TACOMA, WA 98447
Friday, February 8, 2002
Leraas Lecture Hall
1. Call to Order—Norris Peterson, Faculty President, called the meeting to order at 4:12 p.m.
2. Opening Prayer—Dennis Sepper offered the opening prayer.
3. Approval of the Minutes of the December 14, 2001 Meeting—The minutes were approved as submitted.
4. Announcements and Communications—Michele Crayton (Biology) reported for the Student Success Taskforce: retention from first semester to second semester of the First Year was about 95%, similar to last year’s retention. There will be a focus on the First Year to Sophomore retention over the Spring semester.
Gerry
Myers (Business) announced that the Enron Project will offer opportunities for
wide-scale faculty collaboration on this issue from multiple perspectives.
Interested faculty may visit the Enron Project website or call X7304.
Norris Peterson welcomed interested parties to consider serving as the
Vice Chair of the Faculty. The term of office would be 2002-03 as Vice-Chair
and 2003-04 as Chair.
Carlton Benson (History) for the Wang Center Planning Committee
announced that there will be five Implementation Meetings this month gathering
ideas about appropriate uses of the initial distributions of the Wang gift
money.
Chris Hansvick (Psychology) for the Instructional Resources Committee
announced that the academic units should receive a survey about technology
needs by February 15, and that this survey should be returned by March 8.
John Petersen (Religion) for the Faculty Affairs Committee related that
the Board of Regents approved an increase in the salary pool for 2002-2003 of
3%. Out of this will be set aside some $25,000-30,000 for promotion in rank
increases. Over the next few weeks, the Faculty Affairs Committee will be
discussing what recommendations to offer Administration on how the salary pool
should best be distributed.
John Peterson also identified the formation of a Financial Study Group, comprised of some 10 senior faculty from all units on campus. This group has no power; it is advisory only. The purpose of this group is to clearly identify how the “structural deficit” inherent in our current program design and staffing might be reconfigured in order to free-up monies to use for faculty salary enhancement. The FSG’s task is to attempt to find possible areas, on both the academic and administrative sides, that possibly could be streamlined. The group has already met once and plans to meet through the end of April.
5. Old Business—Patricia Killen (Religion) for the Rank and Tenure Committee offered for amendment Motions #4-7 that were introduced to the Assembly in December. All these motions will come to the faculty for a vote in our March meeting.
Ø Motion 4: Doug Oakman(Religion) offered a motion to amend. MOTION FAILED. A suggestion for punctuation change for better readability was offered and accepted by the Rank and Tenure Committee: semi-colons are to be used in line 2 of the motion after “below” and “publication”.
Ø Motion 5: No amendments were offered.
Ø Motion 6:--No amendments were offered.
Ø Motion 7:--Chuck Bergman (English) moved a wording amendment to replace “Ordinarily, some form of service to the university is expected” to “Service to the university is expected”. MOTION PASSED.
6. NEW BUSINESS—Susan Mann, Director, Human Resource Services, responded to questions and concerns about the 12/01 draft of the “Pre-employment Screening Policy—Faculty” (Attachment B to our agenda). Discussion ensued. This was a non-action item for the faculty.
Jim Albrecht (English) introduced a proposal for the Freshman (or First Year) Experience Seminars which has been submitted to the Educational Policies Committee (Attachment C to the meeting agenda). The proposal replaces the J-term GUR with a 1 credit “Life of the Mind Colloquium” and replaces Critical Conversations with an Inquiry Seminar. The program would be a two semester, rather than a three semester, experience. Discussion followed.
7. Adjournment—Norris Peterson adjourned the meeting at 5:58 p.m.
Respectfully Submitted,
Steve Thrasher
Faculty Secretary