Dean's Council Meeting

College of Arts and Sciences

May 2, 2007

Present:  P. Braun, M. Carolan, M. Coleman, R. Crabtree, R. DeWitt, D. Franceschi, J. Garvey, J. Goldfield, M. Gogol, D. Greenberg, F. Hannafey, M. Kubasik, P. Lane, J. McCarthy,

D. McFadden, L. Newton, L. O'Connor, E. O'Neill, T. Osier, S. Peterson, R. Poincelot,

S. Rakowitz, R. Rodrigues, V. Rosivach, K. Schlichting, M. Sourieau, B. Torff, E. Umansky,

Y. Williams, R. White, and D. Winn

Not Present: D. Brousseau, K. Cassidy, D. Franceschi, J. Leatherman, and D. Li

The meeting convened at 4:00 p.m.

Dean's Introductory Remarks

Reference Letters for Junior Faculty Members—The Dean advised the department chairs how to write appropriate letters of recommendation for junior faculty. He encouraged chairs not to incorporate the term "tenure" when writing letters of recommendation. Situations existed where phrases such as "they are making good progress towards tenure" resulted in a legal response when a faculty member was denied tenure and/or promotion. The best way to characterize progress is to articulate that they are making appropriate progress for someone at this stage of their career or admirable progress in a given area. The Dean expressed the importance of being honest to tenure track faculty. Offering constructive criticism is important for faculty as they move towards their tenure track careers.

Annual Report—The Dean asked department chairs to submit their annual reports one week earlier than routinely submitted. He expressed the importance in completing the spreadsheet portion of the annual report. Ms. Jean Daniele compiles this information into a master spreadsheet, which displays the College's accomplishments relative to student and faculty research, grants, publications, internships, and graduate school acceptances. This information is extremely helpful in grant writing processes, along with assisting miscellaneous administrative requests. The Dean recommended that department chairs, who are not familiar with the use of excel spreadsheets, can obtain personalized training for themselves or their assistants.

Approval of Minutes

Dr. Leo O'Connor moved to approve the April 4, 2007 Dean's Council minutes, and Dr. Phyllis Braun seconded the motion.  Twelve were in favor of approving the minutes with one abstention.

Dr. Ed O'Neill moved to approve the March 21, 2007 Program Director's minutes, and

Dr. Marie Agnes Sourieau seconded the motion. Eight were in favor of approving the minutes with three abstentions.

Conversation with Ray Poincelot, Interim Dean

The Steering Committee suggested that Dr. Raymond Poincelot, who was appointed Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences for the academic year 2007-2008, share some of his initiatives for the upcoming year. Poincelot mentioned that he has a lot to learn and will confer with Dean Snyder as much as possible prior to his departure from the University. He asked the Dean's Council to offer him patience while becoming familiar with the responsibilities of the Dean.

Dr. Poincelot will focus on the following initiatives during the upcoming academic year. This is an on-going list of priorities and is not displayed in order of importance.

• Build community among the College faculty and administrators. He will be as inclusive and transparent as possible.
• Offer an open door policy to faculty and administrators, as long as his scheduled commitments warrant his availability.
• He encouraged discussion directly with him when problems and/or conflicts occur.
• Strive to make constructive decisions, while not taking encounters personally.
• Offer the best support he can to all of the department chairs and program directors, and asked that the Dean's Council reciprocate in the same manner.
• The Strategic Plan will be a high priority for the College. Poincelot will work with all College faculty, administrators, and various Centers in the initiative  to implement the goals of the University, especially in terms of core integration and living and learning.
• Advocate strongly for faculty lines in the College, not only for replacement of retirees but for newly approved lines as well.
• Promote mortgage assistance or an increase in faculty housing, in order to make our hiring process more competitive.
• Increase faculty diversity, within the College, and multiply and support initiatives to make the University a more "multicultural respectful and aware community."
• Work with some departments to realign their thresholds, so that functional equivalency exists across the College. His goal is to assure that salary improvement becomes truly a departmental decision. Poincelot commented that he would prefer not to intervene with departmental Merit plans and make adjustments with salary; but if need be, he will intervene to assure equality.

