Transcript, Faculty Council Meeting,
April 28, 1995

TRANSCRIPT
GENERAL FACULTY AND FACULTY COUNCIL MEETING
3:00 P.M., APRIL 28, 1995

ASSEMBLY ROOM, WILSON LIBRARY

Attendance: Present 60; Excused absences 15; Unexcused absences 15.

Open Session

I. Memorial Resolution for the late Robert Brown Voitle: Daniel W. Patterson, Chair

[The resolution was approved with a moment of standing silence following the reading of the memorial.]

II. Chancellor Hardin.

A. Thomas Jefferson Award.

Welcome to the final Faculty Council meeting of the year, a meeting which we will remember for the very next thing on the agenda, and that is that I have the pleasure of asking Professor James Peacock to come forward. And I’m going to ask the Secretary of the Faculty, George Lensing, to read a citation, so that we may make a very, very important presentation to Jim Peacock.

Professor Lensing: These remarks were prepared by Vice Chancellor Tom Meyer, but it’s a very special privilege for me to read them this afternoon having the honor and pleasure and privilege of working with him for three years when he was Chair of the Faculty.

[See addendum at end of transcript.] [applause]

Chancellor Hardin: Let me read the citation. You may be seated. The Thomas Jefferson Award for 1995 is presented to James Lowe Peacock III, being that member of the academic community who through personal influence and performance of duty in teaching, writing and scholarship, has best exemplified the ideals and objectives of Thomas Jefferson. The Thomas Jefferson Award was established by the Robert Earll McConnell Foundation for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in March 1961. Jim, I’m happy to hand you this framed certificate and an envelope with something in it, and with these tokens I express my own profound gratitude to you and join this group in saluting the fine, fine work you have done and continue to do for our University. Thank you. Professor Peacock: Thank you. [applause]

Professor Peacock: Tom Meyer arrived just in time for me to thank him and express my amazement that he knows so much — about me. I know he knows a lot about many things. Thank you, George. Thank you, Chancellor Hardin. And thank all of you. I have a very brief comment, and it’s not about Peacock; it’s about Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson is a superb model for faculty because he so excellently united the duties of public servant and intellectual. He was independent in thought, not doctrinaire unless it be his own doctrine. In fact he once said, “I am a sect myself.” A good motto for faculty. He was a researcher in everything from Greek to agriculture. In fact he was the first American archaeologist. And his reports, which are excellent, are still being read. He was tireless, a workaholic, but on his own schedule. Some projects he did quickly. For example, drafting the Declaration of Independence. Others he took a long time to do — for instance, building his house, which was still unfinished when he was married and even when his wife died, and took many decades. Jefferson’s combination of service and intellectuality is equalled by few individuals. Perhaps it is equalled by some institutions. I nominate this University as one that does achieve the combination of intellectuality and service more than virtually any other, including, perhaps, Jefferson’s own. Therefore, UNC-Chapel Hill itself deserves the Thomas Jefferson Award. I salute Carolina even as it has saluted me, and I gratefully accept the award as a representative of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I would like to thank the colleagues who nominated me, the colleagues who selected me, the benefactors who endowed the prize, and I am truly and deeply honored. Thank you very much. [applause.]

Chancellor Hardin: It’s hard to add to what has been said, but Jim has a very recent honor about which you have read. He’s just been elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. We congratulate you on that new achievement, Jim. It’s a wonderful thing. And then I can’t let this moment go by without asking Florence Peacock to stand and let us recognize her. Florence has on the appropriate school colors. [laughter.] We’re delighted she’s here.

I did not outline any remarks today. Very frankly I’ve been too busy. In addition to all the regular things that are on the schedule, I’m happy to say to you that I have been called quickly to Raleigh two or three times in the last four or five days, and if not literally to go over there, to be on the telephone with people who are working conscientiously to do the right thing for Carolina and for the UNC system in the budget. So on this, my last report to you, as your Chancellor, in contrast to my tone of a couple of recent meetings, I’m going to impart a note of cautious optimism. There is no doubt that through your efforts and all of our combined efforts, and through simply the process of heeding the facts, listening to the arguments, examining the unintended consequences that would flow if some of those early budget proposals were adopted, the responsible leaders in Raleigh are hard at work to reshape a budget with which we can live and thrive and continue to gain strength at this University. I don’t know yet what the final outcome will be, but I am vastly encouraged by the recent exchanges with leaders in state government and enormously grateful to you, and to our students, and to our employees, and our Trustees, and our Board of Visitors, and all of our friends who have helped impart a sense of urgency to these budget discussions.

Now on a lighter subject, people have said to me they don’t know quite what to say to an outgoing Chancellor, but one of my colleagues who’s still in this room said a while ago, “Just an unabashed congratulations.” And that’s exactly the right single word. Congratulations that I was miraculously chosen to be your Chancellor — that’s incredible in itself. Congratulations on having the privilege of presiding over this Institution at a time when we were celebrating 200 years of service to the people of North Carolina, and indeed, 200 years of service of growing distinction and magnitude in the world of learning and higher education. Congratulations for surviving those instances and episodes that were difficult to survive. Congratulations on all the joy I’ve experienced — and those occasions far outnumber the others. And finally, congratulations on the prospect of the change of pace to which Barbara and I are looking forward with real relish. You don’t have to like leaving associations in order to like what comes later. We don’t like leaving all of the associations that are connected with this job, but we love the prospect of doing something different and of yielding this privileged and exciting and challenging position to someone else whose identity no one knows yet, but the revelation of whose identity we hope is closer than it once was.

Now an informal word or two about this Council and your predecessors. This is a big University and the Chancellor isn’t privileged to get to know every single faculty member up close, but over time, if the Chancellor attends these meetings regularly and listens to what’s going on, he or she gets an incredibly broad and pretty deep view of the qualities of excellence and commitment that drive this faculty and that lead this University to ever higher reputation and quality. From the very first encounter I had with this faculty, and I reminded a few people upstairs a few minutes ago that I came here in the midst of the report of the Betts Committee about athletic reform, and we extended our Faculty Council meetings to the entire faculty for several meetings in a row, and we moved to Hamilton Hall to have plenty of room. And I knew as I engaged in those early discussions that I had joined a group of terrific intellects and great character and that we were going to have a good time working together. And there has never been one moment, literally, not one moment, when my confidence in and my respect for and my admiration of this faculty has waned. Just absolutely terrific. And I thank you and your predecessors for representing your colleagues so well. And I thank every one of you for the absolutely incessant and reliable, never-failing support of your Chancellor through thick or thin. And I’ll close with a pledge. I gave you a fairly optimistic assessment of the budget situation. But I still have about 65 days, and if any of that progress I see over there looks like it’s sagging or flagging, I will be vocally, energetically at your service until the day I step down — and beyond. Thank you. [applause]

III. Chair of the Faculty Jane D. Brown.

A lot of completion here today. Congratulations again, Jim. That’s well deserved. Professor Peacock: Thank you. Professor Brown: When I first spoke to you last September I asked you all to make a commitment to fully participate and to be representatives of your constituents. I also said that none of us is as smart as all of us. Today at the end of the academic year I want to thank you for having fulfilled on your commitments. You have participated fully and I do appreciate that. I think somehow these chairs have helped, too. Somehow. So I have enjoyed working with you. I’m also almost enjoying these meetings. [laughter] I’ve also learned that in these difficult times it truly is important that we’re all thinking together about what is to be done and how best to move. I did want to highlight some of what we’ve done this year. I do this at the end of my classes as well to kind of remind us that we’ve come a long distance and what is it that we have accomplished across the semester. Here we’ve accomplished I think some important things across these two semesters.

