TO THE MEMBERS OF
THE ACADEMIC COUNCIL
THIRTY-SIXTH SENATE
Report No. 5

SUMMARY OF ACTIONS, JAN. 22

At its meeting on Thursday, January 22, 2004, the Thirty-sixth Senate of the Academic Council heard reports and took the following actions:

1. By unanimous voice vote, conferred baccalaureate degrees on the Fall Quarter degree candidates listed in SenD#5538, as recommended by the Committee on Undergraduate Standings and Policy.

2. By unanimous voice vote, also conferred the various advanced degrees on the Fall Quarter candidates listed in SenD#5539, as recommended by the committee on Graduate Studies.

3. The Senate passed on a unanimous voice vote the resolution for emeritus faculty to have a standing seat (without voting privileges) serving on the Faculty Senate of the Academic Council

4. Upon recommendation of the Committee on Graduate Studies, the Thirty-sixth Senate by voice vote, unanimously passed the following resolution:

The Senate authorizes the Executive Committee on Interdisciplinary Program in Modern Thought and Literature be reauthorized to nominate candidates for the Master of Arts,
co-terminal Master of Arts, and Doctor of Philosophy degrees for five years, effective September 1, 2005 through August 31, 2010.

EDWARD D. HARRIS, JR., M.D.

Academic Secretary to the University

MINUTES, JAN. 22

I. Call to Order

Conscious of his colleagues' determination to leave by 5:15 pm for the Stanford-UCLA men's basketball game at Maples Pavilion, Chairman Wasow gaveled the Senate to order at 3:15 p.m., just as the last essential senator to reach a quorum sauntered in. He began "by sending best wishes for speedy recoveries to our fellow senators Mark Horowitz and Al Hastorf, who aren't able to be here due to recent surgeries." He also welcomed the new ASSU representative, Alyssa Schwartz, who waved pleasantly from the back row. There were 40 senators, 10 ex officios and numerous guests present.

II. Approval of Minutes (SenD #5528) http://facultysenate.stanford.edu

There were no additions to these (almost two month old) minutes, and they were approved unanimously.

III. Action Calendar

A powerful function of the Senate, approval of the list of candidates for degrees, is a routine of the first meeting of each quarter. The candidates below completed degree requirements during the fall term.

A. From C-USP, The List of Candidates for Baccalaureate Degrees (SenD #5538) was approved with warm enthusiasm, unanimously.

B. From C-GS, The List of Candidates for Advanced Degrees (SenD#5539) was approved with equal enthusiasm, unanimously.

C. Succession of Emeritus Standing Seat in the Faculty Senate (SenD#5533). Chairman Wasow noted that "This resolution comes moved and seconded by the Senate steering committee and is self-explanatory." It reads:

WHEREAS it has been deemed useful for emeritus faculty to have a standing seat (without voting privileges) serving on the Faculty Senate of the Academic Council, the following plan for succession of the emeritus delegate and alternate delegate will be instituted.

*An Emeritus Advisory Council (EAC) formed of the standing delegate to the Senate, the alternate delegate, and five additional emeritus members, will act as an Executive Committee of emeritus faculty, with responsibilities for generating programs for emeritus faculty, for making recommendations for action to the Academic Secretary or to the Steering Committee, and for nominating emeritus/emerita colleagues for succession on the Senate as the alternate delegate. Each EAC will determine the mechanism for choosing the five non-delegate members of the EAC.

* A slate of no fewer than five emeritus faculty will be presented to the steering committee by the EAC for ratification. With Steering Committee approval, that slate will be forward to the Committee on Committees, which will choose one nominee to serve as the alternate delegate to the next year's Faculty Senate. The chosen alternate will then ascend to the standing delegate position during his or her second year of service.

Appreciative of the maturity and broad experience that the emeriti bring to Senate proceedings, the senators voted unanimously and without question to approve this resolution.

IV. Standing Reports

A. Memorial Resolution

Hubert Hultgren (1917-1997) SenD#5531). The Chair welcomed Professor William Hancock, professor emeritus of Medicine, Cardiology, to present a memorial statement in honor of Herbert N. Hultgren. The full memorial resolution was included in Senate packets and will be published in next week's Stanford Report. Bill Hancock began:

Mr. Chair, It is my honor to present a memorial resolution for Dr. Herbert Hultgren, who died several years ago at the age of 80. Dr. Hultgren had a very long career at Stanford, beginning as an undergraduate in 1936. He graduated in 1939, and finished Medical School in 1943. After several years of advanced training, he joined the faculty of medicine in 1947, where he was the first director of cardiology and was the first physician to specialize in cardiology at Stanford. Those were the days when the medical school was in San Francisco.

Herb Hultgren moved to the Stanford campus with the Medical School move in 1959, and in 1968, transferred to the Palo Alto Veterans Hospital, where he had a further long period as head of the Cardiology division there.

In his long career, Herb Hultgren achieved national recognition in three different areas of cardiology research. First was the period of the development of cardiac surgery and valvular and congenital heart disease; second was high altitude physiology and high altitude medicine, interests that meshed with his lifelong interest in mountaineering and about which he wrote a wonderful text, and third, in his later years, the coronary bypass surgery evaluation system, where he was a pioneer in a large scale controlled clinical trials which were innovative then, but were very familiar now. Professor Hultgren was a consummate clinician and very well beloved teacher, especially in bedside one-to-one teaching, which he favored as the preferred method of medical teaching.

On behalf of the committee consisting of Dr. Herbert Abrams, Dr. Norman Shumway, and myself, I am pleased to offer this memorial resolution to the Senate.

