September 11, 1998
Meeting of the General Faculty and Faculty Council
Friday, September 11, 1998, 3:00 p.m.
Assembly Room, 2nd Floor, Wilson Library
Chancellor Michael Hooker will preside. Attendance of elected Council members is required.
Agenda
INFO 3:00 Remarks by Chancellor Hooker.
INFO 3:15 Question Period. [The Chancellor invites questions or comments on any topic.]
ACT 3:20 Presentation of Hettleman Awards. Chancellor Hooker.
INFO 3:25 Remarks by Reyna Walters, President of the Student Body.
INFO 3:35 Remarks by Professor George Wahl, Chair of the Faculty, N.C. State University.
INFO 3:45 State of the Faculty Report. Professor Richard N. (Pete) Andrews, Chair of the Faculty.
INFO 4:00 Faculty Council Procedures and Expectations. Joseph S. Ferrell, Secretary of the Faculty.
ACT 4:15 Report on the Task Force on Student Reviews in Teaching Evaluation. Abigail Panter for Douglas G. Kelly, Chair. Resolution 98-9. Authorizing continuing use of the Carolina Course Review on an interim basis for one year.
ACT 4:30 Recommendation to create the Faculty Information Technology Advisory Committee as a standing committee of the faculty.
DISC 4:40 Report of the Tuition Policy Task Force, Second Draft. Provost Richard Richardson.
INFO 5:00 Announcements. A forum with the Faculty Council and the general faculty will be held September 23 to consider the central campus plan, with the firm of Ayers Saint Gross. The forum will be held in the Wilson Library Assembly Room at 3:30 p.m.
ACT 5:05 Adjournment.
Joseph S. Ferrell
Secretary of the Faculty
KEY:
ACT = Action
INFO = Information
DISC = Discussion
Minutes
Attendance
Present (57): Adler, Angel, Black, Blackburn, Bluestein, Bolas, Carl, Clegg, Collins, Cordeiro-Stone, Cravey, Dalton, Daye, Debreczeny, Devellis, Elvers, Estroff, Fink, Fishman, Fox, Grossberg, Hattem, Hooper, Huang, Jackson, Johnson, Kjervik, LeFebvre, Lubker, Ludlow, Madison, McKeown, Meehan-Black, Molina, Newton, Nord, Owen, Pagano, Panter, Passannante, Pfaff, Plante, Postema, Powell, Raab-Traub, Rabinowitz, Raper, Rosenfeld, Schaller, Sekerak, Straughan, Strauss, Taft, Thorp, Tysinger, Vevea, White.
Excused absences (28):Bandiwala, Bender, Covach, Eckel, Favorov, Foshee, Gasaway, Graham, Graves, Harrison, Haskill, Holmgren, Kaufman, Lentz, Levine, Lord, Maffly-Kipp, Margolis, Marshall, Melchert, Mill, Moreau, Platin, Shea, Steponaitis, Weiss, Werner, Williams.
Unexcused absences (1): Bowen.
Chancellor’s Remarks
Freshman class.
Chancellor Hooker reported that the Class of 2002 is the best freshman class we have had. Average SAT scores are up considerably over last year and applications increased by 1,200. There were 17,250 applicants for 3,400 slots. The percentage of applicants who accepted our offer of admission also increased for the second straight year. One result of that is that we began the semester with 187 students sleeping in temporary quarters. We are slowly finding space for them but 42 students are still waiting for rooms.
Chancellor’s Cabinet.
The Chancellor welcomed to the University the new vice chancellor for administration, James Ramsey, who comes to us from his former position as budget director for the State of Kentucky. Dr. Ramsey, whose discipline is economics, has been on the faculty of Western Kentucky University. Many of the administrative assignments formerly held by the executive vice chancellor have been assigned to Dr. Ramsey. Others have been transferred to the provost or retained by the chancellor. The administrative officers who now constitute the Chancellor’s Cabinet are: Dick Richardson, provost; Susan Ehringhaus, general counsel; Brenda Kirby, secretary of the University; Sue Kitchen, vice chancellor for student affairs; Matt Kupek, vice chancellor for university advancement; Marian Moore, vice chancellor for information technology; Tom Meyer, vice provost for graduate studies; and Jim Ramsey, vice chancellor for administration. The cabinet is meeting weekly and working on problems collectively.
Campus master plan.
