Option added to engineering resources ballot

Faculty have added an option to the upcoming ballot on the resource needs in engineering that would reduce the number of civil engineering faculty from six to five and charge engineering students a lab fee of $840 per year.

The new option, proposed by Phillip Snow, associate professor of civil engineering, was approved at a general meeting of the faculty on Wednesday.

Using a preferential voting system, faculty on Friday will select from six options, five of which were presented by an earlier report from the Resource Allocation Subcouncil (RASC):

• Phase out civil engineering;
• Reduce the size of faculty salary increases;
• Increase the size of the student body by 1.4 percent, or seven students per year, for four years;
• Apply a combination of a smaller increase in the student body and an early-retirement option;
• Apply a combination of smaller cuts among programs (CE, International Programs, undergraduate research, athletics) use early retirements in engineering, and introduce lab fees in engineering; and
• Reduce the number of civil engineering faculty from six to five and charge engineering students a lab fee of $840 per year.

Mark Walker, chair of the Academic Affairs Council, announced that the AAC had removed from the ballot "Option 5," which called for a combination of an early-retirement plan for engineering plus a reallocation of the 20 tenure-track lines in the Plan for Union.

Faculty ballots are to be distributed on Friday, collected on Tuesday and counted on Wednesday, according to Tom Werner, chair of the Faculty Executive Committee. The College's Board of Trustees is to consider the resource needs in engineering at their Oct. 12 meeting, he added.