Faculty Assembly
Faculty Assembly
College of William and Mary
April 25, 2006
Present: Orwoll, Leslie, Meese, Lee, Diaz, Fuchs, Armstrong, Meyers, Brown, Van Dover, Canuel, Watkinson, White, Abelt.
Diaz suggested the Secretary be less literal with his minutes.
March 28th Minutes approved at 3:33.
Provost's report
There will be no SACS visit to the Faculty Assembly. The Board of Visitors (BOV) approved, with no changes, the Faculty Retirement Program. It will go to the Attorney General's Office. I don't foresee difficulty, but cannot tell you how long it will take. The Board was very supportive. There were no concerns about costs and impact. The BOV's only question was whether the faculty was in favor.
The SACS accreditation team is on campus. David Aday and I will meet with them for the next day or so. They will finish 10 o'clock on Thursday. They are not coming to meet the Assembly as they are very focused on the Quality Enhancement Plan.
On September 2007 there will be a major conference: The Future of Democracy Conference. It is the final of 6 conferences that will begin this summer as part of the 2007 event. The first event will be at UVA, on Youth and Democracy. There's very little information at present about this. We want to assure that there is an appropriate role for faculty and students. Dignitaries (including former Presidents) will be here. I foresee information coming forward in the fall. There was a previous incarnation that involved faculty when it was first floated by the federal commission in 2007. We have reserved all of the major buildings from PBK to W&M hall for this. It will take place here mid-September 2007.
I expect recommendations from the Reves Center director Search. I expect the short list in the next few days. I will have interviews with Reves staff.
Another search is just starting: for the Director of the DC semester program. Exceptionally good people have been selected by the search committee, and will be interviewed soon. We want the person there by the first of July.
Handbook revision - Colleen Kennedy has been working on that and will continue working on it all summer. There is much work for Procedural Review Committee (PRC), and Personnel Policy Committee (PPC). In essence this is a revision of the faculty handbook and inclusion of two other books: the part-time, and part-time administrative faculty handbooks.
I will put together a committee regarding grad student stipends and grad student health benefits. The Board is interested in terms of how competitive we are. They are concerned that we offer competitive stipends. Health insurance is a very difficult issue. One of the things we are talking about is collaborative ventures with other Virginia schools. Obviously UVA and VCU don't need this because they have hospitals. Perhaps we can partner with ODU, EVMS, and GMU. We are hoping to obtain advantages of scale. In terms of insurance, this is a high-risk group, including a large cohort of women of childbearing age. The more we pool with undergrads there are advantages in price - but the problem is that students, especially those living far off campus, would have to go to student health first.
Anna Martin and I will start a demand survey for housing of junior faculty and staff. Is there a demand? If so, what would the faculty like, junior faculty and staff in particular. Some market analysis will be done with competing institutions.
Meyers: Have you thought of subsidizing mortgages?
Armstrong: There's an intermediate group to consider here: Postdocs.
Feiss: We include those, including visiting faculty and those with dual households. Would they be interested in studio apartments for example?
Lee: A committee considered this years ago and the problem then was that the college owned some houses, but not enough.
Feiss: As we decommission Dillard, that space is an opportunity. Whatever we do must be revenue-generating. Is there a business model that makes sense - going with a developer to do this for example? Universities used to do this years ago. Among our questions is why universities stopped doing this? Of course, there are inherent conflicts of interest when an employer provides housing. Most of polling our polling will go through deans and target younger faculty.
Watkinson noted that with regularly scheduled leaves, it is very difficult to find a 9-month rent for a person in this town.
Feiss: The board met and passed a tuition increase.
Total for in-state: 9.3%
Out of state: 8%
Grad students: 4%
Professional schools: 9.3%
There will also be a 5% faculty salary increases and 4% staff increases. Our
goal for salary letters to go out May 8th.
The Jefferson lab contract that was up for rebid has been awarded to SURA: Southeastern Universities Research Association. For the next twenty years W&M will have an important role in Jefferson Labs. SURA now runs the Jefferson lab. SURA had many activities that help the College community, including SURA-grid, also known as the Lambda rail and SCOOP: the Southern Coastal Ocean Observation Plan.
