FACULTY MEETING MINUTES

April 11, 2018

I. Minutes for the March faculty meeting were accepted.

II. Reports from College Officers

A. President Greene

  • The President opened the meeting by wishing Happy Birthday to KarleneBurrell-McRae.
  • He recently returned from a campaign launch event in Washington DC.
  • While there, he had a conversation with the Sen. Angus King about immigration and DACA issues, tax policy affecting College endowments, and infrastructure funding for downtown Waterville.
  • Congress is considering taxing colleges with endowment levels higher than Colby’s (but we will be reaching that level soon).
  • Dollars spent for educational purposes may not be taxed, but if they are, we will get hit.
  • A tax policy change is controversial in part, because donors have given money under the old tax law, assuming that it will not be taxed.
  • We spend about 40 million/year from our endowment on student financial aid. I discussed with Sen. King how students on aid will be hit the worst. He shares our concern.
  • Waterville has received a Tiger grant for infrastructure support. This will be used to:
  • Convert Main Street into a 2-way street.
  • Improve streetscaping, sidewalks etc., making downtown more desirable.
  • Senator Collins chairs this committee. We have received assurances that funds will be coming over the next several months.
  • The campaign launch event was held at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian. The President thanked Annie Kloppenberg and Sandy Maisel. Annie’s students performed.
  • Elijah Paris Lovejoy was celebrated the previous night in the Newseum at an event for younger alumni. Patrice Franco and Joe Reisert headed up to the event. Matt Appuzo was one of two alums participating in the panel. (You may remember that he is the Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times journalist - hehad just broken the Michael Cohen story that day.)
  • Theaster Gates received an award at the National Sculpture Center in Dallas, and attended with Sharon Corwin. There was a lot of discussion about Colby.
  • Next weekend we will have over 500 admitted students coming for the Admitted Students Weekend. Please welcome them! We’ll be holding a Hackathon with over 100 students.
  • The Board of Trusteeswill be meeting to approve the budget for next year:
  • This will include funding support for the move to a 4.5 teaching load; 6 new FTE;

2 teaching assistants; and 2 FTE non-tenure positions.

  • Pay raises
  • $200,000 for library (acquisitions)
  • Faculty start-up funding
  • Proposal for a stronger partnership with Bigelow Lab. Thanks to Bruesewitz, Martin, King.
  • Other topics of note:
  • Survey about student retention
  • Faculty satisfaction/retention
  • Communications—external—continuing to strengthen—data analytics—includes discussion with Major Garrett
  • Retiring trustees: Sandy Buck, Susan Boland, Ted Snyder, David Pulver
  • Tenure and promotion cases to be ratified.
  • Final approval of design and schedule for Athletic Center

Questions:

Sandy Maisel (GOV) – What is the playing field shown in the slides? Greene: It’s a general practice field.

Cheryl Gilkes (SOC) – Has any thought been given to a location for indoor commencement? Greene: Yes, it will be 1.5 times the current size. Many more people will be able to attend.

Raffael Scheck (HIS) - How will this affect our LEED sustainability? Greene: It’s a big space, they’ve been very thoughtful about temperature control. We’re on track for LEED Silver, perhaps higher - right Doug?

Bevin Engman (ART) - Does the center courtyard have a roof? Greene: No, but it’s designed to be able to handle snow accumulation. It will bring light throughout the building.

Winifred Tate (ANTHRO) - Is the college planning to make a statement about Nick Isgro’s social media comments? Greene: No, the college does not make statements on political races.

Tate: What about his repeated claims regarding his relationship with Colby? Greene: Any politician can make those kinds of claims. Everyone is encouraged to make their positions known. But there is not going to be an official college statement.

Travis Reynolds (ES) - regarding the financial aid piece, part of the movement for taxing elite colleges is motivated by the image of the athletic center behind you. I’m uncomfortable about the two statements: we are building this amazing facility, but if we’re taxed, we’ll reduce financial aid. What about Waterville’s access to this facility? Greene: the facility is designed with the community in mind. It allows the community to host events there. The question about taxing colleges is more about the liberal indoctrination that occurs there - of how those colleges are out of touch with their communities. Community benefits should always remain top of mind.

Joe Reisert (GOV) - There’s an article in the Wall Street Journal about allegations that colleges in the Northeast are a target of an antitrust investigation. Is this happening at other elite colleges? Greene: Yes, we received the same letter. We are required to retain documents about information-sharing around early decision candidates. The charge outlines that colleges might be colluding about financial aid packages - thereby cutting off choices within the marketplace for students and their families. We are in a different situation because we have a binding early decision process. Other schools have Early Action(i.e. not bound to an institution). This was an issue for the Ivies re: coordinating financial aid awards, as well as potential increases in the cost of tuition.

