Author: aadam02

President Leads Discussion on “Distinctiveness”

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At the March meeting, President James Wagner continued a discussion he had begun in January on Emory’s particular distinctions. He explained why it is important to be able to articulate Emory’s uniqueness among its institutional peers. “We can do a better job in student recruiting and retention,” he said, “and in making our case to faculty and helping our alumni understand what we are becoming.”

Following discussions with other governance groups, deans, the President’s Cabinet, the alumni, trustees, and students, Wagner noted, “it was something about the character, the nature of being in the commmunity,” that repeatedly emerged as a quality that makes Emory special. He identified courage, collaboration, ethical engagement, generosity, and hospitality toward spiritual belief and practice, among others, as expressions of that quality. “This report will be advising how we talk about ourselves and how we brand ourselves,” he said. “I think it will find its way into some of our fundraising and recruiting literature for students.”

Click here to read all Council Concerns reports on “Identifying Emory’s Distinctiveness.”

Ad Hoc Committee on Grievance Policies Begins Work

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Professor of Law William Buzbee spoke during the March meeting about the preliminary work of an ad hoc committee of the Faculty Council to examine the various faculty grievance policies and procedures in place in the various schools within the university. Buzbee, who is chairing the committee, suggested that tentative tasks for the committee included identifying the current policies and procedures at Emory; considering the possible need for a changed conflict or grievance process or an ombudsperson role on campus; gathering information on other universities’ analogous structures or procedures; and identifying best practices and structures for possible use at Emory. The committee members are Cheryl Crowley (Russian and East Asian Languages and Culture), Steve Everett (Music), Sharon Lewis (Psychology, Oxford), and Randy Strahan (Political Science). The committee, Buzbee said, aims to report to the Council in mid-fall about research results and recommendations.

Click here to read all Council Concerns reports on Faculty Grievance Policies.

Open Access Discussions Resume

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At its February 15, 2011, meeting the Faculty Council heard a presentation from the Library Policy Committee (LPC) on the continuing campus dialogues on a proposal for a Universitywide open access policy. Such a policy would enable immediate, unfettered access to Emory faculty-authored scholarly articles. After receiving faculty feedback on questions of implementing an open access repository for Emory, the LPC proposed to present a revised draft of a resolution in support of an open access policy that would minimize administrative burden. The resolution would 1) invite faculty to opt in to participating (at least at first) in the repository, rather than requiring that they opt out, and 2) emphasize that Emory faculty work that already is available through existing digital repositories would be “harvested” for inclusion in the Emory repository as it is implemented. The Council agreed to review a revised resolution draft for a possible vote during the Spring 2011 semester. This vote would express the Council’s support for the principle of open access as official University policy.

Committee to Examine Class and Labor Issues

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At the Council’s February meeting, Provost Earl Lewis announced that on February 3, 2011, he and Vice President for Finance and Administration Mike Mandl charged a new committee to examine issues of class and labor on the Emory campus. Composed of faculty, students, and staff and chaired by Professor of Psychology Nadine Kaslow and co-chaired by Vice President and Deputy to the President Gary Hauk, the committee will begin by focusing on Emory’s non-academic labor force, including questions of compensation and benefits, advancement, retention and turnover, and supervisory skill levels across the university.

 

“We see this as the first of a three or four phase conversation” to take place over twelve to eighteen months, Lewis said. “The first phase would deal with non-academic labor, the second with academic labor, and the third with relationships between members of the academic and non-academic labor forces. A fourth phase would involve our students and their relationship to both academic and non-academic labor.”

 

Faculty Life Course Committee Seeks Members, Ideas

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The Faculty Life Course Committee of the Faculty Council addresses issues likely to enhance faculty life at Emory across the academic career, from junior faculty to emeritus status. This committee brings faculty concerns to the attention of senior administrators and the Faculty Council. Central concerns are to improve academic productivity, facilitate retention, and augment the quality of life and sense of community for faculty at Emory. This year and next the committee would like to focus on mentoring, changes in career pathways post-tenure, decisions around retirement and benefits, and progress toward the 2007 recommendations for non tenure track faculty. The committee is seeking new members interested in these issues and ideas that faculty would like us to focus on.

