At its October meeting, the Corporation considered proposals made by students to divest University holdings in companies with operations in Sudan and to sell only sweatshop-free Brown-logo merchandise, President Ruth Simmons told the faculty at its monthly meeting Tuesday.
Also, Professor of Computer Science Andries van Dam will step down as vice president for research, Provost Robert Zimmer announced to the faculty.
Members of the Corporation, the University's top governing body, asked for a better sense of campus attitudes about the two student proposals. The issues will be discussed at the November meeting of the Brown University Community Council, Simmons said.
Brown students and national organizations have lobbied the University to divest from companies cooperating with the Sudanese government, which has committed what the U.S. government has called genocide in the Darfur region.
Harvard University said in April 2004 that it would sell its shares of PetroChina, a Chinese company with ties to the Sudanese government.
The Brown Student Labor Alliance sent a proposal to University officials in Septem-ber 2005 demanding that the University only sell merchandise produced in factories that pay living wages and allow workers to unionize.
The SLA's move was part of a coordinated, national effort by Washington-based United Stu-dents Against Sweatshops, an organization that aims to improve college and university policies regarding apparel production.
The Corporation also discussed the impact of ever-increasing tuition on students - but with no suggestion to cut back on tuition hikes, Simmons told the faculty.
Simmons said the Corporation acknowledges that college tuition is increasing faster than household incomes and that the University needs to be "continually vigilant" in improving financial aid, but "they don't think there is any need for imminent change."
In his report, Zimmer told the faculty that a search committee for van Dam's replacement as vice president for research is currently being established.
Van Dam, who earned the second-ever computer science Ph.D. conferred in the United States, joined the Brown faculty in 1965 and co-founded the Department of Computer Science in 1979. He became vice president for research October 2002.
Van Dam told The Herald that faculty appointments to administrative positions typically are only a few years long. He accepted his administrative responsibilities with the understanding that his term would last three to five years and he would continue his teaching, research and advising roles simultaneously, he said.
"It's time that I stop doing two full-time jobs. ... There have been times when the competition for time has been difficult and I thought I did neither job justice," he said, adding that he is looking forward to focusing exclusively on his professorial duties.
Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Elizabeth Huidekoper updated the faculty on the University's financial position, following extensive discussions by the Corporation at its meeting last month.
Major elements of financial planning will be revised and updated in light of developments that have occurred over the past few years, Huidekoper said. Such developments include the skyrocketing price of fuel, the operating costs of new buildings and the increased cost of implementing and operating Banner, the planned new student records database, she said.
In his report as chair of the Faculty Executive Committee, Robert Pelcovits, who chairs the Faculty Executive Committee, told the faculty that the Corporation's academic affairs committee is gathering measurements about faculty productivity in an effort to make sure that the University is "getting its money worth." The specific data in which the Corporation is interested are not clear, Pelcovits said.
But Simmons said, "It is far from a study of faculty productivity. ... There is very little on it that has to do with faculty productivity." The Corporation regularly requests statistics related to academic matters, she added.
According to Pelcovits, the FEC leadership was informed of the Corporation's study during a meeting with the Corporation's fellows.
Each Corporation meeting includes an opportunity for faculty leaders to discuss concerns with the board of fellows without University administrators present.
Professor of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences Kathryn Spoehr, who formerly served in several administrative roles including provost, dean of the graduate school and dean of the faculty, told the faculty that the Corporation has often solicited such data in the past. "There is no reason to panic," she said.
In other business, Simmons and members of the faculty complained about the lack of refreshments at Tuesday's faculty meeting - bottled water, coffee and brownies are traditionally available in the lower Salomon lobby before the meetings but have been conspicuously absent at some meetings this academic year. Simmons jokingly reassured the faculty that the refreshments were not a casualty of the University's new energy-related budget cuts. Fortunately, van Dam's bag of Skittles was offered to hungry professors.
