Faculty Council Meeting Minutes - April 10, 2008

Present: Julio de Paula, Dean of the College; Jane Hunter, Associate Dean; Cliff Bekar, Associate Professor of Economics; Ken Clifton, Associate Professor of Biology; Dinah Dodds, Professor of German; Deborah Heath, Associate Professor of Anthropology; Mervyn Brockett, Assistant to the President; and Terri Banasek, Executive Assistant and recorder.

Announcements:

• Dean de Paula reminded the Faculty Council that the external review committee for biochemistry and molecular biology will be on campus April 10-11 and will meet with Faculty Council at 2 p.m. on Friday. The self-study is available for review.


• Dr. Brockett announced that meetings are being scheduled with the accreditation team. Four things will be looked at: general education, assessment, curricular integration between the three school, and diversity.


• The curriculum committee and assessment subcommittee are making a recommendation to Dean de Paula that he convene a task force to review general education next year. This would not include Exploration and Discovery. The accreditation reviewers’ recommendations would feed into the task force work.

Agenda Items:

1. Faculty Council agreed that the philosophy and theatre departments will be reviewed next year. East Asian studies will be reviewed in 2009-10.


2. Faculty Council continued its discussion of position requests. A meeting is being scheduled with the arts and humanities department chairs to discuss the position requests in art and classical studies. Rob Kugler has submitted additional information about the classical studies position.


3. Dr. Heath reported that the search committee for the Mellon Postdoc in Latin American studies met on April 9 and forwarded the top four names to Associate Dean Hunter. The top person, for whom there was unanimous support, will come to campus with the next couple of weeks. The candidate is from UC Santa Cruz; she would also serve the interests of the gender studies program.


4. Dean de Paula reported on a meeting held on April 4 regarding a request from the Board to have a conversation about how we are preparing our students for life beyond graduation, particularly in areas of business. Many of the current trustees are products of the previous business major. The range of responses fell across a spectrum that went from feeling fairly satisfied that we are preparing our students but not helping them recognize their skills to a lot of interesting ideas about developing ways for students to use and build their skills. It was noted that viewing successful students in terms of wealth building and business success can be complemented by recognizing the broad range of entrepreneurial activities that students and alums are engaged in, including work in the non-profit sector, both domestically and internationally, and the successful small business enterprises launched by former LC students.


5. The meeting adjourned at 11:05 a.m.

Next meeting: Thursday, April 17, 9:40-11:00 a.m.