Transcript of the Proceedings of the Faculty Council

Memorial Resolution Robert R. Howren

Craig Melchert, Professor of Linguistics: A native of Rome, Georgia, Robert Ray Howren came to UNC in 1976 to assume the chairmanship of our Department of Linguistics and Non-Western Languages, following a distinguished career at Wake Forest University (where he had earlier earned is BA) and at the University of Iowa, where he had served as the founding chair of the program in Linguistics. After stepping down as chair in 1981, he continued his activities as Professor of Linguistics, first in the Department of English and then in the reconstituted Department of Linguistics, retiring in 1994.

The breadth of Bob Howren's scholarly activities is reflected in his publications, conference papers, and teaching. He had an abiding interest in the history of English and in American English dialects, having produced a pioneering study of the dialect of Ocracoke Island on the Outer Banks, recently the subject of renewed scholarly interest. One major focus of his research was the native American language family of Northern Athapaskan, spoken in the Northwest Territories, Canada. His study of these languages was built on extensive fieldwork carried out over nearly twenty years, much of it in collaboration with his wife, Phyllis. Bob's skills as a linguistic fieldworker were prodigious, a combination of natural talent and an open and engaging personality, which enabled him to "connect" with people of all backgrounds and cultures. His teaching was energized by his never-failing enthusiasm for his subject and his constant efforts to stay abreast of the very latest developments in the field--through a serious of veritable revolutions during his forty-year career.

Bob Howren had the unusual distinction of having nurtured two programs in linguistics at crucial stages of their development. Through his leadership he created the Linguistics Program at the University of Iowa and guided it through its first ten years. Called to Chapel Hill in 1976, he led the Department of Linguistics through a very troubled time. Circumstances beyond his control frustrated many of his efforts to guide the program in the direction he envisioned. He nevertheless was able to retire from a revitalized Department, many of whose features we owe to his initiatives. Bob viewed the role of chair as that of a leader, who implements policy through consensus-building. The Department's strong democratic tradition of internal governance reflects the precedents he established. Two thriving departments of Linguistics, and their many graduates, are in large measure Bob Howren's legacy.

For Bob, giving came naturally, whatever the context. His former associates in English recall him affectionately as a valued colleague who graced their department for nearly a decade. In his retirement years, Bob made valuable contributions to the Institute for Latin American Studies' summer program in Yucatec Maya, a language of Southern Mexico, which became his new object of scholarly research and passionate interest.

With his sudden loss, our memories of Bob Howren center not upon his many professional accomplishments, but upon him as a person, as friend and colleague. Bob had an all-embracing zest for life and a love of people that paid no heed to pedigree or station; both of these qualities showed, and people responded to them. Each of who knew him has our own memory of a personal kindness received, and several generations of students, along with the faculty, recall the generosity with which Bob and Phyllis for well over a decade threw open their home as hosts of the annual Departmental picnic. He was devoted to his family, and had a wide circle of friends both within and outside the University.

Bob never ceased to take pleasure in his many avocations, from which he derived deep satisfaction. He suffered his fatal heart attack between sailplane flights at the Swan Creek Airport near Elkin, NC. One of Bob Howren's lesser-known talents was as a poet, and I can think of no more fitting valedictory than his own words, from a short poem entitled "Glider Solo at Sunset":

Craig Melchert, Chair, Linguistics
for the Memorial committee: Joseph Flora (English), Randall Hendrick (Linguistics), Evelyne Huber (Institute for Latin American Studies), Erika Lindemann (English).
 

Educational Foundation Gift to The Center For Undergraduate Excellence

William M. Moore, Jr.: Thank you. Pete asked me how I had time to hold down a full-time job anymore. I will confess that the other day I was leaving Chapel Hill and was calling in for my voice mail and I had eight humanities voice mails and none about my business so I've obviously gone a little too far. [laughter]

Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today and to address you. I'm going to tell you a little bit about the most recent gift the Educational Foundation has made to the university and talk a little bit about the Foundation's long-standing commitment to academics here at Carolina.

This summer the Educational Foundation committed $350,000 to the Center for Undergraduate Excellence to renovate Graham Memorial. It was the last piece, I believe, of the challenge grant from the Kressge Foundation to raise the $5.7 million for the Center and I would like now, on behalf of the Educational Foundation, to present a very large check to Dean Risa Palm on behalf of the Educational Foundation. [applause]

Dean Risa Palm: On behalf of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Center for Undergraduate Excellence, we're very, very pleased to receive this check from the Educational Foundation. I hope and I think that it is an example of the way in which academics and athletics at our wonderful university are tied together and we hope that this is the continuation of a long collaboration between our foundations. Thank you very much. [applause]

Moore: I just want to say a couple more words. Just a couple of remarks.

I think . . . just to give you this very briefly. There are two things I really wanted to say today. First is that the Educational Foundation truly does, the leadership, the members of the Foundation, the great majority of them support academics here at the university. We all understand that athletics support and compliment our primary mission which is academics. Just to illustrate how strong that commitment is, during and since the bicentennial campaign the Foundation has given directly to the university $6.8 million dollars, total. An even more impressive figure to me is of the 100 people that are the largest donors to the Educational Foundation, there is a recent survey that says they've given $30 million dollars to athletics, they've given over $70 million to the university, the academics at the university. So there's a very strong commitment on the part of the Educational Foundation. If you look at our leadership of the Foundation, it's the same people very much or almost the same people as you see leading the Business School and the university, the Alumni Association. So we're very grateful to have this opportunity. I think our support is actually growing and strengthening. And thank you very much for this chance to be with you.

Richard Andrews: Bill, thank you very much for joining us.

Let me mention a few things and then invite your questions. We just last week awarded the next round of technology grants. These are for faculty technology projects and that amount was about $2 million dollars. We had a number of proposals that were not funded but that I thought and Dick Richardson thought were worthy of being funded so we have freed up another $400,000 to fund those and I think that Dick just notified the recipients of those grants today.

We are also going to take some of the money that the legislature gave us in the¾ it's very difficult to describe¾ The legislature each year appropriates money to us and then based on historical patterns of vacancies, they anticipate how much money we won't spend that has been appropriated and they take that back. It's called the reversion. This year they reduced the reversion, at our request, from 2% of our personnel budget to 1% and they directed that we spend that money on technology and libraries so we are going to take some of that money that is directed to be spent on technology and issue another request for proposals from faculty this time to focus on putting your course on the internet or developing a course for the internet if you don't want to put on the internet one that you've got already.

The focus on the internet is a strategic ploy on our part in anticipation of the growth of the internet as a major means for delivery of education. When I talk about internet based courses, I get the reactions from the faculty that range from mild disdain to outright hostility and very little expression of support but I can tell you from talking with other university chancellors and presidents and from my visits to other campuses that this is going to be a substantial part of the future of higher education, like it or not. And there are many reasons for that and we could discuss them and should discuss them at some point in the future but it is with us, like it or not, and I am convinced that internet-based education is going to change the economics of higher education so that if we want to continue doing what we have always prided ourselves on our doing well, that is traditional liberal arts education for residential 18 to 22-year-olds, if we're going to continue doing that, we will have to enter the arena of internet-based education as well, not because we will use it to serve that population but because we will use it to serve the other 95.5% of the world's population that lives outside the United States and where there is an enormous demand for American higher education.

Why do we have to serve that market? Why can't we let somebody else? Because the revenues associated with serving that market, the global population, will change the economics of higher education. Those institutions that get into the business of global education, internet-based, will have revenues that will dwarf the dreams of Avarice and will enable those institutions to buy the best faculty, to build the best facilities and to, ultimately, buy the best students. So, if we want to maintain the position in higher education that we have had for the last hundred years, a position of leadership, of having the best facilities, the best facilities and the best students, we have to get into the business of internet-based education. I have absolutely no doubt about that. Just emblematic of the change to come is that, as some of you know, the school of management, the business school at Duke last year went online with an internet-based MBA degree, Master of Business Administration degree, and for this degree they charge a little over $80,000 in tuition and they had to close out enrollments because of demand. They marketed it only in Southeast Asia. That gives you some sense of the scales of magnitudes that we're talking about in this kind of arena. Like or not, it is with us. The challenge for us is to ensure that internet-based courses have the same quality that our residential courses have or, if they don't, they at least have quality that satisfies our standards and that is a challenge for us.