The Senate stood for a long and generous moment of silence.

Chairman Wasow thanked Professor Hancock [who had set a new standard by delivering his comments and resolution without using notes!] and then welcomed Karen Wigen, Associate Professor of History, to present a brief memorial statement in honor of Jeffrey Mass. The full memorial resolution was included in the Senate packets and will be published in next week's Stanford Report.

Jeffrey Mass (1940-2001) (SenD#5439). Professor Wigen began:

Jeffrey P. Mass, Yamato Ichihashi Professor of Japanese History and Civilization, died at Stanford University Hospital on March 30th, 2001, at the young age of 60. As the first foreigner to master medieval Japanese documents, Mass transformed western understandings of the institutional and legal lovers of warrior rule. He was widely recognized as the leading scholar of medieval Japan outside of Japan and, in fact, held a concurrent appointment as visiting Professor at Oxford for the last 15 years of his life.

Jeffrey Mass reshaped his field as much through mentoring of numerous students as through writing his numerous books, and he was hands-down the most productive scholar in his field. His untimely death has deprived the campus of a prolific scholar and devoted teacher.

Mr. Chairman, it is an honor to lay before the Senate of the Academic Council a resolution in memory of Jeffrey Mass, Professor of Japanese history and civilization. Thank you.

Wasow invited the Senate to stand for the traditional moment of silence. He thanked Dr. Wigen, who had filled in for Melinda Takeuchi, Professor of Art and Art History, in presenting the resolution.

B. Steering Committee

Tom Wasow noted that the Steering Committee had "asked the Academic Secretary to assemble a small committee to conduct a review of the apportionment by school of the 55 representatives that comprise the Senate. This full review is mandated to occur every ten years. I am pleased to report that the membership suggested by the Steering Committee has agreed to serve on this committee. Members are Saul Rosenberg, Emeritus Professor of Medicine; Nancy Tuma, Professor of Sociology; Roger Printup, Registrar; and Trish Del Pozzo, Assistant Academic Secretary." Because Dr. Rosenberg was a member of the last group to do this in 1998, he will be asked to chair the meeting(s) (one or two should be sufficient) of the group and to present recommendations at a Senate meeting early in spring quarter."

As for future Senate agenda items, Wasow mentioned that "Unfortunately, the PACSWF report listed for March 4th has been postponed due to staffing issues that have delayed completing the analysis." The reports on Faculty Gains and Losses, and the Status of Women Faculty will be given as scheduled that day. He added, "Be sure also to note on your calendars that following the February 19th Senate meeting, we will convene the winter quarter informal Executive Session in the faculty lounge."

C. Committee on Committees

Wasow noted that the CoC would begin the regular committee appointing sessions next week. Professor Arnetha Ball, chair of CoC, had no report to deliver today.

D. Reports from the President and Provost

President Hennessy said "I have no report, Mr. Chair, but I'd be happy to answer any questions." He and Professor Simoni then agreed that Stanford would win the basketball game this evening, but the President predicted a close game. [For those who do not know the outcome, Stanford beat UCLA by ~15 points, being 22 ahead at half time, and is ranked #2 in the country.] That triggered a query from Vice Provost Jones: "I have a question whether President Hennessy has assumed the official title of flag waver for the University. Apparently at the end of the last game against Cal, which was, of course, a victory, you grabbed the flag and led the Sixth Man Club in a cheer!"

The President cheerfully admitted that he had done this, impetuously, but that it was not a permanent part of his responsibilities, adding that "There was some rumor that if I didn't show active support for the basketball team, the AP coaches poll would not raise us up to the rank of #2. And my actions must be characterized as 'controlled irrational exuberance.' I didn't run around the whole court!"

Provost Etchemendy reported on the resolution of the "...little brouhaha over the payment for CourseWork, our very popular Course Management System that was developed in-house and is now supported by Mike Keller and colleagues. The grant funding from the Mellon Foundation that helped support the development and the ongoing support of it has run out, and so we have to figure out exactly how to support it from now until we end up with a replacement product, which we are currently in the process of developing in a consortium with some other universities."

"The money for support is going to have to come out of general funds in some way or other; either I just pay for it directly or I ask schools to pay for it based on usage out of their general funds. My suggesting this caused great outrage among some faculty who claimed that it should be paid for in some way that has no effect on the schools. The facts are that if I pay for it directly, then it still is money that doesn't go to the schools.

"What we decided is to have Academic Computing provide basic 'back-of-the-house' computing support to keep the system running. The system will not be able to provide the level of support that they had been providing to individual faculty, such as putting course material up on the system, which is tremendously expensive.

"We have cobbled together a way of doing this by partnering among the Provost's office, the academic computing folks in SULAIR, and the schools. We are going to provide the system, and it will be up and running for use by any expert users. We are going to provide as much support as is possible to faculty who need support in getting their courses up. But it will be on a first-come, first-served basis, and will not be as extensive as it has been in the past. For example, we can point you in the direction of a scanner, and teach you to use a scanner, but we can't actually scan your material for you. It just costs too much money."

He added that H & S has put in some funding to support the operation as well and that the source code will be provided to any departments or schools that want to run it on their own, such as engineering. For the future, Stanford has joined in a consortium with the University of Michigan, Indiana University, MIT, the University of Delaware and the Mellon Foundation to develop an enhanced course management system that will then be supported and maintained by this consortium, spreading the cost. This should be up and running in a few years. He added "This should make faculty happy. There won't be an individual per-course charge."