If you’ll remember, we began with a thorough discussion of what we called then the consensual amorous relationship policy. Chancellor Hardin has now endorsed the revised policy, and it is in effect. We also learned more about the plans for the Sonja Haynes Stone Black Cultural Center, and the Center for Research on African Americans. And a number of us stated our support for those centers. Fund raising is still underway. So if you haven’t made your contribution, you still may. We have created two new task forces on women at Carolina and on the recruitment and retention of minority students and faculty. And those task forces are also underway. We’ll be working hard this summer and into the coming year. Hope to have guidelines for the Chancellor about what needs to be done in those areas. We also took a field trip to have Bill Graves demonstrate and discuss the future of information technology on campus. We dealt with basketball tickets one more time, and that will be coming back I’m afraid. Apparently that never dies. So we’ll just keep working on that. We were the first to hear Chancellor Hardin take on the Legislature. Chancellor Hardin: Bravo. Professor Brown: Bravo. And our standing committees have worked hard and continue to work on a number of other important issues. We’ll hear some more today and more in the future. So, I think we have accomplished a great deal. We haven’t many resolutions to show for this, and I think that’s okay. Although I’d be happy to hear your sense on that.

I think what I will be doing in the coming year is to work more closely with our standing committees, looking at what kinds of agendas we’d like to set up at the beginning of the year with our standing committees and perhaps coming to the Council with more specific things for us to be talking about. And perhaps passing judgment on. So that we have some more grist for our mill here. I’ve also asked the Committee on University Government to serve as a committee on committees. We’re actually charged to do that in our Code. I’ve asked them to look at our committee structure and to see if we need all the committees we have, and what they should be doing now. And so I’m going to be working with them over the summer on that. We also will be looking at the size of the Council. We’re supposed to do that every five years. And so the University Government Committee will be looking at that as well. I think we might be served by being a little smaller, a little more intimate. And we’ve also — the Executive Committee of Faculty Council has made a recommendation to the Government Committee — we’ve kind of put it back in their court — to include fixed-term faculty. And we’ve asked the Government Committee to figure out how we’re going to do that. So we’ll have those proposals for us before us in the fall.

I also expect next year that we will be dealing with some important issues coming out of the SACS self-study. That’s why I’ve asked Darryl [Gless] to come and speak with us today, to get us started on thinking about what we as faculty and Faculty Council might take up out of those many recommendations from the SACS self-study. As you know, the Executive Committee continues to meet through the summer. And so, if there are issues that — and you do not — so you get a break. And so if you have anything that comes up over the summer that you’d like the Executive Committee to deal with, please let me know, and we’ll deal with it. It’s part of the reason that the Executive Committee was created, was so that there was some voice of the faculty even over the summer. So we’re here and we’ll continue to work for you, and so let us know if there’re things you want us to be looking at. The Faculty Legislative Liaison Committee, also under the direction of Jim [Peacock] and Jan Elliott also continues to work, a vital time for working with the Legislature, and they will — and so if you want to know what else you can be doing now, Jim’s the person to contact, and we’ll keep you informed as well. Steve Bayne has agreed to try to get us all on a listserver, so that we may be in communication with each other more effectively, more quickly, over E-mail. And so we hope to get that up and running so we can be speaking to each other that way. The other thing that we usually do at this Council meeting at the end of the year is to honor our teaching award winners. Well I’m happy to say that this year our University-wide teaching award winners not only are getting their award and honored, but they’re getting dinner, and so tonight there’s going to be an awards dinner for the University-wide teaching winners, and there they will be announced and feted. And so I wanted to say publicly to them, thank you to them and congratulations to them, and that they serve us all by doing excellent teaching. So they will be honored tonight. [applause] And I also want to invite you again to participate in graduation ceremonies. I think that it’s especially crucial this year that we have a good turnout of faculty for a couple of reasons. One is that it shows the Legislature that we do care. It honors our students who we’ve been working with all year. And it honors our honorary degree recipients. This year we are going to give an honorary degree to our speaker, Johnnetta Cole, who I understand gives a marvelous talk. And so I encourage you all to be there to honor her and our graduates. It is on May 14th. You can be at the Kenan Field House at 9:00. The procession starts at 9:30. And I hope to see you all there. Another way you may represent your constituents. And, finally, this is the last meeting for about one-third of you, and I want to thank you each personally. And I’d like to do that in a public acknowledgement, so as I call your name, would you stand and let us acknowledge your participation on Council.

Gerhard Koeppel [applause], John Halton (not here), Karl Petersen [applause], Larry Rowan [applause], Alan Stiven, Charlie Paull [applause], Mike Luger (not here; he’s been a faithful member), Kathleen Harris [applause], Margaretta Yarborough [applause], Carl Anderson [applause] (thank you), Rich Beckman, one of my colleagues [applause]; Kathleen Rounds, Phil Bromberg [applause], Steven Burnham, Frank Loda (he’s been a good member), Ben Wilcox [applause], Bill Wood [applause], Rosann Farber [applause], Bonnie Yankaskas [applause], Jefferson Burkes, Steve Bayne (we’ll miss you) [applause] — who are we going to have talk all the time?, William Maixner, Merle Mishel, Judith Miller, Don Lauria [applause]. And Catherine Maley, she’s been on leave this year; she’s served beautifully on the Executive Committee, and Frank Brown has as well. So thank you all very much. I do appreciate your having served on the Council. I got to serve on it with you for one year. We hope to see you back some time. Thank you.

Now we get to hear from Darryl Gless, who has served incredibly on this SACS reaccreditation task. I’ve asked Darryl to come speak with us especially because we also had some questions after our last meeting about some of the press reports about this study. He’s been doing an excellent job at working with the press as well all the other constituencies, and I hope you will lead us into the future and tell us what we should do next.

IV. Discussion of Primary Findings and Recommendations of the SACS

Reaccreditation Report: Darryl J. Gless, Director, SACS Self-Study.

I will use the microphone. I don’t have Jane’s force of character. Is it on? I’ve only been teaching 20 years. My students still tell me that they can’t hear me in the back of the room — in a class of 20. [laughter] Thank you, Jane, for inviting me here today. Many people in this room have put enough time in the study; they might be forgiven for yearning to hear no more about it at all. But since we’re on the eve of the site visit which begins on May 9th, and since it’s just possible that some of you hear may not have been able to commit all 303 pages to memory, your invitation seems appropriate. My final assignment before packing the self-study off to the printer was to write a 3-page summary of the history of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I now know that history, and the University’s complex, mutually reinforcing, and historically determined missions — as well as its current programs and the people who fulfill those missions — more thoroughly than I ever had or ever expected to know. The primary sensation all this learning and relearning has impressed upon me is admiration: admiration for those who have struggled to create and sustain this first-class University in this place. The University’s very existence from, really is a testimony, and an evidence of victory and struggles over hostility to new ideas and learning. Some of, many of you in this room know better than I that the earliest curriculum at the University was reversed almost as fast as it was instituted by hostility and fear, hostility toward and fear of the new ideas emanating from the French Enlightenment. In this century many of you will know that the University was under attack by the Poole Amendment for daring to teach evolution. In 1932 under severe attack for daring to allow Bertrand Russell and Langston Hughes to speak here. And many of you will remember better than I the 1963 and thereafter ban on those who dared to speak against the War and who spoke as Communists. In every case, in other words, in my reading of the University’s history, the Institution’s preservation resulted from what I would consider a miraculous capacity of its supporters to struggle on behalf of the unfettered search for truth. They built against many odds what I take to be a really precious and rare thing, a public university, that has become a distinguished center of learning by national and international standards. I don’t have to tell you that, really, but simply by accumulating lists of the University’s current programs and recent achievements, the recent achievements of its faculty and staff and its students, the self-study richly demonstrates something we might at times of discouragement allow ourselves to overlook.

