Tuesday, October 3, 2006
Attendance: Jane Evans (Chair), Karen Turner (Vice-Chair), Paul LaFollette (CST), Maxine Chisholm (Coord), Roy Stevens (Dental), Luke Kahlich (BCMD), Bonnie Averbach (FSBM), Sally Harrison (Tyler), Ira Shapiro (STHM), Joan Shapiro (Educ), Zdenka Delalic (Eng), Judith Goode (CLA), Ann Barr (CHP), Lois Millner (SSA), Robert Aiken (CST), David Baron (Medical), Pauline Hurley-Kurtz (Ambler), Diane Maleson (Law)
1. Call to Order:
The meeting was called to order at 1:05 PM.
2. Approval of Minutes:
The minutes were approved as corrected.
3. Visit from President Hart:
Dr. Hart began her remarks by thanking the FSSC for the letter it sent her, and announcing that she was working on formalizing release time for the president and vice-president, as well as time for those representatives performing extra service from time to time.
She announced several actions in which she hopes to engage the Board of Trustees, including increasing informal communication between faculty and board members.
She is working on various issues involving the Temple Health System and its inter-relationship with the university. There will be an inaugural celebration in April centering around the theme of Urban Education and Urban Universities.
She responded to a number of questions and concerns from the FSSC members.
Baron asked if she planned to be more involved with the Health Sciences campus than had previous presidents. She said she plans to be, and that she hopes to design a Temple specific solution to combining a commitment to first rate research, clinical, and educational agendas.
Hurley-Kurtz suggested that the Ambler campus needs greater autonomy. Hart said that we need a master plan for Ambler to guide the future growth and direction of the academic programs and the campus.
Harrison asked what would become of the Elkins Park property. Hart said this issue is in limbo until we find out what can be done with the two buildings on that campus that are currently the property of the state, not of Temple.
Kahlich gave some history of the separate academic and administrative homes of the various arts at Temple and wondered if there were any thoughts of consolidating the artistic disciplines. Hart said that she had been puzzled about the number of different schools housing various artistic disciplines, and agreed that it was important to further explore this issue. She finished her comments by stating "The arts need to be present as literacy."
I. Shapiro asked for comments about her centralized vs. decentralized administration of the university. Hart expressed several ideas:
That faculty should make the decisions in the areas in which they are expert.
That individual colleges should generally make the decisions that are peculiar to their disciplines.
That she values and respects the Board as the ultimate source of decisions, and
That she expects the Board to value and respect the faculty.
She repeated her belief that there is a need for informal interaction between board members and faculty members. Baron asked, "What should Temple be?"
Hart answered that we have traditionally had a unique role in which young people could find an education. From that, we have developed into a large and complex institution. We now need to increase our visibility as a unique urban university which values excellence in research and education. While we must continue our role, it does no favors to people if we "admit them to fail."
Turner noted that "Temple gets a lot of mileage from its diversity. However less and less of that diversity is coming from Philadelphia, and more and more from the surrounding region." Hart responded that we need to find enough endowment to facilitate our commitment to people of our neighborhood as well as our region.
Goode expressed concern over the replacement of tenure track positions with non-tenure track and "other." Hart replied that there is no ideal recipe for establishing the proper ratio of TT/NTT faculty. There are, however, some principles. We should not announce TT positions and then fail to fill them and use the money to hire adjuncts. We should recognize that whenever a faculty member asks for release time that is contributing either to an increased load for his or her colleagues, or encouraging the hiring of more adjuncts. If we are going to have an increasing reliance on full-time NTT faculty, we must re-evaluate their role in governance.
Aiken commented that it is important to continue building trust between the faculty and the administration.
4. President’s Report:
Evans reported that the handbook committee continues to meet and we will discuss some of their work next week. The workload committee is scheduled to meet.
Aiken points out that it appears that the president's office, rather than the FSSC, chose who will attend Hart's first faculty/board reception.
5. Vice-President’s Report:
She is still working to bring order to our standing committees.
6. Old Business:
There was no old business.
7. New Business:
There was no new business.
8. Adjournment:
The meeting was adjourned at 3:00 PM.
Respectfully submitted,
Paul S. LaFollette, JrSecretary
