Category: General News

Faculty Dining Room Future Discussed

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At its April 15 meeting, Dave Furhman, senior director of food services administration, reported to the Council on plans to convert the Faculty Dining Room in the Dobbs University Center over the summer into a “campus convenience store.” The dining room currently serves “a small group of repeat customers of about 40 to 45 folks,” Fuhrman said. “It does not provide a great service to the wider community.” He added that the Faculty Dining Room operates at a loss of more than $100,000 per year, a loss that is subsidized by student meal plans. “We have seen a decline in the quality and service in our student meal plan program at the DUC in part because of this and some other subsidies we’ve had to finance over the years,” Furhman said. He cited several factors that have come together to instigate this change, including recommendations from the Committee on Class and Labor to eliminate exclusive spaces on campus; an expressed student desire for more informal interaction with faculty; student feedback requesting more dining variety on campus during evenings and weekends; the need to eliminate the financial loss; and the opportunity to test a new retail option as a new student center is being designed. The new store will provide high quality deli sandwiches as well as some speciality products, such as gluten-free, halal, and kosher foods.

 

Council Chair Reflects on Year’s Work

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Outgoing Faculty Council chair Deb Houry took several minutes of the final meeting of 2013-14 to review the Council’s work throughout the year. Among the highlights:

  • In early fall, the Council conducted a faculty governance survey based on the AAUP  “Indicators of Sound Governance” instrument.
  • The Faculty Handbook was thoroughly reviewed and revised with an approval vote from the Council in September.
  •  In January, following a review of the conflict of commitment policy outlined in the Emory Faculty Handbook, the Council voted to revise the policy.
  •  The Council also reviewed and approved an update to its own bylaws, as well as accepting a proposal from the School of Nursing to change their representation  to the Council to allow any member of the faculty (and not only a tenured faculty member) serve as a representative.

Seeking Feedback on Emory Barnes & Noble Bookstore

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In March, Bruce Covey, senior director of campus life technology and bookstore relations, along with Paul Byrnes, director of business services, solicited the Council’s feedback on Emory’s bookstores. Covey reported that the bookstore space in the Oxford Road building has gotten “rave reviews,” especially in student surveys. Sales are up in every area but textbooks, but, he added, “we haven’t received a textbook complaint from a faculty member that has reached my office in more than three years,” compared to more than 10 complaints per year in the past.

Covey continued, “The challenge is that we are in an industry that is changing rapidly. As we continue to enhance our relationship with Barnes & Noble, we also need to look 5 to 10 years into the future to think about how the bookstore will affect our community.” As students continue to purchase textbooks from other sources, he added, the bookstores are repositioning themselves by extending their range of services. Currently, the bookstore offers campus office delivery on purchases, faculty/staff discounts, and a computer repair center.

Graduate School Executive Council Chair Reports on Priorities

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As the newly appointed chair of the Executive Council of the Laney Graduate School, Professor of Environmental Health Barry Ryan presented a report on the current status of the graduate school. In his overview, he mentioned that the school presently enrolls some 1900 students, that it offers more than 40 degree programs, and that its faculty includes nearly 1000 scholars and researchers from Emory schools as well as partner institutions elsewhere. He went on to identify four key priorities for the school: academic identity, diversity and inclusion, professionalization, and internationalization. He also noted the major competitive pressures on the school, including areas in which the school must remain competitive (stipends, student health insurance, career preparation, recruitment, and student services) as well as national issues, such as funding and the need for a renewed national agenda that shows the value of graduate training.

 

University Research Committee Considers Changes

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In February, the co-chairs of the University Research Committee (URC), Frank Wong (Public Health) and Elizabeth Pastan (Art History), spoke to the Council to solicit its input. A standing committee of the Faculty Council, the URC awards small research grants to Emory faculty. In collaboration with the Center for Faculty Development and Excellence, the URC is considering changes to improve its tracking of research output, encourage and fund high-risk/high-reward research, update its policies and procedures, and pursue new directions in interdisciplinary research. The URC currently has five subcommittees: 1) Biological & Health Sciences; 2) Humanities; 3) Social Sciences; 4) Math & Natural Sciences; and 5) Visual & Performing Arts. A sixth “Interdisciplinary” category was created three years ago but not formally constituted as a subcommittee. “This is the part we really wanted to bring to the Faculty Council today,” Wong said. “Exactly what do we mean by ‘interdisciplinary?’” He suggested formalizing this committee as a standing committee and said the critical issue was how to conceptualize interdisciplinarity without downplaying or underplaying certain disciplines. Pastan added that currently interdisciplinary applications were defined through self-identification by the applicants.

