October 4, 2004

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

The meeting convened at 2:30.

The College Policy on "Expectations of faculty when on release time from teaching" was circulated and discussed briefly. (URL: www.indiana.edu/~college/faculty/policy/collegepolicies/ Expectations04182003.shtml) Some recent concerns about individual faculty behavior (absent from campus for extended periods while still being paid) appear to be a problem of implementation rather than of the policy itself. Chairs and deans should thus be able to deal with them.

Kevin reported briefly on his attendance at the College Chairs and Directors meeting last week. Much of the meeting was devoted to understanding how to handle sexual harassment matters appropriately. The Office of Affirmative Action is the place to report problems.

A subcommittee of the CPC (Hunt as chair plus Anderson, Livingston, and Ruesink) was appointed to study the proposal for a Masters degree in Biotechnology and report back to the CPC at our next meeting. Minutes of the meeting of September 27 were amended and approved.

Dean Swamy joined us at 2:45.

In our role as College Budgetary Advisory Committee, we discussed with Swamy his efforts to make the College budget balance this year in response to a significant shortfall in tuition income as well as his efforts to prepare a realistic budget for next year. Because personnel costs are such a large portion of the College budget, much of the discussion concerned finding the right balance between salary increases and new/replacement hiring. Swamy is pleased with the good-faith effort that most departments have made to reduce their operating budgets for this year. The effort to finalize the College and departmental expenditures for the current year continues.

The College has approved about 30 faculty searches this year. Because of the budget difficulties it will almost certainly not be possible to make that many actual hires, but Swamy is seeking to organize funding for some 20 of them. Start-up funds will be tight as well as salary funds. Because of the desperate need for some senior hires in certain Arts and Humanities areas, we hope that the CTE request for monies for such hires will be approved.

Several members of the CPC noted that the requests for departments to make tenure recommendations early in the fall detract from making carefully considered and totally thoughtful decisions. The Dean of the Faculties needs the recommendations from the College in mid-November.

Building in time for today's appeals and rebuttals as well as time for careful consideration by College tenure committee has backed the time for department recommendations up to where it now is. Swamy acknowledged the problem being perceived at the department level and said that he would try to allow departments to have at least one more week next year. We also discussed the difficulty of getting eight outside letters in some cases (4 suggested by candidate and 4 by department).

Swamy and the CPC discussed the issue of the length of time that chairs should serve. Swamy believes rather strongly that departments should rotate their leadership and that in general ten years is too long to serve, though there should be no hard rules set. One good model is that chairs should be appointed to a four-year term and then reappointed for an additional two years if all is going well.

Swamy left the meeting at 3:45.

The CPC approved the recommended questions for the survey of Swamy's performance that our Hart subcommittee has worked on. Rob will work with the Survey Research people to get them set.

CPC members noted that at a future meeting we want to have a discussion about using the last three year average of a faculty member's apparent performance as a means of setting the salary increase each year. There is also a strong concern about the need to address electronic publishing as a part of P&T dossiers.

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.