Diversity Committee Minutes, April 24, 2003
Hodges Room 605, 1:00-2:30 pm.
Members present: Roller, Davis, Bayne, Stephens, Blocker, Myers, Keally, Mack, Conner, Royse, Manoff, and R. Smith
Announcements: TLA and ACRL photos will be scanned and archived. We may want to add some of these to our website, and send out a ShareNews with pictures to share with all the staff.
Upcoming ALA conference: members of the committee will have a poster session at the Diversity Fair—mostly concerning outreach activities.
Call for new members: Anthony Smith, Renee Smith, Anne Pemberton, Tamara Miller, and maybe Troy Davis will rotate off the committee. Troy will let us know by our next meeting. So, we need new members. Last year, the procedure was to send out a paper form in May asking for interested people to apply by early June. We will follow the same procedure this year. When we get names, the Dean will consult with us. Committee members were reminded to encourage library staff who might be interested to apply. The Minority Residents will be invited to join if they wish to.
The Committee also discussed the committee chair position. The committee agreed to write a proposal for the Dean outlining different ways of handling the chair position. The Dean appoints the chair, and the only current stipulation is that the person have already served on the committee for 2 years. Three possibilities were discussed: co-chairs, a single chair, or a chair and vice-chair model, with the assumption that the vice-chair would be the next chair. The committee rejected the 3rd proposal as being too long a period—the vice-chair would serve for a total of four years—two as vice-chair, and one as chair.
The Committee agreed to send the first two proposals to the Dean with our comments or concerns. LouAnn will draft the proposal and we’ll review it at our next meeting. Just to get some idea of the committee’s opinion, there was a informal show of hands, and the single chair idea was favored 7 to 5. In the meantime, anyone who is interested in serving as chair should email LouAnn Blocker.
The group decided to postpone visiting the Highlander Center until the summer.
Our lunch with Patty Boling was a great success. Patty had a good time, and so did we.
At the next meeting, all members should bring calendars so we can discuss meeting dates/times for the summer. We will probably stay with Thursdays from 1-2:30.
Report from search committee for Minority Residents: they will meet Tuesday May 6, and will have completed 11 phone interviews at that time. They will then decide who to bring in for interviews, and hope to conduct those at the end of May.
The committee will explore the possibility of having Diversity Committee t-shirts made, with the diversity logo on them. The committee decided to pursue this idea.
With no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 2:30.
Respectfully submitted,
LouAnn Blocker