Brown University Task Force on Faculty Governance Minutes of Meetings

Minutes of The Task Force on Faculty Governance

August 22, 2002

Attending: Nancy Amstrong, Russell Church, Richard Fishman, Peter Gromet, John Savage, and Michael White.

Absent: Anne Fausto-Sterling, and Rajiv Vohra,

1. The first portion of the meeting started at 10:10am and ended at 10:40am. The second started at 3:10pm and ended at 5:10pm. The first meeting was preceded by a meeting with the President and Provost from 9 to 10am.

2. Approval of Minutes of August 7.
   The minutes were approved without change.

3. Medical School and Faculty Governance
   Our planned discussion with Dean Besdine about the following committees dealing primarily with Medical Faculty issues is postponed until a later time.

   The General Assembly The Biomedical Faculty Assembly Committee on Medical Faculty Appointments Medical Faculty Executive Committee (MFEC)

   We expect to postpone all actions relative to the disposition of these committees until an external review of the Medical School is completed.

4. Handling of Disciplinary and Academic Code Issues
   a. Standing Committee on the Academic Code Russell Church reported on his conversations with Deans Armstrong and Cohen about the work of this committee.

   Issues that were raised and which we should address are

   • Should faculty committee members be nominated by FEC?
     We are comfortable with this.
   • Should the academic code be recorded in Faculty Rules?
     We agreed it should
   • Should the committee make an annual report to Faculty?
     We agreed that it should
   • Should the standing committee be chaired by a faculty
     member? We agreed that it should.

   b. University Disciplinary Council Nancy Armstrong reported on her conversations with Vice President Monteiro. She reminded us of the multi-year study that was done by a committee of faculty, students and administrators of this issue which has resulted in a recommendation to be submitted to the Brown Corporation in February. After her report we decided that our involvement should be limited to the following:

   • Recommending the inclusion of the description of the new UDC into the Faculty Rules and Regulations, and
   • The selection of Faculty to serve on the UDC

5. Handling of Rosenberger Medal and Honorary Degree Committees
   We decided that the Honorary Degrees Committee should stand without change. We also decided to allocate to the FEC the work of the Rosenberger Medal Committee of Honor Committee, perhaps as a subcommittee.

6. Administrative Advisory Boards
   We reexamined the titles of the proposed administrative advisory boards in light of the conversations with the President and Provost and a concern expressed by a member of the Task Force.

   We will record in our documents the President's decision to have an advisory board responsible for diversity. After reflecting upon the responsibilities assigned to various boards we decided that we should recommend that those reporting to the Deans of the College and Graduate School should be called the College Council and Graduate Council, respectively.

   Acknowledging the importance that non-traditional information resources play in scholarship, we recommend that the library advisory board be called the Library and Information Resources Advisory Board. We recognize that there may be overlap in concerns between this advisory board and the computing advisory board that should percolate up to the level of the Provost.

   We also added to the membership section of administrative advisory boards the following sentence: Students and staff, as appropriate.

   We recommend that each administrative advisory board prepared a short description of its charge to be included in the Faculty Rules and Regulations.

7. Structure of the University Curriculum Committee.
   After hearing concerns expressed in the meeting with the President and Provost that we distinguish between graduate and undergraduate matters in this committee, we changed the description of the UCC to recommend that it have separate screening committees dealing with graduate and undergraduate matters, chaired by the Deans of the Graduate School and College, respectively, and that these committees make recommendations to the parent committee. All administrators would serve ex officio and have full voting rights.

   We did not change the makeup of the Executive Committee, which is very big, although we may wish to revisit this later.

   
     =============================DRAFT=================================
     University Curriculum Committee (UCC)
     -------------------------------------
       o Responsibilities
     	* The committee of the whole oversees undergraduate and graduate
   	  degree programs and the development of criteria and standards for
   	  them.
   	* Submits proposed changes in degree programs, criteria and standards 
   	  to the Faculty for approval. 
   	* Recommendations to the APC and the Faculty concerning the changing
             curricular needs of Brown undergraduate and graduate students.
   	* Reviews curricula for all new degree programs (graduate and
             undergraduate) and recommendations on them to the APC.
   	* Reviews (3-5 years) of all departmental and program
   	  concentrations and curricula (graduate and undergraduate). 
   	  Reports annually on these reviews to the Faculty and may recommend
   	  termination of inactive concentrations and degree programs. 
   	* Approves changes in undergraduate concentrations and graduate
   	  degree requirements consistent with approved criteria and
   	  standards.
   	* Adjudicates curricular conflicts as they arise between programs
   	  and departments.
   	* Appointment of subcommittees
   
       o Organization
   	* A graduate screening committee chaired by the Dean of the Graduate
   	  School to review for approval all graduate curricular matters.
   	* An undergraduate screening committee chaired by the Dean of the
   	  College to review for approval all undergraduate curricular matters.
   
