Minutes of the Steering Committee Meeting
1 June 2009
3:30 p.m. 208 Samford Hall
(by Dennis DeVries, Secretary)

In Attendance:  Kathryn Flynn, Mary Ellen Mazey, Ruth Crocker, Russ Muntifering, Bill Hames, Emmett Winn, Dennis DeVries, Larry Crowley, Joe Molnar, Bob Locy, Claire Crutchley

Absent: None

--The meeting was called to order at 3:30 p.m.  

--Minutes from the following Steering Committee meetings were approved without change: 30 March 2009, 27 April 2009, 11 May 2009. 

--We discussed the agenda for the June Senate meeting, in an effort to finalize it.  Ralph Foster will present a report from the Service Learning Task Force as an information item.   We discussed the recent history and current status of the consulting policy statement, as well as a memo that Dr. Mazey had prepared (pdf of consulting policy memo).  We concluded that this would best be presented as a part of the Chair’s comments at the June Senate meeting.  In addition, an update concerning the Associate Provost search and the Promotion and Tenure process will be presented. 

--We discussed other items for potential inclusion in either the June July Senate meetings.  These included a report from the Administrator Evaluation Committee, and a report from the Ombudsperson’s Office.  We concluded these would wait until July’s meeting. 

--We briefly discussed lecturships and Dr. Mazey noted that this will be the topic of an AAUP fall retreat. 

--We discussed research and teaching incentives, including a discussion of faculty workloads.  Dr. Winn noted that this relates to the Faculty Handbook section 7.1.B.2.  This is still being discussed, but work load policies need to be developed for each college/school. 

--Under “Other topics” we discussed whether it was time for a report from the Teaching Effectiveness Committee, particularly related to what faculty thought of the new evaluation forms, and whether it is worth the cost. 

-- Meeting was adjourned at 4:42.