MSU FACULTY COUNCIL MEETING MINUTES February 21, 2001 PRESENT: Young, Weaver for Morrill, Sherwood, McDermott, Kommers, Peed, Linker, Leech, Benham, Howard, Stewart, Larsen, Nehrir, Mooney, Jacobs for Lefcort, Weaver, Amend for McClure, Locke, Levy, Bogar, Bond, Jelinski, Francis, Lynch, Butterfield, Scott, Griffith. ABSENT: Hatfield, White, Anderson, Jost, Harkin, Lansverk, McKinsey, Prawdzienski, Fisher, Carlstrom. The regularly scheduled meeting was called to order by Chair Ron Larsen at 4:10 PM. A quorum was present. The minutes of the February 7, 2001, Faculty Council meeting were approved as distributed. Chair's report - Ron Larsen. - A draft of the proposed Board of Regents policy, Ownership of Electronic Course Material, was distributed (attached for members absent), and there was brief discussion. Comments about the draft may be e-mailed to Ron (ronl@coe.montana.edu). - Administrators have received letters requesting they prepare statements of responsibilities, accomplishments and goals by March 2. The statements will be posted at the Faculty Council web site. Tenure-track faculty may review administrators between March 5 and March 21. - Some concern has been expressed that the list of faculty incentives from last week's meeting do not necessarily apply to all faculty. - A draft resolution on instituting FY2001 faculty salary increases at the end of this academic year will be discussed at tomorrow's UGC Steering Committee meeting. UGC Nominating Committee report. - Linda Simonsen, Mathematics, has been nominated to fill a faculty vacancy on the Athletics Committee. As there were no additional nominees from the floor, it was decided by consensus that her name should be forwarded to President Gamble for approval. Faculty Affairs Committee report. - The committee did not meet this week. - Sabbaticals were funded at the level included in this year's budget. Names of faculty receiving sabbaticals will be announced next week. Hewlett Committee report on the new core - David Cherry, Jeff Adams, Adele Pittendrigh (members of the Hewlett Executive Committee). - Two years ago, a grant was received from the Hewlett Foundation to improve MSU's general education (core) requirement. A second grant was received to fund the project an additional two years. - The current goal is to pilot a new core for about 300 students, beginning Fall Semester 2001. Five foundation courses (Seminar, Quantitative Reasoning, College Writing, Inquiry, Diversity, Research and Creative Experience) are part of the core, and there are additional core electives. The course material will vary in some of the foundation courses, depending upon the instructor. - The minimum number of credits in the new core is 28 (The current core credit minimum is 32). - Assessment will be part of the pilot project. - There is a notion that the new core will help retention. - During discussion, it was noted that if the new core is fully implemented, there will be campus-wide impacts, because large core lecture classes will no longer be as appropriate. In the short term, faculty advisors of students will need to be familiar with the requirements of the new core so they can advise students participating in it. Proposed Workload policy (MSU-Bozeman: Faculty Expectations and Institutional Accountability) - Provost David Dooley (Proposed policy attached for members absent). - A task force including faculty and the Provost has been working on the policy since the task force was set up by then-President Roark. The task force is now soliciting feedback on the proposal. - Key elements of the new document include: - It is no longer a workload document but addresses faculty expectations and institutional accountability. Faculty expectations are built into P&T documents. - Definitions of teaching, research and creative work, outreach and service have been expanded. - There is no numerical standard or even a range of numerical measures. - A goal of the policy is to help MSU explain to outside constituents how faculty use their time. - President Gamble was consulted about his views, and he recommended accountability measures and a measure of outputs be used, not inputs. - During discussion, it was pointed out that the original intent of Faculty Council in proposing a task force to develop a policy was to address inequities in teaching load across campus that give some faculty less time for scholarly activity while expecting all faculty to meet uniform UPT standards. - According to the Provost, the task force agreed assignments need to be consistent with the role and scope of their unit and the way in which their work is reviewed. Deans and department heads must ensure consistency between role and scope and evaluations. If necessary, either standards or assignments must be adjusted so they are compatible with each other. This should be left in the hands of the units. - It was pointed out there is a perception that there needs to be equity in faculty workloads across the university and this document doesn't address it. - The Provost responded that this policy isn't the mechanism to address the issue. That must be done through resource allocation, and different inputs are needed to address resource allocation. Diversity in expectations and assignments needs to be recognized. There needs to be differentiation in expectations between units and over time, perhaps with an individual. - Concern was expressed for the way money is currently allocated to colleges which is based on history. - The Provost said this will change for the coming biennium. The Budget Analysis Committee, Long Range Planning Committee, Strategic Planning and Budget Committee, deans, department heads and faculty will develop principles by which budget decisions should be made. The process will be more data driven than in the past. - MSU can now provide both incentives and rewards for faculty and units participating in reaching the university's goals. - The point was made that any statement of work expectations should apply to non-academic units, also. The Provost stated that there will be accountability measures across campus. - There will be further discussion of the statement. The meeting adjourned at 5:25 PM. Joann Amend, Secretary Ron Larsen, Chair