(2) In the absence of the President, Mike Thomas made some brief remarks concerning recent Institutional activities:

(a) The Goal for the Capital Campaign has been raise from 500 M$ to 600 M$; the goal at the outset was 300M$. These are ambitious goals for a public university of the size of Ga. Tech..

(b) Applications for Freshman entry in 2000 are up 8% on the previous year.

(c) The State budget for Higher Education remains unclear. Governor is concerned that tax collections may be down. The overall State budget may be reduced by 2% from last year which will mean few capital projects.

(3) The Chair called for approval of the minutes of the October 26^th meeting of the Executive Board. This was agreed without dissent.

(4) Pete Dawkins presented the arguments for re-instituting faculty/staff discounts to Ga. Tech Athletic Events [Item #8 of the agenda— moved forward]. A brief handout was distributed (and is attached to the archival copy of the minutes). In 1996 the EB reduced the discount from the figure of 50%, used for many years, to the level of 20%. This was in response to interpretations of IRS guidelines and the difficulty of the payroll system in handling a discount as "taxable income". The present payroll structure should be able to handle this matter and Dawkins proposed that the EB return the discount to the 50% level which was effective prior to 1996. Liotta moved that Dawkins be requested to discuss the matter with all relevant parties (e.g. payroll, athletic board, faculty benefits committee) and report back to the EB on whether the change would now be feasible and acceptable.

(5) The Executive Board approved the formation of the nominating committee for the 2000 elections to consist of:

Craig Zimring (Arch) repreenting the EB and acting as Chair.
Don Frank (Library) representing the EB and acting as co-chair.
Kent Barefied (CoS)
Tom Akins (Co-op)
Richard Barke (Pub. Pol)
Lisa Sills (GTRI)
Bill Sayle (EE) acting as an ex-officio advisor (past year’s chair of the Nom. Com).
One student to be nominated by the Student Government.

(6) The Chair discussed the formation of the "Task Group on Course Evaluations". The composition of this group was approved by e-mail vote of the EB on 29 October. The Chairman’s initial charge to the task group (attached to the archival copy of the minutes) was approved. The task group is to make an initial report to the EB at its January 18 2000 meeting.

Edward Thomas reported that the Task group had met twice and concentrated on the survey for the present quarter. It had concluded that ideally the new computer based survey and the older paper based survey should be run in parallel to provide a test that the new survey method was giving comparable information. It has proved impossible to arrange for the paper survey to be handled centrally by CETL due to difficulties with the BANNER computer system.

The EB was reminded that it had voted by e-mail, on November 29, to support the following motion (With 14 votes in favor, one against and four not voting) :

"The Executive Board Endorses the Following Motion of the Task Group on Course Evaluations:

The on-line course evaluations performed in the Fall Semester of 1999 will be used as an experiment only. Data produced by that survey will be supplied only to the instructors in the individual courses. No reports of data will be provided to Administrators and no reports of data will be supplied for use in a published course Critique. The task force further recommends that the provost communicate this decision to all School Chairs immediately".

Edward Thomas mentioned that the "data" discussed in the motion was the raw data of responses to an individual course given by an individual faculty member. It was intent of the Task Group that the statistics on overall responding rates should be tabulated and analyzed.

Mike Thomas was asked whether he would implement this recommendation. He responded that immediate distribution of this recommendation might cause people to de-emphasize the web-based survey and he would prefer not to do it at this time. He will however communicate this decision after the survey is finished. He also wished to be able to revisit the decision after all the results have been analyzed. If the response rate seemed to be statistically acceptable then he would ask that the Task Group reconsider distribution of the results.

Jayaraman commented that the student responding patterns to five or more simultaneous surveys is likely to be different from responding to one survey at a time. The matter is further confused by the courses now being semester courses and not directly comparable with the previous quarter courses. Zimring commented that there must be experience on these matters elsewhere. Abdel Khalik said that the consideration of all these matters was the job of the Task Group and not of the Executive Board.

