forum_200411

PROVOST'S CHAT
NOVEMBER 19th, 2004

The Provost began this "chat" (having about 50 present by the end of the hour) with a discussion of the new academic calendar (beginning with the Fall 2005 semester). He noted that the semester will begin the day after Labor Day and that this semester will end before the Christmas Holiday. The Spring 2006 semester will then begin after Martin Luther King's Birthday.

Faculty contracts will be 9.5 months and will begin on August 15th. In fact, our contract for the 2004-2005 academic year ends on June 15th. We will have a Convocation in the Spring of 2005 (with a similar format to what we had in March of this year). The dates of August 23rd - 25th of 2005 will see an All-College Retreat (see CCFO page soon for additional details on this event). Individual school retreats will occur in 2006 and 2007 with another All-College Retreat in 2008.

J-term was noted and it was stated that the Academic Affairs committee is working on developing "parameters" for this term.

"Standards" for faculty hiring were also addressed. The need for a terminal degree or a record of distinguished professional accomplishment were noted. Departments were put on note that requests for faculty deficient in both areas would not be approved.

The provost noted that the college has a large number of faculty trained by Chicago area institutions (e.g., UIC, Northwestern and the University of Chicago). He wants a faculty that is more geographically distributed than just from the Chicago area. He also stated that the college should be as diverse as possible with respect to faculty applicant political views (when known or revealed by the candidate) as it can.

Articulation initiatives with the Dublin Institute of Technology, an institution in Paris and in Japan were noted. However, initial "return" to Columbia is virtually non-existent (two students from DIT in Spring 2005 and one from the Paris school). Three of our faculty at a time in the future will "visit" DIT and there is a proposed symposia between Columbia faculty and DIT faculty.

New academic programs [at Columbia] are possible in the "areas" of Composing for Film, Expressive Arts Therapy and in Leadership in AEMM. In fact, the Provost noted that, through his office, there will be Leadership Workshops for interested individuals to hopefully improve the depth of leadership at the college.

Deans are evaluated each year by the provost.

The "new" Faculty handbook will be up {according to Jan Garfield] by the end of this academic year. To protect faculty rights, CCFO will put the handbook in progress [over administration objections] on its web site soon.

The Provost also noted that times for future "chats" will be rotated during the course of the day.