Faculty Council Meeting of Tuesday, 1 April 2003

President: Joe Liles; Vice-president: John Woodmansee; Secretary: Floyd Bullard

Minutes

Announcements

Marilyn Link and announced that Mentorship information sessions would take place this week for juniors interested in Mentorship for next year.  Students interested in Mentorship must apply for mentorship—they cannot simply enroll (though they must also enroll.)  Also, 2 May is the 18^th annual NCSSM research symposium.  Students are required to attend sessions and faculty are encouraged to attend sessions and to sign attendance sheets.

Volunteers were requested for a nominating committee for next year’s Faculty Council officers.  John  Morrison and Leslie Brinson volunteered.

Joan Barber announced that the exercise, nutrition and sleep initiative would occur on 7 April. 

It was announced that the grievance and appeals committees would be voted upon soon, but that first we we’d like to vote to amend the by-laws to include DL faculty on the ballots.

Agenda Item 1: Information about the Board of Trustees Meeting last week

Joe and Julie Graves had lunch with Bill Cary, Larry Brock (Chairman of the Fiscal and Human Resources Committee of the Board), and Ed McBride.  Bill Carey laid out the case for why they wanted to offer the ED a multi-year contract.  He said it would give more stability to the school and would make the job more attractive to future applicants for the position.  He wanted to offer the ED a three-year contract with an annual review.  If the ED was let go because of performance issues, NCSSM would have no obligation to buy out the remainder of the ED’s contract.  Otherwise, if it was decided after the first year of a contract that the contract would not be renewed, there would still be two years of transition time while a search was made for a new director.  Bill then told Joe and Julie [Graves, faculty liason to the Fiscal and Human Resources committee] that they planned to push for this at the present day’s Board meeting.  He asked how they would feel.  Joe and Julie invited him to speak to the Faculty Council and he accepted.  He plans to attend the Faculty Council meeting on 6 May to discuss not just the multi-year contract, but also the relationship between the faculty and the administration and the Board.

After that lunch meeting was the Fiscal and Human Resources Committee meeting, in which Bill Carey advocated the multi-year contract, and Joe and Julie shared the faculty’s view, voted on by the faculty at the last Faculty Council meeting.

Then at the meeting of the full Board, Carol Hughes asked Joe how the faculty felt about the multi-year contract and Joe shared the faculty’s vote of opposition.  The Board members were concerned and asked why the faculty were opposed.  Joe said the faculty felt that things were changing too fast.  He was aware that a member of the press was in the room and he tried hard to speak so that he would preserve good relations among the faculty, the administration, and the Board as well as between the school and the public.

Joe then announced that the Board had a retreat on the next day during which, among other things, they worked on revising NCSSM’s mission statement.

Joe announced that a reporter asked to be present at this Faculty Council meeting, and Joe denied her request but agreed to share with her what happened at the meeting.  He said that the reporter might want to question faculty after the meeting.

Joe asked if there were other reports from faculty liaisons to the Board committees.

Steve said that the Board did not want to replace the present mission statement of the school.  Jerry disagreed, saying he believed the Board did see that as their mission.  He became disturbed when they moved beyond the mission statement and started coming up with goals.

Agenda Item 2:  Faculty recommendations to the curriculum and standards task force.

Angelina Winborne and Leslie Brinson, members of the Curriculum and Standards task force, shared the proposal that the TF voted upon favorably (15-1) a few weeks ago.  [see appendix to these minutes for its text.]  Leslie presented some pros and cons if we switch to a trimester calendar, which were added to by faculty.  [see appendix to minutes.] 

At 4:58 John Woodmansee pointed out that we had not really had a faculty discussion, and he asked what the timeline was for the task force and the ED to make a decision.  Would votes made by the faculty at the next (22 April) FC meeting be timely?  Steve Warshaw responded Yes.

A faculty member pointed out (and another agreed) that all we had were unanswered questions.  How can we the faculty or anyone make recommendations when we don’t know the answers to so many questions and we don’t have data?  Steve responded that this is not a linear process and we need to be flexible.

