MINUTES OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
OF THE FACULTY SENATE
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2007

MASON HALL, room D5; 1:30 – 2:30 p.m.

Present: Lorraine Brown, Phil Buchanan, Jane Flinn, David Kuebrich, Robert Nadeau, Jim Sanford, Suzanne Slayden, Cliff Sutton, Susan Trencher

Approval of Minutes: Suggested revisions to the minutes of January 12, 2007 will be made and resubmitted to the committee for approval at our next meeting (February 26, 2007).

General Topics for Discussion:

• Allocation for 2007-08 needs to be presented at the March Senate meeting.
• Copyright Policy may be ready for agenda.
• Meeting with Faculty Reps to the BOV Committees 2:30 p.m. February 26^th, following next EXC meeting 1:30 p.m. on February 26^th, both meetings in Mason D5.
• Requests to use Faculty Senate mailing list for non-Senate purposes; generally say no, but to whom should we refer them? To check with Provost Office about their mailing lists.
• Legislative Update to be attached to agenda; concern about proposal to use money from general account for pay for highways – important decision to be made next week. To ask Tom Hennessey for summary on impact of legislative session on higher education.
• Green Task Force Motion – letter from President Merten suggests incorporation of faculty and administrators as co-chairs. Carrie Meyer serving as chair (with course release time from Senate), to have Tom Calhoun (VP of Facilities) as co-chair? Do we need to vote on faculty and administrators serving as co-chairs? To write as motion from the Executive Committee. Also to report to Senate that we did not get release time we requested; direct request made to President Merten about ten days ago. Received two half-time research assistants. The GMU Environmental Task Force is working quite well and will report to the Faculty Senate in the future.
• Snow Days – who makes policy to open at 10:00 a.m.? Decision made jointly by Provost and Facilities Office. Need to have parking lots and sidewalks cleared, liability issue. Opportunity cost for two hours closure around several hundred thousand dollars; no marginal cost. Also affects food service, bookstore, parking revenues.

Faculty Senate Standing Committee Reports

Academic Policies – Cliff Sutton: four members of the committee are working on separate items. One is catalog-sensitive: Linda Miller (Faculty Athletic Representative) suggested wording re attendance policy in order to include wording about GMU-related activities, beyond present scope of religious observances. Doesn’t create a problem for most faculty, but sometimes creates problems for adjunct faculty. Would not change wording of what faculty should or should not do, but expands coverage. Draft text will be distributed to Executive Committee.

Budget and Resources – Phil Buchanan: No action items, hope to announce salary data posted; may have more reports from Donna Kidd.

Faculty Matters – Jim Sanford presented Draft of Noncompetitive (Waived Search) Hire Policy developed by the Faculty Matters Committee:

Policy: In keeping with Section 1.3 of the Faculty Handbook that states, “ In accordance with the best traditions of American universities, the faculty plays a primary role in…faculty personnel actions,” the faculty role in noncompetitive hires is equal to that in competitive searches and hires. This policy concerns all noncompetitive hires of term, tenured, and tenure-line faculty.

Noncompetitive or direct hires are hires in which the search process is waived. When hiring term, tenured, and tenure-line faculty, competitive searches should be used except in very special circumstances. These circumstances are normally limited to situations (a) when the candidate has already established a national/international reputation, the program has a unique opportunity to hire the targeted candidate, and the area of specialization complements those of faculty already in the program.; (b) when the candidate is a close family member (spouse, parent, child or sibling) of a candidate being hired through formal search procedures and the university is attempting to accommodate the family member; and (c) when an administrator is hired and is considered for acceptance in a specific local academic unit (LAU). While an administrator is normally hired using a competitive process at the administrative level, this policy applies because s/he is not part of a competitive process at the level of the LAU. Term faculty may also be hired without a search when classes must be staffed immediately due to an unexpected resignation, death, or illness of a member of the teaching faculty. Wavier of a search is this situation is usually only valid for up to one year.

