COMMITTEE: Academic Awards

MEETING DATE: 3pm, 10/7/2010

PERSON PRESIDING: Sue Steinweg (Thomas Herron recording minutes)

REGULAR MEMBERS IN ATTENDANCE: Sue Steinweg, Thomas Herron, Heng Hong, Laura Prividera, Dorothy Mueller

EX-OFFICIO MEMBERS IN ATTENDANCE: Dillon R. Godley, Ron Mitchelson

OTHERS IN ATTENDANCE: Lori Lee, JoLynne Daughertry

ACTIONS OF MEETING

Agenda item: Discussion of technology formats of award submissions with ECU IT personnel.

Discussion: various.

Action Taken: None by official committee vote.

Assigned additional duties to:

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Agenda Item: Election of officers for 2010-11 academic year.

Discussion: various demurrals among nominated members.

Action Taken: Slate of nominees created. Motion passed and seconded in support of slate. Steinweg elected Chair of committee; Hong Vice-Chair; Herron Secretary.

Assigned additional duties to:

Agenda Item: Organization and execution of annual awards ceremony

Discussion: Focused on problems with recent re-organization of the ceremony, which turned three prior individual events into one annual one. Speculation as to why this occurred and discussion of past opposition of some members of the Academic Awards Committee to the changes. Discussion of some ad hoc faculty reactions to the changes which were positive. Various committee members raised the following concerns: 1) there were too many recipients in attendance at the most recent annual ceremony, which led to a) an overly long ceremony and/or abrupt recognition of individuals due to time constraints and factory-style processing, and b) increased anonymity at the very time when recipients should be individually recognized for merit; 2) the lumping of various awards and ECU employee categories (staff, faculty, admin) together made for an incongruous mixture, whereby (for example) lifetime achievement awards competed cheek-by-jowl with annual service awards; this leads to the diminishing of the (perceived) greater significance of the former. Discussion of how to correct these problems (for example, to consider separating the 60-odd annual service awards from a ceremony that would focus exclusively on the others, thus reducing the number of award recipients at any one ceremony and also reducing the perceived incongruity of the relative importance of the awards).

Action Taken: Mitchelson makes motion for the AAC to write a letter to the Chancellor expressing these concerns and containing the minutes of this meeting. Motion seconded and passed.

Assigned additional duties to:

NEXT MEETING: 11/4/2010 3pm Rawl Annex 142

ITEMS TO BE DISCUSSED: