Faculty Looking at New Date for Annual Meeting
Proposal made to separate event from Academic Council session
Monday, October 26, 2009
Durham, NC -- For more than two decades, Duke University presidents have delivered state of the university addresses to faculty that were tied to the October meeting of the Academic Council. Now faculty and officers are asking if there’s a better way to organize the meeting and attract a larger audience.
President Richard H. Brodhead traditionally would have delivered the address this past Thursday before the Academic Council meeting. But council chair Craig Henriquez and the council’s executive committee (ECAC) were concerned by low attendance for the session in recent years. Now the council is looking for a new date and hoping a change of the event would attract more interest.
“We’re interested in doing an experiment by giving the annual meeting of the faculty its own time,” Henriquez said. “We want to think (about) what kind of event should it be. Is it a time for presentation of faculty awards and introduction of new faculty? It’s an opportunity for community-building. We’ve attempted to boost attendance these past years without much success, but we are nothing if not persistent.”
Henriquez said the delivery of the state of the university address should be one highlight of the school year. Traditionally, it’s also a time when the Academic Council chair reviews the activities of the council for the previous year and faculty vote on changes to the faculty bylaws.
He encouraged faculty members to send him suggestions for how to organize the meeting, which is now tentatively scheduled for January.
For his part, Brodhead said the annual meeting presented a valuable occasion for the president to share thoughts on the direction of the university. He pledged to continue to do so at the annual meeting but added that a single meeting is not a substitute for regular communications.
“Last year, because of the financial situation, there would be topics that would not wait for a meeting in January,” Brodhead said. “We’ll partner with ECAC to create the right process. We’ll experiment until we get it right.”
In other action, the council approved a new Ph.D. program in environmental policy run jointly by the Nicholas School of the Environment and the Sanford School of Public Policy.
In addition, Ross McKinney, professor of pediatric infectious diseases, presented a proposed policy addressing situations involving potential institutional conflicts of interest in research. One example McKinney cited was research that could benefit the university but would put the researcher personally at risk. The policy would complement a 1992 policy on personal conflict of interest in research.
