From davis@cise.ufl.edu  Mon Apr 21 12:47:30 2008
To: Kincsemfarm@cs.com
Cc: Elif Akcali <akcali@ise.ufl.edu>,
	David Bloomquist <dave@ce.ufl.edu>, Jacob Chung <jnchung@ufl.edu>,
	"Oscar D. Crisalle" <crisalle@che.ufl.edu>,
	Tim Davis <davis@cise.ufl.edu>, Joe Delfino <jdelf@eng.ufl.edu>,
	Kirk Hatfield <khatf@ce.ufl.edu>, James Klausner <klaus@ufl.edu>,
	Tony Ladd <ladd@che.ufl.edu>, Jenshan Lin <jenshan@ufl.edu>,
	Jan Nuetzel <jnuet@eng.ufl.edu>, Ranga Narayanan <ranga@che.ufl.edu>,
	Mark Orazem <meo@che.ufl.edu>, Wolfgang Sigmund <wsigm@mse.ufl.edu>,
	Susan Sinnott <ssinn@mse.ufl.edu>, Eric Wachsman <ewach@mse.ufl.edu>,
	Jack Mecholsky <jmech@mse.ufl.edu>
Subject: Re: Vote on MOA

Dear John (and cc to the Council),

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply in detail to the concerns of the
COE Faculty Council; I greatly appreciate hearing your viewpoints and the
background of this issue.  I'm cc'ing this note to the Council.  I think
opening up more communication between the Union and the College is a very good
thing.  We should do more of it so there are fewer surprises like this.

As Chair of the Faculty Council, I would be the one to go to to speak to the
faculty as a whole.  The Council has the constitutional authority to call a
meeting of the whole college, for example.  Whoever you spoke to in the
college, asking for input, didn't forward that request to me, because I would
have gladly jumped at the chance.  I'm very sorry that connection didn't get
made.  Let's plan a meeting sometime.

Whether or not the T&P limit on the maximum number of letters is a show-stopper
is something the faculty themselves need to decide.  The Council decided that
it was an unacceptable limitation.  Why not leave the number of letters up to
the determination of each college?  Wouldn't it make more sense for the
Articles to remain silent on this issue, as they have done in the past?

I know that some colleges have a hard time getting 3 letters.  Our current
standard is 8 to 10 letters, so this is a big change.

I can give myself as an example, since I recently went up for promotion to full
professor.  My 9 letters were a strong point for my case (5 National Academy of
Science or Engineering members; faculty from MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Cornell,
etc.; 2 past presidents and one current president of SIAM, etc).  If a faculty
member wishes to demonstrate strength in the packet in terms of breadth and
depth of the impact of his or her work, then letters from a group like that is
the only way to do it.

Limiting the letters, in my mind, pushes the balance away from quality and
towards other metrics in the packet - such as quantity (# of articles is easy
to measure; it's pretty much just the letters that weigh in on quality).

I do appreciate the point you make about the workload issue of senior faculty
having to write lots of letters.  That issue is one I hadn't considered.  Which
two national associations have made that recommendation?

I also serve on the SIAM Council ( http://www.siam.org/about/board.php ).
We're meeting in July.  I'll bring up this workload issue with them - without
revealing my personal bias - both the pros and cons of limiting the # of
letters.  They would be the ones, for my association, that would make
recommendations like that.  I'm very curious to hear what they think about it.

In the meantime, I'll discuss it with the College Faculty Council to see what
their recommendations are.

Am I right in my reading of the Memo, that a vote of "yes" will put all
provisions into place immediately?  So that if the MOA passes, we will have a
hard upper limit of 6 letters for T&P packets submitted this fall?  That seems
to be the clear reading of the MOA, to me.

Thanks again!
Tim