Dean Skerrett called the meeting to order at 10:31a.m.
The dean welcomed new and returning Council members and reminded all that past Academic Council agendas and minutes are posted on the Dean’s Office website.
The minutes of the
April 15, 2014 meeting were approved.
UR Scholarship Repository
The dean introduced Lucretia McCulley, head of scholarly communications, and welcomed her to Academic Council. Ms. McCulley discussed the newly installed UR Scholarship Repository. The repository will allow published works by faculty and students to become more accessible online through search engines. Ms. McCulley discussed the many uses of the repository, which included an option to link works from a faculty biography page to the online repository.
Ms. McCulley gave examples of other school repositories. While the University of Richmond’s repository is not yet as advanced as others, the hope is that it will be in the future. Ms. McCulley stated that participation is optional. All student work must be submitted by a faculty member. Ms. McCulley offered to visit departments individually to offer more information on the UR Scholarship Repository.
Budget
The dean gave a presentation on the FY14 budget. The dean explained that for a second year, the School of Arts & Sciences has been able to forward the operating budget surplus into program-based budget (PBB) planning for the next academic year. After reading and discussing requests from departments and programs in November, the Dean’s Advisory Council (DAC) will make recommendations to the dean allocation of the surplus. The dean showed the budgets for major FY15 expenditures, such as faculty research and undergraduate research programs. The dean noted that this year, and going forward, all department chair and program coordinator stipends will be paid their stipend during the year of service.
Contingent Faculty Reform
The dean reported that the number of units taught by adjuncts this fall semester is 69. The A&S Dean’s Office goal was to reduce the number to 70. She congratulated Vincent Wang and the department chairs for working to meet this goal. Because of the 25% raise in adjunct pay, the reduction is budget neutral, but this meets an important goal in our Contingent Faculty Reform Initiative.
Dr. Vincent Wang, associate dean, gave a presentation on the Contingent Faculty Reform Initiative (CFRI). CFRI was launched last semester. Dr. Wang recalled that the goals of CFRI are to prioritize the teacher-scholar model by replacing term of adjunct appointments whenever possible with tenure-stream faculty positions. Our priority is to reduce reliance on contingent faculty, while improving the treatment and compensation of instructors who join us for limited terms or purposes.
The dean’s office reviewed AAUP’s guidelines regarding faculty employment, which recommend the use of contingent faculty specialized fields or to meet short-term unplanned situations. Last fall semester, contingent faculty made up 30% of the A&S faculty members. It was asked why applied music faculty are included in the head-count. Dr. Wang answered that the chart represents these adjunct instructors in a separate category, but that we should count all faculty members, including those who doesn’t receive fringe benefits from the university.
Dr. Wang discussed the strategies of the dean’s office for CFRI. These strategies included the identification of “chronic” term positions, replacing these with tenure-stream positions, entering into leave-proof agreements with departments, eliminating discretionary adjunct appointments, improving pay for adjunct faculty, helping departments reconfigure their curriculum to make best use of tenure-stream faculty, and offering full-time benefits to contingent faculty members who have 4-3 assignments.
Dr. Wang discussed adjunct requests by department over the last four years. Most departments have reduced their adjunct requests. It was asked how to manage the reduction of adjunct professors if an incoming class is larger than usual. Associate Dean Libby Gruner concurred that this was an important question to consider. The dean added that CFRI would be a multi-year project in order to correctly assess the capacity. It was asked why the number of adjuncts teaching general education units was so high since the faculty voted on this core curriculum. Dr. Gruner responded that many times those courses are all that is available for a contingent faculty member to teach.
The dean noted that since 2012, A & S has replaced four “chronic” term appointments with tenure-track faculty positions (in MUS, PHY, LAIS, and MATH). In addition, MUS, PHY, and ENG have entered leave-proof agreements.
Program-Based Budget Requests
Dr. Wang shared the PBB deadline for requests. The deadline this year will be September 19. If a department would like to request an extension in order to prepare a faculty position request, please contact Dr. Wang. If a department chair would like help with their requests, contact Dr. Wang or Terri Weaver, director of budget and operations, in the dean’s office.
Travel Budgets:
Bill Ross has requested that the dean review the level of funding for faculty member’s professional travel. Following questions, the dean agreed to present analysis of faculty member’s use of these budgets and to discuss with Academic Council and the Dean’s Advisory Council useful models for allocating potential increased budget.
Restricted Funds:
The dean asked AC members to look over Dr. Walter Stevenson’s questions concerning discretionary and restricted funds. These will form the first item for discussion at the next Academic Council meeting.
Dr. Hill will send the new course proposal process to Academic Council members via email. He will answer questions about this process at the next meeting.
The meeting adjourned at 11:46.
Respectfully submitted,
Zandria Haines
