January 14, 2000 - Faculty Governance

Meeting of the Faculty Council

January 14, 2000, 3:00 p.m.

Assembly Room, 2nd Floor, Wilson Library

Chancellor William O. McCoy and Professor Richard N. Andrews will preside.

Agenda

ACT 3:00 Memorial Resolutions

Robert B. Cairns, Professor of Psychology
Harold Grier McCurdy, Professor Emeritus of Psychology
Presented by Prof. Peter A. Ornstein

INFO DISC 3:10 Chancellor’s Remarks and Question Time

Chancellor McCoy invites questions or comments on any topic.

INFO 3:20 Chair of the Faculty’s Remarks. Prof. Richard N. Andrews

DISC 3:25 Visions for the Future of the University.

A panel discussion followed by questions and comments from the Council.
Dean Risa Palm (Arts & Sciences), Dean Jeffrey Houpt (Medicine), Dean Madeleine Grumet (School of Education), and Dean William Roper (Public Health)
All other deans are also invited to be present and participate in the discussion.

INFO 4:25 Intellectual Climate Progress Report. Provost Richard J. Richardson

INFO 4:35 Special Report of the Faculty Information Technology Advisory Committee.

Prof. William Balthrop, Chair

INFO 4:45 Annual Report of the Committee on the Status of Women. Prof. Abigail Panter, Chair

INFO 4:50 Annual Report of the Committee on University Government. Prof. Janet Mason, Chair

INFO 4:55 Annual Report of the Advisory Committee. Prof. Christopher Martens, Chair

Joseph S. Ferrell

Secretary of the Faculty

KEY:

ACT = Action

INFO = Information

DISC = Discussion

Minutes

Attendance

Present (71): Adler, Ammerman, Angel, Assani, Bender, Black, Blackburn, Bluestein, Bowen, Boxill, Bromberg, Bynum, Carl, Clegg, Collins, Cordeiro-Stone, Covach, Cravey, Devellis, Drake, Elvers, Fink, Fishman, Gasaway, Graham, Harrison, Huang, Janda, Johnson, Kalleberg, Kaufman, Kjervik, Kopp, Kupper, LeFebvre, Lubker, Ludlow, Madison, Margolis, Marshall, McCormick, McKeown, Meehan-Black, Melchert, P. Molina, Moreau, Nord, Otey, Panter, Pfaff, Plante, Postema, Raab-Traub, Raasch, Rao, Raper, Rosenfeld, Savitz, Schaller, Sekerak, Slatt, Steponaitis, Straughan, Strauss, Taft, Thorp, Vaughn, Vevea, Walsh, Weiss, Williams.

Excused absences (11): De La Cadena, Debreczeny, Eckel, Graves, Grossberg, Kallianpur, Ketch, A. Molina, Moran, Topal, White.

Unexcused absences (2): Bolas, Hooper.

Memorial Resolution

Prof. Peter A. Ornstein, Department of Psychology, presented memorial resolutions for the late Robert B. Cairns, Professor of Psychology, and the late Harold Grier McCurdy, Professor Emeritus of Psychology.

Intellectual Climate Progress Report

Provost Richard J. Richardson reported that the first wave of recommendations of the Task Force on Intellectual Climate are now being implemented, including: first-year seminars, changes in the advising system, summer reading experience, living/learning experience for first-year students, and others. In November 1998 an Implementation Committee was established to pick from the remaining recommendations the next series to be implemented. The budget for implementation was much less than we had hoped due to the recent budget crisis followed by the need to divert funds for flood relief. With the advice and assistance of the Implementation Committee, headed by Donna LeFebvre and Libby Evans, the following steps have been taken:

A new position, Director of Intellectual Life and Coordinator of Distinguished Scholarships, has been established and charged with responsibilities formerly assigned to the Director of Special Scholarships.
$15,000 has been provided for faculty to rent vans and busses for undergraduate field trips.
$500 has been provided for brown bag lunches to be organized for faculty, students, and staff interactions.
Ten public service awards of $1,000, five each for faculty and staff, will be awarded under the direction of the Carolina Center for Public Service.
The impact of the Task Force’s recommendations that are already in place will be formally evaluated and funds have been made available for that purpose.
Procedures have been put in place to ensure that new and renovated classrooms will be designed in ways that will facilitate good teaching.
A web-based calendar of concerts, lectures, and similar cultural and intellectual events is being established.
The original proposal for an Academy of Distinguished Teaching Scholars has been modified to help recognize and promote effective teaching to undergraduates, to serve as an exchange among faculty, to provide mentoring for inexperienced faculty, to offer workshops on teaching, and to serve as a resource working with the Center for Teaching and Learning.

