MSU-BOZEMAN FACULTY COUNCIL MEETING MINUTES
December 5, 2001
PRESENT: Young, Sherwood, White, Kommers, Leech, Benham, Howard,
Stewart, Jones, Ross, Nehrir, McMahon for Weaver, Lansverk,
Levy/Bandyopadhyay, Bogar, Jelinski, Idzerda, McKinsey for
Pratt, Fisher, Lynes-Hayes, Butterfield,
ABSENT: Hatfield, Morrill, Engel, Anderson, Peed, Linker, Larsen,
Mooney, Lefcort, McClure, Locke, Henson, Lynch, Kempcke,
Griffith, Carlstrom.
The meeting was called to order at 4:10 PM by Chair John Sherwood. A
quorum was present. The minutes of the November 28, 2001, Faculty
Council meeting were approved as distributed.
Chair's report - John Sherwood.
- Gary Bogar, Mathematics, and Shawna Lockhart, Mechanical
Engineering, have been appointed by the Provost to the Computer
Fee Allocation Committee from nominees submitted by Faculty
Council.
- Membership of the Space Management Committee (SMC) was
discussed at a Wednesday meeting between Faculty Council
leadership and the administration and again at UGC Steering
Committee.
- Concern was raised for the potential perception of
conflict of interest in cases where the faculty member's
department is involved in a space management consideration.
- A way to resolve the issue agreeable to both
administration and Steering Committee is to add a second
faculty member to the committee. Then, in cases where one
of the faculty member's departments is involved, that
individual would not vote in order to alleviate any concern
for potential conflict of interest.
- Because Cynthia McClure, Chemistry and Biochemistry, is
willing to serve on the committee and she was one of the
nominees for the original faculty position on the SMC, UGC
Steering Committee forwarded her name to Acting Vice
President Roloff, who has appointed her as the second
faculty member of the committee.
- Two ad hoc committees have been suggested: a faculty
demographics committee and a faculty professional development
committee. There is agreement that the faculty professional
development committee should move ahead. The faculty
demographics committee will continue on hold until a director of
institutional planning and analysis is hired, because this second
committee will require a significant amount of data collection
and analysis.
- At today's meeting of Faculty Council leadership and central
administration, possibilities of giving a standard raise at the
time of promotion was discussed. Possibilities for doing so will
be considered.
Faculty Affairs Committee report - Marvin Lansverk.
- A proposal for an ombudsman has been drafted. The committee is
now gathering information from about 20 other institutions
regarding release time and budget needed to make the initial
proposal successful.
Montana Learning Community (MLC) Overview and Discussion - Martin
Teintze, Walter Fleming, Lisa Graumlich, David Cherry.
- The Montana Learning Community (the new core) is a pilot
project which addresses some concerns with the present core
curriculum. A goal of the Montana Learning Community is to
prepare students to be better learners in the remainder of their
course work.
- After getting input from faculty and students, five
foundational courses (Seminar, Quantitative Reasoning, College
Writing, Ideas and Perspectives, and Diversity) plus a Research
and Creative Experience were proposed, and they are now being
tested.
- Four core electives will also be part of the MLC. They will
be in the areas of Natural Science with lab, Social Science,
Humanities, and Fine Arts.
- This fall, CLS 101 - College Seminar, enrolled 304 students
with 20 faculty. This course will be renamed "University
Seminar". There are also freshman seminars in other colleges.
Spring Semester there will be three Ideas and Perspectives
courses enrolling 327 students.
- Next year, second-year courses (Diversity, Research and
Creativity) will be offered.
- "Diversity" includes race, class, gender, ability, and other
considerations and is broader than "multicultural", a current
core requirement.
- As a result of the call for proposals in May to enhance
existing multicultural core courses, using the five new diversity
criteria, two courses were redesigned to meet the criteria. Two
additional courses will be taught Spring Semester, one revised
and one new.
- The purpose of the Research and Creative Experience is to
supplement what is currently done in undergraduate research and
to do it early in the core experience.
- The pilot courses will be existing courses or new courses which
have been redesigned to include at least 1/3 research.
- It was pointed out that there needs to be a way to move from
this primary research experience to a more self-directed
experience.
- The question of cost was raised. According to Professor
Teintze, MLC is still in the experimental phase, and it will need
to be determined if the experience is worth any added cost.
Because freshmen seminars are small classes, it is the most
expensive part of the new core. It is anticipated that classes
with large numbers of students will be included in the new core.
- The new core committee is still trying to determine how to
evaluate the pilot program to assess its impact.
- Although some coordination with General Studies and Business
freshman seminars may be possible, there are differences in goals
that will not make total coordination with the new freshman
seminars possible.
- There will be a faculty forum on cross-disciplinary teaching
and learning on December 13 from 4:00 - 5:30 PM at the Foundation
Building.
As there was no further business, the meeting adjourned at 5:00 PM.
Joann Amend, Secretary John Sherwood, Chair