Emory Report

February 21, 2000

Volume 52, No. 22

Faculty Council To open the Feb. 15 Faculty Council meeting, President Bill Chace reported on the success of a recent trip to New York by an Emory delegation of faculty, staff and administrators. Among other events, Chace said the University representatives visited several foundations and attended a reading by National Book Award winner Xuefei Jin and a luncheon in honor of playwright Alfred Uhry, who recently donated his papers to Special Collections. In response to a question, Chace also talked briefly about the recent MARTA vote to extend its west line and what that means for bringing rail transit to DeKalb County. He said another possibility for traffic alleviation that has been mentioned is widening Briarcliff Road from Clifton to North Druid Hills, while narrowing North Decatur Road in places to try to divert traffic to Briarcliff. Provost Rebecca Chopp said Emory's Southern Association for Colleges and Schools (SACS) accreditation process will begin this fall. Chopp said the process, which happens every 10 years, will be less of a headache for faculty than the last one, since much of the required numbers-gathering will be completed by administrative staff. Chopp said SACS will be looking at how well the University can plan around a central theme and then achieve its goals; she added that Emory is free to choose its own theme, and the most likely topic is something related to information technology. Chopp said the various searches for deans and vice-provosts are going well, with several top candidates for all the open positions due to make campus visits soon. She also said the Council of Deans has referred the Faculty Council's proposals regarding family and medical leave to an external counsel who specializes in such matters, and she hopes to have a report in March. Clark Sterk said the Distinguished Faculty Lecture committee has narrowed the list for the 2001 lecturer to four names and hopes to present a candidate for approval to the council in March. Chair John Boli then solicited volunteers to serve on the newly created Lullwater Task Management Force, a group made up of all Emory constituencies and charged with the stewardship of Lullwater. When no council member volunteered, Boli said he would send an e-mail to the council listserv to find a candidate. "If that doesn't work, I will resort to a more personal, direct approach," he said. For the remainder of the meeting, the council listened to reports from facilitators of the series of lunches related to the "Faculty at Emory" project. A wide range of issues concerning every level of faculty, from non-tenure-track lecturers to senior full professors, surfaced at the lunches, but the large majority centered around one theme: the difficulty in finding time to satisfy all academic, professorial and administrative commitments. Boli said the notes from the lunches would be digitized and analyzed by the Office of Institutional Planning and Research. Later this spring, he hopes to form a group similar to the Commission on Teaching to move forward on these concerns, with the ultimate goal of a publication akin to Teaching at Emory. The next Faculty Council meeting is March 21 at 3:15 p.m. in 400 Administration Building. -Michael Terrazas Return to February 21, 2000 contents page