Chancellor’s Remarks

Chancellor William McCoy reported on the Board of Governors’ work session which he attended today. President Broad presented comprehensive proposals for budget requests to be presented to the upcoming short session of the General Assembly. Procedurally, President Broad will be submitting a supplemental budget request for the second year of the biennium. This affords an opportunity to try to gain funding for requests that were not funded in 1999. For example, last year the System sought $11 million in additional funding for the libraries and received none. This will be renewed as will the unfunded request for a 6% increase in faculty salary funds. In addition to items previously submitted, the President is seeking Board approval for new proposals addressing the System’s capital needs, additional funding for student financial aid, and faculty salaries.

Capital needs. President Broad is proposing a tuition increase across the System to fund the most pressing capital needs. The total increase would be $275 phased in over three years. This would generate recurring revenue sufficient to support issuance of $375 million in capital facility bonds. Of this amount, $136 million would be for projects on this campus. The State would be asked to match the amount raised by tuition increases so that a total of $750 million in bonds could be issued. About $450 million is currently needed System-wide to complete projects that have already been started to some extent. If projects that have been frozen are added to the total (the House Undergraduate Library, for example) at least $820 million will be needed.

Faculty salaries. The 1999 General Assembly directed General Administration to conduct a study of faculty salaries throughout the System in comparison to peer institutions. That study found that $28.5 million is needed for UNC institutions to reach the top quintile of their public peers. For UNC-CH, $6.5 million is needed to reach that level. To enable institutions to reach the top quintile of a peer list that includes private institutions, an additional $4.5 million is needed at UNC-CH and $13.5 million system-wide. President Broad is proposing to address this issue with an additional $200 tuition increase for the two Research I institutions, UNC-CH and NCSU. UNC-C, UNC-W and ECU also requested tuition increases for faculty salaries but the President did not endorse those requests.

Student aid. The Board of Governors conducted a study of student financial aid that indicates a need for an increase of $38.6 million in student aid across the System. Funding for this item will be the only specific additional funding requested from the General Assembly in the upcoming short session over and above expansion items previously submitted but not yet funded. If the financial aid package is not funded by the General Assembly, the special tuition increase at UNC-CH and NCSU would be $300 rather than $200 with the additional $100 set aside for student aid.

Flexibility. In addition to more funding for faculty salaries and capital projects, UNC-CH is asking the Board to request of the General Assembly additional flexibility for the University System in the areas of personnel and purchasing.

Prof. Diane Kjervik (Nursing) asked if the flexibility proposal was system-wide or for the Chapel Hill campus only, or the Research I campuses only. Chancellor McCoy said most the requests would be System-wide although many of them originated with this campus.

Prof. Jaroslav Folda (Art) said he wondered how the various items will be prioritized, and is concerned that the libraries have been under-funded in the last few years. Chancellor McCoy agreed and said that library needs will be a high-priority item.

Visions for the Future of the University

Professor Richard Andrews introduced the topic for discussion—the vision and goals for the future of the University. This grew out of the Chancellor search, and the presentations by four deans to donors in Aspen and again to the Campaign Cabinet Committee. Prof. Andrews found these presentations to be extremely thought-provoking and arranged to have them repeated for the Council.

Dean Risa Palm (Arts & Sciences) presented her topic: Rethinking the College of Arts and Sciences: Goals for the Next Five Years. She said the College is the central unit of the University, with the goal of advancing the entire University as a center of learning that excels in research and graduate education and provides outstanding undergraduate instruction. It has a world-class faculty and extremely able students. Many of the faculty will be retiring during the next five to eight years. It will be difficult to replace these distinguished scholars and dedicated teachers. This will create a challenge and the opportunity to rethink the way research, teaching and service are advanced. The University is embarking on an ambitious capital campaign. This affords an opportunity to redefine what is special about the Chapel Hill campus; what makes it a unique state university. She said the “brand” will continue to be defined by a combination of research and teaching, drawing upon the University’s special advantages and strengths. The defining principles:

A strong research faculty,
A research faculty engaged in undergraduate teaching,
A University that broadens the vision of our students, and recognizes the challenges and opportunities for universities in a new, expanding era of globalization,
A University known for excellence in several key programs,
A distinguished University with a strong sense of its regional history, tradition and culture, and
A collaborative University.
Dean Palm concluded that, in addition to the challenge of the changes in the faculty, the University needs:
To become more collaborative,
To take on the challenge of the ever-more internationalizing world,
To invest selectively to achieve true excellence in targeted areas, and
To be innovative and bold.

Dean Jeffrey Houpt (Medicine) said that in the brief time allotted, he would focus on two issues: (1) what we mean by excellence and how this should be defined, using the Medical School as a case study—a process that the School has recently gone through, and (2) to illustrate how the School carried out one of the initiatives that was put forward in that process, namely genomics, and what it might mean for working with other parts of the University.