Professor Mark asked the Provost to "report briefly on your resolution of a problem of support of the faculty loan fund for homes on the campus." As background, Etchemendy pointed out that a faculty housing program was essential to attract new faculty to Stanford. The standard program has no restrictions on which locations that the loans can be used. Back in the recent "boom years" certain schools, in order to attract top faculty would say to the recruit, "In addition to the standard package, we will lend you a certain amount of money allowing you to buy the house you want." That generated a problem, said the Provost. "Schools were competing against one another for houses on campus, a very unfortunate situation. As a result, I said that I would not allow exceptional financing [over and above the standard program] to be used on campus in order to avoid these kinds of head-to-head competition between schools. This upset some of the homeowners, who felt that it was depressing the prices of houses on the campus."

Whether this fear was justified is not clear, but the collective anxiety led the Provost to

"...no longer put that restriction on exceptional financing so that there would be no question that I am not discriminating against homeowners on campus. I wouldn't ever do that!" Everyone was happy that the Provost listened to faculty feedback, and Professor Mark declared that "...this is a win-win decision; winners, no losers."

E. Open Forum

This opportunity for each senator to speak his or her mind (in five minutes or less) was first taken advantage of by Professor Fortmann. "I've taken note, as we all have, that we've canceled a few Senate meetings this year to save money. And I noted today that we're being extravagant with candy [One small English toffee for each Senator bought by the Academic Secretary in Heathrow airport with his own personal British coins]. But we're definitely saving money on coffee [We think that meant that he did not like the taste of the coffee]. I just was curious as to what costs so much money about a Senate meeting and whether there was anything that we should change about our procedures that would help the situation.

The Academic Secretary, Ted Harris, tried to explain. "There's lots of things, Steve. Laura [the real time recorder], for one, is probably our most expensive commodity [and the one we could not do without]." He went on to explain that the meetings, in addition to the recorder and water/coffee, incur a large cost of staff effort from Trish Del Pozzo, Priscilla Johnson, and Valerie Goss. The loss of two senate meetings is only a small part of the necessary budget cuts that will affect the FY05 budget for the Academic Secretary's Office. He emphasized that the number of meetings plus Administrative Sessions were sufficient to handle the business of the Senate, and added, greatly admiring Dr. Fortmann's loyalty to the Senate, "I do want to note that I am glad that you like coming to these meetings. And we can probably arrange for something special for you on those rare alternate Thursdays when no meeting is scheduled!"

Professor Fortmann shifted his focus. "I wasn't complaining about the extra two hours. But I would wonder if we should use more electronic versions of the documents that we receive. Maybe in the near future, you could go to electronic." Dr. Harris talked briefly to this, mentioning that by next year even Senate elections should be on line. Vice Provost Bravman chimed in to warn that teaching faculty to accept receiving documents on-line rather than in inter-departmental mailing is a significant challenge.

Provost Etchemendy added that sending documents electronically "...only saves money if people are reading online. If we're printing it out, then somewhere in the institution, we're paying for it." [The Academic Secretary thought -- selfishly -- to himself, but did not say out loud, that if the ASO sent out material electronically, there would be savings to his particular budget, and when putting together FY05 predictions, that was what counted to him!]

V. Other Reports

A. Teaching Assistant Oversight Committee Report. -- (SenD#5536)

Chairman Wasow introduced this. "Included in your materials is an executive summary of the report to be presented by both Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education John Bravman, co-chair of the committee, and Professor Godfrey Mungal, fellow senator and associate dean of graduate policy, as a co-chair. This committee grew out of an ASSU resolution and followed repeated Senate discussions of the issue of TA training and oversight over a period of years. Faculty, students, and staff members of the current committee were invited to attend today's meeting. Several are in attendance, including the director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, Michele Marincovich. I will turn the floor now over to Professor Bravman.

Vice Provost Bravman began by addressing Professor Simoni. "At a recent budget group, my good friend and colleague, you said that I seemed to be justifying the expansion of the freshman writing program based on Senate mandate, and you added 'No one pays attention to Senate mandates. Why are you?'" Simoni protested weakly that Bravman had paraphrased his comment, and accepted the laughter that ensued.

Vice Provost Bravman continued. "There have, for years, been questions in the Senate like this: 'Gee, why don't we do something about TA training?' Well, the fact is, we are doing something. I think we have a pretty good story to tell. And particularly in a time of difficult budget climates, it's good to remind ourselves that a relatively small incremental effort spent in this area probably bears significant and rich dividends both financially, but more importantly, pedagogically and academically for our students. Properly trained TAs can make a big difference in the satisfaction of students, in the learning of students, and I think just as importantly, in the ease and enjoyment that we all feel when we're teaching classes, especially the larger ones.

"The Senate mandated the establishment of the TA Oversight Committee, but since I don't like the word 'oversight,' we just call it TAOC. The basic premise of TAOC was that departments ultimately must provide TAs with all the necessary resources and skill sets for them to do their jobs well."

He went on to emphasize that the TA project is very much a partnership with the deans of the three principal undergraduate schools, the Center for Teaching and Learning, (a unit of VPUE) and the committee members (faculty, staff, and students). In a PowerPoint presentation he emphasized the real benefits of properly trained TAs for faculty, for graduate students, and for undergraduates. As an example, for course planning and management by faculty, if one has an effective relationship with a TA, the process will be easier. Bravman noted that "For graduate students in a competitive job market, those headed toward academic careers, involvement in teaching is something that increasingly is looked at by institutions. Certainly for our undergraduates, our TAs are very often the 'face' of courses, particularly large ones. More often than not, in large lecture courses, it will be our graduate student TAs with whom our undergraduates principally interact on a one-on-one basis. So there really are opportunities to leverage our work for all three of these groups.

