Academic Council: August 17, 2011 Minutes

Dean Skerrett called the meeting to order at 10:02 a.m. 

Dean Skerrett shared information regarding the Priorities & Insights Initiative. The dean invited submissions via the website (http://as.richmond.edu/deans-office/about-dean/share-insights.html). The Priorities & Insights Initiatives will provide an opportunity for faculty to share their ideas for the school. Dean Skerrett will schedule facilitated conversations after the comments come in. The dean will report the results back to the faculty in January 2012.

Director of A&S Communications, Rachel Beanland, provided a demonstration of the new look of the A&S dean’s office website, which includes the new Academic Council minutes and agendas. A&S Faculty meetings will be displayed in a similar manner. The dean encouraged Council to provide feedback to the communications team regarding the website.

Rachel also announced upcoming welcome events for the dean:
Drop-in and Meet the Dean: August 25 and 29 from 2:00-4:00 p.m., A&S Dean’s Office
Ice cream social – students meet the dean: Thursday, September 15 at 3:30 p.m., Boatwright Library Patio (rain location: THC Alice Haynes Room)
Early career faculty luncheon (invitation only), September 8 at noon, THC 305
Welcome reception for the dean, Thursday, October 6, 3:30-5:00 p.m., INTC commons

Associate Provost, Joan Neff, updated Council about Mellon funding for University Seminars. The seminars are team taught across schools. There will be stipends available over the summer to those who are interested. There will be a call for proposals early in the fall for the following year.
Joan also shared with Council some of the transitions in the Provost’s Office. Nell Massee, formerly of the Rhetoric & Communication Studies department has filled Joyce Farmer’s position. Joyce has left to be a full-time grandmother. Susan Taylor has taken a position in the Jepson School of Leadership and will leave sometime in September.

Joan reminded Council about the workshop series on course design (with Michael Palmer). Those interested may attend as many workshops as they wish. A smaller cohort group will meet prior to each workshop. Registration is required for the cohort group, but not the workshops.

Dean Skerrett briefly discussed the faculty search process for the fall. The dean would like to work with search committee chairs and diversity advocates to clarify communication between the dean’s office and the search committee. The dean shared with Council that the diversity advocate briefing was beneficial.

Dean Skerrett discussed the faculty annual review process as the deadlines are fast approaching. The dean has observed that this is a time-intensive process and requested Council feedback on how to streamline the process for tenured faculty, with the intention of maintaining the current process for tenure-track faculty and directors. The dean stated that she would like to see an elected group of chairs who might assist with the review process. With the dean’s office being short one associate dean this year, it is important to streamline the review process this year, with the understanding that this year would be a trial year, and we will discuss the process further over the semester.

The dean posed the question to Council: “In an annual review process, what is most meaningful to you as chairs and faculty members?”

Some Council members felt that student evaluations provide feedback that you might not ordinarily get. It was mentioned that student evaluations could be better orchestrated. Students are often inundated with requests for surveys.

Some members were inclined to think that goal setting is a crucial part of the review process. There needs to be parameters to keep the process consistent from department to department. It was suggested to use an online form for chairs and faculty (limited to x number of characters). The annual review process should help faculty track their accomplishments and achievements. It was also suggested that a guideline be established to limit the number of pages submitted. Some faculty said that further opportunities for self-reflection would be beneficial.

There was some concern about inequity in the current process, when each chair is using his/her own judgement about how to calibrate merit standards.

It was noted that some tenure-track faculty submit binder(s) in preparation for mid-course or tenure review, but tenured faculty should not be expected to do that.

The dean posed the question: What is the best way to conduct evaluations for tenured faculty?
Every tenured person is currently reviewed every year. It was suggested to possibly change that to a triennial review process with assignments of scores that would carry for three years. Of course, SACS requirements would need to be heeded.

The dean asked if there were consistent standards across departments? How are those researched?

Some faculty indicated that they do not want peer reviews of teaching, while others felt it could be beneficial. Perhaps someone from another department would be more welcome.

The dean asked if it would be possible to have an elected committee work in the annual review process. A divisional representative might work with chairs and report to the committee on shared standards. That would allow a calibration of merit along with the chairs recommendation to the dean. The dean would be a member on the committee. It was noted that directors need to be supported as well and should not be lost. The oversight of their evaluations would need to be addressed. 