We have entered into relationships with two companies recently that will assist us in developing internet-based courses. One, College Access, or University Access, a company founded by one of our graduates, a Morehead Scholar out in California, is working to develop video-based courses, video-based content and the other, IXL, an Atlanta Company, that has set up a division specifically to provide templates for internet-based courses to do the marketing associated with them and so forth. We have invited people from those two companies to come on campus and to meet with faculty who are interested in putting their courses on the internet.

Let me say something about Nike. I have the feeling that this is going to be a recurring theme. Several people have asked me why didn't we do what Duke has done which is they announced last week they're requiring that all of the vendors that license their logo and manufacturer apparel with their logo on it have codes of conduct that they require their licensees to adhere to. Well, actually we did exactly what Duke did. We did it at the same time they did because every university that contracts with the licensing agent that we contract with and that Duke contracts with did it at the same time. We all did it together. Duke just had the good sense to call a press conference and announce it. So they got the credit for it but we had done what they did.

Yesterday there were officials on campus from Nike and they met with some students. I met with them earlier in the day and I made a request of them and I am happy to say that they have agreed to the request. My request was that they invite a couple of students and the Chairman of the Faculty Council and a reporter from the Daily Tar Heel to go to Southeast Asia and tour whatever factories over there they wanted to tour and see whatever they wanted to see and come back and tell the rest of us what they saw. To Nike's credit, they agreed to do that. So I think that that will be an important next step in the campus dialogue about Nike.

I want to again say that I think there's a much deeper issue here which I would love to have discussed. It goes far beyond Nike. It goes to the issue of the values and the character of our culture. A culture where people would pay $150 for a pair of sneakers that cost probably $10 to manufacture and $50 to advertise and the rest is profit. There might be a little hyperbole in that but there's not a lot. The point is that our values as a society are out of whack when we do things like that and when there are, at the same time, children who go without adequate health care, who go hungry. A society that puts that kind of emphasis on sport is a society, I think, that needs to examine its values and I hope that over time we can do that. But, again, I say with respect to the Nike contract itself, I am satisfied that we have not compromised our integrity in signing it. I am convinced that we have not. But I'm also open to being dissuaded from that view by considerations that have not yet been adduced and to which I am open.

Let me announce that we have filled the Dean's position at the School of Business. Most of you probably read the article this week, the announcement of the appointment of Robert Sullivan. Bob was Dean of the School of Management at Carnegie Mellon University. There he did two things that we found particularly attractive. One was that he globalized the curriculum. That is he refocused the school of business there from a focus primarily on domestic business to a focus on business as a global phenomenon. And the other thing that he did was that he worked significantly to bring that campus into the world of distance learning, digital-based education. In this case, primarily satellite-based education. He formed a partnership between the school of management at Carnegie Mellon and Technologico de Monterey in Mexico which, as some of you probably know, is the MIT of Mexico. By far the best institution of higher education in Mexico and which has five dedicated satellites and a footprint that covers most of Latin America and does distance education throughout Latin America. Sullivan, at Carnegie Mellon, brought them into partnership to provide business education throughout Latin America. Those are the two aspects of what he did at Carnegie Mellon that were particularly impressive to us. He has more recently been director of IC Squared which is the University of Texas' Center for Entrepreneurship which examines questions of technology transfer, the creation of high-tech companies based on intellectual property that comes out of universities. He's done a good job there. That comports with what the Kenan Institute for Private Enterprise does. We think he will be an appropriate and good dean then for the Kenan Flagler Business School.

I think most of you know that we have consummated our negotiations with Madeline Grumet to be Dean of the School of Education. I've spoken about her on a number of previous occasions. We are awaiting approval of her appointment. Madeline is Dean of the School of Education at Brooklyn College of the [City] University of New York. What especially appealed to us about Madeline was the way that she had brought the School of Education at Brooklyn into the service of some of the poorer school in all five boroughs of New York. I am convinced that we can achieve the most results if we focus on some of the poorest performing schools of North Carolina and I think this probably came from my 100 county tour where it was apparent to me that the schools in Wake County and Forsyth County and Mecklenburg County can do pretty well by themselves. They don't need a lot of assistance from us but some of the under-funded schools in the rural areas can use every ounce of assistance that we can provide. And that is something that Madeline has done in the boroughs of New York beautifully with the resources of Brooklyn College and so I look for her to do that here.

And finally, let me say something that arose from a conversation that I had with Lolly Gasaway last night. We were sitting together at the Spangler Family Dinner and we talked about web publishing and we were talking about the high cost of journals and I raised the question well, why don't scholars simply put their publications on the web using their own server and thereby bypass the expensive process of scholarly publication via journals? And Lolly said, "Well, it's because of tenure and promotion considerations. You need the certification of refereed journals, peer-referred journals." And I observed that we could simply ask scholars who have published on the web without the benefit of referees to submit in the review process of tenure and promotion, submit their three or four best articles and then we send them out for peer review, get an appraisal back and we would have accomplished the same thing that peer review and refereed journals accomplishes, thereby saving the world a great deal of money and the planet a lot of trees. Lolly thought it sounded okay. I'm going to ask the Chancellor's Advisory Committee which looks at these matters to investigate the question of whether it isn't appropriate to begin considering in tenure and promotion decisions not just refereed articles but unrefereed web published articles because I am convinced that that is part of the wave of the future.

Let me stop there and invite questions.

Hooker: Dick can you respond? It would be a great surprise to me to learn that the library had a flat budget.

Provost Richard Richardson: I can't respond with the figures, Chancellor, but we're trying to get a response worked together here between Katie and us.

Hooker: I'd sooner believe that hippopotamuses can fly than that the library has a flat budget this year.

Richardson: We've made allocations already for the library this year. These funds, as you know, that are coming up on the 1% reversion are for next year, this wouldn't affect this last year's budget. You can't talk about the funding from this year on the reversion as it affects library technology.

Hooker: I know that our library has moved up substantially here over the last two years in the research library group¾ the hierarchy¾ as the result of funding increases that have come over the last two years. There's no sense in debating a priori what is a matter of empirical fact. We'll find out and we'll report back to you.

Madeline Levine (Slavic Languages and literature): Could you go into some greater detail on this intriguing comment about a public/private partnership to develop courses for the internet? How would that work? I can't conceive that.

Hooker: Yea, there's two companies we've been working with. The one founded by the Morehead fellow that's called University Access. What they do is work with faculty members to assist them in putting their course on videotape and they're working now with Bob Connolly in the School of Business to put the macro-economics business course, Business 18 I think it's called, on video. What they bring to the equation is production-quality studios and coaches who have been in the business of producing training videos for a long time and so know how to coach faculty members to appear to be more than just a talking head. I mean, if you videotaped me, this exchange, it would be pretty boring for people who are accustomed to seeing graphics and so forth to illustrate a lecture and so they coach you in how to do that. How to make a lecture more interesting for video. That's that company. And what they're doing is developing, in the jargon of the trade, content. That is courses that have been reduced to a videotape so that when courses are broadcast over the internet they can, via compression technology that isn't yet available, they can be available to be delivered over the internet. The other company is a company, IXL, that has a model template for the structure of a course on the internet and has a lot of graphics and still pictures and video footage and so forth that can be used to enhance a course. So what they do is work with a faculty member and figure out how to enhance the course with visuals. The same thing you might do if you were going to enhance a course that you were presently teaching with overheads or with slides. Something that you may not have thought about doing. Went through this myself a few years ago where I had a standard introduction into the history of philosophy and it occurred to me one day it might make it a lot more interesting for students if instead of talking about Greek philosophers I flashed up a photo of a bust of Aristotle, for example, and provided that visual image and it worked a lot better. That's the kind of thing that these coaches do. So that's what the companies do and then they market the courses and can assist with the registration.

Levine: Can I follow-up?

Hooker: Sure.

Levine: If I want help with visuals, I go to CTL now and get it free.

Hooker: Yes.

Levine: These are business. So what are the costs going to be to us or to them and how does-

Hooker: Well, the cost to us won't be anything. We're going to share revenues with them that derive from delivering internet-based education. So we simply share the profits.