"We believe that every department should have a departmentally-based TA training program led by a member of the faculty. We believe that the three major components that comprise an effective program are Training, Supervision, and Reflection of the product of the teaching. As for Training, we look to the departments to provide the departmental or culturally specific items that are equally important for effective TAship.

"Supervision of a TA, as with any employee, is very important, and is done by classroom evaluation, mid-quarter evaluations, and videotaping of students. Last year in the Senate, Grace Chang, the graduate student representative, brought up the fact that we had to drop videotaping of TAs for budgetary reasons. Well, I'm happy to announce that through other budget savings, we have already reinstituted our ability to videotape TAs. Watching a videotape of oneself is an extremely effective method for improving one's teaching when under the guidance of someone who has training in that area.

"Last, since so many of our TAs teach more than one quarter, some kind of guided reflection about how the experience was perceived by the TA and the students is important."

Professor Bravman went on to give data of "before and after." In 1997, there were 14 departments with some form of a TA training program and 21 that had none. By 2003, this year, 33 departments have some manner of TA teaching in place, and only three do not. The total number of departments has increased by one because, in the interim between '97 and '03, the anthropology department split in two.

As an example, he focused on Economics. "Starting in 1997, a colleague, John Taylor, founded the Introductory Economics Center (IEC). Econ is one of those departments that faces the special burden of teaching a very large fraction of our undergraduates, perhaps a thousand students per year or more. They have a program that involves identifying grad students for the IEC in the spring for the following fall during which they have a two-day pedagogical training course in late September, just before the students arrive. During the term there are weekly meetings among the faculty teaching the course, the TAs, and the staff of the center, and the very important videotaping, mid-quarter evaluations, and so forth." He went on to describe a similar course given for TAs in Chemistry, where there are many international graduate students, many of whom have trouble speaking English. Vice Provost Bravman explained that there is an examination given to international students, "... and that the University has set a minimum score preventing students with severely deficient English language skills from teaching. That score, in my opinion, is too low. Some students struggle. Our undergraduates get understandably upset when they have TAs with whom they can barely communicate. Chemistry, I think, has done a good job of providing extra support for their foreign students.

"In Religious Studies, it is required for Ph.D. candidacy that a student serves as a TA. They designate an experienced graduate student as a mentor TA who organizes the program and works with the graduate director. This is seen as a real professional development experience for the doctoral candidates."

The Vice Provost went on to show comparative data obtained from the "Reflection" component of TA training, demonstrating that students felt that TA teaching had improved after the training began. In addition, his data supported the observation that when a TA taught the same course a second time, ratings improved, validating the "Supervision" component of the program as well as the experiential aspects.

"To summarize briefly some remaining issues," said Bravman, "I can't emphasize enough the importance of faculty guidance and involvement. We certainly hear from TAs occasionally when they are frustrated. They want to do a better job, but they feel that they're not getting the time and mentorship from the faculty teaching the class.

"Our principal long range goal is that all TAs should receive some kind of training before the class starts, and during the course time, they really do have some active feedback from the faculty member delivering the class. This is tough in a quarter system, compared to a semester system. But even in a quarter system the mid-quarter evaluations, third- and fourth-week evaluations of ourselves and of teaching assistants, can quickly turn around what sometimes are readily identifiable problems with our pedagogy."

Bravman emphasized his belief that TAs should be hired in advance, a difficult logistical problem. He concluded with the conviction that "...if there's a campus-wide understanding of the importance of TA training, with minimal effort we can make significant changes in our satisfaction and the learning and satisfaction of our students."

Questions and Discussion.

In response to a question from Grace Chang (now a representative-at-large of ASSU) Bravman said that the number of departments that had a requirement that graduate students must teach was very small.

Professor Satz wondered about the special problems for women. "Over my years of working with TAs, I have noticed a pattern that recurs periodically. It is that the women TAs have special problems, especially if they look really young." Michele Marincovich answered that the Center is aware of this sort of problem, and that programs just for women TAs have been given, but not recently.

Professor Simoni pointed out that "There are some basic science departments in the Medical School who don't require their graduate students to teach. We've been trying to convince them that the benefits you've described here are not only limited to those who go on for teaching. Those are really a set of skills that benefit everyone in every way regardless of what they go on to do. The NIH training grant that I administer encourages us rather strongly to make sure that there are opportunities for our graduate student trainees to have some teaching experience." Professor Simoni also wondered whether or not all of the evaluations by students of courses as well as of TAs could be put on-line. Bravman agreed that it was feasible, but pointed out the problems that other universities experienced in getting students to sit down and do the evaluations that were requested. Princeton, apparently, does not give credit to the student for taking a course if the evaluation has not been returned, a good ploy to guarantee a high return.

Amidst all this, several faculty congratulated the Registrar on the current prompt turn-around time for evaluations and grades.

Dean Sharon Long echoed Bob Simoni's comments on the value of teacher training for every graduate student. "I do believe it should be part of the training of scholars, and whether those scholars are going to go into research or politics or law, or whether they're going to be pitching IPOs, the understanding of how to distill information, read the audiences, be clear, and having the people skills to deal with a group are really important.

"I also think that it's symbolically important that we, as educators, regard our graduate students as colleagues, not as employees." She hoped that this idea, that all graduate students should be expected to teach, and learn how to teach better, could be a campus-wide focus of study.

