Members Present: Javad Abbasian (ChEE), Shlomo Argamon (CS), Patricia Bach (Psyc), Jeff Budiman (CAE), Bill Grimshaw (SocSci), Andy Howard (BCPS), Vijay Kumar (ID), Robert Krawczyk (ARCH), Eun-Jeong Lee (Psych--for Joyce Hopkins), Art Lubin (AMAT), Victor Pérez-Luna (ChEE), Boris Pervan (MMAE), Ganesh Raman (MMAE), David Rudstein (Kent), John Snapper (Hum), Phil Troyk (BME), Catherine Wetzel (ARCH), Chris White (BCPS), Geoff Williamson (ECE).
Members Absent: Howard Chapman (Kent), Warren Edelstein (AMAT), Ali Emadi (ECE), Joel Goldhar (SGSB), William Newman (MSED), Wai Gen Yee (CS).
Student Government Representative: Caitlin Hubbard.
Faculty and Staff Visitors: Mary Anne Smith, Vivian Weil
Student Visitors: Adam Bain.
Call to Order: The meeting was called to order about 12:40pm on Friday 7 September 2007 in the ballroom of the McCormick / Tribune campus center after lunch.
Dates for University Faculty Council Meetings:
Phil Troyk and Andy Howard announced that the fall Faculty Council meetings
will be held on 7 September, 12 October, 2 November, and 7 December.
All these meetings will run from 12 to 2pm, with the half-hour from 12 to 12:30
for lunch and the remainder for business.
All these meetings will be held in the McCormick-Tribune Campus Center Ballroom
except the 12 October meeting, which will be held in the Hermann Union,
Armour Dining Room (lower level).
UCopt Appointments:
Phil explained that UniFC needs to recommend replacements for three outgoing
members of the University Committee on Promotions and Tenure. One must
be from the Institute of Psychology; one from the Stuart School; and one from
the College of Science and Letters. After some discussion,
Patrick Corrigan (PSYC) was proposed for the psychology position;
Elie Geisler and Zia Hassan for the Stuart position;
and Sanjiv Kapoor, Jack Snapper, and Ed Reingold for the CSL position.
Each of these slates was considered individually, and all three were
approved by acclamation.
It is noted that the Provost has the opportunity to choose among the nominees
for the Stuart and CSL positions.
(secretary's note: These slates were communicated to the Provost's office in
an email sent to Noreen Kozak on 14 September).
Search Committee for Dean of the College of Science and Letters
Appendix E of the Faculty Handbook specifies a procedure for the appointment
of a search committee to choose a college dean. Since Buck McMorris will
be leaving his post as Dean of the College of Science and Letters in May 2008,
the University Faculty Council is tasked with assembling a list of nominees
to serve on this committee. The provost will create the committee based in
part on the nominees recommended by the UniFC.
The following faculty members were proposed:
Gadi Agam (CS),
Jeremy Alexis (ID)
Matthew Bauer (HUM),
Jinqiao Duan (AMAT),
Robert Ellis (AMAT),
David Grossman (CS),
Warren Schmaus (HUM),
Kathryn Spink (BCPS),
Wai Gen Yee (CS),
John Zasadzinski (BCPS).
This slate was approved by acclamation.
(secretary's note: this list was sent to the Provost in an email on
14 September. Prof. Duan's name was inadvertantly omitted from that email,
but a correction was sent to the Provost on 19 September.)
Conflict of Commitment Statement:
Mary Anne Smith presented a statement regarding
Conflict of Commitment,
which will be included in the Conflict of Interest statement that
all full-time faculty will need to sign this year.
Victor Pérez-Mendez asked what the statement meant by
"incidental" activities (which are allowed).
Mary Anne provided an example:
activities that occur in IIT space should be handled as a contract,
whereas activities that occur in the client's space can be handled as a
consultancy.
Retirement Intervention Plan:
Mary Anne announced that the retirement buy-out offered to faculty
in spring 2007 will need to have a closing date associated with it.
Leaving it open-ended would oblige the University to incur a large one-time
debt and a substantial annual expense.
Accordingly, the President will shortly issue a letter announcing that
the window for acceptance of the buyout will close on 31 May 2008.
Support Intervention Team:
Mary Anne described the development of a
Support Intervention Team
to provide better support to University leaders
in dealing with disruptive members of the community.
Mary Anne has altered some details of the plan as a result of
recent discussions involving President Anderson and the UniFC leadership.
Undergraduate Dorm Initiatives
Mary Anne announced that the University has a long-term plan to develop new
undergraduate dormitories, but construction will not begin in the next year.
