Summary Report for UIUC AAUP Policy Committee on January 14, 2008

Present: Abbas Aminmansour, Geneva Belford, Linn Belford, Connie Caveny, Bettina Francis, Harry Hilton, Lewis Hopkins, Cary Nelson, Arthur Robinson, Robert Spitze, Leslie Struble, Donald Uchtmann, H. F. Williamson

The meeting began at about 11:05 a.m. with Donald Uchtmann presiding.

President's Report

(1) Review of the Minutes and of the Summary Report for the Meeting of the Policy Committee on December 10, 2007. These two documents were approved.

(2) Review of President’s Report for Fall, 2007. Uchtmann asked that anyone with corrections in the draft of this report should send them to him or Williamson before the end of the week. At that point, we plan to prepare a final draft to send to the members of the Chapter. A reminder of this request for corrections will be sent out shortly after the meeting.

(3) Preparation for Lunch Meeting with Vice President Rao. Uchtmann went over the agenda for the meeting. The introductions will take place while we are finishing our meals. In his opening remarks, Uchtmann will emphasize the importance of having a dialogue with Vice President Rao at the meeting.

Action Items

(4) Planning for Next Promotion and Tenure Workshop. There was a discussion of who would be on the panel. It was agreed that members of the Provost’s staff could join her but that the emphasis would be on current procedures rather than the work of the Provost’s P&T Reform Committee. This could be the topic of a future presentation. A number of suggestions were made on how to publicize the workshop most effectively.

(5) Academy on Capitalism and Limited Government Fund. In a follow-up to his report at the December meeting, Spitze reported that he had informed Thomas Ulen about the announcement he had seen on the Fund. Ulen has not yet responded. Spitze has found out that Nick Burbules is aware of this document.

(6) Preparation of Chapter’s Standing Rules. Williamson reported that Andersen is working on revising the draft presented at the December meeting.

Reports

(8) Report on Chapter Web Site. Williamson noted that a next step in revising the site will be to place recent Summary Reports and President’s Reports on the site. The Communications Committee will be working on this.

(9) Senate Actions. Aminmansour noted that faculty will be receiving information about the forthcoming Senate elections at the department level and urged everyone to get involved. He also reported briefly on some of the items being considered by the Senate Educational Policy Committee.