Present: R. Osgood, J. Brand, J. Swartz, B. Grey, K. Kamp, J. Mohan, M. Montgomery, J. Mutti, B. Voyles, H. Scott, P. Smith.

The following business was taken care of electronically in advance of the meeting.

President's Remarks (reported electronically)

The President reported on several things which have recently happened or are ongoing. 1) The College will host a memorial service for Greg Schreiber on April 13. He died while swimming on spring break in Costa Rica. We expect his family to attend. 2) We are currently looking for space to house IT, probably in downtown Grinnell or near our new FM building, in light of the possible demolition of Darby to make way for a new campus center. We have a small committee composed of Jim Swartz, Mark Miller, and Mark Godar working on this and other interim space issues in light of the campus center plans. 3) At the Board meeting in May it is likely that the Board will ask me to commence a process for overall institutional planning. We have discussed this preliminarily with Mark Montgomery and with Bob Grey and I would welcome discussion with any or all of you about this.

He also reported that the work on our new heating plant on 10th Avenue is proceeding rapidly. When completed we will sever heating from cooling (remaining near the science center) and this will allow us to augment our cooling capacity at the current site. All of this is being done to reduce our reliance on individual, inefficient and noisy heating and cooling units in current and proposed facilities. It also allows us to deliver heating and cooling in a more efficient and environmentally responsible manner than we are able to do at the current site. The plant work will now be matched by some digging to put in additional supply lines that will radiate from the plants. We have a memorandum for people on-campus that is being posted on the College's website at http://www.grinnell.edu/offices/facilities/ if you care to look at it. This work will be occasionally muddy and disruptive of some existing walking and driving patterns.

He also reported that we received another large commitment which we will announce in the next couple of months. This means that two of the four residence halls will be named for donors. Our goal is to have all four halls named before we dedicate them during the May Board meeting.

He stated that he just received written notice form the Watson Foundation that Michael Abel, one of our students, has won a Watson Fellowship.

Dean's Remarks (reported electronically)

He reported having received a phone call this afternoon that we received a $600,000 grant for the faculty career enhancement program which is a collaboration with Oberlin College. We actually requested $557,400, so this is great news. I think the members of our local committee, including: Jan Gross, Bob Grey, Henry Walker, Clark Lindgren, Elaine Marzluff, Marci Sortor, Doug Caulkins, Helen Scott, Paula Smith. Karen Wiese and Terri Phipps were wonderfully helpful in supporting the whole effort as well. This is only half the team and our Oberlin colleagues provided stimulation, creativity, and important contributions. We will get a summary of the grant activities out to you in the near future.

In the next month we will have departmental reviews in:
· Anthropology
· Art
· Chemistry
· Classics

The Dean updated Council on the status of searches.

The Dean reported that he checked with John Kalkbrenner about the Forum Grill this summer. He has not worked out exactly what they will do yet, but the past two summers the Grill was open for a few hours around lunch and the sales volume was pretty low. He hopes that they can be open and do some things to promote more business. He will be conferring with the staff soon to work out a plan. If you have ideas of ways to promote more use of the Forum Grill during the
summer, Dick Williams would be happy to hear them.

Real time minutes continue here.

Minutes and excerpts for March 13th were approved.

President's Remarks

The President noted that the Board of Trustees is interested in embarking on an institution-wide planning effort by the end of the academic year. They believe that good liberal arts colleges do this every so often. They see that the academic planning process should be part of a larger activity. The whole effort may take a year to complete. J. Mutti asked if the Board envisions doing this with some subset of the Board or the whole body. The President responded that the structure has not been determined, but expects representation from all campus constituencies. On the subject of planning, B. Grey mentioned that Carol Trosset has distributed a draft second survey of the faculty to the faculty members of Council for comment and that it should be ready to send to the full faculty soon.

Dean's Remarks

P. Smith previously distributed draft copy of information which might be placed in the front pages of the catalog and asked for comment by Monday.

The Dean updated Council on the status of searches.

He stated that he has been made aware of inconsistencies in the presentation of information about faculty in the Catalog and the Viewbook. He distributed a set of alternative methods of presentation of credential information and asked for Council feedback by email.

He distributed a sheet which summarized faculty positions which have been added or subtracted between 1997-2003. He also distributed a set of departmental proposals for new or replacement tenure-track positions. There are two from mathematics, one from philosophy, one from physics, one from psychology, and one from theatre.

H. Scott distributed a memorandum to Council regarding the constitution of a taskforce on convocations and academic speakers. B.Grey thanked her for the inclusion of faculty who are in senior faculty status positions and noted that there is far too little involvement of these precious resources. B. Grey moved, J. Mohan seconded, approval for H. Scott to proceed with constituting the committee. The motion was approved. H. Scott noted that when she gets agreement from the five who will become the committee she will bring that list back to Council for approval.

