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Attendance
Approval of minutes
Proposal to decrease division I athletic costs
Diversity Committee
Chautauqua on Public Universities and Citizenship
Proposed review procedures for the College and the dean
Minimum enrollment requirement for courses

Minutes of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Faculty Assembly

Attending: Adrain, Amert, Brown, Buss, Cowles, Darling, Dominguez, Ehrstine, Gibson, Hatasa, Hendrix, Honey, D. Jones, Joselson, Lara-Braud, Lovaglia, Marra, Michaels, F. Nelson, G. Nelson, J. Nelson, Niño-Murcia, Parratt, Pavlik, Plapp, Randell, Redlawsk, Ringen, Schope, Slabakova, Snider, Squire, Strohmer, Waters, Wilcox

Excused absence: Altman, Balderston, Birrell, Fethke, Guentner, Larsen, Latham, Slatton, Troyer

Absent: Aprile, Boggess, Borreca, Christen, Creekmur, Fielding, Finnegan, Fitch, Frankel, Franklin, Freeman, Geng, Gölz, Gross, Hesli, T. Jones, Kim, Kleiber, Leddy, Lewis, Lutgendorf, Payne, Pienta, Plumert, Robertson, Schwalm, Silliman, Stroyan, Thompson, Tomasini, Trachsel, Trevor, Ungar, Vélez, Vlastos, Whitmore, Woodard, Zebrowski

Visitors: Fred Antczak, Associate Dean; Raúl Curto, Executive Associate Dean

1. The minutes of the Faculty Assembly meeting of November 20, 2002 were approved as distributed.

2. Proposal to decrease division I athletic costs. Chair Doug Jones announced that Nick Colangelo, chair of the Board in Control of Athletics, has agreed to answer questions at one of the Assembly's meetings next semester, but he has asked for questions in advance. Jones asked that members send their questions to him before winter break, preferably by email to jones@cs.uiowa.edu, and he would batch them and forward them to Professor Colangelo. Associate Dean Fred Antczak asked whether Jones would be willing to include any questions the EPC might have, and Jones said intelligent questions from any quarter would be welcome.

3. Diversity Committee. Chair Jones announced the membership of the Faculty Assembly's Diversity Committee: Alice Atkinson (Education), Kate Cowles (Statistics & Actuarial Science), Rex Honey (Geography), Tisch Jones (Theatre Arts), Fred Woodard (African American World Studies), and Gerhard Strohmer (Mathematics). Honey has volunteered to chair the committee.

When asked about the committee's charge, Chair Jones referred to the report he distributed at the Assembly's November meeting, which he compiled from comments and questions members had sent to him, and he said that the committee could use its own discretion as to which aspects it would focus and report on. He said the committee would produce a report for the Assembly in the fall of 2003.

Dean Antczak noted for the information of the Assembly and the committee that the Admissions Committee was gathering information from departments on their efforts to recruit and retain a diverse student body, and that they hoped to identify and report on the best practices.

4. Chautauqua on Public Universities, Citizenship, and the Liberal Arts and Sciences. Member Kim Marra distributed a flier on the Chautauqua to be held on February 26, 2003, at the Iowa Memorial Union, on the future of public higher education. She invited everyone to attend and participate. She said that the Chautauqua Committee hopes the event will launch a campus-wide conversation on the significance of the "public" in "public university." It is only one of several planned events, and Marra said the committee would be happy to co-sponsor and publicize any related events that other organizations would like to plan. Member Rex Honey said that the Diversity Committee may wish to sponsor a forum on diversity at public universities.

5. Proposed review procedures for the College and the dean. Member Michael Lovaglia (Sociology), who is also a member of the Executive Committee, presented the EC's draft proposal for review procedures for the College's self-study and for the dean. The proposed amendments to the Manual of Procedure would increase the number of self-study committee members from six to seven and would specify that the committee consist of two members from each of the College's electoral groups plus a seventh at-large member who would be chosen from among the holders of the College's named chairs and professorships. The proposal also specified that all the self-study committee members would be on the budget of the college. The EC proposed omitting the stipulation that the dean be reviewed by faculty from outside the College and added a section that allows the EC to nominate four faculty to the decanal review committee, one each from the three electoral groups and one at-large member who would hold a named chair or professorship, all of whom would be on the budget of the College.

When asked about the rationale for specifying that a holder of a named chair or professorship should be on the self-study committee, Lovaglia said the assumption was that the holders of endowed professorships were the most competent and the most secure faculty members. He noted that the proposal did not specify that there could be no more than one named chair or professor on the committee, but since these faculty are often among the busiest, the EC's reasoning was that they could probably manage to get one on the committee. Member Gerhard Strohmer observed that holders of endowed positions were in fields that attracted development dollars and reserving a spot on the committee for one of them could overrepresent those disciplines. Dean Antczak responded that not all named professorships were field-specific. He also said that endowed positions are awarded to excellent people, and it made some sense to have excellence overrepresented on a review committee. Some members suggested that choosing among DEOs might be better, in that DEOs are more informed about the administrative workings of the College. Member Virginia Dominguez (Anthropology) suggested stipulating that committee members be full professors, because they would be the most immune to major repercussions and would therefore give a more open evaluation.

