The Citadel Faculty Council
Minutes of the Regular Meeting of Sept. 19, 2002
Capers Hall, Room 302

1. Prof. George Williams, new chairperson of Faculty Council, called the meeting to order at 11:08 a.m.
   
   
2. Members attending: Profs. Bishop, Briggs, B. Carter, Dunlop, Foster, Lally, Matthews, Pilcher, Silver, Snively, G. Williams, Woo, Zuraw, Cohn for Chen and J. Templeton for Davakos.
   
   
3. Members absent: unknown as yet since there are new people.
   
   
4. The members, old and new, introduced themselves by going around the table.
   
   
5. The minutes for the meetings of Jan. 31, Feb. 28, April 25 and May 9 were not approved because none but the April 25th minutes existed as yet and the Council was one short of a quorum.
   
   
6. Prof. Williams announced the date of the next Faculty Council meeting as Oct. 24th (some may not have attended this one because there had been a previous mistaken announcement that it was Sept. 26th) and wondered whether Capers 302 was big enough for future meetings; the conclusion was that it would not hold all 23 Council members but that it would hold the maximum number which would come at any one time.
   
   
7. The business of the meeting was structured around a series of handouts from the Administration which Prof. Williams brought from the Academic Board meeting and other places to share with the Council; the idea is to have the Council be one of the ways that college-wide business gets back to the departments. First was General Grinalds' ethics initiative, which included the goal of developing codes of ethics for Citadel groups other than the students: Faculty Council thus has a mandate to develop a code of ethics for the faculty. Prof. Williams proposed a steering committee to draft this for full discussion; he and Prof. Bishop were interested in being on this, and Prof. Carter knew someone else who might. The handout included three models for a faculty ethics code to look at.
   
   The second handout was the latest enrollment statistics for our enlightenment.
   
   The third was a reiteration of the new policy on furloughs: the Council members were asked to share with all faculty the fact that it is a firm policy to let the students leave for Thanksgiving and spring breaks only when their last class is scheduled to end whether it meets that day or not, and students are absolutely not allowed to get early plane tickets or rides and leave before. At Prof. Bishop's query, it was clarified that faculty can leave before 1 p.m. on those Fridays if they have no classes.
   
   The fourth was the schedules for Parents Day Weekend, with the department open houses; Prof. Lally asked whether faculty participation in these was voluntary, and it was confirmed that each department sets its own policy on that.
   
   The fifth was the call for nominations for the five Krause Awards to faculty for excellence in working with students; the deadline for such nominations is Monday Sept. 30th, and last year there were so many meritorious nominations that an extra, sixth award was given. Prof. Silver mentioned the generosity of Bill Krause in this regard.
   
   
8. The sixth handout was the proposal for reorganization of The Citadel into schools, which was passed by the Board of Visitors last Friday the 13th. This involves making the current Deans of Business and Education and the coming Dean of Engineering the deans of formal Schools of Business, Education and Engineering; making the now-vacant Deanship of Undergraduate Studies into a Deanship of a School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and hiring someone; and either creating a position of Dean of Science and Mathematics who would head a School of Science and Mathematics, and hiring someone, or making the deanship of the graduate program into the deanship of this fifth school. The rationales for the schools reorganization were reiterated in the handout, many involving a dean's advocacy for his or her unit and the increased power of a dean in attracting outside funding and donations. The Council discussed this reorganization, mildly deploring the fact that our past disapproval of it had not succeeded in preventing or modifying it. It was noted that alumni donors to The Citadel were probably going to be uniquely loyal to the whole college rather than to their "school", but Prof. Silver observed that the business community might be more inclined to give to a School of Business than to the whole college. Observations were made once again around the idea that adding a new layer of Administration positions was not really the way to address the shrinking percentage of the college's budget spent on instruction.
   
   Prof. Zuraw asked whether the other proposed component of the reorganization, the melding of Faculty Council and Academic Board into a Faculty Senate, would be done; it was reiterated that Provost Carter had respected the Council's wishes on that and dropped the idea.
   
   Prof. Williams proposed that Provost Carter be invited to the October meeting to discuss current issues with us; the members agreed.
   
   
9. The seventh handout was a welcome hard-copy list of the current membership of the standing committees. The appointments were made by the Committee on Committees and the delay till now was because they had to be approved. Profs. Williams and Lally expressed the desire that the committee list be distributed to all faculty at the beginning of the year with an explanation of the codes that accompanied the members' names; as to what form the distribution should take, Prof. Foster noted that a hard copy to everyone would not waste that many trees, and the Council agreed that a hard copy was preferable.
   
   Prof. Briggs suggested that the Citadel web page be made more friendly, with the Faculty section including links to committee assignments. Prof. Williams proposed that a concrete calendar of dates specifically important to faculty be created, including deadlines for grant applications and the like (and not, Prof. Foster observed, things irrelevant to us like SMIs). It was noted that The Citadel has just hired a full-time Webmaster, and that this person could do it for us, since it would be factual dates and not anything controversial.
   
   
10. Prof. Williams raised the question of the Faculty Handbook; the Administration alters it every year with new General Orders, but some Council members had last seen it when they were hired here. Profs. Bishop and Carter pointed out that Faculty Council had gone through the Handbook and negotiated all its changes with the Administration a few years ago, but we have not seen it since. Prof. Lally noted that the Faculty Handbook is our only contract as to work conditions, and said we should each have a copy of it; Prof. Foster pointed out that changing procedures could be addressed economically by having it in a looseleaf form, with page substitutions as needed, like the tax code. Prof. Silver noted that we should have a current, well-distributed Faculty Handbook to show SACS in the accreditation process. It was unofficially resolved that part of Faculty Council's business this year should be to scrutinize the Faculty Handbook, add desirable things to it (Prof. Zuraw pointed out the new ethics code could be in it) and get hard copies of it distributed.
    
    Prof. Williams noted that another major mission for this year will be to see that all the standing committees have currently valid charters and that these are available for scrutiny.
    
    
11. The eighth handout was an announcement that The Citadel should nominate a pedagogical enterprise (one beneficial to an outside community) from here for the state Commission on Higher Education's Service Learning Project competition. This nomination is due Sept. 30th; the prize has not been specified. The ninth and last handout was The Citadel's official policy on personal visitors and children in the workplace: Prof. Williams thought faculty should know this policy exists, since some of us have brought children or other personal visitors to the office.
    
    
12. The meeting was adjourned at 12:13 p.m.