The Citadel Faculty Council
Minutes of the Regular Meeting of Feb. 19, 2004
Board of Visitors Room, Jenkins Hall1. Prof. Lisa Zuraw, chairperson of Faculty Council, called the meeting to order at 11:07 a.m.
2. Members attending: Profs. Andrade, Bishop, Bloss, Briggs, Chen, Darden, Davis, Hewett, Knapp, Lally, Matthews, McKinney, Moody, Niksch, Woolsey and Zuraw. Heisser for B. Carter and Eidson for Snively
3. Members absent: Profs. Allen, Davakos, Lipscomb, Miller and Murray.
4. The minutes for the meeting of Jan. 22, 2004 were presented for approval and, after three small corrections, approved.
5. Prof. Zuraw reported on some developments. The Quality Enhancement Plan has been formally submitted for approval, and Provost Carter will hold three faculty forums on it. The accreditation team from SACS will be here on March 28-31; SACS rejected the two candidates The Citadel proposed for it because they were from South Carolina, so The Citadel proposed two others from Georgia. Student enrollment for fall will make the school start out crowded, but since Padgett-Thomas Barracks will then be complete and Law Barracks not yet evacuated for demolition, no new student need be lodged at the Howard Johnson. At the President’s Meeting, Gen. Grinalds asked whether, to solve a shortage of classroom space, professors could give online classes for students in the barracks. Council members indicated that there was not a classroom shortage and this solution was not needed. As to the Provost search, the search committee would now meet to consider the four candidates; she therefore distributed a detailed form for Council members to rate them. Prof. Moody objected that the qualities being rated were not equal in importance and thus any numbers that came out of the form would not be statistically valid; Prof. Zuraw said she realized this and would therefore not combine the categories.
6. Prof. Zuraw suggested that the Council work on the Faculty Ethics Code some more; she liked the AAUP one, and we might like to look at it. She also indicated that she had reminded Provost Carter that, though the Council had rejected the idea of joining Academic Board in a combined Faculty Senate, we had wanted to meet with Academic Board once or twice a year; should we meet with them to work on the ethics code? It was decided to consider the code at Faculty Council’s March meeting and then see if we could meet with Academic Board in April. Finally, Prof. Zuraw raised the question of whether, as past chairperson Prof. Williams had suggested, Faculty Council’s chairperson should have a two-year term. She herself did not want to serve another year and proposed strengthening the vice-chair’s duties instead; Provost Carter had declared himself amenable to giving the vice-chair a course reduction.
7. The Council considered the revised charter for the Research Committee. After it was noted that the elimination of the requirement that one member from each department be tenured was because Research was no longer linked to the Sabbaticals Committee, which had such a requirement, the new charter was approved.
8. Prof. Bishop reported on the activities of the Campus Affairs Committee. It had met twice since the last Faculty Council meeting and done three things. It had produced its new charter, which now only awaited approval of one more member to make a quorum; begun a response to Physical Plant’s proposed changes in the Campus Housing rules; and started formulating a strategy for gathering data before making a recommendation on campus parking. Prof. Zuraw noted that if this committee made a concrete recommendation about parking policies, Provost Carter would support it; he wanted an outside consultant on the issue.
9. The Council considered whether to deactivate the Community Relations Committee. Its last ex-chair and its current chair both said yes. Prof. Hewitt pointed out some hard work the committee had done in the past, but Prof. Briggs noted that community relations is not really a faculty issue but an Administration one; the faculty is the conscience of the school, and can revive this committee or create an ad hoc subcommittee if a big issue comes up in future. Prof. Woolsey moved and Prof. Darden seconded that the Community Relations Committee be deactivated; this passed unanimously.
10. The Council considered whether to deactivate the Faculty Employment Committee. Prof. Bloss, its last known chair, pointed out that Administration officials above a certain level were completely unforthcoming when this committee tried to examine our working conditions. Some noted that deactivating it would send the wrong signal or be dangerous; Prof. Briggs suggested that it could take on the task of gathering information on salaries and working conditions at what faculty sees as comparable schools and thus build up a baseline collection of data to use for institutional memory. Prof. Bloss affirmed that if this was the committee’s job it would meet and do it. Prof. Zuraw wondered whether this committee could merge with the Financial Affairs Committee, which meets with Col. Holland but takes no discernible actions. It was decided that both committees were valuable and should be kept; Prof. Bloss moved and Prof. Briggs seconded that the Faculty Employment Committee not be disbanded. A propos valuable committees fading into invisibility, several members suggested that the Council should be more active in demanding annual reports and initial school-year meetings by Sept. 30th from each committee, as is supposed to happen.
11. Having decided not to merge Financial Affairs with Faculty Employment, the Council considered the revised charter of the Financial Affairs Committee. It was suggested that this committee simply needed to be more active in getting information to Faculty Council. The sentence was added to its Section II:1:C, Other Reports, "The Financial Affairs Committee will report to the Faculty Council on the financial state of the college by the first week in February." With this addition, the new charter was approved.
12. The meeting was adjourned at 12:11 p.m.