GENERAL FACULTY MEETING

September 2, 1997

I. Call to Order.

PRESIDENT JOHN PALMS:

It must be time to begin because everybody is getting quiet. If it is raining, people don't come because they don't want to get wet. If it's too hot, there are other good reasons. But let me officially open the meeting of the General Faculty, the fall of 1997. I welcome you back and hope you had a refreshing summer. I know many of you had a chance to travel because I tried to find some of you, and you weren't here. I did also. There is just nothing like getting away completely and cleaning out the problems of the mind.

Just a few announcements about some things that are obviously are on our minds. We just had a faculty meeting -- I mean a trustees committee meeting -- and again just to review some of the accomplishments from last year. We really did have a very good year, and the Provost will talk a little bit about the incoming class because it really is a very, very good start for us. But last year, to remind you, we ended up having 22 students receive more than $625,000 in national fellowship money. We had 3 NSF's, 2 Fulbright's, 3 Goldwater's. With those 3 Goldwater's, we joined such universities as MIT, Notre Dame, Princeton, and Stanford. And the great news: we got that $9.2 million defense contract for basic research, which helped us complete our commitment with the state legislature who had given us $10,000,000 for our new science research building. 248 doctoral degrees -- that is a lot of work on the part of faculty, and we appreciate all of you who serve on those dissertation committees and those of you who head those committees. 2,200 master's degrees. 4,000 baccalaureate degrees. 71 medical degrees and 235 law degrees. John, I hope all those lawyers support us out there. Of course, we had a new Provost in the spring.

Looking at the construction on the campus, we were lucky to finish the new dormitory as we had planned -- it's not completely finished but 99% of it is. We did Coker 5, constructed and refurbished a tier seating there. Refurbished Wardlaw 126 and Gambrell Hall Auditorium. I haven't been there yet, but we will meet there tomorrow for the Faculty Senate meeting.

The campaign has been going on all summer, and we finished the year as we had planned. We raised $49,000,000. It is not money that we have in hand; some is part of the bequests and some is part of estate trusts. We have also increased the cash. So the campaign so far has raised $85,000,000. The most critical part of the campaign is between now and April, at which time we will announce the official opening of the campaign. We are going to have to raise something like $65,000,000 between now and then. But to give you an idea of where this money we've raised so far is going: $20.2 million is going to scholarships and fellowships, $5 million to faculty development and chairs, $9.7 million to research and equipment, and $33 million to program enhancement. Now, as I said, this is money to come in over a long period of time, but at least it is money that is committed that we can count.

The most encouraging news in the campaign this spring was the fact that we got our campaign leadership in place. Glenn Tilton, the president of Texaco Global Businesses, is our campaign chairman for out-of-state. You know, we have 80,000 alumni living out-of-state. We found over 1,000 CEO's that are USC graduates, and we are looking forward to nurturing them and cultivating them and then soliciting them with enough pressure. Charlie Way, the president of Beach Company and owner of Kiawah Island, has agreed to chair the in-state campaign. That is very important; vice chairmen of the executive committee are Hootie Johnson, who is the chairman of the Executive Committee of NationsBank, and Bob Royall, who as you know is Secretary of Commerce but serves mainly as the chairman of NBSC, and former Governor Robert McNair, of the McNair Law Firm. That is a very powerful in-state committee. We have our work cut out for us to make the necessary 65 or 70 important solicitations between now and April, when we announce the public part of the campaign.

We are concentrating this year mainly on gifts of $100,000 and above. They've got me scheduled for those and hopefully more substantial gifts. We need your help and appreciate any communication. Many deans are involved in this; it is hard work for them as well. We have over 30 people we've hired to help in the campaign to assist the colleges, and there is a lot of cultivating and a lot of information being exchanged. Also important is the Family Fund, and this year's kick-off for the Family Fund will be next Wednesday. We are asking the faculty and staff not just to make a one-year pledge but a five-year pledge. This is not a legally binding pledge. You are not going to be thrown in jail if you don't meet your pledge, but if you have been giving regularly -- and I am so impressed by what you commit -- we want to ask you to give some idea of what you might be able to commit in the next five years. I will be doing that with you. We have been raising around $600,000 per year. You have no idea now important it is when we go to alumni, particularly those out-of-state who haven't been at the University, and they ask about our sources of revenue and who has been giving to the University, and you begin by saying the faculty and staff have been giving at this extraordinary level as compared to other flagship major public institutions. We want to raise about $3,000,000 from our own faculty and staff as part of this five-year pledge and help set the tone for the campaign.

