Bylaws

Bylaws and related documents

In revisions, text to be deleted is struck through and new text appears in italics. Changes which involve only fixing of spelling, capitalization, and punctuation are not marked.

Current versions

Bylaws, last amended 5/17/13
Promotion document, approved 11/18/11
Evaluation document, last amended 4/11/12

Current proposed amendment

No current amendments

Older versions and amendments

(already voted on)

Amendment pdf to the bylaws (proposed by John Jones) makes further changes to satisfy the provost's office. These are
- Specifying that the Director of Freshman Mathematics is "typically" a tenured associate or full professor.
- More replacement of "neutral" with "abstain" when discussing voting
- Removal of the section on conflicts of interest. This is already covered by ACD.
- Removal of mention of promotion of academic professionals. Current ASU policy makes it impossible for this situation to arise in the future for SoMSS.
Amendment pdf to the bylaws (proposed by John Jones) makes changes as requested by the Provost's office. Changes are throughout the document, but are marked in the usual way.
Amendment pdf to the bylaws (proposed by John Jones) stipulates that when electing multiple people to a committee, that they can be elected in one election (changes in I.C.e). For example, in a typical year we need to elect 3 people to the PBC, but from different categories (1 full professor, 1 associate professor, and 1 at large). This amendment says that we do it in one election where the order in which the positions are filled are listed on the ballot. This was the practice last year, and is consistent with idea of approval voting.
Amendment pdf to the bylaws (proposed by Rosie Renaut) describes the process of appointing adjunct faculty (changes in V.G). We had two people proposed for adjunct status this year (position with no pay, but can work with students and be on grants), and CLAS said we should follow our rules in deciding whether to appoint them or not. We did not have any rules for it in the bylaws, so this fills that deficiency.
Amendment pdf to the bylaws (proposed by John Jones) clarifies who may be elected to a hiring committee for full time track faculty, namely track faculty who are not on leave during the year the search takes place (changes in V.A).
Amendment pdf to the bylaws (proposed by John Jones) contains changes deemed necessary for approval by CLAS (changes in II.A.2, IV.A.2.a, IV.A.3.a, V.A). There is a minor wording change to indicate that the FMPC makes recommendations on contract faculty evaluations (as opposed to actually doing the evaluation which is ultimately the responsibility of the director), removing cases of academic dishonesty from the duties of the review committee (it should be handled by the CLAS Standards Committee), that faculty feedback on track faculty hires consists of evaluating strengths and weaknesses of candidates (but does not contain comparisons). The most complicated change is for searches for the School Director. Here also, faculty input should not compare candidates. There is also a vote but it needs to be done in two parts to comply with ACD. The track faculty vote is reported to the Dean whereas the vote by the rest of the School Assembly is reported to the search committee, and can help them form their recommendation, but the result of the vote of the rest of the School Assembly is not required to be reported to the Dean.
Amendment pdf to the bylaws (proposed by John Jones) removes the provision for election recounts (changes in I.C.1.f). The Associate Dean from CLAS felt that bylaws should not empower a single faculty member to force a recount. On the other hand, we have had such a provision for many years without it causing problems.
Amendment pdf to the bylaws (proposed by John Jones) adjusts the process for approving amendments (changes in VIII). There has been some confusion over what it takes to pass a bylaws amendment stemming from different uses of the word quorum. This clarifies the original intent, that 2/3 of those voting must approve a change for it to take effect. Second, this adds the option to vote "neutral" on a bylaw change. Such a vote counts toward meeting the minimum number of voters on an amendment, but does not count either way for the 2/3 required for a change. This will help when we have a slate of amendments and people want to vote on some, but are indifferent to others.
Amendment pdf to the bylaws (proposed by John Jones) adjusts how information is retained after an election (changes in I.C.1.e). There is nothing in the existing bylaws to prevent elections from being carried out over the web, which is now our current practice. However, it currently requires ballots and other information to be printed out and kept in the school offices. The wording is adjusted so that this information just has to be kept for the required number of days, but that it does not have to be printed.
Amendment pdf to the evaluation document (proposed by John Jones) moves refereeing and journal editing from research to service (changes in II.B.2 and II.B.3). This is where the PBC has counted that activity in recent years, so this brings the document into accord with recent practice. It also makes the evaluation process consistent with the promotion document which counts these activities as professional service.

