The Faculty Senate, in a special meeting last week, approved a controversial recommendation relating to a proposal to develop a campuswide, interdisciplinary structure for teaching and research in computing and information science.
The recommendation, approved in a vote of 30 to 10 with three abstaining, was the sixth and final motion on computing and information science first presented to the senate at its regular meeting Oct. 13 by Terrence Fine, director of the Center for Applied Mathematics and chair of the Senate Committee on Academic Programs and Policies (CAPP). At that meeting the senate approved four of the six motions, rejected the fifth and postponed discussion of the sixth, due to lack of time.
The sixth recommendation was approved at the special meeting Oct. 20, after spirited debate. It addressed the controversial plan to transfer management of the Department of Computer Science from the colleges of Engineering and Arts and Sciences and set it up as an independent entity under a new dean for computing and information science. Robert Constable, formerly chair of the Department of Computer Science, has been named dean.
The motion reads: "The President, Provost, and Deans of Engineering and Arts and Sciences are urged to rethink carefully the management of the Computer Science Department, taking into account the intellectual reach of this department and its roles in the colleges of Engineering and Arts and Sciences and assessing whether radical change is justified by the reasons offered thus far."
Senators and visiting faculty members argued both for the motion and against it. Charles Van Loan, the new chair of the Department of Computer Science, reporting to Constable, asked senators to defeat the motion. He said this new, universitywide, interdisciplinary structure for teaching and research in computing requires new resources that can only be administered by the provost's office directly. Further, he added, "We need a dean at the highest level to make this all happen."
Several faculty members from the College of Engineering spoke in defense of the motion, saying it doesn't make sense to take computer science, the core of modern technology, out of the college. Others pointed out that computer science is an integral part of what the college is all about.
Fine, speaking in favor of the motion, said: "A move of this magnitude, removing a department from a college, has to be considered very carefully. ... You are not being asked whether this is the right move but whether it needs to be considered very carefully."
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