You know that I am in the possession of the tenure and promotion committee blue ribbon report. I met with that committee. Our Provost has met with the deans to go over that report with the recommendations. You can access that report and I hope you do and send your recommendations. We will try to conclude finally what we recommend to you after some more consultation. Jerry might tell you a little bit more about what he has planned there. We also have a report about the Faculty House, and we shared it with the Faculty House Committee and got their responses. Peter Becker has responded to that, and we will be making some recommendations in working with them to see if we can enhance the operation of the Faculty House.

I do want to mention to you what is, I think, our shared concern about the participation in governance by the faculty. The meetings we had in the spring did not attract enough attendance to have a quorum, and there was important business to be conducted. I know that you are committed to the shared governance philosophy this institution has enjoyed. I hope that we can improve the attendance and the participation. If you have recommendations as to things you might want to change to make this a more vibrant operation, I'm sure that the Provost, the new chair of the Faculty Senate, and I would like to hear about that. So if we are not structured right or if the committees are too large or if there are too many meetings, please let us know.

I did submit the minutes to you, but I should have asked you if there were any additions or corrections to the minutes from the last faculty meeting. Are there any additions? Hearing none do I hear a motion made and seconded? All in favor say "aye." Opposed "no." Thank you very much. I will call on the Provost for his report.

II. Report of the Provost.

PROVOST JERRY ODOM:

Thank you, Mr President. Good afternoon, faculty. I have been your provost for 5 ½ months and it has been a very interesting time. It has actually been a lot of things. It's been exciting. It's been hectic. It's been demanding and I feel like a lot of things are going in the right direction. To give you a couple of examples of some interesting things that happened. I spent a week in Fairbanks, Alaska at a Provost's meeting this summer. We are a member of an organization called NASULGC, National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, and I think they decided to move all the provosts out of the lower 48 for a little while this summer. I had a very interesting meeting there and one of the things that I learned very quickly is that the State of South Carolina is being watched and by provosts and presidents and legislatures all over this country to see how performance funding is going to go here. I'll say a few more words about that in a minute.

Also, I had the opportunity to spend several days in St. Croix this summer. We are looking at the possibility of establishing a tropical marine laboratory in St. Croix that offers possibilities for a number of units on campus. We have a seventy-five year lease on 14 beautiful, undeveloped acres on St. Croix. It is up to us to decide if we want to use that land and how we want to use it for a tropical marine lab. There was a marine laboratory there that was associated with Fairleigh Dickenson University. That lab no longer exists and we have the opportunity to reestablish a facility there if we would like to do that.

To tell you how this job can be exciting, I have just spent 2 hours this afternoon with Matthew Bruccoli going through the F. Scott Fitzgerald collection that Matt and Arlyn Bruccoli have placed with our library. To go through that with Matt and have him relate some of the personal recollections that he has and show me some of the very interesting books and newspapers and galley proofs was very exciting.. I think I probably saw my first set of galley proofs today that are worth, according to Matt, a quarter of a million dollars. So it has been a very interesting time.

