Minutes of the Council Meetings >>

SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
DEAN'S MEETING
TUESDAY, APRIL26, 2005
MINUTES

The meeting was called to order at 5:10 p.m.

1. APPROVAL OF MINUTES:  The minutes from the Deans Meeting of March 15, 2005 was unanimously approved.

2. STANDING COMMITTEES:   Dr. Mian reported that the rosters for the Standing Committees of the Council were completed and ready for Council's approval. The Council unanimously approved the 2005-2006 roster of the Standing Committees except for the Appointment, Promotion and Tenure Committee. Dr. Fletcher recommended to the Council to seek more female faculty to serve on this said committee and the Council agreed. Dr. Mian will present to the Council at the next Speakers meeting a revised roster for the Appointment, Promotion and Tenure Committee for their consideration.

3. SABBATICAL LEAVE:  Dr. Namias presented to the Council a revised Faculty Sabbatical Leave Policy and reported that he made the recommended changes as per discussions at the last Council meeting. He mentioned that because clinical faculty play an important role to the Medical School regardless the track they are on this is the reason for revising the existing policy to allow non tenured faculty to apply for sabbatical leave. Dr. Namias reported that he was able to research other Medical Schools and they essentially are the same as UM in that they weigh more towards the tenured, which usually involves around 4-6 years of service. Dr. Namias advised council that he emailed deans from universities such as Emory, Vanderbilt, Rochester, etc. requesting the percentage of clinical faculty who take sabbatical leave and he received one response from Emory, that their policy does allow non tenured faculty to apply they very rarely have clinical faculty taking sabbatical leave because of funding issues. Dr. Namias stated that the money to support this should come from the capital campaign which is in support of faculty development and not burden the clinical departments to come up with the funding.

   Dean Clarkson mentioned to the Council that UM has a policy and expressed that there has been sabbatical leave taken in the past by faculty and the departments funded the leave. There is a problem with Dr. Namias funding recommendation because there is almost no money that has come in from the capital campaign that isn’t specifically assigned. Dean Clarkson recommended that the School of Medicine needs to find a way to raise money for these clinical sabbatical leaves and they must be for academic purposes. The Policy will need to have the approval of the Faculty Senate as well. The Council members felt that if there is a need for this program and the funding is there the Senate would not object. Dr. Namias will research this further with the sub-committee and report findings back to the Council at a later meeting.

4. OTHER BUSINESS:  Dean Clarkson advised that they will be announcing the new provost in the next few weeks right now there are three candidates.

   Dean Clarkson also advised that our Board has approved the Medical Practice Building planning process thru the Executive Committee and the Wet Lab building was approved by the Public Health Trust, because we have to lease the land from the County and he further discussed that we are going thru the process of the land lease for the Medical Practice Building and that will go thru the Public Health Trust in the month of May. He advised that the Medical Practice Building should open by December, 2009 and the Wet Lab should open by 2007.

5. SCHOOL COUNCIL:  The next Dean's meeting of the School Council will be June 28, 2005 at 5:00 p.m. in room 1301. The next speaker's meeting of the council will be held on July 19th, 2005 at 5p.m in room 1537 of the Sylvester Cancer Center. This meeting is open to all faculty, as are all Council meetings.

The meeting was adjourned at 6:15 p.m.