Minutes
Monday, October 29, 2001
President
Rupp convened the meeting at 12:12 p.m.
1.
It
was moved, seconded and approved that the minutes of the April 25, 2001 meeting
be adopted as posted.
2.
Patricia
Grieve, chair of the Executive Committee of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences
(ECFAS), opened with a statement noting concern regarding the impact that the
events of September 11, 2001, may have on grades students will earn and on
applications for admission to the University for Fall 2002. ECFAS reiterated Vice President Cohen’s and
the Deans’ call for faculty to be sensitive in the grading process to the
experiences the students may be having as a result of world events. ECFAS also called on the deans to prepare plans
and to inform ECFAS about ways in which the faculty can be of assistance in
ensuring the continued success in admissions that the Arts and Sciences has
been enjoying in recent years.
She then gave the annual report of the ECFAS
2000-2001 activities which had been prepared by David Helfand, outgoing
chair. The report noted ECFAS’ role in
1) selecting members for the Faculty Development Committee; 2) nominating
members for the Academic Review Committee; 3) providing three members to the
Faculty Budget Group and 4) having its chair serve ex-officio on the Academic
Review Committee. Professor Helfand’s
report cited a number of ways in which the Executive Committee had taken part
in the ongoing activities of the Arts & Sciences.
§
Concerned
by the impact that the proposed energy and housing surcharges would have on the
Arts & Sciences budget, ECFAS worked with the Vice President and the
central administration to reduce the amount that the Arts & Sciences would
be required to contribute, thereby achieving long-term savings in the ongoing
budget.
§
ECFAS
worked with the Arts & Sciences and the members of the University’s
telecommunications staff to remove junk phone-mail from faculty voice messaging
systems.
§
ECFAS
wrote to President Rupp expressing concerns about the impact that the drive for
unionization might have on the university and asking him to take various
actions.
§
ECFAS
began an analysis of the need for “topping off” external fellowships. It hopes to come forward with a proposal
earmarked for junior faculty in the near future.
§
ECFAS
reviewed the development plan which had been created by the deans of the Arts
& Sciences; it expressed concerns about various aspects of the plan in a
joint meeting with the departmental chairs.
§
The
Ad Hoc Committee on Development continued monitoring the fundraising efforts of
University Development and Alumni Relations (UDAR). It reported on the outcomes of the Capital Campaign as they
related to the Arts & Sciences and that it will continue monitoring
fundraising activities during the post-campaign period when Arts & Sciences
will be the central focus of University fundraising.
§
It
began a review of the appointment status of lecturers and adjuncts. A proposal has been developed and ECFAS will
be working with the Arts & Sciences to refine that proposal.
At the end of the report, on behalf of the entire
faculty and the Executive Committee of the Arts and Sciences, Professor Grieve
expressed her thanks to Professor Helfand for his service as Vice Chair and
then Chair of ECFAS. Next, she welcomed
three new members to ECFAS – Marc Van de Mieroop, Neni Panourgia, and Harold
Evans. She also reported that a special
election would be held in February for a Vice Chair who is expected to assume
the ECFAS chairmanship in July 2002.
Her final item dealt with the proposed unionization
of graduate students. She called the
faculty’s attention to the data that are available on various web sites. She also encouraged faculty to hold meetings
so that students would have the chance to talk about unionization and hear
faculty views. She noted that ECFAS, in
deciding to take no formal position on the matter of unionization, never
intended faculty to be silent on the issue.
3. Vice President Cohen began his remarks by calling attention to the
awarding in October of the Nobel Prize in Economics to Joseph Stiglitz.
Vice President Cohen went on to provide an overview
of changes in the fundraising structure that have occurred at UDAR since the
Capital Campaign ended. He introduced
Meg Dooley who is serving as the head of an expanded Arts & Sciences
fundraising structure. Within that
structure, each school will have at least two major gift officers, and the
central Arts & Sciences, for the first time, will also have two major gift
officers. In a reorganization of
corporate and foundation relations, the Arts & Sciences will have a faculty
liaison assigned to it, and a writer
has been assigned for preparing fundraising materials. Vice President Cohen went on to announce
some recent good news on fundraising. A
gift of $7.5 million has been received and will be directed to the
establishment of five substitutional chairs.
President Rupp commented that this was an unrestricted gift and could
have gone for uses anywhere in the university but, as part of the special focus
on the Arts & Sciences, had been directed to substitutional chairs. A gift of $2.5 million, has been received
for graduate financial aid and a gift of $1 million, to be matched by $500,000
from a Mellon Challenge grant, has been received for a substitutional chair in
Arabic language instruction. Vice
President Cohen noted that the coming year is going to be a challenging one for
fundraising; the state of the economy already made the situation somewhat
difficult and the events of September 11 could magnify that.
4. Professor Robert Shapiro, chair of the Academic Review Committee,
presented the annual report. He noted
that the Arts & Sciences will have completed a full cycle of academic
reviews at the end of this year. He
expressed the special appreciation of the Academic Review Committee to all of
the faculty who have worked on the internal review committees.
