####
 What I wanted to do today was to bring you up to speed on what
the Task Force is doing and to issue the same challenge to you that I issued to
Student Government on Wednesday night. You have received in your packet a
description of the committees of the Intellectual Climate Task Force, as well as
the membership of that group. We have been working very hard. The Chancellor
named the chairs of those committees in May, and we met all summer planning work
for the Committee. The remaining members were named in September, and they have
begun their deliberations. I can say that I don't think I have ever had such a
wonderful experience as I did this summer working with that group of chairs. They
are absolutely wonderful, and they are coming up with some terrific ideas. And
you can, if you have questions about what we're doing, please ask one of us. But
what I want to put to you is a charge. And that is to take seriously your role as
both representatives and as leaders. You have a responsibility to represent the
faculty of this University, and I would like for you to go out, talk to your
constituents, and to come back to us and tell us what they think and tell us what
you think. And I would also ask you to take very seriously your role as leaders
on this campus and the serious responsibility you have for creating a dialogue on
this subject and for raising the consciousness of the rest of the faculty about
the extreme importance of this topic to the future of our University. What you
can do, specifically, is, you've received the description. There are e -mail
addresses for all of us. Please offer your advice, find out ideas from faculty in
your department and other departments, ask them to offer their advice. You can
send it to any of us through e-mail, or, we would really like for you to use our
Web page. Each committee has a discussion platform. It seems very appropriate if
we're talking about bringing technology to the University, that we begin by
conducting this dialogue, at least in part, in that fashion. So, also encourage
others to do the same. And, as I promised, I'll be brief. So I and my task force
look forward to hearing from each and every one of you. Every idea is important,
and we want to hear all of them this fall. Thank you.

####
 Well, thanks for having me back. I promised I would be brief
last time. I'm not going to promise this time.

(laughter)

I want to do two things today. I want to update you about some of the ideas that
are beginning to come out of this Task Force, and I want to inform you about some
of the future activities, and once again try and engage you and involve you. The
six Task Force committees have been meeting all semester. They've been very
active, and a lot of good ideas have been coming out of them. At the December
meeting of Faculty Council, we will take up some of those ideas in greater depth.
 At that time you will be asked to join our conversation by providing feedback to
one of these committees. There's a sign-up sheet going around now. You're to list
the three committees you'd most like to interact with, and what we're going to do
at the December meeting is to break up in small groups. You'll be briefed about
some of the ideas coming out of these committees and asked to, I think, function
as something of a test group, a focus group, but also as representatives of the
faculty in reacting initially to some of these ideas. So what I want to do today
is to give you a little preview about what some of the ideas are like. Hopefully,
entice you to want to find out more before the December meeting, and basically,
prepare you for that meeting, give you something of an edge on what's going on. 
So what I'm going to do is run through what some of these committees are coming
up with. None of these ideas are set in stone. Some of them are fairly
provocative. They're meant to be. So, here we go.

Marshall Edgell chairs the Inside the Classroom committee. They are exploring a
number of different ideas, one of which is an academy of distinguished teachers
that would advise the Administration on educational matters. Another idea would
be to require new faculty to actually take a workshop or perhaps even a course on
how to enhance faculty interaction within the classroom. A third would be to
establish a program that would take a very active role in encouraging faculty to
increase the amount of student-faculty interactions in their courses. Another
would be to focus on student independent scholarship, and how we can increase
student research, especially in the first two years. Another is the establishment
of a performance competence evaluation system to help develop the role of faculty
more as a learning coach than as evaluators of student progress. A possibility
that's already being explored in the College is the establishment of a structure
to support cohort education, and that is keeping small groups of students
together through similar experiences, pairing them for particular courses.

Moving to a second committee, Leon Fink has been very active with his First Year
Experience committee. That committee has broken down into three subcommittees
focusing on the recruitment of new students in our orientation, academic programs
during the first year, and living and learning, how one integrates the social
experience with the academic experience. They're considering, respectively,
programs that have to deal with substantially revamping the C-Tops orientation
program. Another proposal being taken up by the academic programs subcommittee is
to revisit the idea of freshman seminars but hopefully from some new and
innovative perspectives. And yet a third is the idea of a freshman campus.

The third committee is Service Learning. Donna LeFebvre chairs that committee,
and they are moving rapidly towards recommending the creation of a center for
public service on our campus. This center would support and expand service
learning and other community service by undergraduates and graduates. It would
act as a gateway, with a supporting database, between the state and local
communities, students, staff, and faculty.

The fourth committee is chaired by Melinda Meade. It deals with Public Spaces,
and they, too, are exploring a number of ideas. These include requiring formal
consultation with faculty and students by Facilities Planning, at a stage where
in-house architects start to address a project--much as we now do to ensure
handicapped access. We would propose doing that to ensure that our public spaces
are designed to facilitate student-faculty interaction. Another possibility is
creating a fund to be competitively won each year by faculty or students in
departments or other groups for purposes of designing the use of lounges,
renovating dead space in their buildings, otherwise improvising interactive space
that we don't currently have enough of. A third possibility is establishing a
fund which could be self-renewing, with contributions, to purchase the best
student art or other creations for hanging in departments, faculty offices, and
such. And a final possibility is the creation of a series of mini-amphitheaters
as a motif around campus. Some could descend, for example, the banks and hills
around building embankments. Others could be groupings of tables and benches
between sidewalks that surround the quads. And these would be accessible to
discussion groups, readers, small classes, and would bring people out to use
campus space during much of the year when the weather permits.