Professor Ball spoke next. "As a faculty member in the School of Education, we talk all the time about the importance of not only content knowledge, but pedagogical knowledge on the part of those who are teaching. And I would like to concur with those comments that have been made about the value of this type of training no matter what profession or career our graduates go into. I would think it would be comforting to students as well as parents who are paying tuition for their students to be here to know that the majority of those students that are providing training for their children or students or themselves are receiving a certain amount of training before going into those classrooms. [There were general nods of agreement around the Senate for this view, although no motions were made, nor mandates issued to the VPUE.]

B. C-GS: Renewal of degree-nominating authority for Modern Thought and Literature Interdisciplinary Program. -- (SenD#5534)

Chairman Wasow began with "...the recommendation for renewal of degree-nominating authority for the interdisciplinary program in Modern Thought and Literature. Your packet includes Senate document #5534, the recommendation from the Committee on Graduate Studies to renew the degree-nominating authority for the Master of Arts, co-terminal Master of Arts, and the Doctor of Philosophy of the interdisciplinary program in Modern Thought and Literature." A number of guests were introduced, including, as the Chair said, "... our old friend Jim Baron, chair of the Committee on Graduate Studies, and Professor Judith Goldstein, cognizant dean for graduate and undergraduate studies in the school of Humanities & Sciences. Also attending is Professor David Palumbo-Liu, who is a member of the Senate and is chair of the interdisciplinary program in Modern Thought and Literature. He is recusing himself from the voting in this matter but will participate in the discussion in his role as chair of the program.

"So, Professor Baron, do you have anything to add to the documents?"

A disclaimer first from Professor Baron: "I want to say I'm not that old!" Chairman Wasow side-slipped that one nicely. "But our friendship, the Senate's friendship, with you is old."

Returning to the matter at hand, Professor Baron said, "You have the C-GS recommendation. There is one other minor glitch on it that needs to be underscored, and that is, at the bottom, the dates for which renewal is being requested should be September 1st, 2005, to August 31st, 2010, rather than 2006 to 2011.

"I don't really have to say that much. The issues that C-GS looked at are summarized in the cover memo. As you can see, it was an extensive review both internally and then by
H & S. We think that all of the issues have been vetted. Full stop." Dean Goldstein had nothing to add. Professor Palumbo-Liu added, "I'd just like to thank C-GS and H & S for this
review. I think it's been fairly constructive. And I'd especially like to thank Judy Goldstein and staff of the IDP who worked hard to put this together."

Questions and Discussion.

Professor Joanne Martin was first in line. "I was surprised to read in the memo from Deans Long and Goldstein that there was a recommendation that the director work closely with the dean or the selection of the administrative committee on the grounds that that would facilitate the program accommodating a wide variety of perspectives. And in Jim Baron's memo, or the committee's memo, the issue was phrased 'as intellectual as well as demographic diversity' is a core element of the program." Her concerns were that "...that as long as we keep an eye open, as Baron's memo says this IDP does, so that intellectual diversity is a core element in the departments and IDPs, and that we open the doors to students who bring all kinds of prevailing orthodoxies and not just one."

Professor Satz said, "I was actually going to say the same thing, but also maybe more in terms of a question, because partly as a director of an IDP, I have been a little worried about IDPs being singled out for needing intellectual diversity on their governing committees as a special concern. I think that directors of IDPs are open to diverse points of view, but that points of view also tend to dominate certain kinds of fields, which is reasonable and fair as long as people are open about them. For example, I would hate to think that Ethics in Society would have to have some unethical people directing or teaching within it! But, of course, at the same time, we believe that Ethics in Society is open to different ways of thinking about ethics." She went on to express reservations about the implied involvement of the deans in the selection of faculty, thus indirectly influencing the intellectual flavor of the IDP.

Professor Baron, who started all this by his reference to "diversity" in the C-GS cover letter, was agreeable to clarification of this. "I want to clarify, because I don't think the Senators have the letters. This was not an issue that was raised by C-GS. It was raised in a small number of letters. I believe we got fourteen student letters back, and I believe two of them made some allusion to this issue. Please understand that this is not a filter through which C-GS is assessing IDPs. The feedback we wanted to make sure the director got was that a small minority of students had voiced hopes that the intellectual diversity that has been in this IDP does continue."

Dean Long spoke to the commitment of her office to being very sensitive to any student who felt unwelcome for intellectual, religious, or other reasons, and also to working with program directors on such issues.

Professor Gardner, pointing to the letter to C-GS from deans Long and Goldstein, read " '...the program should be self-conscious about who is admitted -- Stanford cannot serve every interest and students should be admitted only if there is a faculty advisor available to assist the student in his/her chosen course of study.'" Her concern was that a failure of mentoring or in supporting intellectual perspectives in this IDP might be more pervasive than realized.

Professor Moya was more supportive. "I just wanted to say that as someone who has had a lot of opportunity to work with MTL students as my own grad students, as well as TAs, I've had very, very positive interactions with them. They are very high quality students and I'm very proud to be affiliated with the program. Partly because of that, I did read the documents for this very carefully. In fact, we are only talking about two students that raise this issue of 'prevailing orthodoxy' in very different ways. There is no consensus among the students."

Professor Polhemus strayed away from this finely tuned line of thinking to wondering why the English department, so instrumental and involved in establishing MTL, was not represented on the Advisory Committee. Professor Palumbo-Liu explained that (a) initially no English professors were on that group because those involved in MTL were junior faculty, but that (b) things had changed and now Paula Moya and Shelly Fisher-Fishkin were involved.

