GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
The Executive Board
MINUTES
Meeting
of
Held in the Poole Board Room
of the
Members
Present :
Abdel-Khalik (ME); Callen (ECE); Estes
(EDI); Hall (Bio); Henry (OSP); Jayaraman (Mgt); Kahn (CEE); Mark (CoC);
McGuire (LCC); Richards (GTRI); Wardi (ECE); Welch (GTRI); Clough (Pres.);
Chameau (Provost); Liotta (Vice Provost); Alexander (Staff Rep); Childress (G.
Stu): Katzen (for Kavanaugh U. Stu.); E.Thomas (SoF).
Members
Absent:
Allen (Arch); Boyd (Stu Servcs); El-Sayed (Chem); Marr (Psy); Schwan
(CoC); Swank (GTRI); Williamson (Liby);
Visitors: Bob McMath (Provost
Office); Mark Smith (Pres. Ofc.) April Brown (Pres Ofc.) Bill Sayle (EE); Joe
Hughes (EE).
1. The
Chairman, Said Abdel-Khalik, opened the meeting at
2. The President made the following remarks concerning matters of current interest.
(a) There has been a meeting of the President,
Provost, EB Chair and Secretary to discuss programs for the main assembly
meetings. The intent is to include discussion of matters that are of current
interest to faculty. At the first Fall meeting we shall have brief statements
about the
(b) The President asked the
Provost to discuss his initiatives. Chameau stated that there are two major
focuses. First an attempt to increase understanding and interaction between
units. Second to find ways of better implementing our plans; we have many good
ideas but need to make sure they are carried out. To assist with this process
there will be a series of three “retreats”. The first in five weeks time will
involve Deans; the second, in January, will involve Chairs and Lab directors;
and finally, in late February a selected group of Faculty. At the April 23rd
meeting of the Faculty he would intend to produce the conclusions of these retreats
and suggest methods of improving interactions.
(c) Fall Freshman enrollment
is about what had been intended; new Graduate Student numbers are a little
higher than expected.
(d) Our new faculty will
provide Tech with wonderful new talent. NSF Career awards to Tech last year
numbered 13; highest of any Institution. Since 1995 we have had 59 awards; one
ahead of MIT.
(e) For many years Tech has
led the nation in production of Black MS Engineering graduates and most years
is also the leader in PhD production. This last year we were also the top
producer of Bachelor Engineering degrees awarded to Afro-Americans, beating
even the traditionally Black Institutions.
(f) Last year student
athletes had a Grade-Point Average which was higher than the average for the
whole student population.
(g) On September 6 there
will be the formal ground breaking for the
The
President was asked whether the
3. The Chair asked for approval
of the June 19th Executive Board minutes; this was agreed without
dissent.
4. The Secretary asked for
additional nominations of persons to serve as Chair and Vice Chair of the
Executive Board for the new year; there were none from the meeting. He
announced that he had received two e-mailed nominations that the Chair should
be Said Abdel Khalik and that the Vice Chair should be Gisele Welch. There
being no further nominations he asked for a vote to confirm these for the new
year. This was agreed without dissent.
5. The Secretary asked all
elected members to express their preference for liaison assignments for the new
year and return them to him. Assignments would be made during the next few
weeks.
6. The Chair called on Bill
Sayle to discuss the report of the “Committee on Committees”. Sayle stated that
all committee Chairs had met under his leadership and developed 5 recommendations.
In summary they recommend:
(a) That a “Study Abroad”
subcommittee be created.
(b) That key administrators
should be required to report annually to their relevant faculty committee.
Relationships between administrators and committees need to be improved.
(c) The Institute
Undergraduate Curriculum committee needs to be larger.
(d) The Graduate Committee should be charged to review all programs on a six-year cycle.
(e) That there be a
committee to handle “Intellectual Property” issues.
(For full details see attachments).
Welch asked whether committees were happy with their
charters and whether there was concern with overlap of functions. Sayle replied
that after Chairs had discussed their charters they found no problems with
overlap and that difficulties were mainly with relationships to administrators.
Sayle was further asked whether all the committees were in fact needed and
replied in the affirmative and there was no reason to consider reducing the
numbers. The President asked Sayle which committees had difficulty with their
relevant administrators. Sayle responded that these were mainly committees of
the General Faculty and he would send to the President a list of the important
cases.
The Chair proposed that
Sayle present this report to the GFA/AS meeting on September 18th to
seek further faculty input to the matter. This was agreed without dissent.
