Faculty Assembly
College of William and Mary
Minutes of Faculty Assembly
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Present: Evans, Armstrong, Watkinson, Brown, Meyers, Fuchs, Orwoll, Nelson, Beers, Kulick, Abelt, Archibald, Mooradian, Meese, Diaz, White.
Jim Beers opened the meeting at 3:31
Beers: I want to get a vote on latest SSRL policy.
The President will come in around 4pm. Executive Committee met last week.
The minutes of the January meeting were approved at 3:33
Provost Feiss's Report
A revised draft is in progress with Faculty Retirement proposal.
The Virginia Senate & House have voted on budgets, conferees are discussing them. The budgets look pretty good, there are some differences to resolve. There are calls for 4 & 4.5 percent faculty raises. The Governor didn't put second year biennium raises in his plan. Both houses plan them however. This was not as much as we wanted though. There is good progress on base adequacy. There is some concern about the disappearance of a long-term W&M budget project - $7 million to redo utilities on old campus, and for new utilities. (Steam, chilled water, etc.) Our current plant built in 1948, and you have to make parts every time something breaks, so it is important that Commonwealth consider this.
The problem right now is, no one knows to what extent college funding will be held up on the transportation bill.
Regarding the VP for Development search. The search committee met and spoke with President. He is deliberating. We may have a resolution within a week.
The Internal Search for Reves director will begin. I will put together a job description and distribute to faculty.
Courtney Carpenter (VP Information Technology) has discussed creating a permanent faculty advisory committee. I would like to move forward on that. Carpenter will begin to draft a charge for that committee.
Mooradian: What does Mitchell Reiss (former Reves Center director) do?
Feiss: He is VP for International Affairs. There is a draft report about what the Reves Center will do. It was my decision to restrain this to internal search. The charge will clarify what that person will do. Reves Center has evolved and grown, not a lot of intentionality here. What can it do better? What does it do well? I have a sense that there is push for internal search. I don't have money for an external search. We elevated the number two person to interim director.
SSRL Policy (Research Leave Policy)
Moved and Seconded Revision.
Mooradian: Business school commented on the first draft. Seemed to like the second.
Diaz: The same was true of Marine Science.
Beers: We did too, only discussion about the first draft from the Education School.
Meese: One complaint was that some faculty got these every sixth year (not every seventh as in this policy). But when the Dean ran the numbers they found there were relatively few in that position.
Meyers: What is the date for this?
Feiss: There will b no call for FRA proposals in 2006 for the 2007-2008 year. Anyone who deferred an FRA to the following year will take those of course.
The faculty unanimously endorsed the proposal.
Beers: Meese's committee will be discussing outside letters and whether candidates can waive their right to review them.
Meese: This meeting will happen "come hell or high water."
Feiss: Of course, finally, anything is discoverable in a court proceeding. UVA and VT do have confidential letters, so it is working somewhere.
Meyers: Any developments on phased retirements?
Feiss: We've been discussing the eight and seven percent raises at the retirement phase. We are extending this benefit to everyone, whether VRS and ORP, to make this equal. We are articulating the fact that the VRS can deny the increase if it is designed to increase the payout. We are creating an incentive, and being explicit about this. The second document lays out versions of phased retirement. I can say that the difficult area is bound to be medical insurance benefits.
Nichol arrived.
Discussion followed from Executive Committee
Archibald: Public university is a bogus idea. A lot of schools are tax-exempt, get federal funding, and student loans. It's not an either-or. All non-profit higher ed is public. You can say this is a matter of degree. If that's what really going on, then all institutions should start as public.
