Minutes of the Meeting of the Executive Council
March 12, 2003
Excerpts
Present: S. Barber, D. Kaiser, J. Mohan, M. Montgomery, J. Mutti, R. Osgood, M. Schneider, J. Swartz.
The meeting came to order at 4:20 in the Nollen House Conference Room.
The minutes and excerpts of 3/5/03 were approved.
President's Remarks
The President made no prepared remarks.
Dean's Remarks
The Dean updated Council on the status of faculty searches.
He distributed, as requested, the recommendations of the review of the Noun Program last year.
He distributed a revised proposal for a dance position contract extension from the Theatre Department. There was discussion.
Council Remarks
M. Schneider led a discussion of faculty salary raises. He noted that some have suggested that there is a systematic trend of keeping Associate Professors in rank longer than our peers (approximately six years longer) and that this has the effect of inflating the salaries of those in the Associate rank and subsequently those in the full professor rank. There was discussion.
J. Mutti entered the meeting at 5:15 p.m.
The President noted that there have been discussions about making changes to our list of peer institutions. Specifically, there has been suggestion to replace Williams with Reed College since Amherst is already on the list and is quite comparable to Williams. Also, there has been consideration of replacing Washington and Lee with some Midwest college since Davidson is on the list. D. Kaiser asked what motivated a change at this time. He noted that, although Reed in many ways does resemble Grinnell, in other important ways Reed does not represent a college that Grinnell ought to seek to match. Removing Williams from the list would seem to have the effect of lowering the target of comparison, and therefore D. Kaiser urged that any change in the list of peer institutions be made only for compelling reasons.
The Dean noted that D. Kaiser and a group of about 10 people from Grinnell attended an ACM conference at Beloit this past weekend which stimulated interesting and invigorating discussions on curriculum and student life.
Faculty Salary Process
M. Montgomery distributed a copy of a document on the faculty salary process which was originally penned by the Dean and subsequently modified by Montgomery. There was discussion of several lingering issues including peer review of teaching, end-of-course evaluations, multiyear evaluations for tenured faculty, duties of the department chairs, claim on faculty time, Dean's duties, tenured vs. untenured process, productivity, and satisfaction. The Dean made clear that whatever the outcome he hopes that we can have as a goal that the process will take less and certainly not more time than what is now invested. M. Montgomery suggested that this be discussed by the full faculty.
The meeting adjourned at 6:02 p.m.
Secretary
Karen Wiese