Faculty Policies Committee Minutes

September 20, 2004

Members present: Marc Miller, Bruce Saul, Donna Wear, Peggy Ruth Geren, Barry Thompson, Tom Crute, Pam Hayward, Jana Sandarg, Wendy Turner, Wayne Mixon, Janice Williams Whiting and Katherine Sweeney

Marc Miller called the meeting to order at 3:30 pm. The minutes from September 13 were accepted as posted to the FPC intranet and approved unanimously.

Course Evaluations- Donna Wear reported that all previous committee members had responded indicating their interest in continuing to serve on the subcommittee or not. Donna will contact Steve Hobbs about serving on the subcommittee and will then set up a first meeting.

Teaching abroad and compensation-Janice Williams Whiting had nothing new to report.

Cheating and ethical behavior among students-Peggy Ruth Geren had nothing new to report.

Fall break consideration-Katherine Sweeney outlined the various components of a potential calendar allowing for a two day break for faculty and students, a fifth day for exams and an extra day for faculty grading. She did caution that there may be a spring where one of the above may have to change depending on how the calendar falls. As a sidebar there was discussion about the move to the Civic Center for graduation. Marc will share the potential calendar with Drs. Bloodworth and Sullivan in their next meeting.

Faculty Handbook consideration-Marc, Bruce Saul and Wendy Turner will meet on September 21 as a subcommittee. As a recap, Marc outlined that they would like to break the review of the handbook into three areas: editorial modifications (typos, consistency, etc.), minor modifications that will require some type of action and major policy changes.

Lyceum Series-Bruce outlined some of the background for the group concerning the year end report Jim Benedict distributed when he met with FPC on September 13. In particular the Biology department was not contacted about the geneticist who would be on campus until just before the event and they had a conflict that could not be rescheduled. Wendy also offered some background concerning certain comments Jim had made to the group. She offered a summary of what she thought Jim's overriding concerns were. There is a tremendous amount of money being spent on the series. There should be better oversight over the way the monies are spent. There should be more consistency over programming and the students definitely do need input of some kind. There also needs to be a clearer policy concerning faculty responsibility for support of the series. Janice Williams Whiting offered that perhaps ASU should look at a better distribution across disciplines among the student members of the committee. Tom Crute is currently working on a meeting time for Wendy, Jim, Eddie Howard and him to meet this week. He will put the results of that meeting on the FPC intranet for review by the group prior to next week's meeting.

Department chair evaluations and term limits-Marc, Wendy and Barry Thompson met last week and had a general discussion of how best to proceed. They are scheduled to meet again on September 21. They will discuss Hubert van Tuyll's proposal in light of information they are gathering from other schools. In whatever direction they proceed it will be important that the language be flexible to allow for the best interpretation by each of the three colleges on campus.

New item-Dr. Sullivan asked Marc to have FPC consider a class period during the week where there would be no classes in order to schedule meetings on campus. There was considerable discussion by members. Scheduling would be particularly difficulty for the sciences and the fine arts with the course and lab structure they utilize. Marc has also had a very informal suggestion from a faculty member concerning a schedule that would only include two day a week courses. This would be a challenge as well. Several suggestions were discussed for each of the above, each with positives and negatives.

Marc reminded the group about the faculty meeting at 3:00 on September 22 in University Hall 170. The president will speak about developments concerning the budget.

Marc thanked FPC for their attendance at the new faculty luncheon on September 17. Unfortunately, he has learned that the new professor of Military Science, Michele Goddette, inadvertently did not receive an invitation. He has spoken to her to apologize and has suggested that FPC take her to lunch.

Marc reminded the group that the ASU Alumni Association is hosting a “brick bash” on September 23 from 5-7 at the Maxwell Alumni House. He encouraged members to stop by and buy a brick to support the Faculty Alumni Scholars program and to have a piece of history from the old academic buildings.

Jana Sandarg announced that a group interested in promoting the Cullum 2900 course in Spring 2005 will be meeting on September 27 at 2:30 pm in the Languages, Literature and Communication suite if any FPC members wanted to attend.

The meeting was adjourned at 4:30 pm .