(7) The question of extension of the tenure clock for faculty with family related concerns was deferred to the January meeting since the materials were not yet completed. This does not alter the intent of bringing the matter to the GFA in February to consider a Statutes change. It was emphasized by Liotta that this was an important matter which should, ideally, be completed before the start of the next academic year. He asked that a "Special Meeting" of the General Faculty Assembly be called to complete the Statutes change within the present year.

(8) The Chair introduced discussion of how policy decisions of the representative faculty bodies should be recorded for future reference. As an example there is a policy decision from 1996 (on the matter of periodic review of Deans) which is not recorded anywhere other than the EB minutes and which has been inadvertently ignored since that date. How should such policies be recorded and updated. It was moved:

"That the Secretary of the Faculty extract policy decisions from the minutes of the various representative bodies and transmit these to the Provost’s office for posting in the faculty-staff handbook".

There was the question as to how many such items occur each year; the secretary replied that there is only about one per year. There was discussion that decisions on policy should not be made by the Executive Board alone but should always be approved also by the Academic Senate or general Faculty Assembly, as appropriate. Bob Mc Math apologized for the slow updating of the faculty/staff handbook and said that this is now being corrected. The motion was passed without dissent.

(9) Copies of the report on the Executive Board Retreat were distributed and the Chair initiated discussion of action items which might result from that Retreat.

(a) The Chair suggested that on the matter of "Student Retention" there were no specific recommendations but that perhaps there should be a task group charged with overview of all the various initiatives. McMath commented that such a group is already being created.

(b) On the matter of "Distance Learning" it was suggested that there should perhaps be a review board to study faculty concerns. It was decided that, in the short term, this should be an ad-hoc committee and the Chair will create this group. In the longer term it might be necessary to create a standing committee of the Academic Senate to cover such programs.

(c) On the matter of "Faculty governance" there were a number of specific recommendations and the Chair consolidated these into possible action items.

(i) At the regular meetings of the Academic Senate and the General Faculty Assembly the Chair of the EB should report on the on the recent activities of the EB and should at that time introduce any decision items which would benefit from endorsement by the parent bodies. The Chair will do this.

(ii) The Executive Board should communicate with all elected Faculty Advisory Committees which are required by Statutes in each unit. We should confirm that the FACs are functioning in accordance with the Statutes, ask whether there are any problems, and use the FACs for assistance in matters such as nominating persons for elections. Possibly the Chairs of the FACs should meet periodically with a subset of the EB to review faculty governance matters. The Chair of the EB and the Secretary of the Faculty were authorized to start this interaction with the FACs.

(iii) There was discussion of periodic reviews of the functioning of standing committees. This would include a review of the statutory charges to the committees, their routine operation, and a whether the committees were properly discharging their responsibility for overall evaluation of programs and rules. It was moved that the Secretary of the Faculty prepare a time-table for having every committee meet with the EB for such a review during the next two years. This was agreed without dissent.

(iv) There was discussion of whether the whole RPT (Review, Promotion and Tenure) process should be evaluated in a manner similar to the recent review of the 5-year "Post-Tenure Review" procedure. The objective being to improve the process if that were necessary. The Chair of the EB and Bob Mc Math will create such a committee.

(v) There was discussion of how to "educate" faculty in the processes of "Faculty Governance". Presentations at new faculty orientation sessions might be possible but this program is already overcrowded. The Provost will give this some consideration.

(vi) There was discussion of the proposal that the Chair of the Academic Senate and of the General Faculty Assembly should be elected, with the wish that they function in a pro-active fashion to provide leadership of these bodies. Currently, under the Board of Regent’s Statutes, the "Presiding Officer" for all elected bodies is the President of the Institution. It was suggested that there be a debate on this matter at the next meeting of the general Faculty Assembly and that Marc Smith should be asked to comment on the implications of the Board of Regents Statutes covering such matters.

(vii) There was discussion of the recommendation that there be a standing committee to cover the subject of "Research". No member could recall the justification for that item in the report. It was decided to wait on the review of committee functioning (item iii above) to determine whether any action was required on such a body.