Two motions passed at Tuesday's faculty meeting: one to establish graduate microcertificates and one to add to the section of the Faculty Rules and Regulations on “course bunching” — the act of consolidating yearly teaching load into one semester instead of distributing it across two.
A motion that was not included on the agenda was one to reinstate President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 as the monthly meeting’s presiding officer. Last month, faculty voted to replace Paxson with the Faculty Executive Committee chair — currently Anna Lysyanskaya, professor of computer science.
In the last minutes of the meeting’s open session, Professor and Chair of Anthropology Jessaca Leinaweaver gave notice that in the next faculty meeting, she will propose a vote to reinstate the University president as the presiding officer at faculty meetings.
Leinaweaver and Emily Dolan, professor and chair of music, submitted a motion to the FEC on March 24 to be included in April’s agenda. The motion was cosigned by over 60 faculty, she said, and it was ultimately not included.
“Unfortunately, the FEC chose not to put our motion on the agenda, even though we submitted it in sufficient time for them to consider it,” Leinaweaver said.
Paxson had left the faculty meeting prior to Leinaweaver’s notice.
Lysyanskaya introduced the motions on graduate microcertificates and course bunching.
The faculty in attendance passed the motion, presented by Dean of the School of Professional Studies Sandra Smith, to establish graduate microcertificates, which peer institutions, such as Harvard and Northwestern University, offer.
“The main goal for this initiative motion is to extend Brown’s educational impact and open access to a new population of students who want to acquire knowledge or skills in a targeted sub field to better their lives or advance their careers,” Smith said.
Smith noted that students in the microcertificate programs would still need to submit an application and be admitted to Brown.
“The microcertificate is not a degree,” Smith said, but students may be able to use the course credits from the microcertificate toward a degree later.
“It can be the first step or the final step in an academic journey for a student,” Smith said.
Multiple faculty spoke in favor of the microcertificates, including Interim Dean of School of Public Health Francesca Beaudoin, who endorsed the public health microcertificate program.
“Because of the cost of pursuing a graduate degree, this meets kind of a real world need to pursue additional skills and credentials at potentially a lower entry cost,” Beaudoin said.
The motion passed with 87% of faculty members voting in its favor.
Earlier in the meeting, the course bunching motion passed with 51% of faculty in favor.
According to Lysyanskaysa, one example of course bunching is when a faculty member who typically teaches one course in the fall and one in the spring instead teaches two courses in one semester and none in the other. The pre-existing rules and regulations already allow faculty to bunch their courses “in exceptional circumstances,” such as when undertaking large projects or grant proposals. Now, faculty will be able to course-bunch for University service or curricular need — a modification that “makes our rules more consistent with our practice,” Lysyanskaya said.
The proposed language in the motion states that when course bunching, faculty still must be “in residence” for both semesters, requiring “full participation in departmental and University activities … regardless of teaching responsibilities.”
Roberto Tamassia, professor and chair of computer science, was “strongly in favor,” of the motion, stating that course bunching is “one of a significant improvements to our productivity” that also “essentially comes at zero financial cost.”
Several faculty members raised questions about the meaning of “in residence.” David Williams — associate dean of faculty affairs, as well as a professor of behavioral and social sciences and of psychiatry and human behavior — was concerned that he could not find a clear definition of the terminology in the Faculty Rules and Regulations.
“I do think that’s an important thing to define what it means to be in residence, particularly in an age of Zoom,” Williams said. He added that he planned on voting against the motion because he felt it required “more discussion.”
Prudence Carter, professor of sociology and director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, felt that it was important to discuss data on the current practice of course bunching. “Is this particularistic? Does it affect some departments more than others?” she asked.
Several faculty also stated that they were unaware of the existing policy on course bunching. “I didn’t know that this policy existed at Brown, and I don’t know how many of my colleagues knew about it before,” said Elias Muhanna, associate professor of comparative literature and of history and director of Middle East studies.
After multiple faculty members expressed a desire to postpone the motion, a second motion was proposed to determine whether or not voting on the language change should take place at that particular meeting.
Ninety three participants voted not to postpone the motion, 86 participants voted to table the motion and 22 voting faculty members chose to abstain.
“Not voting for this motion is not going to make it go away. It’s just going to leave it in its previous, more ambiguous state,” said Nancy Khalek, associate professor of religious studies and of history.
“It’s just a slight amendment to an existing policy that will have the same guard rails on it as the old policy,” she noted. “I don’t think people are going to start willy-nilly bunching their courses without any kind of oversight.”
98 faculty members voted in favor of changing the language around course bunching, 70 voted against it and 26 abstained.
Seyla Fernandez is a senior staff writer covering faculty.