Walter Hatch (GOV) although it’s a great opportunity for students in DC, I question the priority of students to miss class in order to go to DC to raise money for the college. Greene: Students in various contexts present research off campus, and these opportunities have value as their classes do. Each student needs to work with a professor to determine the wisdom of participation.

Doug Terp: We are tracking LEED Gold.

B. Provost Margaret McFadden

  • There will be a Celebration of Faculty Scholarship connected to CLAS - more details to follow. I’d like to announce a few major national fellowships awarded to our colleagues:
  • Major national fellowships
  • Nadia El-Sharaawi, Maple Razsa-- ACLS Collaborative Research Award
  • Kim Besio, Andie Wang, Ankeney Weitz--Start Talk Grant
  • Lydia Moland—NEH—Hegel’s Aesthetics
  • Das Thamattoor—Fulbright—Japan, Czech Republic, Singapore
  • Student news
  • Benard Kibet—Watson
  • Claire Murray—Fulbright to Spain
  • NSF Graduate Award—Catherine Moore, Brian Kim, Adam Lavertu

Regarding the survey on Student Retention completed by students and faculty, the major reasons cited I respond these were the social and intellectual climates at Colby.

Discussion

Stephanie Taylor (CS) - Does Admissions contribute any info that is predictive? MM: No, not really. In some cases, it does appear that Colby is a bit of a steppingstone to elsewhere.

Liz McGrath (A&Physics) – I wanted to respond to the question about “supporting athletes better”. It seems that so much of the social climate is driven by athletic affiliation, I feel like we need to support non-athletes more. MM: Many faculty felt that athletes would do better to be embedded all around campus, not just within their team.

Whitney King (CHEM) – How do we compare with others, in terms of retention? MM: Our rate is a bit better than some of our peers. What would a best practice document look like? Who is leaving and why? What can we do to make sure we are responding in the most helpful way? Whitney: What do students coming here want and why? What are we “known as” What can we learn from students transferring in? Maybe we should conduct a “Why did you stay?” survey.

MM: Good idea!

III. Old Business – Kim Besio

Academic Affairs Committee has two motions before the faculty.

Motion #1: Grading Guidelines

Russ Johnson –we heard from some faculty abouttheir concerns.

  • AAC wanted to make expectations for grading more commonly understood.
  • Information would not be used to evaluate teaching effectiveness.

Discussion

Mary Beth Mills (ANTHRO) - Many of you may have received the memo I sent regarding my concerns. I support the goals of this difficult work but I disagree that motions 1 and 2 will accomplish the goals.

  • We got the information but are being asked to accept that the premise is harmful. However, we have no evidence that it is harmful.
  • We cannot apply these findings fairly across different methods of teaching.
  • The potential for bias is unexamined at this point. It implicitly equates high grades with a low level of challenge in the classroom. Without evidence of harm, we run the risk of incorporating unexamined biases toward women, untenured faculty, and people of color.
  • Because the report offers only one implicit way to read these data, the ways that we have departmental discussions will be deeply flawed. The data will further complicate evaluations which are already problematic. My deep concern is that the primary effect will not be on improved teaching, but that it will increase the stresses that faculty face (especially untenured faculty). The data will be used to make comparisons—and people will understand them in terms of teaching effectiveness. It will work its way throughout the review and tenure process.
  • I would like Motion # 1 to be amended: “excellent” rather than “exceptional”.

Sandy Maisel (GOV) – As a member of AAC, we were not able to discuss your memo. We never implied that it meant lack of rigor. We hope that the new faculty would appreciate less opacity around the criteria for grading. Chairs already have access to this information.

Lisa Arellano (WGSS) –My concern is that the memo has a flawed premise - that departments can be compared. 60% of my majors were Phi Beta Kappa. Our programs are very different. This report assumes that there is some parity. “Exceptional” is a strange word. We should consider what creates a culture of high performance where excellence is common.

Laura Saltz (AS) – Why do we have differences? The opacity has not to do with standards that people may or may not be providing, but rather the wide variety of pedagogies. Grades are not an appropriate metric for many of the kinds of pedagogies that we employ. My grades in discussion courses are higher. I am more engaged in those courses. In some courses, the grades are based on the quality of the discussions that we have. The more flipped the course is, the higher the grades will be. The main project of the course is actually collaborative. This rubric is more suited to lecture format courses. The ABCDF is increasingly less relevant. Grading has not kept up with pedagogy.

