Present: S. Barber, V. Brown, L. Gregg-Jolly, M. Montgomery, 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 9/17/03 and 9/17/03 were approved.

The President was not present at this meeting.

Dean's Remarks

The Dean distributed a document describing the merger of the Iowa Peace Institute and Grinnell College. The document outlines the outcome of discussions held by Kent McClelland, George Drake, Jim Swartz, Russell Osgood and Greg Buntz over the summer. A committee will now take responsibility for acting on this matter. M. Schneider noted that this action will result in an endowed designated gift, the income from which will be used to support a mix of things that are both like activities undertaken previously by the Institute and those which are more in keeping with our mission. L. Gregg-Jolly asked about the long-term program implications of this designated endowment. The Dean responded by describing the fiduciary responsibilities of the College in the case of designated endowments.

Council Member Remarks

M. Schneider brought an article which appeared in The Chronicle Review dated 9/19/03 by William Bowen and Sarah Levin regarding athletics and performance at elite colleges. He urged all to read this article.

Diversity Initiative

Council skipped to this item on the agenda leaving discussion of the sabbatical leave to a later date.

M. Montgomery reported the result of the divisional voting on whether or not to retain a focus on domestic diversity hiring in our diversity initiative as evenly split (37 in favor, 35 against) and asked Council members if they think, in light of the discussions and resulting faculty vote in the divisions, that raising this issue in the first place was worth it. L. Gregg-Jolly responded that she believes the vote itself was not that useful but that the discussions surrounding the vote were valuable. V. Brown noted that some faculty in the Social Studies Division said the discussion did not allow them to express their views on the issue and expressed concern that key issues were obfuscated. Council continued its discussion of the diversity initiative focusing on different ways of defining diversity, including demographic, pedagogical, and curricular criteria. V. Brown noted that there are those faculty members who favor rethinking the curriculum as the means to achieving diversity. She suggested that by decoupling demographic and curricular diversity we can avoid a situation which requires that every diversity hire teach courses that add curricular diversity, which in her view is social stereotyping.

L. Gregg-Jolly suggested that Council use the relevant portions of the current Mission Statement ("The College exists to provide a lively academic community of students and teachers of high scholarly qualification from diverse social and cultural circumstances.") as their guide to proceeding to make decisions on this issue. V. Brown again suggested that as we proceed to search for diverse candidate we commit to a broader curricular discussion. The Dean agreed that the most significant downside of our current curricular structure is that we don't now have those wide-ranging comprehensive curriculum discussions. M. Schneider suggested that the larger philosophical discussions about curriculum may be intimidating to a generation of faculty who are more comfortable within the departmental boundaries and that a more productive discussion might focus on what happens in the classroom. He suggested that all faculty could benefit from simply visiting other faculty in their classrooms.

The Dean reflected on the fact that the number one problem that this initiative was created to address was a demographic one. He believes that we have been incredibly successful in making appointments of international faculty, but that when you look at our successes in successfully appointing faculty from regular searches who are of diverse domestic origins you don't even need one hand to count them. He added that if we can take the past experience as an indicator of the future then there is no choice but to do something different. M. Montgomery noted that the Trustees gave a mandate to the administration to achieve greater diversity in the faculty body and authorized the expenditure of funds in support of their mandate and he has no reason to believe that their intention was not to achieve greater domestic diversity. He noted that the recent faculty vote gave no mandate for Council to reverse policy. L. Gregg-Jolly noted that Council business at this meeting is to decide whether or not we are going to continue with the diversity initiative in order to allow a timely recruitment process. The Dean added that Council also needs to determine what model (e.g. invite all departments, target only a few departments, extend the period for a departmental search, etc.) will be used if we are to proceed. He also noted that, while he is not proud of the current demographic make-up of our faculty body, he would agree to postponing any decisions in order to allow a full consideration of all these issues. L. Gregg-Jolly asked whether the impression (that she has received from comments made by the President and Dean) that there is the potential for making more than one diversity appointment is correct. V. Brown argued that to have all the energy that has been stirred up by recent discussions come down to making one appointment reduces the importance of the issue. She argued for a sustained and multifaceted approach to recruitment. Council proceeded to discuss a range of approaches including the:

M. Montgomery predicted that ten years from now Grinnell's faculty would not be any more diverse than it is today. V. Brown insisted that we do not need to accept this prophecy. L. Gregg-Jolly pressed Council on whether or not they intended to make any decisions during this meeting which would be necessary if we are to proceed with recruiting in a timely way this year. R. Vetter added that they may decide not to proceed this year. While anxious to increase diversity on campus in as timely manner as possible, L. Gregg-Jolly expressed her concern at supporting the initiative as carried out before because it seems there may be more productive ways of going about increasing diversity on campus.

S. Barber left the meeting at 6:03 p.m.

There was a divergent discussion on financial considerations and constraints of the institution. R. Vetter asked for background on the creation of the Fund For Excellence. The discussion included the base budget, the capital reserve fund, the financial history of the Fund For Excellence, the growth of the capital reserve fund, the nature of constraints on contribution of the endowment to base budget, the effect of Board fiscal decisions on academic program, and prognostications on the nature of future Board decision-making in relation to the anticipated exponential growth of the capital reserve fund-given the constrained policy on contributions to base budget.

L Gregg-Jolly left the meeting at 6:35 p.m.

M. Schneider noted that a number of ideas regarding potential strategies for pursuing diversity of the faculty body had been raised in the meeting, and suggested that those initiating the various strategies return to Council next week with a precise for discussion and decision-making.

The meeting adjourned at 6:42 p.m.

Secretary
Karen Wiese