Present: V. Brown, L. Gregg-Jolly, D. Lopatto, R. Osgood, W. Moyer, J. Swartz, R. Vetter, E. Willis

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

The minutes and excerpts of the 2/9/04 meeting were held for consideration next week.

President's Remarks

The President noted that the Trustees will vote on approval of Science Center construction during its meeting in Grinnell this week. E. Willis asked what will happen next in terms of construction. The President outlined the construction phases. The Dean noted that the design is close to complete. The whole process will take three years. If the Board approves, construction will begin this summer.

He noted that he will be discussing the current version of the Strategic Plan with the Trustees and does not foresee any issues. He asked Executive Council to make any suggestions for change to Jon Chenette, Jonathan Brand, or him.

Dean's Remarks

He distributed a document which he used to update Council on the status of faculty searches. He noted that four diversity appointments have been made under the current diversity initiative.

It was decided that because there was relatively little business to be done over the next month in faculty meetings, that business would be taken care of in the February 21st meeting and the March 7th meeting would be cancelled.

The Dean noted that the Curriculum Committee had met yesterday and it became clear during the meeting that the faculty need to have a discussion about the rhythm of the semester. It was decided that the discussion would be best suited to Division meetings. The Dean alerted the Division Chairs that their representatives from the Curriculum Committee will be approaching them about this. W. Moyer added that one of the major problems seems to be resulting from assigning a major paper due at the end of the semester without faculty having met with the students during the semester.

Council Remarks

W. Moyer noted that the students on the Honorary Degree Committee have identified Carol Bellamy to be the Commencement Speaker at this year's ceremony. Ms. Bellamy has been Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) since 1995, and former Director of the United States Peace Corp. He noted that she has accepted the invitation. W. Moyer moved, V. Brown seconded, to recommend Carol Bellamy to the faculty as the 2005 Commencement Speaker and to bestow the honorary degree. The motion was approved.

W. Moyer noted that the Expanding Knowledge Initiative Committee met with Student Government President, Rebecca Miller, to talk about the initiative. The Committee will talk with the SGA next week, and will then hold student focus groups.

L. Gregg-Jolly noted that she had two recommendations with regard to the diversity report distributed to Council last week and subsequently issued by Frank Thomas to the community. She stated that she would like to see the data on gender broken down by percentages, and she would like multiple-year data provided to allow tracking, as has been done in the past.

E. Willis asked the President if he had made an appointment to the faculty subcommittee of the Diversity Steering Committee to replace outgoing Katya Gibel Azoulay. He said that he had not received a recommendation from the Faculty Organization Committee.

The President left the meeting at 5:30 p.m.

Draft Statement on Diversity

The Council had agreed last week to take up this discussion at this meeting for reasons of time.

Council discussed the draft recommendations from the Diversity Committee. There was general agreement that the recommendations should highlight the ways in which departments should make full use of the office of the Vice President for Diversity. There was also agreement that the recommendations should make clear the resources which departments can and should draw upon to ensure a diverse pool of applicants. These resources include librarians, who can and will train support staff in how to locate appropriate sites for advertising jobs and contacting potential candidates. All agreed with the Dean that the best time to positively affect the diversity of a search's pool is before a department prepares its proposal and Council members discussed a recommendation that any department planning to proposed a job search meet with the Vice President for Diversity before writing the proposal so that the proposal can include plans for diversifying the pool.

The meeting was adjourned at 6:30 p.m.

Secretary
Karen Wiese