Palumbo-Liu then went on to address the now-much-focused-upon "two letters." It became clear, as mentioned earlier, that each differed in its critique from the other. As for the possibility that there was a "prevailing orthodoxy" (which he did not accept), he said, "I don't find it extraordinary; in all fields at various times one brand is dominant over another. Think of quantitative sociology, rational choice theory. Indeed, think of our own anthropology departments, split asunder from one because of divergent views.

Such debate is what makes intellectual life interesting, albeit sometimes fatiguing. But the charge of a narrow, exclusionary set of theories and orthodoxy persisting in MTL is not supported by other students." He pointed out that MTL gets 130 applications each year and only admits four students. Often, a student is chosen in part because of the diversity of the views evident in his or her application.

Returning to another point made, he said, "I am still a little bit concerned about what Debra Satz mentioned, the link between very discrete and very particular complaints with the suggestions that any IDPs or any unit on campus should work with a dean's office or any other office in determining the constitution of its faculty. On the one hand, it's ironic, because I'm part of the Diversity Action Council and I want to encourage precisely that kind of interaction. But I worry, again, as Debra said, about selecting certain faculty for his or her specific views."

Dean Long extended this point. "It's not unusual for the dean's office to work with the director of an IDP to put together their advisory committee. For example, in the case of Human Biology, knowing how broad the spectrum of the students is, we encourage them actively to make sure they get representation from a broad group, especially making sure that the social sciences are well represented. It's not unusual, nor is it, I think, targeted in any way at this particular kind of IDP."

Professor Gelber raised a sub-issue. "First, I think that the record of the MTL students is really extraordinary, and I wanted to make sure that came out here. The numbers that you are graduating and the prestigious nature of the jobs that they are acquiring and names they are making for themselves in their fields is really a testament to the quality of what they have been acquiring.

"Second, I want to just ask you about the degree to which the graduate students may control or influence the graduate admissions process. How much does the faculty actually control the admissions process? Your answer will be relevant to the previous discussion because if the students control admissions, a certain orthodoxy that they bring to the table may be inadvertently perpetuated."

Professor Palumbo-Liu found this to be an excellent question and thanked Professor Gelber for asking it. "First, as highlighted in the H & S cover letter, the excellence of the program is really correlated with the success of the admissions process. As was mentioned, we customarily receive about 120 to 130 applications each year. This puts MTL behind English and History and this year close to Philosophy in terms of the number of applicants we get. Yet we only have four fellowships to award. Our admit rate is thus 3.1%. That our process is able to make such a finely tuned decision is testament not only to the strength of the applicant pool but as well to the efficiency of the process. If only we could do the same with our stock portfolios!

"H & S departments and programs recently received a memo from the dean's office outlining guidelines for graduate admissions. Our practice is completely in line with what they're suggesting. First, they suggest that the role of students on admissions committees should be "advisory." The responsibility of admitting graduate students resides with the faculty, and students should not have an autonomous role at any stage of the admissions process. There are two stages to the MTL admissions process. First, a graduate student and a faculty member are paired to read 24 files. They then meet with each other to decide on four files for the second round. In the second and final round, the selection committee is comprised of both faculty and students. They meet and have an open discussion on the final applicants. Based on a broad conversation rather than a vote, a consensus emerges for the top candidates and a waiting list. In neither stage of the admissions process do students have an autonomous role.

"The second suggestion from H & S is that when practical, only advanced graduate students should participate in admissions committees. I admit that this has not been our policy, but I will recommend this to our committee in charge. The third guideline is that Stanford students should not participate in the selection of other internal Stanford students; only faculty members should read these files. MTL does not customarily receive applications from Stanford students, but we'd be happy to follow this policy.

And fourth, students who are involved in admissions need to be trained in admissions procedures, ranging from the need for confidentiality to the importance of finding out particular types of information about applicants. We, for the last 30 years since our inception, have had an orientation session in which we do precisely this. So I think in following the guidelines that H & S has come up with, we've been successful and I would urge other departments and programs to follow these guidelines as well, since they seem to work."

Professor Goldstein added some clarification to the deans' role. "First, I think that people are too quick to think about the dean's office in kind of a malevolent way, that somehow we're there to punish an excellent program. The reality is, our faculty are very busy, and sometimes someone has to nudge them to do things that are in the collective interest. In this case our sense was less about diversity but rather that we are there to support the program and to support their ability to find faculty to do things that they might not think is in their short-term self-interest. We're there to help. So I would like people not to immediately think about us as bad people! What David and I talked about was really quite benign and helpful, helping them get the problem solved, for example, of getting faculty in the English department to serve as advisors.

"As for the Guidelines for Graduate Admissions, they just recently have been distributed, and we want all parts of H & S to seriously consider adhering to them."

Professor Inan was concerned that when students have any role in the admissions process, especially in a small department, a camaraderie (ideological or not) among the students may transcend objectivity that is essential for a fair admissions process.

Professor Ball welcomed the opportunity to look very closely at the work of this unit. "I was very positively impressed with the work that MTL is doing, the role and the place that it fills in the University. The dedication of the faculty and the administration of this program is phenomenal. I have two questions. First, do you think that involvement in the admissions process, a form of training in decision making, helps your students excel in academic roles? And second, how much influence do the students truly have in the admissions process?"

Palumbo-Liu felt that the involvement in admissions processes was a real plus for the students, giving them a feeling of having a stake in it, and good experience in defending opinions. As for the second query, he answered, "I haven't seen any instance where it's one group winning over another. One argument around certain candidates may be more persuasive than another, and either a faculty member or a student member of the committee may present it."

Professor Gardner chose to return to this issue of the dean's office having input into the makeup of a program, particularly a small one. She worried about the subtle but substantial influence of an administrative office having an impact on the scholarly composition of a program. She worried about the precedent....but time for more discussion on this issue was no more, and Chairman Wasow moved on.

