Attendees:

E. Talbott (Chair), David Crossman, Irene Frieze, Patricia Beeson, Kathy Kelly, Walter Stoy, Nancy Grove, Peter Hart (University Times), Tony Silvestre, Susan Sereika, Ivanka Nikolova.

1) The meeting was called to order by Evelyn Talbott, a light lunch was served. The Committee recognized the late Dr. Thomas Metzger's accomplishments as Chair of the SEPC. Tom was a dedicated and pro-active faculty member and Chair of SEPC who always sought to represent students and faculty concerns. He was willing to engage all parties and gather information in an objective manner. He was not afraid of the political confrontations of his actions. The Committee recognized his long and illustrious career.

2) There were two matters of new business. The first involved a request for a presentation and discussion by Dr. Dayle Barnes, Associate Professor of Chinese Language and Linguistics in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures.

Dr. Barnes was concerned that the staffing ratio of 7:1 has been increased to 10:1 reducing the ability of instructors to help students acquire good or very good spoken proficiency. He will be circulating information from other institutions regarding their practices in laboratory recitation classes. Dr. Barnes requested that this issue be discussed at the next meeting April 19th. The committee questioned if we were the right body to be addressing this issue but is willing to review some materials from other institutions regarding student teach ratios and comment on this input.

3) The last order of business involved part-time faculty member Ivanka Nikolova, Professor in the Department of Information Science and Telecommunications. She feels that after a period of time, contracts should not be offered only term to term but should be at least a year or longer. Dr. Crossman asked that we re-visit the part-time faculty survey. He believes this issue was considered and no major issue was raised from the Part-time faculty. It was decided that we re-visit this questionnaire and consider offering the survey again in the fall. Dr. Nikolova also indicated that part-time faculty evaluations should consider more than simply student evaluations, although many faculty are hired to lecture in one course and one course only, making it difficult to consider more than issues relating to this aspect.

The meeting adjourned at 1 PM