Dean Houpt said that when he became dean two and a half years ago, there was much talk about being the best Medical School and the best public university in the nation. He thought it would be well to see if there was a collective faculty opinion as to what the characteristics of the “model medical school” might be. If one were starting to build a new medical school and were looking around for a model, would one look to UNC-CH? This question was posed to the Medical School faculty, some 850 strong, and a few selected alumni. The single most common response was that the principal objective of the School should be to serve the State of North Carolina. Dean Houpt said he doubted whether there are five other schools in the country where that would be the answer. By far the majority opinion as to what how best to serve the people of North Carolina is through excellence in teaching, research, and clinical care. A minority felt that excellence in service should be in the form of direct outreach programs, such as our ongoing AHEC program and emergent needs such as response to Hurricane Floyd. The challenge is how to meld this concept of excellence within the context of service to the State. There are three elements of the responses. One was the usual concern with rankings. A second was the idea of centers of excellence and how they could be developed. The third was the concept of innovation: what does our school have that others want to know about?

To develop these ideas, the School established a Research Advisory Committee to deal with the research agenda. Dean Houpt said that this is the example he will choose to illustrate his point. Members of the committee were all faculty members with federal funding. Most of them were not department chairs. Their task was to identify the emerging areas of science in the field of medicine and thus to suggest where the School should be directing its resources. The committee developed a short list of three programs. At the top of the list was the genomics and bioinformatics. There was a concern among some that this approach was biased against people who do population-based or epidemiological research, so a second group was set up jointly with the School of Public Health with that as a particular interest.

While this work was going on, the School was aware that a similar effort was being undertaken in the College of Arts and Sciences. Eventually, a joint proposal was developed to talk about how we might coordinate efforts to create a genomics and bioinformatics program. This effort demonstrates that it is feasible to ask the faculty to define programs of excellence; it is possible to ask the faculty to assign priorities to programs; it is possible to work effectively with other schools and units in an interdisciplinary way.

Dean Madeleine Grumet (School of Education) said the challenge for the School is to serve the State and to provide leadership. North Carolina is celebrated as a national leader of progress. Part of the School of Education’s struggle is to lend its expertise to address some of the pressing needs in the State. The shortage of teachers is a problem, as is the influx of lateral-entry personnel who have no formal preparation for classroom teaching. There is a tremendous population growth in the State and a need for more schools and teachers. The School has established a new fifth-year program for secondary-school teachers that now has 70 students. The School has proposed three centers, one at the new middle school being built in Chapel Hill to work with schools in Orange, Alamance, Caswell, and Person Counties; another at Hillandale in Durham to work with Vance, Durham, and Granville Counties; and a third in Pittsboro to work with Chatham, Moore, Lee, and Randolph Counties. The program, called the Carolina Teaching Network, will address the structural, organizational, and political needs in the cultures of the schools. The School is trying to make teaching an attractive career. One project, The Education Arts Agenda, addresses integration of arts into education. There is a need to address the issues of math and science in the preparation of teachers. Dean Grumet feels strongly that the undergraduate curriculum needs to be intertwined with the School of Education. Research in education cannot be done in isolation; all disciplines need to be brought together in addressing school issues. The School of Education has been funded by the Spencer Foundation to develop research in education in the South and in the University. Collaboration will be necessary among all the disciplines.

Dean William Roper (Public Health) said great opportunities lie in the intersections between disciplines, department, and Schools across the campus. Last year the North Carolina Institute of Public Health was instituted to provide outreach and technical help for public health in the State. In 1999 the Management Academy for Public Health was created, which is a partnership between the School of Public Health and the Kenan-Flagler Business School, to provide hands-on training to workers in the field of public health in State and local government agencies. The UNC Program on Health Outcomes was instituted during 1999, with major external funding from Glaxo-Wellcome, from federal agencies and others, to improve the quality of care and its outcomes. A Center for Excellence in Health Statistics was established during 1999, one of three in the country. The UNC Drinking Water Research Center was funded to allow the faculty to have greater impact around the world in areas of engineering and policy related to drinking water. The challenges for the new century: shifting demographics; economic trends; a booming economy, which is still leaving a separate part of the society behind; environmental change and the challenge of balancing the push for improving environmental health and advancing the economy at the same time; emerging infectious diseases and reemerging old infectious diseases; health risks of human behavior; mental health; violence; the challenge of the information and communication revolution; science and technology revolution; and the demand for accountability and effectiveness. The challenge is there for collaboration across the campus and for looking at new ways to do things together.

Prof. Vincas Steponaitis (Anthropology) asked about the status of planning as part of the vision on the campus, and the panel’s vision for it. Will the faculty have a role in the process? Chancellor McCoy said he believes that we need to institutionalize our planning process in a more effective way than has been the case in recent years. Most of the work has been done at the level of the deans; now we need to pull that together into for the University as a whole.