He noted that a process to consider the next phase
of the Academic Review had begun. A
meeting of the past chairs of the Academic Review Committee was convened by
Vice President Cohen to discuss the matter and to solicit their advice. In addition, the Academic Review Committee
discussed the matter at its last meeting.
It was the consensus of both groups that the academic review process
should definitely continue and that it was particularly important to
institutionalize the process. It was
recommended that the reviews be conducted in approximately the same order as
the prior reviews, recognizing that there may be reasons to review some units
sooner or later than the prior schedule would dictate. It was also recommended that the reviews
continue to include both external assessment teams and internal review
committees as before, but that the membership on both should be changed to
bring a fresh perspective to the review process. Professor Shapiro noted that the self studies and final reports
of the first reviews, as well as the two-year follow ups, will provide a base
on which to build the next cycle of reviews.
President Rupp noted that academic review had been an important process
for guiding the investments of the Arts & Sciences and that it was his
sense that it was an especially well-done activity. Vice President Cohen echoed President Rupp’s remarks, and added
that he felt the reviews had been exceedingly productive and effective. He noted that the academic review
recommendations, along with instructional needs, served as the primary driver
in resource allocation decisions of the Arts and Sciences.
Vice President Cohen then turned to the annual
faculty size and effort report. He
noted that the faculty had grown by 30 FTEs over the past six years. Most of the growth was in the senior ranks,
the result of efforts to sustain or enhance departmental eminence. As a consequence, the percent of tenured
faculty had grown to a decade high of 69%. In response to faculty concern about
this percentage, the Arts & Sciences has begun emphasizing junior faculty
recruiting. The effort to reduce the
tenure ratio is not occurring in a mindless fashion, however, as junior faculty
will still go to tenure where merited and the Arts & Sciences will continue
to recruit senior faculty as is warranted by departmental programmatic plans
and needs.
With respect to instructional effort, credit
enrollments grew at the predicted level.
Graduate enrollments have continued to decline with the planned
downsizing of the Graduate School. The
credit enrollments per professorial rank FTE has remained stable, although
there has been an increase in faculty involvement in undergraduate
instruction. This reflects both the
downsizing of the Graduate School and an explicit decision by a number of
departments to shift more faculty teaching toward undergraduate instruction. Vice President Cohen also called attention
to the fact that class size has shown no change since the Arts & Sciences
compiled this data base in 1994-95. In
closing, he reminded faculty that these are aggregate data that can mask
instances of significant deviation. He
cautioned that, while it was important to address such deviations, they should
not unduly influence broader policy decisions in the Arts & Sciences.
5.
Provost
Cole reported on the new School for Children.
He indicated that demolition began last week at the site for the school,
excavation will begin in mid-November, and construction will start in
December. Plans call for the school to
open in September 2003. The school at steady state will have 650 students in
K-8. Initially, it will open with
grades K-4 and then move up one class per year for the next four years. Children of faculty will automatically be
entitled to admission. Faculty will
also receive a 30-40% tuition reduction and, through a means testing process,
the need of faculty for greater amounts of financial aid will be
addressed. It is expected that 40-50%
of the students will come from the local community.
The school planning committee is currently trying to assess
what the faculty demand for spaces in the school will be. This information is needed to estimate
available space for children of officers of administration, Barnard faculty,
Teachers College faculty and the broader community. To determine this, a demand study is being conducted. The university plans to hold a town meeting
on November 19 to give faculty a chance to learn more about the school. In addition, plans call for opening a
web-site in mid-November. Provost Cole
was asked whether there were plans to extend the school into grades 9-12. He reported that the building could not accommodate
it. He observed that part of the
motivation for starting the K-8 school was that so much less was available in
New York City at the elementary and middle school level than was available at
the high school level. Other questions
were raised about the impact on nearby schools, the nature of the teaching
faculty and the involvement of Columbia faculty in the planning effort. Provost Cole indicated that there would be
no incentives to encourage faculty to move their children from nearby schools,
that teachers would be nationally recruited to staff the new school, and that
there was a faculty planning committee which was working with Gardner Dunning
in developing this enterprise.
6.
Professor
Luciano Rebay raised an item of new business.
He distributed and read a document expressing his concern that six
members of the Board of Guarantors of the Italian Academy were appointed by the
Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He
made a motion that President Rupp 1) take steps to amend the Academy’s charter
to have the six board members now appointed by the Italian Foreign Ministry be
appointed instead by a consortium of presidents of Italian universities and
academies, and 2) should report back to the faculty on this matter at its next
regularly scheduled meeting on February 13, 2002. In the absence of a second, the motion did not carry. Profesor Grieve indicated that ECFAS would
consider the motion..
By consensus,
President Rupp adjourned the meeting at 1:10 p.m.
Prepared by
Roxie R. Smith