Colleagues,

For those who might not have noticed, listed towards the middle of Betsy
Darken's email listing the Faculty Senate's agenda for today's meeting was
the following item:

>       c.        Faculty Meeting Quorum
>         Proposal:   The quorum for a faculty meeting is to be 100.  Action
>at faculty meetings is to be taken   only on         items posted on the
>advance agenda.

If the intent, as I suspect it is, is to increase faculty participation in
faculty governance, I offer the following alternative suggestion.  The
Faculty Senate should propose to the Faculty at large to move the full
faculty meetings to the Thursday or Friday before the start of the Fall
semester, Fall Reading day, and Spring Reading day.  There would not be
class conflicts and therefore few reasons for faculty missing the meeting.

One other minor point.   My understanding is that the current definition of
a Quorum requires approximately 200 faculty members to be present at a
meeting.  Although I can understand the frustration of not being able to
gather enough faculty to conduct business, I am also not comfortable with
the idea that if this measure passes, 15 members of faculty could call a
special meeting during a very busy time and then pass a major faculty
related item with only 51 (out of approximately 400) faculty members
supporting the item.

In closing, I encourage members of the Faculty Senate to not approve the
above listed proposal to change the faculty meeting Quorum.

With warmest regards to my fellow faculty members,
Andy

===============================
Andy Novobilski, Ph.D.
Assoc. Prof. & Acting Dept. Head
UT Chattanooga Computer Science
(423) 425-4202
http://www.utc.edu/faculty/Andy-Novobilski