       o Membership
   	* Deans of the College and Graduate School, an Associate Dean of the
   	  Faculty, the Registrar, all serving ex officio, eight faculty
   	  members, two per division, elected by the Faculty to staggered
   	  two-year terms, two undergraduate students elected by the
   	  Undergraduate Council of Students and two graduate students elected
   	  by the Graduate Student Council. 
     	* Faculty members should be representative of diversity in the
   	  Faculty.
   
       o Chair and Support
           * The Chair shall be a faculty member. The Faculty Vice Chair shall be
   	  elected from among the faculty members in their second year of
   	  service on the Committee and will become Chair during his/her third
   	  year on the Committee.  
   
   	  The Executive Committee shall consist of the the Chair, the Vice
   	  Chair, the Deans of the College and Graduate School, and the
   	  Registrar. The role of the Executive Committee is to set the agenda
   	  for the committee
           * An office, staff and budget.
    
       o Note
   	* The role of the Brown Medical School in this committee is under
   	  review. 
   
     ===================================================================
   

8. Relationship between APC and URPC.
   We recommend that APC should make budgetary recommendations to the URPC

9. Names of URPC and FPC
   We discussed the title of the URPC thinking it was the University Priorities and Resources Committee with acronym UPRC, which we didn't like. (The correct title, as learned later, is University Resources and Priorities Committee, which has a better acronym.) We also heard a report of confusion by colleagues outside the Task Force with the use of the word priorities in this context and that of the APC. Based on these two observations we recommend that the Provost use the title University Resources Committee. It has a very nice ring to it, is easy to remember, and has an easily remembered acronym. (This recommendation was accepted.)

   We also discussed the title of FPC. As was noted in our meeting with the President and Provost, it does not deal with personnel issues. After talking with Russell Carey we considered the titles Faculty Professional Affairs Committee (FPAC) and Faculty Affairs Committee (FAC), settling on the latter title.

10. Method of election of Faculty Officers and the consultative role of FEC
    We modified the charge to the FEC by adding a new responsibility, namely,

    * To refer important faculty issues to appropriate committees and administrators.

    and we changed its consultative role by adding the following responsibility to replace the earlier charge that it consult with the Corporation and students.

    * Serve as a conduit between the Faculty and the Administration, Corporation, and students concerning faculty issues.

    We also agreed that current rules for election of the Chair, Vice Chair and Past Chair will be used except that they will be implemented by the new Nominations Committee for the FEC.

    
      =============================Draft=================================
      Faculty Executive Committee (FEC)
      -----------------------------------
        o Responsibilities
    	* To refer important faculty issues to appropriate committees and
    	  administrators 
    	* Nominations of faculty members to other committees
    	* With the Provost, prepares slates for UPRC and APC; provides faculty 
    	  candidates for appointment to administrative advisory boards; and
    	  advises on appointments to University committees and task forces.
    	* Oversight of Faculty business
    	    - Investigation of matters of concern to the Faculty that
    	      are not under the purview of other Faculty committees
    	    - Sets the agenda for Faculty meetings in consultation
    	      with the President, the Secretary of the Faculty, and
    	      other interested parties
    	    - Receives, reviews and forwards annual reports of Faculty
    	      committees to the Faculty
    	    - Authorized to call Special Faculty Meetings and Faculty
    	      Forums
    	* Authority to act for the Faculty in emergencies provided that it
    	  keeps the Faculty informed of such actions and brings them to the
    	  Faculty for approval as soon as possible
    	* Serve as a conduit between the Faculty and the Administration,
    	  Corporation, and students concerning faculty issues.
           	* Appointment of subcommittees
    	* Review of Faculty governance once per decade
    
        o Membership
    	* Nine faculty members. The committee will have three officers, a
    	  Chair, Vice Chair and Past Chair.  Current rules for election will
    	  be used except that they will be implemented by the new 
    	  Nominations Committee for the FEC.
    
        o Reporting
    	* Annual written reports to the Faculty	
    
      ===================================================================
    

11. Preparing for the next phase.
    Peter Gromet will prepare a draft of decription of the FAC suitable for inclusion into the Faculty Rules for discussion.

    Mike White will produce a draft of a talk in Powerpoint that John Savage might use in this talk to the Faculty at the September 3 Faculty meeting.

    Nancy Armstrong, Peter and John will examine an electronic copy of the current Faculty Rules and Regulations. Procedures will be developed to implement the changes we are proposing.