Please contact Pat Marsteller (pmars [at] learnlink [dot] emory [dot] edu) to bring up issues or to join a working group. And for more information, please see http://www.worklife.emory.edu/facultylifecourse/index.html.

 

Distinguished Faculty Lecture Feb 2

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The Faculty Council invites all to the sixteenth Distinguish Faculty Lecture, to be delivered by Professor of Nursing Ora Lea Strickland on Wednesday, February 2, 2011, at 4:00 in the Winship Ballroom of the Dobbs University Center. Professor Strickland will speak on “The Women’s Health Initiative: Scientific and Sociopolitical Lessons Learned.” Prior to the implementation of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), there had been very few large prospective trials examining the benefits and risks of therapeutic interventions in diseases with significant morbidity and mortality that are common to women. This exclusion was premised on an assumption that results obtained in men could be extrapolated to women. Several social, political, and medical research issues contributed to the decision to conduct the WHI, which included 168,000 women from 40 sites around the United States. Although the WHI resulted in many important results related to women’s health, it also resulted in many lessons learned for its teams of investigators and for the care of women. This presentation will address those issues and lessons. A reception will follow the lecture.

What Makes Emory Distinctive?

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At the January 2011 meeting of the Faculty Council, University President James Wag- ner commented on the beginnings of a semester-long conversation taking place among several governance groups around the university on the question, “What makes Emory distinctive?”

“There are times when it’s important for us to stop and see who we are, for the purpose of being able to declare that, to explain who we are, to invest in what we find is good in that,” President Wagner said. He added that these questions had been taken up by the University Senate and the President’s Cabi- net, and they had been discussed at length at a recent Emory College faculty meeting.

Along with President Wagner, the Faculty Council plans to engage with the question of identifying Emory’s distinctiveness at its next meeting, on February 15.

Exploring New Revenue Streams

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The Faculty Council heard a brief presentation in January from University General Counsel Steve Sencer and Sarah O’Brien, a consultant brought in for three months to identify, evaluate, and implement new opportunities to generate revenue for the uni- versity. A Goizueta Executive MBA alumna, O’Brien and her team are focusing on two general areas: 1) non-degree professional education and certificate programs and 2) digital learning initiatives. O’Brien is serving as a resource to schools looking for help identifying and prioritizing revenue-generating ideas, as well as with implementation. O’Brien said she is already working closely with the Candler School of Theology, the Laney Graduate School, Emory College, and the Center for Lifelong Learning. “We want to generate revenue, but it has to intersect with the [University’s] mission,” O’Brien said. “We want to make sure we move forward the educational mission but at the same time have an opportunity to improve the recognition of Emory globally.”

Open Access Discussion Continues

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At the November 16 meeting of the Faculty Council, the Library Policy Committee returned to lead further discussion of a proposal for a University open access policy that would enable immediate, unfettered access to Emory faculty authored scholarly articles. Members of the Council discussed the policy’s “opt-out” clause, its practicality, and whether it required a waiver by the faculty member’s dean or dean’s designate. They also talked about how the proposed new digital repository would interact with existing exter- nal digital repositories for scholarship, such as the Social Science Research Network. Key points from the proposal: authors will retain sufficient copyrights to their own work; an opt-out clause will be provided; the open access digital repository will be easy to use for authors and readers; the open access policy will be subject to periodic review and critique. A full copy of the proposed policy is available at http://guides.main.library.emory.edu/OA. Comments and questions are welcome. When faculty conversation indicates that timing is appropriate, the Faculty Council will vote on a resolution to support the policy.

Possible Federal Changes to Individual Conflict of Interest Rules

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In a presentation to the Faculty Council on the work of his office, Vice President for Research Administration David Wynes described pending federal regulation that would dramatically overhaul the federal conflict of interest regulations for individual faculty. Among the major proposed changes:

  • The threshold for review for conflict of interest in outside activity would be reduced from $10,000 in stock or income to $5,000 combined;
  • Threshold for review for interest in a private company set at zero equity;
  • Requirement that the university post a website listing all faculty with conflicts of interest, even if the conflict is managed; and
  • Requirement that every faculty member take continuing education in conflict of interest.

Wynes said a final ruling on the proposed changes was expected in late winter 2011.