The Citadel Faculty Council
Minutes of the Regular Meeting of Sept. 20, 2001
"Cathedral Room", Thompson Hall1. Prof. Steve Silver, Faculty Council chairperson, called the meeting to order at 11:02 a.m.
2. Members attending: Profs. Bishop, Briggs, B. Carter, Chen, Dunlop, Foster, Hoyle, Jones, Kelley, Lally, Matthews, Ouzts, Silver, Skow-Obenaus, Templeton, Thompson, Webb, G. Williams, Woo, Zuraw and Beneke for Pilcher.
3. Members absent: Profs. Foley and Kuzenski.
4. After corrections to clarify the change of chair, agreement of subject and verb and the role of Les Robinson, Prof. Thompson moved and Prof. Williams seconded that the minutes of the May 10 meeting be approved. This was passed unanimously.
5. Prof. Silver explained how to find the information about faculty committees in the excellent new format on the Citadel web page, as set up by Steve Comer; the last two years' minutes will also be there in this format within a few days. Prof. Hoyle moved and Prof. Dunlop seconded that Prof. Comer be made Faculty Council's official webmaster, and this was passed unanimously.
6. Prof. Thompson spoke about the necessity to revise the way members are chosen for the Committee on Committees. The old way is to do it by cluster, but the proposed schools reorganization-- which, Prof. Silver opined, the Administration thinks of as a "done deal" and therefore will be done-- will make the clusters obsolete. Prof. Thompson proposed that the Council just elect six faculty members at large who are representative. Prof. Silver proposed that, since we don't yet know what the final schools divisions will be and all the committees need to rewrite their charters, we use the clusters for this year. He put up a reminder of what those clusters were and nominations were taken; Profs. Lipovsky (staying on to provide continuity as the committee reorganization is finished), Greim, B. Carter and Briggs were nominated by others and Prof. Foster volunteered. These were unanimously elected, with Prof. Thompson the sixth ex officio.
7. Prof. Silver asked how Faculty Council itself is structured; how is it determined how many representatives a department gets? Nobody knew this, but Prof. Hoyle volunteered to check. It is not yet certain whether the Council's own structure will be preserved or changed.
8. Prof. Silver announced that a former English Department adjunct, Catherine Mitchell, who now puts out a Christian family magazine in Atlanta, asked him what Faculty Council does to help the students, and he went through the last two years' minutes, extracted the themes related to this and wrote them up for her. He passed out copies of this. The question arose whether any outside person has ever sat in on the Council meetings just to see what we are doing, as everyone can; if so, it was years ago.
9. Prof. Templeton reported on the progress of her subcommittee on the change in policy on the student evaluation of instruction forms. After filling new Council members in on the background of this, she conveyed the subcommittee's proposal that Faculty Council survey the faculty to gauge the level of concern about not being able to see the original student evaluation sheets any more. She went to a CASTLE (Citadel Academy for Scholarship of Teaching, Learning and Education) meeting and learned that professors have to get students' permission to quote their writing in our research; do we therefore have to get student permission to quote their evaluations on our personal data sheets? The possibility was raised that not letting us see the original sheets was legally dubious with regard to us, and taking up twenty minutes of class time to make the students write them instead of learning-- when it would not benefit those particular students-- was legally dubious with regard to them. The Council had some discussion on these issues; we should definitely find out whether it is permissible to give it in class time and if not change it, but the important issue, once again, is not being able to correlate the front and the back of the sheet or the five questions to see a pattern. (Col. Metts's word at the March 22 meeting that they could change the transcription method to cluster the five answers on each sheet as a group is obsolete; he later said it wouldn't be done.) Prof. Templeton raised the possibility that if a professor was emotionally traumatized by awful comments it could conceivably become a worker's compensation issue.
Prof. Briggs moved and Prof. Hoyle seconded that the Council empower the subcommittee to go on with the exploration of this issue, with Profs. Templeton, Lally, Skow-Obenaus, Foster and Hoyle as the members. It was then pointed out that the Council had already done this at the May 10 meeting, so this motion died.
10. Prof. Bishop again raised the issue of professors putting students on orders to miss each others' classes for field trips, and moved that we advocate a policy of getting students to ask permission to miss a class for a field trip with a pink card so the professor could refuse. Others asked why the Commandant's Office and the Deans approve of students being pulled out of classes, and noted that they could do it for some things without anyone's permission. Prof. Silver said he would investigate what the official policy was on this, and Prof. Bishop deferred her motion until the facts are in.
11. Prof. Silver opined that we could not adjourn yet because, as the splendid view from the new window told him, it was raining. There was a flurry of discussion as to whether the "cathedral room", the new Math classroom with the wonderful curved window, was the right place to meet; Prof. Thompson opined that the classroom-style setup and the consequent necessity to sit in rows facing the chair instead of around a table was disconcerting. Prof. Lally moved and Prof. Ouzts seconded that we move to a case room in Bond Hall; there was a voice vote on this which was not formally counted but the noes seemed to have it. Prof. Silver said he would investigate all possibilities for meeting places in future.
12. It had now stopped raining, and the meeting was adjourned at 12:08 p.m.