Minutes - November 13
Minutes
November 13, 2007, 9 a.m., VH2151
Present: Bulen, Harris, Johnson, Jones, Pauls, Pultz, Neitzke.
Absent: Miner.
Minutes of the November 6 meeting were approved and will be posted on the new committee blog/website. An email will be sent to all faculty inviting their input and emphasizing the process with which we are engaged. The committee wishes to encourage both public discussion on the blog and private comment to the committee members individually.
The committee has identified background information needed as we proceed. We have a list of departments and FTE’s allocated to those departments as of last spring. The numbers have changed and the original numbers do not include military science, the library, or faculty in the School of Business. That information will be sought from the VPAA’s office; it is essential to any discussion of models that involve proportional representation.
Additional background information will be sought through the reference department in Pickler from faculty handbooks in peer institutions. We are interested in the systems of faculty governance used, the organizational structure and if/how it corresponds to representation in faculty governance systems. We suspect that unionization may affect some governance systems and that contingent and/or part-time faculty may be a big issue in some institutions.
As the committee understands it, the traditional list of peer institutions includes some faculty salary peers, some COPLAC peers, some peers from the U.S. News & World Report rankings for the Midwest, some funding peers, and some aspirational peers. To this traditional list, the committee wishes to add Missouri institutions, including Missouri State, UM-Rolla, Central Missouri State, Southeast Missouri State, Northwest Missouri State, and Western. In the COPLAC list, we are particularly interested in the University of Minnesota-Morris, University of North Carolina-Asheville, and the College of New Jersey. We believe it might also be useful to look at Geneseo, Winona State, and Bradley University.
The committee will meet again on Tuesday, November 27, at 9 a.m.