Minutes of the Meeting of the Executive Council
April 30, 2003
Excerpts
Present: S. Barber, J. Chenette, D. Kaiser, 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 4/23/03 were approved.
President's Remarks
The President noted that the Board of Trustees will be meeting in Grinnell this weekend. On Thursday a group of them will meet with M. Montgomery to continue with strategic planning. On Friday and Saturday the Board will hear a Cesar Pelli presentation on all the new buildings on campus, discuss investment, endowment, and payout policies, vote on tenure and promotion recommendations, vote on the degrees to be confirmed and hear presentations of their work at the College by Leslie Gregg-Jolly and Ralph Savarese.
Dean's Remarks
The Dean noted that he had just returned from a meeting of the Board of the American Council of Academic Deans and a reaccreditation review at St. Olaf.
He asked Council for their advice on a proposal from Communications and Events that as of this year we will no longer read citations for faculty members moving to Senior Faculty Status at Commencement but will reserve this practice for those moving to retirement. Council members concurred.
He distributed an excerpt from a discussion of grade inflation which was held by the Committee on Academic Standing this year. D. Kaiser expressed dismay for not having received this information before this time when Council will have no time to discuss it this year.
Council Members Remarks
M. Schneider asked if the letters from the Budget Committee were going to be sent to the department chairs. M. Montgomery stated that they would.
J. Mutti noted that the Economics Department has experienced an increasing number of requests for accelerated graduation and asked if other departments were having this same experience and what the impact on the scheduling of curricular offerings would be. The Dean said he would talk to the Registrar about this.
M. Schneider distributed some suggested additional position description boilerplate language regarding the need to teach outside the discipline (tutorial).
Sociology Proposal
There was a discussion of a proposal from the Sociology Department.
Departmental Staffing Requests
There was discussion of departmental staffing requests. M. Montgomery asked the President if, in light of his comments on expansion in an earlier meeting, a proposal for an expansion is approved then nothing else will be able to be approved. The President noted that he will probably not approve anything that is an increase over our current budget over the long-term until the planning process has concluded.
The meeting adjourned at 6:15 p.m.
Secretary
Karen Wiese