School of Environmental and Forest Sciences
Faculty Meeting Minutes
February 26, 2013, 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
Anderson Hall Room 22
CALL TO ORDER
10:30
• The meeting was called to order by Director Tom DeLuca at 10:33 a.m. Graham Allan moved and Sharon
Doty seconded the motion that the faculty approve the minutes of the February 12, 2013 Faculty Meeting.
Faculty voted to approve these minutes by a vote of 28 Approve, 1 Oppose, 6 Abstain of 42 eligible to vote
faculty.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
10:35
• The College is participating in a grant opportunity for which a preproposal has already gone in. The CoEnv
was short-listed and is among 6 other institutions that have been asked to submit a full proposal to Doris
Duke Foundation. The focus of the grant is to bring in students from all over the nation for exposure to
conservation issues. He was asked to forward to conservation-related faculty, but if you are interested in
participating in this let Tom know and he will send you the preproposal and email from Julia Parrish, who is
coordinating the effort. Meetings have been scheduled on March 1st and 27th. The proposal can request up
to $1.5 million, and is focused on terrestrial. Dr. DeLuca is keenly interested in getting input from SEFS
faculty. This would bring students from underrepresented groups in for a summer field class exposing them
to conservation outside of urban environs and into more natural and semi-natural settings.
• Thomas Kinittle will be the speaker for the SEFS 2013 Sustaining our World lecture, his lecture is titled:
“Built Ecologies: regionalism and resource integration in the built world. The event is on April 4, 2013 in
Kane Hall 6pm.
• 10th Annual Graduate Student Symposium is set for Friday, March 8, 2013. The Symposium will be held in
the Forest Club Room and will run from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. A tentative schedule of events is now available
online (http://sefs.washington.edu/CFRGSS/schedule.htm). If one of your students is interested in
submitting an abstract for a poster or presentation, please contact Ellen Weir (ellenf3@uw.edu). There will
be an award ceremony recognizing the best presenters and posters at the symposium. Want as many faculty
there as possible.
• A Search Committee for Forest Protection position will be formed. The Dean has approved the SEFS hiring
proposal. Dr. DeLuca suggests that we keep the same committee with a couple of additions—an outside
member either from on campus or off and a graduate student. Frank Greulich (chair), Ernesto Alvarado,
Kristiina Vogt, Jerry Franklin, Sarah Reichard serve on the committee. Faculty agreed that it was a good
idea to keep same committee. Thoughts about the outside member: someone from applied math and The
Burke Museum were suggested. We are looking to hire at the assistant professor level. Please share your
suggestions for external members with Dr. Greulich.
• The Draft SEFS Faculty Teaching schedule for academic year 2013-14 is attached. Please review your
assignments and send corrections to the Director’s office. The matrix is based on what faculty entered into
the work planning system. Contact both Dr. DeLuca and Michelle Trudeau with any updates.
• Got a message from the Dean yesterday that included a letter from the Provost’s office. It is their greatest
hope to award salary increases in 2013 through the merit process. No funds will come from the Dean’s
office, but any raises will come out of SEFS ABB money. The memo states that there should be 2%
increases awarded for merit, and then another 1% of the base should be used for high merit and other
adjustments with 75% of that 1% for high merit and remaining 25% of the 1% for other adjustments. Dr.
DeLuca has requested that the PMT committee look at merit process, which in his view is a complex bean
counting process that he wants to be more clear and simpler. What he wants is for the PMT committee to
look at the established and approved process and make it more in alignment with other CoEnv units. Dr.
DeLuca will have suggestions for the committee. The revised process will come to the faculty for approval.
• Kristiina Vogt, Faculty Senate representative, stated that the Senate is looking at how promotion raises are
made in order to help make up the differential that grows between senior faculty and junior faculty which
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ends up with the senior faculty making less than the junior faculty. They are considering recommending
periodic increases in grade for faculty.
FACULTY ACTIONS
10:40
• Proposed Visiting Scientist Appointment
Rob Harrison moved and Sharon Doty seconded the motion that the faculty approve a Visiting Scientist
appointment for Yongseok Kim. This appointment is sponsored by Soo-Hyung Kim. Yongseok Kim’s
supervisor works with Soo-Hyung Kim’s supervisor on a project. Mr. Kim will develop datasets and
models to look at climate change effects on crops. Mr. Kim is a full-time research scientist at the
Agrometeorology Laboratory, National Academy of Agricultural Science, Rural Development
Administration (RDA) in South Korea. He has recently completed coursework for his MS degree at
Kyungbook National. Mr. Kim will be working on a collaborative project sponsored by RDA. The aim of
the project is to develop agro-meteorological information data products and tools that couple crop systems
models with agro-meteorological data. Mr. Kim is a certified Java programmer. The project funds will
cover his salary and benefits and travel expenses while at UW. He will have a desk space at the Center for
Urban Horticulture. The faculty voted to approve this appointment. The results of the vote are on file in the
Director’s office.
