Faculty Council

Tuesday, November 16, 2004, 12:00 p.m.

Cohen House, Esther M. Cohen Dining Room

Present: John Casbarian, Steve Crowell, Rebekah Drezek, Lynne Huffer (Speaker), Nancy Niedzielski, Bob Patten (Deputy Speaker), Caroline Quenemoen, and David Scott Absent: Jose Aranda, Vicki Colvin, Marj Corcoran, Donald Morrison, Matteo Pasquali, Patricia Reiff, Herb Ward, and Mark Wiesner.

(1) Minutes: The minutes were approved from the November 9, 2004 business meeting.

(2) Honor Council Appeals Board Appointments: Faculty Council reviewed nominations to the Honor Council Appeals Board with special attention to departmental and school representation. It was determined, considering who the current members are, that best representation would be achieved by appointing Mason Tomson from Civil & Environmental Engineering and Bill Wilson from Electrical & Computational Engineering. A motion was made, seconded, and approved to appoint these two new members to the Honor Council Appeals Board, bringing the total number of members to nine, which allows for the desired rotational schedule.

(3) Lost Student Evaluation Forms: Faculty Council addressed the issue of lost student evaluations from the Springπ04 semester. After discussion of the issue, Faculty Council decided to refer this serious problem to the Teaching Committee whose charge it is to oversee the student evaluation process. Faculty Council will send the following comments along with the referral to the Teaching Committee: (a) this is a serious problem that needs to be addressed, (b) this problem has different effects and implications on various members of the teaching community, (c) the Teaching Committee needs to determine who has been affected by lost evaluations with the possibility of soliciting letters from those students to replace the lost evaluations, (d) the Teaching Committee might consider a recommendation that future evaluations be turned into the Deanπs office in addition to the Registrarπs office to ensure copies of evaluations remain in the schools and (e) the Teaching Committee might look into the possibility of implementing an on-line system for student evaluations.

(4) Governance Reform: An Ad hoc committee from Faculty Council has been created to review the proposal for recommendations for governance reform submitted by the Task Force on Faculty and Shared Governance. The committee consists of: Morrison (Chair), Crowell, Huffer, Quenemoen, and Wiesner. The first task charged to the Ad hoc committee is incorporating feedback from members of Faculty Council on the proposal in preparation for a Faculty Council vote at the next Faculty Council meeting on December 7^th. The second task will be to articulate a plan for moving forward to bring the proposal to vote before the full faculty in the spring. In addition, the Ad hoc committee will be assigned to address implementation and transition issues. Due to the importance of this issue, Faculty Council decided to add a preliminary overview of governance reform to the January 26, 2005 General Faculty meeting prior to the two special General Faculty meetings called to vote on the governance reform.

(5) Summary of 11/18 Meeting with Leebron & Levy: Huffer summarized the meeting with Levy and Leebron which included: discussion of Task Force recommendations, review of faculty salary and compensation, compensation for University service, and concerns with disability attentiveness. The Presidentπs office has agreed to send out a directive to each of the Standing Committee Chairs to submit a report by February 15^th which will be forwarded to the Committee on Committees to facilitate committee assignments.

(6) Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 1:15 p.m., with the next Faculty Council business meeting scheduled for December 7, 2004.

Sarah Holloman

Executive Assistant