February 23, 1996
Transcript, Faculty Council Meeting, February 23, 1996
MEETING OF THE FACULTY COUNCIL
Friday, February 23, 1996
Assembly Room, Wilson Library
Faculty Council Attendance: Present 62; Excused Absences 16; Unexcused Absences 13.
I. Memorial Resolutions:
A. For the late Earl A. Slocum: Edgar H. Alden, Chair, Memorial Committee.
[Professor Alden read the memorial.]Chancellor Hooker: May I ask you to stand for a moment of silence?
B. For the late Lawrence Albright Sharpe: Fred M. Clark, Chair, Memorial Committee.
[Professor Clark read the memorial.]Chancellor Hooker: May I ask you to stand for a moment of silence?
C. For the late Samuel Shepard Jones: William Keech, Chair, Memorial Committee.
[Professor Keech read the memorial]Chancellor Hooker: May I ask you to stand in silence, please?
II. Chancellor Hooker.
I have several things to speak with you about. First, at the risk of opening a can of worms, I want to talk about the Kenan professorships. I was taken aback last week by Rich Beckman’s question about the memo because I hadn’t seen the memo yet. The Provost was circulating it to the Deans for comment before giving it to me. And I certainly hadn’t heard about the salary range. So I didn’t respond as I would have responded had I known what I was talking about. But the discussion that ensued following the discussion of the Kenan professorships last time has served the purpose of educating me to a much larger problem, and a far greater depth of feeling about salary issues than I was previously aware of based on the discussions that we had been having about salaries, and so I hope that that will serve a good purpose. But let me tell you what, why I said what I said and did what I did about the Kenan professorships because I’m convinced that every person in this room, had they had the knowledge that I had at the time, would have done exactly the same thing. And there’s somewhat of a risk in saying that because somebody’s probably going to take exception and say that they would have done differently. But at any rate, just after I arrived at Carolina I had a meeting, at their request, with trustees of the Kenan Trust. Now the Kenan Trust is a foundation that has given Carolina in excess of $70 million over the life of the Trust, and so it is important that we be good custodians and exhibit good stewardship with respect to the funds that are given to us from that foundation. And when I met with the trustees, I learned that we were, at the time, engaged in discussions with the trustees because the University had deviated from our understanding with the trustees about the use of the funds from the two Kenan trusts that provide for the Kenan professorships: that’s the William Rand Kenan, Jr. Trust and the Mary Lily Kenan Flagler Bingham Trust, the latter given to us as the first one in 1918. That’s the one that enabled us to recruit as the first Kenan Professor, I think, Professor Odum, and set the tone for years to come. The ways in which we had deviated from our understanding were four, two fairly significant and two somewhat less significant. The first was that the William Rand Kenan, Jr. will provided that there would be a limit of 25 Kenan professors, and we had, in fact, created 37. So that we had created far more than we were supposed to, and they were awarded to internal, largely to, internal holders of the chairs, not entirely. The second way that we had deviated from the understanding was that we were limited to spending 13.5% of the second Kenan fund for faculty leaves. That means that in last year we should have spent about $160,000 from the Kenan money for leaves. We, in fact, spent $750,000 too much. We spent about $900,000 for leaves. The third way in which we had deviated from the understanding was that in the judgment of the trustees there had been too little external recruitment and too much focus on internal awarding of Kenans. And the fourth way was that we had not in their judgment adequately emphasized the important of getting good teachers. And it was the original intent that students should be the beneficiaries of the Kenan trust money, because we would bring to Carolina great teachers — as well as great scholars.
And so in an effort both to behave as I thought I should with respect to my fiduciary obligation and with respect to a prudential obligation that I have on the behalf of all of you, I announced that we would recruit the next two Kenan professors that we recruited from the outside, as the trustees wanted me to do, and that we would apply not only the criteria that we had originally applied of looking for stellar scholars, but that we would also look for stellar teachers in addition. And I made that announcement here at the second meeting of the Faculty Council, as I recall. We also negotiated an arrangement with the trustees regarding there being too many Kenan Professors. We were able to shift them from one Kenan fund to another Kenan fund, and thereby conform to the letter of our agreement, to the letter of the original bequest from William Rand Kenan, Jr., which was in 1964. It was a long time after Mary Lily Kenan’s bequest. And the other was that we would scale back the number of leaves and the dollar volume spent on leaves. And in recognition of our doing that, President Friday, one of the trustees, or the Executive Director of the Trust, secured for us an appropriation from the Legislature to help buttress the leave fund and the trustees of the Kenan Trust also awarded us $300,000 additional money to provide for leaves so that we didn’t have to tap the fund that we had already maxed out. So I did all those things in recognition of our, as I say, fiduciary responsibility to the trustees of the Kenan Trust, and what can arguably be said to be a prudential obligation that, if we want to enjoy support of this Trust and foundation in the future, we had best do what we have agreed to do. And I think everybody would have done the same.
Now to the memo. The Provost, as a result of all of these negotiations, had money available in one of the Kenan trusts for recruitment of four new Kenan professors, rather than two. And so we decided to go for four and the salary range which has excited so much passion, was not a part of the memo that the Provost circulated to the deans, though it did appear as a typed-in version, I understand, or a typed-in addendum to the memo that the Dean circulated in Journalism because it came out of the conversation that the Provost was having with the Deans, and the conversation was around the point whether we would have enough money to recruit science faculty. And the Provost said that he was told by his staff that the funds would generate, the trust funds would generate, an income that would enable us to make awards of in the $125,00 to $140,000 range, and that, the Provost intended in the conversation, would include setup costs and costs associated with providing laboratory support for faculty in the sciences. That was never intended as a salary range for the new Kenan professors. That was never intended as a salary range. Now, and I was not aware of any of this at the last meeting, and so my inability to respond to the question left the impression, I fear, that that was, in fact, a salary range. I regret the confusion, but as I say, I have learned from it that we have a much more significant problem with respect to salaries than I earlier thought that we had.
Now I have said before that if you compare our salaries with the University of Virginia, which is the institution that we are benchmarking, that is that we’re comparing ourselves in various categories of comparison with them, because they are ahead of us in the U.S. News and World Report survey, and you have to provide some principle for selecting benchmark institutions, then we are significantly behind the University of Virginia in faculty salaries, in total faculty compensation, especially at the professor level, at the level at which you would recruit Kenan Professors. And it was for that reason that we worked so hard to secure additional funding in the Legislature last year, and you’re all aware, of course, that the Legislature responded by giving us permission to raise tuition $400 a student, and we did. That will generate an income of a little over $2 million in Health Affairs, and a little over $7 million in Academic Affairs, and will enable us to address salary compression issues. And the Provost is, probably you know, is well along the way toward working with the deans to develop a mechanism that will enable us to address salary compression issues. It will also obviously provide revenue to support a faculty salary increase of some number yet to be determined. And you also have read in the local paper that we have been working with leadership of the Legislature over the last few months to urge them to give us an appropriation which would match the revenue that the students and their families are providing from the tuition increase. We would have that revenue, were it to become available, also to address the salary issues, and in addition to that, the Board of Governors has agreed to lobby for a 7% increase in faculty salaries for the entire system. So we are working hard on our behalf, your behalf and on the behalf of all of us, to get more money for faculty salaries, and I want to make sure that people understand that in addition to the work that we’re doing with the Legislature, the University was very successful in the Bicentennial Campaign in raising money for faculty salaries. In the Bicentennial Campaign we raised over $70 million to support 64 new endowed professorships, which would bring the total number of endowed professorships at Carolina well up over 200, over the level at Berkeley and over the level at Michigan. So we are, when those are fully funded, we will be in pretty good shape. There’s currently over $150 million available in our endowment for chaired professorships, that is, as I say, supports over 200. We also have 14 teaching awards, four of which were created last year. I have been working to raise money for additional teaching awards, and that process, at least the initial discussions, seems to be going very well. Now I’ve said that the General Administration and the Board of Governors is supporting a 7% faculty salary increase.
Let me tell you, in addition, what they and we are working to lobby for for the short session. One is the elimination of the indirect cost recovery recapture that comes from the State. We now have to give 10% of our indirect costs back to the State, and we have argued that this, in effect, works as a disincentive. We bring, as you know, about $250 million a year into the State of North Carolina from outside to support faculty research, and that is a significant boost to the state’s economy. We believe that we should be encouraged by, in fact, the State providing some kind of match, maybe a 10% match, rather than taxed 10% to support the indirect costs associated with overhead. I’m not sure that we will succeed in getting a challenge match, but I hope that we will succeed in getting the elimination, or at least the reduction, of the tax on our overhead receipts. We’ve also asked for a reduction in the reversion rate. And when you start talking about the reversion rate, people’s eyes tend to glaze over. But it’s very simple. We are a labor intensive enterprise as you know. About 80% of our budget goes to support personnel. It’s slightly less than that. And at any given point in time, obviously, we have vacancies. There are departments that have vacancies, and there are vacancies in the Administration. So we don’t really spend all of the money that is appropriated for us. The State appropriates money as if we were at full accompaniment of employment, but recognizing that we won’t be, the State recaptures, or requires us to pay back to the State, a percentage — right now it’s 2% — and we are arguing that it should be reduced to 1%. Why argue that? Well, in a way it isn’t money out of the State budget. It doesn’t have budgetary consequences to the State if they allow us to keep the money. I understand that it has revenue consequences, but it doesn’t have budget consequences. And it would provide us flexible funds which we so desperately need, especially in recent years. We have not received the flexibility of funding that institutions need to remain competitive. So that’s the reason for seeking a reduction in the reversion rate.
We are also, if you look at the top 20 public universities in the country, we are at the very bottom in terms of support for graduate students. And so we are arguing for support for graduate student health insurance. Most of our competition now for graduate students provides health insurance. We do not. We are urging the Legislature to give us funds to provide that. And we are also asking for an increase in the number of waivers that we have available to us for out-of-state graduate students which reduces their tuition to effective in-state rates, and will save departments a lot of money and enable them to be more competitive. So those are the things that we’re doing with the Legislature. And I’m very optimistic. We’ve had conversations with the leadership of both the House and the Senate in the past couple of months, and I find an enormous amount of good will for the University in the leadership of the Legislature. I also find there a strong feeling that, a recognition that in the changing economy, as we shift to a knowledge-based economy, the best investment that the State can make is in nurturing brain power. Arguably the only competitive advantage that an economy will have in the 21st century is its brain power, and that is clearly recognized by the leadership of the Legislature, and for that reason there is no passion at all for disinvesting in higher education among the leadership. And I’m very pleased to find that. And everybody has a strong desire to see Carolina resume its position at the top, the very top, of American public higher education. And they’re proud of us, and we should be pleased that they are.
Let me shift topics, and talk about the position of Provost. I have been importuning with Dick Richardson to stay on as Provost, or to be a candidate for the permanent Provost if we go to a search, and these conversations between Dick and myself have been going on for quite some time. Dick knows that I’ve been concerned, and I think that he’s been concerned that we’ve had too rapid turnover with the Provost position in the last few years. I think probably the last four Provosts have none of them stayed as long as we need to stay for that to be a healthy operation, and the people who’ve come from outside have hardly stayed long enough to learn the culture, and the people who came from inside did not stay long enough in that position to serve us as fully as they might have. And Dick has, reluctantly I have to say, but happily, has agreed that he would be willing to stay to June 30 in the year 2000 — that would be a five-year term. But only on the condition that he receive a confirming vote from the Faculty Council and the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee. And so I have talked with the leadership just this afternoon because Dick and I just completed these conversations about 30 minutes ago. [laughter] I talked with your leaders, and we will develop a ballot for confirmation of Dick Richardson as Provost for a five-year term, which would take him to June 30, the year 2000. [applause] Dick told me before he came that he would ask somebody to start applause at the appropriate point. He also said that he would be happy to answer any of his colleagues’ questions, if any of you have questions that you would like to address to Dick, or to me, right now about this matter. As I say, we don’t know how the vote’s going to take place; we haven’t gotten to those details yet, but Dick requires a vote of confirmation.
