Present: S. Barber, V. Brown, L. Gregg-Jolly, M. Montgomery, R. Osgood, M. Schneider, J. Swartz, R. Vetter

The meeting came to order a 4:20 p.m. in the Nollen House Conference Room.

The minutes and excerpts of 1/28/04 were approved as amended.

President's Remarks

The President made no remarks.

Dean's Remarks

He updated Council on the status of faculty searches and distributed a chart with this information by department.

He noted that during the October Board of Trustees meeting the Academic Affairs Committee asked to have a dinner conversation with the Executive Council at their next meeting in February. He distributed a list of items that they have indicated they would like to talk with Council about.

He reported that the Off Campus Study Office has received 220 applications as of yesterday. There is an imbalance between students wanting to study off-campus in the fall and spring semesters--which is not new. The College will have to shift about 30 students from spring to fall semester abroad. However, this year we have a particular problem in that we only have 13 students signed up for the fall semester of Grinnell in London and only 7 students signed up for Grinnell in Washington. He has worked with Helen Scott to come up with a solution to the situation and is suggesting that the Grinnell in London fall and spring programs be consolidated into the fall semester. Those students most interested in the spring internship opportunities would be offered those same opportunities but in the fall semester. The administration is considering alternatives to the current mode of operation of the Grinnell in Washington program.

The Dean announced that he would not be able to attend next Council meeting and suggested that it might be a good time for Council to consider the changes to be made to the Faculty Handbook appendices which have been drafted by Marci Sortor to bring the language of those appendices in line with current practice and procedure.

He reported that the Admissions Office has more applications logged into our system at this time than were received by the end of last year. The deadline for regular application was January 20th, but the deadline for transfers comes later. We will probably receive more than 500 greater Part 1 applications than last year. There was discussion of the change to the Common Application only.

Council Member Remarks

M. Schneider noted that Brad Bateman is ready to turn the draft language changes to the Faculty Handbook (regarding the review and promotion process for faculty in the Library and Physical Education Department) from the Faculty Organization Committee back to Executive Council for action. He will distribute these changes to Council for consideration.

L. Gregg-Jolly asked if there is a way to coordinate information coming from the discussions of the four strategic planning subcommittees where overlap exists. It was decided that when this occurred the Chair of the subcommittee would be responsible for disseminating that information to the other Chairs and the Chair of the Faculty.

Consortium for a Strong Minority Presence Departmental Proposals

R. Vetter asked what criteria will guide the decisions to be made regarding these proposals. The criteria that were included in the memorandum that went out to departments inviting proposals specified 1) strength of candidate, 2) overall needs of the department, and 3) department mentoring plan.

It was decided that the procedure to be used would be to rank order the proposals using the voice vote tally method. Discussion included a focus on achieving a divisional balance and the importance of mentoring in the selection process.

The meeting adjourned at 6:02 p.m.

Secretary
Karen Wiese