Dr. Robbin Crabtree asked Poincelot if he would be in favor of a committee to work on equilibration. Poincelot expressed his concerns with assigning a committee to equilibrate across the College. He was concerned with the differential teaching across the departments. Faculty teaching required core courses are faced with lower ambition and/or interest from students rather then courses taught relative to a students' major and/or minor. He was concerned with the possibility that teachers might be measured differently dependant on whether a student is required to participate in a course. Crabtree explained that she was not recommending one plan across the College, rather to address issues similar to what Poincelot addressed. Poincelot agreed to give Crabtree's suggestion some thought.

The floor was opened for questions and/or suggestions.

Dr. Leo O'Connor asked Poincelot if he was planning to continue the use of the Steering Committee to set forth the Dean's Council agendas. Poincelot assured the Council that this process will continue.

Crabtree asked Poincelot if he would continue to implement the College travel policy as presently managed, where each full-time faculty member is allotted a $1,000 travel budget, to be consumed over the course of the academic year. In addition, will the department chairs be given the opportunity, at the beginning of the academic year, to request additional travel funds based on which of their faculty submitted or were accepted to present at conferences? Poincelot assured the Council that the travel practices that Dean Snyder implemented will continue over the course of this academic year, but he could not speak for the subsequent dean.

Dean Snyder commented that faculty travel was increased from an estimated $830 per full-time faculty to $1,000. With an increase in recruitment of junior faculty, the estimated travel funding per full-time faculty is presently approximately $1,400. Additional funding is compensated with contingency travel funding from the College Dean's account. The Dean suggested that the top two priorities towards the Strategic Plan, for the College, should be the recruitment of new faculty and an increase in travel funding to $1,500 per full-time faculty.

Chair Survey Data

Crabtree shared a summary of the College survey that was distributed on April 3, 2007. She mentioned that the Dean's Council selected a sub-committee consisting of Drs. Robbin Crabtree, Rick DeWitt, Jesus Escobar and Francis Hannafey, S.J, who developed this survey in fall 2006.

Crabtree reiterated the beginning stages of the discussions that took place prior to forming the sub-committee. She explained that the Council attempted to provide a Governance change, which was a compromise between the Dean's "dream situation" and the present Chairs' Selection and Compensation policy stated in the College's Governance Document. The Dean shared these proposed changes with the Academic Vice President. Because the AVP and Dean Snyder were not enthusiastic about the compromise solution for chair's selection that was proposed by the CAS chairs, and an informal survey of faculty by the subcommittee showed similar lack of enthusiasm, the CAS department chairs decided not to bring them forward to the College faculty for discussion.

Information was sent to Computing and Network Services (CNS) to assist with implementing an on-line survey. An invitation to participate in the survey was e-mailed to 164 full-time College of Arts and Sciences faculty on April 3, 2007, in which there were ninety respondents by the close of the survey, at midnight April 27, 2007. This was a fifty-five percent response rate.

There was no demographic questions included in the survey, other than, how long faculty where affiliated with the University; therefore, there was no association with individuals and/or departments.

Some of the questions reflected in the survey, along with their results are as follows:

