MEMBERS ABSENT: Drs. William Richardson, Charles Rohde, Jonathan Samet and Scott Zeger.

GUESTS: Drs. Sharon Krag and Noel Rose; Ms. Diane Glover.

Remarks by the Dean:

Dr. Sommer announced that there will be a meeting of the Faculty General Assembly on Friday, May 26 to discuss concerns about recent actions in Washington, D.C., affecting future funding for health-related programs and research. Faculty will discuss strategies and plans for actions to preserve funding.

He further noted that faculty at several prominent Departments of Ophthalmology and Medicine are taking pay cuts in the coming year and that large academic medical centers may be most severely affected due to reliance on declining clinical fees and decreases in funding for NIH research.

Report of the Faculty Senate:

Dr. Alexander noted that the Senate met on May 16 to continue discussion of Faculty PPM 8 and that the Senate's deliberations would be reviewed during discussion of this agenda item at the Advisory Board meeting.

Proposed PPMs Faculty 1.4 and 8 - for vote

Dean Sommer reviewed the status and content of PPMs 1.4 and 8 and remarked that PPM 1.4 will be for dealing with faculty terminations generically, PPM 7 for issues of scientific misconduct and PPM 8 for professional misconduct. He noted that PPM 1.4 will make procedures for faculty termination due to scientific or professional misconduct more workable and explicit. After discussion and minor wording changes, the revision of PPM 1.4 was approved by a unanimous vote of the Advisory Board.

Dr. Alexander then raised a number of issues about proposed PPM 8 on Professional Misconduct which had been discussed by the Faculty Senate. The Faculty Senate representatives stated that a Faculty Senate Grievance Committee would not advocate on behalf of the accused faculty member, but would be hear a grievance impartially. Other members noted that as the consensus was to avoid duplication of faculty committees in the faculty termination process, the role of the Faculty Senate Grievance Committee in this process was not clear.

After further discussion, the Advisory Board determined that an ad hoc faculty committee jointly selected by the Dean and Faculty Senate leadership would serve as the sole avenue for hearing a proposal for a faculty termination. The Advisory Board made several additional changes to the proposed PPM 8 including changing the title of the PPM to "Procedure for Handling Allegations of Unsatisfactory Performance or Unsatisfactory Behavior". The Advisory Board then approved the revisions to PPM 8.

PPM on Non-Professorial Faculty (1.6)

Dean Sommer reviewed the recent history of the revised PPM, noting that titles for the non-professorial track were selected to be as representative of the responsibilities of the new track as possible, but acknowledged that the new titles may not optimally describe all faculty in the track. The criteria and range of responsibilities were developed by the Committee on Appointments and Promotions in consultation with the Committee on Academic Standards. Several features of the new track were reviewed. The only difference in responsibilities compared to the professorial faculty is that non-professorial faculty will not serve as primary doctoral student advisors.

Dean Sommer thanked Dr. Rose and the Committee on Appointments and Promotions for their conscientious efforts developing the criteria for the new track. He commented that guidelines for implementation of the criteria do not yet exist and will arise after gaining experience with the process. Chairs will be asked to submit a small number of nominations to the highest ranks of the new track to establish the upper boundaries and to provide experience for the Committee on Appointments and Promotions. The chairs requested that candidates to this track be evaluated as would professorial track candidates by forming ad hoc committees and soliciting letters of reference from outside reviewers for the higher ranks. Experiences gleaned from this process will allow development of explicit guidelines for the new track. After further discussion, the revised PPM 1.6 was approved.

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