Clerk’s Committee Meeting Minutes, October 6, 2015

Minutes for Clerk’s Committee Meeting on 10/6/15

In attendance: Caleb Anderson (Traditional Student Representative), Dave Dobson (Clerk), Sarah Estow (Social Sciences and recorder for this meeting), Bill Grubbs (Business, Policy, and Sports Studies), Lisa McLeod (Humanities), Alex Ricks (CCE Student Representative), Beth Rushing (Vice President for Academic Affairs & Academic Dean), Kathryn Shields (Arts)

Absent: Steve Shapiro (Natural Sciences & Mathematics)

  1. Gathering and moment of silence.

The meeting opened at 10:03 with a moment of silence.

  1. Approval of minutes from September 29, 2015

Minutes were approved with minor edits.

  1. Quick check on agenda for Faculty Meeting on October 7, 2015

Added item – plea for new recording clerk: Lisa will take minutes on 10/7.  Kathryn will do this for the November meeting if no one else volunteers.  The addition of this plea to the agenda was approved.

Added item – silent announcement on anti-racism workshops: The addition of this item to the agenda was approved.

Tim Kircher will discuss the May and October Board of Trustees, Board of Visitors, and Alumni Board meetings during the November faculty meeting.

  1. Evaluate Research Fund Request

Clerk’s committee agreed this was an appropriate project to fund.

The Clerk suggested discussing the possibility to roll over travel funds from one year to the next.  The Dean said she’d been thinking about working a 2-year rotation of travel funding into the system to allow faculty members to take more costly trips.

It was agreed that it was important to clarify what monies are available for travel, research, etc. for faculty.

One committee member observed that administrators’ travel funds don’t seem to be getting cut quite as much as faculty travel funds.  It was suggested that perhaps this is something that can be discussed in the future.

  1. Questions from GERC (Gen Ed Revision Committee)

There is no open forum time to discuss the work of the GERC.  Possibilities are community time or a retreat (although there may not be funds for this – the Clerk will discuss the possibility of getting funds from Faculty Development), etc.  It was agreed that more meeting time is favorable.

The November faculty meeting will have extensive time devoted to discussing the GER, and perhaps the December faculty meeting as well.

The GERC will be encouraged to ask less divisive questions.

  1. Continued discussion of committee and academic administrative structures

The discussion of committee and academic administrative structures continued.  One thing that was discussed was the idea of what might constitute a “work unit” and perhaps build compensation and committee/role assignment based on this model.

Moving forward, we should catalog what department chairs’ and division chairs’ duties are.  The Clerk will send around a short survey to find out.

Questions to discuss in the future: What’s our new administrative structure and what tasks should be assigned to the various levels? Can we come up with a service credit system in which rewards are distributed in a more equitable way?

 Respectfully submitted by Sarah Estow