Paul Farel (Physiology): have a little concern about your comments about marketing over the internet. It seems that we hear a lot of anecdotal evidence about how this is going to make a lot of money, how we can do it. How we have to do it. That this form of education that has been going on for a thousand years is going to dissolve in the next decade unless we do something. And I just wonder whether we might have a group of university presidents who are listening very carefully to each other. I'm very concerned that whether we'd be able to market courses that are consistent with the values and quality that we want. And everything I've seen about internet marketing courses is that people are not interested in yeast genetics or nineteenth century romantic poets. They're not interested in education, they're interested in skills. They're interested in buying something that will improve their economic well-being. The University of Phoenix or Phoenix University is able to provide courses in these skills and they don't use professors. They use coaches who are people who either don't have doctoral degrees, they might hire a few university faculty members who do this in addition to their regular jobs but this is not the same as university education. To make it economically viable I don't think you could afford to do it with university faculty. So are you thinking that we would set up this broad internet tier of courses, kind of milk it for what it's worth with separate faculty in the university and then use the [regular] university [faculty] for this elite education that otherwise would fall apart?

Hooker: Because somebody else does something poorly doesn't mean we have to. What I said was that the challenge for us was to maintain our standards and not put on the net a course that doesn't meet our standards. That's the challenge. How do we do that? I don't know. We work on it. I said that I'm convinced that if we want to keep doing what we have always done well, that is residential liberal arts education for 18 to 22-year-olds, then we need to be willing to embrace the changes that are taking place in global distance education because the revenues attendant to that will change the economics of higher education. I am absolutely convinced and I cited the Duke/_____ example. The economies of scale that can be achieved via the internet should make it more attractive not less attractive to do that kind of education. And it should be possible to do it with exactly the faculty we have which is one of the reasons that we're issuing these grants for people to put their courses on the internet.

Look at some of the internet based courses before you judge. The ones I've looked at, the ones we've produced seem to me to be pretty good. Just to illustrate the economies of scale remark, consider this: We, right now, have a master of public health program that is largely but not entirely internet based and it is delivered to public health officials throughout the state of North Carolina now. The reason for creating it was as a way of serving the state of North Carolina. There are a lot of public health officials throughout the state who don't have adequate training in public health and that world, as you know, is changing rapidly and there's an additional training that is needed for them but these are people in their thirties and forties who have kids in school, mortgages, can't quit their job, pull up stakes and move to Chapel Hill to get a masters degree. So we can serve them, are serving them, by providing internet-based master of public health degree. The marginal increase in cost for serving a million people around the globe versus the 100 people in North Carolina we service is zero because once you're on the net you're on the net. So that gives you some sense of the scale of what is possible we're talking about. And, again, if we've satisfied our quality standards for the public health officials for North Carolina, we will presumably thereby have satisfied our quality standards for whatever our audience is.

But these are issues that have to be debated, discussed and we have to be satisfied in the end that we have met our quality standards.

Leon Fink (History): I wonder what effect you think Coach Mack Brown's response to expressed interest from some team members to Nike issue has on their rights of self expression?

Hooker: You've lost me. What were their . . . What did they say, what did he say?

Fink: My understanding is that team members approached him wanting to either call a team meeting in reference to the issue or to wear the . . . individuals to wear the black X next to the Nike swoosh. His response was that . . . quoted response was that he was comfortable with the Nike arrangement and that he would call such meetings. I was just wondering in relation to the grant which we all appreciate to academic programs from the Educational Foundations if this is a case where both terms of athletics and academics and intellectual climate of sort of what hand giveth the other hand taketh away?

Hooker: You lost me. Please let's pursue the "one hand giveth and the other hand taketh away." I don't know anything about Mack Brown and his players so I can't respond to that. But I was present for the check from the Educational Foundation so what is the issue there?

Fink: With all due respect it seems to me that one gesture signals a mutual concern with intellectual climate and the other cuts it off.

Hooker: Which gesture concerns . . .

Fink: To me saying that . . . that in a kind of . . . basically cutting off any discussion or suggesting that it's illegitimate for players to want to raise this when it is a public issue on the campus, has a chilling affect on intellectual climate.

Hooker: As I say, I can't respond to that but I certainly concur with the sentiment that characterize the award of the check that's something that's encouraging intellectual-

Fink: But if the statement is as I suggest . . . um

Hooker: If the statement is as you suggest, it seems to me that that is inappropriately cutting off debate but I don't want to imply by assenting to the conditional that I am assenting to the antecedent to the conditional. [laughter]

I have to . . . I have to . . . please.

Altha Cravey (Geography): I just was curious about the trip which you announced to Southeast Asia with the students going and the reporter going. I was curious if there'll be any kind of special preparations so that these students could come back with better information and they'll be prepared so that they can bring better information than say, for example, the trip that was organized for Andrew Young and that kind of promotional tour. Whether they'll be able to provide meaningful information to our community.

Hooker: Well, I'm counting on the community to offer coaching tips to the students before they go and I suspect that if the students are picked that I've been talking with over the past couple of weeks, I don't think anybody is capable of pulling any wool over their eyes. I think they'll probably do a pretty good job of observing what they observe and I would imagine the same for the DTH reporter. If Pete agrees to go, I think it would be hard to dupe Pete.

I have to beg your indulgence. The Center for Study of the American South is having it's fund raising affair down in Louisiana this evening and tomorrow. So I'm going to duck out of here at 4:00 and go down help them raise money.

Thank you very much for your attention.

I have a few things I'd like to speak to you today. One is I would like particularly to call your attention to a news item a week or two ago about one of our very distinguished and increasingly distinguished faculty members and colleagues, Professor Steven Weiss from the Department of Computer Science who has recently been named North Carolina's 1997 Professor of the Year by not one but two prestigious national organizations, the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. There is one of these in every state and we are particularly honored that Steve has received this honor. Is Steve here today? Sorry he's not here. Also note that this is the second time in several years this has happened. Bill Kier from Biology received this honor several years ago so congratulations to Steve wherever you may be today.

On the side table where you came in there is what I hope will be a regular, I won't promise it monthly, but I hope a regular report that I've put together on the implementation of the Intellectual Climate Report. It's a progress report. Let me draw your attention particularly to the box at the beginning of it. One of the important things that will happen very soon is next Tuesday we will have a faculty/student forum on freshman seminars here in this room at 3:00. The idea in this is Dean Palm and Dean Gless and others will be here to talk about the more specific issues that didn't have time to talk about in the full faculty discussion. As we think about how to do freshman seminars well, what do we know about what's been on other places? What are the issues we need to deal with? How can any faculty and students who are interested work together to think out a good design for how we address this idea here at Carolina? That is one, as you can tell from this report, one of a number of interesting things that I think are exciting and going on with this. I won't attempt to read through the report, that's why I put it on paper so that you have it. But if there are any particular items you all wish to ask questions about, or anyone wishes to ask questions about, please feel free to do so. The basic message is that there are a number of initiatives beginning to move forward on different fronts. Some from donors. Some from different staff members. Later in this meeting we'll hear from Sue Kitchen and her staff about some of the residential life and other activities going on through student affairs. The Provost has offered to identify with others a small group of faculty members to look at the University of Texas model for an academy of Distinguished Teaching Scholars and come back and report to us about what aspects of their model would be worth our consideration here and how we might move forward in that discussion.

Just today I was given a resolution which has now been passed by the Employee Forum in which they specifically endorse and offer their support to further work on this report and have offered their chair as a participant in the overall group to try to see how we can best move ahead with this report. We do hope to have not only the one forum that's coming up Tuesday but this will be the first of several envisioned right now as four forums on particular key topics of the Intellectual Climate Report that deserve more discussion and thought among us so we will be spacing those out over the course of the academic year as we move forward.

The Executive Committee Faculty Council has been discussing a number of issues that I think we would really welcome broader input from the Faculty Council on. In particular this is the design of some larger conversations among us about some of the key issues that the chancellor has been putting before us and others that we think really we need to spend time proactively thinking about. One of those is the question of the university's commercial relationships with Nike but also with others. With the internet. With others. At our meeting two months ago the chancellor invited us to arrange a broader discussion of this and the students, the Nike Awareness Campaign and others have requested that a faculty student group be asked to review all contracts. We are discussing what would be a feasible and appropriate way of addressing that issue since the chancellor agreed to that request and so we would welcome any input here or by e-mail or anywhere you wish to make it about how we might move forward with that discussion about how we approach these kinds of relationships. As we move into an era in which the university is more and more invited or challenged or tempted or whatever word you wish to use to enter into commercial partnerships on various things that affect our academic life.

