Present: C. Hunter, D. Lopatto, E. Marzluff, W. Moyer, T. Roberts, J. Swartz, E. Willis

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

The minutes and excerpts of 3/1/06 were approved.

President’s Remarks

The President was traveling.

Dean’s Remarks

He updated Council on the status of faculty searches.

He announced that there is nothing on the agenda for the April 3rd faculty meeting. W. Moyer suggested that this meeting be cancelled.

The Dean reminded Council of a proposal by the Economics Department to the Curriculum Committee to change the way the Department teaches statistics. He explained how students can now satisfy the quantitative methods requirement through three different pathways. This is what leads them to want to revamp one of the paths—a new course to be developed by the Department. He noted that there was a recent meeting of all statistics teaching stakeholders (faculty). It is clear that there has been little communication among them. The last time the curriculum was formally examined was 1987. The Dean went on to say that after this meeting the Economics Department withdrew their proposal and are now requesting approval to teach their new statistics course as a Special Topics course for one year. He noted further that they have not proposed to withdraw their departmental commitment to teach Math 115. There was discussion about the course content of and enrollment demand for both Math 115 and 209. E. Willis stated that she believes the College needs a statistics course to serve the needs of both general education and our majors, and that it is critical that the College fully engage in this discussion.

The Dean noted that he has recently been looking more closely at the issue of Special Topics courses. He is concerned that these courses hold to the numbering system of the college catalog. There have been a few cases, which he has approved, where the faculty member(s) teaching the course have required students who have pre-registered to write proposals as petition for admission to the course and in one case the students were required to submit letters of recommendation. While there have been a few special cases that can be treated differently he is concerned about this process. There was discussion about the reasons for not allowing this practice, such as favoritism, desire to teach only the best students, dependence on the system prerequisites to be necessary and sufficient for registration, etc. D. Lopatto stated that if this preferential method of course registration were allowed to continue there will be an entire sub-culture of weaker students develop and this would not be a situation the College would like to find itself in. W. Moyer noted that the Curriculum Committee is trying to eliminate the option of allowing faculty members to select students (in an overenrolled situation) by name. They would like to see this replaced by a system that depends on students having met prerequisites, class standing, etc. T. Roberts noted that the selection of prerequisites will become a significant issue as we develop more interdisciplinary courses.

The Council engaged in a continuing discussion of the inclusion of a specific diversity statement in position description templates to be given to departments to use in faculty searches. E. Willis reopened this discussion after having heard from several members of the faculty who hold negative views on this subject believing that the inclusion of this statement will reduce the pool because white males will read this as targeting minority applicants and subsequently not apply. Others who voiced an opinion on this statement believe it is essentially disingenuous. Discussion ensued. E. Marzluff noted that if you search the College website on the word “diversity” the only thing that comes up is a document written by Russell Osgood in 1999 which very narrowly defines diversity in relation to domestic minorities. She urged more care be taken in reviewing what we leave on the website. E. Marzluff raised the issue of whether faculty are resentful that the Executive Council should consider itself as having the authority to tell departments what to do without a full faculty discussion. The question was tabled for now and it will be revisited in April when Council receives position proposals.

Council Member Remarks

T. Roberts asked about budget for the support of faculty scholarship and faculty-student research. The Dean reported that there are two separate budgets for this. Annual allocation of funds for supporting faculty research and MAPs is decided by the Committee for Support of Faculty Scholarship by considering proposals in two separate processes. W. Moyer asked if when funds are awarded for MAPs does the Dean or the faculty member tell the student to go ahead and prepare a proposal by May 1. The Dean replied that it is the responsibility of the faculty member.

Physical Education SEPC

He previously distributed a memorandum written by Dee Fairchild on 10/13/05 regarding the formulation of a SEPC for Physical Education Department. He believes that no action was taken by Council last year when the issue came up for both the PE Department and the Library, although it was resolved for the Library. He noted that in her memorandum she notes a lack of comparison between the structure of the Physical Education curriculum and athletic programs and other departments since they do not offer a major or concentration—the normal structure through which students come into regular contact with faculty. She offers a plan which identifies team captains for SEPC representation in the process of faculty evaluation. She is also recognizing that both varsity and non-varsity students take PE courses and to accommodate this other constituency of students she suggests a second letter be written by the Student Athlete Advisory Committee. There was discussion. The Dean will draft a policy that reflects the views of the Council and the Department and send it to both the Council and Greg Wallace simultaneously for comment.

Expanding Knowledge Initiative—Faculty Appointments

W. Moyer noted that EKI appointments are likely to be interdisciplinary and there is an issue regarding the necessity to take this appointment to the full faculty. For example, if we were to create a film studies position (which has no department) do we need to go to the faculty for approval. He stated that he is not in favor of this option. E. Marzluff and D. Lopatto noted that the EKI initiative approved by the faculty directs that all new positions go through normal college procedures, and hence Council should make these decisions. It was noted that more than one interdisciplinary appointment in an area could lead to more and more expansion in that area over time. E. Marzluff noted that ultimately even multiple appointments to a given area could do nothing to create a structure beyond their positions without further faculty approval. W. Moyer noted that it is the responsibility of Executive Council to create interdisciplinary search committees. The Dean noted that as we routinize the composition of search committees outside of the structure given by the Faculty Handbook we will need to change that language. W. Moyer noted that the EKI Interim Advisory Board is working on such a change.

Harris Leaves

The Dean would like Council to look at the experience of the College with regard to Harris leaves to see if they are serving the original intent of the endowment and institutional goals. He distributed data from 1993-94 on Harris recipients and separate data from 1999-2000 showing gender differentiated data on applications to the Harris and Leave programs. He asked Council, if they thought such a study would be informative in future decision-making, to help identify what type of information we would want collected. E. Marzluff asked what the enunciated goal of the Harris Leave program was when endowed. The Dean replied that it was to establish a highly competitive leave program for the purposes of attracting and retaining strong junior faculty. W. Moyer wondered whether there is correlation between Harris leave recipients and future productivity.

The meeting was adjourned at 6:10 p.m.

Secretary
Karen Wiese