Faculty Senate: Mahmoud Abdalla, William Arrocha, Avner Cohen (Vice President), Andrea Hofmann-Miller (via Zoom), Pushpa Iyer (via Zoom), Katherine Punteney, Thor Sawin (President). Assembly Members: Philipp Bleek, Alaina Brandt, Marie Butcher, Paige Butler, Lijian Cai, Anne Campbell, Wallace Chen, Avner Cohen, Monica Galligan, Mike Gillen, Gabriel Guillen, Sharad Joshi, Renee Jourdenais, Samuel Kim, Jeff Knopf, Barry Olsen, Katherine Punteney, Max Troyer, Anna Vassilieva, David Wick, Tanya Williams, Via Zoom: Netta Avineri, Sandra Dow, Jacolyn Harmer, Wei Liang, Eva Klaudinyova, Deniz Ortactepe, Naoko Matsuo, Moyara Ruehsen, Cas Shulman-Mora, Lyuba Zarsky. Staff: Stacie Riley.

Quorum was not reached at today’s meeting, which requires a minimum of 37 faculty members be present. No votes were planned to be taken, however.

Greeting New Faculty: There were no new faculty members present at today’s Assembly. The new regular faculty in Chinese T&I are Lijian Cai, Yuanyan Ding, Xiaoyan Shen, and Xiaojing Shi. Chinese T&I has also hired two visiting faculty: Wei Ding and Chiaming Fan. TLM has one new faculty member starting this fall, Eva Klaudinyova. 

Encouraging News Items: 

• A third section of Chinese T&I is up and running this fall.
• We have an excellent group of undergraduate students on campus this semester, mostly in NPTS. Middlebury is really excited to work with us to build study away site connections.
• College Fall Faculty Forum has invited three MIIS faculty members to campus for this event.
• Enrollment numbers are up. We have a larger incoming class, which due to the smaller than normal second year group means that we met our enrollment targets. We will know after the third week survey if our FTE grew. 
• Muchadei Zvoma in Marketing relayed that we are off to a positive start as far as inquiries for FY20; as of July 31st we are 50 inquires ahead of target so we are looking good from a marketing standpoint. 
• A new professional certificate program in Spanish Community Interpreting started this fall.
• In Fall 2020 TLM will launch an online program for domestic students, which will not compete with our current residential TLM program.
• TSEOL/TFL is working on designing a practicum class for students enrolled in the Schools Abroad with online capstones to begin in Summer 2020, which would allow students to complete all coursework in one year. 
• The Schools Abroad directors are very willing to develop programs for graduate-level School Abroad options to host MIIS students. 
• The library has a new search system, which allows you to search multiple media simultaneously. The search is located on the library’s web page.

Committees’ Members and Roles:

• Faculty Senate: GSIPM representatives: William Arrocha, Avner Cohen (Vice President), and Pushpa Iyer. GSTILE representatives: Mahmoud Abdalla, Andrea Hofmann-Miller, and Sabino Morera. At-large representatives: Katherine Punteney (ex-officio) and Thor Sawin (President). There are no new Senate members this year. Now that ISP is over, handbook revisions will be the Senate’s highest priority for this academic year. 
• Faculty Evaluation Committee (FEC):GSIPM representatives: Paige Butler and Sharad Joshi. GSTILE representatives: Pablo Oliva (Chair) and Tonya Williams. At-large representative: Anne Campbell. Anne and Pablo are the two continuing members. Anne announce a digital dossier option (not required) for this next year’s sabbatical, contract renewal, and promotion processes. Anne asks that faculty notify Stacie Riley of their desire for the digital option so she could set up a secure Google drive for them. This system is more secure, faster, and more reliable than the paper dossiers. FEC is hoping that for fall 2020 these processes will be done in Faculty 180. Faculty 180 will still be used to complete the annual FAR and will be uploaded to reflect the new rubric, including the optional category of development. For those who choose not to use the development category they can set the scale to zero. 
• Academic Policies, Standards, Instruction Committee (APSIC):GSIPM representatives: Maha Baimyrzaeva and David Wick (Chair). GSTILE representatives: Wallace Chen and Heekyeong Lee. At-large representatives: Jinhuei Dai. David Wick is in his third year on APSIC, and Jinhuei and Maha are continuing members. Also on APSIC are the Student Council Vice President and Seamus Dorrian (ex-officio). David suggests contacting him if you are considering changing your curriculum, he has a list of questions that can help you think through your proposal. David is also happy to provide guidance on things that can make the proposal as clear and complete as possible.  