The second one is the conversation that the chancellor mentioned a few minutes ago about the information technology and the university to the future and the idea is how we address this well and as we move ahead with this next round of grants, we're going to need a conversation to think and see the best models of this and, again, to share that with each other and to think out what we can learn about the academic criteria that we wish to apply to those kinds of courses.

The third is the question of diversity and affirmative action. This is one that has been an important concern to this university. With the recent actions that have happened at the University of Texas and California and Michigan and other places, we need to begin to engage this conversation ourselves about the future of affirmative action and other related aspects to us as a university and how we begin planning now, not when somebody attacks us for addressing that issue and dealing with the concerns that have been raised elsewhere. I invite you- We would not have time to deal with all of these in the question and answer period today but I really invite your input by e-mail and otherwise about how we can frame these questions and bring them to the faculty and really have a conversation among all of us who are interested in this about these matters.

Several announcements. I've announced the faculty/student forum next Tuesday. On the 21st, a week from today, our Board of Trustees meets in this room and they have identified this month as the month to talk in particular about faculty issues. So a number of colleagues and I have been putting together a presentation for them that will include some specific issues but also an attempt to convey something to them about the life of faculty members and the diversity of our different disciplines and work responsibilities here. That will begin at 9:00 in this room and any of you who would like to come and join for that and hear what we say, just be involved in that conversation, you're welcome to come, in fact, more than welcome. We would really be delighted to have any faculty who would like to come and be part of that and participate in that.

The next Friday afternoon is the next meeting of the faculty assembly to which our colleague, Lolly Gasaway, is the chair this year and Miles Fletcher and George Rabinotwitz and I are all among the UNC delegation. If there are issues on your minds that you believe we should raise with the general administration, would you please e-mail them to me this week or to any of the members of that delegation. We welcome your input about things we should be talking about with our colleagues from the other 15 campuses and with the general administration.

December 12, our next faculty council meeting, please I would hope that all of us would try to be here for that. President Broad will be speaking to us at that meeting. We will also be dealing with post tenure review procedures and there will be a reception co-sponsored by our local chapter of the AAUP and that's not a complete agenda but at least those items will be coming up for our consideration then.

Finally, many thanks to everyone who turned out in October for the University Day Celebration. There was a wonderful faculty participation in that event. A very welcome one. We get another chance. The 21st of December is mid-year commencement. Please put it on your calendars and plan to come and join those graduates who will coming to that. It's an estimated 1,000-1,500 students who are eligible to commence at that time. The band will be there. I'll send you a note about this but please do put it on your calendars.

Finally, some of us have been having a wonderful experience having lunches with new faculty members. I hope all of you got the notes about that. If you haven't already done that, please take an opportunity to welcome some of your new colleagues and if there are any glitches on that, let me know, we'll try to work them out.

Are there any questions or issues for me at this time?

Fine. Let me move on then to our agenda. Let me invite Professor Janet Mason to come forward and present a Post-Discharge Hearings Procedure Resolution from the Committee on University Government.

Andrews: A motion's been made and seconded is there discussion?

The chancellor has a comment on that.

Hooker: Yes, the last time when it was first broached I affirmed my support for it and I reaffirm my support for it today. I would have- After the painful case of last year, I would have exulted in the opportunity to meet with the Faculty Committee and discuss their perspective and my perspective but I was forbidden from doing that because of those procedures.

Andrews: Are there any questions? All those in favor.

Aye

Andrews: Any opposed? Thank you very much. The motion is passed.

Joseph S. Ferrell (Secretary of the Faculty): To eliminate any misunderstanding, this doesn't mean that the regulations have been changed. It only means that we are asking the trustees to make that change and if trustees are agreeable then it has to be approved by the Board of Governors, so there are at least two more steps in the process before it takes affect.

Andrews: Thank you very much.

Anthony Passannante (Chair, Educational Policy Committee): Thank you very much. I don't have a $350,000 check and I don't want to discuss the internet and the topic I have to discuss is not really very popular largely because of the way I think it was publicized to the faculty. What I want to discuss is the proposed oral communication program. I have to do a little bit of background on this so it will make sense. Many of you already realize that in a 1996 review, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools found that the curriculum here at UNC was somewhat wanting in how much attention was paid to oral communication skills of our undergraduate students. And not being an institution that wants to ignore problem areas of the curriculum, last Spring at a faculty meeting of the College of Arts and Sciences at which I'm told there was substantially less than a super majority of faculty members, a decision was made to implement a new program with the expressed goal being that we end up with students that are significantly better at the skill of oral communication. The university then hired an assistant professor named Lisa Skow to help with the implementation of this program. What we're struggling with at this time is how to effectively begin a new program and there was a lot of resentment from individual units of the institution that what was happening here was really an unprecedented hegemony of one department over another because it appeared that oral communication skills was about to have undue influence over the content of courses across the curriculum. What's happened this Fall is that Professor Skow has met with at least sixteen individual units and some substantial problems have been identified and what's currently happening is she is speaking with Dean Gless and attempting to effectively institute a program without making things impossible for units that are going to have significant difficulty. I think the units that are going to have the most significant difficulty are the ones with very large classes because it is hard to be a good teacher of oral communication skills when your smallest class has 150 people in it.

What we have set up currently is really a three part program of which two parts have been well agreed upon. All of our students that English 11 and 12 are going to

[A portion of Prof. Passannante's remarks is missing due to tape change.]

oral communication programs largely taught by graduate students in English and Communication Studies.

The third part of the program was the one that caused the most difficulty and as was originally proposed, there would be an across the curriculum requirement for majors in any field of study to take one course that was designated as speaking intensive and that's the area of the program that's currently being reviewed. We have no desire to cause an amazing amount of strife in disciplines that can't do this. What we want to end up with is students that can speak well in their chosen field and to the credit of the faculty there has been virtually no faculty member that's come up to me or e-mailed me saying that they did not agree with the spirit of this program. And what we're doing now is trying to get an effective program that will work across the curriculum and I think I'll limit my remarks to that. What will happen is that Professor Skow and Dean Gless will make changes in the third part of the program. They'll go back to the administrative board to the college and we will hear about this again probably in January or February.

Andrews: Are there any questions for Professor Passannante now? Miles.

Miles Fletcher (History): Less of a question than just a desire to add a detail¾ a small one but on that will affect several hundred students each year. Students who place out of 11 and 12 and take the required Honors literature 29 course will not have to take that.

Andrews: Okay. Other questions. Thank you very much.

Passannante: Thank you very much.

Andrews: The next item on our agenda today is discussion of the spousal hiring policy proposed by the Committee on Faculty Welfare. Steve Bachenheimer.

I think what we're trying to aim for here is a situation where there's more flexibility available to chairs or deans or the provost in terms of assisting in the recruiting or retention efforts that surround individual faculty members. So the main points are listed numerically here. The most important point is to get the faculty to see this as an important issue. For example, when efforts were made by the university to hire what have been called the [Super] Kenan Professors, in many instances part of the recruitment would have required helping to find a faculty position for a spouse or domestic partner. In some cases it was a very important issue. This has come up in the past few years in terms of retaining a faculty member as well. There's a really important point to be made in any discussion about this and that is that we all embrace the concept that this is important for the university to be able to attract and retain the quality of the faculty it wants.

The second point is that in this report we call for the provost to designate someone in his office to be primarily responsible for overseeing such a program.

The third point is that we hope the provost would report to faculty council on successes or not under such a policy. That we call on the provost office to continue discussions with other area universities or research institutions to develop some kind of a cooperative venture and that, and the fifth point, a more technical aspect of this is the university currently has a special search policy which does come into play in cases of recruiting faculty and then the efforts to find a faculty position for a spouse or domestic partner but we'd like to see this broadened to include situations when we're trying to retain a faculty member. So, in summary, that is the special report. And I'd like to invite any discussion here about this issue.

Andrews: This is an item for discussion, not simply information and we would welcome that. And Dick Richardson, Provost, is here and if he's like to comment either first or at some point, I'd welcome your reactions. Paul Farel.

