At its February 21 meeting, the Faculty Council heard a report on progress toward creat- ing an open access repository that would enable immediate, unfettered access to Emory faculty authored scholarly articles. In 2011, the Council voted to support an open access policy for Emory. Leah Weinryb Grohsgal has been hired as the digital repository coor- dinator for the project, which is called OpenEmory, and a demo site will go online for testing in March. “We invite faculty to meet with us so that they will actually be able to test OpenEmory and give us feedback for future development,” Grohsgal said. In addi- tion to allowing faculty to submit articles for inclusion, OpenEmory will also “harvest” articles by Emory faculty already available via other open access repositories, the first of which is PubMed. Additionally, OpenEmory will provide download and view statistics for individual articles, and content will appear in Google search results. Following the testing period, the site is scheduled for a launch in fall 2012.
Month: February 2012
Governance structures vary around campus
During the February meeting, Council chair Erica Brownfield presented an overview of the workings and structures of faculty governance by school across the Emory campus, based on her review of each school’s documentation. Brownfield focused on the relationship between faculty governance in the individual schools and the central structures such as the Faculty Council and University Senate.
Overall, she concluded, Emory faculty play a signficant role in governance throughout the university. The specific roles of these gov- ernance bodies, however, vary widely and are at times unclear—for example, whether the structures are authoritative or advisory, and whether their members are appointed or elected. Brownfield also noted that with the exception of Emory College, which has cross-representation between its governance committee and the Faculty Council, individu- al schools do not have a defined relationship to the university-level governance bodies.
Around Campus: College and Graduate School
The challenges of securing space for academic programs around the university, the need for sabbaticals for non-tenure-track faculty, and increases in class enrollments were dis- cussed during the February meeting, as part of the practice of asking two council members to report on discussion topics from their schools. Emory College professor Holly York spoke about those issues, prompting Provost Earl Lewis to note that an effort is underway to clarify the use and associated costs of campus spaces. York and Cheryl Crowley also noted a recent rise in the number of students in classes for whom English is not their first language. The ESL program staff will present to the Council in September 2012. Laney Graduate School dean Lisa Tedesco also reported, noting that funding remains a priority action area, and that Emory must sustain competitive financial packages for graduate students and help students become more competitive for tightening job markets.