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College of Arts and Sciences Policy Committee Minutes
Friday, November 22, 2002 10:15a.m.

Present: Tom Gieryn (Chair), Alex Dzierba, Jim Franklin, Roy Gardner, Susan Gubar, Kevin Hunt, Chuck Livingston, Deidre Lynch (BFC liaison), Ellen Dwyer (recorder)

1. The meeting began at 10:15 AM with the provisional approval of the minutes of November 15.

2. Four items of new business were discussed.

    a) Tom Gieryn announced that the last Committee meeting date of the fall semester is December 13; meetings resume the week of January 13.

    b) The Committee discussed the importance of reminding faculty members of the new Policy on Joint Appointments, posted on the Policy Committee's website at the following URL: http://www.iub.edu/~college/faculty/policy/policies.shtml.

    c) In response to a question about whether COAS or IUB has a policy regulating leaves without pay (also known as LWOPs), Tom Gieryn volunteered to find out. The Committee agreed that, even when there is teaching replacement money (and often there is not), LWOPs increase the service load on resident faculty members.

    d) Another potential equity issue is the negotiation of extremely light teaching loads by some new hires. Although teaching loads vary by fields, ideally there are guidelines for determining (within each department) typical and exceptional teaching loads.
3. The Committee next turned to the need to replace three retiring Policy Committee members for the 2003-2004 academic year. We encourage faculty members to nominate themselves and others for the following three categories: At-Large, Arts and Humanities, and Natural and Mathematical Sciences. With a unanimous vote, we chose Deidre Lynch to replace Jim Franklin during his spring 2003 leave.

4. Tom Gieryn and Chuck Livingston reported on the planning meetings held by the College of Arts and Sciences deans with the Departments of Physics and Economics.

5. Tom Gieryn asked committee members to send him suggestions about issues related to the search for a new University president that are of special concern to Committee members. He will include them in a letter to the search committee.

6. The Committee then discussed the College's salary policy. At present, under that policy, departments have much flexibility in establishing salary guidelines. Chairs and heads of programs that have concerns about College salary priorities need to convey them to the Policy Committee.

Other salary policy issues were discussed but not resolved. These included the percentage of salary money allocated by the College last year to market adjustments and to equity and grievance adjustments, as well as the guidelines for such equity and grievance adjustments.

7. At 11 AM, Associate Dean Linda Smith joined the meeting to discuss Committee members' concerns about the quality of undergraduate students. Several committee members asked about the College's efforts to recruit high-powered high school students. Because of the University's desire to have a uniform recruiting effort, COAS has not been able to mount a high-end recruiting initiative of its own, Smith explained. However, the College now has a five-year plan intended to interest more strong high school students to come to IUB, preferably well before their senior year. This includes the offering of summer courses for high school students and the development of programs for middle school students. In addition, she hopes to build on the success of the STARS program by developing comparable opportunities in the humanities and social sciences. She also hopes that, in the future, the College will be able to emulate the highly-successful Collins' Center, whose programs are paid for by the College and which is a powerful recruiting tool, with another, similar academic dormitory.

In response to a question about GPA requirements for entering the College, Smith reported that, at present, the College is reluctant to increase that GPA for several reasons, including the possibility that such a change might increase grade inflation.

Some time also was spent discussing how to attract more highly-qualified high school students who are not at the very top of their classes. Everyone agreed on the importance of persuading such students to attend IUB. Finally, there was a brief discussion of the importance of existing and future initiatives intended to improve the quality of high school teaching and learning in Indiana.

8. At 11:45 AM, the meeting concluded.