The Citadel Faculty Council
Minutes of the Regular Meeting of Oct. 25, 2001
Room 166, Bond Hall

1. Prof. Steve Silver, Faculty Council chairperson, called the meeting to order at 11:07 a.m.

2. Members attending: Profs. Bishop, Briggs, B. Carter, Chen, Dunlop, Foster, Hoyle, Kelley, Lally, Matthews, Ouzts, Pilcher, Silver, Skow-Obenaus, Templeton, Thompson, G. Williams, Zuraw.

3. Members absent: Profs. Foley, Jones, Kuzenski, Webb and Woo.

4. Prof. Thompson moved and Prof. Williams seconded that the minutes of the Sept. 20 meeting be approved. The minutes were discussed and several emendations made in the wording about the Student Evaluation of Instruction subcommittee report; this sideslipped into another substantive discussion about the evaluation forms. Prof. Briggs pointed this out, the Council stopped doing it and the minutes were approved with one dissenting vote (by someone who thought the details should not be publicized yet).

5. Prof. Silver reported on the latest Academic Board meeting. The school is changing Internet servers and some functions relevant to the library and classes will be interrupted for a week. People who are having a meeting of more than thirty students must now get their Dean's permission due to concern over too many students missing meal formations. The 7:50 [1950] formation is immovably with us because the Board of Visitors wants it even though nobody on campus does. Students can miss it for a Fine Arts performance because that is a required academic event. SACS accreditation is coming up and we need to get an instrument to assess the rightness of the core curriculum. The unofficial word on the budget is that there will be a 4% cut and unknown things will happen-- more will be known in November-- as a result of 9/11. Dean Ozment has asked us to think of things the faculty could do to give the students and community our expertise on 9/11-related issues; people mentioned Prof. Bishop's upcoming Islamic History course and Prof. Darden's presentation on anthrax, and discussed what else could be done. Academic Board stressed the new leave policy for the hours before the major holidays: students can no longer leave the campus until after the end of their last scheduled classes or exams whether they meet or not, so professors should not be pressured into cancelling them.

6. The Council emended the list of Faculty Council liaisons to the standing committees, changing some and adding some according to which FC member was actually on each committee and willing. There was some discussion of why we were restructuring the committees: partly to show thoughtfulness and improvement to SACS and mostly because Prof. Lipovsky's work with the Committee on Committees last year showed that many of the charters did not make sense. There is a problem of lack of institutional memory in the Committee on Committees, specifically resulting in haziness about which committees are supposed to have student representatives on them. (Members variously opined that Thursday at 11, the standard committee-meeting time, is a terrible or a wonderful time for students to come.) We should tell the Deans which committees need student representatives so they can supply them.

Prof. Silver pointed out that Faculty Council itself is not a committee and has a constitution, not a charter: by the restructuring of 1989 the committees are creatures of Faculty Council and report to it. The present restructuring should therefore eliminate practices inconsistent with this. It is supposed to be done by the end of the Spring 2002 term.

7. Prof. Silver mentioned the desirability of having a comprehensive calendar for faculty with grant application deadlines and such professorial arcana as well as the more obvious things like class and exam schedules. Prof. Williams suggested that there be an annual update to the Faculty Handbook with such a calendar; perhaps it could be put on the Web.

8. Prof. Templeton announced that the subcommittee on student evaluation would put out four sets of questions to ask people with different perspectives about the issues: the Administration, Faculty Council itself, the faculty in general and Roberta Tracy about the legal issues. She invited questions for these categories from the members and our departments; they will be anonymous.

9. Prof. Thompson raised the issue of the refurbishing of the faculty offices in Capers Hall; besides recarpeting them, Physical Plant is replacing the old office furniture with huge L-shaped desks. Some faculty were concerned that there was no faculty input, they give people no chance to keep their old furniture if they want it, and they are throwing the old furniture out, which is appalling waste. There was discussion on this, including speculation that the powers that be had thought it appropriate to refurbish all floors when they had the chance to refurbish the emptied Math floor for the new inhabitants. Prof. Pilcher pointed out that the department heads were told and some people had had the option to refuse the new furniture for their old. People wondered whether this expenditure was appropriate in times of budget cuts and hiring freezes, especially since Capers Hall is allegedly going to be torn down and rebuilt soon. A consensus emerged that faculty should be consulted before architectural and other environmental decisions which affect their jobs are made. Prof. Foster noted that the Business Department was consulted on their wishes when they moved from the trailers back into Bond, and Prof. Briggs noted that the science faculty was consulted about Grimsley Hall, though if they had known that others were going to use their auditorium too they might have decided differently on its setup.

Prof. Thompson moved and Prof. Ouzts seconded that the Administration seek input from Faculty Council before making decisions that affect faculty schedules and resources such as the recent acquisition of furniture for Capers Hall. This was passed unanimously.

Prof. Thompson moved and Prof. Bishop seconded that Faculty Council decry the waste involved in the throwing out of perfectly good furniture from Capers Hall. (Prof. Hoyle pointed out that it could have been used to further furnish Thompson Hall.) The was passed unanimously.

10. Prof. Bishop once again mentioned wanting a policy about whether professors could pull students out of each others' classes for special events. Prof. Silver said that Academic Board had discussed this phenomenon and disapproved of it. Prof. Bishop proposed that students pulled out by one professor have to get the permission of the other with a pink slip; Prof. Hoyle added that this should also be used by professors who kept their students half an hour late to get the next class's professor's permission to do that. Prof. Silver said this would be put on the agenda for the next meeting.

11. The meeting was adjourned at 12:24 p.m.