Brown University TaskForce on Faculty Governance Minutes of Meetings

Minutes of The Task Force on Faculty Governance

May 29, 2002

Attending: Nancy Amstrong, Russell Church, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Richard Fishman, Peter Gromet, John Savage, Rajiv Vohra, and Michael White.

After a general discussion we agreed to focus our attention on the most important committee functions and to postpone discussion of the less important functions until a later time.

We then proceded to define the mission of two committees, an Academic Priorities Committee and a Faculty Personnel Committee. Descriptions follow.

Academic Priorities Committee

• Makes recommendations to President
• Issues regular reports to the Faculty
• Members: Six senior academic administrators, six faculty
  • Possible selection procedure for faculty members: FEC prepares slate for approval of Provost and election by Faculty
• Responsibilities
  • All major academic initiatives, including change of status of academic units
  • External reviews of academic units; appoints review committees
  • Strategic allocation of academic resources
    • operational
    • instructional/research
  • Review of all major academic budgetary proposals
  • Review of candidates for endowed chairs
  • Appointment of its ad hoc committees
• Academic Priorities Committee will not be obliged to review all proposals sent to it.

Faculty Personnel Committee

• Responsibilities
• Ensure excellence across all areas of knowledge
• Reviews and approves departmental standards, criteria and procedures
• Appointments, promotions, tenure
• Advise on salaries and benefits
• Advise on faculty retention and recruitment policies.
• Monitor and promote faculty diversity

We discussed the possibility of this committee supervising periodic (perhaps external) reviews of individual faculty salaries to ensure that they conform to the standards of each field and individual qualifications.

At our next meeting we will discuss the makeup of the Faculty Personnel Committee and well as the mechanism for their selection/election.

Our next two meetings will be on June 5 and 12 from 2-4pm in the English Department.

Submitted by
John E. Savage