He declared, "The Committee on Graduate Studies recommendation as amended comes moved and seconded. The Committee on Graduate Studies recommends that the interdisciplinary program in Modern Thought and Literature be reauthorized to nominate candidates for the Master of Arts, coterminal Master of Arts, and Doctor of Philosophy degrees for a five-year period effective September 1, 2005, through August 31, 2010."

The recommendation passed by unanimous voice vote.

C. Continuation of Senate discussion on the Survey on the Faculty Quality of Life questionnaire results. -- (SenD#5525)

Tom Wasow introduced the topic. "This is a continuation of a Senate discussion on the report presented by Professor Pat Jones that began at our last meeting. As a reminder, this survey was developed by the Quality of Life subcommittee of the Provost's Advisory Committee on the Status of Women Faculty, also known as PACSWF. Members of the subcommittee were invited back to today's meeting. Some are in attendance and invited to participate in the discussion. In your materials for today is a slightly revised copy of the slides that were distributed at the Senate December meeting. Also in the packets is an excerpt of minutes of that meeting." He turned the floor over to Vice Provost Pat Jones.

Vice Provost Jones began. "Thank you very much. As Tom said, this is really the opportunity for you to discuss this report. Not only did we not have much time after presenting the report for discussion, but we had not given you the handout beforehand to look at. I know you have had a chance to look at the handout during the past month. There is a slightly revised version that was sent to you in your packets.

"For those of you who weren't here last time, I'd like to introduced Milbrey McLaughlin from the School of Education, who is the chair of the PACSWF subcommittee on the Quality of Life. It was that subcommittee that wrote the survey instrument and is reading the analysis of the responses by gender. And also I'd like to introduce political sciences Professor Norman Nie; his group is doing the statistical analyses for us."

Professor Nie emphasized that "This is very preliminary analysis. It is descriptive, only. We have used just very broad chi square to indicate what is a possibly significant finding from a nonsignificant finding. We've done no item combination. And so what you're seeing is just a lot of very rough breakdowns of the data in tabular form."

Professor Goldsmith was interested in the non-quantitative comments. "In the quality of life survey, there were a lot of opportunities for people to write about things. I think that a lot more will be learned about the quality of life and people's perception of various issues from those comments than what we can get out of these raw numbers. I'm wondering how you plan to process those kinds of data and highlight these kinds of issues and when that might happen."

Professor McLaughlin had an answer. "We have two people working on that right now, looking within all of the responses and also trying to look at the qualitative responses in light of some of the quantitative issues."

Professor Hensler focused upon some data that had surprised many senators during the first presentation. "One of the most striking things about these preliminary data was the dissonance between some of the objective data and some of the subjective assessments on the same dimensions. It's most striking in regard to research workload, and also in areas related to gender differences where it appears that male and female faculty are spending the same amount of time at work, but the women faculty feel that they're spending more time."

Vice Provost Jones admitted that the data were still in the process of being mined. More detailed analysis of the responses may help to clarify whether certain subgroups of women faculty responded that way.

Professor Nie was not so optimistic. "Some of it may remain a mystery, because we social scientists have known for many decades that attitudes and behaviors do not necessarily line up in all instances. We do have some hard measures of family composition, which we will factor in at some point. But I certainly don't sit here and say I know we'll be able to explain where those differences originate."

Professor Gelber noted that, "One of the things that is striking was the large amount of mentoring that goes on in the sciences and the low level of discontent with that mentoring compared with the humanities. My first intuitive thought about it is that scientists are mentoring in the context of labs where their own work is going forward at the same time, whereas in humanities, when one is mentoring, it is often scattered and dealing with issues and with students' projects that may be quite foreign and unrelated to ones own work."

Vice Provost Jones agreed with this interpretation, and Professor Granovetter expanded the interpretation by pointing out that "...in the sciences, most work is inherently collaborative, takes place in laboratories, and mentoring is an intrinsic part of what everyone is doing all the time. In contrast, in the humanities, it may be that there are many more lone scholars and mentoring is a separate activity, not part of the daily flow of research activity."

In response to a question from Professor Keller who wondered about comparative results of quality of life surveys at other institutions, Professor Jones said, "Quite a few universities have been doing quality of life surveys of faculty in recent years. Most of them are focused on the status of women faculty, particularly in science and engineering fields, where they're largely underrepresented. Princeton came up with such a report in the last few months. MIT has issued a series of reports on science and engineering. and more recently other fields as well. Berkeley, Michigan and Penn have done reports. All of these surveys are different and have different emphases. But, as we proceed further with our own report on the status of women faculty, which is really where our efforts are now turning, we will be paying close attention to them."

In response to a question from Professor Keller about the section on "unit support" in the questionnaire, Professor Nie admitted that, "Look, surveys are nothing more than a structured conversation with a respondent. And sometimes you have a very clear reference with strong agreement or disagreement with the statement. But any one question also has a lot of error in it. Therefore, one of the things that social scientists try to do, just like natural scientists, is to try to build balanced scales of measurement. Let's look at the unit support example. The average across all the population is about 0.4, from 0 to 1, pretty close to 0.5." He explained that within the actual curve would be Law School faculty at one end (who sense a lot of unit support) and clinical medicine faculty clustered at the other end. Encouraging the senators to realize that life is not easy for social scientists, he said, "One of the real problems that social science has, as compared to natural science, is the mapping of relative scores into absolute scores. There is no absolute zero or nor an absolute maximum that we totally understand for a concept called, for example, 'unit support'.

