring all announcements which have been sent to his office to Council at its next meeting so that policy issues having to do with procedures for advertising positions could be thoroughly discussed.

Sinnett requested that regular council meeting agenda items be reordered so that issues requiring the most discussion would appear earlier on the agenda. Council members endorsed this suggestion.

Discussion of Department Chair Guidelines for Reviews

Council members reviewed the final draft of the Department Chair Guidelines for Reviews. Dobbs brought forward changes suggested by the Personnel Committee; these changes and other suggestions for changes brought forward by council members were discussed and the final draft was approved.

The meeting was adjourned at 6:18 p.m.

Helen Scott
Secretary