The Citadel Faculty Council
Minutes of the Regular Meeting of March 23, 2000
Board of Visitors Room, Jenkins Hall

1. Prof. Julie Lipovsky, Faculty Council chairperson, called the meeting to order at 11:05 a.m.; a quorum was achieved a few minutes later.

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

3. Members absent: Professors Emanuel, Feurtado, McDowell and Wolf.

4. Prof. Lipovsky made some announcements about the Academic Board meeting while the quorum was collecting: these included the new graduate program to look at in future, evening students' complaints about the shutting of Hagood Gate during the evening, and the idea of setting up a whole Freshman Year Experience course to take the place of freshman orientation. (Prof. Zuraw suggested that this course should be taught Tuesday and Thursday from 11 a.m. to 12 noon.)

5. Prof. Foster moved and Prof. Thompson seconded that the minutes for the Feb. 24 meeting be accepted; they were with two changes to clarify wording. Prof. Silver moved and Prof. Zuraw seconded that the minutes for the special meeting of March 9 be accepted; they were with a correction as to who was present and the acceptance of Prof. White's suggestion that a sentence in the Post-Tenure Review discussion be revised as too inflammatory when seen by outsiders.

6. Prof. Lipovsky described her presentation of Faculty Council's changes to General Order 12 before the Academic Board.

7. The Council returned to the issue of the Post-Tenure Review document. Prof. Lipovsky noted that, as some had suspected, some of the standards removed from the document, like satisfactory ratings involving good teaching plus one of the two other areas, had been removed inadvertently, and there was now a third corrected version which she would tell us about at need. The Council then returned to Prof. Pilcher's question about whether p. 4, post-tenure review not being used to revoke tenure, conflicted with p. 11, two unsatisfactory post-tenure review ratings would start the termination process. Prof. Pilcher himself said that on further thought he agreed that we should show that we were policing ourselves as to tenured incompetents before the state legislature stepped in and did it for us; he therefore proposed that p. 11 be left alone but that p. 10 be changed to say the faculty member could first appeal an unsatisfactory rating to a faculty committee instead of the Vice-President for Academic Affairs. Prof. Lipovsky talked him out of this so it never became a motion. Prof. Bishop moved and Prof. Foster seconded (evidently only for discussion purposes) that p. 11 be changed to say the college "may initiate" rather than "will initiate" termination for two unsatisfactory ratings; thus the school would not be obliged to be locked into terminating someone if circumstances were special. There was some pained discussion about whether sanctioning any form of this meant that we accepted the Administration's ability to revoke tenure; it was pointed out that post-tenure review is in fact mandated but that revocation is a hard and serious process as laid out in General Order 12. Prof. Foster objected to changing "must" to "may" on the grounds that it would open the door to arbitrary decisions as to who would be terminated and who would not, and others pointed out that it could mean discrimination complaints. The motion was defeated 5 to 10 with 2 abstentions.

Prof. Ezell moved that the three ratings for post-tenure review on pp. 10-11 (Exceptionally Meritorious, Satisfactory, Unsatisfactory) be brought into line with the four ratings (Does Not Meet, Meets, Exceeds and Substantially Exceeds professional expectations) in the annual review process. Prof. White disagreed, saying that instead the post-tenure review ratings ought to drop down to just two, Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory. Prof. Silver agreed with this: the four merit ratings have shifting meanings (used to determine the size of raises only this year, for instance) and should not be tied to the issue of keeping tenure or not. Prof. Ezell agreed with them, and revised his motion to propose that para. 8a on p. 10, the Exceptionally Meritorious category, be removed and the Satisfactory rating be explicitly equated with the Meets rating in the annual review. Prof. Williams seconded this. There were further amendments to remove the sentences about post-tenure ratings being taken into account in the annual merit review process and to equate Unsatisfactory with Does Not Meet. Prof. Ezell noted that since professors care about merit ratings not so much for money as for prestige, they should not be insulted and hurt gratuitously by failing to get the unnecessary Exceptionally Meritorious category in post-tenure review. The motion was passed by acclamation.

The question of how to define the Satisfactory rating was raised; there was sentiment in favour of the idea that a professor who was just a good teacher was not being adequate, and Prof. Thompson moved and Prof. Silver seconded that para. 8b on p. 10 be amended to say a Satisfactory rating will come from meeting institutional expectations in teaching and one or both of the other areas of scholarship and service. This was passed unanimously.

Prof. Zuraw moved and Prof. Silver seconded that a passage which was removed in the course of revisions, about department standards and procedures for post-tenure review being available at all times from six months in advance, be put back. This was passed unanimously.

Prof. Toubiana moved and Prof. Pilcher seconded that para. 3 on p. 6, on the membership of the departmental post-tenure review committee, be changed to read that it "may", not "must", include a tenured faculty member from outside the department. There was some discussion about the problems of small departments in finding enough people for such a committee and about whether some disciplines were incapable of intelligently reviewing others, after which this was passed 9 to 4 with two abstentions.

Prof. Lipovsky concluded by saying she would send us a revised copy of the document and she hoped we could finalize it by e-mail rather than having another special meeting. [This hope was realized.]

8. It was proposed that the April meeting be on the 20th rather than the scheduled 27th so that members could attend a special meeting with an expert on peer evaluation on the 27th. This was agreed upon.

9. Prof. Silver moved and Prof. Kelley seconded that Faculty Council oppose the State Legislature's proposed law to filter Internet access to sites with sexual content in all public libraries including college ones. Prof. Nath noted that filtering is primitive and this would reduce the library Internet service to a 6th-grade level, and others pointed out the legitimate need in serious course topics like family violence for sex-and-violence terminology. The motion was passed unanimously.

10. The members compared notes on what exactly had happened at the cadet Talent Show, concluding that there had been ugly sexist and anti-foreign remarks directed at female cadet participants and that Prof. Mary Greenawalt, of all the high administrators and faculty who had been there, had been the only one to try to rebuke the whole audience on the spot. Prof. Zuraw proposed that Prof. Lipovsky write a letter to Prof. Greenawalt praising her for real leadership and send a copy to the oft-mentioned committee which is looking for leadership models; Prof. Lipovsky agreed to do this, consulting other Council members on the wording by e-mail.

11. Prof. Lipovsky opined that Faculty Council should deal with the enormous issue of campus governance: there is so much duplication among academic bodies, and should there be a Faculty Senate in which Academic Board, Fraculty Council and the Graduate Council all meet and are dissolved into each other? There should have been a committee on this some time ago, but now it is for the Council to work on when she is no longer chair.

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