4:00 pm.
Alan Meese and Faculty Affairs Committee.
Meese: Back in August during the faculty retreat, the Provost raised the problem of getting reviews for tenure and promotion when - under current College regulations - candidates can look at the letters of reviewers. He found it hard to get letters, and hard to get letters that were candid. The Provost suggested a few possibilities. Right now the handbook says that anyone who receives such a letter can review it. Among the issues raised by the faculty included the fact that in some departments, candidates can choose their letter-writers.
The committee met on March, and agreed that there was a concern here. Given that it is difficult to get a reviewer, when you end up with your fifth or sixth choice for a reviewer, there is a potential problem. The committee raised potential down-sides of hiding the identity of a reviewer: it difficult for a candidate to question the potential bias of a reviewer; when asking candidates to waive access to their letters this request might not really be voluntary. In addition, those who refuse to waive the right to review letters might be those with a weaker case for tenure, hoping to bid up their letters. The committee was unanimous in proposing a system where the candidate can see the substance of the letter (by redaction), but not to see the letter itself. In addition the candidate will not know who wrote the letter.
The problem will be figuring out how to let the candidate be involved in the choice of letter-writers.
We did not consider whether this was legal or not: that's not our position. We don't propose where to put this (in the faculty handbook, for example). This might go in the standing memorandum by the provost about tenure and promotion. We thought it best to leave that question to later.
Feiss: I can clarify the legal question. I asked Dick Williamson to write me a memo about it. He wrote, "State law is arguably ambiguous about this matter...I do not read the law as clearly prohibiting nondisclosure of either the letter in its entirety or only of the person writing the letter." As many have noted, UVA and Virginia Tech do this and operate under the same statutes as we do. Letters requesting review must tell the reviewer that such a letter can be discovered in a court of law.
Meese: Quoting UVA "By law and university policy, confidential letters and statements of recommendation and evaluations of qualifications for employment, retention, or promotion are not available for access to faculty members."
Meese: We did consider the idea that person could see the entire list of proposed writers.
Beers: If this becomes university policy, will certain programs have to reconsider their procedures?
Feiss: There is enough variability in policies and procedures, it is possible that some might not change their policies until later.
Watkinson: As a department chair I have a lot of questions. Do we have two portfolios, one that is clean, one that has dossiers, vitae, and such?
Feiss: A dossier would have most of the information. An Appendix will have the confidential material, with unredacted letters, reviews and vitae.
Armstrong: The Chair and the Department's personnel committee would have to remove that information from the letter.
Canuel: As a matter of course, faculty in VIMS do not see these letters.
Meese: Currently, as soon as the letter arrives in the law school, it goes in faculty boxes.
Canuel: I'm concerned because tenure resides with the college, not the unit. Clearly our procedures should be on par with one another.
Meyers: At the Dean's Advisory Committee we noticed that there were differences. In English someone gets the letter right away. In Modern Languages, they don't see them until the file is sent out.
Feiss: The Department approaches to tenure and promotion have been determined, at various times, not to violate the faculty handbook. There is a question if these extremes alter the tenure process from department to department. This is almost a Procedurual Review Committee (PRC) issue. I won't send a memo telling people how to do their business. I will set limits, but I have not told them exactly how to do things.
Meese: We will bring this up with Personnel Policy Committee (PPC).
Fuchs: Whatever we decide, is it true that we have to say in the letter that these letters must be disclosed in the event of litigation?
Feiss: Williamson views this as truth in advertising. You are asking someone to potentially put themselves in a position of being litigated against. I view this as more of a "caveat emptor."
Meese: This statement about discovery is only to mitigate the point in the letter that these are confidential letters.
Feiss: If you were to approve this, you could say that next year's dean and provosts will see different dossiers. This would only permit folks that don't have approved policies to change their policies.
