MSU-BOZEMAN FACULTY COUNCIL MEETING MINUTES
                           December 5, 2001
                                   
PRESENT:  Young, Sherwood, White, Kommers, Leech, Benham, Howard,
          Stewart, Jones, Ross, Nehrir, McMahon for Weaver, Lansverk,
          Levy/Bandyopadhyay, Bogar, Jelinski, Idzerda, McKinsey for
          Pratt, Fisher, Lynes-Hayes, Butterfield,

ABSENT:   Hatfield, Morrill, Engel, Anderson, Peed, Linker, Larsen,
          Mooney, Lefcort, McClure, Locke, Henson, Lynch, Kempcke,
          Griffith, Carlstrom.

The meeting was called to order at 4:10 PM by Chair John Sherwood.  A
quorum was present.  The minutes of the November 28, 2001, Faculty
Council meeting were approved as distributed.

Chair's report - John Sherwood.
     - Gary Bogar, Mathematics, and Shawna Lockhart, Mechanical
     Engineering, have been appointed by the Provost to the Computer
     Fee Allocation Committee from nominees submitted by Faculty
     Council.
     - Membership of the Space Management Committee (SMC) was
     discussed at a Wednesday meeting between Faculty Council
     leadership and the administration and again at UGC Steering
     Committee.
          - Concern was raised for the potential perception of
          conflict of interest in cases where the faculty member's
          department is involved in a space management consideration.
          - A way to resolve the issue agreeable to both
          administration and Steering Committee is to add a second
          faculty member to the committee.  Then, in cases where one
          of the faculty member's departments is involved, that
          individual would not vote in order to alleviate any concern
          for potential conflict of interest.
          - Because Cynthia McClure, Chemistry and Biochemistry, is
          willing to serve on the committee and she was one of the
          nominees for the original faculty position on the SMC, UGC
          Steering Committee forwarded her name to Acting Vice
          President Roloff, who has appointed her as the second
          faculty member of the committee.
     - Two ad hoc committees have been suggested:  a faculty
     demographics committee and a faculty professional development
     committee.  There is agreement that the faculty professional
     development committee should move ahead.  The faculty
     demographics committee will continue on hold until a director of
     institutional planning and analysis is hired, because this second
     committee will require a significant amount of data collection
     and analysis.
     - At today's meeting of Faculty Council leadership and central
     administration, possibilities of giving a standard raise at the
     time of promotion was discussed.  Possibilities for doing so will
     be considered.

Faculty Affairs Committee report - Marvin Lansverk.
     - A proposal for an ombudsman has been drafted.  The committee is
     now gathering information from about 20 other institutions
     regarding release time and budget needed to make the initial
     proposal successful.
Montana Learning Community (MLC) Overview and Discussion - Martin
Teintze, Walter Fleming, Lisa Graumlich, David Cherry.
     - The Montana Learning Community (the new core) is a pilot
     project which addresses some concerns with the present core
     curriculum.  A goal of the Montana Learning Community is to
     prepare students to be better learners in the remainder of their
     course work.
     - After getting input from faculty and students, five
     foundational courses (Seminar, Quantitative Reasoning, College
     Writing, Ideas and Perspectives, and Diversity) plus a Research
     and Creative Experience were proposed, and they are now being
     tested.
      - Four core electives will also be part of the MLC.  They will
     be in the areas of Natural Science with lab, Social Science,
     Humanities, and Fine Arts.
     - This fall, CLS 101 - College Seminar, enrolled 304 students
     with 20 faculty.  This course will be renamed "University
     Seminar".  There are also freshman seminars in other colleges.
     Spring Semester there will be three Ideas and Perspectives
     courses enrolling 327 students.
     - Next year, second-year courses (Diversity, Research and
     Creativity) will be offered.
     - "Diversity" includes race, class, gender, ability, and other
     considerations and is broader than "multicultural", a current
     core requirement.
     - As a result of the call for proposals in May to enhance
     existing multicultural core courses, using the five new diversity
     criteria, two courses were redesigned to meet the criteria.  Two
     additional courses will be taught Spring Semester, one revised
     and one new.
     - The purpose of the Research and Creative Experience is to
     supplement what is currently done in undergraduate research and
     to do it early in the core experience.
     - The pilot courses will be existing courses or new courses which
     have been redesigned to include at least 1/3 research.
     - It was pointed out that there needs to be a way to move from
     this primary research experience to a more self-directed
     experience.
     - The question of cost was raised.  According to Professor
     Teintze, MLC is still in the experimental phase, and it will need
     to be determined if the experience is worth any added cost.
     Because freshmen seminars are small classes, it is the most
     expensive part of the new core.   It is anticipated that classes
     with large numbers of students will be included in the new core.
     - The new core committee is still trying to determine how to
     evaluate the pilot program to assess its impact.
     - Although some coordination with General Studies and Business
     freshman seminars may be possible, there are differences in goals
     that will not make total coordination with the new freshman
     seminars possible.
     - There will be a faculty forum on cross-disciplinary teaching
     and learning on December 13 from 4:00 - 5:30 PM at the Foundation
     Building.

As there was no further business, the meeting adjourned at 5:00 PM.



Joann Amend, Secretary         John Sherwood, Chair