A study that will culminate in a master plan for the central campus is now being undertaken with the aid of a consulting firm, Ayers/Saint/Gross. The study will take about eighteen months. The plan will take cognizance of the availability of the Horace Williams tract for future expansion. It will not supercede the existing plan for the tract, which identifies areas suitable for development, but it will address functions and activities that could be relocated to that area.
Enrollment.
The chancellor stated that Provost Richardson is chairing an Task Force on Enrollment Management that will address the issues involved in an expected cumulative increase of approximately 42,000 over the next decade in the number of people seeking access to higher education in North Carolina. A number of these people will be graduating high school seniors who will be enrolling as freshmen in the University System. Many of them will want to enroll at UNC-CH. The task force is considering options and assessing the impacts of growth to serve some share of this increase. We think it is important to establish some principles that would guide our expansion. One is that we do not want to change the existing ratio of undergraduate to graduate/professional students. Another is that we think it would be unwise to expand before we have faculty, classrooms, and housing to accommodate more students.
Advising.
Under Dean Palm’s leadership, the Carolina Advising Initiative is being put in place. We will be hiring ten full-time professional advisors and bringing in part-time advisors during peak periods, looking perhaps to retired faculty for the latter purpose. The provost has allocated an additional $300,000 to the College budget for this purpose. We are also recruiting a new senior associate dean for undergraduate education, among whose duties will be administration of the advising system.
Carolina Computing Initiative.
The chancellor expressed satisfaction with the progress to date of the Carolina Computing Initiative. The supply contract with IBM has made lap-top computers available to faculty and students at less than one-half of market price. Some 200 computers have already been sold under the contract. We are establishing a pilot program to provide computers and training for faculty to four departments in the College: Psychology, Economics, English, and Statistics.
Faculty salaries.
The chancellor said he would like to be able to tell the faculty what is going on in the General Assembly, “but I don’t know anybody who knows.” He does expect that the average faculty pay raise will be 3% once the budget is approved. That is good compared with inflation over the past 12 months, but it is inadequate in comparison to our benchmark institutions, especially the University of Virginia which is receiving an average pay increase of 5.2%. Our greatest area of weakness in comparison with peer institutions nationwide is faculty compensation. This will remain the chancellor’s highest priority in preparing for next year’s budget.
Hettleman Awards
The Hettleman Awards are presented annually in recognition of outstanding scholarly and/or artistic achievement by young faculty. Chancellor Hooker presented the 1998 awards to Professor Carolyn Connor, Department of Classics; Professor Dinesh Manocha, Department of Computer Science, and Professor Richard Superfine, Department of Physics and Astronomy. Professor Connor was recognized for her work on Byzantine society. Professor Manocha specializes in imaging, which is perhaps the greatest strength of our Computer Science department. Professor Superfine’s area of research is nanotube technology, a specialty that promises to be the most exciting area of materials science over the next decade.
Remarks by the President of the Student Body
Reyna Walters, President of the Student Body, addressed the Council. She expressed her warm support for the changes in the advising system that are being put in place. Ms. Walters then turned to the subject of faculty/student interaction which was one of the principal themes of her campaign. Plans are in place for making faculty/student interaction one of the themes of University Day. After the main ceremony, there will be a picnic for students, faculty, and staff. Later in the afternoon there will be a program that focuses on the history of University Day and directions for the future. Ms. Walters called attention to the meeting rooms in Lenoir Hall that have been specifically designed to facilitate faculty/student interaction. She hopes that faculty members will use these rooms occasionally for classes. Ms. Walters also mentioned the Major Decisions program which she wants to continue and expand. Finally, she called attention to the 1999 Special Olympics World Games. The student governments at UNC-CH and NC State will be actively engaged in fund-raising for this event. She asked for the faculty’s support.
Remarks by Prof. George Wahl, Chair of the Faculty, North Carolina State University
Prof. Wahl reported that he and Prof. Andrews have agreed that both UNC-CH and NCSU have much to gain by establishing lines of communication and cooperation between the two Research I institutions of The University System. Prof. Andrews has previously visited the Faculty Senate at NC State. Prof. Wahl is now pleased to return that visit. He has found it helpful to learn about how the UNC-CH Faculty Council operates. He and Prof. Andrews have had occasion to speak to members of the General Assembly about the importance of graduate education and they have met with President Broad to make a case for the special needs of Research I institutions. One area that may be ripe for mutual cooperation is the topic of faculty benefits. Another is the matter of interaction with boards of trustees, a topic that he and Prof. Andrews have discussed. Prof. Wahl noted that the provost at NCSU is retiring December 31, 1998. He invited nominees.