We work at a great Institution and we have reason to take pride in the historical continuum in which we are privileged to play a temporary part. Now the self-study has revealed a few current reasons for the exceptional distinction our predecessors have brought to Chapel Hill. We have not known quite enough about some of those, and I want to mention just a couple of them to you this afternoon. One of them is a striking faculty commitment to teaching of all kinds. Faculty at Chapel Hill engage, we discovered through the self-study, in independent teaching of undergraduates with remarkable readiness. Fifty-five percent did so in the College of Arts and Sciences alone last year; that’s 560 people, more than 560 people, engaging in individualized teaching through honors theses, other undergraduate research projects, independent reading courses, by sponsoring and coaching undergraduate performances, clubs, recitals, exhibits, and by training and supervising the many graduate assistant instructors here whose own youthful energies here bring special qualities to our classrooms and deserve better recognition. Until the self-study documented all these things I had no idea how pervasive they were. I saw, I was doing them, my colleagues in the English Department were doing them. I had no idea how pervasive they were. And we should take credit for that. We should credit for it especially because this kind of teaching is of primary importance to a first-class institution of higher learning such as ours. Students who graduate from Chapel Hill should be able to undertake independent reading, innovative thought about problems that as yet have no answers. The best teachers for such students are themselves adept at imagining novel hypotheses, searching out obscure information, and expressing their discoveries cogently to exacting audiences of other specialists. And that is what we do. And it’s worth being reminded in copious detail of how we do it.

The self-study helps remind us of another special feature of teaching at what has been called a “public ivy”, and I want to emphasize “public.” Because many of our students are the most able and the best educated by any standard, we probably forget, or never knew, that nearly 30% of the student in our classes now, one of every three or four, that is, a dozen, say, in my current undergraduate class, come from households in which neither parent holds a college degree. And we should be aware of that because such students haven’t had the advantage of a built-in lifelong assumption that one of the best colleges in the nation is within their reach and the inevitable reward of their hard work. Such students typically don’t enjoy the many kinds of accidental and deliberate methods by which college-educated parents would reinforce and guide their studies throughout their lives. This means that you and I are often the first to ask our students, these students, to think hard, independently, and creatively, on their own, to be convinced that thinking so is not only a skill they can learn but it is their calling, and to believe that the highest possible achievements, the best competitive, the most competitive scholarships, are in their future. Now I start with those very strong points because they will be the ones that you will not hear about elsewhere. It’s worth reading the self-study just to remind ourselves of what we do well.

Another extremely conspicuous feature of the self-study, copiously registered there, is that we are awfully good at self-criticism. As you probably know, the study offers 17 recommendations, and 73 suggestions, to make the University a still better place in the future. I’ll generalize a little bit about all those recommendations and suggestions shortly. The distinction between recommendations and suggestions, by the way, is simply an instance of “SACS Speak”. The recommendations are those areas where we felt, as writers of the self-study, that the University should do a better job of meeting specific SACS criteria for accreditation, of which there are 500. Suggestions often are as important because they’re areas where we think we should do better whether or not those are areas that have to do with SACS criteria. So, let me say that the follow-up to this plan, the site visit, will occur on the 9th through the 12th of May, in an otherwise quiet time when you find yourself grading papers perhaps, or if you can, getting some rest. You will come across people wandering about campus, perhaps wanting to talk to you when they catch you on the sidewalk. They’ll be roughly 20 of our peers from other institutions in the South. They will spend fully a week — they’ll be here for four days, but they’ll spend fully a week hard at work. Their reward for this will be $50. That is the full, total honorarium we provide for their labors. They may add further recommendations and suggestions depending on whether they agree that we have been sufficiently self critical.

Now the recommendations and suggestions. As you know, this kind of document could just kind of sit on a shelf and be ignored, but the Vice Chancellors have already begun to assign responsibility in many cases for following up on the recommendations. In many cases the responsibility is self-evident, in others not. In some cases the topics are so big that we will require further discussion and a good deal of agreement before we go forward with them. Let me just name a couple since Jane wanted me to do that. The Chancellor has already initiated one recommendation, that is, a more coordinated and continuous planning process for the campus as a whole. That is underway, and no doubt the Faculty Council will have, already has had, and will continue to have, a role in that. One of the recommendations, or a number of them focus on improvement of the general education curriculum. The Dean of the College mentioned last Thursday at the meeting there for the College faculty, that he is beginning to initiate for the fall a widespread and comprehensive discussion of the general education curriculum to make it more simple, more coherent, and, we hope, more interdisciplinary now. And the Faculty Council, as you know, is the body that makes the final decision about the general education curriculum because it belongs to the entire University. So you’ll be involved in that as well.

We are also already underway, the University is, in improving the program review process. And one of the features of that, Maurice Miles, one of the rewards for being on task forces of the self-study is that you get to be on follow-up committees as well. Faculty members would almost rather put their hands in a vice than do any more with program review. The idea here is to make this have more consequence. And also — and this is something that’s got into us from the outside — we must find more ways to measure — I use that word very carefully, and it could be interpreted in a number of sophisticated ways — measure what students learn in our programs. And finally, another major area a number of recommendations and suggestions point to, is to find better ways to ensure that the distinctive systems at the University do properly recognize all the varieties of work including teaching, the varieties of teaching I mentioned, that faculty do. Now with that very short list — it’s not very short, is it? — but I’ll stop there, and answer questions if anyone has any.

Professor Brown: How many of you have served on a SACS team of some sort? A lot. Thank you. Professor Gless: Thank you. I just hope the person who has the privilege of doing this job 10 years from now has as positive an experience as I have had thanks to all of you who have done it. Professor Brown: This is the final document. Are these available if someone wants to read it? Professor Gless: Yes, we keep the run-down; it’s a very expensive document because of all the tables. The unit cost consequently is very high. It is on the campus web, so you can all get to it directly from your computer if you have a modem or are connected to the campus network. You just go to the home page and select directories, news and publications, and then there’s a fairly obvious way to get to the self-study. But we will have some further copies, hard copies, available if people would like them. Just call our office, or mention it to me now, and we can get them to you. By the way, they’re on reserve in all the libraries as well. And all the departments, the department heads, have copies. Professor Peacock: I think we should all thank you for a tremendous job. [applause] Professor Brown: Questions, comments, criticism? Professor Gless: Obviously we can stop there. Professor Brown: Okay, great. We’ll continue working on which of those recommendations we want to take up here. It looks like we will be getting general education coming to us. But there are some other things we need to be addressing. Some things like evaluating full professors and so on.