1. Importance of the role of the department chair (Question 1 of the survey)—leadership (40%), Other (29%), Advocating for department (21%), take turns to serve (15%), representing department (10%), do department busy work (7%), mentor junior faculty (5%).
2. Relationship between chairs and Dean (Question 3 & 4 of the survey)—This was a two part question that focused on the current relationship with the Dean and an ideal relationship with the Dean. The results in the following categories are listed respectively—collegial and collaborative (29%, 88%), mutual tolerance of each other's roles (52%, 3%), chairs facilitate Dean's work (19%, 8%), department as site of work; Dean facilitates (37%, 62%), adversarial relationship (24%, 2%), and acrimonious relationship (6%, 1%). There appeared to be general consensus across the years of service about the current and ideal relationships. There were numerous comments relative to this section of the survey, and Crabtree shared a set of comments to reflect a range that was not linked to a particular department and/or individual. Some of the suggestions reflected in the survey were shared with the Dean's Council—"The Dean should adopt management by walking around—be open and accessible; both Dean and chairs could have more appreciation for each other's roles and challenges; Dean must have an open-door policy; and both chairs and the Dean should have a strong, clear vision."
3. Best method for selecting department chairs (Question 5 of survey)—Survey was calculated based on years of service. By far, the majority of faculty believed that an election was the best method to follow, especially those faculty with greater years of service. There were no faculty in favor of the Dean appointing the department chairs, but some were in favor of collaboration with the Dean, but in no way appointment of the chair.
4. Most appropriate compensation for chairs (Question 6 of the survey)—Most faculty favored more compensation. There were thirty-one comments with a compensation rate ranging from $6,000-10,000. The average recommended compensation was equivalent to that of the chairs in the Dolan School of Business of $7,000 and the minimum being higher then the present $4,500, which is currently the chairs compensation in the College. There were comments relative to equity or equality. Some faculty commented that all chairs should receive the same compensation reflecting both monetary and a course release while other's expressed that there should be flexibility across departments. Some faculty believed that course releases were problematic, because it forced an increase in adjunct use. Some departments are presently receiving course releases, while others are not, which caused an equity issue.
5. Do you think there should be limits on the number of consecutive terms for department chairs (Question 7 of the survey) —The majority of faculty were in favor of term limits with a 51% vote in favor of a two-term limit. The following justifications were displayed to support the favored limitation. The breakdown by length of service was 54% favoring a limited term. This was categorized by our faculty members' length of service—54% for under 5 years service, 53% for 5-10 years of service, 46% for 11-20 years of service, and 52% for over 20 years of service.

• "6 years of service as Chair seems appropriate given the demands of time made on the Chair, the learning curve required to understand the role, and the burnout which inevitably occurs."
• "Term limits are important since some people become ensconced in these positions, and departments become stagnant and deep divisions can arise from old battles."
• "The 2 could be waived if no one else qualified is willing to serve but as a general rule 6 years is enough-people lose their edge after a while."
• "The chair should rotate among department members."
• "Up to the department."

6. Satisfaction with current chair (Question 8 of the survey)—This was also tallied according to our faculty's number of years of service—under 5 years, 5-10 years, 11-20 years and over 20 years. Junior faculty were most satisfied with department chairs. The categories ranked were leadership, mentorship, fairness, communication, collegiality, and availability. The percentage rates declined with the increase of faculty years' of service. Overall the satisfaction with the current chair's relationship with the Dean was ranked with 38% of faculty being extremely satisfied.

Dean Snyder suggested that the Dean's Council release the data compiled from the College survey to the wider faculty. He was impressed with the outcome of the data collection on the term-limits for chairs—76% of the faculty voted for some form of term limit. Crabtree asked Poincelot if he was ready to release the data to the College. Poincelot agreed that the data be distributed to the College. He agreed with the idea of term limits for department chairs. Dr. Schlichting commented that he thought that all committees should have term limits. There should be a hiatus for those who serve on a committee, leave, and are interested in re-appointment. He recommended a handbook amendment to reflect term limitations. Dr. Rose Rodrigues supported a system with rotation of department members to serve as chair—this worked well for Sociology. Rodrigues mentioned that giving faculty the opportunity to chair within their department would lend different styles and priorities, which would bring new life to a department. Crabtree suggested that term limits be placed as an agenda item for our upcoming fall Dean's Council meeting.

The Dean shared some final thoughts on the chair selection and compensation within the College. He prefers a model where faculty would elect department chairs, and the Dean would serve as a check and balance regarding the final appointment. This is the model that virtually every University he is familiar with follows. He suggested that the Council focus on more about what the College chairs do and less about the Dolan School of Business, as a future strategy. He felt that if the Council approached an equity agreement comparable to the Dolan School of Business, it would not work unless the College was willing to accept the procedures that went along with it, such as the Dean appointing the department chairs.

Dr. Miriam Gogol asked if there was clarity as to whether faculty had a preference over course release time or an increase in chairs' stipends. Crabtree mentioned that the data does not reflect that question, but 17% of the faculty felt there should be a choice of either stipend or course release, and approximately the same percentage felt that an increase in stipend or a course release should be individualized from department to department. 51% of the faculty felt that both a course release and an increase in compensation were appropriate. Crabtree mentioned that it was her understanding that chairs currently could choose between a stipend or a course release, both by handbook language and approval of the Dean.

The meeting adjourned at 5:30 p.m.