UpDate - Vol. 15, No. 31, Page 6
May 9, 1996
Faculty Senate elects new officers

     New Faculty Senate officers were elected for 1996-97 and proposed
procedural changes for the senate's Committee on Promotion and Tenure
were returned to committee Monday at the senate's final meeting of the
year.
     New senate officers are Robert Carroll, plant and soil science,
president elect; Joann Browning, theatre, vice president; and Frank
Dilley, philosophy, secretary.
     By a vote of 23 to 19, the senators returned the promotion and
tenure document to committee, allowing more time for them to discuss
the proposed revisions with University colleges and departments. The
changes proposed by the Faculty Senate executive committee followed a
two-year self-study with minor revisions suggested by a subcommittee
of the Committee on Committees and Nominations.
     When asked by Sen. Ken Koford what controversial issues were
included in the revised policy, Tony Dalrymple, a member of the
promotion and tenure committee, said that among the suggested
revisions were proposals that redundant departmental documentation be
streamlined, that the final list of outside peer reviewers be kept
confidential, that tenure-track people not come up for promotion in
their terminal year and that changes be made in criteria for promotion
to full professor.
     A proposal by Sen. David Bellamy that this University-level
promotion and tenure committee be suspended for 24 months while
proposed changes were under review was defeated by the senate.
     Senators, however, approved minor revisions to the promotion and
tenure committee charge, including the provision that no
administrative officers-including department chairs-should serve on
the committee.
     In other business, senators approved a change in student class
attendance, allowing students with sick children or family members to
request an approved absence from the instructor.
     Under new business, Maurice Cope, art history, introduced a sense-
of-the-senate resolution urging that the library's proposed cutbacks
in professional journal orders for 1997-1998 be rescinded. The
resolution proposed that the entire program be reconsidered "in the
light of the needs of the various departments, the state of technology
and the actual availability of articles of comparable quality from
other sources."
     The resolution will be considered by the senate in the fall.
                                                        -Cornelia Weil