The chair opened the meeting by entertaining a motion to adopt the minutes. The minutes were adopted. The chair then presented the results of three questions sent out to faculty, staff, and administrators across all six sites. The three questions were: 1. Have you heard of the Council of Chairs? 2. Do you know the function of the Council of Chairs? 3. Have you ever read the minutes of the Council of Chairs? The core result was that for 44 responses 66% had heard of the council, only 36% knew the function of the council, and only 18% had read the minutes. The 95% confidence intervals for these suggest that at most 80% have heard of the council, at most 51% know the function, and at most 30% know the function. One can fairly safely conclude that no more than half of the employees of the college know the function of the council. What the numbers do not reveal is that administration and former council members are overrepresented in the responses and that the 18% who read the minutes are primarily members, former members, and administrators. Thus that value is likely an overestimate. Those who can answer yes to all three questions are more likely to response to the email sent than those who would answer no - the survey was not anonymous and some might fear that a triple "no" response might have repercussions. In the discussion that followed one member noted that the council of chairs accomplishes nothing of consequence, the council is just another layer, an extra step, another meeting for chairs. The HRC chair noted that HRC is a big responsibility that takes time. The HRC chair noted that their direct link is through the HR director, they move policy from the committee to the director. The role of CoC in that process is unclear to the HRC chair. Implicit in this seemed to be the concern that routing through CoC and up to EC was effectively end-running and potentially undermining the director. As for communicating with other committees, HRC does that directly without need for CoC. The president noted that EC is on the participatory side of the governance house. The council chair then responded. Being as I was talking I did not capture notes, but what I said was, I hope, something along the lines of.... The chair of CoC then noted if one measured "talk time" then EC would be found to be dominated by administrative side. Ultimately only the CoC chair, a single person, is representing the standing participatory governance committees. Although FSS and SBA are present on EC, FSS is there for historic reasons and at present is relatively inactive. SBA is usually represented by a student and is there to represent students, not participatory governance. Only a single voice at the table is there specifically as participatory governance. One can hardly call a committee as being "on the participatory side" when there is only a single voice at the table. There are only a few participatory governance committees, their chairs could easily sit directly on EC. CoC predates EC. CoC probably should have been terminated when EC was brought into existence. The council chair noted that elections were coming up in May, any waiting to make a decision would stall action until fall 2016. The chair wants to see CoC chairs upmerged into EC for fall 2015, but that would mean going into May elections with chairs knowing they will be serving on EC in the fall, even more meetings than CoC generates. === end of notes == As for the committee assessment, there has been only one respondent to the two questions: Two things that worked: Can't really think of anything that worked except for those brief opportunities for sharing what is going on in each committee. This comment is not meant as a negative reflection on the COC Chair or other officers. This comment is simply a statement of my perception of the functioning of the committee in the structure. Two things that need to be improved: COC doesn't really have a clearly defined role. If it is to continue, its role needs to be clearly defined. If COC is expected to be some sort of clearinghouse for college policies coming out of committees, that is a very unreasonable expectation given the fact that COC only meets once a month for an hour. Also, if COC were to play that role in the governance structure, I can see it being a bottleneck for the movement of policies from all committees. Things are already slow; such an expectation would make things even slower. My recommendation is for COC to be disbanded and deleted from the governance structure. At the same time, there needs to be some way to expeditiously move policies recommended by the various committees to EC and on to the Board, if necessary. Council next meets on April 10.