Watkinson: Should this change be made, does this apply to pre-tenure faculty who are already here or does this apply to people hired after this time?
Feiss: I would interpret this as applying for people who will be coming up for review, including those hired under the previous rules.
Beers: It appears that this policy is different from the School of Education's policy. Do we have to change ours?
Feiss: It depends on what it says.
Meese: Can't you make a provostal edict that all of these letters will be redacted from now on?
Feiss: I'm not sure about telling departments by fiat that they should do this. If the faculty assembly says to do this, it may be possible to do this.
Armstrong: I agree with this. Provost Cell's memo regarding tenure files did overturn previous policy. I don't think this should be done piecemeal. I worry that some departments may turn to their procedures and disagree with the provost, giving candidates the possibility to grieve.
Leslie: If this policy will come up, we need to know what to do today.
Feiss: If this body approved these recommendations, we can move forward.
Van Dover: Who gets to see the redacted letters? All of the tenured faculty sees the letters with letterhead. There's a confidentiality that needs to be clear. There should be a reminder to those people to keep the letters confidential.
Lee: I think we should ask that these redacted letters must also be given to the candidates before the formal departmental vote.
Feiss: Perhaps we should create a buffer, no later than 1 week before?
Diaz proposes plan D from the FAC memorandum, namely that review committees should "provide candidates with access to the reviews, but redact the name of the reviewer and any other information that might identify the reviewer." (the redaction option). Seconded.
Lee suggested amending the motion, so that redacted letters should come to the candidate one week before the departmental vote.
Meyers made a friendly amendment "Resolved, that tenure and promotion candidates be allowed access to redacted reviews as soon as practicable after receipt."
The assembly unanimously adopted the following resolution.
Review committees for tenure and promotion shall provide candidates with access to the reviews, but redact the name of the reviewer and any other information that might identify the reviewer. Tenure and promotion candidates shall be allowed access to redacted reviews as soon as practicable after receipt.
Summer Research Grants
Virginia Torczon: There was considerable discussion in our committee, the Faculty Research Committee, of the bonus system awarded to new faculty. Do we want to guarantee summer research grants without some kind of quality check? We suggested guaranteed funding rather than requiring proposals.
Armstrong: Giving research support to faculty without a proposal is the wrong step. There is a difference between providing incentive generically, and providing incentives for proposed research. That proposal is important, giving the committee the opportunity to provide valuable comments to new faculty. These proposals will provide an important seed for future proposals. This penalizes those with NSF support who must turn this down if the perquisite is no longer available to them. A guaranteed stipend will make first year faculty into ten-month rather than nine-month salary faculty, which will be a problem for salary compression.
Meese: I agree with David.
Feiss: This takes away one of the things that new faculty can say in their dossier: that I have received summer grants for my work. This is a quite credible claim if a proposal is required, that faculty wrote a fundable proposal.
Torczon: I see the validity of this argument, but we should consider the problem. Some come up in 4th or 5th year who don't really need those bonus points. I think we should really restrict this funding to 1st year faculty.
Meyers: Perhaps we can say that these bonuses will expire in three years. Are you asking us to alter the charge to the committee?
Torczon: There is a policy and procedures statement that determines the bump that first-year proposals get. Particularly in the Physical Sciences, people come with the Jefferson grants for three years, and then in their fourth year come up against brand new scholars.
Beers: All of the new faculty who come in in our program have startup funds.
Armstrong: I don't have strong opinions about bonus points. If we modify "not more than five" to "not more than three" would this help?
Torczon: In the sciences, I didn't realize how critical this was to first-year faculty.
Van Dover: Why say three years and not three grants?
Feiss: It might be possible for someone to contact Mike Ludwick about this. Some faculty bring grad-school fellowships with them which carry them through the first summer. There will be anecdotal issues about setting this only for one year.
Meyers asked this to be referred to Faculty Affairs Committee to modify or replace the quoted procedures about how bonus points are used.
White: Academic Calendar Advisory Committee. Fall will start later, August 30 Exams end Dec 21. Start Jan 24, May 20th.
