Faculty Affairs Committee Meeting

May 24, 2007

Present: W. Shore, M. Ellard-Ivey, R. Byrnes, S. Starkovich, R. Kaufman

Guest: Patricia Killen

Business:

1. Patricia gave the committee two updates. First, she reported how the $600,000 pool had been spent. According to Teri Phillips, $200,000 went to new positions; $200,000 went to promotions, adjustments to new minimums, equity, and performance; and $200,000 went to across-the-board increases. Teri didn’t divide faculty and staff in her breakdown. Second, Patricia distributed copies of some pages of “The Book” about the capital campaign. Patricia explained that the Development Office will develop fully flown case statements of what’s on these pages.

2. Patricia asked the committee to do their best thinking on three issues facing the University. First, we need to think about graduate faculty as a status of faculty. Business, Nursing, and Education hire faculty to teach both undergraduates and graduates (Marriage and Family Counseling and the MFA program hire faculty to teach only graduate students). Business wants to have exclusive graduate faculty. There’s no separate graduate faculty in the Faculty Handbook. We need to think about what the responsibilities and privileges of graduate faculty are. What are the parameters for graduate faculty? Who gets listed? How do we determine the assignment of load? Patricia also noted that many people believe that our graduate programs all have room to grow and can do so without stressing our material resources, such as classrooms. Committee members noted that we need to think about how having a separate category of faculty might be damaging to faculty culture; we also need to think about issues of quality and setting reasonable benchmarks. Second, we need to think about issues of fixing the number of faculty we’d like to have, considering salaries for entry-level faculty, and setting bumps for tenure and promotion. Patricia invites the committee to come up with a number of FTE faculty that will be PLU’s number of faculty; she said she’s also happy to receive a number for staff, as well. Patricia noted that we will have 15 searches next year (all replacements, no expansions). Third, we need to think about the nine-month contract and incorporating summer into load. Doing so would bring consequences for policy and for faculty culture. There would be repercussions in service to the university, faculty governance (again, committees don’t exist in the summer), department work, our tuition and budget structure. Patricia said that she has received requests from faculty in Nursing, Education, and Business to have summer included in the nine-month contract; faculty in the Arts and Sciences have asked to have Summer I included in load. Ron noted that as one of those faculty members, he may want to recuse himself from future discussions of the nine-month contract. Patricia said that she’s bringing these issues to us ahead of the curve so that we’re prepared. She would like to have formal responses to all three issues by the end of September. She’s asking for FAC’s best judgment.

3. Steve told Patricia that members of the committee will have some plans—to be considered thinking/thought pieces, not official committee work, since FAC doesn’t exist in the summer—to show Patricia and Sheri over the summer. Patricia said she welcomed the informal consultation.

Meeting adjourned at 5:16 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Rona Kaufman

FAC Secretary