Chair of the Faculty’s Remarks
[The Faculty Code of University Government requires the chair of the faculty to report annually on the state of the faculty. The full text of Prof. Andrews’ reports for 1998 and 1997 can be found on the Faculty Governance web site. The following is a summary of this year’s report]Prof. Andrews recalled that he said when standing for election as chair of the faculty that his top priority would be to increase the constructive influence of the faculty in addressing both internal issues and external challenges and to articulate what the faculty believe to be outstanding and special about this university community. He listed a number of accomplishments in 1997-98:
Implementation of many recommendations of the Intellectual Climate Task Force, most notably the Freshman Seminars Program, the initiative in undergraduate advising, creation of a public service center and doubling the number of service learning courses, and new guidelines for considering public spaces in facility planning initiatives:
Creation of the University Priorities and Budget Committee
Establishment of a faculty Instructional Technology Advisory Committee
Changes in the hearings process for faculty dismissals
Adoption of a statement reaffirming the faculty’s commitment to diversity
Development of the Faculty Governance web site and use of email listserves to improve communication among faculty members.
He then turned to major issues that will come before the Faculty Council in the coming year. Among these are:
The outcome of the Board Governors’ study of tuition policy
The central campus plan
The work of the Task Force on Enrollment Growth
The work of the Ad Hoc Committee on Copyright
Results of a survey of faculty research needs undertaken by the Research Committee
Further implementation of the report of the Task Force on Intellectual Climate, especially those dealing with innovation and undergraduate teaching and student residential life.
Beyond these specific issues, Prof. Andrews drew attention to three broader matters that he commends to the faculty’s attention. First is the implications of information technology for our teaching. Not everyone will become involved in distance learning, but nearly everyone will need to prepare himself or herself to teach in a new environment of instant access to vast amounts of information and ways of sharing and manipulating it. We will need to teach our students how to use it appropriately and purposefully. That means that we must become familiar with the opportunities it affords in our own fields and to become discriminating critics of the ways in which it can overwhelm, distract, and mislead students. We will need to focus more than ever on the core elements of a university education that no computer can teach by itself, such as how to frame good questions for study, how to design good projects to answer them, how to critically evaluate information and opinions, how to draw logical inferences and construct strong arguments, how to distinguish meaning from mere information. Second, Prof. Andrews welcomes the possibility of cooperative initiatives with NC State. Finally, he invited ideas and suggestions as to how to shape the Council and faculty into a more effective and constructive force both within the University and beyond.
Faculty Council Procedures and Expectations
Prof. Ferrell, secretary of the faculty, briefed members of the Council on the nuts and bolts of Council membership and its modes of operation. He pointed out that the General Faculty (which includes everyone holding a faculty appointment) meets twice annually (September and April). Its principal function is to approve changes in the Faculty Code. All faculty members are welcome to attend and participate in Faculty Council meetings but voting rights are held only by elected members. He stressed that the Code wisely requires advance notice of any agenda item that will require a formal vote.
Prof. Ferrell said that it had been suggested that the Council might begin convening at 2:30 p.m. with adjournment planned for 4:30 p.m. as a convenience to members whose offices and parking spaces are distant from the usual central campus meeting place. There was little enthusiasm for the idea, so it will not be pursued at this time.
Report of the Task Force on Student Review in Teaching Evaluation
Prof. Boone Turchi presented the report of the task force. Prof. Turchi reviewed the reasoning that led the Council in March 1998 to adopt Resolution 98-3 providing that the Carolina Course Review is “disqualified as an instrument of official personnel evaluation.” Student evaluations of teaching have three important uses: (1) administrative evaluation of faculty performance, (2) production of a “consumer guide” for students to use in selecting courses, and (3) as a diagnostic tool to help instructors improve the quality of their courses. When the Educational Policy Committee addressed the issue in 1998, the CCR was actually being used only for the first of these purposes. The Committee found it unsuited for that purpose because the statistical measures being reported are invalid. After adoption of Resolution 98-3, it came to light that the board of trustees requires evidence of teaching evaluation when considering faculty personnel actions. Completely eliminating use of the Carolina Course Review with no replacement has caused difficulty because some departments have no other formal means of evaluating teaching in place at this time. The Advisory Committee appointed a task force to address the problem and its report is now before the Council. The recommendation, embodied in Resolution 98-9, is in two parts. The first part will authorize continued use of the Carolina Course Review for the 1998-99 academic year by departments who wish to do so, but without the invalid statistical measures that precipitated the previous Council action. The second part calls for formation of a new task force to develop a teaching evaluation system for future use.