Bevin Engman (ART) – I really want to underscore Lisa and Laura’s comments. In my lower-level courses, I can distinguish objective differences among work. It becomes important to acknowledge what we are teaching- what are you learning while you are learning to paint? In 2nd and 3rd semesters, students are doing their own work and the criteria is individaul. What am I grading? What am I rewarding? Independent thinking. I’m asking students to enter unfamiliar terrain. They’ve never made these things before, and I’ve never seen them before. We are encouraging courage, resilience, etc. I often talk about well-reasoned failures as being of greater value than unambitious successes. To target their attention, I might split up their grade: give them an A for the Amount of work; a C for Rigor; perhaps a B+ for Resilience. Standardization is the enemy.

Ankeney Weitz (ART) - The first college I taught at had languagethat helped me work with students in terms of talking about what the grades meant. This was helpful. It was hard not to have this. The definitions of the terms could be left to the instructors. I’m in favor of Motion # 1, giving instructors guidance. The way the terms are defined may not work for every pedagogy.

Aaron Hanlon (ENG) –These standards seem more geared towards qualitative work. This is too difficult a task. These guidelines would make it harder for me to apply rigor in my grading. They are less specific than my rubrics. I’m not terribly confused about what excellence looks like in my field. I'm more interested in support for the assessment decisions that I make.

Raffael Scheck (HIS) - I support both motions. My grading is often thought of as too harsh and students are frustrated by getting a different grade from me than they would have gotten in a different course. It is an equity question.The second motion is not a revolution. We used to have this at Colby. The information didn’t make much of a difference—people cited academic freedom. When I was new, I once had a conversation with President Cotter about being a “hard grader”. He said. “Oh! P&T will love this. Our best teachers are the hardest graders.”

Bruce Maxwell (CS) –As Chair,new faculty are wondering if their grade distribution is too high etc. Within each course you have to clarify what their grades mean. There is a change in our student body - and the change in grades may be due to this. We have to think about challenging our students more. I don’t want to make it harder to get a B, but I do want to make it harder to get an A.

Mary Ellis Gibson (ENG) - I don’t want to be defensive, but there seems to be a concern about the Humanities and claims of the lack of rigor. We are admitting a different kind of student and we need to challenge our most rigorous students. The data are focused on Humanities and IDS as the least rigorous. There was no consultation from AAC with chairs from these divisions. I would have brought up the claims that I did with recent accreditors; Almost none of our chairs had a clear claim about how grades were determined. We don’t seem to be tracking student development. Departments might look at incoming and exiting student work. Contingent and untenured faculty are giving higher grades.We have many more contingent faculty compared to other divisions - this also may explain some of the differences between divisions.

Elizabeth Sagaser (ENG) - I must first say that this auditorium is not conducive to a discussion this important. I want to echo Lisa and Laura. English’s pedagogy is not a good match with this grading rubric. It’s hard to say what teaching style draws the strongest work. Sometimes it is the professor who was putting in the greatest effort with individual students, that gets a yield of the hardest working students, and it results in the highest quality work. When younger, we may have taught with great passion and feedback to every single student. Many of us allow for rewrites—more work, better grades - setting a format for students to work harder. Many of our students are motivated by individual attention. Sometimes it is a highly rigorous course and an extremely effective instructor that leads to higher grades.

Megan Cook (ENG) – Rubrics are liked by our students because they were raised with them. As they move through their major, rubrics are less useful - they may not be the most effective tool.

Judy Stone (BIO) - I’m not enthusiastic about either motion. I’m especially concerned about the use of the word “exceptional” - as it implies rarity. I propose an amendment to change that term to “outstanding”. The amendment was seconded.

The amendment to Motion #1 changing “Exceptional “ to Outstanding” in the definition of an A grade was then debated.

  • Russ Johnson: The AAC considered many terms, including outstanding - although that also implies rarity.
  • Sandy Maisel - We could except the amendment and change “exceptional” to “excellent”.
  • Ankeney Weitz - I’d like to drop the language “appropriate balance”.
  • Elizabeth Sagaser – What is an “appropriate balance” in grading?
  • Catherine Besteman - This concerns the very core of what we do and it’s really important. I’ve noticed that some of my colleagues have had to leave because of the late hour - we can’t leave it [a vote] to 6:00pm. Can we lay this over to the next meeting? Reisert: we have a motion to defer the discussion to the next meeting - at the beginning of the next meeting. MOTION PASSES.

Announcements

  • Timothy Hubbard: Chair of the IT committee. Tackling e-mail policy. Major overhauls. With Richard Uchida, Chad Tracy. Draft of the policy is posted on the IT website.
  • Winifred Tate: Follow current events in Waterville and speak out on the current leadership crisis in Waterville.
  • Sandy Maisel: Conference on Trumping Ethical Norms. Two panels. Everyone is invited to attend.

Sandy Maisel moved to adjourn.

Meeting adjourned at 5:40 PM

Respectfully submitted,

Bevin Engman

Faculty Secretary

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