Mooradian: My mother told me to date certain girls, and I wouldn't date those girls. A reactance formation is set up when we resist doing something just because we think we're being forced to; that is, when we believe we're losing freedom. Regarding setting strategic direction, BMW came up with a market, decided to look at their heritage. They focused on performance. We have a similar situation. We have to be something and it has to differentiate us and the value we provide. It might be being "great and public." We shouldn't reject that just because we perceive it as being forced on us. There tend to be parochial views of public - helping Virginia, discounting tuition, things like that. Another view of public would be more like the idea of the public intellectual: an empowering, broad view of "public" as embodying service to humankind and to the greater good. I think the faculty is concerned that we're headed toward "great and lower-case public," That is, to "public" in the sense of obligations, ties to proximal communities, and focus on local problems, and public in a limiting rather than an ennobling and broadening sense.
The Community Outreach Project idea came up at our last meeting. We were told there were three options: Petersburg, Charles City County or Portsmouth. That brought us to real concerns. If that's what's great and public, this is too parochial. Scott Nelson talked about the history of the school, and suggested that we should have an RFP process for any state development incentives. If we need to be public and great we need to think about options and broaden the conversation. I'm worried about the people who are on the "Visioning Committee." These are not people who have a forward-looking and empowering view of William and Mary. If we want a good history of William and Mary, if we want to know just exactly what William and Mary was in the 60s, the 70s and the 80s, than sure, these people are great historians of what William and Mary has been. They are not the sort of people I would associate with vision setting or even vision articulation.
Meese: if this were a private school, I'd be doing the same thing when I teach and when I do consulting. The mission that I've experienced as a student was that education at this place was ennobling and transformative. Our status as a public school gets in the way of what we want to achieve. Maybe we have normative obligations from our public status: public ownership, public paycheck, state board. Do these attributes imply obligations to the state other than be the best liberal arts education we can? If it wants us to create public goods, then they can pay us for that. Our payment doesn't imply any further responsibility. We shouldn't be unilaterally finding other obligations. We should figure out what great, and that is public service per se. Being great scholars and great teachers makes a public good and benefits the public.
Beers: Faculty and University Priorities Committee has taken a more active role in determining priorities. One of the things the faculty has come up with is a set of criteria: excellence in students, excellence in teaching, excellence in research.
Meyers: We have fantasized about being a private institution, what would we change? Most of us would change very little.
Nelson: There are many problems with this having been a public institution in the past. The College at one time endorsed the notion that slavery was a "positive good". Then it invested all of its endowment in the Confederacy. Then it resisted opening again after the civil war as it feared that Congress might require them to admit black students. Then it refused admittance to black undergrads until the mid-1960s. Our public statements and positions have had a very checkered past.
Brown: You posed the question, what does it mean to be great? We have banners showing the Approval of US News and World Report, and I have the sense that banners like that actually distort what is great. We may be structurally a house divided. We are public in the sense that we live in a market economy, and depend on the ability to recruit students. But there is an older style of public, in the Republic of Letters. In that sense we try to repay the circumstances of our privileged existence. I'd like to see a further refinement of greatness. There is no unitary greatness given our need to survive (the market greatness) and our aspirations in that other realm (greatness in the republic of letters). Which horse is pulling this cart?
Mooradian: I'd like our status not be tied to a market. BMW took themselves to a white space in the market. We have to be something special. I don't want us to be an Oldsmobile, where we are based on backwards-looking vision. The voluntarism of this generation is commendable.
Brown: If we follow out the logic of Scott Nelson's suggestion, it would be virtuous to suggest our checkered past, but it could hurt us in the market.
Nelson: We do produce public intellectuals, in the sense suggested by Russell Jacoby in The Last Intellectuals.
Watkinson: The engagement of the entire faculty is mandatory for this. The faculty has shown its strength when we come together to discuss these large questions. It's difficult to get faculty to do that. It's hard to cast a bright light on what we do. I encourage you to use your bully pulpit to raise this question. Greatest danger is to compartmentalize this discussion. You don't want to give the impression that certain things, certain projects are being privileged. The entire faculty should be allowed to be involved, perhaps with FCUP to review these. It's left to a great Master of Ceremonies to keep a great number constituencies involved.
