The Citadel Faculty Council
Minutes of the Regular Meeting of Jan. 27, 2000
Board of Visitors Room, Jenkins Hall

1. Prof. Julie Lipovsky, Faculty Council chairperson, called the meeting to order at 11:08 a.m.

2. Members attending: Professors Bishop, Brown, Chen, Dunlop, H. Ezell, Feurtado, Foster, Hurren, Lipovsky, Maynard, McDowell, Pages, Pilcher, Silver, Thompson, Toubiana, B. White, Wolf, Woo, Zuraw and Kay Woelfel for G. Williams.

3. Members absent: Professors Emanuel and Kelley.

4. Prof. Lipovsky introduced the topic of the parking in Capers lot again; Prof. Brown moved and Prof. Thompson seconded that she and Sam Evans, chairman of the Staff Council, send a joint letter to Col. Tomasik urging swift action to make Kovats Field a parking lot for Bond Hall faculty and staff so that Capers lot could be only for Capers faculty and staff. This motion was passed 17 to 1 with no abstentions.

5. Prof. Foster moved and Prof. Pages seconded that the minutes for the meeting of Dec. 16th be accepted as written; this was passed unanimously. Prof. Bishop was asked if she could get out her minutes before the meetings so people could read them in advance; she agreed that this was desirable, but has failed to do it for the next meeting.

6. Prof. Lipovsky introduced a guest observer, Dr. Mary Steedly, who is studying military education and was interested in Faculty Council's deliberations.

7. Prof. Lipovsky reported on some Academic Board topics. The document on post-tenure review which was presented to the Academic Board did not match the one Faculty Council has been looking at, so it has to go back to the departments to work out the discrepancies. Academic Board has called for a study on whether and how The Citadel should offer distance learning since 60% of colleges now do. Prof. Thompson objected that there has already been a study of this by Profs. Barrett and Sinisi of History, but Prof. Pilcher pointed out that that was only a limited study of a possible M.A. in military history which was found to be too close to the one offered via distance learning by the Army War College.

8. Prof. Thompson reported that the Vice-Presidents' meeting featured the usual announcements that enrollment and donations are up and progress reports on the numerous campus cosnstruction projects.

9. In the main business of the meeting, Prof. Dorothy Moore spoke to the Council as a representative of the Faculty Tenure and Promotions Committee about its concerns on General Order 12, the new tenure and promotion procedures. She had made a list of concerns the FTPC has about whether these procedures conform to Equal Employment Opportunity criteria, which The Citadel is responsible for meeting. The main issue is that the instrument we use for student evaluation of instruction has never been tested for validity at this school. It is not enough to say that it has been tested elsewhere: as the recent books concerning The Citadel show, Susan Faludi's Stiffed and Catherine Manegold's In Glory's Shadow, emotions ran high here about the admission of women cadets and this might be spilling over into student evaluation of women faculty. Also, some departments do not let professors see the results of student evaluations, and it is not fair to judge professors by information unknown to them. When the Administration brought in Dr. Parker Young the previous week to talk about legal recourses in college fairness issues, his information was ireelevant to us as he was an expert on student rights. Prof. Moore went through the list of FTPC's concerns: there was no testing of our form for validity, inclusion of student comments in faculty annual evaluations was an example of non-standardized procedure which might harm protected classes, and so was inclusion of the observations of fellow-faculty. All professors should be judged by a valid, reliable and uniform instrument.

There was discussion about this. In response to questions (such as whether all this fuss was just going to end up making microscopic changes in a rating figure between 4 and 5, and whether any specific person claimed to have been hurt by student evaluations) Prof. Moore said the Administrat-ion had previously said the student evaluations were just for the use of the professor, and then told us that they would be used for evaluations, and now this past fall that they would be tied to merit pay. Before they affect material rewards of our teaching, she and FTPC want studies of whether students' race and gender, the kind of class it is and the subject matter affect students' opinion of the professor; in particular, the history of hostility to women as cadets probably does translate into prejudice against women professors. The "global" questions on the back of the form, in particular, especially the ones about what students liked best and worst about a professor, bring all ratings down (which they were intended to do; Dr. Metts was concerned that all faculty were rated too high before they were put in) but allow for subjective prejudice. Prof. Lipovsky pointed out that the faculty evaluation procedure is full of checks and balances and other criteria; are we not professional enough to take all factors into account? Prof. Moore pointed out that, with this year's new policy that student evaluations are to be used to determine merit pay, people could now sue for discrimination if our instrument allowed prejudice to affect salary. Prof. Ezell and others expressed dissatisfaction that we were now supposed to use student evaluations for summative and not just informational purposes (the latter being the only valuable use, to tell professors how they might change); but if this has to be, the instrument might as well be scientififally valid if possible.

Prof. Thompson moved, and Prof. Ezell seconded, that Faculty Council recommend that Gen. Carter take whatever steps are necessary to have our instrument of student evaluation submitted for review as to its validity to two independent experts not involved in its development or use. This was passed unanimously.

10. It was decided to hold a special meeting before the next regular one to look at the other discrepancies in General Order 12 and the different recommendations for changing it. Prof. Moore asked the Council in particular to look at Gen. Carter's recommendation about bringing in people with tenure, so that their tenure would have no review but the search committee's, in special circumstances. This meeting was scheduled for Thursday February 10th. [It was, however, later cancelled because too many people could not come on that day.]

11. Prof. Lipovsky said her meeting with Sam Evans showed her that faculty and staff do not talk enough to each other, and we should have a faculty-staff liaison for which she would solicit volunteers. None appeared immediately.

12. Prof. Ezell expressed his feeling that Gen. Carter's call in the latest issue of the Brigadier for a student improvement in grades was also a call for professorial grade inflation, and future calls like this should simply be for more student motivation and discipline.

13. The meeting was adjourned at 12:30 p.m.