Minutes of the 9/20/06 Meeting of the College of Arts & Sciences

 

Proxies were held by:

Robbin Crabtree for Leo O'Connor

Laura McSweeney for Matt Coleman and Peter Spoerri

Larry Miners for Kathy Nantz

Marice Rose for Laura Nash

David Sapp for Mariann Regan

Joan Weiss for Vera Cherepinsky and Steve Sawin

 

Call to order: The meeting was called to order at 4:15 pm. Prof. Crabtree welcomed the faculty and set the tone for the 2006-2007 College meetings. She explained that the College Steering Committee would focus on keeping presentations short and would be willing to cancel meetings in the absence of a full agenda.

 

Approval of the minutes of 4/27/06: Prof. Mulvey moved to approve, seconded by Prof. Lane. Prof. Rakowitz asked to change the minutes in order to clarify that the Bellarmine museum being funded by the Board of Advisors is separate from the Board's support of a project in the Visual and Performing Arts department. She suggested changing, "Finally, the Department of Visual and Performing Arts is proposing a visiting artist/scholar program, along with a new museum in the lower level of Bellarmine, to house..." to "Finally, the Department of Visual and Performing Arts is proposing a visiting artist/scholar program. In addition, the Board will fund a new museum in the lower level of Bellarmine, to house..." There were no objections to the change and the minutes were approved unanimously with 8 abstentions.

 

Election of Chair and Secretary of the College

Chair: Prof. G. Lang, seconded by Mulvey, nominated Prof. DeWitt. Prof. McFadden, seconded by Prof. McSweeney nominated Prof. Bernhardt. Prof. L. Miners, seconded by Prof. Davidson, moved to close nominations. Nominations were closed and ballots were distributed. The result, announced later in the meeting, was that DeWitt was elected Chair of the College.

Secretary: DeWitt, seconded by Mulvey, nominated Rakowitz. Prof. Buss, seconded by Davidson, moved to close nominations. Unopposed, Rakowitz was re-elected Secretary of the College.

 

Introduction of New Faculty

Crabtree (still running the meeting while awaiting the vote count for Chair), distributed a handout with names and brief descriptions of the new faculty in the College, and asked those new faculty who were not teaching at the time to stand and be welcomed. The new tenure-track and visiting faculty are: Jim Biardi, Brian Walker, Jessica Davis, Amanda Harper-Leatherman, John Haggarty, Kathleen Lang, Serena Jourdan, Peter Duval, Mike Sweeney, Steven Bachelor, Cherie Woodworth, Mark Demers, Yael Eliasoph, Jerelyn Johnson, Kris Johnson, Min Xu, Janie Leatherman, Raquel Ukeles, Angela Kim Harkins, Matthew Blackwell, and Jon Leiseth. The handout is posted at faculty.fairfield.edu/cas

 

Remarks by Dean Snyder

Last year

The Dean began by suggesting that last year's major accomplishment was strong academic performance, citing the scholarly output of the current faculty, the strength of the new hires, the active involvement of students in conducting and presenting/publishing research, participating in internships and study abroad opportunities, earning competitive fellowships (especially Fulbrights), and earning acceptance to graduate schools. Among the highlights, he also noted grant activity in the College, and many examples of new and continuing initiatives in community and professional outreach.

 

The College and the University Strategic Plan

Now that a new Senior V.P. has been hired and the implementation process has begun, the budget will follow the plan. In other words, we are most likely to get funding when our goals align with the Plan. In this way, the Plan provides opportunities for the College. We can strengthen and extend some of our current activities like the sophomore symposium and the floor for women in science. We can also argue for new faculty lines as more full-time faculty will be needed for core integration. Similarly, we can continue to push for faculty housing initiatives because they're necessary for the living and learning component of the Plan.

 

Faculty hiring plan for 2006-07

Snyder explained that hiring remains a main priority in the College. We are continuing to use the agreement reached between the A.V.P. and the V.P. of Finance that funds freed up through retirements in the College remain in the College. This year there will be 13 hires, 12 of which are replacements. The one new line makes for a total of 12 new lines since 2003.

The 13 positions are configured as follows: two in Biology (Developmental Genetics and Evolutionary/Bioinformatics); Chemistry (Inorganic Chemistry); Classical Studies (Classical Historian); two in Economics (Applied Microeconomics and another to be determined); English (20^th Century British Literature); Math (Biostatistics, 1/3 with Biology); two in Modern Languages and Literature (not definite, possibly Spanish and Chinese); Philosophy (Asian Philosophy); two in Physics (senior scholar and Materials Science, 1/3 with Chemistry).

Snyder also talked about the importance of hiring for mission, which includes a focus on core teaching commitments. He further argued that hiring for diversification expands our intellectual capital along with our intellectual and cognitive capacity and complexity. He warned of the need to make sure that our professional environment is welcoming to all.