V. Annual Reports of Standing Committees:

A. Educational Policy: Seth R. Reice, Chair.

Professor Brown: You all have a copy of this document. Professor Reice: I’m Seth Reice in the Department of Biology in the Curriculum in Ecology. I’m finishing my third year as Chair of the Educational Policy Committee. Members of the Committee were Jane Burns, Jim Gallagher, Judith Farquhar, Jim Ketch, Michael Lienesch, Sara Mack, Linda Spremulli, and Frank Wilson. We had some interesting items come to us. The ones that seem simple are the ones that turn out to be controversial. But I think that’s part of the nature of the faculty. And the only one that we’re bringing to you today is a change in the composition and the mission of the Educational Policy Committee which was recommended to us by Joe Ferrell, Chair of the Committee on University Government. And that has four basic principles to it. The first is to make the Educational Policy Committee advisory to the Registrar, meeting a long sought need by the Registrar to make sure that what the Registrar does is congruent with what the University faculty thinks they should be doing, and also that the University faculty should not do anything that the Registrar finds impossible. The biggest thing we did last year was ask the Registrar to make it possible for a student who had completed an Incomplete, to have that IN/ disappear from their record, because we actually meant that they had completed the course so why should they be penalized for the rest of their life for somebody to know that they didn’t complete it right on time? That was a major step for the Educational Policy Committee, but it was also something the Registrar needed to know about.

The second part of this proposal is to expand the role of the Educational Policy Committee to include both Academic Affairs and Health Affairs to have a truly University-wide mission. It seemed a very reasonable proposal. It came to us from the University Government Committee. The idea is we are one University. We should have one set of educational policies. I hope you understand that the Educational Policy Committee does not make curriculum or curriculum decisions. We simply make sure that the way we carry out the business of the University is consistent.

Third is to follow this is to open the election of Educational Policy Committee members to the entire faculty so the Health Affairs coming on board should have a full chance to be well represented. And you may not have noticed when you went through the document that was sent to you by the University Government Committee that we used to have all kinds of slots for different divisions of the University, and now those will vanish, people will just be elected at large, and that means that the Health Affairs could have all the members if they wanted.

And last is to include student representation.

So this amendment is unanimously recommended by the Educational Policy Committee for passage by the Faculty Council. And that’s the main order of business today. Professor Brown: Is there a second? Professor Reice: That was a resolution. I was moving the resolution. Professor Brown: Discussion? Professor Steve Bayne (Dentistry): I guess what I’m going to do is just sort of beg some people for further explanation of the impact of changing this to pan-University. And I’ll start out by saying I support the idea that we should be doing everything as an entire University, not as divisions or segments or whatever. But I was trying to imagine the impact it would have for the School of Dentistry, which I’m trying to represent, and if you look at the complexities currently of curriculum, we have one 4-year dental curriculum, we have a 1-year dental assistant curriculum, we have a 2-year dental hygiene curriculum, we have 8 Master’s programs that operate semi-independently, we have, we have 3 Ph.D. programs, two in cooperation with other schools on campus, and we have a Bachelor of Science program. They all start at different dates. They all have different exam weeks. They all have different regulations. They all essentially have independent registrars that operate within the School of Dentistry. And my question to you is how would that change with the new document? What would we have to do in order to change to conform to the new document as recommended? Professor Reice: Not a thing. Let’s say you were to institute a new program. That doesn’t even come to the Educational Policy Committee. But let’s say you wanted to change the grading system. And suddenly the School of Dentistry wanted to have a brand new grading system, one that would grade by Greek letters. And the rest of the University doesn’t grade by Greek letters. So you would submit a request that that be considered, and the Educational Policy Committee would review that. But it’s very few truly substantive issues of curriculum ever reach the Educational Policy Committee. Professor Bayne: Let me take an example, though. At the moment we now have course directors. Each course has a person in charge. Each course director is allowed to develop their own grading system that is not University grading system. Doesn’t that change things? Professor Reice: Well, I don’t know how they do it, but it’s not certainly a matter of, for instance, in the Graduate School they give HPL grades. In the Undergraduate School we give ABCD grades. No one ever comes to the Educational Policy Committee to find out what numbers go with what grades, only that there is a grading system and the grading system has a meaning. Professor Bayne: So the scales would still be variable? Professor Reice: Sure, they always are. This is a very benign change.

Professor Miles Fletcher (History): The one concern I have and perhaps you can clarify this point for me, is the diversity of the members that the new proposal would guarantee. What I’m getting at is when I was on the Committee I found it very helpful to have a variety of academic disciplines represented on the Committee because a proposal would come up and, that the social scientist would think of as fine, but it would cause horrible problems for the natural sciences, or whatever. Does this ensure that different academic areas of the University will be represented on the Committee, or is it advisable to have some language that would ensure that? Professor Reice: It does not specifically ensure that. This is an unusual…; this present construction of the way this Committee is laid out is unusual compared to other standing committees; that is, we specify that, it used to be specified that, two members would hold primary appointments in the Social Sciences Division and one in the Professional Schools, and go on all the way through. For most University committees that distribution of membership is controlled and ensured through the Nominations Committee. And I would expect that that mechanism would work as well in the future for the Educational Policy Committee as it does for anything else.

Professor Philip Bromberg (Medicine): Well, I’m more concerned with this benign document. The basic idea that one would like to have more coherence, indeed, contact with the different parts of this vast University is not going to be a good thing, but harmful. The fact that the draft tosses out more words than it adds is obviously something that’s very good, for the paper supply if nothing else. But I am concerned by the fact that this is a very diverse University and that educational policy is not simply the province of the faculty of this University. No, we are called by external review boards to account for our educational policies, and to adhere to certain standards, and as Steve has pointed out in the School of Dentistry there is a very complex educational structure in the School of Medicine that’s even more complex than the School of Dentistry. And I would think that a change of this sort which eliminates the Division of Academic Affairs as the legitimate purview of this Committee and suddenly extends the purview of the Committee to the entire University with its many existing educational policy committees is something that should be worked through in greater detail . The devil is often in the details, and with, I think, broader representation than is currently the case. I caution against the ready adoption of this apparently simple change. Professor Reice: Well, let me simply say to you that, first, this has been studied by two standing committees of the faculty. The first was the faculty Government Committee, which had two members of Health Affairs on it, Harry Gooder and Dr. Lauder. Our Committee has Frank Wilson on it from the Medical School, and so it’s not like it was unknown to Health Affairs people. But I want to say to you there’s nothing to be afraid of. This is not a change that is going to suddenly radically affect your programs now any more than the Educational Policy Committee has run rampant through policies and procedures of the College of Arts and Sciences in the Division of Academic Affairs.

Professor Harry Gooder (Microbiology & Immunology, Medicine): Just a point of clarification. This came before the Committee on University Government before I joined it. Professor Reice: Excuse me. Professor Gooder: I was not actually on the Committee when this was discussed, and the first time I saw it — while I’m making that point, I would point out that it’s my understanding that under b)(cc) of the new resolution, there really has been no effort to counsel advice for the University Registrar in administering faculty regulations. Making the regulations is still, if I understand it, in the hands of the faculty. Professor Reice: Sure. Of course. Professor Gooder: We administrate them, and as we get more and more interdisciplinary programs and more and more students who are registered both in Health Affairs and in Academic Affairs, all the time, how do you record these students in jointly being administered by many two departments that have different regulations? There’s never been a clearinghouse where you could take that, point that out. Professor Reice: Quite honestly, the Registrar’s been asking for this participation from the faculty for four years at least. And this mechanism just simply means that the Registrar can present to the Educational Policy Committee a proposal. We, for instance, have had a chance to look at the calendar. We have two reading days this year because the students have asked for two reading days. And the Registrar came to the Educational Policy Committee and asked us if this is going to be a problem, and simply deliberated on it and we have two reading days now. Life goes on. I think that it is a very useful thing to have one place to look at all the educational policies throughout the University.

