These minutes reflect discussion and debate at a meeting of a committee of the University of Minnesota Senate or Twin Cities Campus Assembly; none of the comments, conclusions, or actions reported in these minutes represents the views of, nor are they binding on, the Senate or Assembly, the Administration, or the Board of Regents.

Minutes

Faculty Consultative Committee

Thursday, March 3, 2005

12:00 – 2:00

405 Walter

Present:

Marvin Marshak (chair), Jean Bauer, Charles Campbell, Carol Chomsky, Tom Clayton, Dan Feeney, Emily Hoover, Mary Jo Kane, Morris Kleiner, Scott Lanyon, Judith Martin, Jeff Ratliff-Crain, Martin Sampson (Not present but not counted as absent because of technology failures: Gary Davis, Kathleen Krichbaum)

Absent:

Gary Balas, Fred Morrison, John Sullivan

Guests:

Professor Art Erdman (Advisory Committee on Athletics), Professor Perry Leo (Faculty Academic Oversight Committee for Intercollegiate Athletics); Professors Marti Hope Gonzales, Paula Rabinowitz, and Joel Weinsheimer

Other:

Lynn Holleran, Kathryn Stuckert (Office of the Chief of Staff)

[In these minutes: (1) Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics; (2) capital request process; (3) update on strategic planning; (4) report of the task force on academic freedom; (5) evaluation of instruction policy]

1. Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics

Professor Marshak convened the meeting at 12:00, welcomed Professors Erdman and Leo, chairs of the two athletic committees, and turned to Professor Kane to lead the discussion of the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics academic integrity document.

Professor Kane reported that she and Dr. Engstrand had discussed the proposed document and amendments to it with the Advisory Committee on Athletics, chaired by Professor Erdman, and the Faculty Academic Oversight Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics, chaired by Professor Leo. On the table today is the institutional vote on the document. The deadline for voting is April 1; one question is whether the Committee should vote on behalf of the Faculty Senate (because bringing it to the Faculty Senate would mean presenting a 30-page document to the Senators today and asking them to vote on it, which would not be appropriate). She said they had consulted widely on the document and did not believe it necessary to bring it to the full Faculty Senate. She turned to Professors Erdman and Leo for comments.

Professor Erdman said that with respect to the provisions of the document, the University of Minnesota is ahead of the game; it already practices almost all of what it is in the document. One point where practice here is not consistent with the document is in its call for the athletic board to establish a clear statement about how the academic performance of athletes affects coaching salaries. The University is part-way there, thanks to efforts by Athletic Director Joel Maturi; there is discussion by the personnel subcommittee about individuals, which Mr. Maturi takes seriously. Professor Marshak noted that the Coalition document does not ENACT anything; it makes recommendations to the NCAA, which in turn will deal with them.

It is important to recognize, however, that this is a national body of faculty senates making recommendations, Professor Kane said. There has never been a collection of faculty senates, with representation from a significant number of large institutions, making this kind of statement. The University, because of its experience with academic scandals earlier, has become a national leader in reforms. She cautioned that the University should not adopt the stance that it does not need this statement because it follows it; there are many institutions that do not follow the practices set out by the Coalition.

Professor Leo agreed; he said they had carefully tried to avoid assuming that everyone does what Minnesota does. He said he was not sure about some of the ideas in the document but that overall he was pleased with it and the committee favors it. Professor Erdman said he cited the example where the University does not follow the document to illustrate the interactions with the athletic director that the committee has never had before.

Professor Marshak noted that the two athletic committees had both recommended the University vote in favor of the document. Professor Martin said she believed the Committee should act on behalf of the Senate because there was no added value to bringing it to the full body for a vote. The Committee will bring it for information to the April Senate meeting, however, because the Senate has the right to overrule the Committee when it acts on behalf of the full body. The Committee voted unanimously that the University should vote in favor of the document.

2. Capital Request Process

Professor Marshak next recalled that the Committee had held a discussion in January about the capital request process with two CLA department chairs; it was agreed then that the Committee would revisit the issue. The issue was the view that the preparation of the capital request is not a transparent process. And, Professor Martin said, the perceived misalignment between University priorities and the allocation of funds.

Does the Committee on Finance and Planning deal with this, Professor Martin asked? Regularly, Professor Campbell said, but not quite in this way. It would be useful for FCC to talk with the Provost, as the one who makes the academic decisions.