Updates on Workforce Planning and Incentive Separation Plans: The Senate has received no official update on where we are now in the process. Thor has reached out to HR and the Institute Council about a status update. Thor stated that there were ten faculty who accepted the ISP offers, two contract non-renewals, and two retirees, which put us close enough to the saving goals that there will not be a second round of ISPs this year. 

Thor received word that breaking contracts (what was referred to as plan C) is now off the table for the foreseeable future. Thor also stated that administration shared that contract non-renewals for non-performance are going to become a “new normal” with those going up for renewal being more highly scrutinized. This does not mean they will happen every year, but they will happen at a higher rate than the past (which was nearly never).  Contract non-renewal decisions can be made not only for performance issues, but because of financial constraints.

Another option now offered at MIIS is the Associate Faculty position, which allows a faculty member to have a more gradual transition into retirement by being employed at 60% with access to benefits. Faculty can stay in this position for up to three years.

Thor did ask Cathy Vincent, Karen Miller, and Hannah Ross about the fact that MIIS faculty have a letter of appointment and not a “contract”. He was told that in higher education, the combination of the letter of appointment and the Faculty Handbook make up the contract. The handbook can be found at go/handbook.

Due to Workforce Planning, there will be a larger than normal group of faculty not returning next year. The Senate spoke to President Laurie Patton in May about ideas on how to recognize these faculty. The idea of a lecture series has been mentioned, Laurie also mentioned increasing faculty development funding, perhaps with a named presidential fund.  The MIIS Council is deciding how best to approach this recognition process.

A discussion about the two past and potential future contract non-renewals followed. Many faculty think this could be very problematic, not only for morale but for recruiting and maintaining faculty members. What are the standards that will be followed for non-renewals and should the Senate be involved in checking those standards? Faculty are concerned that they were never told how these decisions were made. 

Thor did share parts of a letter he wrote to the Institute Council. He specifically addressed:

• While another round of ISP will not be carried out this year, and contract breaking is no longer being considered to deal with the ongoing deficit, will contract non-renewals for fiscal/enrollment reason continue?
• When performance is deemed satisfactory, individuals in programs facing enrollment challenges could face non-renewal of contracts. In this case, what is the criteria for decisions, especially when multiple faculty in the same program are up for renewal? 
• This year, two faculty members in the same department were up for renewal and one contract was not renewed while the other was. Both non-renewed faculty had long records of service to the Institute so what criteria are being used when making these decisions: seniority, teaching evaluations, retaining diverse faculty pool, etc.?
• Clarity on the departure of Dean Rebecca Henriksen.

Thor then shared the response from the Institute Council via Vice President Dayton-Johnson, who had no objection to the Senate sharing the response. 

• Because of strict confidentiality guidelines, the Council can release no information on the departure of Dean Henriksen.
• Confidentiality constraints also are present in discussions about renewal of faculty contracts, although the Council can talk about the criteria used to make renewal decisions. The criteria used are laid out in the Faculty Handbook including teaching, scholarship, and service, but also include financial sustainability of a program. The financial criterion was applied more frequently last year than in the past, and will be applied in the future. 
• The Council cannot go in detail about particular renewal cases, but parallels can be made to selecting a final candidate for a job. You apply objective criteria, then select finalists, then look at what distinguishes finalists from each other, and after considering everything you make a subjective decision based on instinct and judgement. It is also worth noting that the double-firewall on information about the ISP process means that I was operating in the dark as to the intentions of the various candidates when renewal cases were considered. To sum up, though anchored in the same handbook-based guidelines, each year’s set of decisions will be qualitatively different. 

Thor does clarify the double-firewall comment reference in the Council response. He states that when Vice President Dayton-Johnson and Provost Cason were making contract renewal decisions, they were not aware of who was interested in accepting the ISP. Once that firewall was removed and the administration saw who took the incentive separation package, the administration thought that they had the right of final refusal. However, this turned out not to be true, in fact it’s illegal. This was not how anyone wanted this to play out, and it could mean that we will need to hire some people to replace the faculty lost who had critical skills. 