Mr. David Lanier, University Registrar: I’m starting with a controversy, but you have to realize on this campus there is one place where all the diversity comes together, and that’s in my office: where unified records and transcripts are kept, where all the students, whether they’re undergraduates, graduate, or professional students. It doesn’t matter if you’re a dental student or a medical student or an undergraduate or a graduate student. I have to administer the records, and I look to somewhere that I can ask questions about policy and procedure at the University to make sure I understand or that I’m interpreting things correctly. A policy is needed there all the time. Even a place to go. You do have more transcripts. All undergraduates have their own grading system on this campus as far as assigning and receiving transcripts. So there’re also commonalities across the campus where I need to look if I want to get an answer. There are some other rules I would like to have a sounding board in the future. Like we have no policy here on rescinding a degree. What would the campus policy be if you find that a doctoral student plagiarized their dissertation? Shouldn’t that be a fairly standard policy across campus? Carry it to the Educational Policy Committee; they may decide that it shouldn’t be a standard policy across the campus, but I need a place to carry questions like that. That was really what I was looking for.

Professor Rich Beckman (Journalism): I want to go back to one point that was discussed earlier. I’m still concerned about having this be just an open, random election. Representing a fairly small professional school I can see where, you know, Arts and Sciences and Medicine can easily be represented if they vote for their constituency, and other smaller programs could get left out. In fact I think we’re going the wrong way. Just because this Committee is different in the election process than any other committees, I’m more, I’m fonder of this model extending back to other committees than I am of just accepting the norm. I think we need to be talking about diversity in representation, and yet I can see where this would lead to a lack of diversity.

Professor Bromberg: Did the work of this Committee include consultation with existing educational policy committees, say, the School of Medicine? Professor Reice: We did not canvas all the educational policy committees because this seemed, and still seems to me, an extremely simple decision to have one place where all the policies would have a chance to be examined by a representative body, so we did not seek out that sort of feedback from all the different committees.

Professor [unidentified ]: I guess my question is, would a decision of this Committee supersede a decision of policy in, like, the Medical School? Professor Reice: The Educational Policy [Committee] does not decide anything. That’s why it’s so amazing to me that this is even a problem. What we do is we make recommendations to the Faculty Council. And the Faculty Council, which obviously represents everyone, gets to vote on whether or not the suggestion of the Educational Policy Committee should be the policy should be the policy of the University. We’re just a deliberative body. We carry so little weight that I can’t that imagine that anybody would be concerned about it. [laughter] Professor Peacock: To follow that, then, whatever the Faculty Council decides is only advisory, so at various levels whatever your Committee comes up with will be checked out against –. Professor Reice: I feel myself shrinking at the very moment. [laughter]

Professor Fletcher: I’d like to offer an amendment. I think the issue of academic diversity, discipline diversity, is very important to the Committee, and I think having been on the Committee, it would save people a lot of time in terms of discussing proposals, stopping proposals before they get to the Faculty Council. And some things that the Faculty Council votes do become positive as the result of recommendations of the Educational Policy Committee. Therefore I’d like to recommend that in Section, I guess it’s ii, that wording be added, sorry I don’t have this precisely worked out, wording be added that major academic units of the University have representation on the Committee, that being the College of Arts and Sciences, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, the Humanities, professional schools, and the Medical School. I’m saying this off the cuff; I don’t know if that’s adequate, but I’d like language to that effect to the provisions regarding the composition of the Committee. But if that’s precise enough, or clear enough. Professor Brown: If we could vote on the amendment, add major academic units, so we can send it back to the Government Committee for a quick look at it, what that would look like? Professor Fletcher: Let me say just as another comment, I’m in general in favor of the proposed changes. This is a friendly amendment. Professor Brown: So it’s a friendly amendment; should we vote on the amendment? Professor Fletcher: I think it has to be seconded. So any further discussion of that?

Vice Chancellor Garland Hershey (Health Affairs): Jane, I’m rather concerned that the topic before us is educational policy, and this is a heck of a way to create educational policy. You’ve heard that none of the academic folks in the professional schools have heard anything about this change. This is a complicated, complex University. Seth, what seems to you to be little change here often has significant changes elsewhere. We have other kinds of concerns Professor Beckman had raised. I wonder if there would be any harm in holding this open, allowing discussion to occur on the merits, or concerns that individuals may have, and bringing it back to the Council for action. Professor Bayne: I’ll move what Garland just said. Professor Brown: We have a motion on the floor. We need to dispense with that first. Pete, do you want to speak to the motion on the floor and then we can come back to Garland’s suggestion. Professor Reice: There is an amendment to guarantee representation for major academic units.

Professor Pete Andrews (Environmental Sciences & Engineering, Public Health): Two comments on that. One is that it doesn’t necessarily seem to address the problem of minor academic units, which is why I think I heard from the other this afternoon. So I would hope if it does go back to the Committee, I would hope it would address the representation question in general not simply air these grievances. Second, a question that really bears on that but it’s also broader. And that is, does this, is it your sense that the representation on the Committee is related to or separable from the question of being advisory to the Registrar, in the sense that Mr. Lanier is looking for some help fairly quickly and so forth, and that could be done by the Educational Policy [Committee] in its current form or any amended motion? Professor Reice: I think it is more helpful to the Registrar to be broadly representative. I perceived that that broad representation would come through the electoral process within the University. But I don’t have any problem with this at all. I think David wants to start consulting tomorrow. Professor Brown: We might be able to work quickly on this, give this back to the Government Committee and ask them to get it back to us.

Professor Karl Petersen (Mathematics): As I understand it, what the resolution we’re discussing, this draft from the University Government Committee, an amendment to The Faculty Code of University Government, defines the charge and structure of the Educational Policy Committee. And I don’t see this question of representation as a problem whatsoever. The reason it’s been dealt with in paragraph G there which amends the Code to say “….in selecting persons to fill positions established by or pursuant to this Code, consideration should be given to the charge or function of the position and the factors of departmental affiliation, faculty rank, tenure status, color, age, and sex to the end…”, etc. There’s a general instruction given in selecting people for this Committee. Consideration that the different constituents of the University be represented. I think to try to specify the way the form was done, with all this wonderful language crossed out, specify two people from this school, two people from that school, you’re going to come up with a large, unwieldy committee, which is absolutely unnecessary. The function of a committee in a representative thing like this is not for each person to represent their constituency, but to have it be a channel, that the members of the Committee, our names would not be secret. If you have something to argue about an issue that’s being discussed in the Committee, go to the members of the Committee, or let it come to the Faculty Council and see that your viewpoints are taken into consideration.

Professor Steve Bayne (Dentistry): I guess I’ll go back to Phil’s point. There are very, very many very complicated educational policy committees that exist with all the units around campus, and if they’re not directly represented, I’m not sure that they’re going to be fairly represented. And I appreciate the concerns of my colleagues as far as how you develop a representation or whatever, but you really need information from these groups from the horse’s mouth, on the part of each issue. It can’t be passed along to two or three different people. And it’s not simple. I mean, honestly I can’t represent the Dental School, having been there for 10 years and trying to understand it. There are just so many different aspects involved. And so I would sort of hark back to what Garland said. It might be wiser to take another month or two to look at the ramifications. Not that I don’t believe everything that Seth is trying to bring to us, that maybe this is really a simple change. I’d just like to take another look at it in light of those complicated educational policy functional groups. Professor Brown: Okay. Right now what’s on the floor, we’re discussing, is the amendment about representation.