The Committee agreed it would also discuss the capital budget process with the Provost. One possible recommendation might be that the University should be prepared to fund capital projects for academic priorities outside state funds, Professor Marshak suggested. Professor Lanyon said the Committee might inquire if the way buildings have been funded the last 10-15 years has been to the University's advantage in terms of its academic priorities. Professor Hoover observed that the compact process, the locus of discussions about collegiate capital needs, will not address classroom space; Professor Marshak said this Committee is the advocate for classrooms.

3. Update on Strategic Planning

Professor Marshak reported that the academic strategic planning task force will meet the March 21 deadline for its report, which report will then be put out for consultation after the President has reviewed it and decided which recommendations he will accept. The task force is meeting frequently and devoting its attention to the three areas the Provost has mentioned: structure, undergraduate student culture, and faculty culture. Will the results be as dramatic as the Provost has suggested, Professor Kleiner asked? Professor Marshak said he expects that they will be. They are dealing with fundamental questions. Professor Chomsky said that the six weeks of consultation between March 21 and the first of May will be critical. Professor Marshak assured her that the task force is well aware of that.

4. Report of the Task Force on Academic Freedom

The task force issued its report, Professor Marshak said; what should be the follow-up? If there are hearings in the House and Senate on the proposed "Academic Bill of Rights," he said, copies of the report should be distributed as part of the University's testimony.

Professor Martin said she had proposed academic freedom as the subject of one of the "Great Conversations" sponsored by the College of Continuing Education; a decision will soon be made about next year. She said she has also shared the report with colleagues in the CIC. Professor Chomsky said the "Great Conversation" could be the starting point for conversations that are needed in many places. There needs to be a plan for carrying the discussion to colleges and departments, for faculty and students. It would be better to have the conversations when there is no immediate problem at the University, rather than be reactive. It is not this Committee's role to carry on the conversations but it does need to generate them.

This is an item that needs to return to this Committee's agenda periodically, Professor Marshak said.

5. Evaluation of Instruction Policy

Professor Marshak now welcomed Professors Gonzales, Rabinowitz, and Weinsheimer to discuss the draft policy on the evaluation of instruction. He turned to Professor Hoover to start the discussion.

Professor Hoover recalled that during 2003-04 the Senate Committee on Educational Policy (SCEP) and the Senate Committee on Faculty Affairs (SCFA) appointed a joint subcommittee to look at the policies on the evaluation of instruction. The subcommittee was chaired by Professor Will Durfee and wrote an excellent report. SCEP and SCFA discussed the recommendations and agreed on most. The one item on which the two committees do not agree is about who should have access to written comments on student evaluation forms. Across the University there are different things done with the comments, some positive and some not. The draft language in the policy provided that the written comments would go only to the instructor, along with a footnote that read "students will thus understand that if they write comments that insult the instructor, the department will not see the comments. There are ways other than anonymous comments on forms that students can make their dissatisfaction known to the department or college." SCEP voted 10-3 to delete the language requiring that written comments go only to the instructor and the accompanying footnote; SCFA has a very different view and voted in favor of retaining the language.

Professor Kleiner said that it was the view of SCFA that language should remain. The concern is to protect faculty from statements that could be used against them in salary, promotion, tenure, and post-tenure review decisions. SCFA believes that a lot of information should be used in those decisions, but given that some comments can be unrepresentative or untruthful, and that faculty have no way to respond to such comments, the written comments should be passed along to department chairs and committees only if the faculty member wishes. This issue was originally raised by women faculty members who said that inappropriate comments were going to administrators and faculty groups. The comments are supposed to be confidential but they can leak out and do great harm. SCFA believes the comments in general can be useful and inform the faculty member, and they can go to others for help with instruction if they wish.

Professor Marshak said that the two committees have asked FCC to decide something. It could decide to leave in the language, take it out, try to rewrite it, or let the issue go to the Senate. He turned first to Professor Gonzales for discussion.

Professor Gonzales said she falls in the SCFA camp on the issue. There are a number of reasons why the comments should go to the instructor, who should decide if they will be forwarded.

First, inflammatory written words are far more memorable than statistics, and as a social psychologist she is concerned that those words exert a disproportionate weight in personnel decisions.

Second, no standardized question accompanies the box where students write comments. She likes to ask what she might do better next time. But to standardize the question limits the freedom of instructors to ask the questions they want to.

