March 28, 2003

Present: Tom Gieryn (Chair), Alex Dzierba, Katy Fraser, Roy Gardner, Susan Gubar, Kevin Hunt, Chuck Livingston, Ellen Dwyer (recorder)

1. The meeting began with the approval of the minutes of March 7, as amended.

2. The Committee discussed and approved for circulation to the faculty the new policy on "Expectations of Faculty While on Release Time from Teaching," developed by Kevin Hunt.

3. Katy Fraser then reported on the March 27 Dean's Meeting with Chairs and Directors. Ted Widlanski discussed the "Conflict of Interest" statement that needs to be signed by the faculty members. Ray Smith made a presentation on instructional technology resources and urged chairs to pass on the information regarding resources and workshops to their faculty. Linda Smith discussed recent initiatives related to undergraduate education, including the newly-proposed living learning center for foreign languages and College efforts to recruit high quality students, and to focus attention on the senior year. David Zaret talked about the promotion and tenure guidelines, including the newly-revised timetable for submitting the names of external reviewers.

4. At 3:15 PM, Dean Subbaswamy joined the Committee. In response to questions, he discussed briefly the complex intellectual property issues around web-pages and compact disks developed by faculty members for their courses, sometimes with formal University financial assistance and sometimes without.

5. He then turned to a lengthy discussion of the 2003 budget, noting in particular the factors that make long-term budget-planning very difficult at a state university. The largest revenue category is student fees, followed by state monies. The largest expenditure category is compensation and benefits, followed by internal University assessments. He pointed to the steady climb in contract and grant activity within the College during the past two years, attributing much of it to the College's commitment to investing in research efforts.

6. The meeting ended at 4:00 PM.

Questions or comments regarding the minutes and actions of the Policy Committee may be addressed to Tom Gieryn, 5-2950, Dept. of Sociology, Ballantine 754, gieryn@indiana.edu.