Minutes of the February 2007
Faculty Meeting

Opening

President Anderson called the meeting to order at 11:34 am.

Jennifer Koenig opened the meeting with prayer.

The minutes for the December 2006 meeting of the faculty were approved.

President’s Remarks

The president began his remarks by welcoming back the faculty who had led the Middle East, Far East, and Global terms abroad, as well as those who had been on sabbatical in the fall and interim.

He then noted that construction on the science complex had begun, that the construction crew was planning to begin pouring concrete on February 12, and that the columns and first elevated floors would be in evidence by March.

With respect to the finances for the science complex, he reported that $22.7 million had been received in gifts and pledges. Commenting on the next steps, he reported that the fund raising campaign’s success had emboldened the campaign to attempt to raise the rest of the money by July 1 st, 2007 so that the entire building could be built in one phase. To accomplish this goal, an additional $11 million would need to be raised by July 1 st, and he stated that raising that money would be his top priority in the next six months. He also noted the inspiring fact that 68% of natural science faculty had recently responded to the college’s invitation to contribute to the campaign by pledging a total of $307, 000. In closing his remarks on the topic of finances for the science complex, he said that the rest of the faculty would soon be given the chance to contribute, and that he hoped they would find ways to do so.

With respect to admissions, the President noted that the college had crossed the threshold of 4,000 applicants for a class of approximately 700 for the first time in its history, which meant that the college’s acceptance rate would be in the lower parts of the 50 th percentile, as opposed to 66% last year. Out-of-state applications, he noted, were up, and the only states that had not yielded applicants had been Rhode Island and West Virginia. He further reported that early-action admission acceptance letters were being sent out, and that the admitted pool reflected an increase in the percentage of legacy and multi-cultural students from the previous year, while the number of Lutherans had held steady; at the same time, he noted that all academic measures of the admitted students were higher than the measures of last year’s early admission student pool.

The President then reported that the Board of Regents was currently meeting on campus, with the primary task of approving the comprehensive fee increase proposal for 2007-2008. He stated that the Board had asked for a recommendation for next year’s fee, embedded in a multi-year strategy for establishing the college’s cost and the size of the student body, relative to the college’s vision and academic goals. He declared that, in response to its request, the Board would receive a recommendation that the college reduce the size of the student body to around 2800 over the course of the next five years. This course of action, he explained, would lead to benefits in terms of faculty-student ratio, dorm density, selectivity, etc., but would also cost the college tuition dollars.

With respect to the rest of the year’s faculty meetings, the President alerted the faculty to the fact that the spring faculty meetings were shaping up to be very busy with the committees bringing many resolutions to the faculty.

Finally, he drew the faculty’s attention to a Nike commercial that had aired during the national broadcast of the Duke-UNC basketball game the previous night. He noted that if anyone had seen the commercial and thought that the choir singing in the background sounded familiar and particularly good, it was indeed the St. Olaf Choir.

Action Items

Matt Richey, chair of RPC, moved that the faculty approve the addition to the faculty handbook, RCPC 06/07-01, a motion incorporating changes in the language regarding the examination policy. The motion was approved by a majority of the faculty.

Wes Pearson moved the adoption of 2007 spring sports schedule.

In discussion, Jonathan Hill requested that the days of the week be included in the schedules the next time they were drawn up. Pearson said that that would not be a problem and would be done in the future. The motion was approved unanimously.

Committee Reports

Chair of RPC, Matt Richey, reported that the committee would send out proposals for restructuring two committees – curriculum and student life – that could then be discussed at the March faculty meeting. At the April faculty meeting, he said, the committee was planning to bring a proposal on these two committees for a vote.

Richey also reported that the committee’s most recent action involved formulating a recommendation regarding faculty salary pool distribution. He noted that the committee supported the Board of Regent’s goal of enabling the college to reach the 80 th percentile of the AAUP salary survey for each faculty rank. In the current budget, he explained, there was a 5.25% increase for faculty salary. In making a recommendation about how to distribute this increase, RPC was proposing to continue to distinguish between continuing long-term and non-continuing short-term faculty, with the latter likely receiving approximately an across-the-board 3.25% increase. Richey said that the remainder of the 5.25% increase would then be distributed to different ranks, depending on how far each rank trails the AAUP guidelines; more specifically, he estimated that there would probably be an across-the-board dollar amount proposed for full professors, perhaps on the order of a 6% overall increase.

Dan Dressen asked whether special appointments were considered short-term or long-term faculty, and Richey responded that they were generally considered long-term.

Chair of CEPC, Jill Dietz, then reported that CEPC would be very busy in the spring, with nearly thirty items that would need to be voted on by the committee or the full faculty, or both. For those items that would not be dealt with in open meetings, she announced, the committee would like to use its web-site to facilitate consultation, with links to drafts of policies being considered and plenty of time for faculty to read and comment on those drafts. Use of the web-site, she hoped, would open up and streamline the process.