Procedures: Faculty in the LAU review the credentials of any individual who is a candidate for noncompetitive hire using the same procedures as review of competitive hire candidates. These include at a minimum the opportunity to examine a curriculum vitae, meet with the candidate, attend a job seminar or formal presentation by the candidate, and review letters of reference. The LAU faculty then vote to accept or reject the candidate. The hiring process moves forward only when a majority of the LAU faculty who are eligible to vote accept the candidate.

If a candidate for noncompetitive hire is to be tenured upon hiring, s/he must be reviewed by both the LAU faculty and the college- or school-level promotion and tenure committee. The LAU review requires a majority positive vote by eligible faculty for tenure in addition to the vote to accept the candidate into the program. If the LAU faculty vote is positive and the chair approves of the candidate, the dossier is then sent to the college or school promotion and tenure committee. As with all tenure reviews, independent external letters from recognized experts in the candidate’s field must be obtained in a manner consistent with other tenure reviews, and candidates are held to the same standards as other candidates in that LAU. Since noncompetitive hires may be made outside the normal annual promotion and tenure cycle, college and school promotion and tenure committees must develop procedures for reviewing candidates out of cycle.

• Term Faculty: There are so many term faculty in some departments. Practice varies –some schools/departments require presentations, others do not. Some term faculty may have worked for years at GMU as adjunct faculty. Policy draft may contradict Faculty Handbook, perhaps to leave out term faculty – controversial, already existing language. Suggestion made to split into two separate motions – one for tenured, other for non-tenured faculty. Do we also need to include term research faculty? They usually do not teach, probably need to say only tenure, tenure-line, and instructional term faculty. Noted that some research term faculty turned into direct hires; research faculty as sponsored hires – generate their own salary money; eligible for tenure(?). May never apply for another grant, paid at a large salary. Also issues of abuse.
• Approval/Authority: Policy to be added to Faculty Handbook once completed; BOV approval needed for Faculty Handbook. BOV does not have to approve policy – President can approve a policy before it becomes part of Faculty Handbook. If President approves policy, it does not become contractual until approved by the BOV. Important to have new policy in place to avoid future problems.
• Decision Levels: Noted that tenure (recommendation) can be turned back or allowed by decision of the dean (2^nd level) and provost (3^rd level). There have been examples in which department promotion and tenure committee made decision not to recommend tenure in which the dean recommended tenure; even if both department and dean do not recommend tenure, the provost can approve tenure. Any link in the chain can be overturned; decision ultimately resides with the Provost.
• Scope of Accommodation Hires: Do accommodation hires include only spouses? Or also parents and children? Is the latter unnecessarily broad?

Employment of Family Members: Proposed draft revision modeled on College of William and Mary draft policy: (changes from William and Mary policy appear in bold)

If a faculty member or administrator is in a position to hire, supervise, evaluate, or make personnel decisions about a family member, that family member’s contract could be one in which the faculty member or administrator has a “personal interest”. The employment of family members is permitted, provided that an employee does not exercise or appear to exercise any control over the employment or employment activities of the member of his or her immediate family and is not in a position to influence or appear to influence those activities. In the event the employee is in a position to influence or appear to influence the employment or employment activities, the Board of Visitors will be apprised of such. The Board may approve the employment of the family member after expressly establishing appropriate safeguards that avoid any and all actual or apparent conflicts of interest.

• Restrictive language vs. positive tradition. We do have domestic partners and spouses coming in, do we want an encouraging tone to apply or a more restrictive guideline?
• Efforts to accommodate domestic partners?
• Problems at department level in carrying this out
• If competitive market dictates wage at $60,000, should not be paying $100,000.
• Real issue is whether person is qualified and whether there is a position.
• If someone is here already and considered a superstar and then they marry someone else, can the new spouse be hired? That has happened before with no outside offer- may be hired as an administrator.
• Why to hire someone other than trailing spouse as a matter of policy? If apply, hire as most qualified; violates affirmative action. Board must be apprised of the relationship.

Respectfully submitted,

Meg Caniano

Clerk, Faculty Senate