January 24, 2005

Present: Rob Shakespeare (chair), Judith Anderson, Erik Bucy, Katy Fraser, Jeff Hart, Roger Levesque, Chuck Livingston, Al Ruesink (recorder), Pam Walters

The first meeting of the new semester convened at 2:30.

For the first part of the meeting, we considered issues for our spring agenda and generated a very tentative schedule. Topics include a faculty review committee proposal, the status of gender and minority and overall salary equity reviews, developments in publishing and their relation to promotions, and a review of older CPC policies. Potential sources of information about the issues were noted, both documents and guests. We also discussed CPC (College Policy Committee) involvement in the planning meetings that Dean Zaret will be holding with department chairs and institute directors. We decided to send CPC representatives to perhaps a third of them each year, reducing the time commitment of committee members while maintaining contact with department and institute issues.

Dean Subbaswamy joined us at 3:02.

We talked at some length about the status of financial arrangement for the transfer of Computer Science from the College to the School of Informatics. Complications arise because of the department's fiscal deficit. Policy Committee members expressed strong opposition to the College providing any subvention to Informatics as a part of transferring Computer Science. Student enrollments in the College for spring seem to be about what was expected based on the fall situation. The CTE (Commitment to Excellence) projects that involve the College-- in both the first and second rounds--seem to be developing on schedule. When asked about the College relations with OVPR (Office of Vice President for Research), Swamy noted that they are excellent. There are issues concerning centers and institutes still being sorted out.

Likewise, there are issues about the restructured Graduate School that are still unresolved. Swamy agreed that it would be beneficial for a CPC member to attend selected planning meetings with departments and institutes, noting that if a unit really wanted us to observe its planning meeting, we should make special arrangements to attend. Because the College has received a proposal for restructuring TESOL and Applied Linguistics into a department of second language studies and wants the proposal carefully vetted, Swamy asked us to prepare to study it in detail. Grade inflation is a hot topic both nationally and locally, and the CPC agrees with Swamy that a lot of faculty discussion should be involved before any action is taken at IU.

The meeting adjourned at 4:00.

Albert Ruesink, recorder

Questions or comments regarding the minutes and actions of the Policy Committee may be addressed to Rob Shakespeare, Dept. of Theater and Drama, Theater and Drama Ctr. A300H, 5-4367, shakespe@indiana.edu. Past minutes and College Policy Statements can be found at the CPC web page: www.indiana.edu/~college/faculty/policy/policies.shtml.