Representatives Present: Cosetta Seno (FRIT), Robert Kuchta (BCHM), Elspeth Dusinberre (CLAS), Shemin Ge (GEOL), Andrew Cowell (LING), Shelley Copley (MCDB), Mark Whisman (PSYC), Jennifer Schwartz (HONR), Vilja Hulden (HIST), Cecilia Pang (THDN), Christopher Osborn (CINE), William Taylor (ANTH), Mike Zerella (RAPS), Joe Bryan (GEOG), Annje Wiese (HUMN), Aun Hasan Ali (RLST), Nils Halvorson (APS, NS Divisional Rep), Matthias Richter (ALC), Benjamin Brown (APS), Robert Parson (CHEM), John D. Griffin (PSCI), Keller Kimbrough (ALC, AHUM Divisional Rep), Daniel Kaffine (ECON), Christina Meyers (SLHS), Anthony Abiragi (PWR), Lorraine Bayard de Volo (WGST), Jeffrey Cox (ENGL, AHUM Divisional Rep), Paul Romatschke (PHYS), Sebastian Schmidt (ATOC), Enrique Sepulveda (ETHN), Albert Bronstein (MATH), Marissa Ehringer (IPHY), Robert Rupert (PHIL)
Also in attendance: Glen Krutz (Dean of A&S), Bud Coleman (Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs and Initiatives, A&S)
Representatives not present: Andy Baker (PSCI, SS Divisional Rep), Matthew Burgess (ENVS), Martin Boileau (ECON, SS Divisional Rep), Zachary Kilpatrick (APPM), Stephanie Su (AAH), Juan Pablo Dabove (SPAN), Nichole Barger (EBIO), Liam Downey (SOCY), Anastasiya Osipova (GSLL),
The meeting was called to order at approximately 3:32 p.m.
The Chair expressed the intention to record the meeting for the purpose of writing minutes of the meeting afterwards. He assured the membership that the recording would be used solely for that purpose. Chair commenced recording and yielded the floor to Dean Krutz.
Dean’s Remarks
Dean Krutz congratulates everyone present for a record-setting fall-to-spring retention rate for first-year students in Arts and Sciences.
Dean Krutz announces that searches for all three A&S Deans of Division are open and encourages enquiries and applications. See the A&S Web site for more information about the selection process.
Dean Krutz expresses the view that CU Boulder is behind in the development of online education and that pursuing a greater range of online offerings may help the College with retention and also financially, in the context of the new budget model.
Chair’s remarks
The Chair announces that the remainder of the ASFS meetings for Spring 2023 will continue in a remote format. A Qualtrics Poll was recently administered regarding meeting modality. Over
three-quarters of the membership voted (33 votes in total), and two-thirds (22 to 11) of the votes were in favor of remote, as opposed to in-person, meetings.
The Chair calls attention to the recently distributed Qualtrics ballot concerning a bylaws amendment specifying rules for handling an extended absence of the ASFS Chair. The voting period is one week, per the decision of the Faculty Governance Executive Committee (FGEC). This is a vote of the entire Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The Chair encourages the membership to vote and asks that members encourage their colleagues to vote.
The Chair remarks on the proposal, currently being developed by Senior Vice Provost Eggert and the BFA, to create a campus-level curriculum committee. Rupert describes the genesis of the idea and what are expected to be its two primary functions. One is to address problems to do with duplication of curriculum and courses across schools and colleges; the new budget model provides a financial incentive to schools and colleges to increase the number of credit hours that their students take within their home school and college, with the possible result that individual schools and colleges will create their own versions of courses that already exist in other schools or colleges. The second potential function is to help with or possibly to oversee the mapping of courses and degrees onto the learning objectives identified as part of the development of the Common Curriculum. It is unclear at this point what sort of power the campus-level curriculum committee will wield in this process. It is the intention of the FGEC to invite Katherine Eggert to speak to the ASFS at its March meeting, where these issues can be discussed in more detail.
The representative from ANTH, who also serves on the ASFS Curriculum Committee, asks about the possibility of a visit by SVP Eggert to a meeting of the Curriculum Committee. The Chair encourages Curriculum Committee leadership to contact Katherine Eggert directly and invite her to meet with Curriculum.
Dean Krutz shares a positive impression of the way the Common Curriculum work was pursued – in response to the demands of the relevant accreditation agency – and the way it has come together. He encourages participation in the mapping process and emphasizes the importance of keeping on top of duplication-related issues.
