Approval of minutes. The minutes for the meeting of April 9 were approved as amended. The minutes of April 30, May 7 and September 3, 2003 were approved.

Remarks by the Secretary. Professor Lattman reported that the Council had its first dinner meeting on Tuesday, September 9. The Deans will be invited to the dinner meeting on October 7 to discuss the status of the departments that are being reviewed this Fall. The November dinner meeting will take place on November 4. The issue of changing the tenure policy will be discussed, and members of the working group chaired by Dean Falk will be invited.

Open Discussion. Professor Rugh suggested that the external review of the Whiting School and the APL/Whiting School Task Force report should be topics of future Council discussion.

Professor Das stated that along with the tenure policy question there is concern among faculty about the representative nature of the Academic Council and about the role of the Council under the new policy. Dean Weiss observed that the Council election issue had come up at the Arts and Sciences Chairs Meeting. There followed a discussion of the difficulty of getting people to serve, the feeling among humanities faculty members that humanities candidates seldom get elected to 5 year terms, and the practice of forming ad-hoc coalitions to secure election. It was decided that data on the past Council elections was needed to form a basis for further discussion, and Dean Weiss said that this data would be prepared.

Professor Leslie reported that the Kreiger School Curriculum Committee has decided to do a major review of undergraduate education.

The Council approved faculty and student members to fill vacancies on the KSAS Curriculum Committee: New faculty member, Steven David, Political Science 2003-2005, and returning faculty members Donald Carter, Anthropology 2002-2004, Mark Robbins, Physics and Astronomy 2002-2004, and Rochelle Tobias, German 2002-2004. Student members Jessica Ambrosetti, Lindsay Eastwood, and Jonathan Zimmer as KSAS Curriculum Committee students members for 2003-2004 were approved. The fourth student nominee is still pending selection by the Student Council.

The Council approved the request that Ernst William Spannhake serve in place of Hygiene representative James Tielsch on the Graduate Board for 2003/04 was approved.

The Council approved the following faculty and student members to fill vacancies on the WSE Curriculum Committee. The two-year appointments of Professors Howard Weinert of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Roger Ghanem of Civil Engineering through Spring 2005. Current members Professors Don Geman of Mathematical Science and Michael Karweit continue through Spring 2004. The appointments of student members Sarah Huntting, Christopher Kovalchick, Robin Mohapatra for 2003-04 were approved.

Professor Khan, Chair of the Appointments and Promotions subcommittee reported that the following appointments were approved: Dr. Amy Crews Cutts and Mr. Ori Lev as Lecturers in the Master of Arts Public Policy Program in the Institute for Policy Studies for Fall, 2003.

The Council turned to a discussion of the rights of Centers/Institutes to nominate Lecturer appointments. Dean Douglas commented that the question of the Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute (JHUISI) appointing their own lecturers has been raised. Professor Masson commented that the majority of courses in JHUISI's programs are existing courses, and teaching appointments are approved by the Academic Council, the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Peabody, and SAIS, as appropriate, through normal procedures. However, for some important courses such as courses in legal issues there is no appropriate, existing entity through which the appointment can be made. This is the motivation for the request. He noted that currently he would like to be able to make 2 such teaching appointments, out of a total of 21 courses taught in the Master of Security Informatics program. In discussion of the issue, a number of broader questions of appointments in centers and institutes were raised, and the general conclusion was that the Council needed to develop a broader view of the general issue. This will be taken up at a Council dinner meeting. A motion to grant JHUISI the right to bring appointments to the Academic Council directly through the Dean of Engineering was approved.

Dean Weiss left the meeting at 3:55 p.m. and Dean Douglas assumed the chair.

Remarks by the Deans. Dean Falk announced that the following people have agreed to serve on the working group for the implementation of the tenure policy change: Professors Lattman and Hobbs from the Academic Council, and Professors Rao Kosaraju, Matthew Crenson, David Nirenberg and Louis Maccini.

Following up on a question raised at the September 3rd meeting, Dean Falk discussed on-line courses. The decision to institute an on-line course is primarily a departmental matter, as are all questions of pedagogy. Dean Douglas said that in the Whiting School there are no on-line courses in the full-time engineering program, but five in the part-time program.

The meeting adjourned at 4:56 p.m.

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Last updated 03Oct03 by dgips@jhu.edu