Professor Fletcher: Just a quick response to Karl. I think in my mind G is a little bit too vague, and the current regulations for membership [remainder of sentence indecipherable]. Professor Brown: Okay, further discussion on the amendment? Professor Richard Pfaff (History): As a former chair and member of the faculty Nominating Committee, I would point out, and I’m sure those who have been on the Committee will agree with me, the work of that Committee is done in a very rushed set of circumstances, and there are a great many [courses] that pass the table in three or four meetings. More specific, the charge of the Committee would be better balanced, the Committee be charged to arrange its own balance given all the factors that it has to deal with is less likely to achieve the type talking about, so I would argue for more specificity in the instructions to achieve the effect you’re trying to achieve, the desired effect. So I would argue for more specificity in the instructions. Professor Brown: Since we don’t have a specific amendment, could I restate it from what I’ve just heard us talking about, that what we were looking for in this amendment is a representative committee, and however the University Government Committee could conceive of that — would that be a fair representation of your amendment? Professor Fletcher: Making sure that major divisions of the University are represented. Professor Brown: These major divisions you’re speaking to? Professor Fletcher: Yes. Professor Brown: We’re just going to have small academic units as well being represented? Professor Fletcher: Yes. Professor Brown: Is everyone clear about that? Okay, great. So that’s the amendment. Is everyone prepared to vote on that at this point? All those in favor of the amendment, to send this back to the University [Government] Committee to be more specific about representation on the Educational Policy Committee in the future. All those in favor, say aye. All those opposed say nay. [There were a few.] The ayes have it. So that amendment passes. So we send at least this piece back to the Government Committee to look more closely at representation.

Now we go back to the rest of the resolution. That’s the one on the floor. Professor Paul Farel (Physiology): I’d like to move to separate the question, so we can vote on each part separately. Professor Brown: Okay. I’m not quite sure what to do with that. Professor Farel: There are four sections. Professor Brown: After a second on that, to separate the sections, to vote on each part. Do we need to discuss separation? So all those in favor of separating the question, to vote in 4 parts: aye, opposed. It’s actually a, b, c, d. So we will now vote on each part separately. Professor Bayne: And we will discuss each part separately. [Unidentified]: Not necessarily. Okay, further discussion on the Educational Policy Committee should be made advisory to the Registrar. Let’s take a vote on that. All in favor of making the Educational Policy Committee advisory to the Registrar please say aye. B: Expand the role of the EPC to include both Academic Affairs and Health Affairs, to have a truly University-wide mission. Further discussion.

Professor Bayne: Well, I’d like to move what Garland said, to table the motion for a definite period of time, maybe the summer, for more input, because of the complexities that might be involved, not because I don’t support it. I think that there are some other things that I can truly represent, and I wouldn’t feel that I could vote for them possibly, without guidance or other input. Professor Brown: You’re moving that we table this piece? Second on this. So all those in favor of tabling b, about this is the piece to include Health Affairs, all those in favor of tabling that and send it back to the University Government Committee and ask them to look at it again, but we may need to get them more broadly representative because they don’t have very many Health Affairs people on their Committee. So I’ll ask them to do that. All in favor of tabling the motion about Health Affairs, say aye. Opposed, nay [there were a few]. I think the ayes have it. So this will go back to the University Government Committee to say, let’s look at that a little more closely. Professor Bayne: We did put during that time frame.

Now, c), can we vote on that having tabled the other piece? Professor Reice: It’s really contingent on b). Professor Brown: So I think we should just table b) and c). Now we can vote on d). So we tabled b) and c). Now we’re going to vote on d). Do we want to include students on the Educational Policy Committee? Discussion. Professor Reice: One little bit of discussion. We couldn’t understand why they were left off in the beginning. Professor Gooder: I think it may be appropriate to point out the President of the Student Body is present and wish to say something. Professor Brown: Do you want to speak to this? Mr. Calvin Cunningham: I certainly will. I was encouraged to see it when this came around. I certainly hope you can support it. Thanks. Professor Peacock: Point 2 does specify about student representation. It says one undergraduate student and one graduate or professional student. Should we assume that that’s what we’re voting for? Professor Reice: We’re essentially voting for that one line of point 2, the rest of which is highly controversial. Professor Peacock: In other words we’re not just voting vaguely for student representation….. Professor Reice: One student representative appointed by the Student Body President. Professor Brown: Two. Professor Reice: Two, one undergraduate and one professional or graduate. Professor Brown: All those in favor of including students on the Educational Policy Committee, say aye. All those opposed. Okay, great. We accepted two pieces, and not accepted two other pieces. We’ll send those back to the University Government Committee. We’ll hear more from them in the fall. Thank you very much, Seth.

B. Research: Paul D. Fullagar, Chair.

Professor Edwin Brown (Classics): As you see, Paul Fullagar is out of town and asked me to pinch hit on this occasion. I’m Ed Brown on the Committee, which has, if I may say so, been dealing with very non benign matters this year. On the other hand, because it’s not a work of art creation, you have, been as you see in the brief annual report before you, read various Vice Chancellors first and foremost, Wayne Jones, Vice Chancellor in charge of Finance, Tom Meyer, and others. And apart from those meetings have been particularly concerned to be in touch with directors of the various service groups on campus, and in that connection seeking to increase the inter-communication between faculty and those groups, and their efficiency for all of us. I’m glad to try to field any questions you may have. On the other hand, Paul will be back very shortly and encourages you to write any questions, and any solutions, about a shortfall in research, directly to him.

Professor Bayne: I was recalling the other day that about two years ago, and I think it was the sixth Kenan convocation in the spring, Phil Owen was here and talked to this problem of shrinking research funds and all the other pressures that exist, and made a series of 4 or 5 recommendations that I thought were very good ones. The head one, or the first one, was that we closely examine our resources and see how we can share common resources and not duplicate as many things as we do. And I’m wondering if the Committee couldn’t deal with some of these issues, like the 4 or 5 points that he recommended, and make that sort of an action plan for the next year. And then come back to the Council and say, “These are ways that we can work together or we can maximize use of the funds, or create space, whatever.” I feel bad for the Committee. It’s always sort of reacting to the bad news from the Legislature. You don’t have this money, you’re not going to have enough space, this is shrinking — instead of looking at what are the creative solutions. And I know that it’s hard. I’m not trying to come to you with the answer. But I think there were some answers embedded in that speech. And maybe that would be a starting point for some of those discussions.

Professor Brown: We have been trying to address those questions in meeting with the Vice Chancellors, and as far your other point, duplication, for example, our very last meeting concerned the removal of the duplication of, in the financial area when the various secretaries of personnel in each separate department do the job and then it has to be done over. And there does seem to be a prospect that the efficiency there can be much increased. Professor Bayne: The point that had so much impact on me was Owen said in his own parent institution there were 21 different molecular biology facilities and they didn’t work together, and why should that be? Professor Brown: Tom? Professor Meyer (Vice Chancellor, Graduate Studies and Research): That’s too many. [laughter] I might add in reinforcement to the report of the Committee, relatively late in the semester we began to meet with the Research Committee. We being those people who are associated with being a research enterprise for the institution. Skip Bollenbacher, as the Associate Vice Chancellor for Research Development, Bob Lowman, who is Associate Vice Chancellor for Research, and we had a Technology Development person. And the thought is to use this Committee plus some additions as a means for advising the administration about those areas where we can hide deficiencies, those areas where we should do a better job with our new construction. The first pass that we had together as a group I thought was very encouraging. We tried to attract relatively strong forceful personalities to the group. We succeeded in that. It’s a group of 16 people. Sixteen was chosen instead of 12 for the following reasons: the thought is that based on, if we have as many as 8 out of the 16 at the meeting, then it’s a success because the other 8 are on the road where they should be. We have all the initial stage conversations and I would hope that over a period of time, certainly we’ll continue to meet this summer, we’ll have an awful lot more to say about some of the specific points that you’ve addressed. Professor Bayne: Thank you, Tom.