We have begun a very promising year with respect to our incoming students - our freshmen. Those of you who were able to attend the new student convocation a couple of weeks ago saw that the Koger Auditorium was totally full of freshmen and their parents and I think everybody was very excited. The quality of our incoming student is certainly increasing. The quality of our reputation as a university is growing. To give you some examples of that, in 1991 we received 7,000 applications for admission to the freshman class. This past year we received over 10,000 applications. We have almost 3,000 students. We have 2,986 (today) freshmen. Our SAT scores are about 13 points higher than last year. They are right at 1100. The projected GPA as well as their high school GPA is higher. Our honors freshmen have an average SAT score of, I think, 1356. Our Carolina Scholars scores are up around 1450. We have just an incredible freshmen class and I have already talked to some of you about having taught those students, some of the Honors classes in particular and how exciting they are and how good you feel about the quality of the students that we have here. We have a waiting list for our Honors College right now that is substantial. We have 41 National Merit Scholars this year--14 more than last year. We have 7 National Achievement Finalists. The University of South Carolina had more members of the All-State Academic team than any other school in the state and in fact any other school period. In the past a lot of students going to Duke and Emory and Virginia, but this time we led every school in the number of students attending. In some of my travels through the state, I have found that people feel very, very good about the University of South Carolina--about what we are doing, what we are trying to do, and where we are going.

In terms of deans' searches and positions, I was really pleased this summer to be able to name Marcia Welsh of our faculty as the new Associate Provost and Dean of the Graduate School. Bruce Coull was named the Dean of the School of the Environment. We're happy to have both of those individuals on board and I look forward to working with them.

As you know we have a number of deans' searches that are currently underway. The School of Public Health and the School of Pharmacy have both been underway for some time.

The College of Science and Mathematics has recently had their search committee constituted and is now beginning work under their chair Craig Rogers who is Dean of the College of Engineering. The College of Liberal Arts had a special called meeting last week where we set the ballot. The ballots are due Friday and we will constitute that committee very quickly. We also are working on setting up the committee for the College of Education. So several deans' searches will be underway this year.

Performance funding is a complicated situation. This past year, on the basis of 14 performance indicators, the University scored a total of 67 of 70 points. We received a grade of 96. It was then scaled back to a grade of 89. Everybody was scaled back except the technical colleges and I don't understand why some were and some weren't. But that is what makes it complicated. But we did very well. It will result in some new money for us. The legislature set aside this year $4.6 million in new money and we will receive a portion of that which we estimated and included in our budget this year. We had counted on that money. In 1998-1999 we will address eight new performance indicators. I think you would be interested in what they are. They include:

1. Expenditure of funds to achieve institutional mission.

2. Adoption of a strategic plan to support the mission statement. I will be working with the deans. We may do it a little bit different in terms of how we do strategic plans this year. You will hear more about that as the year goes along.

3. Performance review system for faculty to include student and peer evaluations.

4. Availability of faculty to students outside the classroom which is a question included on student teaching evaluation forms or should be at this point.

5. Entrance requirements of the student body. The high school standing, the grade point average, and the activities of the student in high school. This year we have already been judged on SAT or ACT scores.

6. We will be judged this year on graduation rate.

7. We will be judged on credit hours earned of students who graduate.

8. We will be judged on financial support for reform in teacher education.

Those are the eight performance indicators this year that will give a total of 22 performance indicators. In the year 1999-2000 15 more indicators will be phased in for a total of 37. At that time all of the funding for higher education will be determined by these performance indicators. Two of things that I am most interested in working on this year are faculty workload which will be a part of performance indicators and the other is space utilization. Our Registrar's office has recently obtained some new software that, along with the data base in the Facilities office will allow us to very closely examine how space is used over the period of a day. This will include the size of the space and the number of students in that space. I will be working with Richard Bayer and Charlie Jeffcoat and other people to look at space utilization.

Finally, I appreciate what you have done for the last year to help us in terms of recruiting these undergraduate students. The faculty were very involved in that. People who made phone calls, who arranged visits to classes, all of those things that made a big difference. I urge you to continue to help us. I have a really good feeling from people in the State about how they view the University. The perception is changing. I had an occasion on Friday to have breakfast with Jim Hodges, a legislator who will perhaps be the Democratic candidate for Governor. He feels very good about the University. I then had lunch with Billy Boan a real friend of this University and a person I think that is willing to help us even more in the future.

