Faculty Assembly
The College of William and Mary
Minutes of the Faculty Assembly
13 December 2005
Present: Evans, Watkinson, Fuchs, Leslie, Canuel, Meyers, Nelson, Abelt, Kulick, White, Armstrong, Meese, Archibald, Clemens, Beers.
Absent: Van Dover, Orwoll, Mooradian, Lee, Diaz
Terry Meyers and David Armstrong corrected some of the language used in the minutes of October 25, 2005.
Minutes for October 25, 2005 Approved 3:37
Provost's Report
There is no news on the budget front. Pronouncements have come from the governor regarding new research initiatives. The College was not mentioned at first when he discussed cancer research. Today he spoke of funding for environmental initiatives including the bay, including 2.4 million over the next biennium. There is some debate about whether this initiative will last.
At some point Universities will be asked a question about whether they would prefer the Governor's earmarked funding or dollars to get the Universities closer to base adequacy funding. The other four institutions getting these earmarked funds may not be able to say no to earmarked funding. The entire principle of earmarked funding for Universities does run upstream against the idea of restructuring.
The Governor's budget will be out next week. We can better understand the direction he proposes then.
The University restructuring proposal is moving ahead. We need to have Institutional Performance Standards, set by the State Council of Higher Education in Virginia (SCHEV). There were 72 metrics proposed, now there are 24-25. They are complicated; some don't measure what they say they will measure. We will need to set annual and six-year targets. We can only fail to meet a few of these. We, UVA, Virginia Tech and a few other institutions will send in our metrics.
We go up January 4th to SCHEV staff to arrive at consensus on these metrics for Institutional Performance Standards. Sometimes our numbers and their numbers don't agree. The Governor has sent us a copy of his proposals, with some new metrics.
We have received our external review from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). We provided material in early September in response to SACS principles. We were found noncompliant in 9 areas, most compliant institutions come back noncompliant in 12 areas. Some were highly technical: we don't have a 2005 audit (which is not back); there were quibbles over faculty qualifications (Graduate programs without faculty holding graduate degrees in that precise discipline); the Board of Visitors' (BOV) bylaws shows no annual evaluation of the president, though there is mention of an annual evaluation in his contract letter. The major area of noncompliance was in what we predicted: we can't demonstrate that institutional effectiveness is working. Nothing has us off-track. We have to respond by Mar 1 in a focus report. If you're interested I'd be happy to share it with you.
At request of Women's network, Provost Feiss has initiated study of racial and gender equity across the entire faculty to see if there are inequities. This has been done by the deans, but there has been no comprehensive study in over a decade. Lorne Kuffel, Shirley Aceto, Tom Ward, and Kelly Lockeman are at work on this.
I have begun a full review of the faculty handbook to bring it up-to-date. It is not the easiest document to work with. It was written over a six-year period by a committee of thousands; there are problems with continuity and logic. I hope to finish this by the end of the summer. I will work with Colleen Kennedy, Shirley Aceto, and members of the executive committee. I hope to have a draft copy to you with a highlighting of substantive changes. Substantive changes in the faculty handbook must be approved by BOV. Presently we have separate documents now for faculty and adjuncts who take positions here. These rules apply to everyone on the faculty, but are not in all the documents that faculty receive. I hope to come up with flowcharts: e.g. if this happens, then this is how you proceed. I encourage you and colleagues with long-term concerns to pass on comments to me and to Colleen. Much of the faculty rights and responsibilities section is lifted from AAUP Red Book, and may not be changed.
3:52
FRA proposal (Provost's Proposal for Faculty Research Assignments)
(NB: the FRA proposal is at
http://www.wm.edu/facultyassembly/draftdocs/fraprop.pdf
The Ad-hoc committee's response to this proposal is at http://www.wm.edu/facultyassembly/2005-6/FRA_resp.pdf
)
President Beers pointed out that he would like to limit discussion to half an hour.
Armstrong: David Armstrong introduced the ad-hoc committee on the faculty research program proposal. This committee has consulted the faculty broadly, and have closely read synopses of the discussions of the Faculty Assembly and Arts & Sciences meetings about this proposal. I thought the committee functioned well, and would like to thank the committee for its work.