A faculty member said that it seemed to him we were trying to make a decision about a year too early.  It would seem our recommendation ought to be to study the issue (or not), not to go forward with a trimester system (or not).  As it is, the process seems almost hostile.  How can the faculty be behind it if we feel that it’s been forced upon us?

Jerry talked about how he wanted teachers to be teaching fewer classes and students to be taking fewer classes.  “If we were starting this school brand new next year, what would you want to do?”  The task force has been working for two years, and they need now to make a recommendation.  They need to recommend something that we can look at next year. Jerry added,  “This decision [to go to a trimester schedule] has not been made and I don’t want to ram anything down the faculty’s throats.”

The meeting adjourned at 5:17PM.

Appendix 1:

Draft Recommendation

Curriculum Assessment and Standards Task Force

March, 2003

We propose redesigning the NCSSM curriculum to maintain high academic standards, ensure intellectually challenging educational opportunities, and promote a healthy living and learning environment for all students and staff.  Students will take fewer courses and teachers will teach fewer classes at one time compared to the current curriculum.  We have targeted the 2004-05 school year for implementation using a trimester calendar, provided we believe it will make us a better school.

The redesigned curriculum will provide a framework for aligning the Mission Statement, student admissions standards and graduation requirements, course offerings and course enrollment requirements, overall learning goals and course goals for students, student assessment, and the School Improvement Plan.  The aligned curriculum will ensure equity for all students.  Enrollment requirements, graduation requirements, and teaching assignments will be measured in terms of contact hours or credit units rather than courses. 

This recommendation is contingent upon certain conditions.  If any of these conditions cannot be met, an alternative recommendation will be developed.  These conditions include:

*substantially increased professional and curriculum development funding beginning in the summer of 2003 to prepare the redesigned curriculum

*additional continuing funding for the resources and personnel required to implement the new curriculum

*the understanding that some courses will need to be taught over three trimesters

*an evaluation process to assess the effectiveness of the redesigned curriculum

Appendix 2:

Notes on Faculty Council Discussion of Draft Trimester Proposal 4/1/03

Angelina and Leslie showed the draft recommendation, reminded not to forget qualifying conditions, asked to focus on opportunities

Positive points: 

• Students could take fewer courses per term
• Potentially more time in class per week
• Possibly increased flexibility for students – might take elective in Trimester 3 she/he couldn’t have taken otherwise
• Possibly increased flexibility of contact hours per week for different courses
• Possibly fewer courses per instructor in a given term
• Seniors might have culminating experience in Trimester 3 to synthesize what they’ve learned
• Might not need Mini-Term anymore
• Might be more likely to allow experience abroad
• Could use Trimester 3 to prepare students for AP’s – might even include students who weren’t in the course Trimesters 1 and 2
• Possibly more opportunities for research or year-long projects
• Student-teacher combinations that aren’t working well don’t have to last as long
• Could have more time than in semester calendar for some courses

Negative points: 

• Could limit our best students
• If what we are doing now works, then going to trimesters may not be a dataq-driven decision
• Is a need for school-wide curriculum revision driving the decision about a new calendar?
• Not clear whether stress would be reduced
• Might have to give exams and compute grades more often
• Students in some courses need a longer time than they presently have to process what they are learning – research shows student learning proportional to time over which they learn -- trimesters could shorten that time even more
• Q1 grades, which tend to be lower, don’t go on transcripts now, allowing for adjustment to school.  But Trimester 1 grades would
• Not clear that academics are main source of stress
• Trimester 2 split by Winter Break
• Class ’05 will be transition class, living under two systems – could hurt recruitment
• Possible impact on sports
• Not enough time in trimester to develop trusting relationship with students
• Process of deciding which courses get 1,2, or 3 trimesters unclear
• Working on course goals now – shouldn’t we complete and process that step before changing whole curriculum
• Too many unanswered questions, draft proposal isn’t clear enough, not to the point in next month of making a recommendation