Paul Farel (Physiology): When we were discussing the salary policies, one of the points that came up was how demoralizing it was for a faculty member to have to seek an outside offer either he or she had no intention of taking simply to get resources. And how it creates cynicism within the department. Along these lines, I wonder if we could just drop the last clause of point 5. To drop the words "whom the University is attempting to retain in the face of competing offers." And just offer this help to the spouses or domestic partners of all faculty.

Bachenheimer:: This is just a discussion. We're not voting up or down. I welcome that as an enhanced sense of what we're trying to accomplish here.

Bobbie Lubker (Education): I affirm/confirm/agree with that comment. This seems to be crisis mode and sometimes couples come and the partner or the wife or the husband gets a terminal degree after the couple gets here and then wanders around on "misty flats where the waves go to and fro." And there seems to be no way to help that situation. Seems to me that taking off that last line would help with the intent of the project.

Carl Bose (Pediatrics): This diverges a little bit from what your intent was but one of the things that we lack is that the number of opportunities for spouses or partners and the other is the breadth of opportunities. I wonder if we ought to consider in this university setting full-time/part-time, part-time permanent faculty appointments. Even and including the tenure track as an opportunity for spouses who have family commitments, be they male or female. We would, in our small group, relish that opportunity to offer a very capable faculty member that opportunity but simply can't.

Craig Melchert (Linguistics): Just an informational question. Can you tell me where I can find the provisions of the current special search policy?

Provost Richardson: You mean the provision for special searches? Meaning that you don't have to- There are certain things that you don't have to advertise. This is the affirmative action office, the equal opportunity people who have the regulations about the kinds of things we can do in an effort to assist spouses without going through a national search. Voice?: I simply wasn't aware of where one would look.

Melchert. I simply wasn't aware of where one would like.

Richardson. In Affirmative Action.

Andrews: Any other discussion? Dick Richardson.

Provost Richardson: Thank you. I will receive this and do everything we can to implement it. We have certainly worked very hard on this already. It's not actually directly my responsibility, but we place it there, I suppose. I would think it's the single most frustrating thing we have [to content with] in hires during my work with the provost office in the last three years because it's increasing and we don't have good arrangements or cooperative arrangements with the other institutions in the area. As a matter of fact, all four of the special Kenan offers that we made involved spouses. And the fact that we didn't get all four of them¾ or any of them at this point¾ suggests that we're certainly not working on it successfully. I meet with the provost at Duke and NC State. We three have already agreed to establish people in our office to form a cooperative arrangement. The big problem in this is money. The second is information. If we had money, I could go to the department much more effectively and say "with a little money would you be interested in X?" If I go to a department and say "would you let me have your money and by the way are you interested in X . . ." [laughter] We also frankly have to get better reciprocity among the institutions because some of the institutions and some of the departments in institutions are more responsive to looking at individuals that are presented by us than others. We're trying, through the provosts' offices, to [achieve some consistency in this].

The one area which we've done almost nothing formally is with Research Triangle corporations and that's an area we really need to work in because many of the very best positions would be not in the academy but in a corporate setting.. I would be happy to try to the best I can . . . .

Robert W. Culp (Administrative Information Services): Thank you Pete. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you for a few minutes this afternoon or a couple of minutes. I have a hand out that you can pass around that you can take back with you and I won't have time to go over all of this. It's a one sheet informational sheet on the personal I.D. Again for those of you who don't know me, my name is Bob Culp. I'm with the Administration Information Services. I'm director of Administrative Applications and currently I'm serving as a chairman of the Campus Coordinating Committee for the conversion to the person I.D. The person I.D. basically is going to replace the social security number for all students, faculty, staff and affiliates of the university for all of the access to any of the records in the information systems that we maintain. It not only includes information systems that we maintain centrally but also throughout the campus data bases that are maintained, perhaps, in some of your departments and schools. So it's important for us to be aware of what is going to take place and part of the role of this committee I got up is to make sure that the information does get out to the folks on campus that are responsible for these records and data bases and that's one reason I think it's also important for you, as the faculty, to understand what's going to be happening and what the implications of this change are.

I'd like to talk for just a moment about what the PID is. It's basically a nine digit number. The PID stands for Personal I.D. It will replace the social security number. Basically the format will be a little different than the social security number. It will be four digits followed by five as opposed to the format that you're used to seeing the social security in. As far as to why the university is making this change, the decision was based on a number of factors but the Federal Privacy Act of 1974 is what we're basing the current use of social security number on. It allows universities to use SSN as a record identifier but it does require that we protect the social security number and the privacy of it and back in the seventies that was fairly easy to do but that was before the internet and networks all over campus and basically today, in the technical environment that we operate in, it's almost impossible to protect the social security number when it's out there on these records that are passed around all over creation. So the easiest way to make sure we are in compliance with the federal privacy act is to simply remove the social security number as the record identifier and replace it with a different I.D. number which is what we plan to do.

One other aspect of it that I'd like to make sure everyone understands is the difference in the PID, the new Person I.D., and the one card number which will be on a new UNC One Card which you've probably also seen something about. The One Card office is going to be issuing, it's almost a separate issue, a new One Card to all students and faculty and staff next Spring. That is for other purposes to allow a sixteen digit account number to be used for purposes of making it standard with bank cards and so forth and to offer additional services. But the sixteen digit UNC I.D. number or UNC One Card number will be different from your nine digit PID number. It basically will be attached to the One Card for any transactions when students use it for meal purchases or when you use it for the library and so forth. That account number is what will be swiped from the magnetic strip on the back. But the PID, you I.D. number, will be a different number. It will be displayed on the front of your new One Card and so you'll be able to reference it. Most of us are going to have to get used to the fact that we know what our social security number is but now we're going to have a new number and so we felt it would be helpful to have it displayed on the new One Card. Most of us will have to have pictures made again. Those of you that joined the faculty since, I think, around '92 or so that have had pictures made with the new digitized type camera will not need to do anything in terms of getting a new One Card. It will automatically be produced for you but most of us who were here longer than that will have to go and have pictures made. There'll be information coming out about that very soon. Those of you that need to have pictures made will get a letter. Actually if you look on your One Cards and those of you that have them, if it has up at the top, if it says "Faculty Staff," then that means it's an old card and you're going to have to have a picture made and you'll get information about that. The one card office will be setting up stations and put out schedules in the next issue of the Gazette that will show you where you can have it made. You will need to have this done in order to continue to use the card in the library and the actual conversion will take place- I'm going to sort of skip over to item number six . . . it's going to happen next Spring and the One Cards will be issued during the Spring but they won't be activated until May. So you'll have your old card that will still be effective until probably graduation weekend and they're going to time it along those lines so everyone will kind of identify with that time in May and, again, there will be a lot of publicity about this coming up in future weeks and at that time.

The conversion is taking place first with the students and that will actually happen in February, around mid-February. And the reason students have to be converted first and at that time is so that they get their new numbers prior to the registration period that takes place in March for the upcoming terms of the Summer Sessions and next Fall. Those of you that work with the students in advising and helping them register need to be sure that the students remember to use the new PID number at that time when they register in March. They will have received them by that time. The confusing part is it's going to be a difficult transition because they will not have received their new One Cards by that time. Some of them might have but it will take several weeks to issue all the One Cards but they will have received information with their new PID number and hopefully will remember to use them in their registration process.

Faculty and staff will actually not receive the numbers until a little later with implementation of the new Human Resource System which is scheduled for later in the Spring. And, again, there will be a lot of information coming out about that later also.

The only other thing I would urge you to do is make sure that anyone in your department that is responsible for data bases that might be using social security number now, be sure to look at these records and see how they can be converted to the new PID numbers next Spring. We're available to help them in planning and providing conversion files and so forth at that time and in the handout here at the bottom I have my name and e-mail address so they can certainly get in touch with me that way. We also have the last bullet under item seven here refers to a web site for the PID conversion. That can be accessed. I've got the address on here, the URL. And also can be accessed under the university's home page, the UNC home page under News of the Day. They can get to it very easily or you can get to it and there's lot of information, questions and answers out there on that page that will answer, I hope, a lot of questions people will have.

