John Carroll University

Faculty Forum

April 18, 2002, 11:30AM

Chair:  Ernie DeZolt

Vice Chair:  Dick Horwath

Secretary:  Karen Gygli

 

I.  Invocation:  Verghese Chirayath

II.  Minutes from March Meeting:  Approved.

III.  Announcements: 

·         Formation of Ad Hoc committees:  There was a call at the March Forum meeting to form two ad hoc committees, one on the wording of the JCU diploma and one on how to achieve greater faculty involvement in the decision-making process at this university. Leo Schneider, Pat Mooney, Tom Nevin, aned Verghese Chirayath will serve on the diploma committee, and talks are currently underway with the Jesuit community and the Business School to get their representatives to this committee.  The executive committee of the Faculty Forum will add three faculty members to the three Forum officers who already meet with Fr. Glynn to create the committee concerning faculty consultation on university policy decisions.  Interested faculty should email Ernie DeZolt by April 23.  Ernie would like a first meeting before the end of the semester for this second committee.  Parameters will be specified upon selection of the committee members.

·         Reports from Forum committees will be posted on the Faculty Forum webpage so that all proposals and their status can be viewed at any time.

·         Karen Gygli’s  last meeting as Forum secretary.  Thanks Karen!

·         Results of two recent Forum elections:  The proposal to make the Vice Chair of the Forum the ex officio member of the Nominations Committee passed, with 123 favor, 14 not in favor, 15 abstaining.  The proposal to write a letter to the President objecting to the appointment of the Academic Vice President without a national search passed with 98 favor, 53 not in favor, 1 abstaining.

·         A reminder that the slate of nominations which recently went out in campus mail is NOT a ballot.  The list is simply to facilitate the nominations approval (after any new nominations from the floor) at today’s meeting.

·         Paul Lauritzen has sent a summary statement concerning the April 4, 2002 Chairs meeting with Fr. Glynn.  Two point were made very clear to the Chairs by Fr. Glynn.  First,  Glynn stated that he has made his decision, it is best for the university, and that he has no intention of changing his mind.  Secondly, he is willing to work with the faculty to change institutional culture through the creation of a faculty tenure and promotion committee, and through the appointment of faculty to a budget committee.  He also discussed with the Chairs the creation of adminstration handbook.

·         The Faculty Forum welcomes the staff members present today.  Changes in the university insurance coverage will be discussed today. Please participate in this discussion. 

 

 

 

IV.  Committee Reports:

 

·         Committee on Academic Policy:  Mary Ann Flannery reported that the committee will be speaking soon to the Office of Academic Advising concerning whether first year students should be allowed to drop classes without prior approval from their academic advisor.  The committee and Academic Advising will also speak about larger issues of deadlines for dropping classes and the pass/fail option.

·         Rank, Tenure and Salary:  no report at this time.

·         Research, Service and Faculty Development:  Jerry Weinstein reported that this Forum committee on research and service will meet a week from this Monday to discuss further communication with the University committee of reserach and service, proposed changes in the Grauel fellowship application, and a continuing discussion of the University research committee’s mission.

·         Finance:  Joe Kelly reported that the proposal concerning retired faculty’s teaching loads was tabled by the committee in favor of the pressing issue of health care.  After some discussion and a proposal to table the core committee report which did not pass, it was decided to have the core committee report and nominations first, before going to the finance/health care committee presentation. 

 

V.  New Business:

·         There were no nominations from the floor, so nominations for the University committees elections are now closed.

·         Core committee report:  Bob Kolesar (MT) gave the annual report on the core.  The importance of core was stressed.  As Fr. Glynn has stated, the liberal arts should permeate all areas of the curriculum at John Carroll.  The committee makes the following suggestions:

Ž      Advising, for the most part, is being done well.  However, one way to improve would be to avoid all those senior course petitions.  Advisors should stress that students have a responsibility to know the catalogue, and to regulary check their audit sheet on the web. 

Ž      The committee is troubled by the frequency of students petitioning to take core courses, in such areas as philosophy and the sciences, at community colleges.  The flat rate tuition policy should be reassessed to see if it is contributing to this. 

Ž      The committee discussed how it communicates with faculty.  Bob reminded faculty that chairs are crucial in this process.  Bob praised Walter Simmons for his recently approved course EC 343 Economic Development.   An R, S, or D designation is reserved for a course that devotes a majority of class time AND assignments to, for example, diversity issues. 

Ž      The committee is looking into getting rid of pass/fail grades for core courses.  The pass/fail grade is also not allowed for major and business college courses.

Ž      There is no exemption of the language requirement for students with English as a second language.

Ž      There are too many part-time faculty teaching core courses.  More introductory courses should be taught by tenured faculty.  The committee recognizes that this is not an easy problem to solve.

Ž      The connections between courses should be stressed whenever possible, through coherent sequences across the curriculum.  All courses should stress the liberal arts.

Ž      First Year Seminar--Should faculty be forced to do FYS?  Yes, since students need it to graduate from JCU.

·         Finance committee and health care presentation.  Lisa Mencini and Jonathan Ivec met with committee in December.  An Ad Hoc committee was formed to meet about rising costs of health care.  This committee had faculty and staff representation.  Finance committee members Walter Simmons and Earl Spurgeon sat on this committee.  Also, there was an attempt to include both married and single representation, along with a variety of ages.  This committee met several times this semester, and must decide on changes and a timeline to implement those changes before June in order to implement.  Walter Simmons and Lisa Mencini presented some charts and information that the committee considered.  The annual business report will be posted on the Faculty Forum website, and then presented at the November Forum meeting instead of today’s meeting.  In the question and answer session that followed the presentation, concerns were raised about how an increase in expenses passed on to workers at JCU would affect those already at the lower salary levels. 

 

Meeting adjourned. 

 

Minutes prepared by Karen Gygli, Forum Secretary