Professor Fletcher: I particularly noted your comments on the University Research Council drains, and you said the level of funding was increasingly inadequate. But I think that those grants, small as they are, are absolutely crucial for research activities of many faculty. And I just wanted some more information. Is the absolute amount of money for these grants decreasing or remaining the same or slowly increasing? Professor E. Brown: As I understand it, they’re actually decreased. Professor Fletcher: Decreased. And how about applications? Professor E. Brown: That may be one reason why they’re increasingly inadequate. The applications increase but the funding dollar does not. Professor Fletcher: If that’s true, if the applications are increasing, and the absolute amount of funds are decreasing, then I think that’s a real crisis. Particularly for those of us in fields where we don’t have much access to outside funding, these grants have been the real lifeblood of our research, and this may need a quite vigorous response perhaps by this body. Professor E. Brown: I’m keenly sympathetic as a member of the Classics Department, which does not normally obtain much external funding.

Professor Carl Bose (Pediatrics): Just one other word of insight about those grants. They become seed money for preparatory work which permits people to apply for much larger grants and brings ever increasing funds into the University. They are the lifeblood for new faculty members. What is the source of money for those grants? I should know, I suppose, but…. Professor E. Brown: I’m sorry, I’m not able to answer that. Professor Jane Brown: Do you know, Tom? Vice Chancellor Meyer: There is a pool of funds whose origin may be a mixed place within the institution. It’s been fixed for a long period of time. We have been working with Development, again this group of Vice Chancellors, in particular Bob Lowman and Renee Carney. We’ve identified this as an interest and primary concern in a symbiotic relationship that has evolved with the Development Office to look at the research apparatus in particular and try to promote it. I think what we find is that the notion of and the role of value, we have very clear statistics that allow us to point out that x number of grants were started at $2000 or $3000 and multiplied times 20 or 30. The numbers are clearly in place. What we’re doing now is looking institutionally and outside the institution at systemic development opportunities, because it turns out if you think about development in this context, one really needs to find those places, through a clientele mix, where there’s real interest. For example, we anticipate there will be interest among our corporate clients, those people who we do the research with. So we’re looking very carefully at our development portfolio to try to find various places where we can use systematic processing of generating income. In addition to that I think as the Institution itself looks at itself and finds ways to use its resources, such as out of its overhead funds, we intend to try to compete for some of those funds. So I know it’s a problem, and certainly examined in principle or taking action — we’re in the early stages of the action. Professor Brown (Jane): So it’s high on your agenda. Vice Chancellor Meyer: It’s very high on our agenda. Professor Bayne: But, Tom, is the source an endowment or is it gifts or is it a little bit of overhead? What’s driving it? Vice Chancellor Meyer: Paul, do you know? Chancellor Hardin: I don’t know. Vice Chancellor Meyer: I think it’s a fixed fund that comes from, did come, from the endowment, but Steve, I honestly don’t know the origin of the money. I can find that out. But the point is we need to identify that source obviously and see where we can come up with. Professor Bayne: Okay.

Professor Ed Brown: I only wanted to say that the Research Committee, the faculty Committee on Research, has been included in that group of 16, so we are trying to keep abreast. Professor Andrews: I’m on the Executive Committee of Faculty Council, and I just wanted to note this comment. Well, specifically, the University Research Council grants, in this case, is quite consistent with discussions in Executive Committee and the SACS working groups that noted the desirability of making a wider pool of University-wide money available for service-seed money and this sort of thing. I suspect this may be one of the things that you come upon next year as well. Professor J. Brown: Good. Anything else? Thank you so much, Ed. Professor E. Brown: I move that the report be accepted. Professor J. Brown: That’s fine. Since there’s no clear resolution…. Thank you.

C. Established Lectures: Catherine Marshall for Paul H. Frampton, Chair.

I’m not Paul Frampton. I’m Catherine Marshall, from Education, in fact from Education Policy, which as you can see is a very complex and rich field. This is a very straightforward and nice Committee to be on. There’s money that doesn’t disappear, usually. And it is an opportunity to invite important people, fascinating people, to give lectures here on behalf of all of us. The Committee consists of Paul Frampton, Chair, and Professors Sagar Jain, Arne Kalleberg, Towny Ludington, me, Roberta Owen, Camilla Tulloch, and three students, Marianne Reeves, Karl Norbert, Geoffrey Wright. In this past year we commissioned three lectures. The first was the Weil Lecture, which is to concentrate on American citizenship, and on February 13 this year we invited former Governor James Martin to give a lecture entitled “Citizenship and the Political Contract.” Then the second one is the Martin Luther King Lecture, which needs to focus on civil rights. And we invited Chancellor Julius Chambers of North Carolina Central University to give a lecture entitled “Martin Luther King’s Dream: Fulfilled or Deferred.” The third, most recent, the John Calvin McNair Lecture, which is to focus on science and religion, we invited Professor Paul Davies of the University of Adelaide, Australia, who is a physicist and an author of many popular books and winner of the very prestigious Templeton Award for 1995. He gave a lecture entitled “Creation and Time.”

This is the report of the Committee. I will say that the Faculty Council and a chancellor will be appointing a new Chair in the future, and I would like to recommend this as a committee to serve on, in that, as I said, it’s one which has a lot of nice benefits. It’s like going shopping and the money doesn’t disappear and you can get some nice things. We do have interesting debates on issues like how controversial should the lecturers be to provoke discussion, how to attract very important people. We’ve considered people like Janet Reno, Richard Leakey, Anita Hill. How to attract people like that. And we have considered issues like how to avoid becoming part of a political campaign when we think about people like Janet Reno or Al Gore. And the last issue, one of the last issues we deal with, is within the University: how to avoid becoming part of University agendas, as for example, last year when many of our lecture were merged with the Bicentennial Campaign. So I recommend that we should have this Committee and recommend acceptance of this report.

Professor Brown: Thank you. Can I ask you one question: how is attendance? Professor Marshall: I did not get numbers from Paul on this. I attended only one of the three this year: the Julius Chambers lecture. I would estimate about 100. Perhaps somebody else was there and can give a better estimate on any of the other ones. Professor Brown: That was on a basketball night, too. Professor Marshall: Right. Chancellor Hardin: Professor Davies packed them in. We had the McNair Lecture just a couple of weeks ago. We had a rare SRO audience. Professor Marshall: The Committee is supported a great deal by — Chancellor Hardin: Carroll Hall; it was in Carroll Hall. It was actually overflowing. Professor Marshall: There are people who deal with the diplomatic relations, and making sure things run smoothly, and dinners. But certainly one of the issues was making sure that the events are scheduled to not conflict with the Grateful Dead or championship basketball. Professor Brown: Sometimes unavoidable. Thank you very much. Any comments for Catherine?