More specifically, Dietz said that in the coming month, CEPC would be discussing and preparing motions on new course proposals, selective admissions to courses, and changes to the family studies, physics, and psychology majors. She also said that the committee was continuing to talk about committee restructuring and changes to the multi-cultural studies requirement.

Dean’s Report

Dean May began by stating that he was glad to have Mark Schelske at the meeting and healthy. He then welcomed everyone to the new semester, admitting that the full slate of upcoming events on the college calendar -- including the Globalization Conference, the Mellby Lecture, and the Peace Prize forum – was both a reminder of how hectic things could get and of the embarrassment of riches that surrounds members of the St. Olaf community. As a new semester resolution, he urged the faculty to think about going to an event that they might not normally go to, in order to learn what their colleagues and students do outside of the classroom.

Dean May then turned to address the enrollment and management strategies that the associate deans and faculty leadership committee had been working on in recent years. He reminded the faculty that the college had successfully worked to get first year writing and religion classes down under 20, with the goal of ensuring that every first year student could say that they had had at least two small classes in their first year at St. Olaf. He went on to say that the dean’s council would like to work for similar results for all of the core requirements of the college. As part of this overarching plan, he noted, a management enrollment strategy for registration was being introduced. Acknowledging that this agenda had given rise to some dismay among the faculty, May proceeded to attempt to speak to some of the oft-heard concerns.

He began by clarifying that neither the overarching strategy nor the specific goal of reducing class sizes was driven only by a concern with rankings, such as those in U.S. News and World Report. He clarified that the target of small classes consisting of less than 20 students was based on numbers received from a data sharing consortia that the college had belonged to for many years. As dean, he added, he regularly received several complaints a year from parents about students not having enough small classes, and by “small,” these parents always seemed to mean classes with less than 20.

May continued, reporting that comparative data about the number of classes enrolled below 20 shows that the college’s peer institutions have between 65-75% of classes enrolled below 20, and he added that those numbers hold true for both elite peers with large endowments and non-elite, less-affluent peers. A few years ago, he detailed, about 44% of the college’s classes were enrolled below 20, but with the initiative to lower enrollments in first year courses, that number had risen to 49% to 50%. The goal should be, he declared, to raise the percentage up to 65-70% in order to put the college in better standing with its peers.

Coupled with the comparative data noted, May added that the results of the last three National Surveys of Student Engagement gave cause for concern. In each survey, the college had been right with the rest of its peers except with respect to student-faculty interaction, a category in which the college had been four percentage points below its peers. There were undoubtedly many reasons for the college’s difficulties on this score, he stated, including the fact that the college enrolls many more students than do most of its peers, however, he also indicated that the percentage of classes under 20 probably also had something to do with the unhappy NSSE results.

Continuing in the same vein, May added that the faculty resources ranking in US News and World Report, which included faculty salary as well as the enrollment statistic about classes below 20, continued to reflect poorly on the college. Indeed, he noted that in that category the college ranked 170 th among 200 liberal arts colleges, well behind most of its peer institutions.

Summarily, May said that the numbers should not be disconnected from admissions potential. For a long time, he noted, the college has bragged about individual attention to students, and therefore, the NSSE results bothered him. He further acknowledged that he would be disingenuous if he said that he didn’t pay attention to the rankings. If the college could get into the top 50 colleges, this would help admissions in an increasingly competitive market continue the excellent reputation the college has built. The Board of Regents, he noted, was concerned with the rankings, and was keenly listening to the initiative to reduce class sizes.

In an attempt to move toward the goal of reducing class sizes, May reminded the faculty that he and the Registrar, Mary Cisar, had issued a memo to department chairs that asked for minimums and maximums for the 2007-08 class and lab schedules. Acknowledging that the maximums had upset some people, he reminded the faculty that the memo explicitly recognized that one size does not necessarily fit all, and that departments should feel free to ask for exceptions if the maximums were too much of an imposition. He explained that three sets of maximums had been proposed, namely 18, 30-48, and 60 or above, thereby trying to reduce the number of courses that enroll between 20 and 30. May reiterated that he understood that these were difficult issues and that exceptions could be asked for, but concluded that progress needed to be made on this front.

Jonathan Hill responded to the Dean’s comments, saying that the memo had caused great difficulty in the English department, where most courses fell into the 20-30 enrollment range. He further noted that he did not think it wise to adjust numbers with impunity, without attention to a fuller consideration of issues such as pedagogy, FTE, the curriculum, including electives, that students deserve, and the effect of teaching larger classes.

