Present: J. Cummins, B. Ferguson, K. Jacobson, J. Meehan, R. Osgood, S. Rebelsky, J. Swartz, E. Willis.

Paula Smith was in attendance in her role as the new Dean beginning in July, 2008. Mark Schneider was in attendance in his role as the new Chair of the Faculty beginning in August, 2008.

The meeting came to order at 4:15 p.m. in room 226 of the Rosenfield Student Center.

The minutes and excerpts of March 12, 2008 were approved.

President’s Remarks

He noted that the Police are making progress in solving the homophobic incidents that occurred on campus before break.

Dean’s Remarks

The Dean updated Council on the status of faculty searches.

He mentioned that he had traveled to Baltimore with Sarah Purcell and Richard Fyffe to a NITLE sponsored workshop on the future of the academic library. They came away from the workshop thinking that Grinnell’s Libraries are providing good support in relation to information access and utilization.

The Dean noted that five former Grinnell College students had been awarded highly prestigious National Science Foundation Fellowships and eight additional current and former students have received honorable mention.

He distributed information on the number of positions by department and the history of additions and subtractions since 1997.

He noted that enrollment data have been provided to Council as part of their consideration of position proposals in the past. However, because there are 22 proposals this year all relevant enrollment data can be found on the Dean’s website.

He also noted that, in the case of a position request coming from a department that has a relatively recent self-study and external review, Division Chairs have the responsibility of reading those documents and reporting to Council any pertinent information to aid in their consideration of the proposal.

Council Remarks

S. Rebelsky congratulated the staff of Dining Services for an excellent job in carrying out its first ever culinary competition called the “Golden Toque” over break.

Reviews of Faculty Members Who Teach Outside Their Home Departments

The Dean reminded Council that the faculty had passed on a Faculty Handbook amendment which provides policy in the case of reviews of faculty who teach courses outside of their home departments. At this time, three faculty fall into this category. The Dean suggested that he offer to allow them to choose to be governed by this new policy and then he will select the model for review after consultation with the Executive Council and the departments. At that time, it will be his responsibility to recommend review team members. Council was in agreement.

Position Requests

The Dean reminded Council that the first order of business in the process of consideration of position proposals is to determine which of them will go to the EKI Advisory Board for their input to the Council process. E. Willis asked if the only criteria in this initial triage was interdisciplinarity or would other criteria such as inquiry-based learning be considered. There was brief discussion of the latter concept with disagreement with regard to the universal applicability of that concept across the disciplines. Finally, Council settled on interdisciplinarity or new areas of knowledge as the criteria for deciding that a proposal would be provided to the Advisory Board for comment. Council devised a schedule for discussion of these proposals in order to build in enough time for the Advisory Board consideration and input. The Dean noted that after an initial discussion of each proposal Council has typically returned for a final discussion of the relative merits of each in relation to each other. Willis opined that it is the standing position of Council that replacement of a vacated position requires a strong case to be made.

Because the President needed to leave the meeting early, E. Willis asked him what he thought needed to be further done to the draft Faculty Handbook language governing voting and if he thought the matter could be closed this academic year. He responded by noting that the word “regular” needed to be finally defined and with that the proposed changes could, with the College lawyer’s tentative approval, go to the faculty for a vote.

The President left the meeting at 5:35 p.m.

The discussion of position requests continued. Willis reminded the group that there is the possibility (budget available) of approving three EKI-Strategic Plan based proposals and one non-EKI proposal this year. J. Meehan asked members of Council what they would be looking for in their review of the EKI proposals. Various members of Council suggested that a strong EKI proposal would demonstrate the ability to relieve existing faculty to teach in new interdisciplinary areas, breadth of constituency, coherent curricular planning within a given cluster, concentration, or department and within the curriculum of the College as a whole, discussion of enrollments in relation to pedagogical method, and evidence of student interest. J. Cummins reminded Council to revisit their recently penned guidelines for preparation of an EKI proposal which are located on the Dean’s website. S. Rebelsky asked if certain proposals do not provide evidence of having met with the Associate Dean will the proposers be allowed to do so after the initial Council review. Willis stated that would be allowed.

Voting Rights

(see above for President’s remarks on this)

There was continued discussion of the new language of the proposed changes to the Faculty Handbook regarding who can vote within the faculty governance structures. The discussion centered on the need to define “regular” as it is currently used in the Handbook in relation to voting. After considerable effort it was decided that an acronym would best suit the need since the actual classes of faculty included in the definition is too bulky to repeat as necessary in the various sections of the Handbook.

The meeting adjourned at 6:40 p.m.

Secretary
Karen Wiese