Announcements:
Dean Johnson said that the Social Science department chairs expressed concern about the December 1 deadline for fall course schedules. Three of the departments are undergoing extensive curricular changes this year, putting them under an extremely tight timeline. The deans suggested the department chairs advise the registrar of their situation and ask for an extension of their deadline.
Dean Johnson reported that the social science chairs are in favor of changing the date for submission of sabbatical leave applications to October 1.
The search for the Pamplin Chair of Government is moving forward. The committee hopes to bring candidates to campus within the next few weeks.
Ethnomusicology candidates will be coming to campus during the next week.
Dean Keedy announced that the following students have been selected as Goldwater candidates: Holly Severson, Carolyn Wolf, Annie Weiland and Adam Smith.
Four student groups have been selected by MSN faculty to apply for inclusion in the Council for Undergraduate Research (CUR) Poster Conference in Washington, D.C. The students selected were: Dan Meliza and Bryan Cutler (Lochner and Scalettar's group); Joseph Azar and Jonathan Beathe (Duncan's group), David Severson and Jose Higa (Balko's group); and Dante Gasser, Annie Weiland and Jessica Youngman (Bierzychudek's group). In order for the groups to now be accepted by CUR, they must prepare an abstract of their work, accompanied by a letter of support from their faculty adviser.
Dean Keedy said he attended the supervisor training conducted this past month by Human Resources Director Greg Walters and reviewed the new support staff evaluation process with his chairs.
Planning for the Biology/Psychology office space remodel is moving forward. Current plans provide a net gain of three offices for biology faculty, one additional psychology office, with no change to the Bio/Pscyh Conference Room. The remodel will now go out for bids.
The Biology searches each have approximately 60 applicants. The committee hopes to narrow the field of candidates to about 20 by the end of the month.
Agenda Items:
1. The Council reviewed requests for equipment <$5000. This round of requests was primarily earmarked for the non-academic departments, e.g. admissions, libirary and registrar. The academic departments were also asked to submit any requests remaining after the recent first-round allocations in September. It became very clear upon review of the support department requests that all available funds would be needed in those area.
2. The deans reviewed sabbatical applications for academic year 1998-99. Decisions will be made next week on the 8 full-year and 13 one-semester sabbatical requests.