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

The meeting came to order at 11:30 a.m. in Room 226 of the Rosenfield Student Center.

President’s Remarks

The President welcomed Council members to the new academic year. The President noted that the Board of Trustees are scheduled to meet in Grinnell during the first week in October and the members of Council are invited to his home for dinner with them on October 5th. He noted that the Board has on its October agenda a regular review of the endowment, authorization of the second phase of the Athletic complex, revisitation of the agenda from their summer retreat, faculty presentations, and a review of dining services operations as part of their routine examination of various administrative operations of the College.

Dean’s Remarks

The Dean noted that Carlie Van Willigen has been appointed to the position of Associate Director of Institutional Research and Cheryl Chase has been appointed to the position of Associate Registrar.

He noted that he thought that registration was progressing similar to that of last year. E. Willis took exception to that characterization saying that we are going to have trouble offering spaces to incoming students in the introductory level courses and she thinks Council needs to discuss the correlation of the constant reference to the faculty:student ratio to the actual ability of the current faculty to meet student need/desire for certain courses.

The Dean noted that over the summer the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation presented an invitation to the President to submit a proposal (in unspecified areas but which correspond to the Foundations interests in the area of the liberal arts) in rather short order. He distributed a copy of the proposal which was submitted and described the proposed activities as centrally in support of the Expanding Knowledge Initiative including faculty development, support of Arabic and Middle East Studies, Digital Video and Media Studies, and Environmental Studies which constituted a re-envisioning and planning phase. We expect to hear something later this fall or early winter.

Council Remarks

S. Rebelsky offered Congratulations to Karen McRitchie and the TC Coordinators for receiving an Award of Excellence from the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group in University and College Computing Services for the TCDB, the student-developed software system that we use to coordinate our student technical consultants.

Referring to the President’s call for comments from the faculty regarding items of current discussion by the Trustees which he presented at the first Faculty Meeting of the year this morning, S. Rebelsky asked the President to consider sharing that packet of information with members of Council. The President agreed to do so.

E. Willis also reported on a conversation with a faculty member regarding the Council’s lack of resolution of the matter of teaching linguistics at the College.

Willis noted that she has decided to make her presentations to the Board as Chair of the Faculty focus on themes she considers important for them to hear. Her first such presentation will be focused on what we need to do to successfully recruit and retain the very best faculty…what we can and should be doing with the extraordinary resources of the College.

Referring to the President’s comments regarding the use of “No Limits” to characterize the College and an apparent lack of focus on the faculty vote against the use of this phrase for such a purpose in the preparation of the hard copy of the College Catalog this year by Public Relations, Willis suggested that the President’s explanation was not going to be sufficient for many faculty who are quite upset by the lack of attention paid to the majority sentiment of the faculty.

Faculty Position Proposals

The Dean reminded Council that if a department experiences a change in personnel as a result of decisions reached after March 1, the Council has agreed to consider new position proposals from those departments in August. Accordingly, Council is now considering proposals from Art, Economics, English, Physical Education (2), and Theatre and Dance.

Elections

Council nominated J. Meehan to continue in her role as member of the Diversity Committee. Meehan accepted the nomination.

Council nominated K. Jacobson to membership on the Budget Steering Committee. The President noted that, because of a fairly steep learning curve, this position is served best by someone willing to accept a two-year term. Jacobson accepted the nomination and the commitment to a two-year term.

The meeting adjourned at 1:15 p.m.

Secretary
Karen Wiese