Armstrong: Apologies for not getting this out sooner. Alan Fuchs helped us recognize the separate aspects of this proposal that need to be considered separately. We did break down into nine separate topics and worked through them rapidly. David Lutzer and Bob Archibald suggested funding by increasing the size of the faculty. Virginia Torczon and Will Hausman also provided input.
Armstrong: We did not discuss funding for Faculty Research Proposal. The mechanism of drawing on indirect costs will vary, as will demand. We felt it wasn't within the purview of our committee to come up with a funding model.
Armstrong: I have received a number of suggestions for revisions.
Armstrong: We broadly supported the Provost's proposal, to take the burden off faculty and the Faculty Research Committee (FRC) to determine when faculty were eligible for leaves. Instead of frontloading the leave process, having FRC the base their decisions on an excellent proposal, we agreed that it was more sensible to judge faculty productivity on their previous leave and the six years after that leave.
Meese: We would like to apologize for getting this report out so late. We didn't state where we agreed to disagree with the Provost but instead moved forward with our own proposals. We saw our task as focusing on Faculty Research Assignments (FRA's) and Summer grant directly.
Armstrong: We did discuss whether to generate a faculty survey. With the tight timeframe we saw a difficulty in framing questions that would get a response to the provost at the end of this semester. There was a dissenting minority opinion from David Leslie.
David Leslie: The use of classification "research active" bothers me a lot; it is hard to apply across the campus. Would foreclose research leaves for those classified as not research active. Those needing to retool would not have a leave. There would be a lot of pressure on chairs to move that line (who is research active) up or down. A chair in a department with inactive faculty, might move that line down. Another department with 100% active faculty might get more resources.
Armstrong: Perhaps the Faculty Research Committee could oversee a review of guidelines that each department or school has. Physics might decide a certain number of journals over a period of time made one research-active. We might send that to the Dean to help set this. The Faculty Research Committee could oversee this process. We would also had a review mechanism: appeal to the Faculty Research Committee. Nothing would preclude someone publishing a paper and submitting a request to be made research active.
Armstrong: An increasing proportion of this faculty is research active. My impression is that no one gets tenure without research. I would be surprised that a department had more than ten percent research inactive faculty.
Beers: I would like to hear from Area I.
Meyers: I have two proposals for language to define research active, and to outline proposals. [The proposal is included below]
Two proposals (underlined) for language that might make departmental definitions
of "research active" equitable. Further down the page is a possible
"broad definition of 'research active'"
4. Individual departments or schools (as the case may be) shall determine whether
faculty are "research active" by applying guidelines that each department
or school has adopted for this purpose. Departments or schools may choose to
employ the research scores generated as part of annual merit reviews in their
respective definitions of "research active." Guidelines, as determined
in A&S by the Dean, must be compatible with a broad definition of "research
active" to be developed by the Faculty Research Committee. Or Guidelines,
as determined by the Faculty Research Committee, must be compatible with a broad
definition of "research active" to be developed by the FRC.
5. A faculty member deemed "research inactive" by his or her department or school shall have a right of appeal to the Faculty Research Committee pursuant to procedures the FRC shall promulgate for this purpose. In deciding the appeal, the FRC shall apply the definition of "research active" adopted by the department or school in question.
Just as an exercise, here is one possible broad definition of "research active":
A faculty member shall be deemed "research active" if he or she has had over the last five years a record of publications or exhibitions in peer-reviewed venues, or in some arts disciplines, the equivalent.
This would allow someone who does not have such a record to begin to work towards
one with the certainty then of an FRA in the sixth year. The wording in effect
sets a minimum of two refereed articles (or creative productions) in five years,
which is surely a "record" that is achievable by all our faculty who
want to, especially with the incentive of an FRA at the end. If this bar is
too low, a number can be added before "publications."
Meyers: Responses have been favorable to this draft. I want to check it with
Provost Feiss. If the Faculty Assembly murmured appreciatively would this empower
you to work on a new draft?
