Faculty Meeting: Starting Off the New School Year With a Bang

The first faculty meeting of the school year took place this Monday, September 9. Highlights included priorities for this year from various committees, several announcements for upcoming faculty workshops, and a slight update to the Off-Campus Study Programs Committee (OCSC) charge.

President’s Report

The meeting began by bringing the minutes from the April 8 and May 10 faculty meetings for approval, after which both were approved unanimously. President Audrey Bilger then opened her report with a statement of her appreciation of the turnout at both the Summer Research Symposium and the faculty lunch last week, and mentioned that she was impressed at the knowledgeability of the STEM students who presented their summer research at the poster session. 

Bilger shared that she found it successful last year to list priorities and update them throughout the year, and reviewed that those priorities were supporting staff, continuing Reed’s equity and inclusivity initiatives, enhancing communication, and mapping out the funding campaign. On the subject of supporting staff, she highlighted new workplace flexibility options, which will start being implemented in January following supervisor training this semester, as well as experience reviews for staff and salary updates accordingly. Additionally, she said that the Board of Trustees approved the “quiet phase” of the fundraising campaign, which is when major donors are solicited privately, which is followed by the “public phase,” where donations from everyone else are solicited. 

Bilger said her priorities for this year are improving the campus climate, with a new group having recently been formed to work on this issue, which will be meeting for the first time this week. Further priorities included improving the graduation rate and continuing the fundraising campaign. By the end of the year, they are aiming to move from the quiet phase into the public phase, and further, there will be good news related to the fundraising campaign announced soon. All of these priorities will require collaboration across the campus and tie into Reed’s Strategic Plan.

Additionally, Bilger announced the formation of a new Ad Hoc Committee on Governance Documents and Processes. This committee will consist of professors Peter Ksander, Nigel Nicholson, and Michelle Wang. The need for a review of Reed’s governance documents was called out in the 2013-14 Strategic Plan, so the college views this committee as very necessary. Their work will take at least two years, starting with a review of the Faculty Code this year. “It’s a lot of work, and I’m grateful to everybody here who’s ready to do that work,” Bilger remarked.

Bilger then introduced Christy Martin, the Title IX and 504 Coordinator. Martin mentioned that faculty received emails from her over the summer with information about updates to Title IX policy and regulations, which were put in place following new federal guidelines. She thanked them for paying attention to her emails and offered to hold Q&A sessions with departments if they were interested.

In the Q&A portion, Professor Elizabeth Drumm (Spanish) suggested that the Summer Research Symposium could be reopened to all students who did summer work, not just science students, as she said used to be the case. Peter Ksander (Theatre) then asked what is required to edit the Title IX policy. Vice President and Dean for Student Life Karnell McConnell-Black and others clarified that the Title IX policy is a standalone policy, not part of any other governing documents, and that the policy goes through a community review, which is less stringent than the update process for documents like the Faculty Code. Dean of the Faculty Kathy Oleson then said that although some content was previously moved from the faculty rules and procedures to the Title IX policy, details that are specific to faculty remained in the faculty code, which continues to have a stringent approval process.

Dean's Report

Kathy Oleson then took the podium to share a few announcements. Firstly, she had been collaborating with Executive Director of Public Affairs & Communications Sheena McFarland, who will be holding upcoming sessions for faculty interested in working with the media, including one on interview training and one on writing op-eds.

The Ad Hoc Committee on Distribution Requirements requested a special meeting to discuss the report from last year. Accordingly, a special faculty meeting will be held on September 25 at 4:00pm in the Gray Lounge. Materials will be sent out in advance, and there will be no vote, simply discussion.

Oleson announced plans for a faculty retreat this spring after classes end, focused on curriculum development, especially interdisciplinary and long-term planning. A date for this has yet to be finalized.

Oleson then introduced the new Associate Dean of the Faculty, Suzy Renn, who shared two announcements. First, she thanked Associate Dean of Students for Academic Life Steve Abrahão and Director of Academic Support Drew Gonrowski for helping with advising assignments. According to her, they tried to balance assignments based on how many advisees and thesis advisees professors already had. Renn asked faculty to please let her know if there were problems that she hasn’t been told about yet. She also shared that they will be starting a new system for committee documentation for all committees, where all committees will have a shared Google Drive. The goal is more continuity from committee to committee.

Oleson then brought up Economics Professor Jon Rork, new Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning. He began by asking faculty to please let him know what they need. “I can’t do this job without you,” he said. “I can program for programming, but if it’s not useful to you, why are we doing it?” Additionally, he announced that there will be two upcoming workshops (on September 25 and October 2) about four-week comments. The faculty voted to change those in the spring, and a cross-departmental team was created to work through how to implement those changes. In the workshop, they’ll walk through what those changes will look like in IRIS.

Next up was Karnell McConnell-Black with an update on the Sports Center. “Yes, the Sports Center is open!” he said, though they are still working on a few things. For example, locker rooms are still not ready yet. The Sports Center team is still working through the nuances of being back in the Sports Center, and so he asked faculty to give the team grace. Some people asked when they can allow family back in; he asked them to hold tight for a moment. There will be further communications with updates, as well as an open house on September 20, 12:00pm-2:00pm.

 Subsequently, Associate Dean of Graduate and Special Programs Laura Zientek came up to share that the MALS Program and Committee on Graduate Programs are welcoming submissions of course proposals for 2024-25, and encouraged faculty to reach out to her with any questions.

Oleson returned for questions. There was a question on four-week comments: faculty voted last spring to make them required, but some people thought that there was supposed to be another meeting to determine the language for the four-week comments. Rork said that the four-week comment group tried to keep the wording as close as possible to the discussion at the spring faculty meeting, as the vote was for changing the requirement but there was no vote on any other details.

CAPP Report

Ann Delehanty, chair of the Committee on Academic Policy and Planning (CAPP) invited faculty to attend weekly open CAPP meetings (Mondays at 4:00pm in Eliot 414). She shared several upcoming key dates: October 4 is the first round deadline for visiting positions. On November 1, there will be a call to add a companion 0.6 position to CRES’s FTE, building on the 2.4 positions they were allocated last year. In early December, there will be a call for tenure-track and replacement positions. This is a new model, but Delehanty said CAPP is optimistic about these deadlines this year.

CAPP has three major topics that they’re focusing on this fall: grading, group requirement review, and measuring and allocating faculty workload. Additionally, there may be a new submission form for CAPP documents; there was a reminder to include a staffing form when required and not include personnel information or Committee on Advancement and Tenure (CAT) memos.

Updating the OCSC Charge

There was a proposed update to the OCSC (Off-Campus Study Programs Committee) charge. Although the Quest couldn’t take a picture of this proposal, it appeared fairly minor, simply adding more flexibility in who can be on the committee. The proposal passed unanimously.

CAT Report

The final speaker was German Professor Jan Mieszkowski, chair of CAT. He implored faculty to please write comments for their colleagues who are being evaluated this fall. Additionally, last spring, faculty voted to change the definition of scholarship in the faculty constitution; he said that they’ll be receiving proposed language soon to revise the faculty handbook to correspond with the definition that was already approved.

There was no new business, so with that, the meeting was adjourned.