Nichol: Even I believe that the most important way that we serve the Commonwealth or the public good is to train and ennoble these marvelous students. No other aspect of public-ness or public mutuality rivals this. What we give to the Commonwealth of Virginia is a set of skills and opportunities. That's the greatest thing we do in terms of greatness and public-ness. To those who think the largest service is the opening of young minds, I think that's flatly true. Joel at Charter Day mentioned the problem of missing the forest for the trees. What is the visioning committee?
Mooradian: Sam Sadler, Stu Gamage, and others.
Nichol: I do have a committee with Geoff, Carl, David Aday, and others. Its purpose is not programmatic or setting priorities. I talk all the time about the College of William and Mary, its history and traditions. I am required virtually every day to talk about this College with enthusiasm and commitment. I try to find ways of describing that. My ideas are not necessarily the best way of describing what's going on here. I can't describe the full breadth of our programs. What I say to them is: Here's what I have in my modest quiver. Do you have stories about work that faculty are doing> Faculty members' work that's changing the world, and affecting students? Can you write them up for me to take around as 3x5s to the College? Given the extraordinarily limited group, this is what it does. It has no planning function.
Nichol: On the reaching out and adopting a community business (the Cornerstone Project), we had one meeting. We wouldn't move on this without an RFP process to the faculty. This did arise politically. After discussion with the Governor as part of the Charter process. It's not clear if these would be imposed whether or not there'd be a charter. For the three universities who sought Level 3 management agreements, we had to have these. There is ample opportunity for political interference in this process. We don't want to be caught between Governor, House and Senate. I had some apprehension about the Charter movement myself. It's a decision the University made a long time ago to seek. As part of that effort the state has made demands. We submitted 6 year plans for enrollment, management. When the Governor met with the three College Presidents, they were anxious that we take community college students (though it was part of the agreement). He wanted to have an "adopt a community" set of obligations. They are vague. We must work on economic development and social progress in distressed communities. They should not be our own communities. It's written into the management agreements. They're probably vague enough to be modest in operation and format. Since they began as political matters we started with proposals from Stewart Gamage and Jim Golden. They looked to see if they had any interest in this. K-12 or economic development. Essentially there has been discussion along that line. We are a long way from allocating resources to that issue. We're looking at private funding operations, support from non-profits. It's so vague and preliminary at this point. If you're looking for freedom from the state. The Commonwealth has something to say about whether we have public obligations. We don't have a lot of options unless we decide that we will forgo the charter movement.
Nichol: Is public bogus? Is there a public uniqueness? Bob is right that there are privates that get a lot of state funds. It's obviously a mixed bag. Publics becoming more private; privates if you look close are quite public. I try to ask myself, are there public obligations not dependent on the analogous claim that only publics do this and privates never do. I think there are issues of access that publics must deal with, and that some privates do a better job because of endowments. Access and affordability are obvious examples of this. A recent study by the ETS (Education Testing Service) shows that of the 146 most selective institutions, fewer than 3 percent come from bottom quartile. More than 3/4ths come from the top quartile. Publics have the bottom quartile at 10 percent. We're still moving in the opposite direction. Maybe many think that if we have the option of becoming private, that we should take it. But the first time I talked to the search committee - I pointed out that my life is different from W&M. There was a North Carolina and a Virginia model of privatization. I supported the former. The UVA law dean said we are "related" to UVA which is "related" to the Commonwealth. My statement to the search committee, was: If you want to become private, I'm not the guy you want. Great, public universities are important for this democracy. I'd be lousy at it, I'd be depressed, and I wouldn't do it.
Nichol: UVA law said that we won't take any more money and will charge anything the market will bear. Are we talking about that? If we still continue our relationship, there is a sense that the Commonwealth will inevitably have an interest in shaping the institution. If the Commonwealth doesn't like the idea of raising tuition I doubt that we'd be able to do it. We would have to remind ourselves that there is some reason why the Commonwealth supports the College. I hear claims, occasionally, that there's no reason for the Commonwealth to continue to support this place if it's a discount version of Princeton for sons and daughters of Northern Virginia. If we don't privatize, we'll be asking ourselves and the Commonwealth will be asking why they provide funding for them.
