Faculty pitch ideas to College

Author: Adam Schaffer

Students have the Student Government Association (SGA), Commons Councils and protests to ensure their voices are heard by the College administration. The American people have their vote (and their dollar). But how is the will of the faculty expressed?

As part of The Campus's series delving into Middlebury's various committees, we are going to look into the inner workings of the several faculty committees at play.

Representing the voice of the faculty in College affairs, the committees are divided into the Faculty Council, Appeals Council, Education Affairs Council and the Council on Reviews.

Membership in the committees is determined through faculty election.

The College Handbook describes the role of the Faculty Council (FC) "as a channel of communication between the faculty and the president."

But what does that mean? "[W]e generally see ourselves as representatives of the faculty," wrote committee member Barbara Hofer, associate professor of Psychology, in an e-mail. "They elect us to serve in this role of faculty governance and we try our best to represent their views to the administration and to represent administrative issues to them."

The council deals with a wide range of topics, from the recent budget issues to athletic policies.

When presented with a topic, they discuss it in committee meetings, and often seek the input of trustees and current faculty members

Three of the council members also play a vital role in the College's finances, advising on such topics as faculty salaries and long-term financial planning for the College, while the other three serve as a Committee on Conference with the Trustees.

The committee also works closely with the SGA, most recently on alternatives to the proposed Honor Code changes.

The Promotions Committee, one branch of the Council on Reviews, deals with promotions onto (or off of) the tenure track. According to the College Handbook, "the review for tenure examines a faculty member for evidence of exceptional quality in teaching, and of significant scholarship or artistic achievement recognized as such by scholars and artists beyond Middlebury College."

The committee reviews course evaluations and scholarships and attends classes to evaluate the merits of the professor, both before and after tenure has been granted.

The Reappointment Committee, the second arm of the Council on Reviews, also reviews both tenured and tenure-track professors. The central difference between the two arms is "in the (full) professor review [by the Reappointment Committee], a candidate can come up again for review (after a few years' time) if he or she does not pass the review the first time," committee member Baldwin Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy Peter Schumer explained in an e-mail.

Schumer applauds the committee members as "among the 'best and the brightest' of the faculty at the College. Everyone works incredibly diligently and fully understands the importance of their job as well as the trust that the College places in them," he wrote.

The Educational Affairs Committee (EAC) deals with issues of the general direction of the College curriculum and makes recommendations on the proper allocation of faculty and College resources. Recent topics have included distribution requirements, senior work requirements and credit for AP/IB courses.

Through their "many, many meetings," committee member Kathryn Morse, associate professor of History, explained, "address issues in multiple ways," including research, discussion and consultation with other faculty members.

However, the EAC has no decision-making power, and acts as an advisory body. Matters are either forwarded to the faculty for a vote or to the administration for a final decision.

Unlike the rest of the committees, the EAC has a student counterpart with which it meets monthly to discuss matters of mutual interest. Adding to the EAC's uniqueness is the fact that it was not created to represent the will of the faculty, but rather allows faculty members to vote themselves on specific issues. Nevertheless, representatives are elected to serve the interests of the College as a whole, not individual constituencies, Morse explained.

"My colleagues on the EAC and I have no direct experience with that model, but believe that our current model - asking colleagues to think institutionally, rather than divisionally or departmentally - is more effective."

The committee does like to hear student opinions on academic matters, she said. "Really."

Looking on to the views of those faculty not on the committee, most are very supportive and enjoy the democratic nature of the committees.

Truscott Professor of Chinese Studies John Berninghausen thinks that the Faculty Committee "works out pretty well and that it almost always has."

However, in the case of the EAC, he notes that the current method of voting for representation by the faculty as a whole, instead of the previous system of ensuring equal representation among the various divisions, can lead to "large sectors of the faculty feeling that they are not equally represented in the deliberations of the EAC," he wrote in an e-mail, "if no one from one or more divisions happens to be elected." This was not always the case, Berninghausen went on to explain, "as during the 1970s and 1980s, representation to the former Teaching Resources Committee, the predecessor of the current EAC, was structured so that the four main divisions of the faculty at that time were equally represented on the TRC by the division chairs."