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

The meeting came to order at 11:45 a.m. in the Nollen Conference Room.

President’s Remarks

The President welcomed Council members to the new academic year.

Dean’s Remarks

Distributed electronically
Next week we will meet on Tuesday at 4:15 since Eliza has a conflict on Wed.

In late July, Pip Gordon took the initiative to resign effective at the end of the academic year (2005-06). We have replaced her Tutorial from another department and the Theatre course she was scheduled to teach in the fall has been canceled by the Department. They are working on a replacement for the spring as well as searching for individuals to take on her design duties for the year.

We have a few more (about 20) first year students than planned due to very low summer melt and a few fewer upper level student than planned (due to higher than normal number of leaves and departures) for an on campus enrollment about the same as last year.

Early this summer we investigated the recommendation of several faculty members that we improve upon our abilities to offer Arabic in the ALSO program. We were able to accomplish 2 things. First we applied and were granted a Fulbright Foreign Language TA for a woman to assist with teaching ALSO Arabic. She comes from Jordan and has gone through the International Student orientation program. She is completely paid for by Fulbright (travel, health insurance, room, board, stipend) and will take two classes. We also got things worked out to experiment with a video conferencing course that is orchestrated by Montana State and involves 5 campuses and an instructor in the SF Bay area. The student will be together on line for 2-1 hour sessions per week and receive native language conversation, and tutoring from the FLTA.

Real time minutes
The Dean distributed a list of departmental majors and the number of majors between 2000-05 taken from the Fact Book. He also distributed a list of agenda items held over from previous years and some new items for discussion and prioritization by this Council.

The Dean reminded Council that, in order to facilitate clear and open discussion, members should view that which takes place in Council sessions as confidential.

He noted that last spring Council had recommended a search take place to fill two new Expanding Knowledge Initiative positions (Human Geography and Earth Systems Science). Two cross-divisional search committees have been formed and they are working together under the direction of Marci Sorter to present Council with position descriptions and a search calendar by next week. The Human Geography search committee consists of Kathy Jacobson, Jack Mutti and Helen Scott and Earth Systems Science consists of Jon Andelson, Jackie Brown and Elaine Marzluff.

He also noted that last spring Council had recommended a special search in Dance. In order to help the Theatre Department move forward with its revised curriculum we will proceed with that search at this time. C. Hunter asked if there would be revision of the dance position description required because of the resignation of Pip Gordon. The Dean replied that the two were not connected.

Position Requests

He urged Council to move quickly on the position requests now before them for reasons of late year resignations so that searches could begin.

The Dean reminded Council that faculty allocation procedures require departments to submit position requests to Council for consideration by April 1st each year. However, if there are personnel changes after that time departments may submit position requests in time for Council’s first meeting in August. There was discussion of position requests in Art, Education, History, and Spanish.

Elections

The President noted that, because of the relatively steep learning curve associated with the financial complexities of the College Budget, it is best to have the same person serve a two-year term on the Budget Steering Committee. E. Marzluff volunteered to continue in her second year of service on this Committee. Council elected her to this position.

The President noted that the history of the Diversity Committee was such that without a strong presence of Council on the Committee it is given to wandering. J. Meehan volunteered to serve on the Committee but was not willing to serve as Chair until she had a better idea of its purpose and method of operation. Council agreed and elected her to the Committee.

The meeting adjourned at 1:30 p.m.

Secretary
Karen Wiese