The fifth committee is Outside the Classroom and Lloyd Kramer in the History
Department chairs this committee. They are exploring a number of different ideas
for bringing intellectual exchange into the various reaches of everyday life. One
idea involves better coordination between faculty, as they organize their
courses, and those who exercise extra-curricular activities on campus. Faculty
would be strongly encouraged to integrate outside events into classroom activity.
 Indeed, into course requirements, thereby beginning to break down the dichotomy
between inside and outside the classroom. The Chancellor mentioned earlier the
importance of advising, and this committee has already begun to focus on that and
is in the process of developing a proposal to change the advising system so as to
make the advisor-student relationship much more than some sort of bureaucratic
check-off of requirements, which many students feel that's what it is now.

The final committee is on Faculty Roles and Rewards. Laurie McNeil chairs that
committee. A lot of the changes being discussed, and many of those that I just
mentioned, will require changing, indeed, perhaps fundamentally rethinking in
some very basic ways our role, the role of faculty. This committee is working at
a bit of a disadvantage because they have to wait for the other committees to
come up with proposals so they can begin to explore how to adjust faculty roles
and rewards in order to facilitate those proposals. Nonetheless, some of the
things they have begun exploring include encouraging deans and vice provosts to
make part of a departmental budget depend on how much climate-enhancing activity
its faculty has engaged in in the last year and plans to do in the future. 
Another possibility is a much broader definition of teaching load, to include
other activities, like undergraduate thesis advising, general advising, and the
like. A third possible proposal would be to establish a source of funds at the
Provost level, with RFP's for climate-enhancing activities. Proposals, for
example, might include time off to revamp a class to make it more of an inquiry
style experience, funds for undergraduate research projects, resources to develop
interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching projects. Another would be to
encourage the naming of professorships for excellence in interdisciplinary
scholarship teaching judged by its effects on members of the University
community.

In sum, you can see these committees have been fairly busy. They are working hard
to look at these different areas. No one idea is going to produce substantial
change. But I think when the package of ideas is taken together and put into a
coherent plan, that we will have an exciting blueprint for enhancing the
intellectual climate on campus. In the upcoming weeks I'm going to ask you to do
four things. Next week The Daily Tar Heel will be running a series of articles on
intellectual climate. I've been very pleased with the excitement they've shown,
and it would be very helpful if you would engage your students and your
colleagues in discussion of these articles as well as some of the topics I've
brought to you today. Secondly, the Task Force has a terrific Web page. The
address is on the flyer that's on the back on the table. You've seen some signs
similar to this (Prof. Conover displayed a sign inviting attention to the Web
page). I've brought a number of them today. Please visit the page, participate in
the discussion boards, encourage your students and colleagues to do the same. If
each of you could just persuade a few of your students, a few of your colleagues,
to participate in our Web page conversation, the dialogue would be broadened
considerably. And so what I want you to do is I want you to take one of these and
post it on your door, and when people say ìwhat is that?î tell them and encourage
them to use it. It's really a very exciting innovation and a very appropriate way
to carry on this conversation. The third thing as I've already mentioned, is the
discussion we're going to have in December at Faculty Council. It would be good
if you gave that some thought ahead of time and acted as representatives and
talked to you colleagues about some of these ideas. If you would like further
advance information, you can contact me or any of the six committee chairs I've
mentioned. And the fourth thing I'm going to ask, and a number of my committee
chairs have mentioned this to me, and that is, engaging you in helping to combat
the skepticism that they have encountered from many people around campus about
whether this Task Force can do anything. Now, in asking that I realize a number
of you might be skeptics about whether this Task Force can do anything. Let me
assure you that the people on this are working very hard, but more than that,
they believe that something can be done, and they are convinced that real and
substantial changes can happen. I am convinced of it. I am confident that our
Chancellor is convinced of it. The Provost and other administrators are convinced
of it, and more importantly, are willing to help us in this project. So,
together, I think we can do remarkable things, and I hope you will join us in
that effort. And I look forward to our conversation in December. Thank you.

(applause)

####
 Those of you who aren't members of the Faculty Council can
participate in this, too, because I'm going to read off where these various
committees are meeting, and your task is to talk about some initial ideas that
the Committee on the Task Force on Intellectual Climate have come up with. Let me
stress that none of these are recommendations set in stone yet, and, indeed,
they're all still under discussion and there's still lots of room for new ideas. 
But we have facilitators who are not members of the Task Force to aid in the
discussion, and then knowledgeable members from the Task Force, in most cases
chairs of the relevant committees, to provide background information. Let me read
where each of these groups is meeting, and those of you who aren't members of the
Faculty Council are welcome to come and participate in the discussions as well.

Inside the Classroom: That committee is going to meet right here in the Assembly
Room.

The discussion of Outside the Classroom, which has to with all the activities
that bridge the two will meet in room 501, the North Carolina Collection gallery.
 And that's on the second floor, the same as the Assembly Room is.

The Freshman Year Experience will meet in room 710, the Friends of the Library
room. And that's on the third floor.

Public Spaces: Will meet in room 711, and that's the staff lounge. Also on the
third floor.

Service & Community Based Learning will meet in room 711C, off the staff lounge,
on the third floor.

And Faculty Roles & Rewards: will meet in room 901D, the seminar room in the
Manuscripts Department on the fourth floor.

I'm going to dismiss you and send you off, but having had experience in sending
students to groups before

(laughter)

I know what the temptation is, and we would really like for you to spend an hour
or so on this lovely afternoon talking about this very important topic. So thank
you. Let's go.