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 4-18-07 were approved.

President’s Remarks

In response to a request from E. Willis, the President provided guidance on college diversity programs. According to the Gruder decision, the following should be in place: 1) a written policy regarding diversity in hiring practices, 2) to the extent that diversity is sought it must be justified by reference to desired educational outcomes and assessed periodically, 3) race cannot be the only factor or wholly determinative but can be one of several factors, 4) the plan must be holistic, 5) there can be no floors ceiling or quotas, and 6) the plan must be time limited.

Dean’s Remarks

The Dean noted that the Curriculum Committee has received more than 50 requests for summer internships for credit and this has raised concerns regarding the burden on faculty time. There will be further discussion of this issue since the faculty severely curtailed this practice several years ago for the same reason.

The Curriculum Committee has proposed that they should be involved in prioritizing faculty position proposals before Council reviews them. Council members believe that this is not consistent with the intentions and explicit direction provided in the Faculty Handbook which states that it is the responsibility of the Council to plan the curriculum.

The Dean updated Council on the status of faculty searches.

He noted that the Registrar’s web page has updated information on special topics courses available next semester.

E. Willis noted that there were 22 term appointments made this year and asked the Dean if he projects that term appointments will stay high. He replied that there are too many variables involved in this equation, with leaves highly unpredictable. Willis noted that department chairs will need to coordinate leaves to smooth out the impact of leaves over the medium term. E. Marzluff suggested that the Dean should be more proactive in encouraging this planning function of the chairs.

He distributed a draft memorandum calling for an expression of interest and nominations for the position of director of the Rosenfield Program since Wayne Moyer will be stepping down at the end of next year. It was decided that rather than call for such nominations this year it would be best to leave the due date open until early fall. E. Willis asked about course releases for this duty. The President stated that it will be two courses. The Dean suggested that at some point it would be appropriate to discuss the scope of the program.

Council Remarks

J. Meehan noted that she has received concerned comments regarding the possibility of not opening the Associate Dean search to faculty. The Dean noted that an open invitation was sent this morning.

S. Rebelsky asked the President about the status of legal review of the draft of change in faculty voting policy. The President responded that the ad hoc committee should begin drafting the precise change in language required to amend the Faculty Handbook and that language would then be reviewed by legal counsel prior to going to the faculty for a vote.

Faculty Position Proposals

Council discussed faculty position proposals from the Linguistics Concentration in the area of General/Spanish Linguistics and Chinese/Japanese Linguistics and the Computer Science Department.

The Dean made a general observation by noting that, if we don’t count concentration courses, introduction to statistics, introduction to linguistics, or tutorials as additions to the interdisciplinarity we hope to achieve then, we will get nowhere near our goal of allowing a significant number of the faculty to teaching in new interdisciplinary areas.

The meeting was adjourned at 6:20 p.m.

Secretary
Karen Wiese