There was discussion whether the dean should share faculty salary data with the committee. It was suggested not to delegate merit recommendations to an associate dean. The dean asked Council to think about the process in ways that would make the process meaningful and more efficient.
The dean thanked Council for the discussion and promised to continue to discuss the process over the course of the next year.

The meeting adjourned at 11:44 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Cheryl Burns

Dean Skerrett's Remarks at Colloquy

Below are remarks that Dean Kathleen Roberts Skerrett made this afternoon at Colloquy:

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I am honored to join this university as the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences. I share your desire to create a learning environment unlike any other in higher education, a model institution for the twenty-first century. With liberal arts at its heart, our unique suite of schools enables students to gain skills for discovery, analysis and creation, while preparing them for citizenship and enterprise. This mix appeals to students and to families that have various expectations of a college graduate, and allows us to welcome a diverse generation and to join their families to this school.

The generation we are teaching will reach maturity in a world that is deeply wounded and precarious.  The apocalypse proceeds for the diversity of species at a terrible rate, and the waters rise to engulf the lands of the poorest of the poor. We do not know what the new normal will be for the world economy, or how economic collapse will deepen ecological degradation. We do not know how religious or political forces will respond to crises of sickness and scarcity; or how technology and communications will interact with basic human need. Yet the students in our classrooms today must meet these global contingencies tomorrow.  

Any of us who saw Tyler Hicks’ photograph of a starving Somali child, published on the front page of the New York Times on August 2nd, stopped in our tracks. Many scholars here could provide commentary: images of severely emaciated African children have a history in American media. Yet the photograph nonetheless incites our visceral knowledge that a person can suffer the most hideous anguish.  If there is any hope to foster communities of nurture and justice for the future, it will fall to the ingenuity and compassion of this generation we are teaching.

There is no obligation in our professional lives more pressing: to practice our disciplines of discovery and creation so as to devise the most effective pedagogies we can. And we have a task that is peculiar for highly trained teachers—we must teach our students how to learn what we are unable to learn, and how to do what we are unable to do. I have high expectations of the intellectual and practical capabilities that our students must gain. 

Yet, when people ask me what is the point of a liberal arts education, I say: to form people capable of resilience and joy. Because resilience they will need in inexhaustible supply to meet crises that challenge their hope, and joy to share, in a groaning world, that still gives such beauty in abundance.

I have high expectations for us as well, for pedagogical innovation and scholarly productivity, for administrative tact and wise resource management. But innovation and productivity are just work, dear colleagues, if they are not grounded in a community of virtue. So let us be together a community worthy of academic freedom. I said to our new faculty on Monday, do not wait until you are tenured or promoted or retired to practice courage. Because if you do not practice courage when you are insecure, you will not suddenly have it when you are safe. Courage never feels like fearlessness or confidence or conviction; it feels like struggling to do the next right thing in the face of uncertainty and stress. For this reason, we need also practice mutual kindness. In a community of severely intelligent people, who have long opportunities to observe each other’s sins, and who build our careers on critical acumen—mutual kindness is a condition of our freedom together. So be brave in the moment, and kind for the long haul. An Augustinian scholar, James Wetzel, observes that time becomes incarnate in us as habit. Therefore, let the time we share in this next year as faculty and staff of the University of Richmond become in us habits of courage and kindness.

I am delighted to be counted among the faculty of the School of Arts & Sciences. Thank you for having me.

Academic Council: August 17, 2011 Agenda

Our next meeting will be held on Wednesday, August 17, 2011 in the Keller Hall Reception Room (KHRR). Breakfast will be available at 10:00 a.m.

Discussion Agenda

1. Priorities & Insights Initiative
2. Communications Updates - new look for Council agendas & minutes (Rachel Beanland)
3. Mellon funding for University Seminars (Associate Provost Joan Neff)
4. The workshop series on course design this fall (Associate Provost Joan Neff)
5. Annual faculty reviews
6. Other business

Next Meeting

We will meet on Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 10:30 a.m. in Tyler Haynes Commons, Room 305 (THC 305).