The representative from ETHN expresses concern – based on the historical experiences of schools of education – about the potential for the mapping process to eventuate in top-down mandates and the enforcement of uniform standards across units and about the possibility that promises to accreditation agencies will be used as weapons against the faculty and academic units. The Chair encourages vigilance with regard to such potential problems.
The representative from ANTH emphasizes the need for significant A&S representation on any campus-wide curriculum committee. The Chair suggests that the ASFS consider pressing for proportional representation on any campus-wide curriculum committee. In the chat, Dean Krutz expresses support for such proportional representation and notes precedent with regard to the make-up of the Council of Deans.
Credit for DEI-related Work in Unit-Level Merit Review
The Chair shares the text of the BFA’s resolution concerning the topic at hand and notes the correspondence between aspects of the BFA’s resolution and the two aspects of this issue briefly discussed at January’s ASFS meeting: an enforcement-like aspect connected to the BFA’s directive that “no unit shall disregard or fail to credit such work” and a resource-sharing aspect, which is described in the final clause of the BFA’s resolution.
The Chair reminds the assembly that the Chair of the ASFS Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Cecilia Pang, has offered to oversee the creation and maintenance of a repository of existing departmental policies that can serve as a resource for departments working to formulate and refine their own policies for awarding credit for DEI-related activities in merit review.
One of the AHUM Divisional Representatives, Keller Kimbrough, notes that, because the ASFS Grievance Committee is responsible for reviewing complaints concerning merit review and the resulting salary adjustments, there is an indirect sense in which the ASFS is automatically involved in enforcement-like activity.
The representative from APS identifies himself as a member of the ASFS DEI Committee and suggests the possibility that the ASFS DEI Committee and the BFA’s Diversity Committee collaborate, if the latter is a distinct entity. The Chair affirms that the BFA’s Diversity Committee is a distinct entity and that there has been some such collaboration in the past, and endorses the idea of future collaboration.
The Chair expresses the intention to send a message to Chairs and Directors, possibly with the Chair of the ASFS DEI Committee as a co-signatory, announcing the ASFS’s intention to house a repository of resources relevant to the development of unit-level policies governing the awarding of credit for DEI-related activities in merit review.
The Chair asks whether some departments might want limitations on distribution of their materials. Rupert suggests that Pang send a link to the location of the collected materials only to those who specifically request access.
The representative from HIST asks, in the chat, whether, in light of the BFA’s resolution, it is legitimate for a faculty member in A&S to submit a grievance just on the grounds the faculty member’s department doesn’t have a policy for awarding credit for DEI-related activities. The Chair asks the Chair of Grievance, Daniel Kaffine, to speak to the issue.
The Chair of Grievance distinguishes between (a) the case of existence (or nonexistence) of department-level policy, (b) the case of grievances concerning the alleged misapplication of existing departmental policy, and (c) the case of a grievance concerning such details as the relative weight given by a department’s policy to a particular form of activity. He expresses qualms about the Committee’s handling of the last of the three. There is some follow-up
discussion about the conditions under which a faculty member would or wound not have “standing” to file a grievance that makes its way to the ASFS Grievance Committee in a case of type (a). The representative from ALC expresses support for the idea of criteria developed at the department level and the role of Grievance in addressing concerns about the misapplication of a given department’s application of its own policies. He also suggests that, regarding the concerns about departments not developing policies at all, the ASFS’s and Grievance’s approach should be to deal with problems as they arise.
The representative from CINE expresses support for an avenue of grievance in the case in which a faculty member is concerned simply that their department doesn’t have a policy of the sort at issue.
The HUMN Divisional Representative from ENGL notes that, given the current structure of campus policy creation and enforcement, the BFA’s resolution does not create an enforceable campus policy. Faculty Affairs has not created an official campus policy with the content of the BFA’s resolution. The Chair describes ways in which the Grievance Committee might frame its judgment or the advice it gives to the dean that are consistent with this observation.
The representative from HIST suggests that if we’re thinking of engaging in any enforcement like activity, including via Grievance’s issuing of judgments or opinions, the ASFS might first consider taking its own vote whether to endorse the BFA’s resolution (given that the BFA’s resolution does not alone create campus policy).
Further comments are made in support of policy development at the departmental level, in support an initial act of trust that local parties will do the work the BFA has in mind, and the application of existing channels of review and resolution to ensure that the policies in question are being developed and applied at the departmental level.
