The Citadel Faculty Council
Minutes of the Regular Meeting of Feb. 22, 2001
Computer Lab, Daniel Library

1. Prof. Tom Thompson, Faculty Council chairperson, called the meeting to order at 11:08 a.m.

2. Members attending: Profs. Bishop, Briggs, Dunlop, Gordon, Jones, Kelley, Lally, Pages, Silver, Skow-Obenaus, Templeton, Thompson, G. Williams, Zuraw, Lassiter for Matthews, Turner for Nath and Nath himself.

3. Members absent: Profs. Britz, Brown, Chen, Lineberger, Moody, McDowell and Woo.

4. Prof. Thompson thanked Profs. Zuraw and Kelley for their help in electing a board of governors for the Faculty House.

5. Prof. Thompson reported on the Feb. 20 Academic Board meeting, to which Prof. Leon went in his place. He put up the results of Academic Board's votes on the faculty senate and schools issues, which so diverged from Faculty Council's votes so far (just 9 out of 23 surveys turned in as yet) that this meeting should now vote. The budget cut will now probably be 10 1/2% and probably require a fee and tuition increase. Policies for testing out of a course (no existing mechanism to do so) and credit for online courses (if another college gives credit for them we'll accept it) were announced, as was the new policy of printing out no hard copies of the term's course schedules but expecting students to pull them off the Web. The cadet leadership objects to academic departments pulling students out of lunch to have noon meetings. Faculty Council discussed this last issue briefly: noon is often the only time for students to meet outside visitors, every other time is designated military time, the 7:50 formation means ESP is lost to us as a time to meet them, designating one day a month to meet students at noon isn't flexible enough. Prof. Thompson noted that the Board of Visitors sets up these schedule-destroying formations over the objections of everybody now on the campus and we can do nothing about it. Prof. Chen suggested having one set day per week when cadets can meet with departments at lunch. Prof. Briggs volunteered to be the Council's representative when Dean Ozment has a meeting about this.

6. A quorum was achieved, and Prof. Dunlop moved and Prof. Williams seconded that the minutes of the Jan. 25 meeting be approved. This was passed unanimously.

7. Prof. Thompson gave a brief status report on Prof. Lipovsky's current task of reorganizing the Committee on Committees. Prof. Zuraw expressed apprehension about her plan to see which committees have real work and which never meet, thus making fine distinctions about the quality of service; Prof. Thompson said she was just trying to see which committees were chartered by the Committee on Committees and which were not and issues like that.

8. The Council members began to vote on the survey about the reorganization into a faculty senate and schools; after an objection to a show of hands the members filled out the survey and the secret ballots were counted by Prof. Silver.

9. While this was being done, Prof. Lipovsky came in and reported personally on her work with the Committee on Committees. This work was "like putting a cloud in a box", but they have identified several issues: making sure committees are not over- or understaffed, finding a balance for everyone between being on too many and too few committees, seeing which committees have real use, making the charters and operating procedures of each committee available to its members, the fact that some committees don't have charters, and dealing with the issue of small departments which don't have enough of the senior faculty members needed for the major hard-work committees and thus overwork the ones they have. Her plans are to get a proper rotation on and off committees (she has no plans to match people to committees by personality, just what they ask for) and whittle down committees which are too big. She asked the Council for its concerns; Prof. Nath was concerned that some committee reports on the Web have not been updated since 1994, and Prof. Lally was concerned that committees not under the Committee on Committee's aegis would be overlooked for service credit when some of them (like pre-law, pre-med and Fine Arts) do real work and have use. Prof. Lipovsky said committees like that are not campus-wide and do not have a charter, they should get service credit but she needed to clarify who exactly was responsible for them. In any case, there are about 220 committee slots and about 150 faculty members, so there should be scope to do justice and allot equal work.

10. The ballots were counted and the results given. The Council voted 12 to 5 against combining Faculty Council and Academic Board into a Faculty Senate; it voted 7 to 4 in favour of establishing a School of Business but against making any other departments and divisions into schools by various margins. If asked to choose between making departments not headed by deans into one big school and dividing them into two schools (sciences and humanities), the vote was 9 to 5 in favour of the latter. There was discussion on what the Council should officially recommend. Prof. Silver moved and Profs. Bishop, Gordon and Lally among others seconded that we should recommend keeping Faculty Council and Academic Board as separate bodies which would meet together from time to time; this was passed 16 to 0 with one abstention.

Prof. Briggs moved and Prof. Silver seconded that we send no recommendation about schools because there was no strong unanimous feeling. In the discussion about this it turned out that there was strong feeling that the proliferation of schools should be kept to a minimum; if we can't stop a division of everybody into schools at least we should declare for only four instead of five. The issues of schools being pretentious and Balkanizing the faculty were reiterated and the question raised of whether the budget cuts would stop them from doing some of the reorganization. After consideration of these things the motion to make no recommendation was defeated 9 to 4, and Prof. Kelley then moved and Prof. Lally seconded that we recommend that the Administration be kept as small as possible and still do the job, meaning as few deans as possible. Prof. Zuraw objected to this on the grounds that Business, Education and Engineering having deans of their own and the others not would mean a step back for the rest of us. Prof. Silver pointed out that it turned out Business did not actually have to have a dean to be accredited. Prof. Templeton said we should be more specific about the motion so they couldn't say they were keeping it as small as possible, and suggestions were made about specifying; Prof. Silver proposed amending the motion to say the administration should be kept as small as possible "barring accreditation issues which would require deans". This was accepted by the movers. After remarks that it would be better to have no schools at all because every administrative reorganization does no good academically but just increases the Administration's share of the money and positions, and that a general resolution is good as establishing a principle, the motion was passed 16 to 0 with one abstention.

Prof. Jones suggested that we not pass on the numbers from the survey to Gen. Carter since the scattered votes in favour of some schools conflict with this resolution; Prof. Bishop pointed out that the vote to retain the Council's own existence should be passed on to him.

11. The meeting was adjourned at 12:24 P.M.