Brown University Task Force on Faculty Governance Minutes of Meetings

Minutes of The Task Force on Faculty Governance

July 24, 2002

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

Absent: Michael White

1. The meeting came to order at 3:05pm and adjourned at 5:10pm.

2. The minutes of July 17 were approved.

3. Publicizing our work and obtaining feedback We agreed upon modifications to a draft letter previously circulated to the Committee that will be sent to all members of the Faculty describing the work of the Committee.

4. Revision in the Tenure, Promotion and Appointments Committee (TPA)
   1. We changed the name of this committee to the Tenure, Promotion and Appointments Committee (TPA).
   2. We agreed to have TPA make recommendations to the Deans of the Faculty and Biology and Medicine instead of the Provost.
   3. We agreed the the Vice Chair be elected from among the elected faculty in their second year of service on the Committee and that the Vice chair shall become Chair during his/her third year on the Committee.

5. Revisiting the Academic Priorities Committee (APC)
   1. We amended the responsibilities of APC to say explicitly that it shapes the general direction of Brown academic programs.
   2. We changed "endowed chair" to "named chair."
   3. We added that the Provost serves as Chair of APC.

6. Design of the University Curriculum Council (UCC)
   1. J. Savage and N. Armstrong reported on their on conversations with the Deans of College and Grad School about this new committee. Both support its creation.
   2. We replaced Items #8 and #9 in the previous description with a new Item #8 that gives the committee the right to create subcommittees.

7. Exploration of the role of students on the ACUP replacement
   1. We discussed a variety of alternative methods to obtain student opinions on the ACUP replacement. We will revisit this matter at our next meeting.

8. Faculty Executive Committee (FEC) and Committee on Nominations
   1. We examined the current mandate of the FEC and agreed that some of its responsibilities should be retained, others assigned to other committees, and some should be deleted. A new draft charge for the committee will be prepared by the J. Savage and circulated before the next meeting.

9. Medical Faculty Executive Committee (MFEC) and Medical Faculty Bodies
   1. We agreed to invite the Interim Dean of Biology of Medicine, Richard Besdine, and the Chair of the MFEC, Martin Weinstock, to meet with us on August 21.

10. Committees Reporting to the President
    1. J. Savage reported that he had communicated to Russell Carey, Secretary of the University, that our Task Force was not going to recommend changes to committees reporting to the President unless the President requested us to do so. He was also told that we are ready to discuss faculty governance issues with the President.

11. Other Comittees
    1. It was agreed that N. Armstrong and R. Church would explore with relevant administrators the function of the following two committees:
       • Standing Committee on the Academic Code
       • University Disciplinary Council

12. Administrative Advisory Committees
    1. We decided to recommend that they be called "boards" instead of committees.
    2. At our next meeting we agreed to examine whether we need a Faculty Resources committee that would be responsible for advising on all resources needed by the Faculty for research and teaching. This might subsume the responsibilities of the Library Committee and the Faculty Advisory Committee on Computing.

13. Next Meeting
    1. Our next meeting will be from 3-5pm on Wednesday, August 7.
    2. We agreed to discuss a mechanism to allow faculty members serving on administrative boards to report back to the Faculty. This may be done via the FEC.
14. We agreed that a workload reduction is appropriate for service on some of the major committes we are proposing.

Submitted by
John E. Savage