1. There were 3 resignations this Council year:

   John Blanco (June 2002) was replaced by George Hashisaki Frank Butros (July 2002) was replaced by Greg Strickland Rosie Dunn (April 2003) was replaced by Prue Thorner
   

2. Provost Gene Block attended the Council meeting in November 2002 (see Minutes for details).
3. Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer Leonard Sandridge attended the April 2003 Council meeting (see Minutes for details).
4. A letter of support was sent to the Assembly of Faculty for its resolution to the Board of Visitors regarding tuition increases. http://www.virginia.edu/genfac/endorsement.html
5. A diversity statement was submitted to the university’s diversity website following the Daisy Lundy incident in February 2003. http://www.virginia.edu/uvadiversity/generalfaculty.html
6. The Council wrote to Gene Block on behalf of a general faculty member who was offered early retirement.
7. The Council wrote to Yoke San Reynolds regarding the loss of coverage for allergy medications and proposing health benefits for part-time workers; a meeting was scheduled with her for June 2003.

1. Permission was requested and received to send GFC files to the University Archives.
2. The Chair served on the group investigating a rewards and recognition program for general faculty with Anda Webb, Nancy Rivers, Tom Gausvik, and Dave Ripley, conveying to the group that the Council was opposed to this program for general faculty.
3. Messages from the university administration, and relevant items from UVa Headline News, were forwarded to the general faculty email list. Meeting agendas and minutes were also posted to the list.
4. Procedures manuals were written for both the Council and the Chair, including: origins of the Council, job descriptions for officers and committee chairs, annual time line, contacts, election procedures, committee charges, member responsibilities, bylaws and other working documents, etc.
5. Website pages were revised and submitted to the Communication Committee for implementation; early (1993/1995) Council minutes were obtained and added to the Website.
6. Faculty Senate meetings and the fall Faculty Senate retreat were attended by the Chair and members of the Executive Committee.
7. The Chair attended the Faculty Senate of Virginia meeting in November 2002.
8. With the Chair-Elect, the Chair discussed with Nancy Rivers the relationship of the University to the state legislative process.
9. The Chair presented the welcome at the 10th Anniversary GFC Forum in April, including a brief history of how Council was formed.
10. The Chair served ex officio on all GFC standing committees.
11. The Chair worked closely with the Chair-Elect to ensure a smooth transition to the new Council year. This new position has greatly eased the workload for the Chair and has helped foster institutional memory for the Council.

• Revising and updating the GFC website with all previous minutes, list of current representatives, and updated bylaws
• Defining the role of the GFC majordomo, updating the gf-roster and other GFC email lists, managing the website and other web communications as appropriate
• Developing strategies and a timeline for communicating with the General Faculty constituent audiences including:
  
  • Increase awareness of GFC
  • Disseminate GFC mission
  • Improve communication with constituent audiences
  • Communicate pertinent and timely information to constituent audiences such as benefits, policies, etc.
  • Create a General Faculty welcome packet/brochure, etc.
  • Create opportunities for social interaction among general faculty

• GFC Brochure was completed in June 2002 for dissemination to new general faculty as part of the welcome packets for new faculty. Brochure was finished and forwarded to Madison Hall for inclusion in these packets.
• A welcome letter to the general faculty, soliciting input for Council priorities, was emailed in Fall 2002. Constituents’ primary concern was health benefits for part-time workers.
• The GFC website was reviewed, and recommendations about new and revised information that needed to be included on the website were discussed. Copies of the 2001/02 GFC minutes were archived on the website, and gf-roster was updated. The GFC contracted with Student Techies to facilitate the maintenance of the Website and implement communication strategies under the supervision of the GFC Webmaster.
• The GFC Webmaster dealt with a constant array of problems with the email lists, updated the subscribers based on the list obtained by the Data Collection Committee, and converted to new software in Spring 2003.
• A General Faculty Forum was held on April 18, 2003 with Leonard Sandridge and Gene Block as the guest speakers. The forum focused on the role of General Faculty at the University of Virginia and included an acknowledgment of the 10th anniversary of the General Faculty Council. The event was held in the Garden Room of Hotel E with over 50 people in attendance.
• Research about strategies to highlight the achievements and successes of general faculty was initiated. Discussions with Louise Dudley and Student Techies resulted in the possibility of Student Techies devising a search mechanism to create a page that highlights the achievements and contributions of these general faculty members to UVa.
• Meetings were advertised through email and minutes were distributed to the General Faculty following the meetings. Information about adding the meetings to the UVa master calendar and the UVa HS master calendar were also investigated.

• Decide how to ensure approval of draft General Faculty Policy
• Develop strategies and timeline for dealing with other goals:
  • Clarify research faculty policy issues.
  • Propose health benefits for part-time General Faculty, working with other groups as necessary.
  • Clarify, and revise as necessary, the grievance procedure for the General Faculty.
  • Develop/implement plan to make state legislators aware of General Faculty category of state workers.
  • Create a database of who/what/where we are for purposes of networking. (Or, ensure that information in Oracle Human Resources database has the information we need and that we can get to it easily.)
  • Address issue of salary increase discrepancy in comparison with tenured faculty and classified staff.

The Policy Committee’s progress during the 2002/2003 Council year is briefly summarized by objective below.

Objective 1. Continue working with the Provost and General Council to finalize the revised Policy on General Faculty and to clarify policy-related issues specific to research faculty.

During May/June 2002, the Policy Committee communicated several times via email and also met with Gene Block, Alex Johnson, Rick Kast (General Counsel), and Anda Webb regarding the revised draft Policy on General Faculty and policy issues specific to research faculty. Our recommended revisions to the revised draft policy were forwarded to Block and Kast for their consideration in preparing the next draft.

