On May 14, Brandeis held the last faculty meeting of the spring semester at 2 p.m. in the Shapiro Campus Center Multipurpose Room. President Arthur Levine ’70 announced the results from the Faculty Senate elections, gave remarks and updates about student enrollment, and Founding Director of Brandeis’ new Center for Careers and Applied Liberal Arts, Lewis Brooks ’80, discussed more updates to Brandeis’ new microcredentials program. Finally, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Carol Fierke announced the names of this year’s retiring faculty and a motion was passed to require faculty to submit their list of degree candidates to the provost and allow the provost to make any additional corrections or amendments to the aforementioned list of degree recipients. 

The meeting began with a brief announcement from President Levine to present this semester’s Faculty Senate results. The elected faculty members included, Caitlin Gillespie (LIT) as Senator, Arts, Humanities and Culture; Alejandro Trelles (POL) as Senator-At-Large; Aldo Musacchio (FIN) to the Committee on Strategy and Planning, Business and Economics; Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso (AAAS) to the Committee on Strategy and Planning, Arts, Humanities and Culture; Debarshi Nandy (FIN/BUS) to the Board of Trustees as Faculty Representative, Business and Economics; David Katz (HIST) to the Board of Trustees as Faculty Representative, Arts, Humanities and Culture and Kate Moran (PHIL) to the Tenured Promotions Committee, Arts, Culture and Humanities. President Levine congratulated all of the elected faculty and encouraged more faculty members to submit themselves for elections in the future. 

Next, Chair of Faculty Senate Jeffrey Lenowitz asked for any corrections to the minutes from the previous faculty meeting on April 17, for which there were none. President Levine stepped back up to give a few remarks and updates on student enrollment for this fall. “I’m disappointed,” President Levine said, confirming that student enrollment for next fall is about the same as last year. He confirmed that Brandeis had a 40% increase in applications this year, but that enrollment rates hadn’t increased accordingly. “This class is one of the best we’ve ever admitted. But it’s not as big as it could be,” he said. “We managed to expand the top of the funnel. The task next year is to take the bottom of the funnel and translate it into acceptances.” 

President Levine also thanked faculty for reaching out to students, citing that 147 faculty members had made phone calls to students and that those students were more likely to enroll at Brandeis. With no further announcements, President Levine wrapped up his remarks: “We worked really hard this year. We accomplished a whole bunch this year. And I’m really grateful to have had the opportunity to work with you this year. Let’s make next year even better.”

   Next, President Levine announced the winner of this year’s Wellington Prize, Madadh Richey (NEJS). The Wellington Prize, a $3,000 award named after Duke Wellington, was first established in 1983 by an anonymous donor and is meant to “enliven the spirits and delight the sense of the recipient.” It is awarded to an assistant professor via a lottery system and is to be used for “something [the recipient] dreamed of but deemed irrelevant to their … pressing career concerns.” The recipient is required to report on how they spend their prize money at the first faculty meeting the following year.

Lewis Brooks came to the podium to give some updates on the second round of the microcredentials program for next fall. Currently, there are eight microcredential submissions, all of which will require follow-up meetings to review and confirm assessment procedures: Civil Discourse and Conflict Resolution; Cultural Competence; Instrumentation; Design in Three Dimensions: Art, Engineering and Imagination; Natural Language Processing; Collaborative Communication and Business; Intermediate Language Competency; Sports Communications and Media Innovation. Sports Communications and Media Innovation is the first co-curricular microcredential, shared by the Journalism and Athletics departments. The other microcredentials span departments ranging from Legal Studies and Theater to Engineering and Computer Science. 

Brooks said that he envisions these microcredentials as a way of recognizing “skills our students learn, not only in the classroom, but in their extracurricular activities and Brandeis passions.” Brooks continued, emphasizing that the process of reviewing and approving each microcredential is tedious, “the process, first of all, cannot be compressed into a few days. … Each of these [microcredentials] has its own requirements. Each of them needs to be addressed.” For now, seniors will most likely be required to complete all of the requirements for a microcredential by the end of the first semester of their senior year to make sure that each microcredential is properly assessed. Brooks also announced that in the first round of microcredentials that were awarded, 24 students will achieve 26 microcredentials, which will be notated on their transcript. 

One faculty member asked when the next round of microcredential submissions would take place, and Brooks responded that the timeline would, for now, be loosely tied to semesters but may change in the future. Another faculty member asked whether or not other departments could contribute to the current microcredentials that have been approved. Brooks affirmed that other departments could participate in the microcredentials. “We are looking for this to be as collaborative a process as possible,” he said. 

With no more questions for Brooks, Provost Fierke stepped up to announce the retiring faculty. She began by thanking the faculty for their support over the last five and a half years as she steps down as provost. “This is an amazing group of faculty that we will miss dearly and we hope [they] will come back and join us,” she said. The retiring faculty for this year are: Stephen Cecchetti, International Business School; Richard Fell (PHYS); Timothy Hickey (CS); Constant Horgan, Heller School; Alice Kelikian (HIST); Ellen Kellman (NEJS); Blake LeBaron, International Business School; Harry Mairson (CS); Robert Nieske (MUS); Michael Randall (ROM); Lisa Rourke, University Writing; Jonathan Sarna (NEJS); Paola Servino (ROM); Esther Shorr (NEJS); and Robert Walsh (THA). “Please do not be strangers … [and] remain a part of our community,” Provost Fierke said after a round of applause from faculty members. 

Provost Fierke then called up the registrar, Mark Hewitt, to present the degrees to be awarded for this year’s graduating class. He began by thanking his office staff, “We talk about a village, this wouldn’t be possible without everybody in my office.” He made a few quick announcements about any changes to degrees, including late grade changes and errors on the checkout sheet. Hewitt also presented statistics on this year’s trends, and notably mentioned that this year’s graduating class marks the largest number of degrees awarded in Brandeis history with 946 degrees. 69% of this year’s graduates received Latin honors, which marks the achievement of exceptional cumulative grade point averages over their college career, and 17% of students received departmental honors. 

Hewitt then motioned to require that all faculty submit a list of their department’s degree recipients to the Board of Trustees and empower the provost to make any additional updates or changes to degrees. The motion was passed. 

Finally, Chair of the Faculty Senate Jeffrey Lenowitz stood up to thank Hewitt, who has served as the University’s registrar for over 30 years. Hewitt received a standing ovation from the faculty members. 

The meeting adjourned at 2:32 p.m.