I am, fairly soon, going to send to the President for him to present to the Board of Governors, a reorganization plan for the Administration, and I wanted to let you know that. And to tell you something about it and something about the reasons for it, more detail later. But for the moment, the changes that will most affect us are these. There is an unhealthy ambiguity in the reporting relationships of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and the Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs. This is an ambiguity that my predecessor tried to resolve by giving the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affair the additional title of Executive Vice Chancellor, but I don’t think it adequately resolves the ambiguity. I think that it is crucially important for there to be a seamless web between Health Affairs and Academic Affairs. There are so many decisions that require a common decision procedure for various matters that affect both of those Divisions. And so I am changing the title of Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs to Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, and the title of Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs to Vice Provost for Health Affairs, signalling that both of those positions report to the Provost. Now it may occur to you that we don’t have now a separate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, and we don’t, and Dick and I don’t know whether we will fill that position soon, but if we do, it will be with a search. For the moment Dick will continue as he is now, to serve in both positions. I’m also bringing under the administrative control of the Executive Vice Chancellor, who will no longer be Dick, but will be Elson Floyd, the administrative side of the house, so the various Vice Chancellors that are in the administrative side will now report to the Executive Vice Chancellor who will be Elson. I’m also creating a position which doesn’t exist, but does at virtually every institution of this size, and that is the position of Treasurer, and I have asked Wayne Jones to serve in that position. We have now over $700 million under management in our endowments, and it is the size operation that really requires a treasurer. So Wayne Jones will become the Treasurer, and we will recruit for a new Vice Chancellor to take over his duties, to be called the Vice Chancellor for Administration because there is a lot of administration that goes under that Vice Chancellor, and it is much more appropriate that the title be Vice Chancellor for Administration rather than Vice Chancellor for Business and Finance. We are also creating a position called Chief Information Officer, again a position that exists at many institutions, and virtually every institution that has tackled the problem of computing on campus, or technology on campus, in the last five years, has created such a position by bringing administrative computing and academic computing and telecommunications, telephony, in under the same operation, the same executive officer. And so we are creating that position. We are also creating a position of Vice Chancellor for University Advancement, and that will be filled by Matt Kupec. Matt has done a superb job as Associate Vice Chancellor for Development, and I have confidence in his ability to bring more under his span of control. And so we’re doing that. Those are the major changes that I think you will see. And there’ll be more, smaller, changes that will come out when I send this to the Board of Governors and after we’ve completed all of the reorganization. But I did want to bring that to your attention at this time.
I also want to respond to the letter that I received this week from a number of your colleagues on the faculty who were responding to the Carolina Review. And I’ll simply read the letter that I wrote to them in reply.
Dear Colleagues, Thank you for your letter of February 20, 1996. Although I affirm the primacy of the value of free speech in the University community, I wish to add my voice to those who, while acknowledging the right of the Carolina Review to engage in free expression, find the article in question to be deeply offensive and altogether inappropriate in a community where civility and intelligence as well as freedom should characterize our discourse.
That’s all I have to bring to your attention. I’d be delighted to answer questions. Professor Richard Pfaff (History): With respect to these professors. At the last meeting when Professor Beckman asked you about this, you were quoted as saying the operative locution in your question was comparability. Comparability. I mean the way you phrased the question, “I would reject the premise,” that is, that you would be bringing in people at salaries twice those of existing faculty who are comparable to existing faculty. Even with the sort of revised understanding, are you still positing these new faculty as incomparable to the existing faculty? Chancellor Hooker: Yeah. I think, Rich… What I had in mind, Rich was talking about people who were Associate Professors at mid career, and as I conceive the Kenan Professors where we will emphasize teaching as well as the scholarly credentials, they would be people more senior than that. And so they would be people not at a $50,000 or $60,000 salary range currently. That’s the sense of comparability that I had in mind, was salary comparability. These would be people who would already be making at the top of the salary scale for their profession. I was taken aback by the, by what looked like in Rich’s statement, $125,000 floor, because I knew you could get the best philosopher in the country for less than that. [laughter] So I had in mind that we would not be recruiting for mid career people but we would be recruiting people more senior than that. Professor Pfaff: I understand that. If you have full professors here with, say, 30 years of service, and salaries $60,000 or less, in the Humanities, and you get someone coming in at $110,000, $120,000, are you expecting to get somebody twice as good? [laughter] Chancellor Hooker: No. I deny the premise. Professor Pfaff: Well, isn’t that what comparability means? Chancellor Hooker: What I said was that the salary range that was provided was a salary range for scientists and it included laboratory costs. There is no salary range for the other professors. Obviously you bring people in for what you can get them for. And I have no idea what that would be except in Philosophy. And I can tell you it’s a lot less than $125,000 in Philosophy. But the salaries they will make here as Kenan Professors will be comparable to the salaries that they are currently making.
Professor Ron Hyatt (Physical Education, Exercise & Sport Science): Chancellor, last Sunday we had a privilege on this campus of hearing the Music Department present a program, a tremendous number of students, that out Sousa’d [John Philip] Sousa, and I never saw any publicity about this, or thank yous. But I would like to go on record as thanking you, and I hope you will join me in commending this group of students and talented faculty for a superb day at Chapel Hill. Chancellor Hooker: And I do so join you. [applause] of publicizing what takes place on campus. And certainly the Sousa concert I saw no notice of it anywhere. Except that I had received in advance a letter inviting me to attend. And I have expressed this dissatisfaction to a number of people. I’m determined that we will do something about it. But I acknowledge that we haven’t done anything yet.
Professor David Ganz (Classics): While welcoming all of the comments, Chancellor, you’ve made about salaries and the attempt to raise salaries, may I ask you here and now to express profound regret if not stronger at the current status of the salaries of our library staff who are at least as indispensable to the running of the University as these Kenan Professors we are talking about. You have come from the University of Massachusetts to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and I would like to think you believe this is a move upwards. As you perhaps do not know, the difference in salary between librarians at the University of Massachusetts and the University of North Carolina system is $8,000. I trust that this degree of deplorable treatment of the people on whom we depend which has been ignored by the Bicentennial Committee will not be allowed to continue. Chancellor Hooker: The salary compression problems in staff are just as severe as the salary compression problems on the faculty. The faculty understands the salary compression problems from their perspective because they feel it. But we have very difficult salary issues across the campus. The problem is the way that the State legislature has raised salaries in recent years. They have raised salaries for all state employees the same percentage, and that overlooks the fact that in many professional staff positions here we’re competing in a national labor market, and so it leads to comparisons that we make and that others make of, for example, the difference between the average salary of a library staff member here versus U. Mass. We have salary problems throughout the campus. Professor David Ganz: But you’re not going to make a commitment to changing them? Chancellor Hooker: Well, I’m not, I’m busting my gut to do what I can to raise salaries, and I will commit to continuing to do that, but you can’t commit to something that you can’t deliver. I can deliver best effort. I cannot deliver money. My best efforts may result in money, and I hope they do.
Professor Terry Evens (Anthropology): You spoke about the impact of the Kenan Professorships on the question of leaves. Can you give us your assessment, I mean, do you think in the long term, or even in the short term, what that impact’s going to be? Are we going to have, likely to have less leaves or more leaves? I think this seems particularly important in the University where we don’t have a sabbatical. Chancellor Hooker: Yes, it is crucially important, and that’s why the Provost took money that was available in the Kenan fund and applied it to leaves, and so spent $900,000 when we were supposed to spend $160,000. It was not a foolish expenditure. The leaves are desperately needed. It’s just that a pool of funds was tapped which was not available to be tapped for that purpose. As I said, we have secured a grant from the Kenan Trust now that will enable us to give twice as many leaves as we would have given if we had gone back to the original restriction. But there are limited pools of funds from which you can draw leaves, and so it is reasonable to believe that for the foreseeable future, short term at any rate, there will be fewer leaves. Now this is another, faculty development in general is an area where we probably did not pay as much attention as we should have during the Bicentennial Campaign, or we paid attention and it didn’t result in endowments. But that is an area that I have been focusing on in my initial fund raising discussions and we will put a lot of energy there in the coming months and years. But I would be misleading you if I led you to believe that our efforts are going to enable us to bring the leave level quickly back up to what it was last year. Thank you very much.
Professor Indra Chakravarti (Statistics): I came to know that we do not have in the Library anywhere in the holdings Bengali literature. Chancellor Hooker: Bengali literature? Professor Chakravarti: Yes. There are 200 million people who speak this language, Bengali, and we don’t have any books. So I think this is a lack of conscience at this University which is the first state University and this language, besides being part of the U.S. language, and fast developing, in fact you can find books by Salmon Rushdie because they were written in English, but you cannot find any book written by Tasalima Nasarina, which has made a sensation all over the world. It has been translated into French, English, everywhere. So we don’t have these books. And I’m not saying that we should have a momentous collection. But when I talk to some people they say, “Well, Duke has a fantastic collection.” But Duke has also a fantastic basketball program. And we have a fantastic basketball program here. But I think my point is, take with conscience, of the fact that we don’t have this literature represented. So. Chancellor Hooker: Let me address that. First of all, the basketball program is a significant generator of revenue. I’m not talking about fund raising. I’m talking about gate receipts. So that the comparison is not apt. We have an agreement with Duke which we’ve had in place for some time that we will develop our collections in tandem and that we will not try to duplicate in various areas that the librarians have identified as such that the collection can be built at one campus or the collection can be built at the other campus and can be shared. It may very well be that Bengali literature is one of those areas. I don’t know. But if Duke has a significant collection in that field, then, or in literature in Bengali, then I would conjecture that that’s one of the areas that the librarians have designated where we will not build if Duke builds. Just a guess. Professor Chakravarti: There has to be some core collection anyway. Chancellor Hooker: It’s hard to argue that the library’s adequate if it doesn’t have a single work in Bengali literature. Professor Chakravarti: Not a single one. And Tagore is I think as important as Moliere. Chancellor Hooker: I’m not going to argue against that point.
III. Chair of the Faculty Jane D. Brown.
Professor Brown: I want to thank you, Chancellor Hooker, for those remarkable remarks this afternoon, and I want to say publicly that I thank you and appreciate what you’ve done to bring administration and faculty together. This week he, at a dinner for the Executive Committee of Faculty Council — it was the third time we have had dinner with the Chancellor — but this time he also invited Trustees to come have dinner with us. And I think it’s a precedent-setting dinner, and that faculty actually got to talk directly to Trustees about some important issues. We talked primarily about technology and what that is going to do for us, to us, as faculty members, and I think it was quite a remarkable conversation. So thank you for making that happen. I also wanted to thank you for inviting us all to have lunch with you. Apparently 400 of us have replied that we’d like to have lunch with the Chancellor. Chancellor Hooker: I’m afraid at the end of the process I’m may look like I’ve had 400 lunches. Professor Brown: Thank you. I wanted to speak just a little bit more about what the General Administration is doing for us — and to us.