Between early November 2002 and the end of April 2003, we communicated with the Provost on several occasions concerning action on the revised draft policy. He apologized for the delay, which was attributed in part to demands on his time imposed by the budget crisis, and assured us the work would proceed within a short time. A revised draft policy was eventually posted for our review and comment in mid May (shortly after the beginning of the next Council year).

In December 2002, we also communicated with Gene Block, Tom Gausvik (Chief HR Officer), and Nancy Bertram, (Associate Dean of the College) concerning temporary disability leave for Research Faculty. This arose in the context of a new option for temporary disability leave coverage for some general faculty under the university’s new VSDP program. Unfortunately, this class of "parking-lot" issues was not resolved and, in the words of Gene Block, still "needs more work."

Objective 2. Propose health benefits for part-time General Faculty, working with other groups as necessary.

Lotta Lofgren and Carol Hunter investigated the availability of health benefits for part-time (50% or greater) general faculty at UVa’s peer (SCHEV) institutions and found that all provided some form of health benefits for part-time workers. UVa provides no benefits (except to Medical Center employees) and is clearly an outlier in this regard. These findings were reported to Gene Block and Leonard Sandridge in subsequent meetings. This information provided leverage in our efforts to implement benefits for part-time faculty.

Lotta Lofgren and Lynda White developed a survey for all 50% or greater part-time salaried workers regarding health benefits. They worked with a consultant to produce the survey on the Web, and to gather and begin analyzing the results.

Objective 3. Clarify and revise as necessary the grievance procedure for the general faculty.

Because they are interrelated, the Committee thinks it premature to address this issue until after the revised policy has been finalized.

Objective 4. Make state legislators aware of the general faculty as a discrete category of state employees and encourage them to eliminate the salary increase disparities between general faculty and tenured/tenure-track faculty.

We have discussed the possibility of arranging a forum with local legislators to discuss this matter but, otherwise, have not focused on this issue.

Objective 5. Work with university administrators to ensure that general faculty are identifiable in the new Oracle database and that the GFC is able to directly extract relevant information that accurately details the current composition (who/what/where) of the general faculty (this became a joint objective with the Data Collection Committee).

We have interacted with George Stovall (Director of Institutional Studies) and identified several problems with filters that have been applied to the data in the past to identify general faculty. Most importantly, "wage" faculty (primarily part-time or adjunct faculty) and faculty whose salaries were paid directly by outside agencies and not processed through the university (some research faculty) were excluded. The people who are implementing Oracle are aware of our needs and we have been told that the system should eventually be able to provide the necessary information. However, the implementation schedule is uncertain. In the meantime, we have continued working with the files from Stovall (modified as appropriate) to capture most current general faculty.

Other Activities.
In addition to the above, the Policy Committee has advised several individual members of the general faculty concerning their rights and privileges in the context of the expectation of continued employment, standards of notice, and termination.

• Conduct a survey of general faculty
• Appoint Oracle reporter who can mine info from Oracle for labels, lists of constituents for majordomos, etc.
• Do a statistical analysis of the general faculty membership.
  

The purpose of the Data Collection Committee is to collect data that would help the GFC better serve the general faculty. One goal was to conduct a survey of the general faculty. Another goal was to collect data that would show characteristics of the general faculty, such as where general faculty are employed, rank, and salary, percent full-time, length of employment, etc.

Neither goal was accomplished. The survey was tabled to a later date when the GFC has determined what we would like for a survey to tell us. The second goal was thwarted because it requires access to confidential information. We will not be able to collect or do data analysis until we gain permission to access this data. However, I am available in the future to do data analysis on any data the GFC might collect in the future.

Consequently, the goals of the Data Collection Committee have changed somewhat. An added task accomplished by the Committee was to manage the database of the general faculty members. This file was updated and corrected. The information was shared with the Bylaws Committee to facilitate reapportionment. The Council email lists were also updated by the Communications Committee based on this database, allowing the Elections Committee to conduct elections. In addition contact was established with University Human Resources from whom the Council will obtain the general faculty member data in the future.

• Update election procedure; give to Webmaster to update Website
• Create historical list of all previous Council Members, dates, who they represented; give to Webmaster for Website
• Manage elections in winter 2003.

1. The Elections Committee met monthly from October through March. The Committee worked with the Bylaws Committee to establish equal representation for constituents of the GFC, concluding that there should be an additional representative from the Health Sciences Center in place of a second at-large representative. While this recommendation was approved, there were no nominations to fill this seat.
2. The Committee worked with the Majordomo to clarify membership on each of the GFC constituents’ mailing lists in order to facilitate the election process.
3. The Committee conducted the election for GFC representatives in February and March of 2003, the first using a Website for collecting nominations and for balloting.
4. The Committee updated the procedures for carrying out elections to be posted on the GFC website in May 2003.

• Review Bylaws for consistency (last reviewed 1999)
• Investigate whether proxies should have voting privileges
• Readjust members’ constituencies, ensuring that there is a law school member; look particularly at the representation for "other schools."

1. Enumerated constituencies and reapportioned them for new Council membership elections; the final apportionment is described by the representation on the Council for 2003/04 and posted on the Website in the December minutes
2. Ascertained that proxies are permitted to vote in Council meetings when the Bylaws procedures (IX.I) have been followed
3. Reviewed and revised the Bylaws (see Website), and conducted a vote for approval: 254 yeses and 7 nos.