Provost Feiss: I don't have a strong deadline. We are committed to the old system for next year. I would like at the end of this academic year to start to lay out a schedule. If we don't have something fairly hard by April, then we'll be in some trouble. President Nichol is very interested in this and would like to move in this regard in late-winter, early spring. He feels that the faculty wants to know what he will do on their behalf; a bit of the hurry may be his impatience to do something here. Perhaps he's thinking of his initiation to roll this out.
Provost Feiss: If you wanted time and wanted to extend discussion to the February meeting that would give me spring break to work on this.
Fuchs: This discussion (and the report of the Ad-hoc committee) reflects what I see as a consensus. It seems to reflect what we've heard.
Clemens: I initially shared David Leslie's concern about segregation of faculty into eligible and ineligible. To the extent the process is made systematic, I am inclined to favor it. If the Faculty Research Committee provides consistency and an appeal this might be acceptable. "Growing" the faculty (sic) sounds great, as the Report of the Ad-Hoc Committee suggests. I would like to hear Provost's idea about this. Our curricula are no longer under our control given interdisciplinary majors. I'm wondering if there will be resources to grow faculty and replace us for leaves.
Armstrong: We talked about "teaching power" in regard to this question: the number of faculty seats. Most faculty at other places would jump on the Provost's proposal for regular leaves. It is commendable that the faculty here is concerned about students. We suggest a measurement of courses per year per department to define our teaching power. Different departments deal with leaves differently: the Computer Science Department has a regular "floater." Others do fine with adjuncts. There will always have to be funds available for deans to hire somebody.
Watkinson: For chairs and program directors, we would call attention to number 6 in the Provost's proposal. We disliked the proposed reduction of pay by 25% for a one-year leave (i.e. a 75% pay leave rather than an 80% pay leave). We felt this 25% cut in pay was too onerous for junior faculty. Our teaching loads across the board are very much higher compared to our peer institutions.
Archibald: In support of Alan Fuchs's point, we have done a good job here. The Provost will have a chance to gather input.
Feiss: This draft FRA proposal would come back to you in January. It would respond to the Armstrong/Meese document. I can go to the Deans and ask, "What does this look like?"
Canuel: My faculty will want to know what constitutes a faculty.
Armstrong: We thought of tenure eligible faculty. Our thought was VIMS doesn't participate in this system. Our leave system here is a leave from teaching and administrative responsibilities.
Canuel: VIMS has been independent in granting leaves because it is supported by IDC (indirect costs). We would argue that we should be a part of this.
Feiss: "Growing the faculty" and eliminating IDC is expensive. There are important histories here with the various faculties. Some faculties for instance have received positions to make leaves possible.
Manos: The independent financial relationship with VIMS has a long history as well. If there would be a commingling of resources with VIMS that would be fine. I understand your concern about development and VIMS being left out.
Meese: Funding for increasing "faculty power" might come from tuition increase.
Feiss: We can't raise tuition and get any more money out of VIMS.
Clemens: Is "growing the faculty" (sic) pie-in-the-sky?
Feiss: This becomes easier post-restructuring. We have probably the lowest student faculty ratio of any in the country consistent with our peer group. We're more like the poorest private school in the country. Some of this is balancing with faculty salaries. We do a very bad job in assessing what we do in support of undergraduate research, while we can more easily count PhDs and Masters Theses. We know that our faculty is heavily engaged in undergraduate research. If we can measure this, then we have a rationale for increasing the faculty. This would be a rationale to make to the board.
Manos: We have added 39 faculty since 1995 and 5.5 in continuing restricted positions.
Kulick: Where does this number come from?
There was general discussion about whether the faculty has grown since 1995 or not.
Feiss: I will bring a document with policies and procedures in it.
Evans: Is an 80% leave doable?
Feiss: This issue will not be a show-stopper.
Questions emerged about who would be research active.
Meyers: Regarding "research active," the guidelines would be reviewed by the Faculty Research Committee and must be compatible with a broad definition of 'research active'.
