Draft Revision on "Conflict of Commitment"

 

Definitions and Background

"Conflict of commitment" refers to faculty members engaging in more outside work than is appropriate given full time employment at Mills.

When there are questions about what “appropriate” means in a given case, the Provost has to decide. The Provost routinely deals with a few cases each semester. The current language in the faculty handbook provides limited guidance about what is appropriate and what should be done when there is a problem or disagreement. Section 2.13.2 reads:

2 POLICIES > 2.13 ACAD RESP > 2.13.2 Outside Employment-Consulting

Full-time members of the Faculty of Mills College are expected to devote their full professional energies to their duties at the College. A member of the Faculty wishing to engage in continuing remunerative activity outside the College during the academic year must inform the Provost/Dean of the Faculty in writing. If such activities adversely affect the faculty member's performance at the College, then the Provost/Dean of the Faculty shall require that such outside activity be terminated.

Considerations

We recognize in this issue tensions among institutional benefits (visibility, enhanced skills of faculty, networking that can benefit students, etc.), individual benefits (a faculty member’s right to manage her or his own time, need for outside income), equity issues that arise when one’s relative unavailability shifts work onto colleagues, the free-riding that emerges when the task of making the college feel for students like faculty are around falls disproportionately on some, etc., challenges to morale and solidarity that can emerge when there is high variance in how we fulfill our duties as faculty members.

In our continuing effort to strengthen faculty role in shared governance, we agree with the Provost’s suggestion that the faculty handbook should provide her with more guidance about the faculty’s collective sense of what we expect from ourselves in terms of a full time commitment as well as guidance in what she should be able to do to encourage conformity to our standards and expectations.

The Faculty Executive Committee has had initial discussions with the Provost and among its members but before proceeding further we wish to hear our colleagues’ thoughts on this topic. To provoke your feedback, we present a very preliminary draft revision of the above section of the handbook (based on a draft by Provost Greer and revisions by the FEC).

Draft Revision

Sometimes a Mills faculty member has an opportunity for outside paid work, simultaneous with employment at Mills. This work is often consulting or teaching at another college or university. The flexibility of the Mills schedule can allow for such activities, but an important consideration is the drain of time and energy away from the primary commitment to Mills College and its students.

Therefore it is the policy at Mills College that a tenured or tenure-track faculty member may work outside of the College for at most two work days per month during the academic year, or can teach at most one three-hour course per academic semester at another academic institution. Faculty members are required to inform the Provost and Dean of the Faculty of such work, in writing, before each episode of work commences. The Provost will respond, either approving or not approving. If the work is approved, the faculty member still has all the responsibilities listed in the Faculty Handbook, section 2.13.1, including availability during Orientation, presence at all class meetings and posted office hours, attendance at departmental, divisional, committee, and faculty meetings and at Convocation and Commencement.

If the faculty member accepts and persists in the outside work without the approval of the Provost, then that faculty member can be subject to disciplinary action, as outlined in the Faculty Handbook, sections 2.10.5,2.10.6, to 2.10.7.

Resources

1. AAUP. 2004. "Faculty Employment Outside of the University: Conflicts of Commitment" 
2. Barnard College. "Policy on Conflict of Interest and Commitment."
3. Drummond, William J."Don't Ask, Don't Tell: Evolution of the UC Conflict of Commitment Policy." Research & Occasional Paper Series, Center for Studies in Higher Education. University of California, Berkeley 
4. Harvard University School of Medicine. A concise statement on conflict of commitment.
5. University of California. Conflict of Commitment and Outside Activities of Faculty Members (see also "Berkeley Campus Procedures for Conflict of Interest/Conflict of Commitment Cases")

DRAFT Motion and Implemention Language on College 60s

Motion

Effective with the 2010-2011 College Catalog, the general education requirement “Interdisciplinary Perspectives” and its fulfillment by Coll 060 sophomore seminar (p. 12 in 2009-10 catalog) is rescinded.

Further:

The Educational Policy Subcommittee of the Faculty Executive Committee is charged, in coordination with other appropriate faculty committees and the Provost’s Office, to study alternative programming for sophomores and to examine whether the Interdisciplinary Requirement, in some other form, should be included as part of the College’s general education program.  Target date for initial report second faculty meeting of fall 2010 so that details could be worked out in time for inclusion in 2011-12 budget and catalog.

