Minutes for the Meeting of December 7, 2004

Attending: Peter Hlebowitsh (Chair), Micheline Chalhoub-Deville, Ellen Herman, David Jepsen, Joyce Moore, Nancy Jackson, and Chris Ogren

Minutes of the last meeting were read, corrected, and approved. Peter will ask Gary Sasso about his reflections on the effects of last year’s discussions with the FAC on the duties of and support for program coordinators.

Updating the latest on the Qualitative Research Task Force: Reporting on his meeting with Dean Dimico, Anne DiPardo, Carolyn Wanat, and Liz Whitt, Peter said that Anne, Carolyn and Liz are planning to: (1) endeavor to address concerns raised by the FAC on the new College-wide qualitative research web site which they are currently developing; (2) keep records of their course waiting lists in order to assess the demand for these courses; and (3) continue their ongoing discussions of approaches to a second-semester course in qualitative research. They will continue to meet informally (as they have for several years), but will not accept our charge to serve as an ad hoc committee on qualitative research courses, and thus will not write a report for the FAC. We again discussed the need for a standing curriculum committee in the College, and decided to develop a charge for such a committee in the spring.

The data on the % of Associate Professors in rank across the schools: Peter presented a table comparing numbers and percentages of full, associate and assistant (with tenure) professors in each of the University’s schools. Our examination of the table revealed that the percentage of associate professors in Education is not as anomalous as Betsy Altmaier suggested at our November meeting. At 43%, we’re above the University average of 35%, but lower than Nursing and Pharmacy. We discussed various possible reasons for differences among schools, and Peter agreed to look further into the issue of time in rank. Betsy had raised her concerns about our high percentage of associate professors in our larger discussion of program coordinators, suggesting that associate professors’ service responsibilities, such as program coordination, drain energy that they would otherwise use for research and instruction. We agreed to continue to pursue the issue of program-coordinator obligations. Specifically, Peter will raise the issue with the Administrative Council; if it is not important to the AC, we may leave the issue alone.

Salaries and national rank: In response to our understanding that Provost Hogan is interested in rankings, Peter presented three graphs of National Rank of Schools of Education in the Big 10: (1) Against Average Salary of Professor; (2) Against Average Salary of Associate Professor; and (3) Against Average Salary of Assistant Professor. On each of the graphs, the average salary at Iowa was lower than that at the institutions near us in rank; in other words, Iowa has a relatively high rank with relatively low salaries. We discussed possible explanations and additional information that may be helpful. In response, Peter agreed to add cost of living to our comparisons and to research salary information in the Chronicle of Higher Education. We will then continue the discussion.

Deferred to next meeting: Further discussion of course duplication, the standing curriculum committee, and loss of faculty, will wait until the next meeting because Peter had not yet met with Carolyn Colvin to solicit her feedback. He was planning to meet with her within a few days.

Schedule for the spring: We will meet from 12:45 to 2:15 on the first Tuesday of each month, beginning in February.