Peabody Faculty Council Meeting

Peabody Faculty Council Meeting Minutes of Meeting February 4, 2010

Members Present: Paul Speer, Rogers Hall, Dan Levin, Rich Milner, Craig Smith, Steve Heyneman, Jim Hogge. Absent are Donna Ford, Brian Griffith, Georgene Troseth, and Camilla Benbow.

Chair Paul Speer called the meeting to order. Prior minutes were approved. Speer notes minutes will be posted on a new web site, also the Faculty Council constitution. Rich Milner suggests putting a brief description of each committee on the web site; for Faculty Affairs, concerns should be taken directly to the departmental representative.

Paul mentions that FC minutes will be read by NCATE, in the near term.

Committee Status Updates

Dan Levin (Academic Standards) reports a brief survey of what other universities are doing with math requirements (US News and World Report cohort). Stanford requires no math, but they have a general science requirement (can include math). NYU has broad set of courses available to non-math majors (e.g., quantitative reasoning, elementary stats, number theory). These sound like non-calculus mathematics classes. Columbia Teachers College has worked with the mathematics department to discuss the issue, perhaps to modify existing courses.

Rogers Hall asks, and it turns out the “liberal core” is determined by the college, not the university. As contrastive examples, undergraduates in P&HD might benefit more from a statistics course than from a pre-calculus course, but undergraduates in elementary education might not. Craig Smith reports that P&HD faculty voted to allow a second stats course to count for the undergraduate mathematics requirement in the liberal core.

Donna Ford (absent, Diversity), by Paul Speer’s report, is working on a survey of the quality of graduate student life at Peabody. The survey is broadly inclusive, covering different subgroups of students and different aspects of university life. Heyneman asks if FC can review the survey, to make sure broad issues are in the survey. He would like to know how non-US nationals see the graduate student experience.

Curriculum Committee (Craig Smith) has no new business. The next cycle will be the last one for catalog copy, and Craig will alert chairs and DGS’s to this.

Rich Milner (Faculty Affairs) reports the committee is reviewing practice faculty reviewing guidelines. All have responded by P&HD. Some departments have not distributed the guidelines, so the survey nudged them to do so. Other departments have mentoring committees in place. FA members feel there is a need to change the college culture around practice faculty review. Goldring (Chair, LPO) has proposed college meetings concerning review for Lecturers, Practices and tenure-track faculty (separately; initiated from the Dean’s office). Heyneman observes that on review committees, candidates would benefit from seeing examples of successful review, in order to think about their own activities and dossier preparation.

Dean Hogge shares the history of efforts to broaden the guidelines over the past several years. In recent cases, practice faculty candidates have looked similar to tenure-track faculty dossiers. Heyneman shares that he is reviewing exemplary cases that look very different from tenure-track faculty. Hogge will look forward to seeing these.

On the issue of systematizing faculty concerns, guarding faculty from retaliation, but also not creating problems where they do not exist. The new web site is one avenue, as well as encouraging faculty to speak with their FC representatives.

Nothing from Research (Heyneman).

McClendon and Dickinson (DTL) visit to share a proposal for a new MA program for Teaching and Learning in Urban Settings. This has come together quickly without usual cycles of FC input. This process started last summer, in conversation with Metro Super, Jesse Register. The original idea was to create a “research consortium” that would position Peabody and Metro for Race to the Top federal resources. Register also asked for a MA program that would train and recruit teachers into Metro. DTL faculty, led by Dickinson have pushed this forward, in conversation with Register.

After a period of dormancy, during which Peabody was passed over on state and national conversations about Race to the Top, Register has come back with funds in place to start this year. There is some urgency around this, and FC is asked to review and endorse the proposal, in principle. Heyneman asks where the money will come from, and McClendon expects either Metro operating budget or private donations that will be associated with named fellowships. VU will give a 33% discount on tuition. Dean asks about the students’ point of view: they pay no tuition, but agree to teach in the district for 5 years. Peabody owns admission, but Metro selects candidates they would hire. The result would be the first cohort. These students will be clustered in a small set of schools, with hand-selected principals and instructional programs geared to support the MA program.

David Dickinson (DTL chair) notes there is a small budget for evaluation, and this will be very important. New practice faculty searches are underway to support the program. Heyneman expects the nub of the issue will come down to whether or not Peabody is seen as a place to create master teachers for urban environments, not just deep subject matter content. On the issue of coordination, Register has agreed to appoint a liaison in the district. Rogers Hall and then Steve Heyneman ask about relative timelines of the college and the new Metro super. How do they influence each other? Heyneman further asks what we can do, what partnerships we can forge, that will extend beyond Metro leadership? McClendon shares that a year out, he expects observers will ask, “Why didn’t we do this, sooner?” There is risk, but this is worth it for the college. David Dickinson shares that Metro is in a hurry, particularly on math and science. There is great value in creating schools and classrooms in schools where innovating teaching is possible. Heyneman further recommends gathering strong evaluation data and partnering with another city organization that can support the effort, beyond current district leadership.

Donna Ford comments on this as a “breakthrough” initiative. Metro teachers have told her that Peabody students pass through without making a lasting contribution, and this has created resentments. This college, as a result, is profoundly disconnected from local schools. This is potentially a big change. She also notes that public housing projects are part of many faculty members’ commutes, but there is no relation there, either. She questions why there was resistance to the LDUS MA program, which seems similar. She also asks why she has not been consulted on this program, given her area of research. The Gates Foundation report in 2008 shows African American students dropping out, because they have poor relations with their teachers, and they are turned off by the curriculum. David Dickinson responds by inviting Donna Ford’s participation, noting that Rich Milner’s involvement in LDUS is expanding rapidly.

Donna Ford shares the experience of a recent Peabody graduate in secondary math, who feels that he was not adequately prepared to teach in a local, high poverty school. Heyneman responds that these new programs need to support the development of teachers who will make a career in schools like these. Partnering with local teachers and community organizations with “street cred” will support this, as will gathering strong, longitudinal evaluation data. Donna points out that since 80% of Metro is African American, there needs to be a substantial focus on the experiences of these people, not general-purpose “seminars.” There must be Black people at the table in the design and implementation of this program.

Rich Milner notes that part of the response should be how students are admitted into these programs, including students who do not have particularly strong GRE scores. Donna Ford further proposes that the admissions criteria at least yield cohorts that reflect the racial diversity of current teachers in Metro. David Dickinson agrees that diversity of the cohort will be a high priority, and there are already plans for outreach efforts and recruiting from liberal colleges across the nation.

Paul Speer summarizes: (1) What is needed from FC, procedurally? (2) What forms of feedback would you like from faculty in the college?

Craig Smith notes that these courses can be run for as much as two years without FC curriculum approval. Paul Speer asks if this is a new degree, and it is not. Rogers Hall asks about the relation to the recently approved and growing LDUS program (non-licensure), and that is not yet clear.

FC unanimously agrees to approve the proposal. The meeting was adjourned.