Last Friday, our members of the Faculty Assembly went to the General Administration building. The Faculty Assembly is our faculty delegates to the body that represents all faculty across the System, and so each System campus sends a delegation. And there, and often, and every time, the President of the System speaks to us and tells us what he’s doing and what General Administration is doing across the System. And this time we were pleased to learn that the President is proposing a 7% salary increase for faculty. We were also happy to learn that for the first time, the President and General Administration and the Board of Trustees is proposing also a staff, an increase in salaries for staff. And that’s the first time, I understand, that General Administration has ever done that. So we’re pleased that that’s occurring. The President was less sanguine, however, about our relationships with the Legislature than you are, Chancellor Hooker. And he encouraged the faculty to work with him this year in working with the Legislature. That’s also a little bit different from what we’ve heard in the past. Sometimes we’ve been criticized for not singing out of the same hymnal when we go to Raleigh to speak on our behalf. And there’s still concern about that, that if we do assist General Administration in working for the University that we are all singing the same tune. That we’re all saying the same kinds of things. I think the agenda that the Board of Governors and the General Administration has proposed in terms of the budget is excellent. It does speak to salaries. It speaks to support for graduate students. It speaks for getting overhead back on campuses. And reduction of the reversion rate and so on. So I think they’re important issues, and they’re the right ones to be talking about. So I encourage us all to pay attention to this and to continue to participate in supporting the University in Raleigh.
There were a couple of other things we talked about at the Faculty Assembly I wanted to alert you to. Out of the last legislative session there were a number of legislative attempts to manage the University more closely than we’ve ever been managed before. And the result of that is that General Administration now has more than 15 or so reports that they have to generate and report back to the Legislature in the Short Session. And some of these have major implications for who we are as a University and who faculty are throughout the System. One of them calls for common course descriptions for all courses taught in community colleges. It’s going to be an incredible task involving something like 700 faculty looking at all these courses and trying to come up with a paragraph description of each course taught in every community college. And this is all designed so that community college students can transfer more readily to four-year institutions. And so, there’s good, some of that’s an advantage that’s going to allow community college students to come here more readily. But it’s an enormous task.
Another is a proposal designed to have faculty spend more time in the classroom. And this report calls for General Administration to set standards for how much time faculty spend teaching, and to set up an incentive system for those who teach more than the standard. And we have tried to impress on General Administration that at a number of our campuses much of our teaching is done outside the classroom, but that, because we cannot quantify it as easily as we can in terms of FTE’s, or numbers of courses, it probably will not be counted in the standard setting. So I think this is especially important proposal. We’ve requested significant faculty involvement in creating that report back to the Legislature.
Finally, the third piece that I’m especially concerned about is a proposed standardized accountability system for measuring the progress and success of each campus in the System. So this is the accountability piece, that it’s kind of, the shoe has dropped. This is, it’s here now, and there is a report that proposes a set of standards and performance indicators. These performance indicators will be tied to budget in the future. And this has to go, has a very short turnaround time. It will go back, it’s supposed to go back to the Board of Governors in the next month, and then proposed to the Short Session of the Legislature. I’m especially concerned that when the Faculty Assembly met on Friday we were not told about this. Faculty have not been involved in generating these performance indicators. And it was released on Monday, a draft form of it was released on Monday when the chief academic officers of the campuses met at General Administration. So I have written a letter to General Administration requesting sufficient time to review the proposed measures. And I would like to put a small group of us together to look at them. Some of them are right on, easy to say that’s exactly what we’re up to here, and we need to, and of course that’s how we would want to be held accountable for what we do. Others of them are not so clearly tied to our mission. And I think it will behoove us to suggest some alternative ways of measuring our quality and success and productivity. In general what I’m seeing here is that we are going to be held accountable, and if we do not take the lead here, if we do not participate in these discussions, it will be done for us. So it’s kind of a wake-up call. It is a wake-up call. It’s saying that the Legislature is especially concerned about where their money is going, and what we’re doing with it. And whether we are serving the citizens of North Carolina. And they’re going to be looking very closely at how we’re doing that. So I think that it is very important that we stay in this conversation, and that we contribute as much as possible to it, so that how we are held accountable is how we want to be held accountable in the future. So if any of you are interested in working with me on that, please volunteer.
So, a few announcements. Many of you are being nominated for standing committees at this point whether you knew that or not. The Faculty Council elections are underway. I want to thank both David Thompson and Rosemary Munsat for a remarkable job they do in putting all the names together who was eligible, and all the standing committees that we have. There is a nominating committee that is going through all that, recommending people to serve on standing committees and so on. I encourage you all to say yes when you are called to participate. I appreciate how participatory you have been, and we need you. So just say, yes, when you are called. I also am pleased to announce that we do have fixed-term faculty in the process this time, and I want to thank both Garland Hershey’s and Dick Richardson’s offices for making that happen and for Rosemary putting all those new ratios together. We will now be a body of everyone of us representing 34 other faculty. And so all of that had to be reconfigured. So thank you for doing that.
You may have seen as you came in a request from Habitat for Humanity, and I bring this to your attention because they speak to me about it out of our last conversation about intellectual climate. And they look forward, this is a student initiative. They are building a house. And they would like to be doing it with faculty. So I think it’s a wonderful opportunity for us to be working together with students, and I have a sign-up sheet so you can all sign up to do it. And all you need to is put down your name and your phone number, and they’ll call you. [For further information about volunteering, or about Habitat in general, call Karen Caskie or Heather Green at 969-7641.] And, finally, I unfortunately do not have tickets to the basketball games, so I didn’t get to see this, but I understand that our most recent teaching award winners were introduced at the Virginia and Carolina game, which I think is a wonderful moment to do that. We used to do it here in Faculty Council, but it gets much wider exposure in the Smith Center. So that’s great. And what I wanted to do today was to just, to read the names of our colleagues who have been honored for excellent teaching, and to appreciate all the work they’re doing.
Stuart H. Gold in Medicine
Edward J. Kaiser in City and Regional Planning
Lawrence L. Kupper in Biostatistics, School of Public Health
Kathleen Rounds in the School of Social Work — won the Distinguished Teaching Awards for Post-Baccalaureate Instruction.
The Tanner Faculty Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching went to:
Robert S. Adler in the Business School
Pamela Cooper in English
Terence Evens in Anthropology – who is here
Ken Lohmann in Biology, and
Della Pollock in Communication Studies.
The Johnston Teaching Excellence Awards went to:
Donald C. Jicha in Chemistry
and Arrel Toews in Biochemistry.
The William C. Friday-Class of 1986 Award for Excellence in Teaching went to:
David Halperin in Religious Studies.
The Tanner Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (Teaching Assistants:
Judy Ellis in Religious Studies
Judith Logan in English
Elliot McGucken in Physics and Astronomy
Kimberly Miller in the School of Education, who has also served as the head of the Graduate and Professional association [Federation]; and
Sanjay Shahani in International Studies.
Let’s all give them a round of applause. [applause]
Now we turn to the other business of the day. Oh, you can ask me questions. Professor Harry Gooder (Microbiology and Immunology): Not a question, but a comment about faculty-legislative interactions. For five years we’ve had a committee of faculty on this campus attempting to educate individual members of the Legislature regarding what we do, what we need, and how efficient our sort of resources are. Every year one makes a plea for more faculty involvement directly with the Legislature. When we began it was not looked upon with favor by General Administration. It so happens that we’ve had some successes over the last few years, and I think from what you were just saying, they’ve bought into the idea that individual faculty on the various campuses can be influential in the education agenda of the Legislature. Professor Frankenberg may be here; he’s currently chair of that group. And I know he’s looking for the involvement, significant involvement, of a larger number of faculty. And I’m simply going to make a plea that we realize that the name of the game has changed. We can no longer simply depend upon General Administration or our own Administration to increase our resources. And more and more faculty are going to have to get involved directly with either the legislative process or with individual alumni and donors if we’re going to get significant core holdings in the Library, etc., and the involvement of faculty salaries, too. Professor Brown: Do you want to say anything to that? [to Chancellor Hooker] Chancellor Hooker: I agree. Clearly a lot of our success last year was attributable to the faculty and to the legislative committee here, and I’m delighted that the President sees the value of having faculty educating the Legislature and it can only work to our benefit if we have more and more people doing it. Professor Gooder: I think it’s important that it be a faculty agenda, however, not an administration agenda. And there will be times they’ll be out of sync with General Administration. I think that’s appropriate. I think it’s essential we tell them what we’re doing, but we don’t necessarily buy into an administrative agenda. Chancellor Hooker: Yeah. No, I think that this year there is nothing on the Board of Governors’ agenda for the legislative session that our faculty wouldn’t warmly embrace. Professor Gooder: I absolutely agree. Chancellor Hooker: And if we could get that, that would be delightful. And again, anything else would be selfish, but it is conceivable, obviously, that, Jane just enumerated some areas where one can imagine that the faculty would perceive its interest at variance with that of somebody else. But certainly this year the Board of Governors’ agenda should be our agenda. Professor Brown: Anything else? Great. And I know Dirk is looking for volunteers to work with him on this. It’s called the Faculty Legislative Liaison Committee. So if any of you are particularly interested in that, please let me know and I’ll let him know.
IV. Special Report of the Executive Committee of Faculty Council: Revised
“Mechanisms to Implement Salary Principles”: Jane D. Brown and James L. Peacock, III.
Professor Brown: Okay. Very great. We’re talking about salaries today. We have been talking about salaries. And now we’re going to talk about salary policies. Do you all have the resolution? Everybody has that. So I’d like to start with a brief review of where we’ve been on this. We have certainly talked about this before. We began this conversation in Faculty Council based on a couple of reports about salaries and salary distribution generated both by a committee in Arts and Sciences and a committee chaired by Jack Evans and Arden Miller that was a subcommittee of the, and then a subcommittee of the Executive Committee proposed a set of principles for salary policy. Those principles were discussed at the October Council meeting and adopted at our November meeting. And you all should have a copy of those in your handout there. We discussed the implementing mechanisms at the November meeting but did not vote on them at that time. A conference committee was convened to consider the implementing mechanisms. In the meantime the principles and the draft mechanisms were circulated to all faculty and administrators with the November Council minutes and faculty and administrators were encouraged to comment to the conference committee. Chairs and deans from both Academic Affairs and Health Affairs and members of the Executive Committee of Faculty Council served on that conference committee, and you have a list of who served there, as well. And Jim Peacock who will go to heaven for this served as chair of that conference committee. Professor Peacock: Hopefully not right away. Professor Brown: And they met a number of times and then brought their recommendations back to the Executive Committee. The conference committee agreed on four of the six mechanisms. Numbers 2 and 3 of the ones you have there today were not brought back from the conference committee. There was not agreement on those. The Executive Committee, after much more conversation, decided to reinsert mechanisms 2 and 3. They are a little bit different from how they were originally. But they would still provide for review of the policies. The Executive Committee brings these forward unanimously. We unanimously support the mechanisms that you have there in front of you. If you would, I’d like to go over them just very briefly. This should get us all on the same playing field here. This is what we’re looking at. Does everybody have a copy of this?
