Three top University administrators plan to meet with faculty from each academic department this year to discuss issues concerning the implementation of the overall integrated planning initiative, Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe said.Jaffe said he, Provost Marty Krauss and Chief Operating Officer Peter French have already met with two departments: sociology and German, Russian and Asian languages and literature.

Those meetings appear to reflect a shift in the administration's approach toward integrated planning, after Jaffe submitted a proposal for major academic reforms last year. Those proposals-which included cuts from linguistics, music, classics and other departments-were withdrawn for reconsideration by Jaffe in the wake of significant faculty and student outcry, though aspects of the proposal were praised by certain departments. After backing down from his proposals, Jaffe acknowledged the faculty complaints that communication had been lacking in the process.

"I understand and accept that the process that we chose to pursue these discussions has turned out to be problematic," Jaffe told the Justice in March. "I would like now to move on and get as constructive a result as we can."

Integrated planning is an initiative focused on determining how best to spend a $15 million increase in the annual budget by 2012.

Jaffe has not said he plans to issue another set of proposals, but he did say the current meetings have been "very positive," and that no explicit changes have been discussed with either department.

"There is no specific agenda items that we're trying to resolve," Jaffe said. "It's really just to talk about, in a general way, the future course of the university, concerns that people have and for them to ask us questions about what we think is going to be happening."

Prof. Robin Feuer Miller (GRALL), the chair of her department, said the meetings have been beneficial.

"It just gave what can often be a kind of standard first meeting of the year ... a fresh perspective to have the University looking at us and us communicating with the senior representatives of the University," she said.

But classical studies chair Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow said her department plans to prepare carefully for its meeting with the administrators, which is scheduled for today. Her department had been slated for cuts under Jaffe's proposals last year before the dean reconsidered.

"We took it more seriously than [the German, Russian and Asian Languages and Literature department], let's say, because of the position we were in last year," Kolowski-Ostrow said of her department's preparation for the meeting. "We don't think we can walk in and just have a casual discussion."

Koloski-Ostrow said her department has created a document outlining several new proposals that would incorporate goals from integrated planning, but she declined to comment on any details.

"One of the requests [the president and the University have made] is to think about ways to raise revenues so we can do more of what we love to do most," she said. "It is an educational document and it's a forward-thinking document."

As part of the academic portion of the integrated planning initiative that began last year, Jaffe introduced a set of controversial proposals last fall that called for the elimination of the music composition graduate program, the linguistics major and the teaching of ancient Greek, as well as a reduction in the number of faculty in the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and physics departments.

These proposals were intended to shift resources within the arts and sciences and to alleviate what Jaffe called a "structural academic deficit."

After receiving widespread criticism of the proposals, Jaffe backed away from his proposals at a March 3 faculty meeting. Separate from the integrated planning initiative, Jaffe garnered community support for his efforts to increase arts and sciences faculty salaries as well as boost graduate student stipends.

Jaffe also received praise from the East Asian studies program and economics department for his attempts to increase their course offerings and faculty rosters.