March Faculty Council Minutes

March Faculty Council Minutes

RICE NEWS OFFICE
April 30, 1998

Minutes of Faculty Council Meeting
10 March 1998 – noon
Faculty Club

Present: Isle (speaker), Aranda, Beckingham, Braam, Caldwell, Driskill, Gibson, Hightower, Patten, Yunis; Guests: John Boles, Deborah Nelson, and Phil Davis. Absent: Antoulas, Cox, Ghorbel, Meade, Wilson, Wittenberg.

The agenda consisted of: (1) Athletics&emdash;Report from Members of Standing Committee on Athletics, (2) Committee Reports .

Isle called the meeting to order and the minutes of the previous meeting were approved.

(1) Athletics–Report from Members of Standing Committee on Athletics: Faculty Council had invited Boles, Davis and Nelson, who serve on a special admissions subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Athletics, to attend this meeting to get their perspective on how the procedures of the committee are working. This subcommittee reviews the academic qualifications of all applicants proposed by the athletic department. Once they are appointed and start their work, they interact only with the dean of Admission and Records. They each read every folder of every candidate and give an independent opinion. If the dean admits a student they have unanimously rejected, he must inform them in writing. This year the dean has admitted two candidates who were unanimously rejected by the subcommittee and nine who were rejected by the subcommittee by a 1-2 vote. This procedure was put in place several years ago and appears to the subcommittee to be working. The SAT scores of admitted student-athletes have continued to improve except for those in the lowest quartile. After a lengthy discussion, two points became apparent: (a) It would help the committee if it had the prospective student’s counselor’s recommendation, and (b) The committee is not getting follow-up reports from the registrar and college masters as required in the special admissions procedure. Isle stated that Faculty Council will follow up with these two items.

(2) Committee Reports: (a) Committee on Committees–this committee is operating on schedule and should have recommendations to the president within a few days. There was a question regarding service equity. Patten, chair of the Committee on Committees, will put together some numbers which will show gender, departments, etc. This task is complicated as there are many avenues for service and the statistics for the University Standing Committees will show only a small part of the whole picture; (b) Elections–a call for nominations has been sent to each voting faculty member and Isle encourages everyone to seriously consider either running for a position or nominating someone; (c) Classroom Space–Isle announced that an ad hoc committee on classroom space will be appointed and asked if council thought this should be a permanent University Standing Committee. While council wants faculty to be involved, it thought this decision should be made after the ad hoc committee has had a chance to see what on-going issues emerge; (d) Handbook–Isle announced that except for a statement on academic freedom, which Tom Haskell has agreed to draft, the Faculty Handbook is complete and will come out in hard copy and on the Web.

Originally there were several additional items on the agenda. A meeting was scheduled for noon Tuesday, March 24 to address the unfinished business.

The meeting was adjourned at 1:15 p.m.