Virginia Torczon (Chair of Faculty Research Committee): What is appropriate is that departments come up with criteria for 'research active'. This should also include external grant activity.
Beers: Would the Faculty Assembly be defining this?
Meyers: I would like a department to have someone looking over the shoulder.
Armstrong: The Dept. would send their proposal to the Faculty Research Committee. The Faculty Research Committee responds.
Meyers: Department or school guidelines must be approved by the Faculty Research Committee.
Terry Meyers moved to amend the Ad-hoc Committee's report. Meese opposed Terry's motion. Meyers withdrew motion.
Watkinson moves approval of the Ad-Hoc Committee's report. Nelson seconds. Approved.
Faculty Retirement Program
http://www.wm.edu/facultyassembly/2005-6/FRET_draft.pdf
Kulick: There have been many roadblocks along the way. According to law, we
cannot have an agreement to be rehired. With Fuchs on the Faculty Compensation
Board, we found that Virginia Tech had a policy.
A written request for temporary re-employment would be sent before retirement. This written request must be approved by department chair or program dean. This cannot spell out precisely the pay.
Post-retirement there would be a contract which says that you will be rehired.
This first document (written request) gives a professor a concrete sense that he or she will be rehired.
Watkinson: For those still at the College who qualify for VRS fifteen percent pre-retirement bump salary - can you keep the 15 percent?
Kulick: You can continue. Salary will be proportional
White: Can you explain the ages?
Kulick: Age 60 is most likely beginning point. Institution will pay five years or until age 65, whichever comes first. Anyone dropping out sooner would forgo her health insurance.
Fuchs: Virginia Tech says legislation starts at age 60.
Meyers: Is there a problem with age discrimination if this expires at age 70.
Feiss: No. You can't terminate someone at a given age.
Meyers: You could cast this in terms of years of service.
Beers: If a faculty member was turned down for the faculty retirement program (FRP), can that faculty member continue to work?
Feiss: Yes. It's critical that there be no coercion.
Meyers: I have a question about the interaction with 2d and 2c in the proposal, for those faculty with a 3/2 teaching load. Would I get 50% of my salary if I taught two classes one year and three a second year?
Feiss: It's possible. Some of this time responsibility might be taken up with significant service responsibilities. If you have valuable faculty who does significant advising or personnel committee, this might work.
Kulick: The document says you cannot serve on certain committees.
Feiss: She might serve on a hiring committee for example.
Meyers: Can the one month break required in this document take place in the summer?
Kulick: You might switch to a twelve month contract, then break on June 30.
Archibald: What about negotiation for office space?
Kulick: That is a difficult thing to say, especially for labs. It would be foolish to suggest that people would have their old offices. Perhaps shared office space would be a solution. I don't think there can be any guarantee.
Meyers: Might there be a cost of living increase given inflation?
Kulick: Some FRPS at other institutions have it, some do not.
Fuchs: We might have it pegged to average faculty raises over the period of the FRP.
Leslie: Once retired you'd give up tenure?
Meyers: I have suggested adding to the document a list of things given up: long-term disability, life insurance.
Watkinson: This proposal may fill gap of teaching power.
Meyers: What about people who've already signed up to retire in the next year or two?
Feiss: Nothing prevents our rehiring of people on an informal basis.
Archibald: This does raise what we have to pay them.
Feiss: In some parts of the college, half a senior faculty will not hire a junior replacement necessarily.
Kulick: This is not based on the assumption that this would happen.
Fuchs: In addition, most may not want half-time.
Feiss: There will have to be some decision about how many people would be allowed to do this. Deans would like this to be more in the realm of expectation. In other places that have instituted this, there has been an explosion of interest then a shift to steady-state. VT had a huge number retire, including many who VT didn't want to retire. UNC took it off the table because so many retired under this system. The whole point is to help transition into retirement those who don't want to stop doing what they're doing. This is not a way to get rid of faculty.
Kulick: This has been on the web, we would like a general endorsement.
The Assembly generally endorsed the proposal.
Archibald: This is not a faculty handbook document?
Feiss: No, but it will go to the board.
Meeting Adjourned 5:40 pm