Prof. Timothy McKeown (Political Science) questioned whether the wording of Resolution 98-9 as presented would allow use of CCR results from years prior to 1998-99 in tenure evaluations being conducted in the current year. After discussion of this point, the resolution was amended to make the second sentence read: “Use of the results from any year shall be confined to the raw score on each question and the median score in the class for each question.”
Prof. Robert Adler (Kenan-Flagler Business School) commended the task force for its work. He supports accountability and looks forward to improving our ability to evaluate teaching.
Prof. Rachel Rosenfeld (Sociology) suggested that it would be helpful to departments now engaged in tenure evaluations to have access to the task force report as a guide to how CCR data might be used.
At the conclusion of the discussion, Resolution 98-9 was adopted without dissent as follows:
Resolution 98-9. Authorizing Continued Use of the Carolina Course Review for One Year
The Faculty Council resolves:
Section 1. Notwithstanding the provisions of Resolution 98-3, adopted March 27, 1998, instructional units may continue to use the Carolina Course Review as one method of evaluating teaching during the 1998-99 academic year. Use of the results from any year shall be confined to the raw score on each question and the median score in the class for each question. Means and standard deviations of class scores shall not be reported. No norm-group percentiles shall be reported, nor shall the five summary statistics be reported.
Section 2. The Advisory Committee is requested to form a task force to design a system of evaluating teaching to be made available to instructional units for use beginning with the 1999-2000 academic year.
Section 3. Resolution 98-2, adopted March 27, 1998, concerning dissemination of results of the Carolina Course Review remains in effect.
Faculty Information Technology Advisory Committee
Dean Darryl Glees, chair of the Faculty Information Technology Advisory Committee (FITAC), presented on behalf of the committee a request that the committee be permanently established as a standing committee of the General Faculty.
Prof. Warren Newton (Family Medicine) asked about the relationship between FITAC and ongoing efforts in the Division of Health Affairs around a very similar issue. Dean Gless replied that the purpose of FITAC is to bring together people from all across the campus. Prof. Marila Cordeiro-Stone noted that the committee has no member from the School of Medicine. Dean Gless replied that this is being remedied.
The Council referred the matter to the Committee on University Government with the request that the committee take the request under advisement and report its advice to the Faculty Council.
Report of the Tuition Policy Task Force
Prof. Andrews initiated discussion of the second draft of the Board of Governors’ Task Force on Tuition Policy. Comments on this draft are due from each campus by September 21. Chancellor Hooker has asked Prof. Andrews to coordinate our response. Prof. Andrews pointed out a number of issues that strike him as important. The first is the clear distinction drawn in the report between undergraduate tuition and tuition for graduate and professional students. The document offers opportunities for more differentiated tuition at the graduate and professional level without necessarily affecting undergraduate tuition. Second, this draft proposes policy that would more sharply distinguish between tuition and fees. It would restrict or eliminate many fees for general academic and administrative support while leaving intact the opportunity to use fees as a dedicated revenue source for defined purposes. A major exception to this principle would be the education technology fee.
Prof. Tony Molina (Dental School) said that he has heard comments from one of the admissions directors in the Dental School that while our in-state tuition is among the lowest in the country our out-of-state tuition is among the highest. This now making it difficult for us to attract the brightest and best. He is concerned that further tuition increases would exacerbate the situation.
Prof. Andrews replied that the report does not commit anyone to increase tuition; rather, it establishes policy that would apply if that were to be contemplated.
Prof. Stanley Black (Economics) said that he reads the report as attempting to establish a systematic procedure for General Administration to consider the matter of tuition on a regular basis and to remove that issue, to a degree, from the legislative area.
Prof. Diane Kjervik (Nursing) noted that our ability to attract the best students is dependent, to some extent, on the availability of financial aid. She asked whether the report addresses that topic.
Prof. Andrews replied that the report includes recommendations for a Board of Governors study of need-based financial aid and reaffirms the principle of affordability, but nothing more specific on this subject.
Adjournment.
There being no further business, the Council adjourned.
Joseph S. Ferrell
Secretary of the Faculty
