Minutes: FACAS Meeting, 1/10/08
Time and Location: 10:30 – 11:30 am, KL 205
Present: D. Biers, G. Doyle (chair), P. Johnson, T. Lasley, L. Laubach, Y. Raffoul, D. Sink, L. Snyder, S. Wilhoit (Faculty Board)
Absent:
1. Minutes of 12/06/07 were approved as written.
2. The FAC expressed concern about the procedure and timeliness of electing the University P&T Committee. Joe Untener has assembled an ad hoc committee to have elections for the university committee. Lloyd Laubach is serving as a representative of ECAS on that committee. Lloyd will stress to the ad hoc committee that elections should be held as ASAP, and a letter should go out from the Provost office to all faculty describing the procedure for the selection of the university committee and the department and unit P&T committees.
3. It was suggested that both the Post-tenure Review Policy and Faculty Teaching Evaluations should be completed this semester. The Post-tenure Review policy has precedence. Perhaps a sub-committee of the FAC, including Steve Wilhoit, could consider the Faculty Teaching Evaluation document.
4. The Peer-Consultation document should have a cover page (not part of policy) that “justifies” the reasons the peer consultation is necessary. Tom Lasley will edit the cover page written by Becky Wells to include comments about request from the Board of Trustees and the responsibility of faculty to do peer reviews.
5. The FAC believes that the annual review forms used by the units must be reviewed for consistency in spirit and fairness. Perhaps the ad hoc committee that is arranging the election of the University Committee on Promotion and Tenure can do this review.
6. At this point the discussion reverted back to the premise that UD already does enough administrative and peer review, and we should not add another layer to the existing reviews. The post-tenure review can be part of the sabbatical review procedure. This would necessitate that the sabbatical review process be relatively rigorous, fair and consistent across all departments. It also would require the establishment of a process for those faculty who do not apply for sabbaticals. The one drawback is that the sabbatical review does not require a review of the previous several years, but it could.
Tom Lasley will mention this path for post-tenure review to the Provost, and it will be discussed at the next ECAS meeting.
7. The next meeting is scheduled for 10:30 am on Thursday, Jan 17, 2008 in KL 505.