Faculty Council

February 20, 2003

315 GERLACH HALL

3:30-5:30

Present:

Guests:

1. Announcements

Chair Gene Mumy announced that Vice Provost and Dean for Undergraduate Studies, Martha Garland, would be delighted to receive comments or accounts of faculty/student interaction.

2. Arts and Sciences Restructuring

Chair Mumy present Council with a list of the biggest questions or hesitations that faculty have regarding the Provost’s proposal to restructure the Colleges of the Arts and Sciences.

A. Vice Presidential Status

The original report from the Ferrar Committee advocated the promotion of the Executive Dean to the position of Vice President to increase the clout of the colleges, since the changes should provide more emphasis on ASC.

While Professor Doug Macbeth opined that the slim list of duties were not substantial enough to validate Vice-Presidential status, the majority of Faculty Council members present seemed to prefer the Executive Dean be a Vice-President.

B. Promotion and Tenure

Faculty Council did not approve of the implications that the restructuring may have on P&T decisions. There would become a theoretical extra layer of review that is not present in other colleges. Council felt that there are already standards for many interdisciplinary promotions and many faculty present were interdisciplinary scholars that had no problem with their promotion process.

C. Curricular Changes and the Arts and Sciences Curriculum Committee

Council thought the language concerning this part of the proposal is very non-committal. The optimistic view was that College committees would be chaired by the representatives to the ASCC, facilitating inter-collegiate collaboration. The fact that the current ASCC committee is not operating according to Arts and Science Faculty Bylaws was discussed, as was the issue of federalism in the colleges. There was lengthy discussion on the ability of a member of one college to judge the curriculum in another, for example, fine arts and molecular genetics.

An un-official vote was taken on the question: “Do you support this proposal as written?” The vote was Yes 0, No 21, 4 Abstentions.

The meeting was adjourned at 5:30 pm.