But we think this is going to be a very positive change for all of us to protect the privacy of our social security numbers but we realize it's going to be a very difficult change particularly for those administrators and administrative personnel that deal with records and forms and processes that will have to go through a transition period that's going to be somewhat difficult next Spring. Hopefully you'll be patient with us at that time. If you have any questions at this time, I would be happy to answer them.

Unidentified Voice: The format with the four digits and then the five digits, do the four digits convey any information about your department, your rank . . .

Culp: No, it's strictly a numeric number. It's actually an eight digit number with a ninth digit is a check digit for, hopefully, catching errors. But there's no meaning attached to the numbers.

Barbara Tysinger: (Health Sciences Library): I was wondering how are you going to be handling new students and new faculty in the Spring semester during the transition period? Will they be receiving their new cards and their new numbers then and have to use them?

Culp: Yes. All the details on that have not been finalized that I will say new students, in fact, even applicants that are currently dealing with our admissions offices will be notified of the change in February and will be sent a mailing indicating what their new number is so that they'll know after they've been admitted that they're no longer to use their social security number. So they'll be advised of that.

Tysinger: My concern is actually more for libraries. I'm Barbara Tysinger from the Health Sciences Library. Currently we use what is the One Card number. It's not social security card number for everyone. Some faculty actually have a made up number. I still have a made up number. It's not my social security number. I guess that's my question, is the library card. Whether they're going to be using that during the Spring semester or if they're just incoming that Spring?

Culp: Are they using the One Card for the library?

Tysinger: Yes.

Culp: Those will be changed. During the Spring they'll continue to use the old card. But the new ones will be issued and in May they'll be activated and so . . .

Tysinger: I guess we're missing something. We're not communicating. A new student just beginning classes in January has never been to the university before. Has never received a One Card before.

Culp: They would have to receive the old card to be used until then. I'm sorry. We do have representatives from the library on our committee and they've been working with us and you'll be getting, I'm sure, specific information later on that.

Any other questions?.

The next item on the agenda is the Annual Report of the Committee on Instructional Personnel. This is for information item it does not require any action but Dick Richardson chairs that committee and is here if there are any questions in respect to that report.

Any questions? Alright. I take that as received. Thank you.

John P. Evans (Business Administration): I understand this is an item on your agenda for discussion. There's nothing to be approved or voted on. Audreye Johnson had to be out of town at a conference and asked me if I would represent her here. If you have comments that you would like communicated back to the committee, I'd be glad to take them.

Miles Fletcher (History): As I remember on previous years we've gotten some data on graduation rates and there was a comment in here something about data was sensitive and students might be identified from it but I'm just wondering is there someway that some graduating data could be presented to some members without running the risk . . .

Evans: Sure. I think so. In the transition from one chair in the committee to another, I think frankly that Audreye may have been caught short with regard what has been the practice of reporting those data with this report and by the time we discovered that, the report was already distributed. I think surely that . . . those are data that the committee reviews, in fact, each semester and we can just take it as something to accomplish that we will put together the appropriate supplement to this report that would provide those data. The summary that we're both thinking of is at a level of aggregation that I think avoids this issue of about which we really should be concerned but, yes, we can do that.

Fletcher: So we can get that at a later date?

Evans: Yes, we have those data for . . . let me think, they are through . . . what is the term that . . . Administration Information Services, the census date for the Fall semester. So we have those data now and that should be a simple matter. We may not make it by the December meeting but surely by the January meeting of the Council.

Richard Pfaff: I'm surprised to read in the bottom paragraph the sentence "The Athletic Department has been without blemish; self policing has been internally operationalized." I have no idea what these words mean.

Evans: You put me in an awkward position, not being the author. I believe what it refers to is the fact that with regard to NCAA regulations, there are so-called secondary violations and then there's another term that applies to those of a more serious nature. We look rather carefully for things that are secondary and report those, bring those to the attention of the NCAA routinely. These might have to do with something such as a coach making a telephone call to a prospect when that sort of thing is not permitted. We bring that to the attention of the NCAA before someone else does, partly as a way of showing that we are, indeed, policing what we're doing. I think that's what it refers to. It, I think, is also in part a reference to the fact that at the level of the Atlantic Coast Conference, there is a considerable amount of I will call it self-regulation of athletic department practices across the conference that we review at that level. I would be glad to ask for more clarification if you would like.

Steven Bachenheimer: When one reads the Tar Heel or the Chapel Hill Newspaper occasionally unfortunately we sometimes read news articles that involve students and they're often referred to members of such and such athletic team. Whereas if a student was involved with an unfortunate situation and might be the member of the campus Y or the debating team that probably wouldn't be part of the descriptor. I'm wondering whether your committee members ever discuss this issue and what your personal thoughts are on why students who happen to be athletes and may be involved in incidents of one sort or another tend to be automatically identified primarily as members of an athletic team. What does this mean? What are we supposed to take from this?

Evans: A short answer to your question is that particular issue has not been discussed by the committee. A perhaps longer answer to the question is maybe an invitation to speculate on what's in the mind of the person in the media who takes that perspective and reports it in that way. It might be risky to read a lot into it but part of what I read into it is the fact that those activities are very much in the spotlight and when a representative of the media observes one of those individuals in whatever sort of situation you're referring to because of that spotlight on athletics, that identifier is provided and there is not the same spotlight on the other activities that you're referring to and so the descriptor is not used.

Joe Ferrell: In the negotiations with the Nike contract was the Faculty Athletics Committee consulted at any stage of that and, if so, what was the nature of the consultation?

Evans: The negotiation for the most part, this is leaving aside anything having to do with the individual supplements provided to coaches, the negotiation for the most part was conducted in the very late Spring and early Summer. The committee's routine practice is to meet four times during the Fall semester, four times during the Spring semester so we were not directly involved. We've had a discussion in one of our meetings during this Fall semester about the content of the contract, the director of athletics wanted to make sure that we were informed about the content and what had happened to that point and what things remained to happen.

I think it's probably considered inappropriate form to call on members of the press who are present in the room to respond in the meeting but anybody who wants to meet with any of our regular reporters after the meeting and discuss the question that was raised to get their perspective as journalists, I'm sure they would welcome the conversation with faculty members.

The next item on our agenda is a discussion in which the Agenda Committee and I have invited Vice Chancellor Susan Kitchen and her staff to come and talk with us about one of the major elements of the Intellectual Climate Report. This is the residential life initiative. Part of the first year student experience. It's in keeping with a larger objective that we're trying to accomplish which is to save a little bit of time, at least, each meeting, sometimes a lot of time, but at least some time for a discussion on some item that really deserves more than formal information and business and so forth. So, it's particularly timely given that both Sue Kitchen and her staff have been giving a good deal of thought to this and a number of these items and we're going to be looking at the freshman seminar as part of this on Tuesday with Dean Palm and so I've invited Sue and her staff to come.

Vice Chancellor Susan Kitchen: Thanks Pete. We really do appreciate the opportunity to make a very brief presentation and really focus on some discussion of this first year initiative. We've brought some handouts along to do some of the background a little bit more quickly so those of you who came in probably picked up an organization chart that looks like this. I get to say that one of the things that (if not, it's right there on the back table) I like to say to new staff members in Student Affairs which is if we act this way like a bunch of little boxes on behalf of students, we will fail students. That is that students do not live their lives in convenient little boxes that we call careers or activities or international experience. And so on the other side of that handout you see the results of how it is we're trying to rethink our work in student affairs and that is that our purview is largely, although not entirely, but largely outside of the classroom and that all we do is either a service that supports a student being here or, in many cases, a learning experience that takes place outside of the classroom. And in thinking through that centrality of the importance of student learning outside of the classroom we then put together a team that cuts across the various departments in student affairs and I asked Dr. Cindy Wolf Johnson, who has been here at Carolina for a number of years and teaching various leadership programs through the College of Arts and Sciences Special Studies curriculum, teaching those courses on leadership development. I appointed her to be the associate vice chancellor for student learning and to head up that team and Cindy has been working then with this team looking particularly at the first year experience and the residential component of that, building on the kinds of living/learning courses that we already have present in our residential system. So at this point I want to turn the session over to Cindy to lead us through a little bit of background and lots more discussion. Thank you.,

Cynthia Wolf Johnson (Assoc. Vice Chancellor, Student Affairs): Thank you, Sue. And I appreciate the opportunity to be here today and to share with you the perspective of student affairs and how student affairs can be a significant part of the first year initiative. As you will recall from the Intellectual Climate Task Force Report, there were four main segments of the first year initiative. One was the freshmen seminars that will be coming out of the College of Arts and Sciences. A second component was summer reading. A third was the residential component and then fourth was an evaluation perspective of the whole first year experience. At this point I just want to take a minute and to reinforce the critical importance of looking at all of those components together in an integrated whole in order to make this a full experience and the best experience it can be for first year students here at Carolina.