 

Issues for the coming year

The Full-Time Faculty Teaching Equity Committee (FTFTEC) made recommendations that were finally implemented over this summer. This year, requests for course releases and stipends (other than for chairs and directors) had to be made by 9/15. In the future, those requests will need to be made by 12/20 for the next academic year.

Snyder also spoke about the issues of selecting and compensating chairs. He suggested that effective chairs are able to work with their faculty and the dean and they are appropriately compensated. He indicated that there is currently a subcommittee of the Dean's Council considering these issues.

College staff position reviews are a continuing issue. Historically, there has been an accretion of staff and of duties, with no systematic review of the distribution of staff and no broad update of staff duties. Staff communication issues also need to be resolved.

Interdisciplinary programs in the College have also recently been reviewed. A report from the review committee (Profs. Coleman, Franceschi, Gogol (co-chair), Li, Osier, Poincelot (co-chair), Umansky, and Williams) will soon be released. Among its recommendations are to change directors periodically, to make expectations clearer, to consider combining the three environmental programs (Environmental Science, Environmental Studies and Marine Science), and to consider some sort of combined International and Area Studies program. This report is just the first phase. The Dean's Council will discuss the proposals as will the College faculty. Of course any resulting proposals for changes in the programs will need to go through the formal university routing procedure. External expertise may be brought in to help with the planning.

Other reviews of College programs are in varying stages of implementation. Specifically, Snyder mentioned reviews of EN 11/12, the science cohort, and the Department of Modern Languages and Literature.

Snyder continued with an update on the CAS Board of Advisors. The 21-member Board meets three times a year. They currently have four priority projects— $50,000 two-year projects in each of three target departments (Biology, Religious Studies, and Visual and Performing Arts) and a $300,000 museum in Bellarmine. Fundraising for these projects is now underway, and there will be new phases in 2007-2008.

Snyder explained that his emphasis on branding the College as an entity itself, rather than a collection of individual departments, is part of a plan to position us for the next capital campaign. That campaign will focus on programmatic initiatives and endowed chairs and Snyder intends to push aggressively for increasing our faculty through endowed chairs.

 

Closing thoughts

Snyder concluded his remarks with a paean to the College faculty. He spoke of the success of our faculty in teaching, highlighted by a willingness to explore pedagogy, to develop new courses and methods, and to work across disciplines. He also noted that College faculty are leaders in a number of university-wide initiatives, including: the Center for Academic Excellence; the academic component of the IRC; the assessment initiative; the Fulbright committee; the new Center for Service Learning; the Writing Center; and institutional research. Members of the faculty also produce an enormous amount of scholarship, and that happens in the context of a 3/3 teaching load, and a commitment to high quality teaching and service. He urged the faculty to be proud of the accomplishments of the College, and referred to the College as a loving and caring community.

 

At this point, DeWitt took over as Chair, and opened the floor to questions. Prof. Epstein noted that Snyder had focused in his final remarks on how remarkable the faculty's scholarly productivity is in light of our teaching responsibilities, yet he did not comment on institutional support for scholarship. Epstein wondered whether support for scholarship was on the radar. Snyder replied that it was. He said that, for example, the average travel budget is $1000 per person, but the average expenditure on travel is $1400 per person. He argued that we need to link those expenses to the Strategic Plan in order to get that funding from outside of the College. He further explained that teaching and research are not mutually exclusive; we recruit people with strengths in both areas, so we can frame requests for institutional support around the Strategic Plan goals of increasing full time faculty teaching in the core and increasing opportunities for living and learning initiatives. In response to a question from Prof. Keenan, Snyder explained that the museum in Bellarmine will be for fine arts.

 

Announcements

DeWitt explained that the next meeting was scheduled for Wednesday, 10/18 at 4, but that we would attempt in the future to vary meeting days. He said that we would email a fuller schedule of meetings soon, and noted that all relevant information could be found on the College website (faculty.fairfield.edu/cas).

Prof. L. Miners offered an update on core activities planned for the Fall. On 9/27 there will be a drop-in event to raise awareness and interest in core integration. Ken Bain will be speaking on campus on 10/30. The retreat at Sturbridge will be 11/3-11/4. He reminded the faculty that integration of the core is not just an exercise for the College. Prof. Naser asked whether adjunct faculty were invited to the retreat; Miners said they were not.

Naser gave an assessment update. He announced an assessment conference at Holy Cross that could be coordinated with attendance at the Sturbridge retreat. He also said that departments were currently charged with discussing learning objectives for core courses. He ended by asking people to cooperate with requests for documents for the self study.

DeWitt thanked Crabtree for her years of service as Chair.

 

Lane, seconded by Prof. Bowen, moved to adjourn. The meeting was adjourned at 5:08.

 

                                                                        Respectfully submitted,

                                                                        Susan Rakowitz