Rationale, Background, Implementation

1. Summary of Effect
1. 2009-2010 will be the final academic year in which students must satisfy the Interdisciplinary Requirement by taking a Coll 60 seminar; after this year, the Interdisciplinary Requirement and its fulfillment by a College 60 seminar are both hereby ended.
2. After the current semester no Mills student will be required to fulfill interdisciplinary perspectives by taking a College 60 course.
3. A student who is currently enrolled in a college 60 course but fails to complete it satisfactorily will not need to fulfill a general education requirement
4. Any student who will graduate in May 2010 but for some reason has not completed this requirement will be relieved of need to fulfill it.
5. Current college 60s will remain on the books for next academic year. Instructors may convert them into departmental courses or not.
2. BACKGROUND & MOTIVATION
1. Evidence suggests that as it has been implemented, the rationale for this requirement has been unsuccessfully articulated to students.
2. COLL60s have proven exceptionally difficult to field with regularity
3. Ongoing question among faculty about institutional support in the form of full funding commitment.  Replacement policy not perceived as consistent.
4. Hiring adjuncts to teach courses that are supposedly at core of curriculum
5. Members of APT repeatedly note that student evaluations of instructors seem consistently lower than other courses.
6. Some faculty members take the position that no single instructor can teach “interdisciplinarily.” Others disagree noting that this depends on idea that individuals are by definition single disciplinary.
3. Costs and Benefits.   
1. Anticipated budgetary impact.  We have usually needed to field approximately 12 COLL60s per year.  Assuming recent numbers of ~25% taught by full time and 75% part-time (or full time with replacement) puts annual effective instructional cost is on the order of $120,000 per year.  COLL 60s also represent a cost in additional advising, administration (provost office fielding them, GenEd committee fielding and vetting them, MCenter tracking requirement fulfillment).
2. Other costs and benefits.  Perception/reality of unpopularity with students.  Perception/reality of lower teaching evaluations.  Departments which do not receive course replacements have a decrease in course offerings.  To the degree that the courses are not, or are not recognized as, interdisciplinary, the experience may undermines our efforts to foster appreciation of interdisciplinarity.
4. New GE List.  From the end of this semester the general education requirements will be
1. Skills
1. Written Communication (2)
2. Quantitative and Computational Reasoning
3. Information Literacy
2. Perspectives
1. Women and Gender
2. Multicultural
3. Disciplinary Experiences
1. Creation and Criticism in the Arts
2. Historical
3. Natural Sciences
4. Human Institutions
5. CATALOG CHANGES (page numbers refers to 2009-2010 edition)
1.  p.11 column two: strike ", while the COLL 060 interdisciplinary seminar program gives each student the chance to work closely with one or two professors in an intensive collaborative classroom."
2.  p.12 column one: strike first paragraph under "Perspectives" from "Interdisciplinary..." to "...12.75 semester credits or more."
3. p. 13 column one: under "General Education (GE) Requirement" change "The 11-course (10-credit) GE ..." to "The 10-course (9-credit) GE..."
4. p. 13 column one: under "General Education (GE) Requirement" strike final sentence : "COLL 060 must be taken as a sophomore."
5. p. 14 same changes as above under "Bachelor of Science(BS) Degree Requirements"
6. p. 83 "Although College 060 courses do not count toward a student's major, as with all general education (GE) courses, a College 060 may fulfill a second GE requirement in addition to the interdisciplinary requirement."
7. pp.83-88 Remove "Interdisciplinary Perspectives" from "Meets the following GE requirement(s)" for each course.  In some cases this will mean removing the designation altogether.
8. pp.83-88 Remove "Sophomores have priority in registration" from all courses in this section.
6. BANNER CHANGES
1. Remove "Interdisciplinary Perspectives" from list of GE requirements
2. Remove "Interdisciplinary Perspectives" from all courses with COLL prefix
3. Update MAP generating programming to reflect change
7. ISSUES
1. PROCESS.  "Isn't changing a requirement violates principle of Catalog as contract?” In general we proceed on the assumption that we may not change the degree requirements after students have begun their education at Mills. The position of the FEC is that while this may apply to adding NEW requirements, it does not apply to taking requirements away. In addition, the former existence of a requirement is not a promise to make a particular course or type of course available.And, further , we have not located an college policy or legal opinion that would prevent the rescission of a requirement.
2. FAIRNESS.  “Isn't changing requirement after some have already fulfilled it is fundamentally unfair to those who have already done a College 60?”  This is a reasonable question in connection with a policy change like this.  After thinking it through, we don't think it should be an impediment to change in this case.  While any requirement can be perceived as a burden borne, neither this requirement nor the classes that fulfilled it were mere hoops to jump through. The courses were among the more creative ones faculty have offered, were extremely intellectually diverse, and appear to have been worthwhile educational endeavors to the students who took them. To side with the idea that those who opted to delay fulfilling this requirement “getting away with something” while others have to "pay a price" would be to take the position that the courses were a waste of time and that the opportunity cost of taking them far outweighs their educational benefit.   Our conclusion is that this is not the case.
3. INTER-DISCIPLINARITY.  We stand by the principle of interdisciplinarity and the value it adds to the liberal arts curriculum. We hold, however, that it may not make sense to locate it in the curriculum at a point when students are essentially pre-disciplinary.
4. We acknowledge that our academic program – and retention in particular – may be well served by a “sophomore experience” and we are committed to investigating alternative approaches, both academic and non-academic, to providing same.