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September 12, 2002
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September 12, 2002
Attending: Nancy Amstrong, Russell Church, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Richard Fishman, Peter Gromet, John Savage, Rajiv Vohra, and Michael White.
In light of comments made at the Faculty Forum on September 10, we re-examined our recommendation that only full professors serve on this committee and decided that we continue to believe that the bests interests of the Faculty are served by our recommendation.
Given that we expect our recommendation to be challenged, we will encourage proponents of the alternate position to work with us to prepare in advance motions challenging our position. This will help to expedite a decision on this matter.
Responding to the desire expressed for the Dean of the Faculty to continue as chair TPA, we reconsidered our recommendation that a faculty member serve in this capacity. The advantage of a faculty chair is that it makes explicit the responsibility of the Faculty at the level of the University for faculty evaluations.
Since a reason given for having the Dean of the Faculty as chair of TPA is that this person will have institutional memory and the staff to properly support the committee, the Chair reported on his meetings with the Dean of the Faculty and the Chair of the Faculty to discuss staff support for TPA and FAC. The Dean of the Faculty has proposed that a senior staff person be hired to support both committees as well as run the office of Faculty Development in the Dean of the Faculty's office. This person would be at the level of a senior departmental administrator and, on matters of Faculty governance, would also report to the Chair of the Faculty. The Task Force found this proposed arrangement acceptable.
We also discussed the procedures for evaluating cases that come before the committee. While we are comfortable with the committee assigning discipline-based subcommittees to prepare a detailed evaluation of each case, we believe that the committee should establish its own procedures after seeking the best internal and external advice on this matter.
In response to a suggestion that TPA should have fewer than 12 members, we decided not to change our recommendation because that we feel strongly that this would reduce the representation within intellectual divisions of the university so much that it would reduce the effectiveness of the proposed committee.
The Task Force has heard from individuals who are concerned that our assignment of current AAMC responsibilities might weaken our recruitment of woment and minorities. In response to these concerns the Task Force has explored ways to modify the charge given to FAC. The Chair and Vice Chair met with President Simmons to discuss these issues and her plans for a senior officer for diversity. When we told her that we were trying to decide where to put the current AAMC charge to review all denials of promotion or reappointment of women and minorities, she said that this provision is almost certainly in violation of Federal law. She explained that many universities have standing Faculty grievance committees that develop expertise in handling the highly legalistic appeals that arise. Also, she informed us that committees of this kind can handle all claims of bias or violation of procedure in matters concerning salaries, promotion, retention and other terms of employment. Such committees need to be staffed by administrators with experience in these matters.
After discussing such a committee, the Task Force decided that it offers an attractive way to provide protections against bias and/or violation of procedure and asked the Chair to seek help from the President's office to prepare a proposal for such a committee. (Russell Carey was later contacted and agreed to help.)
Since we expect it will take some time to prepare a proposal for a grievance committee, in the interim we would not move responsibility for handling grievances from FEC to FAC. Also, we would not recommend elimination of AAMC until this matter is resolved.
Some of the functions of AAMC have been assigned to FAC, namely that of assessing and promoting affirmative action. This includes working with the Dean of the Faculty's office to produce reports on searches and their policies against which compliance of Faculty searches is measured. We recommend that FAC advise on the policies used to evaluate searches.
We discussed our current proposal for UCC in light of concerns expressed at our earlier Task Force meeting by Deans Estrup and Lusk. Given that we consider ourselves a university-college, we continue to believe that is important to have one committe that reviews all courses and degree programs. However, we also agree that whatever arrangement we propose should be workable from the points of view of the Deans of the College and Graduate School. Consequently, we agreed to invite both deans to attend our September 19 meeting. (Both have agreed to attend.) Our goal is to produce is a more detailed description of the operation of the UCC that is consistent with our views and those of the deans.
We discussed whether to insert language into the charge of UCC to prevent it from reviewing departmental programs without the participation of the department but decided that it was unnecessary, it being obvious to all that this would be inconsistent with proper behavior.
In light of issues raised at the Forum and email, we reviewed our recommendation that FEC be given responsibility for handling nominations to committees and boards. We also addressed the need for a nominations committee under Robert's Rules of Order.
We continue to recommend that FEC handle nominations because we believe that it can manage the task, it increases the importance of FEC, and makes explicit a function that FEC is frequently called upon to perform when ad hoc search committees are created to replace senior administrators.
Concerning Robert's Rules of Order, we believe we can assign the nominations responsibilities to FEC or change its name to reflect them.
After hearing that some administrators believe that the weight of the Faculty will be felt more strongly if their faculty members are elected, we agreed to recommend that faculty members can be chosen in several ways for service on boards, namely, by appointment by the relevant senior administrator on the advice of FEC, or by nomination by the FEC and election at a Faculty meeting or by mail ballot.
Our goal is to help senior administrators carry out their responsibilities. We note that our original recommendation for appointment to boards reflects the fact that some faculty members won't stand for election but will accept appointment.
We agreed that members of the Task Force need to meet with senior administrators chairing boards to help them frame charges for their new boards. The following Task Force members have agreed to meet with the following senior administrators:
| Board | Administrator | Task Force Member |
|---|---|---|
| Faculty Development | Dean of Faculty | Nancy Armstrong |
| Benefits | VP Administration | Peter Gromet |
| Campus Planning | VP Planning | Richard Fishman |
| College Council | Dean of College | xx |
| Computing | VP Computing | Rajiv Vohra |
| Diversity | Senior Administrator | xx |
| Graduate Council | Dean of Grad School | xx |
| Library | University Librarian | Russell Church |
| Research | VP Research | Michael White |
We held off on assigning members to the College and Graduate Councils in light of our upcoming meeting.
We also discussed an email suggestion that senior administrators show their budgets to their boards. The Chair reported that when he asked the Provost about this, the Provost said that senior administrators might consider this an excessive intrusion into their administrative responsibilities. Also, the Provost has said that URC will review budgets of senior administrators in detail. Based on this information we decided not to take a position on this issue.
Submitted by
John E. Savage