 

Provost Reports on Budget Process, Reaccreditation

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Provost Claire Sterk addressed the Council in February on several major processes currently underway in the life of the university. The annual “budget season” recently began, she said, offering “an insider’s perspective on challenges and how people are looking toward solutions. More and more, we hear about ways to collaborate that were not part of the rhetoric in the past. It’s shifting the way people are approaching identity in their schools and the budget consequences.” Sterk also spoke at length about the SACSCOC reaccreditation visit on March 17-19, 2014, and the extraordinary amount of preparation and effort behind the process (for example, Emory’s QEP, “The Nature of Evidence”). “I think everybody would agree that it’s important for us to do assessment,” she said. “We just want to do it in ways that fit the institution.”

 

Understanding Who Constitutes “the Faculty”

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In a January meeting discussion led by three council members, each representing concerns from faculty in the health sciences, the Council deliberated the evolving meaning of “tenure” and “nontenure” faculty positions across the university. As the numbers of clinical track faculty in the health sciences rise, for example, how are those non-tenure-track faculty supported, and what influence do they have on traditional domains of faculty governance, such as curriculum? Also discussed was the National Institutes of Health’s intention to move away from funding structures that support faculty salaries through research dollars, leaving many faculty in “soft money” positions in the health sciences to wonder about future salary funding sources.

 

SGA Proposes Revision to Student Judicial Processes

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Two Student Government Association leaders, President Raj Patel and James Crowe, an associate justice of the Constitutional Council, presented to the Faculty Council their proposal to realign student judicial processes. They explained that the honor councils in Emory College and other divisions hear cases of academic misconduct, and that those processes provide recommendations to academic deans, though in most divisions the dean is not bound by the recommendations. The Constitutional Council, on the other hand, hears “questions of the constitutionality and equity of any university action which affects the rights of any student or group thereof,” according to the Emory Student Constitution. In the proposed realignment, the Constitutional Council would review cases when division-based appeals are exhausted and only to consider whether “student rights or university policy” have been violated. The students were invited to return to the Faculty Council in the spring semester to discuss processes at other institutions and questions of evidence and implementation.

 

Welcome from the Chair

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Welcome to the new academic year! The Faculty Council began 2013-14 by receiving 1084 responses to an online governance survey—modified from an Association of American University Professors survey—circulated to all faculty in early fall. To me, this 33 percent response rate indicates the growing interest in shared governance on our campus. We will be reporting on the results next month. Beginning with that momentum, I hope this year for the Faculty Council will be characterized by open communication, transparency, and trust between the council and the general faculty. In that spirit, we have made some recent changes to the council website, facultycouncil.emory.edu, where you can now find minutes for the past year’s meetings (use your Emory ID/password to login to the pages). Please also use the “Join the Conversation” links throughout this publication to comment on the articles through the Council Concerns blog. We welcome your input, feedback, and ideas. Please do contact me at dhoury [at] emory [dot] edu.

 

President to Council: Ask the Bigger Questions

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Emory President James Wagner addressed the Faculty Council in September with the observation that higher education is very much a part of the public discourse of the nation currently. While the great interest is good, he said, the challenge is the narrow conversation: “We have an additional calling, and it’s actually our older calling, which is the calling around preparing folks to be not just job-ready, but citizenship-ready. We do so much around what it means to be a human being. A lot of the great questions that are confounding Congress right now aren’t going to work out on the spreadsheets. They are going to require judgment, values, and character. We need to be asking the bigger questions.” He encouraged the Council to help “expand the conversation” both on campus and beyond.