Nichol: If we decide that we're not going to do anything public, it would be a hard position for us to maintain. There will be obligations from the Commonwealth side. I like some of the senses of public obligation from which that will flow. I like the idea of emphasizing the public citizenship of our students. That's right up there with commitment to great liberal arts education. It's an essential part of describing our mission. What it has in common is that every university claims this. I accept completely Chandos Brown's "House Divided" point. The administrators live in two worlds, perhaps a thousand worlds. I hate those (US News and World Reports) rankings. They're pernicious in relation to commercialization of our efforts. They radically penalize public universities that focus on access. In my profession, the tail is wagging the dog. Law schools all over the world are cheating on these factors. Because law schools are concerned about employment, they offer two week externships during the period of their graduation! The only purpose is to cheat on US New rankings. This college, because it's so unique and interesting, is in a very different world. Bringing the best students here is important; it is important to those women and men.
Nichol: To me this is equally a matter of public policy. I think it's crucial to the future of this country have great public universities. If we move to a society where the highest echelons are private, or public-become-private, and accessible to those so dominantly with wealth, then this democracy is not living up to its premises. If we think only of what expands our greatness, then we have trouble.
Nichol: I dealt with the legislature in Colorado. University of Colorado has some real excellence in sciences. I tried to convince them with a little investment you could make this a great university. One in twenty would say Berkeley is good; others say Idaho is good enough for me. They thought public education was the Wal-Mart for the unwashed masses who will become "district attornies." To me this is a vile violation of what a University ought to be.
Nichol: What's greatness. Every dean believes his or her shop competes with others: competing for faculty and competing for students. We need to compete at even higher levels for faculty and students. I think of it as simply as that. Every dean knows what that means. When I came to UNC we were competing with certain schools; when I left we were competing with others.
Nelson: We have fears given your predecessor's actions and the possibility of SCHEV's getting into our business.
Nichol: One of my great honors is to talk to others about what the College does. That's my privilege and my job. I say to Dennis Manos and others: tell me what faculty do here. I didn't know what the faculty were doing. The principal part of my job is to tell the story of this place. When I was a teacher, I wanted students to grasp constitutional law. This was very present-oriented. I think about what this was like 300 years ago, 50 years ago and what it will be like in the future.
Nichol: We have this research initiative. Here's 300/400/500 million dollars and we're interested in research. John Casteen said you wanted us to do nothing with research.
Watkinson: The state has evolved also with Republican governors and BOV that tried to undermine what we do as an institution. I tried to show them that they didn't need exit exams. Your timing is just right. Maybe it's foolish to be optimistic.
Nichol: This charter business might be very good. Generally it may be a way to give us more financial independence and regularity and cost-savings. It may allow publics to do their work more effectively than otherwise: increased flexibility and efficiency. I've had problems with high tuition-high aid model. The folks pushing hardest for access were only interested in a lot of money. I said then that it could work logically and it could be problematic. After first ten years my doubts were correct. People were not putting those dollars in need-based scholarships, but US-News driven scholarships. Actual higher tuition higher aid may work.
Meese: Warner and Wilder did cut our budgets pretty widely. This three percent figure of folks in the bottom quartile is equally consistent with a number of hypotheses. One possibility is that the poorer folks are priced out; the other is that they're not meeting admissions standards.
Nichol: If everyone had the money they needed then you wouldn't have 3 percent in the bottom quartile. There are opportunities, K-12, cultural matters. Reason for gateway is to convince some that it might be realistic to be there. I agree with Alan to that extent.
Meese: We do have state obligations, things we discern as important. State has refused to fund that access.
Nichol: If state pays 36%, they aren't paying 50%.
Meese: You are deriving duty of this aid from your theory of democracy. Certain vision of democracy would require this. How does your vision of democracy comport with taking scarce resources and applying it to things like the Gateway Initiative?
Nichol: I'd like to embrace a larger system of public obligation.
