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The Arts and Sciences Faculty Senate (ASFS), 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm, Zoom

Representatives Present: Robert Rupert (PHIL), Julie Lundquist (ATOC), Sebastian Casalaina (MATH), Paul Romatschke (PHYS), Mike Zerella (RAPS), Joe Bryan (GEOG), Andrew Cowell (LING), Annje Wiese (HUMN), Juan Pablo Dabove (SPAN), Stephanie Su (AAH), Shelley Copley (MCDB), Matt Jones (PSYC), Kieran Murphy (FRIT), Cecilia Pang (THDN), David Paradis (HIST), Christina Meyers (SLHS), Robert Parson (CHEM), Rebecca Flowers (GEOL), Svetoslav Derderyan (PSCI), Jennifer Schwartz (HONR), Robert Kuchta (BCHM), Aun Ali (RLST), Daniel Kaffine (ECON), Zachary Kilpatrick (APPM), Nicholas Villanueva (ETHN), Matthias Richter (ALC), Matthew Burgess (ENVS), Nichole Barger (EBIO), John Stevenson (ENGL), Liam Downey (SOCY), Irene Blair (PSYC), Lorraine Bayard de Volo (WGST)

Representatives not present: Rebecca Wartell (JWST), Anthony Abiragi (PWR), Elspeth Dusinberre (CLAS), William Taylor (ANTH), Christopher Osborn (CINE), Doug Seals (IPHY), Anastasiya Osipova (GSLL), Benjamin Brown (APS)

Also in attendance: James White (Acting Dean), Bud Coleman (Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs and Initiatives), Sonia DeLuca Fernández (Senior Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion)

The meeting is called to order at 3:32 pm.

Dean’s Remarks

The college is continuing to move forward with re-organization. The goal is to have this wrapped up by the end of the semester. By the time of the final ASFS meeting of the spring, White can give more information on this.

The strategic budget realignment for the campus is also moving forward. If the college goes up in undergraduates, it will see an additional bump in dollars when the census is finished in the fall.

The search for a new dean for the college is ongoing and three candidates will be coming to campus soon.

RLST’s representative asks why the choice was made to go with an external candidate. White says that would be a question for the search committee. Several representatives, as well as the chair, thank White for his service to the college.

Chair’s Remarks

The final ASFS meeting of the academic year is in April. It will be held jointly with the A&S faculty as a whole. There will be reports from standing committee chairs and they will try to have items on the agenda that are of interest to the faculty as a whole. One item is the work on a common curriculum for the campus. Katherine Eggert and Daryl Maeda will visit to talk about their work with this. Rupert asks everyone to encourage colleagues in their units to attend.

The election of a chair occurs at the April meeting. The chair’s term was recently changed from one year to two years. Andy Cowell, budget committee chair, has agreed to take on oversight of this. If you would like to self-nominate or nominate someone else, please contact Andy.

The Faculty Salary Procedures Working Group, also referred to as “phase two” of the EPEWA process, will involve review and discussion of faculty merit and salary adjustment procedures. If anyone is interested in participating in this working group, reach out to your BFA representative. The email asking for nomination submissions mentions a deadline of February 11^th, but Rupert believes there is some flexibility.

Planning Committee

Shelley Copley, chair of the planning committee, shares screen with slides.

There is a new promotion track for teaching faculty that is being implemented in the college. It used to be two ranks: instructor and senior instructor. There was also a category of teaching professor of distinction, which was honorific. The new system institutes a new rank and new working titles: Teaching Assistant Professor, Teaching Associate Professor and Teaching Full Professor. Copley recognizes that teaching faculty would have preferred “assistant teaching professor” and so on, but these are the university-recognized working titles. There will still be a Teaching Professor of Distinction honorary title.

Teaching Assistant Professors are eligible for promotion to Teaching Associate Professor after six years of service. Teaching Associate Professors are eligible for promotion to Teaching Full Professor after three years of service and this promotion process would require letters from outside the faculty member’s department.

There will now be three ranks and the question the planning committee has been working on is, how to handle promotions within this new system. Copley says there are four possibilities.

The first possibility is inspired by the dean’s advisory committee (the successor of the instructor task force). They came up with the idea of constituting a personnel committee. The planning committee has discussed this possibility and they liked a lot of what the dean’s advisory committee recommended. The pros of this option would be that it would enhance rigor, parallel the existing tenure track personnel committee and it would be constituted of specialists in teaching while being chaired by a teaching full professor. The con is that it would require extra service from teaching faculty.

The second option was brought up by the chair of the existing personnel committee. This option would have the existing personnel committee split into two subcommittees. One would handle tenure track cases and the other would handle teaching faculty cases. This helps ensure consistency. However, it would greatly increase the personnel committee chair’s workload and the chair would not be a teaching professor. The existing personnel committee’s chair clarifies that this would involve forming a subcommittee and increasing the number of people on the committee. The composition of that subcommittee for teaching faculty cases would be exactly what the planning committee has envisioned.