To accommodate the expected increases in undergraduate enrollment in AY08-09,
some buildings currently set up for graduate student housing will be converted
to undergraduate space.
This is in keeping with the principle that the highest priority in housing
is the undergraduates' needs.
Upgrades to some of the graduate apartments are anticipated as well over
the next year.
Faculty Support for Athletics:
Mary Anne described President Anderson's enthusiasm for increased
participation by faculty in the University's athletic programs.
This participation is not just a matter of improved cooperation with
the coaches in terms of exam scheduling and management of assignments;
it also involves planned incentives to faculty for attendance
at athletic devents.
Mary Anne will herself be involved in these incentives in her role with
the Quality of Life Committee, and the students want the faculty to
become more heavily involved.
The suggestion from the Council is that greater cooperation between
academics and athletics should work both ways.
IIT Code of Ethics
Phil reminded the Council of the April discussion of the proposed
IIT Code of Ethics,
as developed by a taskforce led by Vivian Weil
of the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions.
The Council agreed at that point to ask the Academic Freedom Committee
to discuss the Code and report back to the Council about how to deal with it.
So at this September meeting, the task before us was to populate the
Academic Freedom Committee and ask it to look over the Code.
At least two of the members of this committee need to be Council members.
After some discussion, the Council assembled a committee slate of
Patty Bach (PSYC), Howard Eglit (Kent), Phil Troyk (BME),
and Jialing Xiang (BCPS). This slate was approved by acclamation;
Phil and Patty affirmed their willingness to serve.
(Secretary's note: Jialing Xiang has agreed to serve.)
The committee will be asked to report back by the end of the semester.
If the Council decides to hold a faculty meeting in November,
the committee will be asked to report back before the 2 November UniFC meeting
so that its recommendations could be voted on by the full faculty,
should the recommendations require full-faculty assent.
A discussion of both the role of the document and its specific content ensued. Faculty members in Humanities, Psychology, and other Academic Units have expressed concern about the degree to which this Code is intended to be an enforceable document. Some members of Council had positive views of the general tenor of the Code, but are concerned that the bulletized specifics of the document will reduce its long-term applicability and its appropriateness.
CoPT Guidelines:
At the end of the AY 2006-07 the Council agreed that it should draft
some guidelines for the operation of the Committees on Promotion and
Tenure, particularly the top-level (University) CoPT.
At the September meeting the Council discussed what those guidelines
might be and where they would be codified.
Specific procedures for operations might or might not belong in
the Faculty Handbook, whereas broad guidelines might properly be
included in the Handbook.
Chris White has offered to help form a roughly five-member task force
to consider development of these guidelines,
perhaps incorporating some of the guidelines articulated a half-decade ago
but never actually adopted.
The Council agreed that this task force should spend much of the fall
semester gathering facts and increasing its understanding of the issues
involved; the task force will report back in time for its recommendations
to be considered by the full faculty in its spring 2008 meeting.
UniFC Officers' Terms:
Phil and Chris pointed out that the transition to a new chair will occur
this year in January rather than over the summer.
It has been suggested that this mode of operation might be preferable to
the transition described in the Faculty Handbook,
and that officers' terms that are longer than the currently-mandated one-year
terms might allow for more productivity.
Jack Snapper agreed to assemble a committee to consider these issues and
report back to the Council at its October meeting.
(Secretary's note: as if 18 September, Jack has assembled a committee
consisting of Michael Young, Lew Collens, and himself;
that committee will meet at least once in September.)
President's meeting with UniFC Officers:
President Anderson met with Phil, Andy, Mary Anne, and Chris (remotely)
on 4 September. He discussed with the officers several of the issues
that the Council went on to deal with at this meeting.
He would like to meet with the officers roughly three more times during
AY 07-08.
Phil, Chris, and Andy reported that the attention that President
Anderson is paying to UniFC issues is an encouraging development.
UniFC Communication:
Some Council members, including Phil, expressed some disappointment over
the last-minute posting of the agenda for this meeting and the lateness
of the posting of minutes for last-year's meetings.
Andy agreed to get these documents (including supporting documentation)
onto the website earlier in the cycle.
Council members also suggested that the UniFC website is not particularly
visible to the faculty as a whole, and recommended that the secretary
make an effort to improve the site's visibility.
Andy agreed to do so, and pointed out that creation of a simple psedonym
for the site (e.g. http://unifc.iit.edu/) would be easy to accomplish.
It might be possible to get a link to the Council's site directly from
the IIT site's home page; Andy said he would look into that.
Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 2:10pm.