Third, stereotypes are alive and well in academia. If they were just descriptors, that would be one thing, but they are PROSCRIPTORS, prescribing what people should be like. To the extent evaluations of women faculty are different from those of men, it is in part because women are expected to be nurturing and motherly as well as competent; men are expected to be competent. Stereotypes do exist and it is patently unfair to subject women faculty to them with these comments, especially young women faculty.

Professor Weinsheimer said he believes the policy language overreacts, but in the proper direction, which is to prevent irrelevant comments and lies from becoming public. But there is no way to screen, in order to distinguish between irrelevant comments and inappropriate comments. He said that if there is an inappropriate comment, he is capable of disregarding it. The problem is administrators with poor judgment. The solution, however, is not to put a gag order on students. The departments need the students' views where they count: with administrators and faculty committees who judge. The student views cannot be reduced to a histogram. Students respond to questions that instructors do not ask. A department needs to know if an instructor is not attending class regularly. Right now the classroom is a little black box that no one can see into. The results of the "student release" questions are made available at the discretion of the instructor; if the comments are also released only at the discretion of the instructor, the policy will pull a curtain down around the classroom unless the student has the courage to go to an administrator and say the instructor is not coming to class. That is rare. Professor Weinsheimer said he is afraid the policy will render the faculty unaccountable to the people they exist to serve.

Professor Martin said she might have agreed with Professor Weinsheimer 10-15 years ago about the reluctance of students to make complaints, but in the world of email, students contact everyone a lot.

Professor Rabinowitz said she wished to speak on two levels, the personal and professional. At the personal level, she read a number of completely inappropriate comments when she first came to the University (and was pregnant). Being a pregnant professor, she said, produces upset in 18-year-olds that causes them to make comments about everything except the pregnancy. Reading these comments is very hurtful—and she, she said, is "a tough cookie." She does not read them at all now; she remembers the bad, but misses the comments that she elicits about what she can do to improve as an instructor. She said she argues that on a personal level the comments should go only to the instructor, not to chairs and department committees. This is a very open system, which is good, but that means a lot of people will see inappropriate comments.

Professor Rabinowitz related that she is involved in a project through the Modern Language Association (MLA), in conjunction with the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, that is taking up student evaluations. There has been a lot of work on them, and they are looking at why women faculty seem to be stalled at the associate professor level. There appear to be two factors: excessive service ("the mommy problem") and negative student evaluations. This is a national discussion, through both the AAUP and MLA, about the differential effects of student evaluations. Negative evaluations have more weight for women than for men. She said she believed there will be a consensus that there is an over-dependence on student evaluations, which has a negative effect on women in the professoriate.

Professor Chomsky noted that she had provided to the Committee the excerpted minutes from the SCEP and SCFA discussions because of an inquiry she had received from elsewhere in the University. What can happen is that something in one course can go bad and a few people write negative comments—even though most say the class was fine—and those comments stick. In the Law School they use all the comments in the tenuring process but there are six pointed questions; open-ended questions is an uncontrolled and unrepresentative way to identify student problems. She said she is an advocate for student evaluations, so it is possible to see inside the classroom; the research shows they have value if the evaluation results are taken seriously. She said she does not believe, however, that open-ended comments are the way to find out what is going on—one cannot see the undertones, what is motivating students, and the inappropriate comments are hard to get out of one's mind and can be problematic.

Professor Feeney said that he would not take a position on the two options but believed that if any should be discussed by the Senate, this is such an issue. The Committee should not decide; there should be open debate. If the two committees are of different views, this Committee cannot decide. He moved to forward the discussion to the Senate. In response to a question from Professor Ratliff-Crain, Professor Kleiner clarified that SCFA, by a close vote, agreed that the policy should provide that each campus will make a decision about the distribution of the written comments (so the Morris campus may continue its current practice of using the comments in personnel decisions, if it wishes). There was a question about whether the policy applies to professional schools; Professor Hoover said that it does.

Professor Hoover said there are two specific questions. The way that SCEP passed the policy, it is silent on who sees written comments. But incredible things can happen, such as department secretaries reading the comments. The fact that anyone can read them is a problem. She said she will bring to SCEP a proposal that units must decide who can read them. Students need to know, Professor Ratliff-Crain said. If they feel that the comments go ONLY to the faculty, that might almost be asking for more ad hominem comments. Students do not believe that department heads read the comments, Professor Hoover said.

The Committee voted to place the item on the Senate docket. It also agreed that it would have further discussion of the draft policy at its next meeting.

Professor Marshak adjourned the meeting at 2:00.

-- Gary Engstrand

University of Minnesota