I would be more than happy to answer any questions before I ask the deans to introduce our new faculty. In the absence of questions we can introduce the new faculty to you.

The following new faculty were introduced by the deans of the colleges:

College of Business Administration -Dean David Schrock

Dr. Martin Roth - Marketing

Dr. Melayne McInnes - Economics

Dr. William Morrison - Economics

College of Education - Interim Dean Harvey Allen

Dr. Deborah Curry - Department of Educational Leadership and Policies

Dr. Timothy Letzring - Department of Educational Leadership and Policies

Dr. Susi Long - Department of Instruction and Teacher Education

Dr. Vicki Newman - Department of Educational Leadership and Policies

Dr. Michael Sutton - Department of Educational Leadership and Policies

College of Engineering - Associate Dean Joseph Gibbons

Chemical Engineering

Dr. Victor Giurgiutiu

Civil Engineering

Dr. Hanif Chaudhry (Washington State University)

Dr.Sarah Gassman (Northwestern University)

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Dr. Asif Khan (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Mechanical Engineering

Dr. Sarah Baxter (University of Virginia)

College of Journalism

Dr. August Grant

Dr. Richard Peterson

College of Liberal Arts - Dr. Blease Graham

Department of Anthropology

Dr. Laura Ahearn (University of Michigan)

Dr. Faye V. Harrison (Anthropology and Women's Studies) - (Stanford University)

Department of Art

Robert Lyon (Temple University)

Dr. Minuette Byers Floyd (Florida State University)

Dr. David Streible (University of Texas at Austin)

Department of English

Dr. Martin Bruckner (Brandeis University)

Dr. Susan Courtney (University of California at Berkeley)

Dr. Janet Sylvester (University of Utah)

Department of French and Classics

Dr. Jeanne Garane (University of Michigan)

Departmennt of Germanic, Slavic and Oriental Languages

Dr. Nicholas Vazsonyi (University of California at Los Angeles)

Dr. Junko Baba (University of Texas at Austin)

Department of Government and International Studies

Dr. Melissa J. Marschall

Department of Philosophy

Dr. Christopher Tollefsen (University of New York at Stoney Brook)

Department of Sociology

Dr. Andre Mizell (Ohio State University)

Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese

Dr. Darrell Dernoshek (University of Pittsburgh)

Library and Information Services - Dr. George Terry, Vice Provost and Dean:

Brian Cuthrell (South Caroliniana Library) - USC College of Library & Info Sc.

Robin Copp (South Caroliniana Library) - USC College of Library & Info Sc.

Christine Whitaker (Thomas Cooper Library) - University of Kentucky

Cynthia Kent (Thomas Cooper Library) - University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Michael Macan (Thomas Cooper Library) - Rutgers University

School of Law - Dean John Montgomery

Robert Jacoby (Law School Library)

School of Music - Dean Dorothy Payne:

Gail Barnes (Ohio State University)

Walter Cuttino (Cincinnati Conservatory College of Music)

College of Nursing - Dean Mary Ann Parsons:

Dr. Wanda Anderson-Lofton (Medical College of Georgia)

Dr. Deborah Bechtel-Blackwell (University of Texas at Austin)

College of Pharmacy - Interim Dean Farid Sadik:

Dr. Charlotte Luebert

School of Public Health - Intermin Dean Diane Ward:

Dr. Elizabeth Mayer-Davis (University of California - Berkeley)

Dr. Stuart R. Lipsitz (Harvard University)

Dr. Donald S. Cooper (Visiting Professor for 1-year)

College of Science and Mathematics - Interim Dean Roger Sawyer:

Department of Biochemistry

Dr. Uwe Bunz

Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Dr. Ken Zemizu

Department of Geological Sciences

Dr. Michael Howell (USC - Geological Sciences)

Dr. Raymond Torres

Department of Physics and Astronomy

Dr. David Tebeschi

College of Social Work

Dr. Frederick Buttell (University of Alabama)

Dr. Jo Ann Coe

PROVOST ODOM - That does remind me that I should tell you that after a tenure and promotion blue ribbon panel meeting, I discovered that the Provost Office did not have a homepage. The Provost Office does have a homepage now thanks to Jane Olsgaard. Thank you so much. If any faculty member is interested in seeing the report of the blue ribbon tenure and promotion committee and its recommendations to the President, you can access that on the Provost's homepage. Just be careful about all of pictures of Olsgaard and Greiner. Anything else?

