MEETING
OF THE FACULTY
GRINNELL COLLEGE
May 16, 2005
President Osgood opened the meeting at 4:16 p.m. in ARH 302.
Approval of Minutes – Russell Osgood
Minutes from the April 18, 2005 meeting were approved as submitted.
Election of slate of nominees to standing committees – Jon Andelson, FOC Chair
Jon began by announcing three corrections to the handout attached to the minutes:
With these corrections, Jon moved to accept this slate of nominees. Motion passed.
Proposal from the Executive Council and the Faculty Organization Committee for Change in Faculty Election Cycle – Wayne Moyer, Faculty Chair and Jon Andelson, FOC Chair
In presenting this proposal, Wayne announced a correction on Page 8: items G and H should be transposed. A motion was made to accept the proposal of changes to the handbook per the agenda’s attachment and with the above correction. Motion passed.
Remarks – Russell Osgood
President Osgood thanked everyone including the Deans and Executive Council. He also thanked all members of the faculty for teaching, advising and serving on committees. In addition, he thanked the staff including the secretary of the faculty. He remarked on what a pleasure it is to work with everyone and to be at Grinnell.
Remarks – Jim Swartz, Dean of the College
Jim thanked everyone for their participation in many things during the past year. This year, thirteen tenure-track faculty appointments were made and Jim commented on what a great group of new faculty members we had coming in. By filling all the tenure track positions that there were searches for, there will be fewer term positions than ever before. A new three year salary review process was implemented as well.
The Dean’s office loses part of the services of Marci Sortor. Accordingly, they are looking for someone to help out as Associate Dean. They hope to move this process forward over the next few weeks.
Christopher McKee will be moving to Senior Faculty Status (SFS) at the end of the next academic year resulting in a search for his replacement next year. A search committee will be formed consisting of two library faculty members, Executive Council representation, Bill Francis, Director of ITS, Instructional Support Committee representation and members from all three divisions with Jim chairing the committee. The search will begin this summer and will hopefully conclude by the end of the fall semester.
Jim announced the following faculty promotions:
Further, Jim announced that Doug Caulkins will serve as the Donald L. Wilson Professor of Enterprise and Leadership at Grinnell College.
Two faculty members published/edited books recently:
Eugene Herman (with Michael D. Pepe), Visual Linear Algebra, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2005
Alan Schrift (Ed.), Modernity and the Problem of Evil, Indiana University Press, 2005.
Recent grant awards were announced as well:
Jenny Anger was awarded a Working Group grant with the new Humanities Center at Brown University for support of a group of scholars (including Jenny and one of her students, Pam Soulos) to research a British arts and culture journal entitled “The New Age” (ca. 1900-1914) with the purpose of staging small exhibitions at Brown, Grinnell and the University of Oklahoma during 2005-06.
Heather Benning was awarded a grant from the NCAA (to Grinnell College) for support of an assistant women’s soccer coach/director of intramurals and club sports.
Pending state funding, Mark Schneider was awarded a grant from the Iowa Academy of Science/Iowa Science Foundation for the “Quantum Identity of Photons”.
Alan Schrift was awarded a grant from the ACM for support of summer research in Paris.
Unofficially, Vince Eckhart has been awarded a grant from the NSF for “Ecological and Evolutionary-Genetic Limits to Range Expansion”.
Remarks – Wayne Moyer
Wayne began by announcing that faculty are invited to a tree planting ceremony in honor of Pamela Ferguson tomorrow at 5:00 p.m. at Nollen House.
Wayne then gave a presentation on how the Budget Committee went about calculating merit and salary increases. For the people they were reviewing this year, the Committee had far larger packets of information than during previous assessments. The Committee had highly detailed letters from department chairs and personal statements. It appears the Committee had far better information during this assessment than in past years.
In reading over all the materials, the Committee made three assessments regarding merit:
The Committee had guidelines about how to rate these on a 1 to 5 scale which was shared with the Personnel Committee. They computed separate scores for each of these three criteria and averaged the scores to an integer (1, 2, 3, 4 or 5). They decided to weigh these scores as follows: teaching 50%, scholarship 30% and service 20%. Distribution of these scores from the Personnel Committee and the Budget Committee were quite close.
How does this get translated to salary recommendations?
Salary increases:
The trustees approved an overall raise of 5.5%. Due to a high inflation year, all faculty received an across the board increase in salaries of 3.5%. This left the Committee with the remaining 2% for merit pay and adjustments. It was deemed that merit should be based on a dollar amount as opposed to a percentage. Accordingly, merit pay was set at $500 per each merit point or $500 x 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 merit points up to a maximum of $2,500.00. Adjustment recommendations were for faculty who, for whatever reason, appeared to be a bit behind in salaries. These adjustments dealt with a nominal number of faculty or dollars.
When finished, the Committee had approximately $29,000.00 left over. How did they distribute it? Based on analysis of peer institutions from Jim Swartz, the Committee gave first year faculty $500.00, all faculty members $100 and assistant professors an additional $400.00. All monies were distributed.
Remarks – Jim Swartz
Meeting was adjourned at 5:09 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Mary Heitsman
Secretary to the Faculty