So, in number 1. What we’re calling for is that each unit that recommends faculty salaries and where salary increases originate would in consultation with the unit’s head and its faculty formulate a written policy to guide such recommendations. If you read your “Frequently Asked Questions,” you get some more about that. It’s basically that it could be the faculty as a whole at that point. It could be an elected committee. It could be another kind of committee. To propose policies at that level. In number 2 and 3 we suggest a mechanism for the review of those policies. In number 4 we suggest that individual grievances should go to the Faculty Grievance Committee as is specified in The Faculty Code now. In number 5 we request that data be made more available and understandable to the faculty. And in number 6 that regular evaluations of deans, chairs, and others would include appraisal of their performance in implementing the salary policies. We suggest that these mechanisms be provisional, that we would see how it would work for the next two years, and then we could bring them back and say they should be adopted permanently, amended, replaced, or eliminated. Okay? Rather simple for a very complex subject. And we did talking points because even though they look simple on the surface, they are not. And I anticipated questions and lots of interesting conversation about this.
Let me set a few guidelines for this discussion. We — I would to make sure we know who can vote and who can do whatever. We are not a meeting of the General Faculty today. So we are a meeting of the Faculty Council, which I think is appropriate because we are the ones who’ve been talking about this. We are elected to represent the rest of the faculty. So it will be the Faculty Council members who will vote on these mechanisms. Any member of the faculty and ex officio members of the Council can move amendments and speak to these amendments and to the original mechanisms. Does anyone have a question about whether you are a member of the Council or an ex officio member? Why don’t we just read who the ex officio members are, cause you can make motions. “The ex officio members shall be: the Chancellor, the Provost and Vice Chancellors, the Dean of the General College and the College of Arts and Sciences, the Chair of the Faculty, Secretary of the Faculty, and the chairs of standing committees of the faculty.” So those are our ex officio members. Okay. Any questions about that? Do all members of the Faculty Council have a name tag on today? Okay. So you know who you are. [laughter] Okay, also. We adjourn automatically at 5:45, whether we are done or not. We have been training ourselves to be done by 5:00. I doubt we’ll be able to accomplish that, but it would be nice to do that, to move expeditiously, with velocity. So, I have also heard from a number of faculty who want to speak. I have a tentative list of people who want to speak to these various mechanisms. And I’ll try to call on you and others who want to speak to them. I would encourage us to not be redundant. If someone has said what you want to say well, fine, let’s leave it at that and get on. Okay? And let’s remain civil, as we have also trained ourselves to be. Okay? So, Jim, I’m going to call on you to move the mechanisms. And anything else you’d like to say as chair of the conference committee.
Professor Jim Peacock (Anthropology): I hereby move the mechanisms. Professor Brown: Do I hear a second? Who seconded? Professor Peacock: Many people. Thank you very much. Is there anything else you’d like to say, Jim? Professor Peacock: Very briefly. I want to remind you of the Principles which you passed last time, especially Principles 1 and 2, because the Mechanisms are an effort at carrying out Principles 1 and 2. Principles 1 and 2, which you have before you, in essence, call for a publicly stated policy developed in consultation with faculty. And that’s what our mechanisms try to do. Now, do you want me to also move Joe Ferrell’s amendments, which were handed out. They’re not my amendments, but they’re his, and you do have them on the table. Professor Brown: Well, I think the first one is an appropriate one to do right at the start, given that it is about where these things go. So, that would help us be clear about — Professor Peacock: I therefore would like to move amendment #1 from Joseph Ferrell, who cannot be here. Professor Brown: Does everyone have a copy of that? Would you read that, Jim?
Professor Peacock: It says:
The Faculty Council endorses the following procedures for implementing the Principles to Guide Faculty Salary Policies adopted by the Council on November 10, 1995, and urges the Chancellor to take appropriate action to implement them.
And then he explains that:
[Comment. This new paragraph makes it clear that action requested of the Council is not legislative in nature but is a request for a action by the Chancellor. Such a request is within the powers of the Faculty Council as specified in Section II.H.(2)(c) of the Faculty Code, which provides that the Council has power to “…give advice to the Chancellor with respect to any matter affecting the life of the University.”]Professor Peacock: Joe Ferrell is the Chair of the University Government Committee and therefore he’s trying to make sure that what we do is in accord with the Code. Professor Brown: so do I hear a second to that amendment. [Seconded.] Discussion on that amendment? We’re going to move fast. We’ll just move to a vote then, hearing no discussion. All those in favor of that amendment, say aye. Any opposed. [one] Very great. The ayes have it, so that will be a preamble to this, suggesting where this goes. Very great. Now I will open discussion, and I would encourage you, let’s stay as organized as possible, we’re going to move through it if possible. So, anyone want to speak to Mechanism #1?
Professor Steve Bachenheimer (Microbiology)(and also Chairman of the Faculty Welfare Committee): I may need to start by going back to Principles. There’s a lot of discussion about Mechanisms and how decisions should be made about salary increases. But there’s one concern I have, that is, are there any, can we identify any common principles across campus? I know there’s been a lot of discussion and realization that many units have to deal with many different issues with regard to salary and how raises are apportioned and so on. But are there, in fact, any common principles? My understanding and the understanding of the Welfare Committee is that when the State appropriates money it can be, it’s composed of monies for cost of living increases and monies for merit increases. And the question comes up as to whether, when decisions are made about distributing salary increase monies, whether cost of living, the portion that’s represented as cost of living increase money can, in fact, be distributed in such a way as to deny any given faculty member a cost of living increase. The argument could be made that merit increases can be distributed in a way that could address issues of salary compression, etc. But can, in fact, unit heads divert cost of living increases to deal with issues like salary compression? If they can, under what authority? Does this seem like the appropriate thing to do? Professor Brown: Does the Provost want to speak to that? Provost Richardson: It’s not possible for cost of living increases to be diverted. They can be established either by the Legislature, and the implementing in the initial appropriation. More usually are established by the policy sent down by the Board of Governors to each of the individual constituencies, with an instruction that at least say, 2% of this money must go for across-the-board. When that happens, one cannot do anything to divert it. Professor Bachenheimer: So I would suggest perhaps it would be useful in some way to create a mechanism that lets all unit heads know explicitly that certain funds must be used in certain ways. Professor Brown: Isn’t that clear, Dick, when monies come in on campus? Professor Bachenheimer: But it would seem important in this discussion about mechanisms governing salary policies that there be some explicit statement about that fact. I think there are people who don’t understand it and some people who are well aware of it. And I think it can do no harm, it seems to me, to, as part of any policy statement that goes forward with regard to salaries, that that statement be made. Professor Brown: Anyone else want to speak to that?
Professor Gooder: I hate to disagree with my faculty colleague, but I think it, if my memory is correct, for the last five years the Board of Governors have not mandated any of the salaries monies to be applied to cost of living. The simple thing that’s come down from the Board of Governors to each campus is that more money shall be used for merit only. And that’s one of the reasons that we’re getting into the mess that we’re getting into. And it has not sat well with Faculty Assembly, but they have not been able to change the minds of the Board of Governors. Insomuch as the Board of Governors mandate a cost of living, there is no way the Chancellor or any other administrative officer can obviate that cost of living, I don’t see why we need to burden the written documents by saying it.
Professor Brown: Anyone else want to speak to number 1 here. Professor Peacock: My colleague, Ron Hyatt, has an image for this effort, which is trying to put tennis shoes on an octopus. This is an example of one of the hundreds of specific points that could have been included but we chose not to in order to emphasize the essential points which are consultation, and that the policy should be stated explicitly. If we get into the details of what the policy ought to say, then I think we’ll not get out of here by 5:00. Professor Brown: Any further discussion about #1? Very good. Move on to #2.
Professor Miles Fletcher (History): We’ve been at this issue of salaries and the mechanisms for a long while, and I greatly appreciate the work of the conference committee arriving at this compromise. I do have a concern about mechanism #2, and I’d like to propose a brief amendment to it. My concern is that the elected committee in each college or school should perhaps do a little bit more than just look at the policies to make sure that they’re in a file somewhere and that they conform to the principles. I think this committee has to take some action to make sure that the policies are being used. Therefore, my brief amendment, proposed amendment, comes in the second sentence of mechanism #2. As amended, it would read: “The dean or director, in consultation with an elected faculty committee that chooses its chair, is responsible for ensuring that each unit has its current policy on file and that policies are implemented” — that’s the amendment — “consistent with the Principles.” Professor Brown: So you are inserting one word. Professor Fletcher: Yes. Professor Brown: Okay, do I have a second for that amendment? [seconded] Any discussion.
Professor Joy Kasson (American Studies): It seems to me that Miles is, I know what a lot of work it has been to arrive at these very clear mechanisms. It does seem to me that this suggestion is in line with the spirit of what this second point is about, which is about having the elected faculty committee and making sure that it has a role to play in this process. So I think that the idea that the faculty committee would cease its job once the pieces of paper got in the file also to me seems like not quite enough work for it. And so I would like to agree with Miles and to support the notion that it’s not only collecting the policies but suggesting that the elected faculty committee would work to implement them, would work to ensure that they’re implemented.
Professor Carl Bose (Pediatrics): I’m a faculty member, a non-administrative faculty member. I don’t agree with this amendment. I think that there are other avenues to appeal perhaps errors in implementation on the part of administrators. There is a grievance process, if individuals are aggrieved and implementation has been unfair in their service. There, as you see farther down, issues concerning the policies can be taken to the Chancellor, and the Chancellor may choose to use the Advisory Committee as a hearing board. I think there are other mechanisms to deal with faulty implementation. And I worry very much that implementation implies that a committee would, by default, have to be reviewing individual decisions by administrators. I don’t think I would wish to see that happen. There is also another opportunity to review the performance of administrators in the implementation process, and that’s at their periodic reviews. And it’s stated very clearly they will be reviewed upon their performance in implementing salary policy. So I think there are a number of safeguards. I think that this may interfere with the role of the administrators and may cause them to have to be constantly reviewed on individual decision making at the committee level, which I think may interfere with their function in this University. [Unidentified person]: And what is that function?
Professor Steve Leonard (Political Science): I’m sorry to disagree with Carl. I think that all the reasons he gave are the reasons that we need these considerations for accountability and implementation. Accountability is the issue here. It seems to me that accountability entails first a statement of clear and defensible principles, which we have. Secondly, a set of procedures by which we can be sure that those principles are being adequately implemented. This document, and I apologize to my colleagues on the Faculty Council who were part of this process, this document seems to me to be woefully inadequate with respect to considerations of implementation. I think that, in fact, accountability in the implementation of these policies is good for administrators, because it strengthens their legitimacy; I think it’s good for faculty because it strengthens our sense of a just community here; and I think it’s good for the public at large because it gives the public at least some assurance that the money that they’re sending to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is being used in ways that are publicly accountable. So, again, I think that I have to disagree with Carl. I think that some wording that would make sure that these policies are not just reviewed but also implemented is fully appropriate in this case.
Professor James Thompson (English): I’d like to endorse Miles’ proposal here. It seems to me that’s the only place in this whole document, aside from the title, that the concept of implementation appears. Otherwise this document, as gracious as it is, says in so many words, a half a dozen times, our principles are quite lovely, but we don’t wish to implement them. We don’t wish to put them in practice. I don’t think that we would come up with a policy on sexual harassment and then announce publicly that we’re not going to implement it. And that’s what this document does without the amendment.
