Last Friday, faculty met in the Mills Hall event space to discuss last week’s Board of Trustees meeting, review changes to next year’s first-year course registration and advising system and provide other committee updates.

President Safa Zaki addressed the faculty and briefly spoke on the importance of freedom of expression on campus.

“I am relatively new here. You have not yet had the chance to get to know me. But if you did know me, you would know that I have stood up for people’s right to speak up and speak their own opinions on complicated matters. I believe that I cannot speak for all of you in a way that reflects the diversity of opinions that is held on a college campus,” Zaki said. “I’m looking forward to more conversations that will allow us to get to know each other.”

Zaki also reported on the success of faculty lunches with trustees as a response to members of both faculty and the board requesting more contact with each other.

Professor of Natural Sciences and Associate Dean for Faculty Recruitment and Pre-major Advising Rachel Beane provided an assessment of the first-year course selection process, which took on a new structure last summer. There was no overall decline in enrollment in the humanities and language courses, and most first years reported feeling confident about their transition to Bowdoin.

Next summer, first years will still take placement surveys, follow an online introduction to the Bowdoin curriculum in Canvas, complete academic interest advising forms and meet with their advisors during orientation in August. However, the forthcoming Workday transition means incoming students will no longer use buckets of subjects to choose required courses and will build their schedules directly in Workday after completing Canvas modules.

Professor of History and Associate Dean for Curriculum Dallas Denery said that the implementation of the College’s new Workday system is in its early stages and will occur in increments, the first of which has already been established. Once it is built, faculty will run a “mock semester” to test the new system.

“We run through an academic year from beginning to end and test onboarding students, putting in advising holds, releasing advising holds, having students test the whole semester to make sure it works,” Denery said.

Professor of Art Carrie Scanga reported on the faculty forum, which took place on October 11 and was centered around gathering feedback on current faculty governance.

“As we described at the faculty forum, GFA [the Committee on Governance and Faculty Affairs] has been hearing a faculty desire to reconsider what kinds of service are meaningful and effectively work as part of our faculty oversight of the institution,” Scanga said.

Faculty expressed a desire to explore a bigger role in admissions and excitement to reorganize community structures to allow for more agency. They also wanted more transparency for all parts of governance, including committee assignments, process and decision-making. GFA will host listening sessions in Mills Hall starting this week to further gauge what reforms faculty want in governance.

Senior Associate Dean of Students Lisa Hardej reported on changes to the CARE (Concern, Assessment, Response, Evaluation) Policy for Behavioral Risk Assessment, Intervention and Support.

“We’re now offering another pathway to communicate concerns that are more focused on mental health and wellbeing—we’re calling this a ‘CARE referral’ online form faculty can fill out,” Hardej said. “Because this is public–facing, we can receive concerns from anyone in the community as well as outside of the community.”

The next faculty meeting will take place in Mills Hall on December 6.