March 4, 2016 H&S Senate minutes
Present: Wendy Dann, Hugh Egan, Claire Gleitman, Enrique Gonzalez-Conty, Jennifer Jolly, Matt Klemm,
Brendan Murday, Matt Price, Peyi Soyinka-Airewele, Sharon Stansfield, Carla Stetson, David Turkon,
Jennifer Tennant, Aaron Weinberg.
Absent: Rebecca Plante (excused).
Guests: Mike Richardson (Interim Dean), Kyle James (SGA VP for Academic Affairs and member of the
all-college Shared Governance Taskforce).
Meeting started at 4:01 pm
1.
Motion to approve the minutes from February 5th, 2016.
Motion passed, 11-0-0.
2.
Announcements and updates:
A) Reminder about all-school meeting (originally scheduled for March 29th, but rescheduled for
April 5th) during the noon hour. Topic: originally slated to be shared governance, but after
discussion, Senate elected to change the topic to diversity and inclusion, with an eye towards
helping departments fulfill the mandate to hold an event or workshop designed to increase
inclusive collegiality and professionalism.
B) H&S faculty recognition reception for tenured and promoted faculty: April 5th at 4:30.
Additionally, the Provost is hosting a reception for faculty on Monday March 7th at 4pm.
C) Response from Provost to our thoughts on the proposed Associate Provost position. We
wrote a letter to the Provost with our thoughts; the Provost responded, saying he recognizes
that the label for the position is problematic. New title proposed to be “Associate Provost for
Experiential Learning” rather than “Associate Provost for Transformative Learning.” He hasn’t
yet decided whether to go forward with the search at this time.
D) Faculty Council report: Council discussed a change in food and entertainment policy. Gerald
Hector wants to clarify and enforce the policy, which limits food to events exceeding 3 hours in
duration, and limits food procured with college funds to be supplied through Sodexo. The
committee deciding on this policy has no faculty representation, and some faculty expressed
frustration about the limitations imposed by the policy. Part-time faculty also gave a
presentation to Faculty Council concerning their union’s negotiations.
3.
Report from Subcommittee reviewing departmental criteria for promotion to full professor:
A) History department’s policy related to criteria for promotion to full professor. Discussion:
their policy has the chair writing a letter of evaluation for the file, but the policy doesn’t specify
that the chair won’t also have a voice in the personnel committee evaluation. We might suggest
that the department policy be clarified on this point before recommending that the Dean
approve the policy.
B) Discussion about whether the subcommittee should be reviewing policies with an eye
towards ensuring inter-departmental equity in the degrees of specificity and quantity in defining
the “significant service” component of the criteria.
4) Old Business:
A) The incoming Dean has expressed willingness to meet with the Senate President over the
summer; what would Senate want to say to the Dean? Senate should highlight these issues:
i) the needs of the School regarding facilities. Specifically: bringing related departments into
the same physical space to facilitate connection and collaboration; inadequate library space;
departments in inadequate facilities; departments not located in a single space; issues with
classrooms: in some rooms the desks do not all have good viewing angles to see the
projection screen, and in other rooms the configurations are not conducive to class
discussion.
(ii) challenges in enrolling a diverse incoming class in some of the highly competitive
programs: we struggle to enroll accepted students from diverse backgrounds. Room and
board is expensive enough that even full tuition remission isn’t enough to make us
competitive.
(iii) frustrations about ICC, both concerns with it as presently formulated, and concerns
about how new curriculum is created.
(iv) growing programs face struggles to give each student instruction time unless additional
faculty hired. E.g., as more theatre students are enrolled, not all students get the
opportunities we’d like them to have. In other programs (Art, for instance), we could take
more students if there were more space and hence a room with a higher fire code capacity.
There are challenges all around when the number of enrolled students in one program
increases and another decreases.
(v) centrality of H&S to the mission and vision of the college at large, and hence the need for
the H&S Dean to be an advocate for the school.
(vi) helping the Dean to navigate the governance structures within the school, helping to
indicate what different committees can do, what they need from the Dean, etc.
(vii) creating stability, e.g., fears of losing lines or faculty. H&S programs struggling to enroll
and struggling to procure resources from the college despite the success of graduates with
H&S degrees. [The administration is receptive to converting NTENs to TEs, since the
position costs the college about the same. Departments are likely to have more luck
converting an NTEN line to a TE line than in getting a new TE line.] In asking for a new or
converted position, departments should give the Dean as much information as possible
about the justification for the position to use as ammunition in making the case to the
Provost, e.g., offering more ICC courses even if the major isn’t growing. Justifications in
terms of students served will constitute a more powerful argument than justifications in
terms of a need to cover a sub-disciplinary expertise. This is an issue of concern across the
humanities and social sciences. Senate could consider facilitating a conversation about how
humanities and social sciences departments might re-envision themselves in light of the
shifts in student demand, if there is interest.
(viii) conversations about race and diversity issues in the classroom. Faculty may not fully
appreciate how big a problem this is, and perhaps Senate should do something to help the
School tackle the problem rather than leaving it just to each department.
New business:
A group of faculty have been meeting this semester to think about how faculty can
counterbalance top-down administrative processes. The group is working on developing a
list of questions departments might think through in addressing issues concerning diversity
and inclusion.
There is a requirement for each department to hold an event or workshop designed to
increase inclusive collegiality and professionalism. Few departments have held an event yet.
The H&S faculty meeting on April 5th may help departments find ideas for these events, and
to identify what the problems are that we are hoping to remedy. We might ask a couple
departments who have held events to present what they did, and have time for discussion.
We can encourage departments to consider co-hosting an event. Other ideas for events
could be developed by talking to Doc Richardson, to CSCRE, or by looking through resources
being made available through Faculty Council. Senate will form an ad hoc subcommittee to
work on compiling a list of possible resources for ways to implement diversity and inclusion
events, to be distributed to departments that seek guidance: Peyi, Jennifer, and Rebecca will
serve on this subcommittee.
Meeting adjourned, 6:01pm.