Professor Leon Fink (History): I’d like to add a word on the same on behalf. Intellectuals and educators sometimes disparage of being members of the chattering class. That’s surely unfair, except occasionally with some Faculty Council [laughter], and not as a member of the Faculty Council but as one who’s been interested for some time in the deliberations, this is a kind of fork in the road. It seems that a lot of serious thought and good effort has been put into this process. If it represents anything, it does represent something of a change, an experiment to be sure, in offering another kind of guidance over the administrative decision making, namely, a more active faculty presence to the end of equity. So I would hope that we would finish this process up with something substantive rather than mere rhetorical.
Professor Barry Lentz (Biochemistry & Biophysics): I’d like to point out that the word “implement” or a derivative of that word is in item #6, and when I read this, I underlined that word and ask how are you going to bring this appraisal of the performance of an administrator into the review of the administrator. I feel that the appropriate place for ensuring that the administrator is implementing is in their regular reviews. And, I’m afraid that if we put the word “implementing” in item #2, it will have the effect of creating a micro-management of our chairs and administrators at the point of individual salary decisions. And I think the appropriate place for it is at the point of review. And so I would be in favor of judging our administrators and not at the point of individual salary decisions, or every year at the point of review.
Professor Mary Sheriff (Art): I’d like to speak in favor of the amendment. I think it’s really all to the good that we have a lot of openness in this entire process. And I also would like to say that from my point of view there’s a difference between looking at perhaps a grievance that an individual faculty member is bringing, and looking to see if the policy is implemented in a fair way across the board. And I think that dealing with individual grievances and dealing with a general assessment of the implementation are two different issues. So I think that including the word is very positive on this point.
Professor Khalid Ishaq (Pharmacy): I do agree with Carl. And I think Barry. I think this is going to cause lots of problems at the end, and there should be a little bit more flexibility given to directors and deans. If this is maybe a committee, that’s fine, but I think this is carrying it too far. Thank you.
Professor David Pike (German): As far as I know, the only real review of administrators and of chairs that takes place, takes place in five-year increments, so that I would think a lot of faculty members could pay a fairly stiff price in the interim before it’s determined that that person’s chair or that person’s dean has been found to be deficient in accordance with paragraph 6 with his or her sort of oversight responsibilities. I sort of have a tough act to follow. I do not want to be redundant. I think this is what the entire set of mechanisms is going to come down to, whether or not we’re going to have any specific mechanism that offers some possibility of engaging the problem or whether we do not. And the only mechanism here that significantly will engage the problem is #2 and then only if, in fact, these policies are watched to see that they are, in fact, implemented. I don’t see that it is terribly realistic, given the pattern of compression and inequities and unfairness and injustices that have occurred over the past several years here, to think that any of these other items by themselves will sort of work together with #2 in terms of its limitations in examining nothing more than policies to seriously engage a problem and to start dealing with it before it gets worse and before the threat that it poses to community on this campus gets so out of hand that we will have really acrimonious and nasty confrontations. I think the time to act is now. I’d like to tell, I would like to urge all those of you who believe that we have a serious problem and we need to act now stand up and be counted. Because I think this is the ballgame.
Professor Karl Petersen (Math): [tape changed] … issue here is whether the faculty would be involved in checking out whether these policies are being implemented, and I think the involvement of the faculty should be helpful to the administrators and it’s also the right thing to do. In the first place the faculty are the ones who are impacted directly by these salary decisions. They should be involved to the extent that’s possible and feasible. But beyond that, the faculty judgment, expertise, and advice should be very helpful to those making those decisions. I don’t see any problem at all with micro management. We’re not talking about looking at individual cases. We’re talking about general aggregate decisions across the board within units or over the larger segment of the University. And there’s an historical parallel. I think many years ago on the Faculty Council there was a discussion to get faculty more involved in the running of the athletic program. You might recall the Betts Committee and the outcomes of those discussions. The Athletics Committee used to be entirely appointed, and at a time of some controversy in the athletic program here and nationally, the Faculty Council voted, over the objections of the Chancellor, fine, I was on the Council and at that meeting, to make the Athletics Committee be an elected committee of the Faculty Council. And I don’t think anyone could really argue that that has hurt the athletic program. I think if you read the papers, we see that frequently the University of North Carolina and its athletic program are held up as models to the rest of the nation as to how to run an athletic program in an open and honest way. I think that’s due in large part to the good advice that the faculty Athletics Committee gives to the Administration, and to the Athletic Department. And so by analogy here, I don’t think there’s anything to fear about micro management, or the fact that a committee is going to look to see how general principles are actually put into practice. The individual cases are going to be handled [this way(?)].
Professor Paul Farel (Physiology): I have a sense that considering the passion with which some people are speaking that they have some specific cases in mind and they feel the need for a schoolwide committee to look at the implementation of the policies. And I don’t have that, so feel kind of at a loss. I think that there’s a level of detail that some of us who oppose the amendment don’t have. My concern is that if a chair comes into a department and decides to build up that department by emphasizing an area that’s really hot, and pays market value to hire very brilliant people in that area, I’m concerned that a school level committee that looks at that can say, “This violates our principle of community that’s more important than perhaps scholarly excellence.” I don’t know who to trust more. I mean my tendency is to trust the chair more in these situations than to trust an elected faculty committee who will tend to be people who have been here a long time and perhaps have a vested interest in things remaining as they are. So I would oppose the amendment.
Professor Debra Shapiro (Business School): For that very reason that you just, Paul, expressed, when I was talking about these mechanisms or potential mechanisms with the Dean of the Business School, he interpreted this elected faculty committee to mean that he no longer would be making decisions, but that there would be faculty-wide committee. And the question was raised, “Are people across all areas of faculty able to impact, make individual faculty salary decisions?” And he didn’t think so, and in the discussion we all agreed that we actually feel that the Dean we hire is hired because we put our trust in the Dean. And when I read mechanism 1, question 1, it’s labelled page 1 a few pages later in this document, there’s a question that says, “Does Mechanism #1 specify how decisions are made about individual salaries?” And the answer says, “No, for example, some units may decide that they want the chair or dean alone to decide individual raises while in others a committee of faculty will advise the chair or dean on such decisions.” So what I’m finding a little disturbing is if in fact that’s true, I think the language of Mechanism 2 needs to reflect that, because otherwise I think there’s a chance that deans won’t actually feel that they have that privilege, to do it alone, if in fact that’s what the faculty of their school want them to do. Professor Brown: I think a point of clarification would be that even if the dean, even if the unit head, decided that the dean would make the decisions, that there still would be guidelines generated by the faculty about how those decisions would be made. Professor Shapiro: In general. Professor Brown: In general. That’s right. And that’s what could be brought to this review committee, is to see whether those policies are being followed.
Professor Leonard: I’m confused about the nature of the objections to the amendment. It seems to me that there is nothing in these mechanisms that prevents administrators from making decisions about salaries that they think are fully appropriate. Nothing in here says they can’t make decisions. All kinds of flexibility is preserved in these mechanisms. What is not preserved is the right of administrators to make salary decisions without having those, implementation of those salary decisions, checked by a faculty committee. That’s all that’s being suggested here, that those decisions should be checked by a faculty committee. And I have to emphasize again that this is a matter of legitimacy and accountability, and I think it’s good for administrators to have this policy precisely because those decisions will be seen as subject to public accountability, and if those decisions are defensible ones, then, in fact, any decision that will be made, should receive as much support as it could possibly muster, given the case made in its defense. I also have to say that my parents are not very sophisticated people, but they did teach me to recognize an insult when I saw one, and I find it slightly insulting that some of our colleagues suggest that, in fact, faculty members are less capable of administrating, of making judgments about what constitutes responsible and reasonable decisions about salary matters. Professor Brown: Okay, any further discussion for this amendment on the floor.
Professor Dick Soloway (History): And for my sins I also served on the conference committee, and as a member of that committee that had serious reservations about some of the earlier forms in which paragraph 2 was stated, I’m relieved to see that many of those concerns have been addressed. I don’t see, either as a chair or as a faculty member, any serious problems here. It looks to me like we’re not discussing a committee that’s going to deal with salaries. We’re talking about a committee that’s going to see whether or not units and departments that have in fact voted upon and passed a salary review policy have, in fact, done that and that they are carrying out what they agreed to do. And I think the term, implementation, is very apt, appropriate, in this case, because it seems to me what that committee in conjunction with a dean, that’s what we’re dealing with here, needs to be concerned, not only with is this thing being carried out, the policy being carried out, but if not, how can we go about getting the unit to implement. And as a chair, I would welcome, frankly, a committee saying, “Look, you passed the salary review structure we have, and implemented, and we don’t see how it is being implemented in these particular areas.” It gives me the opportunity to address those concerns, particularly if my faculty have concerns that we’re not implementing what we agreed to implement. So, I find this not a terrible, dangerous paragraph at all, and I, as an administrator, would be very comfortable with it.
Professor Peacock: The issue of whether to have the word “implement” or not was discussed at length by the conference committee with the same arguments expressed on both sides. And then by the Executive Committee with the same arguments on both sides. And, a decision was made not to have the word “implemented.” However, I think Professor Soloway’s clarification of what it could be construed to mean is very helpful. The main concern about the use of the word was that which had already been expressed, namely that it invites micro management inappropriately. I think what he describes is appropriate. Professor Brown: Are we ready to stop? Oh, Carl, one last person.
Professor Bose: I’m sorry. I feel compelled to make one more argument. It was actually an argument first raised by Garland Hershey. He’s not here today, so I’ll cautiously make it on his behalf. He raised the concern that, at least in Health Affairs, mechanism 2, even as written, would impair the ability to hire and retain quality chairs. I did not agree with that advice, as it’s currently written. I think the more meat you put into it would imply the more interference with the discretion of chairs to make decisions which they believe are in the best behalf of their department and their faculty. And it may, indeed, impair our ability to hire quality chairs in Health Affairs and I presume across campus. We are vitally dependent upon quality of leadership. And I fear that with this amendment, and therefore will vote against it.
Professor Brown: I can’t quit debate unless someone out here quits debate.
Professor Terry Evens (Anthropology): Just one quick remark. I really don’t understand Carl’s position, since as it’s already been indicated, what’s going on here is the recommendation that such a committee can then say something as regards implementation. This does not control a chair’s or dean’s decision. It does inform it in certain ways, that the dean or chair will now have to take other understandings and opinions into account. That’s a good thing.
Professor Craig Calhoun (History and Sociology): I would just like to offer the assertion that one of the key characteristics of a high quality chair might be to develop a policy in consultation with her or his faculty, and to carry out effectively that policy so that the faculty would recognize that it had been carried out.
Professor Arne Kalleberg (Sociology): I agree. I’m going to vote against this amendment. The problem I have with it is that it’s not really clear how this faculty committee is going to implement this policy. And I think unless that is spelled out clearly, it’s not clear to me how this is going to work. And I’m very concerned about micro managing, reducing flexibility of chairs. I think this is going to only hurt our Institution. And, so if, in principle I think it’s important for a faculty committee to have some sort of review. But I think the heart of it is how they’re going to do that. And until that’s spelled out I don’t see, I see a lot of danger in this.
Professor Gooder: One of the problems that a chair faces is not accountability, because most of our chairs and deans are perfectly willing to be accountable. I think Professor Brown put it well the other day when he said the problem is fairness, whether or not the faculty perceived what the structure under which salaries are being determined is, in fact, fair. I think the problem that we face, at least in Health Affairs, which may not be the same as in Academic Affairs, is multiple sources of revenue. And a chair who comes in with a five-year program, and the faculty are going to support him, I hope, with that new program, may well wish to implement fairness over a five-year period. I think the worry about putting the word “implementation” in is that a faculty committee might wish to see fairness every year. And I think if you do that, you’ve really restricted the flexibility, at least with chairs in Health Affairs, and I know if my own chair were here speaking, he would say he is seriously looking at what we are debating today before he makes his mind up whether he will be reappointed. And we normally have to search for chairs outside because we don’t have a revolving system. And so, I think we really have to think about the effect of this amendment.
