MINUTES of the GENERAL FACULTY MEETING, May 2, 2003
Auditorium, Duckett Hall

1. Provost Harry Carter called the meeting to order at 10:33 a.m.



2. Provost Carter recognized faculty members who had achieved various things this past year.
   
   Josey Templeton and John Carter were promoted to full professor.
   Cindy Bolt, Scott Lucas and Mark McKinney got tenure and promotion to Associate Professor.
   John Peeples and Thomas Jerse got tenure.
   Julie Lipovsky and Kyle Sinisi got full-year sabbaticals.
   Les Cohn, Mark Del Mastro, Sheila Foster, Dot Moore and George Williams got half-year sabbaticals.
   Yvonne Bruce, Jerry Craig, Lonnie Craven, Larry Dunlop, Kanut Durgun, Jerry Low, Chris McRae, Richard Porcher and David Shields were either retiring or going elsewhere.
   The composition of Academic Board was to change somewhat because of changes of department head or Dean. John Moore would be the new department head in Math and Computer Science, John Peeples would be the new department head in Electrical Engineering, and there would be a new department head for Civil Engineering and a new Dean of Undergraduate Studies as yet unselected.
   Alix Darden received the Medbury Award for undergraduate teaching.



3. Prof. Pat Ezell reported on the current state of the College of Graduate and Professional Studies. Enrollment was up, they were working with MUSC to develop a joint MBA and pharmacy/medicine degree, and the increasing numbers made it possible to give a graduate degree in Criminal Justice. She displayed the improved brochures for recruiting both undergraduate and graduate evening students, described the open house in the North Area for the MBA program and the new recruiting on the Web, and solicited help from the faculty to attract evening students.
   
   Provost Carter added that because this year is the 35^th anniversary of the founding of the graduate program, retired Professor Tom Mahan, who was present at the creation, would be this year’s commencement speaker at the graduate graduation.



4. Prof. George Williams reported on the year’s activities in Faculty Council. Being its chair had been a humbling experience and he had learned a great deal, including in the very welcome weekly President’s Briefings. He asked the officers and members to rise for recognition. He then described the Council’s work, including the open meetings about campus parking, the work of the six subcommittees on various issues, the development of a suggested ethics code for faculty in accordance with Gen. Grinalds’ Ethics Initiative (which could provide material for faculty development and CAC luncheons next year), and the creation of a new permanent standing committee to examine issues connected with student evaluation of teaching. This last arose from the Faculty Council subcommittee on Student Evaluation; Prof. Peg Lally, as its chair, passed out a survey about the present student evaluation form, which can also be filled in online. Prof. Williams noted that the Faculty Council charter had been amended this year to allow for a more constantly attainable quorum; this change had to pass a vote at a general faculty meeting, but the vote would be taken at the fall meeting. He announced the latest urgent issue, the class absence problem, brought to the Council’s attention by Provost Carter the previous day; expressed his wish to have Council members more visible and credible than in the past; and noted that the election of new officers would take place at the first fall meeting.
   
   Prof. Jane Bishop praised Prof. Williams’ inspiring and morale-building leadership as chair of Faculty Council, and led a round of applause for him.



5. Provost Carter announced that the main business of the meeting was the budget crisis. Before dealing with it, he presented some slides and comments about the general state of things. After a dip last year, freshman GPAs, Citadel Scholars, gold stars and the like are back to near-record highs, showing that freshmen can deal with everything that is thrown at them. Several rankings of the school had taken place in the press, including U.S. News and World Report’s ranking of The Citadel as #7 of all southern universities, and several external reviews were coming up. He gave the dates of the last and next specific reviews of the schools of Business, Education and Engineering, then talked about the two general ones, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and the National College Athletic Association. Both would review us overall on August 15^th and after; SACS wanted to see if we were complying with their standards for mission, governance, effectiveness of teaching and the like. A handout showed that we were in good shape as to the SACS criteria, and there was a round of applause for Prof. Bob White for coordinating the compliance audit. There will then be a new Quality Enhancement Plan, which will concentrate on the first three semesters at The Citadel and bring about a coherent college-wide plan to improve student learning. Prof. Larry Moreland, as head of the Strategic Planning Committee, did a fine job on this. The NCAA’s five-year review, also falling due on Aug. 15^th, would scrutinize a bumpy five years for Citadel athletics, including the integration of women’s sports into the mix. Finally, Provost Carter gave the statistics for the proportion of women (6% in the Corps, 40% in the evening) and African Americans (8% in the Corps, 15% in the evening) in the student body.