I would like to say that in order to make it as comprehensive as possible and as coordinated as possible, I've had the pleasure of working with Dean Darryl Gless from the College of Arts and Sciences to see how we can do that. I've also been meeting with Leon Fink who has chaired the task force subcommittee on the Intellectual Climate Task Force Report and now the opportunity to speak with you here as members of the faculty council.

Today we will focus on the residential component in particular, though, and what I will do is present the recommendations once again that we saw in the report done by the committee but I'd like to, as Dr. Kitchen mentioned, mention it in context of what we have been doing over the past number of years in student affairs and, in particular, the Department of University Housing. Really where we've started is that for the past several years we've had living/learning programs on our campus. Living/learning programs really go way, way back into higher education in the very early days, the colonial days, when we really had what was known then as residential colleges; places where faculty and students could live together, learn together and study together. Over the years, those dwindled away and then we began to have residence halls where there were really very few faculty involved in the various halls in a number of campuses across the country. In the last number of years there's been a trend though where that is changing and campuses are beginning to look at having residential colleges where faculty, in some cases, are living on campus, although that's not a whole lot. I think back in 1993 I read there were about 26 different campuses that had faculty living on. But what is more common now is having faculty very involved in the residential life of college students on campuses. There are a number of goals that are for those types of programs have been the result of a lot of research that's been done over the past several years. One of the major goals is to develop a sense of community. Many of you have probably read the book, "In Search of Community," by Ernest Boyer, who talks about the importance of building those small communities on our campuses. Another goal is connecting the classroom with the residential experience because it does help student satisfaction, student success, lots of studies on retention. Closely linking academic and co-curricular activities to enhance a seamless learning environment so students aren't living in two separate worlds and certainly that's a trend we're seeing throughout higher education. And then, finally, the personal and academic development; helping students deal with the transition issues as they come to the college and the university.

At Carolina we have had a number of living/learning programs. As a matter of fact, we've had eight over the past eleven years. At this point I want to turn to the overhead. You all should have also received a handout when you walked in that described the various living/learning programs.

The first one is our Academic Enhancement Program. This is a program that was established in 1992 where there's an environment to help students in their academic adjustment. They're involved with having opportunities for taking tests, preparing for taking exams, career exploration, study skills . . . and looking at study interests. In a lot of these programs we have faculty involvement. In this particular case, the faculty is a retired member from the Department of Sociology. A teaching assistant who actually teaches two English courses in this residence area, English 11 and English 12. It is not a requirement for people living in this residence area but it is an opportunity to bring the classroom into the residence halls. There are 170 participants ranging from freshmen through seniors.

Next we have three that are related to foreign languages. These were all established in 1986, they all provide an opportunity to integrate the learning with culture, food, music, lot of usually there are videos, discussions. Faculty involvement from the Department of Romance Languages for French, a teaching assistant and then 23 participants, these are small programs, freshmen through seniors.

German, very similar to the French, 15 participants, freshmen through graduate students.

The Spanish house, faculty member again from the Department of Romance Languages, teaching assistant and 22 participants, freshmen through seniors.

Then we move into a whole new area, health sciences. This one was also started back in 1986 and this was where students who were majoring in health science fields lived together and learned together and talked about issues that are of interest of them, similar career interests. Professor from the School of Pharmacy, 47 participants, again freshmen through seniors.

Living well. This was established in 1991, more recently. This is where students actually choose to live in an environment that is going to focus on their wellness; address issues in nutrition, sports, exercise, who want to balance their personal and academic life. It is a substance free environment, it has been since the start in 1991. This has a steering committee involved, different individuals throughout the university. Matt Sullivan from Campus Police who does a lot of studying in the area of alcohol and Dr. John Edgerly from the Counseling Center, two people in particular. 106 participants, freshmen through seniors.

Our substance free living and learning is an area that doesn't necessarily have programs to it but it has the substance free environment, much like the living and learning. Again it has a steering committee of members involved to consult with us. We have 51 participants, again, freshmen through senior. What I'd like to mention on each of these living and learning environments and there's one more to go, is that the majority of these are very close to being full if not filled. I think the most we're missing is one maybe two open slots in any particular program. As a matter of fact, the first one, the academic enhancement with 106 participants, we actually had to turn people away. There really were not enough spaces allotted for that.

And our last one and probably the one that people are most familiar with was started back in 1988 by student government and this is the Unitas program. There is an academic course involved with Unitas where students are starting, living together in a multicultural environment; learning to live together through their differences. We actually pair roommates based on differences in race and ethnic cultures as opposed to similarities. We have a faculty consultant from Communication Studies, two teaching assistants from different departments and, again, freshmen through seniors participants totaling 41.

Now what we have found throughout the years as we have done an evaluation of the programs, we know that from all the research that's been done that colleges and universities when they build the small communities particularly in the residence halls, there's a lot of increased student satisfaction about being here at a college and university. Instead of looking at the satisfaction, what we're really studying are the outcomes. What is it that students are learning as a result of being in these environments and structure them to be more effective in the future? Some of the typical responses that we get from our students are the following: that they've gained some new insights and broadened experience. These are the kinds of things we'd hoped they'd say. They developed intellectually and emotionally which is part of our goals. They've learned a sense of responsibility, developed respect for others and their opinions. Grades improved and their confidence improved. And a few other benefits and outcomes, friends. Of course, that's going to happen in any residence hall. Learning better ways to study, time and stress management and learning more about campus resources.

So this is a bit about how we have done thus far in the living/learning programs. As a result of them being successful over the years, we have two new initiatives that are planned for the Fall of 1998. One is a small community on women's issues and we're connected with the women's studies department for that program and then one that we're looking into on the area of leadership and leadership development and that would be connected with the Carolina Leadership Development in the Division of Student Affairs.

But there's a third one and it's a bigger initiative and that is the first year initiative. And what we can do with it is to look at how we can take what we've done thus far, what we've learned from those experiences and how we can help make this the best one possible.

The first year initiative from the Intellectual Climate Task Force Report looked at these various areas. They looked at the goals, looked at the approach that we would take, physical facilities, etc. At this point I would just like to commend Leon Fink and members of this committee who put a lot of hard work into this because they really did take a look at what was going on in other campuses and what had been successful. In particular, I'd like to commend Wayne Thompson from the Department of University Housing who's done a lot of work in the area of living/learning programs.

The goals of a first year residential experience are very similar to what the goals would be for any living/learning program. Although there are some unique goals given that it is a program for first year students. The two additional goals would certainly be dealing with transition issues and helping with a smooth transition for the first year students and the second one would certainly be helping students adjust their academic studies.

The goals according to the Intellectual Task Force Report were, again, like I said, same as the others: connection between classroom and residential experiences, a seamless learning environment, a sense of community among first year students and personal and academic school development. To do that it was proposed that there would be weekly seminars with graduate mentors. These weekly seminars would be curriculum based. They wouldn't necessarily be in an academic department but they would be an intentional curriculum that would be from the very beginning of the semester all the way through and designed in such a way that it makes sense for students and that it's well planned and well integrated and, where appropriate, connected to the various academic departments. That it would focus on learning outcomes. What is it we want students to get out of this experience and then let's try to plan that as well as evaluate for that at the end. Though the weekly seminars would have an academic link, as I mentioned before, that they would focus on personal and academic development; the study skills, the time management and stress management skills, the critical thinking skills. Having scholarly topics where we bring in people to talk about a particular issue. I reflect back to last night with Jonathan _____. I don't know if any of you here were at that talk last night but it was a full packed Hill Hall and there were students who were so incredibly touched by that presentation. But to have opportunities like that where residents in these facilities would be encouraged to go to a talk like that and come back and have dialogues with the graduate mentors in the residence halls after the fact. And then certainly the transition issues.

