�MINUTES OF THE FACULTY HANDBOOK REVISION COMMITTEE

Wednesday, July 11, 2007; Mason Hall, D5 � 12:00 � 1:30 p.m.

 

Present:� Kevin Avruch, Associate Director and Professor of Conflict Resolution, Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution; Rick Coffinberger, Associate Professor of Business and Legal Studies, School of Management, Chair; Martin Ford, Senior Associate Dean, College of Education and Human Development; Dave Harr, Senior Associate Dean, School of Management.

 

Absent: Lorraine Brown, Professor of English, College of Humanities and Social Sciences; David Rossell, Associate Provost for Personnel and Budget, ex-officio; Suzanne Slayden, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, College of Science.

 

Provost Appointees:� The Provost met with Martin Ford and Dave Harr.� In addition to the departure of Marilyn Mobley, the retirement of David Rossell was recently announced.� At this juncture, the start-up time for a new appointee would not work; therefore Martin and Dave will continue to serve as his remaining appointees without replacing the departing committee members.� The Provost also reserved the right to add another appointee to the committee; impression conveyed that things going smoothly.� He also thanked the committee for the work done so far.�

 

Meeting Cancellation:� As several committee members are unable to attend July 25th, the meeting will be cancelled.� Our next meeting will take place Wednesday, July 18th from 12:00 � 1:30 p.m. in Mason Hall, D5.

 

Fall Schedule:� After some discussion, a tentative plan to schedule twice monthly meetings of two hours� duration, tentatively for Tuesday mornings pending feedback from absent members of the committee.

 

Update/Discussion: Who is covered by the Faculty Handbook?�

�        Full time instructional and research faculty are covered; administrative faculty not covered.

�        Should adjuncts be covered?� Consensus in earlier discussions that adjuncts should be covered as well; there are many things in Handbook for which adjunct faculty are responsible.� There are also many things which do not apply to adjunct faculty; good practice to be explicit, lest some complain they have employment rights which they do not have as adjunct faculty.�

�        Adjunct faculty offer letter the same as other offer letters.� Without a contractual (adjunct faculty) handbook, rules which apply are scattered, may not be known.

�        Committee has not yet examined sections of Handbook for applicability to adjunct faculty.� Would require reworking of some sections already completed to make much finer distinctions.�

�        Are all part-time faculty adjuncts?� In Human Resources they are, but they really are not.� Prototypically, adjunct faculty hired to teach one course one semester at a time; have separate contracts for each course they teach.� Part-time faculty can be hired for entire academic year, but may not be hired on multi-year contracts.

�        Some things covered by University Policies distinct from Faculty Handbook.� Do University Policies supercede Faculty Handbook?� They should not be in conflict. �Do Commonwealth of Virginia policies trump Faculty Handbook?� Technically, they should not be in conflict.�

�        �Adjunct� means different things in different units.�

�        Need for separate adjunct faculty handbook discussed; to ask Provost�s view.�

 

Update/Discussion:� Criteria for Evaluation, Promotion and Tenure

�        Modifiers such as �genuine� excellence and �high� competency not popular, redundant.

�        �Excellence� as validity, �Genuine� as reliability; consistent performance.� To promote overall pattern of data for evaluation in six-year period; not just one outstanding year.

�        Procedural changing of deadline from December 1st to November 15th to speed up appeal procedures.�

�        Nobody is clamoring for a university-level promotion and tenure committee as exists in large research universities.�

�        Distinction between full and associate professors � needs to be something bigger, such as national recognition.� Faculty continue to do high quality work, may be doing new work; time for judgment of work by larger community of peers.� �Associate� or �Tenured� sense of great potential and clear evidence of delivery.� Letters and awards mean more for full professor, as does presidency of a major scholarly organization, or as editor of a journal.

�        Each academic unit to send to provost for his approval their criteria for promotion and tenure; more precise language needed.� May be impossible to come up with language to cover diverse disciplines.� When a new leader hired, changes must go through governance process.�

�        Strong feeling, regardless of language used in criteria � after you go through all the hoops, an emergent sense of what decisions should be � the right thing will get done.� If someone acts in bad faith, system will catch it.� Should the Provost/President act in bad faith, a different problem.� Even so, with one positive vote on appeal committee, then may go to BOV Faculty and Academic Standards Committee.�

 

Respectfully submitted,

Meg Caniano

Clerk, Faculty Senate