• Paige points out that the non-renewal process is arbitrary since it is based solely on when a faculty member’s contract comes up for renewal.
• Jeff Knopf asked that if it is illegal to rescind the ISP, is that also true of contract non-renewal, can it be rescinded and the person retained? Thor states he does not know the answer to that, but will ask the Council.
• Jeff also states that it is very unsettling for faculty here at MIIS to have contract non-renewal hanging over our heads, but it could also make it very hard to recruit new faculty and retain current faculty.
• Sharad points out that it will also make it hard to recruit international faculty members.
• William Arrocha thinks the Faculty Senate needs to discuss this further, based on the comments at the Town Hall on August 29th about market changes and how fast a program needs to respond to the change. He states that the handbook needs to reflect a solution that offers faculty some protection, especially since we don’t have tenure. The Council is basically telling us that if you don’t catch the market you’re out.
• Thor agrees that the Senate should work with legal council to determine what a governing body at an institute can do to protect the faculty, and how this language can be added to the handbook.
• Katherine suggests that the Institute should publish enrollment targets so faculty know if they might be targeted, i.e. if your program has been under target for the last two years then you might be up for non-renewal.
• Paige agrees and thinks there should be more transparency, first you have a chance to respond as a program (think about creative ways to address the problem) and then, if that fails, the process moves to possible non-renewal. Further discussion ensued.

New Middlebury-Wide and Middlebury Institute Policies: 

• New health care package starting in 2020.
• A family leave policy is being worked on.
• New romantic relationships policy beginning fall 2019 for the College, and has been added to the Middlebury Handbook (B.1.a.C). The exact language for the forms for exceptions for faculty at the graduate institutions is still being worked on. Thor also points out that this will be a Middlebury-wide policy and violation could result in termination.  
• Faculty asked over the summer whether we are legally nine month or twelve month employees. Thor reports that the handbook and faculty appointment letters do not explicitly say, which is to the faculty member’s benefit. If faculty were nine month employees there could be healthcare benefit issues as well as challenges from the benefit providing company. 

Faculty Development Fund Guidelines:

The Committee has revised the guidelines and is encouraging proposals for activities beyond conference travel. If you are submitting for conference travel, the Committee has instituted suggested award caps in the amount of $2,800 for international travel and $1,800 for domestic in the hopes of encouraging frugal budgeting. Historically, recipients of the Mark award are invited to report out to the Mark family once a year. New this year, Mark recipients will participate in a poster fair to showcase their award activities to the Institute community. Also new this year is the Robert and Betty Lundeen Fund for Junior Faculty Development supporting qualified teaching and research at MIIS. Sharad asks if funds can be carried over to the next year. The answer is no, if you are not participating in the activity you were funded for you must either resubmit a new application, including budget, or wait to reapply in the next round of funding. 

Updates on Last Year’s Faculty Assembly Legislative Items: 

Deans’ and program chairs’ evaluations. The Deans have seen their evaluations and have access to see the program chairs’ evaluations. A question that came up is do we, as faculty, have the right to see how colleagues rated the deans? Thor asks that if faculty want to see the deans’ evaluation they need to let their Senators know so that could be written into the process. This time around only the deans and Jeff Dayton-Johnson will see their reviews. 

Revised timetable for January hires. Currently, January hires have to apply for contract renewal in their second semester at the Institute and promotion is delayed. The Assembly voted that January hires should be able to go up for contract renewal in the fall of their second year of teaching and promotion in their ninth semester instead of their 11th. HR thinks it is unwise to offer January hires two advantages. HR proposed a compromise: January hires will be hired on a 3-½ year contract with contract renewal done in their fourth semester and promotion done at the same time fall hires are eligible. Another option is to have an alternate cycle for promotion and renewal for January hires, which could create a problem aligning the processes with the financial cycle.  Senate will pursue this option to test its viability.

Multi-year contracts for non-degree-program faculty. HR is okay with this change with one caveat, these faculty must go through the same evaluation process as regular faculty. Currently, the non-degree program faculty, of which there are very few, are not required to serve on faculty committees and are not eligible for development funding or sabbatical. If we want to allow non-degree program faculty to serve on committees and apply for sabbatical and development funding, then HR would like to eliminate the category “non-degree program faculty”. We will have to decide if this is something we should pursue.  

As a reminder, the Faculty Handbook is the priority for this year’s Faculty Senate. The Senate has instituted the following triage system for proposed changes:

• Minor changes such as updating terminology: check with MIIS Council, legal, and HR. 
• Medium change such as putting in place practices we currently do: check with MIIS faculty once change has been drafted, then confirm with deans, HR, and legal. 
• Major changes such as new policies: initial check with deans, HR, and legal about the possibility of said change, followed by consultation with MIIS faculty for revision, then a final check with the deans, HR, and legal. This would be followed by final wording from the Senate and then brought to the Assembly for a vote. We are hoping that all the consultation prior to a vote will prevent things from getting stuck after the vote.