Minutes

Minutes, Truman Chapter of AAUP
February 29, 2008, 4:30 pm

University Club

Meetings are open to all university faculty members.

Faculty present: Betty McLane-Iles (presiding), Martha Bartter, Marc Becker, James Harmon, Jerry Hirsch, Sylvia Macauley, Judi Misale

1. Minutes of February 1 meeting were approved.

2. Planning for meeting with President Dixon. We are tentatively looking at meeting with President Dixon on April 21 or April 25, with a tendency toward April 25. Topics for conversation may include work conditions and benefits for contingent faculty, faculty governance, curriculum reform, support for faculty research, salaries. Plan is to meet at the University Club.

3. Statewide news: David Robinson. We read and discussed David’s email report from the February 23 annual meeting of the the Missouri Conference of AAUP. How can we project a more public and positive image of AAUP among faculty on campus? We could do more in depth information dissemination of what is happening on campus, and with change in governance this might be an opportunity. Do we want to do a spring newsletter, perhaps highlighting history and memory of AAUP on campus? If we do, we should target it for distribution by the end of March.

4. University Survey. Judi is pondering doing the survey one more time before she retires next year, with the idea of working with someone else on campus to pass it off to a new person. We could digest the data during the summer, hold a town hall meeting at the beginning of the semester, and distribute the results in a fall newsletter with the AAUP Footnotes. Judi will talk to several people who might be interested in taking over the survey.

5. Disability office. We discussed the response from Lou Ann Gilchrist to our questions about the disability office. An ongoing problem is a lack of resources for the office. How can we get more resources for this office. Should we take this further, and if so where? Martha suggests approaching it with idea of how can we help you improve this. Betty suggests a collaborate effort for a survey to get a broader sense of the problem. Jerry suggests getting an ADA expert to do the survey. Judi: financial implications if survey shows that University comes up significantly short. Jerry: No ADA police; often results only come from lawsuits. Consensus that we continue to pursue this, hopefully in collaboration with disability office.

6. Discussion of faculty governance /curriculum. Diane Johnson recommended that we have our own AAUP committee to work on these issues, but we’ve done nothing to this point. Judi suggested we wait for a report from Diane at next month’s meeting so we’ll have more update information on the committee’s work.

7. Adjournment, 6:00 PM

Respectfully submitted by Marc Becker, secretary