Professor Kasson: Is it appropriate to call the question? Professor Brown: Yes. Okay, now we vote on that. Is there a second on the call to question. This calling the question for the amendment. To end the discussion. We are ending discussion about the amendment of Mechanism #2, which includes, inserts the word “implemented.” Do we want to stop discussion? All those in favor, say aye. Any opposed? One. Okay, so it looks like we’re prepared to vote on the amendment. All we’ve done is inserted the word “implemented” between “are” and “consistent with the Principles.” All those in favor of that amendment? Again, this is the Council members who may vote. All those in favor of that amendment, say aye. All those opposed say no. Looks like we need a hand vote. All those in favor raise your hands on this side of the room. And all those against, please raise your hands. Thank you. The nays have it. It’s 30 against and 24 for. So “implementation” is not included in number 2 Mechanism.
Discussion about #3? I’m sorry; if there’s more to say about #2? That was the amendment on #2. Is there any other conversation about #2? No. Shall we move on to #3? Any conversation about #3? Any discussion?
Professor Ron Link (Law): Just for information, I got a little lost in the legislative history. Did I understand you to say the conference committee did not agree on items 2 and 3 and therefore did not approve the set overall and that the Executive Committee of the Faculty Council is proposing the full set? Professor Peacock: No. The conference committee approved everything except items 2 and 3, on which they could not agree. Professor Link: Would it be a fair statement to say that in general deans and department chairs oppose the statement, or the mechanisms? Professor Peacock: No, that would not be fair. For one thing, we did not take a formal vote. And also the conference committee generally agree with all but items 2 and 3. That was the one where there was lingering debate. But there was not a formal vote where you could say who precisely was against the point. Professor Link: What were the objections to item 3? We discussed 2. But what were the objections to 3? Professor Peacock: I think on the whole the objection to 3 was whether there needed to be any higher level review. Everyone seemed happy with the first level. And then the debate was more whether there needs to be something above that.
Professor Bill Campbell (School of Pharmacy): That wasn’t quite my recollection, Jim. I think, at least my recollection was, there was an agreement that a review at a higher level was appropriate and necessary, but it was not clear where that review would be. And I think, actually, it was internally inconsistent as you note here; I mean, it says the request be brought to the Chancellor, and yet in Questions and Answers it says, it responds to a question, that it will be brought to the next level higher, which based upon the Chancellor’s remarks today, would be the Associate Vice Chancellor. So, I’d like to clarify that. There certainly was not an intent that a higher level review was inappropriate, but it was the feeling that it would be the next level up, not jumping several steps. Professor Brown: Further discussion on #3?
Professor Leonard: Is it appropriate at this point to propose an amendment to #3? Professor Brown: Yes. Professor Leonard: I’d like to propose the following amendment to #3. With the amendment it would read as follows:
Issues concerning policies can be brought to the faculty committee at the dean or director’s level (or equivalent). Issues concerning policies and their implementation unresolved at that level may at the request of unit faculty be brought to the Chancellor, who, in consultation with the Advisory Committee, will be the final arbiter.
Again, the arguments in defense of this would be the same as I made in defense of the implementation. Professor Brown: So you’re inserting that phrase in the second sentence after “Issues”. Issues concerning policies and their implementation unresolved at that level…. Is that right? That’s an amendment. You’re proposing that as an amendment. Is there a second to that amendment? [seconded] Any discussion on that amendment?
Professor Pamela Conover (Political Science): I support this amendment, and I supported the last amendment that failed. Not because I’m convinced that we know what’s going to happen. I don’t think we do. But because I’m convinced that it’s an experiment in faculty governance worth trying. And I would draw your attention to the very last paragraph which says these mechanisms are provisional. They will be reviewed in two years. And that provides ample opportunity for us to see whether they will have a bad effect or a good effect. I think it’s modest experiment, and a modest step, and I would urge those of you who voted against a similar amendment for the second one to reconsider. I think this is simply a two-year experiment in faculty governance. If it fails in two years we can come back here to this room and say, “Let’s change it” — or we can come back and endorse it. It is not final and it’s not fixed.
Professor Calhoun: I would remind everyone that this amendment, which I support, would not materially change what is possible, but only affirm what is already possible, that is, that issues, including issues concerning implementation, may be brought to the Chancellor. I think it is already the case, as everyone is aware, that issues concerning policies and their implementation in the University may be brought to the Chancellor. He appears before us in this gathering regularly and hears us bring concerns about various policies and their implementation. It is no extraordinary tying of the hands of department chairs or any other administrators to suggest that faculty members in their units can bring their concerns to higher level administrators for review.
Professor John Workman (Business School): Maybe I’m naive. I’m just trying to understand what implementation means now. Before implementation meant the committee reviewed implementation. As I understand it now, if an individual person has a grievance, they can ask for review by a higher up of the implementation but not by that faculty committee? I’m just trying to understand what this amendment is about. Professor Brown: Miles? Professor Miles Fletcher: I don’t interpret the amendment that way. The amendment concerns, and actually all of #3 concerns, issues relating to policies, not an individual grievance. So if, in other words, if an individual has a concern about policies within his or her unit and/or in the way in which that policy is being implemented, the individual can bring that concern to the school or college committee. It’s not an individual salary issue. It’s policy issue. Professor Workman: But also concern about implementation of that policy. But again, the point is, before it was the committee at the department level really doing that, that implementation. This time it’s being reviewed by a higher up. Is that correct? Professor Fletcher: No. Number 2 refers to the committee at the school or college level, and so does #3. That’s how I understand it, refers to the committee at the school or college level and then if it’s unresolved there goes further up. Professor Brown: That’s right. Professor Fletcher: You still look puzzled by it. Professor Workman: Yeah, I am. Professor Leonard: Perhaps I should clarify my amendment? My intention here was not to hamper individual faculty members in any way or to perhaps enhance their opportunities in any way. In fact, this particular amendment concerns, as Miles suggested, nothing more than issues pertaining to the implementation of the policy itself. So in an individual grievance process, I can only, I assume, bring a grievance on my own behalf. However, if I feel that colleagues in my department, or perhaps colleagues in the school of which I’m a member, have been in some way aggrieved by this process, I could bring that to the attention of the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee — or to the school.
Professor Farel: It would help me a great deal if I had a specific example of something that could be brought up under the amendment that could not be brought out without the amendment. I’m having trouble thinking about what it actually means. Professor Leonard: I don’t think we need to do this. We have reports available through, from information provided by the Office of Institutional Research showing the extent of inequities on campus. I’m sure it would be valuable for us to give specific examples about individual cases in this venue. Professor Brown: Well, can you give us…. Professor Leonard: Okay, here’s a… Professor Brown: Don’t name names. Professor Leonard: Here’s a generic example. You have a department in which you have 4 full professors, 4 associate professors, 4 assistant professors. You have three new hires in a year. Every one of the new hires is brought in at a salary greater than, say, two of the lowest paid associate professors. That seems to me to be the kind of example in which these concerns would be applicable.
Professor Calhoun: I still support the amendment, but I think Steve’s example may be misleading. The amendment, again, I would assert does not open any class of actions which would not already be possible. It just clarifies that actions could be brought with regard to implementation matters as well as other issues. Secondly, it only would be the case that the objection that Steve brought outlined could be brought forward if in fact the unit policy indicated that that was inappropriate. If the unit policy said it is the policy of this unit to trust the chair no matter what the chair does in all salary matters, then it would be inappropriate to bring that grievance, although I think one might bring different grievances about the creation of the policy. In general, right, grievances are talked about, they’re not grievances, excuse me. Issues are heard about the policies. The departments or other units have the opportunity to set whatever kind of policies they and their leadership arrive at in a process of consultation. The question is, if we raise one about implementation, are those policies being implemented? We are not opening the door to people going back to principles of natural law to fight the established pattern.
Professor Farel: I’d just like to ask, are we clear what we’re voting on? It seems there are two different interpretations of the amendment. Professor Brown: How do I assess that? Professor Bose: Well, I beg to differ a bit with Craig. The amendment was in the first sentence of #3, not in the second. [chorus of no’s] Then we now are all clear on that. [laughter]
Professor Sue Estroff (Anthropology and Social Medicine): I’d just like to flip the question around as I’m thinking about it in my own mind. And think, all of us, before we vote, about what it says about us that we can’t or won’t vote for this. Professor Brown: For it? Professor Estroff: For this amendment. And I’m not going to take a position either way, but I’m thinking long and hard about being here and giving my energy to this place and being a part of this community, and what it means about us that we won’t adopt the spirit and the letter of the previous amendment and this amendment. And I’d just like, before we vote, ask people to reflect on that just for a moment and see if that has any effect on the take you have on what this means.
Professor Brown: Any further discussion on this amendment. Unidentified person: Call the question. Professor Brown: All those in favor of stopping debate on this, this is the amendment concerning policies and their implementation, inserted in here, all those in favor of stopping discussion say aye. Anybody opposed. Okay very great. So we will now vote on the amendment that reads in the second sentence of #3, it reads, Issues concerning policies and their implementation unresolved at that level may at the request of unit faculty be brought to the Chancellor, who, in consultation with the Advisory Committee, will be the final arbiter. Okay. All those in favor of the amendment, say aye. All those opposed say, no. I think the ayes have it. Very good. Anything further on #3?