Professor Gooder: How much — thinking back to the discussion of educational policy — we’re now becoming a very diverse Institution and a very large one, how much contact does your Committee have with the established lectures in other divisions of the University? For example, the one on science and ethics and so on. And I worry that sometimes we’re competing for the same people. We’re scheduling very similar talks within the same time frame. And I simply encourage that there be contact with those schools that have established lectures. Professor Brown: Good idea. Professor Marshall: To my knowledge there is no discussion among the committees. Professor Brown: Can you take that back? Professor Marshall: Yes, I certainly will.

Professor Genna Rae McNeil (History): I’d like to concur with my colleague’s comment about established lectures. The Julius Chambers lecture, for example, was scheduled also at the same time as a major named-lecture in the History Department, which meant that some of us were trying to run across the campus to see if we could be in two places within a hour. And I also would like to make the comment that it seems to me that for the short time that I’ve been here, remembering the Weil Lecture with Cornel West and looking at this Julius Chambers lecture and others, that there is the need to have some discussion with students and with professors somehow in advance because sometimes persons will go up to the campus are actually friends. The lecturers are friends of persons who are here, and members of the faculty might be able to not only encourage greater attendance but also provide a more hospitable situation for the lecturer. And if faculty members know, so they can bring this to the attention of the departments during their meetings, there is probably a possibility of having more interest on the part of faculty members who might see that they could tie in a lecture to something that they are doing for their course work. And I would urge the Committee to give some consideration to that, and to seek out persons who might be able to identify whether or not there are persons on the faculty who have ties to the persons invited. Professor Marshall: Thank you. Professor Brown: Great. Anything else? Thanks for coming.

VI. Secretary of the Faculty George S. Lensing.

Election Results for Chair of the Division of the Humanities, Faculty Council and Administrative Board of the Library, and Standing Elective Committees (including Faculty Assembly Delegation and Executive Committee of the Faculty Council).

Professor Lensing: In the interests of saving time I’m not going to read all of the persons who were elected to the various faculty committees and the Faculty Council. You have a handout that is available over on the table with the results of the recent faculty elections. I do want to say a word of special appreciation to Rosemary Munsat and David Thompson who supervise that whole process of preparing ballots, distributing ballots, collecting ballots, counting ballots, and they’ve done a superb job. Professor Brown: Let’s applaud them. [applause] We had colored paper everywhere. Professor Lensing: Jane and I both would like to extend our congratulations to all of these persons who have been elected, and it looks as if we will have some very strong representation here on the Council replacing those of you who will be leaving, and on the various standing committees.

Professor Bayne: Rumor has it that all those people want better basketball seats. [laughter] Professor Lensing: Actually they have to give them up. [laughter]

VII. Old or New Business.

Professor Brown: Okay. Any other old or new business? Very great. All right. We now go into Closed Session for non-faculty persons to talk about candidates for honorary degrees for next Commencement. Professor Lensing: All members of the General Faculty may stay.

Closed Session

(to non-faculty persons)

VIII. Presentation of Candidates for Honorary Degrees for 1996 Commencement:

Beverly W. Long, Chair, Committee on Honorary Degrees and Special Awards.

The slate of candidates was approved.

The meeting adjourned at 4:50 p.m.
George S. Lensing
Secretary of the Faculty

Actions of the Council: 1994-95

Date	Action	Destination
Sept. 23, 1994	Resolution of thanks to Senator Howard Lee, Representatives Anne Barnes and Joseph Hackney	To Senator Howard Lee, Representatives Anne Barnes and Joseph Hackney
	Resolution of thanks to General Assembly	To Members of General Assembly
	Resolution of thanks to Elizabeth McMahan, editor of Faculty Handbook	To Elizabeth McMahan
Oct. 21, 1994	No resolutions
Nov. 11, 1994	No resolutions
Dec. 9, 1994	No resolutions
Jan. 13, 1995	No resolutions
Feb. 17, 1995	Resolution of Gratitude	William C. Leone II; Alana Ennis, UNC Chief of Police Safety; Edith M. Wiggins, Interim Vice-Chancellor for Student Affairs; Frederic W. Schroeder, Jr., Dean of Students; Ronald S. Binder, Director of Greek Affairs; John W. Edgerly, Director, University Counseling Center; Katherine Ney, Associate Director, Student Health Service
	Resolution Concerning the Location and Number of Faculty Seats in the Smith Center and in Kenan Stadium and Related Issues	To Fred Mueller, Chair, Committee on Athletics
March 17, 1995	No resolutions
April 28, 1995	First reading on amendments to Faculty Code of University Government: Section IV.B. (1)(b) (Educational Policy Committee). Second reading to occur in September 1995.	To University Government Committee for revisions to Section IV.B.(1) (b)(ii).

 

Addendum

THE THOMAS JEFFERSON AWARD TO JAMES PEACOCK

THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL

April 1995

There are times in the life of any human institution which demand greatness. Thomas Jefferson gave us that at the birth of our nation through his political acuity, his sense of public service, and his universal brilliance. We have been the beneficiaries of greatness in our time and in our place by our friend and colleague, James Peacock, and we honor him today with the 1995 Thomas Jefferson Award.

Peacock graduated magna cum laude with high honors in psychology from Duke and from Harvard with a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology. He overcame that burden of the former to become one of our truly outstanding scholars, gaining international acclaim in social anthropology. He has research interests in East Asia and his first book, Rites of Modernization: Symbolic and Social Aspects of Indonesian Proletarian Drama, in 1968 has been hailed as a modern classic. His focus has been on Indonesia but he has extended his interests to North Carolina and the American South publishing with Ruel Tyson, Pilgrims of Paradox: Calvinism and Experience Among Primitive Baptists in the American South, in 1989. His importance to his profession becomes clear when it is noted that members of the American Anthropological Society chose him to be their president from 1993 to 1995. He has served as visiting professor at Princeton and Yale and on leave for a year with a Guggenheim Fellowship and Kenan Leave at All Souls College at Oxford. He is Vice President of the American Society for the Study of Religion and is the recipient of the 1995 Mahatma Ghandi Award of the College of William and Mary.

Jim Peacock has been a leader devoted to the University in ways and to a degree that few have. He served as faculty chair of Anthropology from 1975 to 1980 and again in 1991 when he was elected Chair of the Faculty. That election was timely in the life of the University and continues to be so. It was Peacock who breathed life into the Executive Committee of the Faculty Council and with it created a faculty-based agent of action and means for change. It was his Executive Committee that became adviser to the Administration on budgets and planning, which took up the cause of salary inequities, and which brought the Faculty into the land use plan.

It was Peacock who devoted himself tirelessly to his Faculty and to his university and set a standard of leadership that will inspire those who follow. Peacock was a bridge builder helping calm the passions evoked by the Black Cultural Center through quiet persuasion and rapport. He reached out to the staff and they rewarded him with the first Employee Forum Community Award for improvement in Faculty-Staff relations.

It was Peacock’s Executive Committee and Peacock’s leadership that opened a new chapter in faculty involvement, the direct approach to the General Assembly. It was a time for help and a time for leadership, and he was there. He was there to cajole and explain: on excellence and continuance, on the realities of competition and salary, and above all, on the importance of the University. He was there and still is, our leading advocate to a public that has much to hear.

We have the honor now of honoring Jim Peacock with the Jefferson Award. His playing field may be smaller than Mr. Jefferson’s, but it has the same parts — political acuity, public service and brilliance.

Thomas J. Meyer