Minutes of the Meeting of the Executive Council
April 2, 2003
Present: S. Barber, D. Kaiser, J. Mohan, 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 3/12/03 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 noted that five students have received prestigious national academic awards recently. They are Hai-Dang Phan '03 (Watson), Holly Maness '04 (Goldwater), Erin Hart '03 (Fulbright Teaching Assistantship to Germany), Geoff Swenson '03 (Carnegie Junior Fellow), and Rashed Chowdhury '03 (Carnegie Junior Fellow). He congratulated all on their superior academic performance.
The Dean distributed departmental faculty position proposals and announced that the discussion of these proposals will begin next week. He noted that the Chemistry, Physics, Economics, and Chinese and Japanese Departments had all submitted expansion proposals. D. Kaiser suggested that Division Chairs might begin the deliberations by providing an overview of the proposals and the issues that they present.
He then reviewed the agenda for the faculty meeting scheduled for Monday April 7th. He noted that it is M. Montgomery's goal to have Council approve some document that could go to the faculty for brief presentation at that next meeting. To that end he circulated a document to Council today for consideration at this meeting.
Council Member Remarks
D. Kaiser mentioned that he had read in the local newspaper that the College plans on selling some of its buildings and asked for details. The President responded that two houses facing each other on Sixth Avenue which are currently used for student housing will be sold in order to make room for parking which is a serious need at this point. There are two other properties have houses which are in such bad condition that they are not worth repairing one of which will be used for parking space.
M. Schneider suggested that the issue of early retirement might be taken up by Council this year. The President responded that there is an administrative subgroup of the Benefits Committee who are working to develop several alternative proposals.
As mentioned in a prior Council meeting, the Dean noted that the Committee on Academic Standing has been working on implementing a web-based system for accessing student academic information. They will be making an announcement shortly regarding its availability and utilization.
Faculty Salary Review Process
M. Montgomery had distributed a draft proposal to Council members prior to the meeting. Council took the remainder of the meeting discussing and editing that document which will be distributed to the faculty prior to the April 7th faculty meeting. M. Montgomery intends to present the proposal at that time.
S. Barber left the meeting at 5:50 p.m.
The meeting adjourned at 6:00 p.m.
Secretary
Karen Wiese