Present: C. Hunter, E. Marzluff, J. Meehan, R. Osgood, S. Rebelsky, T. Roberts, J. Swartz, E. Willis.

The meeting came to order at 4:15 p.m. in room 226 of the Joe Rosenfield Center. The minutes and excerpts of 3-7-07 and 3-14-07 were approved.

President’s Remarks

The President noted that he would be leaving the meeting early because he is hosting a talk by Neil MacCormick and dinner with his international law students. MacCormick was recently Scottish representative to the European Parliament.

Because he would be leaving early, the President wanted to share his thoughts on the Early Career Faculty group request to make department review letters routinely and consistently available to those early career faculty under review, primarily for professional development purposes. While he appreciates their request for transparency, he noted that the current procedure dictated by the Faculty Handbook places the responsibility for personnel review exclusively with the Personnel Committee and that anything that appears to alter this responsibility would be dangerous and unacceptable. Currently, the Personnel Committee conducts the review and the Dean is responsible for writing the resulting letter to the faculty member under review. The Dean, in this process, screens that information which would be considered confidential and that the Committee finds unnecessary. There was further discussion of this issue in view of the inconsistency across departments in regard to information sharing in the review process.

Dean’s Remarks

There was discussion of a staffing request from the History Department.

The President left the meeting at 4:50 p.m.

The Dean noted that the Physical Education, History, and Economics Departments will be undergoing external reviews this semester. He noted that traditionally the respective Division Chair meets with the review teams.

The Dean distributed a memorandum from Bill Ferguson dated 4/2/07 which concerns the long-term staffing needs for a Policy Studies Concentration and the Concentration proposal. He noted that the Concentration is not now ready to submit a position proposal due to further curricular/departmental coordination needed but plans to submit such a proposal in future.

The Dean updated Council on the status of faculty searches.

He distributed 11 position proposals for Council deliberation, six of which are considered EKI proposals. The Office of Interdisciplinary Studies EKI Advisory Board will be discussing these six proposals very soon and will provide advice to Council on their merit.

Council Member Remarks

E. Willis noted that the Faculty Budget Committee continues to discuss the process that they will recommend be followed for next year.

Willis also noted that Council needs to decide how to proceed with faculty discussion of the “No Limits” theme.

C. Hunter expressed concerns that the AD Search Committee did not see the AD invite-to-interview memo prior to its submission to the diversity officer and president (though the committee fully supports the invitations themselves) and wanted to be assured that the full committee will get a chance to review and approve the final recommendation before it is submitted.

T. Roberts expressed concern with the possibility that an increased number of students are withdrawing from classes out of a concern for low grades. The Dean said he would check with the Registrar to see if there are an unusual number of drops recently.

Library Request for Change in SEPC Selection Process

The Dean reminded Council of the recent history of creating a selection process for SEPCs for the Library and the Physical Education Department. After a year of implementation of the new procedure, the Library has requested a change which would slightly modify the existing procedure resulting in a slightly larger SEPC. S. Rebelsky moved, C. Hunter seconded, approval of the Library request to revise the SEPC election policy to match that proposed in a memorandum of request from Richard Fyffe, dated March 28, 2007. The motion was approved.

Discussion of Position Requests

The Dean noted that the Office of Interdisciplinary Studies has selected a subset of the position proposals for discussion by the EKI Advisory Board in the coming weeks. Those requests for expansion positions include:

Art—Digital Film-New Media
Computer Science
Philosophy-Neuroscience
Linguistics Concentration—General/Spanish Linguistics
Chinese & Japanese; E. Asian Studies Concentration—General/Japanese Linguistics
Ad Hoc Committee on Humanities—Film History and Theory

E. Willis suggested that in order to make progress on this task the Council should discuss the remaining position proposals first while giving time for the Advisory Board discussion of the EKI designated requests. These non expansion requests include:

English—Medieval Literature
Political Science—Comparative
Political Science—Judicial Politics and Processes
Library—Data Services Librarian
Gender and Women’s Studies Concentration—GWS

Council discussed a concern voiced by T. Roberts regarding a fairly widely held perception among departments that by appointing new interdisciplinary faculty their chances for having future requests for replacement positions would be negatively affected because the EKI appointment(s) would be viewed by future Councils as expansions. Both the Dean and Chair of the Faculty expressed the view that, while nothing could be promised by this Council that would prescribe action by future Councils, they did note the following. First, that past Councils, stretching back for at least ten to fifteen years, have rarely if ever denied a department’s request for a replacement. Second, that since most EKI appointments will only add courses to a department in the context of also adding to the College’s general education offerings, that taking on an EKI appointment could be seen as a positive and not a negative in any future request for a replacement.

C. Hunter asked how many EKI expansions are already in the budget projections. The Dean responded that there are three budgeted in each of the next three years. J. Meehan asked how she should approach reading and evaluating the EKI position proposals. T. Roberts and C. Hunter responded that the appropriate lens would include the goals of the EKI for expanding curricular areas and providing the opportunity for current faculty to branch out to new areas of teaching.

The meeting adjourned at 6:20 p.m.

Secretary
Karen Wiese