The third option is to split the existing personnel committee into divisional personnel committees. The pros of this option include decreasing the workload for individuals. However, the workloads could increase if they are also handling teaching faculty cases. The con would be that it could weaken ties across the divisions.

The fourth and final option is to simply do nothing. This would maintain the status quo, but would not increase the rigor of the evaluation process for teaching faculty.

ALC’s representative says he likes the idea of divisional committees, but sees how meaningful it is to get to see what other divisions do. He is concerned about splitting the college into distinct worlds, but reading files within your division seems easier and quicker.

ETHN’s representative agrees with adding rigor to the process and does not think he would be in favor of not doing anything. He gravitates towards the first option, but his concern goes back to service on the committee. We are already asking so much of teaching faculty, so adding even more to their service seems like an issue. Is there a way to figure out how to alleviate other service required if they serve on this committee?

Copley says a certain percent of their workload is dedicated to service and it would be appropriate for other service to fall off of their workload if they are on this committee.

The same representative clarifies that he began as an instructor, so he knows what the service demands are like and that it is difficult to say no. He feels we would still be adding pressure to the teaching faculty in smaller departments.

Associate Dean Coleman says that, in addition to providing rigor to the process for teaching faculty promotion, there is added reason for moving this promotion process to a college level committee. Currently, the department chair is the only level of review teaching professors go through for promotion. This could be problematic if a teaching professor does not have a good relationship with their chair.

RAP’s representative points out that RAP (Residential Academic Program) instructors do not neatly fit into some of the plans being discussed. They do not teach for a department but instead teach for a RAP, which employ people from multiple departments. He asks that everyone keep this in mind as they get further along in the discussion.

A divisional representative from the Natural Sciences says she does not have a strong preference for any option. She does think there should be a committee similar to the existing tenure and promotion committee with consistency across divisions and across tenure track/teaching faculty. There is a concern that teaching criteria would start to become very different. Tenure track faculty should have a path to tenure through teaching excellence- is that different in a significant way from the path for teaching faculty? There needs to be an eye on consistency as this discussion moves forward.

Personnel committee’s chair says that a single chair acting for both committees would act as the guardian of consistency. There would be one meeting per year of both subcommittees in order to coordinate.

HNRS’ representative says that when she discussed this conversation with her department, the question of “why are we changing this?” was asked by a few. Teaching faculty said they already feel like they are over-worked and underpaid. This feels like more of a burden and they are not fully understanding the motivation.

Copley says the intention is not to add any burden on instructors. A more rigorous procedure would require the same dossier from teaching faculty that is currently required. The task of getting letters from outside the unit would fall on the chair of the PUEC. The idea is not to add anything, but to take the decision out of the department and have it carried out at the level of the college. Associate Dean Coleman adds that they are not trying to burden the teaching professors more and an expedited reappointment process will be an option to reduce work.

Rupert says it is important to recognize that this language connected to excellence in teaching as a path to tenure comes out of regent law. It might be that we are stuck with a certain rubric if we are thinking about tenure by excellence in teaching.

Copley says she has heard at least one person supporting each of the four options.

Rupert says he has heard very different things from different teaching faculty. Maybe there’s a way to survey the teaching professors to see what they want. It is not the final word necessarily, but it is a very important part.

ALC’s representative says he is concerned that with this rigor being proposed, they may be inadvertently raising standards when teaching faculty already have a heavy teaching load.

Copley says maybe her use of the term “rigor” isn’t being understood the way she means it. She is referring to the fact that the promotion process would be at arm’s length, rather than within the department.

The same representative says he recognizes the intention not to do this, but still worries about the possibility of inadvertently raising standards. He asks that everyone pay close attention to this and be very specific about expectations.

Copley says there are two different questions here, the process for promotions and the criteria for promotions. Right now, they are only discussing the process but certainly the criteria should also be clearly laid out.

HIST’s representative says the consistency argument is an important one. As much as he loves the idea of putting it in the hands of different units within the college, that seems like it could be fraught with problems and is more persuaded by the idea of consistency.

White says they ask departments and programs to set the criteria for tenure track faculty. This is because the college is not homogenous. There are differences among the units when it comes to teaching professors as well. He would argue that it is still important for departments/programs to express what the criteria are for promotion for teaching professors. It’s helpful to know what the standards are.

The chair of the existing personnel committee says he understands the concerns about raising standards. There will inevitably be a raising of standards, involuntarily. This is why it is important that cases are decided within a body in which teaching professors are the majority. If the personnel committee is broken up by divisions, this is more problematic because the balance on each committee will be different.

PSCI’s representative says he likes Rupert’s idea about surveying teaching faculty for their opinions. It’s still not clear to him, from the perspective of teaching faculty, what about these op