7. Gisele Welch provided an
interim report on the work of the IP & Commercialization subcommittee. She
explained that this group is reviewing the proposed Policy on IP rights which
was created in 2000 and is to be an update to the Faculty Handbook. The general
topics of discussion have been the following:
(a) Should the policy apply
to GT students? The general answer is yes. If the student is employed by Tech
then certainly they are covered. We should provide additional information to
students about IP ownership.
(b) Should we consider the
impact of Federal and State legislation on IP? The answer is certainly yes and
there are impending changes that need to be considered.
(c) Should conflict of
interest be a follow-on effort of this committee? Again yes, this is a
significant problem.
(d) Should there be an IP
committee? Again yes; the faculty handbook calls for such a committee but it is
not active.
(e) Is the distribution of
royalty appropriate? Here the committee has some questions that need to be
clarified with the authors of the original policy.
Chameau stated that this
needs to be handled quickly as there are persons anxious to develop projects
and wish to fall under the new policy. Recently he has needed to make ad-hoc
decisions that anticipate implementation of the new rules.
Liotta commented that there
are three external groups using consultants to advise on this question. The Board
of Regents who wish to make the rules uniform for all Institutions; the
Department of industry and Trade who wish to promote rapid exploitation and
Georgia Tech which has some different perspectives from the other groups. We
would like our policy to be set in place and to be used as a template for the
other groups.
Welch commented that GT had
a high level of patent activity but a poor license income. The pathway for
faculty to exploit their inventions is not clear. The next job to tackle is
conflict of interest matters. Welch was asked for the main differences between
the old policy and the new. She replied that there were two. First the
inclusion of students; they were not covered in the past and second, a change
to the distribution of income. Chameau recounted an instance where five
students were engaged in a senior design project in association with a company,
and without faculty advice, signed a waiver of patent rites with that company.
The result of their work is now being commercially exploited and neither they
nor Tech will benefit. We need to protect students from this.
The Chair asked that the committee finish its work as rapidly as possible and report back to the Board.
8. The Chair proposed the
following agenda for the September 18th meeting of the GFA and AS.
(a) President’s remarks and
welcome.
(b) Approval of minutes of
previous meetings.
(c) Brief review of the
(d) The Provost’s plans to
seek faculty opinions through retreats and surveys.
(e) Second reading of
proposed changes to statutes.
(f) Report of the Committee
on Committees.
(g) Approval of minutes of
Standing Committees.
This agenda was approved without dissent.
9. The Chair stated that the
Faculty Status and Grievance Committee had asked to Board to review the
question of whether a faculty person can lose GF status if their position is
reclassified to a “staff” category. The FS+G committee takes the position that
this would be contrary to the present statutes and believes the matter should
be clarified. The Chair stated that this is probably too complex to be debated
without some preparation and he proposed that a small group first review the
question. He suggested the following ad-hoc committee:
Chuck Donbaugh (as Director of OHR)
Bob McMath (representing the administration)
Gunter Meyer (outgoing chair of FS+G who raised the
question)
Karen Boyd (representing non-academic, non-research
GF persons)
Yorai Wardi (representing interests of Academic
Faculty)
Mark Richards (representing interests of GTRI
persons)
Edward Thomas (to act as liaison).
He further suggested that
Mark Richards should act as chair.
The President cautioned that
we should also seek Board of Regents views on the matter. We have been very liberal
in our interpretation of GF status and must consider the political impact of
any changes.
The Board approved formation
of the sub committee without dissent.
10. The Chair asked for any other business.
The Secretary asked
permission to make the following appointments to committees and assemblies to
replace persons who had resigned from Tech. In each case the proposed
replacement is a person who received the highest vote of any unsuccessful
candidate in the last election.
(a) Joseph Hoey to replace
Wishon on the Academic Services Committee.
(b) John Valentine to
replace Bill Bullock on the Student Regulations Committee.
(c) Michael Black to replace
Scott Friedman as one of the GFA representative from the Services and Central
Administration constituency.
These were approved without
dissent.
The Chair suggested that in
the future the Secretary be permitted to make such replacements under this
policy without seeking permission of the Board. This was approved without
dissent.
11. At
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Respectfully
submitted
Edward
W. Thomas
Secretary
of the Faculty
Attachments
to the Archival Copy of the Records:
(1)
Agenda.
(2)
Report of the Committee on Committees. (See also web site http://www.facultysenate.gatech.edu/RecfromCmteonCommittees1(3)
Interim report on activities of the IP and Commercialization sub committee.