The Citadel Faculty Council
Minutes of the Regular Meeting of Feb. 24, 2000
Board of Visitors Room, Jenkins Hall

1. Prof. Julie Lipovsky, Faculty Council chairperson, called the meeting to order at 11:05 a.m.

2. Members attending: Professors Bishop, Chen, Dunlop, Feurtado, Foster, Hurren, Kelley, Lipovsky, Maynard, Pages, Pilcher, Silver, Thompson, Toubiana, G. Williams, Wolf, Woo, Zuraw, John Carter for H. Ezell and Kathy Jones for McDowell.

3. Members absent: Professors Brown, Emanuel and B. White.

4. Prof. Lipovsky, who in order to save time had sent out an e-mail to the Council members about curriculum and other changes in the Academic Board meeting of Tuesday Feb. 22, reported on one issue, the proposed basis for dividing up the merit pay allocation. The Administration had not yet decided whether to allocate the money by department to be divided by ratings therein or by merit category campus-wide, but would have to do so almost immediately in order to make the changes by the March 15th paycheck. Academic Board had also made changes to the proposed post-tenure review process, which Faculty Council therefore has to look at.

5. Corrections were made to the minutes of Jan. 27: Prof. Williams corrected the secretary's spelling of his substitute and Prof. Pilcher asked for a slight rewording of the sentence about the Army War College and distance learning. Prof. Thompson moved and Prof. Foster seconded that the minutes be passed with these corrections, and they were.

6. Prof. Lipovsky disposed of some small items before the main business of the meeting. She reiterated her call to the Council members to tell her ways our departments foster leadership qualities in the students so that she can show the President the faculty is helpful in this aspect of Citadel life. The issue of student leadership had been raised in the Ombudsman's Report so it was mentioned; Prof. Feurtado mentioned that a student had read this report and criticized it in the Brigadier, and asked whether we could read it too. Prof. Carter, the Ombudsman and its author, noted that he had written it for the President alone and the rumours of it that had gotten to the Brigadier were unauthorized, but said he would show it to and discuss it with any Council member who wanted to see it.

Prof. Lipovsky said that on second thought Faculty Council did not need a liaison at every meeting of Staff Council but she would just keep exchanging thoughts on relevant issues with its chairman Sam Evans. A relevant issue just now was that faculty should avoid taking guests to the staff lunchroom on the fifth floor of Bond Hall because it had hindered staff people from getting their lunch and they have less time and flexibility than faculty.

7. The Council, in the main business of the meeting, discussed Vice-President Carter's recommendations for changes to General Order 12 on faculty tenure and promotion. The main question was a change to the proposed requirement for external review of the scholarship of candidates for tenure (p. 5, Section H, para. 2) and promotion (p. 10, Section C, para. 1); Dr. Carter's recommendation was that this be changed from a requirement that every candidate's scholarship be reviewed by three outside scholars to a choice between that and the candidate submitting evidence of peer-reviewed scholarly publications and presentations which would show he or she had been reviewed by outside colleagues. Prof. Thompson moved and Prof. Foster seconded that this be adopted. There was debate on the issues of how a department would decide whether to use a new external review or just the peer-reviewed scholarship; on whether wide acceptance of the necessity for new external review would be excessively burdensome to the professors asked to do it, including ourselves for other schools; and on whether internal colleagues or external reviewers would best know the quality of a candidate's work. Prof. Zuraw proposed that the document state that the requirement for external review is, not just may be met by the proposed procedures; it was also decided that on the department-wide level, if a department had voted a new standard since a professor's hiring the professor being evaluated should be able to choose the evaluation standards which had prevailed at his or her hiring or the new ones as desired. These changes would be made for both tenure and promotion to full professor. Prof. Woo moved and Prof. Zuraw seconded that the Council accept Profs. Foster's and Zuraw's amendments to Dr. Carter's language, and this and the original motion as thus amended were passed unanimously.

The second question was about using student evaluation for the tenure decision (p. 5, section H, para. 3). Prof. Pilcher moved, and Prof. Thompson seconded for discussion purposes, that the Council add "after it has been validated" to the statement about using the student evaluation of instruction instrument, and that the last sentence, about the department head summarizing significant themes that emerged in the five narrative responses on the form, be eliminated altogether. This led to another discussion about the instrument, whether it could ever be validated and, if not, whether the call to do so was really a call to eliminate it; there was then discussion on whether the discussion questions were good or bad (asking what the students liked least about the course might inspire them to think of something when they wouldn't have otherwise). Prof. Silver pointed out that student evaluations establishing that the students liked a professor might help protect him or her from a capricious department head's opinion, and that there is no way to validate an instrument like this. It was eventually decided to keep the validation phrase but, on Prof. Thompson's suggestion, to change the last sentence to say the department head would simply summarize the forms, not the narrative responses. In this form, the motion passed 13 to 3 with two abstentions.

8. It was decided to hold a special meeting in two weeks, Thursday March 9th, to finish with General Order 12 and take our first look at the proposed document on post-tenure review.

9. The meeting was adjourned at 12:25 p.m.