Possible Changes to A&S Faculty Governance Bylaws
The Chair introduces the issue and shares the redlined document an earlier version of which was discussed at the January meeting of the ASFS. He draws attention to the only added material, new wording that lists three options for clarifying the existing text defining the voting membership of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Two of the three options are based on suggestions made at January’s meeting. A third option is taken from system-level documents that define membership in the faculty senate. It is the option that has been used, during the current AY, for votes of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. It emerged as the favorite of the FGEC at its most recent meeting. Rupert proposes to amend the redlined document so as to incorporate only the third option in question with the intention of bringing it back to the assembly in March as a motion from the FGEC (a motion that the package of proposed bylaws amendments be put to a vote of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as a whole).
The representative from CINE asks about further changes. The Chair notes that the other redlined changes are the same as those described at the assembly’s January meeting, and he briefly runs through them. These concern the substitution of the term ‘Teaching Professor’ in
place of ‘Instructor’, the status of the A&S Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs and Initiatives (as an ex-officio, non-voting member of the ASFS), clarification of the responsibilities of the Personnel Committee (so as to make room for the awarding of honorary titles by a procedure outside of the Personnel Committee and to make explicit that Personnel’s role vis-à-vis the evaluation of Teaching Professors has not changed), and an adjustment to wording regarding the basis of parliamentary procedure, which will, in effect, give Divisional Councils the authority to reject Roberts Rules as the manual governing the Councils’ parliamentary procedures.
The representative from CINE moves that the FGEC proceed as Rupert describes – preparing this package of amendments as a motion to be voted on at the next meeting of the ASFS. The representative from RLST seconds the motion. The Chair asks for objections, and there are none. The FGEC will proceed as suggested.
Workloads and Compensation for Teaching Professors (led by Shelly Copley, Chair of Planning Committee)
The Chair yields the floor to Shelley Copley, Chair of the ASFS Planning Committee, to present Planning’s work on the current agenda item.
Copley shares the membership of Planning and describes the history that led to Planning’s current project, which follows up on a report issued by the Task Force on Instructor-Rank Faculty in March of 2019. Among the issues addressed in that document are workload and compensation for Teaching Faculty.
Copley shares data on compensation. Teaching Faculty make, on average, 64% (Instructor compared to Assistant Professor) and 70% (Senior Instructor compared to Associate Professor) of the mean salaries of TTT faculty at comparable ranks and notes that the mean salary of Teaching Faculty is only slightly higher than the mean salary of high school teachers in Colorado. According to chairs, this level of compensation has led to low morale among Teaching Faculty and has led to problems with recruitment and retention of Teaching Faculty.
Copley turns to the question of workload, emphasizing the wide variety of courses taught across the College, from studio classes to large lectures, which makes difficult a quantitative comparison of workload across the full range of Teaching Faculty in the College.
Most Teaching Faculty members do not teach four formal courses per semester, given various kinds of course equivalents (for running programs, for teaching large lectures that count as two courses, and so on). These course equivalents reduce the number of courses assigned. Partly for this reason, views of Teaching Faculty vary regarding the acceptability of their current workload (although compensation remains a sticking point). Some of this variation in attitudes toward workload is a result of variation in workload both within and across departments.
All department chairs interviewed expressed highly positive views about the role and importance of Teaching Faculty. Some chairs expressed highly negative views about a 4-4
workload. Some chairs expressed the concern that if the workload were reduced, more faculty would need to be hired.
Interviews with Teaching Faculty suggest that they are highly dedicated but, because of the heavy workload, sometimes feel as if they have to cut pedagogical corners.
The Planning Committee concludes that increasing compensation for Teaching Faculty should be a high priority in the College and that the College should work toward sustainable workloads for Teaching Faculty (both for the well-being of Teaching Faculty and to protect the quality of the education for our students).
Copley notes that the faculty does not control the resources needed to implement the preceding recommendations, but Planning asks the administration to consider the following possibilities. One is to reduce the standard workload for Teaching Faculty from 4-4 to 3-3. Copley suggests that this might not be the most strategic approach given the variation in the meaning of these standardized loads for Teaching Faculty across the College. Another possibility is to develop a more nuanced formula sensitive to such factors as the kind of courses being taught, the number of preparations involved, and whether the faculty member has TA support. Ideally this would be done within departments, but Planning recommends that Divisional Deans exercise oversight to maintain comparable workloads across departments.
The Chair expresses the intention to open the floor for discussion of these issues at the next meeting of the ASFS.
The meeting is adjourned at 5:03 p.m.