And #4? Professor Link: Is it clear that an individual grievance about salary would be taken to the Faculty Grievance Committee? If so, have those, in fact, been taken? Professor Brown: Can anybody speak to that, who’s been on the Grievance Committee? There’s Jack Semonche. Professor Jack Semonche (History)(Chairman of the Faculty Grievance Committee): The answer to that is yes and no. Yes, a grievance can be taken; no, a grievance can’t be remedied. Professor Brown: Say again. Professor Semonche: A grievance can be taken to the Faculty Grievance Committee, but as a practical matter, it can’t be remedied. Professor Brown: Remedied. Professor Semonche: And if you want some clarification, I’ll give it to you in a moment. But let me ask, Jane, first of all, whether I can propose an amendment as a non-Faculty Council member. Professor Brown: Yes you can because you’re an ex officio member as chair of a standing committee. Professor Semonche: Then I’d like to, in responding to Ron’s question, and also responding to proposition 4, or provision 4, make an amendment that would delete 4 from this list of mechanisms. And I do that for a couple of reasons. One, it’s not a mechanism to implement anything, and therefore is irrelevant. Secondly, it is, at best, misleading. And at worst, mischievous. And I mean to address really the latter point and respond to Ron. We have had as far as I can determine, from a perusal of the records, one case that came to a hearing over the last 10 years dealing with an individual grievance about salary. That individual also responded to the survey our Committee conducted last year and said he was convinced on the basis of that experience that the problem could not be remedied dealing with individual cases. Now, individual cases before the Grievance Committee. The Provost has recently asked for grievances based upon inequity due to compression. And maybe he thought he was going to get a few commuter planes worth of cases, instead of a couple of 727s. The Grievance Committee, as a practical matter, has found, over a decade, that it really cannot deal with individual grievances because the problem is systemic and is general, and these principles should be designed to recognize the fact that that is clear with anybody who has dealt with this problem over the last 4 or 5, 6 or 7 years. And therefore I move that 4 be deleted. Professor Brown: Is there a second for that amendment? [seconded]
Professor Pfaff: Point of order. I would like to be recognized on a matter, that this is a point of order. Professor Brown: Yes. Professor Pfaff: I think it is really true that you can’t make an amendment which runs directly counter to the purpose of that which is being amended. You can’t make an amendment which says in effect, no, to what, as opposed to yes. So I think the amendment is out of order. Professor Brown: So you can’t make an amendment to delete something. Professor Pfaff: It’s a contrary sense of the motion. Professor Brown: Craig, are we talking about parliamentary procedure? Professor Calhoun: I wish we were. The motion on the floor is not a motion to approve item 4 is it? Professor Brown: No, the motion is… Professor Calhoun: It is a motion to approve the entire document and therefore the amendment which calls for striking out item 4 would not be out of order or directly contrary to the motion to approve the entire document. Professor Pfaff: That would be up to the person who proposed the entire report. It would be Jim Peacock’s call. Professor Peacock: I think we should entertain the amendment and vote on it, discuss it and vote on it. Professor Brown: Does that satisfy you, Dick? Professor Pfaff: Yes. Professor Brown: Is there a second to the amendment? [seconded] Okay. Professor Pfaff: Okay, now I’ll speak in favor of the amendment. [laughter] I do think that this is a false step to include the grievance procedure here, for the reason primarily now that we’ve opened this great Pandora’s Box of making all of these discussions a lot more public, we really mustn’t tie one hand — I’m going to mix metaphors horribly here in a minute — one hand of the discussion behind the back in terms of the confidentiality that the Grievance Committee must maintain — so that a grievant can express with any degree of publicity his or her grievance. But the Grievance Committee cannot be asked to respond publicly, and so you have no way of knowing whether the Grievance Committee would be performing its, would be issuing responses which were consistent. So I think the degree of secrecy that the Grievance Committee necessarily has in dealing with other kinds of grievances runs counter to the thrust of what we’re trying to do with this discussion. Professor Brown: Any further comment about this? This amendment?
Professor Christopher Armitage (English): I hope in 1996 it’s not an offense to turn my back on the throne. Professor Brown: Please do. [laughter] I’d like to support Professor Semonche’s proposal to delete item #4. And since the Grievance Committee is a personnel matter, all its issues are conducted in camera, and one hopes, secrecy, whereas in great danger I will introduce the “c” word, “comparability,” even though the Chancellor obviously is not very happy with it. But comparability is obviously the very essence of this matter. It’s already been alluded to by my friend over there. But one of the things which so agitates many of us is finding, for example, new associate professors hired at salaries greatly above long-serving, for two and three decades, full professors, that when this news leaks out, fear and loathing creeps through the department, and that comparability should be the very essence of these discussions. And therefore I support Professor Semonche’s suggestion. [the question was called] Professor Brown: All those in favor of stopping discussion on this amendment, say, aye. Opposed. Very good. We’ll vote. The amendment is to delete #4. All those in favor of deleting # 4, say, aye. Any opposed. Okay. Number 4 is gone. Thank you.
Number 5. Any discussion about #5? Professor Evens: I think #5 is important to emphasize. Professor Brown: You need to speak up a bit, Terry. Professor Evens: You need to make this information public, but nevertheless I would like to propose an amendment. I would like to see the following sentence added. Simply, .. Professor Brown: Where would it be? Professor Evens: At the end. Well, there’s only one sentence. Professor Brown: Oh, you’re right. Professor Evens: It would be a second sentence. It would read: “The base salary figures for each faculty member should be archived and the data in the archives made available in Davis Library and any other appropriate location on campus. ” And this seems, I think, a simple matter. My concerns are 1, it’s time to remove the stigma from people who want to examine this material, and 2, for obvious reasons it seems very important that material this time be ready at hand if we’re to help promote fairness in the salary structure. Professor Brown: Could you read it again, Terry? Professor Evens: Well, it should be something like that. I didn’t write it out terribly carefully. I said, “The base salary figures for each faculty member should be archived and the archives should be made available in Davis Library and any other appropriate location on campus.” Professor Brown: Is there a second? [seconded] And discussion?
Professor Gooder: I’d ask you to define what you mean by “base salary.” The point is my dean [may complain](?) that I was running a department, but there is no such term in our Code and no such figure. Professor Evens: Let me, I want to read something from the previous mechanisms, which perhaps may help. It said, “The data should identify the permanent base salary of each faculty member that”…..sorry, there was something there, it concerned, there are so many different figures, as you go now to the materials and you look, it is very, very difficult to determine what an exact salary is of a faculty member. You can’t tell the supplements, you can’t even tell exactly what [is reported](?). And I’m asking for some clarification of that in the records and that it be made available.
Professor Melissa Bullard (History): I’d like to speak in favor of that amendment for some very practical reasons, namely, that for people who have been working with this data it’s very important to have runs of data over more than just one year. The present information that’s made available, with all its imperfections, is only for a current year. Therefore, if we have this data archived, it will be possible for people, people in the Office of Institutional Research, for example, to be able to consult more readily information for periods of years which, after all, is the vital data that one needs to understand and compute compression and inequities. You can’t do it just on the basis of one year data. So archiving the information would make more years’ information available.
Professor Peacock: The difficulty of defining a term such as “base salary” was one of the reasons why we simplified it and left it up to the Office of Institutional Research to figure out how to define and make available. As the mover of this, I would regard as a friendly amendment something more or less like Terry’s but perhaps deleting the word “base.” Professor Brown: Good. Terry, do you accept that as a friendly amendment? Professor Evens: Yes. Professor Brown: So we take out the word “base.” So now we’re discussing an amendment that says, the sentence, “The salary figures for each faculty member should be archived and the archives should be made available in Davis Library and other appropriate locations.” Professor Peacock: It’s a friendly amendment. I’ve accepted it. Professor Brown: We’re not voting on that, right? We’ve just revised the amendment. We’ve taken out “base.”
Provost Dick Richardson: I asked that all the data, current data, be moved from Airport Road to Davis Library, and this has happened only this year, making accessibility of these data to the faculty easier. We don’t have archival material on them unless you want us to just move books from former years. And I acknowledge Terry’s concern about trying to figure out base salaries. We have a horrendous time figuring that out ourselves. But the best that we can do with Institutional Research, I feel fairly confident right now, is to move data books from other years that are comparable to what we have right now. But we can’t archive it in a way that’s, in a format that’s different, given the sort of situation we’re in. Professor Brown: Can it be done in the future? Professor Richardson: I will be happy to talk to Tim [Dr. Timothy Sanford, Director of Institutional Research] about in the future possibly making some sort of archival data of bases. But there’s not any possibility we can get a history of this differently than what we have. Professor Brown: But we could begin. Is that right? Professor Richardson: I’m willing to ask somebody to try it. But it’s certainly difficult to get that material in a format differently than the way we can turn it out for everything else.
Professor Gooder: I would wonder if the proposer and also Professor Peacock would accept it should be in both Health Affairs Library as well as Davis Library? Professor Brown: Would that be considered “other appropriate locations?” Professor Evens: Absolutely.
Professor Brown: Anything else? This is on the amendment to #5. Do I need to read that again, or is everybody clear about that? Okay. The amendment is: The salary figures for each faculty members should be archived and the archives should be made available in Davis Library and other appropriation locations. Professor Peacock: And Health Affairs. Professor Brown: Davis Library and Health Sciences Library and other appropriate locations. Okay. All those in favor of that amendment, say aye. Any opposed, say no. Very great. Any further discussion about #5? Very good.
Number 6: regular evaluation of deans. Professor Kasson: I’d like to propose an amendment. I’m going to have to propose and run, I’m afraid, because I have to go pick up my daughter, but– . The spirit of this amendment is simply to expand a little bit the question of who would do the appraisal of the performance in implementing the salary policies. And to suggest that after the word “appraisal” be added the phrase “by the elected faculty committee as in number 2 above.” And this would suggest that this elected faculty committee, which has now reviewed the policies and is well aware of what they are, can do a report that would be part of the appraisal of the performance of deans, chairs, and other unit heads. The regular committees that do those appraisals have many things to consider. And those evaluations proceed on many, many fronts. But the elected faculty committees are aware of what the policies are and what the issues are regarding them. So, the amendment would be to add that the regular evaluation should be by the elected faculty committee as in number 2 above. Professor Brown: As in #2 above. Okay. Is there a second? [seconded] So we would insert “include an appraisal by the elected faculty committee as in number 2 above.” Discussion of the amendment.
Professor Richardson: I appreciate Joy’s concern, but I hope everyone would recognize that we have a process by which this appraisal is done that includes, in all, the faculty. I come to the faculty chair and seek members. We appoint that upon her advice. This appraisal is done over a six-week period. Incredibly intense. And they have a number of things that they can look to — for example, the individual’s relationship with minority hires, female faculty — a number of things that they must make an evaluation on. This would require simultaneous evaluation by another committee during this same period of the individual. We have, according to our document, only a six-week frame within which it has to be done. Now, it doesn’t matter to me whether we have two committees or not, but I think we should be aware that this would put two committees poring over of the same data and certainly poring over the same dean.
Professor Bullard: I’d like to make perhaps a point of clarification. I don’t think the spirit of this amendment in any way is to design another committee which would duplicate the efforts of the committee that you have just pointed to, Dick. I think it would provide one piece of data, which that committee would be very well placed to do, to this larger committee that would be looking at all facets of the performance. There would be just one piece, and it seems a very logical addition to this process.
Professor Pike: I’m confused about something that perhaps I ought not to be confused about, that being a characteristic of a lot of the entire discussion. Regular evaluations of deans, chairs, and other unit heads: are we in every instance talking about an evaluation that occurs once every five years? Now I’m assuming in the case of deans that that is in fact true, but is that also true in every instance of an evaluation of a unit head, that is only occurs when that person is to be presumably reappointed or not to a second term. Professor Brown: Dick, can you clarify that. Are chairs evaluated regularly, five years? Provost Richardson: The evaluation that we do at the dean level, of course, and actually it’s done in the first semester of the fourth year in a five-year appointment. So it’s not at the end of the five-year period. I’d ask the Dean of Arts and Sciences to tell us about the evaluation process for chairs. Obviously, if you’re not going to be reappointed or if you seek not reappointment, you’re not going to be evaluated on this score. Evaluations are on appointment or reappointment. Dean Stephen Birdsall (College of Arts and Sciences): I guess I’d say that the only formal evaluation is done at the end of the first individual chair’s term in which he or she might be considered for reappointment. There are, of course, informal opportunities for input but you are right. Formal evaluations, it’s either in the fifth year or if the chair decides to step down early, then in the 3rd year or 4th year or whatever. But usually if they’re stepping down, of course, there wouldn’t be a reappointment until the fifth year.
Professor Bose: Yes, this really is to mind where success in implementation is most likely to reviewed in detail and we can have a real impact on someone who doesn’t perform and who ignores policies that have been developed in a consultative capacity. And I appreciate that this committee might be a very valuable partner in this scheme. I wonder, though, the fear I would have is if they pull all of this information together in a very detailed fashion, hand it over in a report, and it would be diluted out because the primary committee hadn’t really put the effort into it. I really think that the committee that does the evaluation ought to collect the information, see the source documents, be part of the process. And I think it might be more meaningful if done by that committee, that is, the committee that reviews chairs and deans. I’d hate to see this report and information diluted out by virtue of its collection and consolidation by another committee.