Council Remarks

B. Grey noted that the Curriculum Committee will be making a recommendation to regularize Mentored Advanced Projects. He suggested that Council consider the proposal which they will be receiving in a proforma manner and allow the Committee to move it directly to the full faculty without discussion in Council. There was discussion of the nature of faculty compensation to be associated with these projects. The Dean will get a compensation proposal to Council for review next week. He would then expect the full faculty could begin to review the proposal on April 15th with return comment by April 29th.

B. Grey noted that several faculty had approached him with what looked like a job ad for a Chinese language and literature person which appeared to be from Jim Mulholland's office. As it turned out, this document was created in order to satisfy an Immigration and Naturalization Service requirement (a long-standing feature of immigration law).

Psychology Proposal

The history of this proposal was reviewed by the Dean. The Dean noted that Psychology has also submitted a new proposal for a tenure-track position. B. Grey moved, K. Kamp seconded, that the proposal for a temporary position be turned down and that the Dean should allow the Department to forego the tutorial and approval. The motion was approved.

Faculty Salary Process

The President stated that he has high expectations for Council resolving this discussion in time for new procedures to be implemented next year. The Dean reviewed the progress to date. B. Grey opened the discussion by focusing on the issue of faculty development. He noted that there are several faculty members who have been in the associate rank for a very long time and that recently a faculty member had retired in that rank. He stated that this is not an acceptable situation. He would like to see a stronger push for more comprehensive faculty development in order to make sure that everything is done to make these people fully participating members of the academic community. He also reflected on the various stages of a faculty career in relation to leadership issues which have emerged from the faculty discussions during the planning process of the Mellon Faculty Career Enhancement project. There is getting to be a significant problem getting faculty to step up and provide such needed service. He strongly suggested that there be periodic evaluation during a career which focuses on expectations for service. It was suggested that the process of post-tenure review is a good way for faculty to reflect on and for administration to encourage two-way communication on this and other important career related issues.

The President stated that he believes that Council should come up with a developmental faculty process which is not directly tied to salary. B. Voyles suggested that with the new Mellon grant there couldn't be a better time to discuss this in whole faculty forum. The Dean noted that by tying this to a more lengthy periodic process he would expect that each faculty member would take the time to reflect on the larger issues of his/her career and produce a much more thoughtful and summative document than the current FAR process produces. Such an opportunity is directly tied to career enhancement. The President also noted that this type of process creates a flow of good communication on an individual level between faculty members and the Dean, as opposed to the current procedure which requires individuals to communicate through their departments.

B. Voyles suggested that this process still needs to be tied to salary decisions. J. Mutti disputed a misconception that service is penalized in the salary review process. Jack Mutti noted that individuals who have focused on service, as well as those who complete scholarly projects, have been rewarded in roughly comparable ways under the current procedure used by the Faculty Budget Committee. The procedure assigns a merit score where 50% of the weight is assigned to teaching, 33% to scholarship, and 17% to service. A faculty member who serves as a department chair and receives a 3 in service may have less time to move along a scholarly agenda, and may receive a 0.5 for continued progress on an ongoing project. Another faculty member may devote relatively little time to service, perhaps being on 3 or 4 less demanding committees, and receive a 1 in service; that faculty member may instead be successful in publishing a substantial refereed article every other year and receive an average of 1.5 for scholarship. Because the range of common scores for scholarship is tighter than for service, both faculty profiles would end up being rewarded with comparable merit scores. (The range of scores for scholarship reserves a 3 for particularly significant successes, such as the publication of a book). At least from the financial perspective, faculty do not face a major penalty for accepting major service commitments.

The President noted that the only comment he has heard from the Trustees regarding the faculty salary process during his tenure has been that perhaps we are overstimulating input by making piece-work payments, and instead should be rewarding performance. J. Mutti asked the Dean how many faculty members he could review in a year. The Dean stated that, assuming all the non-tenured faculty are removed from this group and the review cycle is three years, he would need to perform approximately 30 per year and that would be challenging but manageable. K. Kamp noted that there has been no discussion of how onerous this process might be in terms of required documentation from the department chair and that she is opposed to increasing their workload. B. Grey noted that there seems to be general Council agreement on all the issues for discussion with the exception of the faculty development element which has tentative agreement but needs a bit more discussion.

B. Voyles suggested that the division meeting would make a good forum for discussing the general parameters of this new salary review process.

The meeting was adjourned at 6:08 p.m.

Secretary
Karen Wiese