Prof. Gary Bowen (Social Work) said he did not hear much said about student competencies. The ultimate question is (1) what is our organizational mission and values, (2) what is the context, (3) what are the competencies that students are going to need, both educationally and socially to really survive in the next century?

Dean Palm said the global nature of society will necessitate student experience be different than in the past; we need more international experience on the part of both students and faculty. Knowledge is multiplying very quickly and becomes obsolete. A liberal arts education gives students the mental capabilities of handling the variety of things that will turn into competencies.

Addressing the student side of the equation, Dean Houpt said the Medical School is working on several issues. One is the preparation of the disadvantaged students for a medical education, extending the concept to economically disadvantaged students as well as minorities. Another is posed by the fact that physicians are not supposed to make mistakes but in fact do. The Medical School is looking into ways to prepare students to accept “I don’t know” as a permissible response to some situations and to enable them to work with that.

Prof. Leon Fink (History) commented that the University is profoundly affected by conditions in the public schools—K to 12. There is a huge demand for teachers, especially in math and science. He felt that responsibility for teacher preparation should not be the exclusive responsibility of the School of Education. He hoped the faculty would take to heart the imperative that Dean Grumet emphasized. Perhaps this is an appropriate time to establish a center within the University that addresses ways to collaborate across disciplines. Excellence in the University implies excellence in the public schools and a commitment to the schools in a way that the University has not taken seriously except in bits and pieces. There could be courses for teachers at the graduate level within the departments of the College. Why should those who teach Chemistry to 18-year-olds exist in a completely different professional community than those who teach Chemistry to 17-year-olds?

Prof. Frank Wilson (Orthopaedics) commented that cross-fertilization, teaching in another department than one’s own, especially in the Honors Program, now requires payment of a stipend. He asked how this problem can be addressed, since the Honors Program has limited financial stability.

Prof. Stephen Leonard (Political Science) commented on the obstacles to interdisciplinary work, such as money available for teaching honors courses, and wondered how interdisciplinary activity among faculty can occur, when the rewards system is bound to disciplinary boundaries. Dean Roper said the School of Public Health is in the process of putting value on collaboration. Dean Palm said the University needs to have incentives for collaboration, and eliminate any disincentives.

Special Report of the Faculty Information Technology Advisory Committee

Prof. William C. Balthrop (Communication Studies) reported that the Faculty Information Technology Advisory Committee (FITAC) is addressing the critical question of how UNC-CH can adopt technology in an appropriate and timely fashion to ensure its teaching and research competitiveness. The successful integration of information technology is viewed as an organization having two dimensions:

The establishment and management of infrastructure, and

The creation and management of a process that integrates this infrastructure into the academic and service life of the University.

FITAC has assumed as its task the establishment of a broadly based dialogue with faculty, administrators, students, and staff people to create a working draft document by the end of the semester, on what is the strategic vision and direction on information technology for the University. The Report begins with some broad issues and then addresses some specific concerns:

Faculty rewards,

Professional development and security,

Academic uses,

Resource utilization, and

Funding.

He said that the critical question is to institutionalize the measure by which an appropriate faculty voice can be assured within the decision-making process for information technology. There will be forums, comments, FITAC meetings, and sub-committees during the year before the working document is presented in late April .

Annual Reports of Standing Committees

Prof. Abigail Panter (Psychology), Chair, Committee on the Status of Women, presented the Annual Report, as distributed. Prof. Catherine Marshall (Education) suggested that Chancellor McCoy look into better funding for the evaluation of the BRIDGES program and its important goals for more women in academic leadership. The Report was received.

Prof. Janet Mason (Institute of Government), Chair, Committee on University Government, presented the Annual Report, as distributed. The Report was received.

The annual report of the Advisory Committee was received. Prof. Ferrell pointed out that Prof. Pamela Conover (Political Science) had been inadvertently omitted from the list of committee members.

Old or New Business.

Vice Chancellor Jack Evans reported on the Wachovia contract. There were three issues identified: signage; clarifying whether this would be a full service bank or a service center; and the degree of exclusivity granted to Wachovia. The lawyers for both parties have achieved a constructive clarification in a document signed by both the University and a representative of Wachovia Bank. The University has clear control on the matter of signage; on the issue of the level of service being provided (with protective wording which says that if external regulations make it necessary for Wachovia to seek approval of what they are doing as a branch bank because the services they are providing require it, the agreement permits them to do that without giving them the opportunity to expand the scope of service being provided); and the issue of exclusivity, which makes clear that, if the University creates new clusters of automatic teller machines, Wachovia Bank will be limited to one teller machine, no matter how many teller machines might be located in the cluster.

Adjournment.

The business of the day having concluded, the Council adjourned at 5:05 p.m.

Joseph S. Ferrell

Secretary of the Faculty