Professor Bullard: Just in response to Carl’s point. I think that a lot would depend on how the committee that was appointed used the material offered by this committee. And it would certainly be a tremendous advantage to that committee to have this material available and to have an added group of elected faculty who have considered these issues help decide a particular agenda of the department or unit. I think it would be tremendously helpful. Professor Brown: Further discussion on the amendment to include “by the elected faculty committee as in #2 above.”
Professor Catharine Newbury (Political Science & African and Afro-American Studies): I was a member of the University Salary Committee that met last year and submitted a report in the spring. The committee chaired by Jack Evans. And it was very sobering in going through the material that that committee gathered to realize just how serious the problems of equity and the problems of salary compression are in certain units in this University and certain divisions. And so I think that the more teeth that we can put in these mechanisms the better. And I strongly support Joy Kasson’s suggested amendment because I think it’s important that this elected committee have something to do. And they would gather, they would gain expertise and be able to put together information in terms of the implementation, and I fully concur with what Melissa said about how that expertise could then be shared with the review committee that is set up at these five-year intervals. So I strongly support the amendment.
Professor Pike: A quick addition. I would like to stress the “and other unit heads” here, that seems to be being forgot a little bit in our concentration of other somewhat more formalized processes of evaluation. But there is no committee that evaluates a departmental chair and considers whether or not the chair should be reappointed. I think it’s a fairly informal process that’s involved in the consideration of a reappointment of a department chairship. Maybe, and I’m just talking about Arts and Sciences. Well, then, if nothing else, then, we need to make this even more complicated than it is already, but I wouldn’t see how we could be hurt by having those people. I guess in this case it would be the dean who was reviewing a particular departmental chair solicit information from this particular committee with respect to that particular chairman’s performance. But I’ll — there are ambiguities here that I’m not aware of; I’ll let other people address them.
Professor Mike Lienesch (Political Science): I want to respond to Carl’s point. For four weeks in January I was on a very hard working dean’s review committee. And as a practical matter, for we were very ably chaired by Pete Andrews, who’s sitting next to me, as a practical matter, I can’t imagine that we could have done what Carl suggests in gathering that kind of material. We had plenty to do and spent a lot of time diddling all the other things we had to do. And as a practical matter I think it would be very helpful to committees like that to have that material made available. Professor Brown: Any further comments? So we have an amendment that we will vote on here that inserts, as I have it:
Regular evaluations of deans, chairs and other unit heads should include an appraisal by the elected faculty committee as in #2 above of their performance in implementing the salary policies for which they have direct administrative responsibility.
So we are voting on this piece: by the elected faculty committee as in #2 above. That’s the amendment. All those in favor of the amendment, say aye. All those opposed, say no. Very good. That’s carried.
Any further comment about #6? Any further comment about the final paragraph that makes all of this provisional?
Professor Peacock: This is in response to Joseph Ferrell’s proposed amendment #2. Professor Brown: That you all have a copy of. It was available when you came in. Professor Peacock: It seems to me that the final paragraph makes it unnecessary because this set of, this policy is provisional and should it become permanent and, therefore, the Code need to be changed, then Joe’s amendment seems relevant. But at this point it does not seem necessary. Professor Brown: Anybody else want to say anything else about that? Okay. We did it. We are ready to vote on the original motion.
Professor Link: Is discussion on? I’d like to propose an amendment which basically simply would allow any unit to elect out of the mechanisms by a super majority vote. It would read: “Any unit may elect by a two-thirds majority of those present and voting not to be bound by the mechanisms, in which event the unit may adopt any mechanisms or no mechanisms at all.” Professor Brown: Do you have a copy of that, so I can… Okay. New amendment. Do I have a second for that amendment? Should I read it again? Do I have a second for the amendment? [seconded] The amendment is:
Any unit may elect by a two-thirds majority of those present and voting not to be bound by the mechanisms, in which event the unit may adopt any mechanisms or no mechanisms at all.
There is a second. Comment on this amendment. Professor Gooder: Two-thirds of whom? It doesn’t say “faculty.” Professor Brown: Majority of those present. Professor Link: I borrowed the language from the Faculty Code, actually. It would be up to the unit, whoever’s entitled to vote in the unit. Professor Brown: So the intent is faculty in the unit? Professor Link: It’s whoever’s entitled to vote in the unit, which would be faculty, I assume. Professor Brown: Okay. Professor Gooder: May I add to my reason for asking it? There is much debate in many units as to the voting privileges of full-time, part-time, and fixed-term faculty. Hence, my reason. I think you can’t just lift it from The Faculty Code. That applies solely to essentially full-time faculty. And I think one has to specify who would be allowed to vote in passing such a resolution. Professor Link: Who’s present, entitled to vote, and voting. Does that take care of your concerns? Professor Brown: How do you want to change it? Professor Link: It would be “of those present, who are entitled to vote, and voting.” Something like that. Professor Brown: Okay. Since that’s been seconded, what do we need to do? Professor Peacock: We need to discuss it. Professor Brown: Now we’re discussing that amendment to the amendment? Is that a friendly amendment, Ron? That you just accept it? Okay, fine. Very great.
Professor Peacock: If that passes, then I take it, item, and it’s — if the whole thing passes, plus the amendment, then item 3, I believe, would permit a faculty member to bring to the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee as an issue that their unit did not have mechanisms. In which case the Advisory Committee perhaps could recommend that they create mechanisms.
Professor Laurie McNeil (Physics and Astronomy): One step back from Jim’s point is that there are certainly plenty of units in Arts and Sciences, at least in which the only legal voting members on issues are full professors.
Professor Leonard: I’d like to ask Professor Link why two thirds? Why not say a full consensus, given the importance of these considerations to the individual well being of faculty? Why not make it required that every voting member of the unit choose to opt out? Why two thirds? Professor Link: Simple, clear, traditional, super majority requirement.
Professor Calhoun: I would like to propose an amendment to Professor Link’s amendment. A second sentence which should read: “Upon such a vote the unit shall be determined to have seceded from the University.” [laughter and applause] [seconded] Professor Brown: Was that serious, Craig? Read it, say it again. Professor Calhoun: “Upon such a vote that unit shall be determined to have seceded from the university community.” Professor Brown: Any — this is getting ridiculous. We will now have discussion about this amendment. The second sentence that says, “Upon such a vote the unit shall be determined to have seceded from the University.” Correct? It has been seconded. Discussion about this? Professor Link: Let me speak to my proposal. Professor Brown: You have to speak to this amendment, please. Anyone else who would like to speak to this amendment?
Professor Leonard: I’d like to speak in favor of the amendment. [laughter] I think that, again, given the importance of these issues for all of us, those of us in other units of the University ought to be concerned with the well-being of faculty members in units that choose to secede. So, whether those units decide by two-thirds majority or not, I would speak in favor of the amendment precisely because those units would have effectively declared themselves to be quite independent of the concerns of the rest of the University.
Professor Pete Andrews (Environmental Sciences & Engineering): It might, in fact, be able in the six or eight minutes left to emphasize the importance of getting back to take a vote on the final question. I call the question on this, and would urge we need to call the question on the previous amendment as well. Professor Brown: Okay. Very good. All those in favor of calling the question on the amendment to the amendment, say aye. All those opposed. It passes. We’re now going to vote on the amendment to the amendment, which reads, add on a second sentence, “Upon such a vote the unit shall be determined to have seceded from the University.” All those in favor of that amendment, say, aye. All those opposed, say, no. I think the ayes have it. Very good. Now.. [the question was called] Thank you. All those in favor of calling the question for the original amendment, as amended, please say aye. [passed] We’re now going to vote on the amendment proposed by Professor Link, and I’ll read it to you:
Any unit may elect, by a two-thirds majority of those present who are entitled to vote and voting not be bound by the mechanisms. In which event the unit may adopt any mechanisms or no mechanisms at all. Upon such a vote the unit shall be determined to have seceded from the University community.
All those in favor of that amendment, say, aye. All those opposed. It did not pass. Further conversation about it, as a whole. Professor Link: I would agree — is it Steve? — I would agree with Steve’s point that we ought to respect each other and each other’s units. That was precisely the point. We have diversity of practice, diversity of viewpoint. I find a certain irony in the Chair of the Faculty’s expression of concerns about attempts to impose a very administrative onerous burden on all sixteen campuses and not to recognize the unique aspects of each campus, which I think is a common theme coming from Faculty Council deliberations. And Jack Boger can say it better than I but he wasn’t able to be here today. The point is our system in the Law School works well. We have no problems with the way our system functions, with the way our dean functions, with the way all the deans in my memory have functioned on this issue. And I’m very sympathetic with what must be the problems in other units judging from the intensity of feelings expressed. We’re very concerned about this “one size fits all” approach. We’re concerned about creating friction in our unit where there is none. You know, if this to be an experiment in faculty governance, shouldn’t we have a control group that isn’t subject to these requirements? If we’re going to respect diversity of viewpoint, why don’t we respect diversity of a unit viewpoint? The principles have been referred to as clear and defensible. I’ve called the body’s attention to the fact that the principles, when passed in November, had not been approved for lo 15 seconds when somebody raised a question about what they meant with respect to diversity and whether that was to play in. We have very grave concerns about what these principles will really work out to in practice, and I close with two comments. One, and this one to somebody earlier’s request for illustrations — Professor Calhoun: Is this a filibuster or a comment? Professor Link: I had said I was closing with two comments. And if you want to shut me off, then fine. I’m closing with two comments. First is, is apropos of Jack Semonche’s motion. If there indeed is no venue for an individual grievance inevitably they will be forced into the straitjacket of claiming that that individual grievance really reflected a systemic grievance and they’ll come into this process. And the other comment I would make is that what one of my colleagues said, he brought this up for discussion. He said it looked to him like something imposed by a lawyer on somebody he didn’t like.
Professor Brown: Any further comments? [question was called] All those in favor of calling the question; I’m sorry do I have to have a second on that? Professor Lensing: No. Professor Brown: All those in favor of ending discussion on the full body of mechanisms at this point, say, aye. Any opposed, say no. Professor Conover: Point of information. What have we done with amendment 2 of the so-called Joe Ferrell amendments? Professor Peacock: We decided not to present it because it is unnecessary. Professor Brown: Okay. We are prepared to vote on the amended mechanisms. Let me remind you of what we’ve done. Number 1 remains as stands. Number 2 remains as stands. Number 3 we have inserted a phrase right after “issues” in the second sentence that says, “Issues concerning policies and their implementation.” Number 4 has been deleted. In number 5 we have added a sentence after the existing sentence that says: “The salary figures for each faculty member should be archived and the archives should be made available in Davis Library and the Health Sciences Library and other appropriate locations.” In number 6 we have added the phrase “after appraisal by the elected faculty committee as in #2 above.” Am I correct? We have one minute to vote. Okay. All those in favor of the amended mechanisms, say aye. All those opposed say no. We did it. [applause] [The Mechanisms to Implement Salary Principles as amended and adopted are attached.]
Professor Bullard: I’d like to read a quick statement of thanks to go into the minutes, for the last 30 seconds. Professor Brown: Okay. Professor Bullard: Or shall I just submit it for the minutes. Professor Brown: Just submit it. [Professor Bullard’s Statement is below.]
The meeting adjourned at 5:45 p.m.
George S. Lensing
Secretary of the Faculty
