Campbell addition OK’d

Associate professor William Sherman designed the south office addition for the Architecture School’s Campbell Hall, in collaboration with Scribner Messer Brady Wade Architects of Richmond.

Staff report

The Board of Visitors’ annual summer retreat is not typically a time for conducting
official business, but at its July 12-13 gathering on a James River plantation near Hopewell, the board approved plans for an addition to the Architecture School’s Campbell Hall and two items of proposed legislation for the 2003 General Assembly.

Discussion before the brief business session was wide-ranging, focusing chiefly on academic issues: faculty salaries, the role of graduate students as instructors, the demise of survey courses over the past three decades, and curriculum reviews currently under way in the undergraduate schools.

Board members William H. Goodwin Jr. and Thomas J. Bliley Jr. expressed particular concern about stagnating faculty salaries. “We as an institution have to be prepared to be fairly bold,” Goodwin said, urging that board members and the administration lobby the General Assembly for permission to raise tuition further. “We have to show them the reality.”

Bliley concurred. “We have an obligation to convince the General Assembly that … if you tie our hands, we’re going to lose the faculty that’s going to get us the end result [you] want, the best public university in the country,” he said.

Rector Jack P. Ackerly III asked that a report on tuition and related issues be made at the October meeting of the board’s Finance Committee.

Reviewing requested data on the number and percentage of courses taught by graduate teaching assistants, President John T. Casteen III reported that in fall 2001, 307 GTAs (the equivalent of about 200 full-time instructors) lectured or taught seminars, or 19 percent of the 1,625 people who teach undergraduate classes. Most taught required introductory writing or literature courses, first-year discussion sections, or second-year science labs, he said.

“We make somewhat less use of GTAs than our peer institutions in the AAU,” Casteen said. He agreed with student board member H. Timothy Lovelace Jr. that standardizing what is taught in different sections of the same course is difficult, resulting in inconsistency across sections in some departments.

Board members welcomed the announcement that both the Educational Policy and External Affairs committees plan to meet more frequently in the coming year.

“We spend virtually no time on academics,” said Terence P. Ross.

“I agree. It’s important for us to know more about it,” Goodwin said.

Lovelace offered to set up an informal session for students to discuss curricular issues with board members. Educational Policy chair T. Keister Greer said his committee’s upcoming priorities include curriculum reviews, implementation of the Virginia 2020 initiatives, graduate student funding and program reviews through the Shannon Center.

Following a review of designs for the planned south addition to Campbell Hall at a Buildings and Grounds Committee meeting held earlier July 12 in Richmond, the board on Saturday approved moving ahead with the project. The $5 million, four-story addition will provide office space for 36 faculty members and the school deans, as well as a seminar room, an expansion of the architecture workshop and two conference rooms. Construction is expected to begin in spring 2004.

Other resolutions approved by the board were:

• A legislative proposal to clarify current state law related to hazing that causes “bodily injury.” The law currently requires expulsion of any student found to have committed bodily injury through hazing, but does not define what conduct that might include. The University Judiciary Committee, which works in conjunction with the vice president for student affairs on such cases, had asked that the University seek clarification from the General Assembly.

• A request that the Medical Center be declared eligible for all privileges, benefits and immunities that apply to licensed hospitals or licensed health care providers, even though the Medical Center is exempt from state licensure as a state agency. This would require an amendment to state law.

• Authorization for R. Edward Howell, vice president and chief executive officer of the Medical Center, with the advice of Dr. Arthur Garson Jr., vice president and dean of the School of Medicine, and in consultation with Sandridge, to create an organizational structure for the delivery of care at the Medical Center. The board also authorized Howell, again in consultation with Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Leonard W. Sandridge, to engage in joint planning and financial sharing arrangements with the School of Medicine, as appropriate.