PRESENTATION
• No presentations are planned.
DISCUSSION
10:45
• A discussion of the SEFS Fellowship Allocation Process will be led by Clare Ryan, SEFS Graduate
Program Coordinator. The SEFS Scholarship and Financial Aid Committee met on February 21st to
allocate fellowships. Faculty expressed concern for lack of process or potential impropriety. Two handouts were provided. One document was a flow chart of the process. There are two types of scholarships.
One of them is meritorious for students already here and the other is fellowships to get students here. All
applicant packets are uploaded to interest committees. From the packages the interest committees make
nominations. The Graduate Program Coordinators (Drs. Ryan and Kim) look at all the nominations and
then meet with Michelle and Amanda to look at credentials. In their ranking they look at match for the one
year recruitment fellowships because one year is not enough to attract a student. Some interest groups get
more applicants than others, e.g. ecology got 41, so if other interest groups get much fewer, then it could
mean that not every group will get an award. Proportionality of the interest group sizes is also considered.
Graduate program coordinators then make recommendations to the Scholarship Committee, and the
scholarship committee makes the final decision. Some of the fellowships are ethnicity based because we
have matching funds for minority candidates. There are 27 quarters of scholarship funds that can be
awarded. This year some interest groups only have one award. PCMI doesn’t have any. Although there are
many different funds with different sets of rules, for the most part money is pooled to the extent it can be
because many of the funds are small. The wishes of the donors are matched with the candidate
qualifications, and each student knows which funds provided them their scholarship. Students are required
to write a thank you letter. In addition to writing a letter students sometimes have to attend the scholarship
dinner put on by the Advancement office. Because of rising tuition we have not had as much money to
award as 5 years ago. In addition to the tuition increases the College of the Environment moved to tier 2
tuition (starting Autumn 2012). A more diverse student body requires more support to succeed. Faculty
wondered if there is a duplication of process? Why isn’t the scholarship committee composed of the interest
group leaders. Then we would have a large scholarship committee—10 or so people on the committee. In
addition, the graduate interest group leaders would also have to participate in a second meeting for
undergraduate awards. In addition, a committee made up of interest group leaders would have a hard time
getting away from the interest groups pushing their own candidates. The Scholarship Committee takes the
ranking of interest groups and doesn’t fundamentally change the rankings unless there is a good match for
say the 2nd ranked candidate and none for 1st. Also, if there is a requirement for the fund the ranking could
change. The student doesn’t need to know if there is a match required. The faculty need to come up with
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the required matching funds to put together a package for desired candidates. Faculty asked that
information on the website be clearer.
• How committee assignments are made will be discussed. Dr. DeLuca has received a variety of concerns
and complaints about committee assignments. He would love for us to never have to raise the question of
trust because of committee assignments. He believes that the faculty are a small enough group and should
be able to look each other in the eye and know and trust each other. One of the approaches that he is
familiar with is having committee membership made on a rotating basis and that each member of the
committee rotate through the committee to be chair before going off the committee. It is his opinion that
this is one way that fresh ideas could be gained and it gives junior faculty a leadership opportunity along
with allowing everyone to be involved. He recognizes that it would be a complicated matrix and there are
some committees that have membership requirements. Although he is a bit reluctant he wonders if he
should create an ad hoc committee to work on committees to figure out if we can have rotating assignments
which would be instituted the next academic year. The committee would flesh out the idea, bring it to the
faculty to discuss with an eventual faculty vote. A faculty member thought that the Elected Faculty
Advisory Council could be the best group to take this on, and Dr. DeLuca agreed that they should be
charged with this task. Faculty also suggested establishing a database of what has been going on and to
track the new assignment matrix, if it is instituted .
UPCOMING MEETING
11:25
The next School of Environmental and Forest Sciences Faculty Meeting will be on Tuesday, March 12, 2013
from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. in Anderson Hall Room 22.
ADJOURNMENT
11:30
The meeting was adjourned at 11:30 a.m.
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