The council discussed the proposed policies on faculty misconduct and faculty development. The proposals were created by a subcommittee last fall in an effort to revise previous policies regarding post tenure review.
“You have a chance to put this into motion today,” BFC Faculty President Cassidy Sugimoto said. “Rather, (the post tenure policies) are being presented in the hopes that you will take them back to your constituencies, get to their responses and communicate that response back to the BFC.”
Professor David Fisher, chair of the constitution and rules committee, led the discussion on these policies.
“The policies I’m going to discuss are aimed at protecting tenure, protecting the integrity of the system that allows all forms of basic research to prosper and move forward,” Fisher said.
Fisher said the current policy has been in place since 1999, adding that it was vague, especially in defining the possibilities of remediation instead of dismissal.
The proposed policy changes more clearly distinguish misconduct from incompetence by creating two separate procedures for each. In misconduct cases, the major procedural change was limiting attorneys. In incompetence cases, however, the policy proposes reversing the tenure procedure by starting review at the local level.
IU-Bloomington Provost Lauren Robel stressed the importance of separating the misconduct and incompetence policies.
“I thought that that was the gist in where we were going with this review, and I think it would be a really good thing for faculty members on this campus if those two things were separated,” Robel said. “Misconduct is pretty different from ‘I think you’re not doing the job you’re supposed to do as a tenure faculty member.’”
Although the discussion was cut short, the BFC will continue discussing post tenure review policies, as well as the proposed faculty development policy at the next meeting.
The first action item on the agenda was voting on two changes to the BFC bylaws. These changes focused on the representation of University Graduate School and the Creation, Reorganization, Elimination and Merger committee policy.
The BFC voted unanimously to change the representation in the committee of the University Graduate School. The change adds the vice provost for graduate education and health services as a voting member in the BFC.
After discussing specific points, the council voted on and passed the CREM policy, adding the CREM committee as a standing committee. The CREM committee will be in charge of creating, reorganizing, eliminating and merging academic units, including departments and schools.
The meeting concluded with the enrollment management report. David Johnson, vice provost of enrollment management, gave the report that was a series of statistics and information about the new freshman class.
The report included statistics on the diversity, talent and background of the new IU-Bloomington class.
Among these statistics were record-breaking numbers, including the highest average GPA at 3.76, the highest average SAT/ACT score at 1218, the highest amount of underrepresented students at 1,185 and highest number of overall students enrolled at 7,875.
Johnson discussed the goals the enrollment department has each season, including aiming diversity, helping students afford an IU education and bringing in international students.
“These are complementary goals, but often they can be conflicting goals as well,” Johnson said. “So we have to work on balancing goals in the whole setting of enrollment.”