6. Provost Carter then discussed and presented slides about the budget crisis. The 2001-2002 school year had started with $18,705, 912 appropriated for us, but it had been reduced to $17,505,142; the 2002-2003 school year had started with $17,194,443 appropriated for us and this had now been reduced to $15,723,901. The appropriation for the 2003-2004 school year is down to $14,170,380, so that The Citadel must now make do with four and a half million dollars less than we had thought two years ago. There could thus be no raises for its employees, either merit or cost-of-living, and the unfilled faculty positions might have to remain so. Also, to remain in Division 1A of the NCAA the school had to expand its teams from 10 to 17. The budget challenge for 2003-2004 is to save $3.2 million on general expenses and $1.6 million on athletics. He showed slides with various approaches on how to do it. For the general revenues, the preferred option was a combination of raising student fees somewhat and giving all employees four days of unpaid furlough. For the athletic shortfall, the preferred option was a combination of raising athletic fees somewhat and cutting one sport, probably men’s soccer. There was a stir, a murmur and a low laugh when he mentioned another school that was eliminating its football team. In any case, these options are to be approved or not by the Board of Visitors at their June 13^th meeting, with a special meeting on May 9^th to discuss them. To the outside world, the increased fees will amount to 17% for in-state students and 12.4% for out-of-state ones, but there are factors like carryovers that make it really more like 9%; we should say so when asked about this, and we should also give him suggestions for saving money. 40 to 45 states are now in this kind of trouble, and the struggle will go on for years.



7. General Grinalds spoke to some of Provost Carter’s points. Raised athletic fees hurt our small school more than they would where the pain could be spread among many more students; the Brigadier Club does a wonderful job of raising money for athletic scholarships, and other fundraising has produced $29 million dollars this academic year, which is impressive. However, only $2.5 million of the $150 million endowment is in unrestricted funds, and those are what we need to fill the state’s gaps.
   
   He then addressed the issue of Citadel participation in the war in Iraq. Over 300 of our graduates are involved in the war, including Petra Lovetinska, so that we can say the men and women of The Citadel are representing us well in the theater of war. He mentioned the two Citadel men who were killed in the war, Lonnie Childers and Ben Sammis, and described the inspiring nature of Ben Sammis’s funeral, which he and Mrs. Grinalds had attended in Washington; he then told of an equally inspiring visit to a wounded ’96 graduate, Jeff Houston, during which he became acutely aware of the web of Citadel connections in the military involved in the war. He pointed out a story in the Post&Courier about a little boy who found a valuable ring on the beach and, guided by his mother, got it back to its proper owner; this was an inspiring real-life contrast to a TV commercial he had mentioned at last fall’s general faculty meeting, in which the assumption was that if the characters in the ad had found the valuable ring on the beach they would have kept it and bought a car with it. The Citadel is to help its students use their talents, but also to give them something to hold onto as they go out into a world of ambiguity.
   He briefly mentioned the possible rearrangements of governance, with Gov. Sanford wanting a State Board of Regents and others now talking about dividing the state universities among three constituents’ boards. But he returned to the talents of the faculty: he had seen us in action in the classroom, he had heard the overwhelmingly favourable comments about us from students, and he was moved by our helpfulness to the students and very proud of us.



8. Prof. Williams announced that at the luncheon immediately following, the certificates of appreciation to Faculty Council members would be on display. Provost Carter facetiously claimed that Faculty Council photos would be on sale in the same place. The meeting was adjourned at 11:55 a.m.

Respectfully submitted (though it is not clear who is supposed to approve this),
Jane Bishop
Secretary, Faculty Council