MINUTES
Faculty Affairs Committee Meeting
Monday May 2, 2005, 2-3pm
University Center 203
Members: Beauvais Lyons (Chair), Basil Antar, Jennifer Beals, Muammer Cetingok, Bill Dunne,
Members Absent: Bart Rohrbach, Peter H–yng, Brian Edwards, Susan Hamilton, Majid Keyhani.

1. Approval of the Minutes of April 4, 2005, approved by consensus

2. Chapter 7: Compensated Outside Activities, Report (Bill Dunne)

The Senate Executive Committee met on April 18th, 2005 and one item of business was consideration of the current revision of Chapter 7 concerning compensated outside activities (COA). The current revision is one brought to the Senate via the Faculty Handbook Sub-Committee (Dunne and Lyons) by Anne Mayhew, Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs. The revision reflects input from the UT President's office and reinstitutes quantitative limits for the amount of time that COA may be pursued in a year. After some discussion, particularly about the impact that adding the limits has on the interpretation of other aspects of the document (e.g., section B.3. requires reporting of hours of COA and potentially, if not followed, section B.10. necessitates the sanctioning of the noncompliant faculty member), the committee decided to "table" the revision until the Fall Semester when the Senate is back in session. At that time, the Senate will take up the revision. In the interim, Beauvais Lyons, Candace White (Faculty Senate President), Deseriee Kennedy (Faculty Senate President-Elect), and Bill Dunne will meet to discuss how best to frame the revision for consideration by the Senate. Beauvais made the case that the 20% rule was preferable to specific hour limits. Bill made the case that a conversation with President Petersen about the position the Senate took in April 2004 might be constructive if the Senate wants to go that route.

Bart Rohrbach and Bill Dunne met with Susan Martin, Associate Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs, concerning revisions to two sections of the Manual--Annual Review of Probationary Faculty and Annual Review of Tenured Faculty. The purposes of the Manual Revision are to bring the document into compliance with the new Faculty Handbook, to deal with all topics referenced in the Handbook as being found in the Manual, and to provide a better organization and narrative for users. A variety of changes were recommended:

1. Restructuring Manual so that these two sections are Parts I and II, not I and III.
   
   
2. Reorganizing them so that Part I concerns only retention review for tenure-track faculty members and Part II concerns Annual Review of all faculty members (consistent with Handbook).
   
   
3. Change of usage: Probation refers to status of time period, whereas probationary is replaced by tenure-track for the status of such faculty members.
   
   
4. Multiple clarifications as to when a faculty member may file responses to documents that are added to their files during each review process (two weeks after receipt of materials).
   
   
5. Clarification of processes associated with ratings of "Needs Improvement" and "Unsatisfactory", so that similar documents and responsibilities apply to both situations.
   
   
6. Sundry changes in syntax to improve logic and readability.

After the meeting, Bill Dunne realized that two issues were not addressed, and a follow-up email was sent (its receipt was acknowledged but no action specified by Susan Martin). Two issues are;

1. Explicit recognition of Appendices A, B, & C in main text of Manual
   
   
2. Roles of Compensated Outside Activities in annual review--submission of plan, no substitution of COA for institutional responsibilities, no incorporation of COA review into review, and COA may be limited by ratings of "Needs Improvement" or "Unsatisfactory".