Minutes of FDC meeting on April 5, 2002   
                1871 Room of Fricke Center.
  
  In attendance: Marie Baehr, Andrew Das, Heather Hall, Bill Hirstein, Helga Noice, Earl
  Swallow, Therese Wehman
  
  The minutes of the previous two meetings were approved.
  
  After some discussion about the nominees, committee members agreed to rank order the
  four candidates for the President's Award for Excellence in Teaching, and send the
  rankings to Earl.  
  
  There was also discussion about whether the names of all nominees should be announced
  at the award ceremony.  It was decided to do so, primarily because the flyers for the
  award state that this will be done.
  
  There was discussion on the format of the recently held faculty book reception.  Helga
  Noice proposed that a more formal type of setup might be preferable, in which faculty
  author spoke very briefly about their books, and the books were displayed more
  prominently.
  All further suggestions on the format of future book receptions should be sent to Therese
  Wehman.
  
  Committee members agreed to rank order the candidates for both the faculty research
  grants, and the departmental initiatives.  Money is available to fund 2, possibly 3
  initiatives.
  
  Earl will post the proposals of previous awardees of grants from the alumni association
  on the FDC website, so that those interested in applying can see what sort of proposals
  are funded.
  
  The rest of the meeting was taken up by a discussion of the practice of offering faculty
  member stipends to attend, e.g. developmental seminars.  One thing that emerged from
  the discussion is that whether or not the topic of the seminar falls within the faculty
  member's normal range of duties is an important issue in deciding whether a stipend
  should be offered.  Similarly, if the seminar occurs outside normal working hours, e.g.,
  on the weekend, this may provide a reason to offer a stipend.  The practice of offering
  stipends to insure good attendance was criticized.  No consensus was reached on this
  issue, but we will discuss it in the future.
  
  wsh