The Citadel Faculty Council
Minutes of the Regular Meeting of May 11, 2000
Prioleau (Rare Books) Room, Daniel Library

1. Prof. Tom Thompson, the incoming Faculty Council chairperson, called the meeting to order at 11:09 a.m. without a quorum. A quorum was never achieved.

2. Members attending: Professors Bishop, J. Carter, Maynard, Pages, Gordon (for Pilcher, his sabbatical-year substitute), Silver, Skow-Obenaus, Thompson, Zuraw, Kuzenski for Britz, Trautman for Chen, D. Moore for Foster, and Bruce for B. White.

3. Members absent: Professors Brown, Dunlop, Emanuel, Hurren, Matthews, McDowell, Wallace, G. Williams, Wolf and Woo.

4. Prof. Thompson announced that there was still a difference in two passages between what Faculty Council and Academic Board had approved about General Order 12. Academic Board approved and we disapproved the idea that if time pressed on a decision about tenure or promotion, the chair and vice-chair of the Faculty Tenure and Promotion Committee could make the decision without the other members. Prof. Moore, who was there not only as a substitute for Prof. Foster but as an advocate for the FTPC, emphasized the importance of this discrepancy and explained how the FTPC now safeguards professors' rights with full documentation to the full committee and how under the GO 12 version this would be replaced with (possibly biased) summaries. She requested that Faculty Council send Gen. Carter a statement backing FTPC in objecting to this before GO 12 was officially printed in the fall. Prof. Pilcher suggested that, since Faculty Council could not vote on this issue without a quorum, we vote soon by an e-mail canvass as in the past. [This was done.]

Prof. Moore then expressed FTPC's unhappiness with the decision not to get the Student Evaluation of Instruction instrument validated; Prof. Thompson pointed out that we had advocated validation and pretty much failed, and Prof. Moore asked that we do more. We could not, however.

Finally, Prof. Moore brought up FTPC's concern about the new way of informing the professors what their student evaluations said, namely to give us only transcripts of the comments and computer summaries of the ratings instead of returning the actual forms to us after grades are handed in. This is an issue because professors should be able to balance unfair or wounding remarks against their context, not the students' identity but their category and their quirks as seen on the rating questions. Prof. Bishop reported on having shared her and colleagues' concerns about this with Gen. Carter, and how he had told her that not returning the actual forms was mandated by CHE to protect students' anonymity. Prof. Moore suggested that we find out if CHE actually does mandate that, and invite Gen. Carter to a meeting about the issue. Prof. Thompson agreed.

5. Prof. Thompson announced that Faculty Council would tackle its share of strategic planning in the fall.

6. Prof. Pages wanted to know what additional burdens would be placed on the unwilling by the First Year Experience course, and the Council discussed that course again. Prof. Moore was concerned as to whether it would cover specific Citadel issues, and Prof. Silver said that a committee meeting the day before had decided definitely on a large Citadel-survival component. Prof. Carter noted that they also had a strategy to try to affect barracks culture through Jenkins Hall.

7. The meeting broke up at 11:39.