The graduate mentors would also be a critical thing that I haven't mentioned. The graduate mentors, according to the subcommittee's suggestion was that they would be recommended by you. That they would be recommended by faculty in the various academic departments. We would hire them- Well not necessarily hire them but select them and then they would live, for free, in the residence halls. So while they wouldn't get paid, they certainly would in some ways because they would get free residence area. The graduate mentors would also be trained in small group facilitation. They would be trained in student development kinds of issues. They would be trained in critical thinking and how we can encourage that through the various dialogues and throughout the program.

Two other aspects that I want to raise so that we can talk about this and get your perspectives is communal involvement. University citizenship, as we all know, is a major part of the whole mission of higher education and one way to do that is to invite faculty and staff members to come together and interact with students in the residence halls to talk about issues of leadership and citizenship. But to also have peer led activities where students are involved coming in to talk to other students about organization involvement and leadership. And then service learning. You all know about the critical importance of service learning. So we get students involved in the service learning.

What I haven't mentioned yet is that this program would be voluntary. Students would choose to sign up if they want to. It would be a pilot program where we would have 500 slots available for the first three years. 500 slots each year for the first three years. Students would choose for the first year residential component on their residence hall registration contract and we would house them at that point. Once a student is voluntarily agreeing to this then they are having a commitment with the university that this is something that they're committing to so that they would participate in these weekly dialogues. That's true for all our living/learning programs. Students contract to participate in the various discussions or they create a contract in a particular type of environment and when students don't fulfill that, we do hold them accountable and sometimes students no longer live where they originally said they did. That doesn't happen very much but it is something that we would pay attention to.

And then finally which is one of the most important points is that we would never do a program like this without intentionally focusing on the evaluation of it. My understanding is that the task force group when they looked at this, said it would be important to evaluate the whole first year initiative in a total package, the seminars, the summer reading, the residential program, would all be looked at at once. But there will be particular things that'll be important with the residential area. The way we would do these evaluations is through student questionnaires, we would do it through focus groups. There was a suggestion that we do long term performance comparisons for those who participate in the first year experience versus those who don't. And that would be easy enough to do with the residential piece. And that there would be some annual reports from academic departments about how the first year initiative has impacted your department. That may pertain more importantly to the freshmen seminars but we never know. There might be a piece here that can fit in for the residential part as well.

So at this point I'd like to just pause and open it up for discussion

Carl Bose: I would strongly encourage the assessment piece. This is a lot of energy, a lot of resources. I'm pleased to see it's a pilot and I hope it's successful but the performance comparisons I think would be particularly important. They're not trivial because it's a self selected population of students who are probably coming to the university intellectually charged and ready to go compared with some who may not be so. The comparison is not a trivial matter but you've got world experts on outcome research at this institute so I think it could be done eloquently but is, I think, a very important component to this.

Marila Cordeiro-Stone (Pathology & Lab Medicine): Would you comment on the number of students who are currently participating in the programs that you described in relationship to the actual population of eligible students. It seems to be small.

Johnson: Right.

Cordeiro-Stone:: And for the programs you mentioned does that mean that you're not offering enough or, …. What thoughts you have as you're looking at the freshman year in terms of attracting the students to participate?.

Johnson: If I hear you correctly, and you correct me otherwise so that the housing staff can hear this because I might turn to them to respond to some of these questions, and that is how does the size of the programs compare to our size of the amount of students living on campus and then if there are enough students applying, do we offer enough? Is that correct?

My understanding is that they are relatively small and that's intentional for the most part because they are small communities but as far as the whole original plan of that, let me turn to either Wayne Thompson or Wayne Kuncl. One of you want to . . . Wayne

Wayne Kuncl (Director of Student Housing): Cindy, you're right. Most of them are intentionally small. The one that is the academic emphasis program which is in Teague Residence Hall: if there was an intent for that to grow we would drop the program. So if the numbers are increasing, we might move to another residence hall. We started very small with that and then we grew and expanded to the size of that particular residence hall. That one has potential growth. The one that did grow, at one point Unitas doubled its size in one year and we realized it was too unmanageable. The numbers were about 96 students and it was too large a program for faculty and students and so the next year they backed off to the 48 they have or 47 in the program.

Bobbie Lubker (Education): Would you come in on why there seemed to be a decline in all the programs? There seems to be a peak in the sophomore year and then, I noticed, some programs that had no seniors and very few juniors. Would you comment on that?

Johnson: Sure. That is very typical for all of our residence life. The majority of our students, I believe it's about 38% are freshmen, 31 or 32% are sophomores, and then it declines quite a bit to something like 19% juniors and something less than that of seniors. So we find that students do typically move off campus. They tend to go to- They prefer apartment living and so that's really what . . .

Lubker: I guess another part of my question is if this were available to upper classmen, do you think- And I know that's not what this is about, but would upper class students who had successful experiences as freshmen and sophomores be attracted to such a thing?

Johnson: To the first year initiative type-

Lubker: To the kinds of programs that you described here. The small group living. The family/community kind of thing.

Johnson: It's possible that they might. Historically they haven't. These have been around for quite some time.

Kitchen: That is often the reason a student might stay on campus another year in order to be part of a program. It's a somewhat mixed blessing in that in order to accommodate new freshmen coming in, we need sophomores and juniors and seniors to find other wonderful places to live, so we don't market too hard.

Lubker: Empty the nest.

Kitchen: That's right.

Leon Fink: One issue that I think is worth raising for those of us and those who are interested beyond a small circle is if we think about implementation is the fact that the committee's proposal, if you recall, was entirely of a pilot nature with the seminars and the reading programs as well as the residential component, initially confined to the numbers that Cindy mentions. But now I think most of us are aware that we're moving to expand the seminar option. I think it's a great idea to become the common experience, not just the small pilot number but to move fairly rapidly, we hope, to be the common experience for all first year students. I see no reason why the reading component, similarly, over the summer should not apply as the seminar component expands to incorporate . . . I don't see why the Summer program should not be on a universal basis and I guess the question I have on my mind is whether we should also be thinking of a common residential experience or resources and I think that raises the challenge of what then could be the common element and whether the intensity of the pilot that we should design as mentioned for self selected group would require some loosening, some degree of loosening to accommodate the entire population. I think it should definitely maintain the component of kind of seeding of the residence halls with graduate students. But exactly to the nature of the interaction. That seeding has been crucial to the learning program . . . in such outstanding places as Rice, Harvard, Yale, you know. It seemed like a good idea. But as to the exact nature then of the interaction, the programming that could take place, I think that remains very much up for discussion.

Johnson: And that's certainly something that we'll take some time to look at. There may be some things that we can do in the interim basis as we're planning this more intently that we can begin to do something with all freshmen. We'll certainly pay close attention to doing that. This has certainly heightened our sensitivity to it. It's been something we've been looking at for years but now the momentum's here and we're ready to roll with it.

Kitchen: [microphone interference] . . . look at the academic seminar question when we discussed that at the forum to look at how we match those two experiences, how we really marry them together so that we get the intensity of a residential experience matched with a very focused academic common experience. That really seems to be the drive that gets not only more students interested but really helps them get the most out of these kinds of experiences.

Andrews: Sue or Cindy, do you anticipate for particular issues that need to come back for faculty action at some point? Or particular aspects of this where you would like some further faculty input as it further develops we could help you with?

Johnson: Well one thing I know I would be interested in is to hearing from faculty, hearing you all as to how you see yourselves involved in this and how you see yourselves interacting through programmatic ways in residence halls with these students on these various topics. Or your involvement in nominating the various graduate students and getting involved in that process. Those are some of the areas that I would like to hear more about.

Andrews: Great. Well, thank you very much for being with us, both of you. All of you, in fact. Thank you Wayne Kuncl and the other staff members who are here. We appreciate . . .

We do have one more item of business, it's a closed session so those who are not members of the faculty council could take the opportunity to…... Any member of the faculty is welcome to stay. Any others we would thank you for coming.

[The Council went into closed session to consider nominees for 1998 Distinguished Alumnus/Alumna Awards. This portion of the meeting is not transcribed.]

Andrews: We are no longer in closed session but is there any other business?

Do I hear a motion to adjourn?

You're adjourned. Thank you very much.