University Faculty Council Members present: Howard Chapman (Kent), George Schipporeit (Arch), Phil Troyk (BME), Michael Young (Psyc / Chair), Judith Zawojewski (MSED).
Absent: Ralph Brill (Kent), Glenn Broadhead (HUM), Joel Goldhar (Stuart), Andy Howard (BCPS / Secretary), Miles Wernick (ECE), Ken Schug (BCPS), Xian-he Sun (CS), Dan Tarlock (Kent).
UCOPT: A new member needs to be chosen for the University Committee on Promotions and Tenure: it should be an engineer, since the outgoing member was an engineer. A list of candidates will be e-mailed to the Provost, or else the department chairs will discuss candidates directly with him.
Discussions continued regarding revisions of the Faculty Handbook.
Emeriti: The definition of the Professor Emeritus position has been revisited. Mary Ann Smith has researched how other universities define this position. Definitions vary widely: they range from emeriti having no voting at all to all having a right to vote on everything. Most are in between. The distinction between "active" and "inactive" emeriti is difficult to arrive at. The University Faculty Council decided to revisit this problem at a later date, and not hold up the distribution of the handbook to the faculty at this time. UniFC will take up the definition of "active" emeriti and their privileges at a later date.
Curriculum Committee: The Council discussed why should the Provost have a vote on the Curriculum Committee at all. There are two issues here: one is whether the language in the document is consistent, and the other is whether the provost should have a vote. Resolution was that the provost is ex officio involved in curricular matters and is thus a voting member. This will be clarified.
Research Centers: At a future meeting the University Faculty Council will need to address the roles of Research Centers, as defined in Appendix P. These entities have ambiguous roles in the university structure, because the faculty who populate the centers have regular appointments within academic departments.
Governance: At a future meeting the UniFC should also reexamine and potentially re-word appendix P, section B. The current language imples that it can consider a proposal even if the committee that reports to it has voted not to give it further attention.
The remainder of items on the list of clarifications brought by Phil Troyk were adequately addressed.
Procedure: At its February meeting, the UniFC will vote on sending the revised handbook to the faculty. It will provide faculty with notes of the changes made, and will indicate that no vote is needed to make changes reflecting clarifications.
The meeting was adjourned around 2:10p.m.