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RPC 2006-2007 Home | RPC Current Year Home
RPC Meeting Minutes
September 13, 2006
Present: Balik, Collins, Flath, Heyman, Hornback (Hornbach), Hoye, Lindeman, Laskin, Michelfelder, Nedelsky, and Contant (ACE Fellow)
- Meeting was called to order at 3:05 pm
- Chair Heyman introduced Cheryl Contant, ACE Fellow, visiting Macalester this academic year.
- Heyman announced that he had set up a Moodle site for the committee to use. All members should start checking this site routinely.
- Minutes from the meeting of September 6, 2006 were approved
- Heyman discussed a calendar for the committee for 2006-2007.
a. Enhancing faculty support – all of fall and into the spring
b. Capital campaign issues – Heyman will be serving on a campus committee and will report back to the committee on these issues routinely
c. Progress on past RPC issues – Lorne Robinson will be asked to provide a report with updated information on need aware admissions effects in fall 06 admission cycle (will be invited to an RPC meeting for Q&A on his report); Size of college and study away issues discussed in spring.
d. Salary audit can occur anytime once information is available
e. Proposal for changes in tuition and fees – being discussed on campus this fall with senior staff and faculty. Will monitor.
f. Wallace, Face grants and sabbatical leaves will need to be discussed in early November. Only faculty will be needed for these reviews, and Heyman will do reviews of sabbatical requests.
- Discussion of Faculty Support topic
a. Committee’s product will be a report that analyzes various options (with costs and benefits included) and provide recommendations.
b. Goal of Faculty support enhancement are: improve faculty recruitment and retention, improve student-faculty scholarship opportunities; enhance the quality of teaching. All goals were considered to be equal priority with the intent of finding solutions that addressed all three.
c. The committee discussed several metrics to measure these goals including: number of part-time instructors (and cost of training new faculty each year), number of tenure-track faculty, average class size, number of courses taught by faculty (by division) per year, frequency of sabbatical leaves, number of faculty/department, number of new course developments by faculty. Others will be added.
d. Heyman presented data on comparable institutions (to be posted in Moodle) on semesters teaching/semester leave and teaching loads.
e. Hornback presented a “back of the envelope” calculation that involvement determining the number of student-courses offered each year to try to “model” the impact of options discussed. This included a formula:
i. 162 FTE (with 34 science faculty at 4 courses/year and 128 non-science faculty at 5 courses/year)=776 courses/year. At 17.4 students/course that produces 13,502 student enrollment each year.
ii. Courses needed on campus each year is 1841 student FTE – 125 (on study away)=1716 FTE students x 8 student enrollment in courses/student/year = 13,728 student enrollment per year.
iii. Would be possible to determine then how teaching load reductions would produce changes in number of courses offered compared to courses needed by students each year.
f.
Options to be addressed include: reducing teaching load, changing the sabbatical cycle, providing enhanced staff support for teaching.
- Committee went into Faculty Professional Activities Committee to discuss nomination for Mellon New Directions Fellowship award at 3:00.
- Meeting adjourned at 3:20 pm.
Respectfully submitted by Cheryl Contant
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