The Dean replied that the maximums listed in the memos were not to be understood as hard and fast rules and that if exceptions were necessary, they should be requested from the chair, the associate dean, and the registrar. He clarified that the goal was to push faculty to deal with the issue, but not to cause consternation.

Matt Rohn asked why a directive like the one set forth in the memo would be issued, if everyone would get exceptions when they asked for them. If the directive did not have real teeth, he asked, will it not be the case that some departments will go on like they always have, while other departments who take the directive seriously will pay the price? Finally, Rohn asked why the Dean’s Council had not elected to send the associate deans to have discussions about the issue with departments and start the process of thinking through the issue.

May replied that the memo was not meant to be absolutely binding, but to force departments to think about the issue. He elaborated that in the beginning paragraph of the memo, the directive is called an experiment. He also stated that he believed there were places in the curriculum where the changes could be made fairly easily. He noted that the memo had been sent out to department chairs two months prior and indicating that department chairs had had due notice. He concluded by stating that he remained open to suggestions and hoped that people would continue to ask and talk about the issue.

Quoting Alexander Pope, President Anderson noted that this level of discourse and the negotiations involved called for “the feast of reason, and the flow of soul.”

Registrar’s Report

The college Registrar, Mary Cisar, began her comments by thanking the faculty who had turned their grades in and exhorted others to get their grades in without delay. She reported that web-based registration for interim had been successful. 77.54% who submitted their registration on-line, got their first choice for interim, and 93.27% received either their first, second, or third choice. For registration in the spring for Fall 2007, the overall structure of a typical semester registration will remain the same, with a pre-registration period and then the normal ballroom registration, from April 24-26 th. However, in between those two periods, students will submit their choices on-line for two courses, as well as an ideal schedule for the fall, which will be used for planning and testing purposes. This structure marks a gradual transition from arena registration to web-based registration. The plan is to move to full web-based registration by the spring of 2008, for fall of 2008. She said that this spring’s test runs of the registration results will enable the office to determine whether web-based registration enables the registrar’s to achieve the same results as pre-registration currently does. In order to accommodate the test runs, which will require some extra time, the advising process will open on March 5 th, a bit earlier than usual, pre-registration will open right after spring break, and the on-line registration process will start just after Easter. On February 28 th, when the final proof of class and lab is due, chairs will also be asked for information about pre-registration, a due date that is much earlier than usual.

She said that she would send out helpful information to help adjust both students and faculty advisers. She clarified that the Registrar’s would not send out registration cards, because advisers will sign off electronically.

DeAne Lagerquist raised a question about a timing problem implied in Cisar’s comments. In light of the fact that she would not find out about a new course until after the faculty voted on it in March, she wondered how she could include it on her class and lab which was due in February. Cisar said that the class and lab could be submitted with the proposed class included.

Janis Hardy asked whether an electronic copy of changes in FTE could be sent out, making it easier to negotiate changes. Cisar said that the Registrar’s could move toward that goal.

Karen Cherewatuk asked whether there had been a problem with students being able to register for courses for which they did not have the prerequisites. Cisar said that while the prerequisites were listed on the course for the students to view, the computer system, at present, was unable to prevent them from registering for such courses and that therefore, advisers and students needed to still pay attention and be mindful.

Open Agenda

Jeanine Grenberg, the chair of faculty development committee, reported that the summer grants deadline was coming up on February 23 rd, and that she was looking forward to reviewing a lot of applications.

She also announced that the Mellby lecture, entitled “Commodity Connections: Latin America and the United States,” would be given by David Schodt on Thursday, March 8 th in Viking Theater.

Finally, Grenberg announced that in early April there will probably be a meeting to prepare faculty for submitting release-time grants.

Jo Beld noted that the progress report on the college’s assessment plans would be due next Wednesday, and that a draft of that report had been sent out that morning, and a copy of the executive summary would be sent that afternoon. If faculty had any feedback on corrections or salient changes or additions that might be noted, she would be pleased to receive them, and asked that they be sent by noon of the upcoming Monday.

Paul Zorn announced an interesting talk, sponsored by Statistics, Biology, and Political Science, on the upcoming Monday at 4 p.m., concerning estimates on mortality counts in Iraq.

Maggie Broner announced that Carol Klee, from the University of Minnesota would be giving a lecture on Spanish in the United States on Tuesday, February 13 at 7 pm in Viking Theater.

Steve Soderlind repeated the Dean’s earlier announcement that the Globalization Conference was coming up, and that all would be welcome.

John Ferguson announced that there would be a hymn festival on the last weekend of the month, Saturday night, and that the new organ would be dedicated at a recital on Sunday.

The meeting was adjourned at 12:36.

Respectfully submitted,
Jamie Schillinger