A&S Planning and Budget Commmittee Minutes Oct 1 2002

Minutes: A&S Planning and Budget Commmittee

October 1, 2002

 

Members present: Ying Kit Chan, Susan DeWitt, Julia Dietrich, ex officio; Stuart Esrock, Thomas Riedel, chair; Nat Schwartz

The meeting was convened at 12:02 P.M.

This meeting was scheduled outside the originally agreed upon schedule to deal with the question of how to reward service activities. The two main items were the proposal to no longer list 3% for the attendance of faculty meetings on the Annual Work Plan (AWP) and the question of whether faculty who take on substantial service should receive course reductions or salary supplements.

The committee first discussed the issue of the Annual Work Plan. After some discussion we agreed that while it is certainly expected that every faculty member should attend faculty meetings, removing the item from the AWP would send the wrong message. Prof. Schwartz made a motion, unanimously approved by the committee that "the committee advises the Dean that removing credit for College and Department meetings from the Annual Work Plan will lead to an unintended result of encouraging faculty not to attend meetings." This concern is based on our current personnel policy Article 2, 2.1 A: "Evaluations must consider those areas of activity for which the approved annual work plan indicates a faculty member's responsibility, and no faculty member may be penalized for non-performance in any area of activity for which the faculty member has no assigned responsibility."

Next the committee turned to the list, handed out at the previous meeting, of faculty who receive course release and or supplemental pay for service related activities. Again the committee feels strongly that service is an activity in which every faculty member needs to engage. Going over the list we noted that many of the faculty listed are heavily engaged in service beyond the activity for which they receive extra rewards. Furthermore, the list did not provide any indication of the amount of service required for the reward, the quality of service provided, whether the service required presence during the summer etc. The committee agreed that department chairs, The Dean or the Provost, as the case may be, need to evaluate the service activities to determine whether these rewards are justified. It will fall on the Dean's office, through the approval of the AWP's, to provide consistency within the College.

The committee further notes that service should be a valued activity and that evaluation of service should be taken seriously. The committee recommends that a norm for service determined and criteria for service evaluation be specified. This could be done through a modification of the Dean's Guidelines, the College By-Laws, and the Mission statement.

The committee approved the minutes of the last meeting.

The meeting adjourned at 1:00 P.M.

The next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday October 8, 2002 at 12:00 Noon, in Gardiner 331.