1. The Council minutes of 8 April 2008 were approved.

2. The Council memo to the Dean on the creation of COS Councils and specifically a Council of the Geosciences had been sent to the Dean and a response received. It is anticipated the Dean will take that concept to the COS Chairs. The memo is attached to these minutes.

3. The meeting was primarily directed toward discussion of a draft memo on a ‘Policy on individual faculty seeking to transfer from one academic department to another’. This would be submitted to COS as a change in the bylaws. One discussion topic was the role of the Dean in the transfer approval process. It was recommended that the policy should address two separate situations, 1) where an individual faculty member is initiating a transfer to a different academic unit, and 2) when an entire academic unit is abolished administratively involving many faculty. Tenured and tenure-track faculty should also be treated differently. The draft was tabled pending additional development by B. Ehrlich and J. Gentle.

3. It was agreed that minutes for this meeting, the last of the semester, would be approved via e-mail.

4. Meeting adjourned.

Enc.

To: COS Dean Vikas Chandhoke
From: COS Executive Council
Subj: COS reorganization
Date: 8 April 2008

In response to a request from Dean Chandhoke, the Council discussed various aspects of College reorganization specifically in the area of the Earth Sciences. It appears that much of the Dean’s interest in reorganization is directed towards establishing similar departmental profiles relative to teaching and research. Generally, it was agreed that in some cases similar profiles may not be necessary or in the best interests of COS. For example, a unit primarily devoted to research and graduate education might not wish to consider adding an undergraduate program if one is not consistent with its mission. Nonetheless, our understanding is that a concern of the Dean’s office is the low student enrollment in some academic units, a concern which can be and to some extent has been addressed by having faculty in such units teach in other units for which they have expertise.

Much of the discussion was directed towards Climate Dynamics which has a low enrollment and also the Earth Science (geology) component of ESP, which has a large undergraduate enrollment. These two units have been discussing a possible merger into a new department. From the information provided by representatives of both units, there seems to be interest and advantages to the creation of this new department. The consensus of the Council was that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages of this merger. The Council also recommends that to increase enrollments Climate Dynamics should consider a MS degree and relevant undergraduate courses, such as the soon to be taught Climate 101 general education course. Although the member of the Council from that unit expressed the concern that a MS program can serve to divert the unit from its primary mission (the PhD program), most Council members did not see that as a basis for concern.

It also was recognized that there are other Earth Science faculty in the College, specifically in Geography/ESGS. These faculty might be interested, and should have the opportunity, to migrate to other more relevant academic units resulting from any COS reorganizations.

RECOMMENDATIONS

First, the Council recommends that the College create one or more Councils of departments with related academic interests. The administrative structure of these units would be a committee of the department Chairs, with each Chair rotating as Council Chair. This structure has the added benefit of avoiding an additional layer of administration and its associated costs. Administrative councils also would provide further advantages including:

 Increased visibility for some units and disciplines
 Greater programmatic consistency and efficiency within departments
 Reduced duplication among departments
 Improved faculty interaction and synergy.

The activities of this Council could include the following:

 Oversight of curricula to avoid unnecessary redundancy in courses and programs.
 Coordination of faculty hires to avoid redundancy.
 Provide a forum for the consideration of new programs and/or programmatic reorganizations.
 Provide a forum for the discussion of joint research activities.
 Promotion of joint marketing and student recruitment strategies.
 Provide advice regarding the effective use of faculty resources such as joint teaching arrangements, team-teaching, etc.