Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Attendance: B. Aiken (CST), D. Baron (Medicine), J. Chen (CENG), J. Evans (President), S. Harrison (Tyler), J. Joyce (Faculty Herald), E. Newman (SSA), J. Solow (BCM), T. Speaker (Pharmacy), K. Turner (SCT) and R. Williams (CLA).
1. Approval of Minutes:
The minutes of the March 15, 2005 FSSC meeting were approved.
2. President’s Report:
a) GenEd Executive Committee: J. Evans and L. Millner met with Provost I. Schwartz on March 18, 2005 and presented a list of names and biographies of nominees for the GEEC. They pointed out to the provost and Peter Jones, also present, the lack of nonwhite volunteers to seve on the GEEC and suggested this lack might be a result of the recently diminished importance of service for consideration of promotion and tenure. They noted also the need to stagger terms fr the new GEEC and to mobilize nomination of student members for this committee. Evans noted that the Senate Steering Committee will nominate Area Coordinators.
b) Committee on the Status of Women (CSW): J. Evans observed that this committee has not met this year and its chair, Nilgun Okur, has related that class time conflicts have precluded such meetings. J. Evans noted that issues identified in a CSW report in autumn 2003, and as yet unresolved, include differences between male and female faculty of the same rank in salary, work space, equipment and class contract time. She will ask for an update and for a nominee for the next chair.
c) Graduate Board: Tony Ranere and Jim Korsch have requested the opportunity to meet with the FSSC an apparent conflict between the Graduate Board and the Graduate Dean regarding hamonization/homonogenization of policy and process for designation of graduate faculty, monitoring of graduate student advisors and student progress as well as related matters that impinge on departmental and collegial governance. J. Evans declared a consensus in inviting the requesting pair, the Graduate Dean and perhaps both parties together to discuss the concern about the critera and guidelines before bringing these issues to the entire graduate faculty.
d) University Policy on Tobacco Use: The new Temple University policy on tobacco use is expected to be developed and distributed to the faculty in the near future.
e) Request for FSSC Statement: Novella Keith requested that a statement of support by the Faculty Senate be developed for a University of Colorado faculty member who may be dismissed on the basis of that faculty member’s statements and views.
3. Vice President’s Report:
L. Millner reported that there is still a need to fill several committee vacancies for the forthcoming academic year. She also related that Dick Lancioni has been added to the president’s university Advisory Committee on Tuition.
4. President Adamany’s Report:
President Adamany, accompanied by Provost Schwartz and Ann VanSant, joined the FSSC as invited guests. President David Adamany reported:
a) New Faculty Appointments: Some 55 new faculty have accepted appointments.
b) Student Enrollment: About 3,900 new students, a near capacity enrollment, will enter Temple University in the fall term. Of these, 2,700 will be transfer students.
c) State Support: The governor recommends that the state’s subvention be reduced by about 2% this year to about $167,000,000, a sum that will represent about a 10% decrease in the state’s support level as compared to the 2000-2001 academic year.
d) TAUP Contract: Some details of the now approved TAUP contract are still being clarified, and it will be necessary for the Faculty Senate and administration working together to bring the Faculty Handbook into conformity with the TAUP contract so that the same standards will apply to both the union and the nonunion schools.
e) Response to FSSC Questions:
Based upon the live births beginning about two decades ago, the numbers of likely new high school graduates will reach a maximum in about 2008, but there is not much room for additional students in the university’s general facilities or student housing. This anticipated housing shortage has motivated private development of a residence tower at the southwest corner of Broad Street and C. B. Moore Avenue. Construction of that building, able to some 900 to 1200 persons, is expected to start in 2006. That and other private developments have led to an investment of about $105,000,000 in the Temple area during the last four years. Temple has helped the city’s administration become aware of development in the immediate Temple surrounds by assisting in gaining zoning variances and other regulatory variances.
The September entering class has an average SAT score of about 1088. Although the new SAT includes an essay, Temple will not make use of essay scores immediately, preferring for a few years to compare the essay subset scores with subset scores of the other two parts of the SAT. If the scores and student performances are noted to be consistent, then Temple University will adopt them.
Changes in the Faculty Handbook will involve faculty working with the administration and will be made only where the new contract supersedes the current Handbook, ie on promotion and tenure matters and the status of non-tenure track faculty.
We do not want to move to a two-tier faculty. Tenure track faculty should work on teaching and research while fresh and hold off from service until tenured and senior, established and knowledgeable about practice around the country. The idea of submitting only what a candidate thinks are his/her 10 most important works in promotion/tenure credentials is attractive. Currently, we use impact factors, citation indices and the number of libraries holding a person’s book or journal publications in evaluating these credentials as considerations for faculty promotions and tenure.
It is inappropriate for those at the Associate level to undertake service work. There is a sense that there are too many committees in the University. Faculty should probably not serve on more than one, or at most, two university faculty committees.
Of the new faculty hires, about 40% are members of minority groups. A new Office of Multicultural Affairs has been established to monitor with whom the university conducts business, mentors for new minority students, faculty recruitment and retention of university personnel at all levels. The idea of establishing a cross-campus caucus of minority faculty is a good one as is the idea of formalizing recognition of the role of minority faculty in mentoring undergraduate students.
Integration of our GenEd program with other community college curricula will come in time, but we will need to have a GenEd program up and running here first. There are no immediate plans to enlarge the global reach of Temple University though we can identify parallel organizations in other countries, and we do so now.
5. Old Business:
William Nathan suggested inviting departmental chairs and other academic heads of curricula that have heretofore undergone the recently instituted internal Program Reviews to summarize the outcomes of their respective reviews for the FSSC.
6. New Business:
No new business was presented for discussion at this FSSC meeting.
7. Adjournment:
The meeting was adjourned at about 3:30 PM.