Member John Nelson (Political Science) maintained that the seventh member was a bad idea because it would give one electoral group strikingly disproportionate representation. Dean Antczak replied that the disciplines were not evenly distributed in the electoral groups to begin with, and he suggested that committee members would be unlikely to take a narrow view of whom they were representing. Nelson replied that the electoral groups, while not comprising equal numbers of disciplines, were nevertheless the established basis of representation in the College.

Chair Jones asked for clarification concerning whether the EC wanted the Assembly to vote on the proposal or simply suggest revisions for the EC's consideration. Lovaglia noted that it was a draft proposal and said that suggestions for revisions would be welcome.

John Nelson moved to strike the seventh at-large member from the proposal. The motion was seconded. The motion was approved on a voice vote with no opposition.

A member asked whether the EC discussed any rules for reporting the results of the dean's review. Dean Antczak said that reporting procedures were the provost's prerogative, and the College could not tell him or her what to do in this regard. Member Alvin Snider (English) noted that the University's Operations Manual allowed colleges to make additional rules, as long as they did not conflict with the University's established policy.

Another member asked whether the section on the review of the dean applied if the College was being reviewed at the same time as the dean. There was some discussion about whether it should be made clearer that the two committees had two separate functions, and that the dean would not be chairing his or her own review committee.

John Nelson moved to replace "on the budget of" in the proposed section 34 (collegiate self-study committee) with "in." He argued (1) that those members of the College faculty who were not on the budget of the College were still in fact members of the College and should be so recognized, and (2) that the College should be willing take advantage of the expertise of all of its faculty who wished to be active in College governance. His motion was seconded.

Dominguez noted that the decision last year to exclude faculty who were not on the budget of the College from serving on the EC stemmed from concerns about the kinds of confidential discussions normally undertaken at EC meetings, i.e., those regarding budget and personnel issues. She was not sure that the same kinds of discussions would be the norm for the review committees.

The motion passed on a voice vote with no opposition.

Member Forrest Nelson (Economics) moved to make a similar change to the language of proposed section xx (committee for review of the dean). The motion was seconded and passed on a voice vote with no opposition.

Several members contended that the language in section xx was ambiguous in terms of the makeup of the dean's review committee. The second clause of the second sentence of the second paragraph seemed to imply that the committee would consist of four CLAS faculty members nominated by the Executive Committee. It was moved and seconded that the second sentence be split into two sentences, with the first clause becoming a sentence, and the second beginning with "Nominees" rather than "which." The motion passed on a voice vote with no opposition.

It was moved and seconded to change the sentence just amended to "Nominees shall consist of four faculty selected to represent the varied disciplinary perspectives and activities of the college." The motion passed on a voice vote with no opposition.

John Nelson moved to strike the word "four" from the previously amended sentence. He said there was no need to limit the number of nominees, since the list was simply advisory and the provost would choose whomever he or she wished to serve on the committee. The motion was seconded. Virginia Dominguez argued that a definite number carried the presumption that the provost would choose those people. She suggested defining a range rather than leaving the number completely open.

Chair Jones reminded the Assembly that time was running short for the meeting and suggested tabling further discussion. It was moved and seconded to table discussion of the current motion, and the motion to table passed on a voice vote with one member opposed.

6. Minimum enrollment requirement for courses. Chair Jones asked Executive Associate Dean Raúl Curto to address members' concerns regarding the minimum enrollment requirement for courses. Dean Curto referred the Assembly to the minutes of two Educational Policy Committee meetings at which he had discussed the minimum enrollment requirement. The first was the meeting of December 6, 2001, where he asked the EPC's permission to raise temporarily the minimum enrollment of undergraduate courses from 10 to 12, and of graduate courses from 5 to 6. That request was in response to the deep budget cuts that prevented the College from hiring as many adjuncts and visitors as in previous years. The EPC agreed with the stipulation that Dean Curto "continue his practice of selective and equitable attention to the specific situations of particular faculty and departments."

Dean Curto and the EPC reviewed the situation at the EPC's September 19, 2002 meeting. At that meeting, he reported that "despite having raised the 'minimum enrollment' number, he had found very few instances this fall in which low-enrolled courses were being offered. He also spoke of efforts to use PTEAP and other methods to average out enrollment targets, so that necessary courses that are low-enrolled can still be offered."

Dean Curto emphasized that low-enrolled courses were not cancelled if they were necessary to the department's programs. He said that the system was working--that the numbers of instances and exceptions were decreasing. He added that the policy was necessary because of the need to fully justify low-enrolled courses to the provost when asking for additional funds for instruction.

Member George Nelson (Mathematics) said that students know of the minimum enrollment policy and can see the enrollments online, and that the policy gives students a disincentive to enroll in low-enrolled courses. Dean Curto acknowledged that students do have access to that information and suggested that departments work directly with students to recruit them to courses that are at risk for being low-enrolled.

7. Adjournment. The meeting adjourned at the scheduled time.

Respectfully submitted,
Carolyn Lara-Braud
Secretary pro tempore