PRESIDENT PALMS:

Thank you, Jerry. I want to add another word of welcome. It is really impressive to see the qualifications of our new faculty coming on board. It is really challenging for us that you place your trust in this institution. We are an institution on a roll, but just beginning to roll.

We have a lot of things going at the same time. But we have stuck our neck out a little bit with some of the goals that we set.

I want to congratulate John and the School of Law for getting out of the third tier and into the second tier of law schools at least in U.S. News and World Report. LSAT's are up. The job success rate is high, and we are in a new group of institutions in that particular tier of law schools.

Also, David, congratulations for still being no. 2 in the nation with the master's of international business studies program. We are still the only public school in the top five as far as a master's degree of international business, which says a great deal about your faculty and the kind of students you are recruiting as well.

We do have a tremendous challenge. We are proud of this freshman class. We have 750 students who are on merit scholarship. About 4 years ago, we had about 300. It is costing us almost $3 more million dollars to do that. To become a first rate institution is not cheap. The kind of deans that we are trying to recruit and the kind of packages that they expect are mind- boggling. We need more support. We are trying to work with the Legislature even in addition to these performance parameters to try to get additional resources. The one thing that has been encouraging is that the peer institutions we have been allowed to name for comparison by the CHE are the institutions that we are inspired to be more alike. They are looking at the average faculty salaries and support for graduate students and scholarships, and all of that hopefully will be used as the comparison schools that we will be gauged against. But at least people in the Legislature know what our ambitions are. I am hearing the word AAU more frequently from the Board of Trustees and alumni because they have been reading about this. Now we must muster the resources for this goal.

We are being watched. Jerry and I have been to New York a number of times, and we have met with an important foundations, and we would like to have recognition through major grants, contracts, or projects. We met with the Mellon Foundation. We met with the Sloan Foundation. We met with the Carnegie Foundation. We talk about our objectives, and then they want to see some evidence. We can show that our library has been ranked 54th. We made a lot of progress in our SAT scores, and the quality of our faculty, and the kind of standards and criteria we have adopted. We also mention our minority enrollment and the fact that we are one of the top schools in the country in graduating minority students. They perk up. They are hearing more about the University of South Carolina, and we have been encouraged. We have been invited to submit proposals to help us with our research programs, with our economic development programs in the state, trying to raise the per capita income, which is often tied to research, teaching universities. We need to be talked about in that group of foundations as well as among those institutions that are already AAU members. Thank you for working so hard to help us recruit this class and these new faculty and keep us going with this wonderful momentum that we have collectively acquired in the last 4 or 5 years.

Do I have any reports of any faculty committees? Remember, tomorrow we have a Senate meeting. If you are a senator, please commit yourself to that meeting.

III. Old Business.

PRESIDENT PALMS - Any old business that we have not discussed?

IV. New Business

None.

V. Good of the Order.

PROFESSOR JOHN SAFKO - (PHYSICS and ASTRONOMY ) On behalf of the few of us who are here just as faculty members who have been around for more than just being our first year I would like to apologize for those faculty members who are not in attendance. I know some are teaching classes but I can't believe that everyone else who isn't here is teaching a class.

PRESIDENT PALMS - Well it could be a good sign -- maybe everyone's busy -- but we need enough attendance to get the business done. Do I hear a motion to adjourn? So moved. All in favor say, " aye." Opposed, "no." Look forward to seeing you here at the reception. Thank you.

This page updated 20 April 1998 by the Office of the Faculty Senate,
and copyright 1998, The Board of Trustees of the University of South Carolina.
URL http://www.sc.edu/faculty/general/97/minutes/0902.min.html