Professor Peskin was surprised with dissatisfaction of associate professors relative to full and assistant professors and made several suggestions about why this was so.

"Associate professors are a heterogeneous group. Maybe we treat our assistant professors very well and they learn about reality only after being promoted. Maybe the small fraction of non-tenured associate professors are unhappy. Maybe there's a group of associate professors who feel that they were passed over a long time for promotion, and their discontent persists."

Vice Provost Jones responded that, "We did look up and try to understand the makeup of the associate professor pool; we do know that 22% of associate professors are long-term, which means more than seven years in rank. It's possible that some of those folks are feeling a little impatient. About 11% are untenured, and these associate professors are primarily in the professional schools. We don't know years in rank because that wasn't asked in the survey. But we can look by school and division. We can also look at the open-ended responses in the context of factors affecting the satisfaction of individuals who responded in ways that suggest that they have a lower degree of satisfaction. Doing some of those multi-variate analyses and looking at their open-ended responses are things that are planned."

In response to a question from Professor Polhemus, who focused upon the 48.7% response rate and what it might mean, Professor Nie admitted that, " People who are very positive and very negative about the substance of a survey tend to have a higher response rate than people who are in the middle. I can't quantify it, however. But I also can tell you that from a self-administered questionnaire to a thousand faculty members, a 50% response rate is 'sterling' given the complexity and length of this questionnaire. We feel that's about the maximum that you could expect."

And, as Professor Polhemus worried about those who did not answer the questionnaire, wondering how far from the respondents their opinions would be, Professor Nie said,

"What we can do is to go back and try to do some formal non-response analysis by begging and pleading to some of the people who didn't respond, to respond. But as I mentioned, generally you find the people at both ends are more likely to respond than the people in the middle, but that non-respondents when you get up to this 50% respondent rate are really not very different from those who respond. And all I'm doing is giving you the wisdom of a craft called 'survey research' that's been evolving over the last 75 years. Would I have liked to have seen the response rate at 70? Sure, but we're beginning to live in a society where only the Census Bureau gets those kinds of response rates."

Professor Phillips brought attention to the "work-load" data. As an example from his own existence he mused that, "my wife often accuses me of shutting my eyes and napping after dinner, but I tell her I'm a philosopher and I'm thinking about the meaning of life and that counts as work time. [Professor Philips did not tell us of her responses to that]. Another example. I read the New York Times Review of Books; when I find an example that I use in class, does that count as work time? It's not clear to me that there's any agreement about what it is people actually are reporting here or how valid these estimates of hours worked are." Professor Nie then did an effective job of building a case that considering the very small standard deviation, there is a "tremendous amount of intersubject agreement on what it is and how much it is, that that's what it takes to support an academic career." Sixty hours a week is what it takes to succeed on the faculty at Stanford, it seems.

In response to a question from Professor Fortmann, who wondered why it was that a third of the faculty felt that they are not compensated fairly in relation to their peers, Professor Jones promised to look more closely at these data, and President Hennessy pointed out that this might reflect the "Lake Woebegone effect, where all the children are above average." In this case, no faculty member wants to consider himself or herself as appropriate in a lower quartile of compensation.

Professor Goldsmith asked, "Has there been any systematic attempt to survey people who have left Stanford on these questions and more detail about why they left? Because that's a very vocal group that might be on the severely dissatisfied range about whom we don't have information."

Vice Provost Jones reminded the senate that "...our office does carry out, most years, what we call the 'recruitment and retention survey', where we try to understand the reasons why we were unsuccessful either in recruiting someone or in retaining them if there was a retention issue. Indeed, we are going to add that to the March 4th Senate meeting in lieu of the PACSWF report. We are in the middle of doing such a survey of events that happened last academic year. We have not the time or resources to track down individuals who are not here; we have been doing this survey indirectly by asking the department chairs and deans for their understanding of the reasons why someone either didn't come or left. Of course, hidden biases could not be determined. We would never know, for instance, if someone did not accept an offer because the Provost did not wear a tie when they went out to lunch!" [ Etchemendy was certain that this could never be a reason for turning Stanford down, and the President declared that if it were a reason, Stanford wouldn't want them to come anyway.]

Professor Jones then said that "I think that we might do this survey again. We did try to include some questions that were similar to questions other universities had in their surveys. And I think there is certainly an interest among the group of universities who are studying gender equity in the sciences and engineering of trying to have more similarity among such surveys so we can do cross comparisons." Professor Nie was heartened by this, pointing out how much validity is improved if the same questions are asked year after year.

"Because this was a one-time survey," Nie explained, I think we're short on variables. In addition, the committee worried a lot about privacy and therefore didn't collect a lot of information that really wouldn't have been a threat to privacy but would have helped us to understand these results better than we're going to understand them. If we do do it again, this is one area where we can learn and improve."

Professor Burchat had the last question, continuing the discussion about the perception of compensation. "I agree that the executive session of the Senate held last year was very enlightening, but it was, of course, a very small fraction of the faculty who saw those data, especially what Dean Long showed on retention cases, which, it turns out, are the real outliers in terms of salary. I think if there was a way that we could communicate those data a bit more broadly, it would help the faculty be more content with their own salaries."

The Senate, at this point, applauded Professor Jones and her colleagues, and began filtering out, even before official adjournment.

VI. Unfinished Business - None

VII. New Business - None

VIII. Adjournment

A motion to adjourn was seconded, and approved at 5:10 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Edward D. Harris, Jr., M.D.

George DeForest Barnett Professor, emeritus

Academic Secretary to the University