Version with amendments passed on 3/8/12: pdf

Amendment pdf (proposed by Douglas Williams) to create the FMPC, the Freshman Mathematics Personnel Committee (changes in IV.A and V.C). There is an extensive amount of work each year in evaluating contract faculty and in dealing with renewals and promotions. The old bylaws allowed for two lecturers to assist in this task, which is really not enough. This creates a committee of six to handle the work, with two of them serving as advisors to the PBC. (Updated 2/24/12 to include a provision intended to require a principal lecturer be a member of the committee.)
Amendment pdf (proposed by G. Hurlbert) replaces Borda voting with approval voting (changes in I.C.1). The argument in favor of the change are that borda is sensitive to addition of independent alternatives while approval voting is not, that approval voting reduces the effect of negative voting and may lead to different people being elected. The arguments against the change are that Borda gives voters a greater ability to express their wishes and as far as we know, the current system is accurately reflecting the preferences of a majority of the voters, in which case trying to produce different outcomes could be counterproductive. (Updated 2/24/12 to remove runoffs.)
Amendment pdf (proposed by P. Thompson) adds a 7th member of the PBC (changes in IV.A.1.b). The main rationale is to make it more likely that faculty from underrepresented groups are elected to the PBC. The arguments against are that there are often not enough such candidates to fill a 5 person ballot so the process may not achieve its goal, that voters can see the current composition of the PBC when voting for the final member at large so they can already cast their vote for faculty from underrepresented groups if they feel this is important, and making the committee bigger makes it a little more unweildy to schedule its meetings.
Amendment pdf (proposed by H. Thieme) creates the position of School Parliamentarian (changes in II.F). This makes one faculty member responsible for seeing that rules are followed during faculty meetings, and that minutes are taken. The argument in favor is that this would have been helpful at times. The argument against is that we may not need to have a formal position for this job. (Updated 2/24/12 to correct a typo.)
Amendment pdf (proposed by J. Jones) makes election of hiring committee members happen by direct election (changes in V). ACD now requires that half of every hiring committee be elected. This is currently satisfied by making at least half of every hiring committee come from the PBC (appointment from an elected committee is ok). However, PBC members have plenty to do already, and having half of a hiring committee come from the PBC may not be appropriate depending on the area in which we are hiring. Moreover, this helps get more faculty involved in important service duties related to running the school. (Updated 2/24/12 to clarify that in the case of multiple hiring committees, their elections are done sequentially so that a person elected to one can remove themself from the election of another, and to specify how the chair of each hiring committee is determined.)

Version with amendments passed on 1/31/12: pdf

Amendment pdf (proposed by S. Tracogna), changes the issues FYM faculty can vote on in faculty meetings (changes in III.C).
Amendment pdf (proposed by J. Jones), fixes wording glitches which came to light too late to be incorporated in the 11/18/11 version. Specifically
- The current title of the old "Director of First Year Mathematics" is "Associate Director for Freshman Mathematics" (changes in II introduction, II.D and subsequent mentions of this position).
- Changed "First Year" to "Freshman" to parallel the title change above (changes in IV.B.4).
- Updated names for the Undergraduate and Graduate Associate Directors (now Associate Director for XXX Studies -- changes in II).
- one word change to be consistent with lecturer hiring, that there is only one committees (changes in V.C)
- with director search committees, "at least" half of the committee is elected, instead of the implied "exactly" half. Also, the later sentence saying that the Dean appoints the committee is clarified to indicate that it respects the election of members (change in II.A.2)
- changed "winner" to "winner(s)" a couple of times in discussing elections (change in I.C).
These changes were last updated 11/23/11.
Amendment pdf (proposed by J. Jones), makes the School Director and Associate Directors ineligible for the PBC and the review committee (changes in IV.A.1.b and IV.A.2.b). The rationale is two-fold. First, these committees represent the voice of the faculty as opposed to the administration, so this will separate the committee members from the school administrators. Second, school administrators should have enough service work to do so that it is unreasonable to ask them to also serve on one of these committees. On the latter point, administrators could always remove themselves from these ballots, but often people feel an obligation to leave their name on a ballot whenever eligible.
Amendment pdf (proposed by J. Jones), imposes a term limit on PBC members -- current members whose terms are ending may not run for the following year (changes in IV.A.1.b). The rationale is that this will help rotate the jobs more evenly among faculty. Current PBC members could always remove themself from the ballot, but often people feel an obligation to leave their name on a ballot whenever eligible.
Amendment pdf (proposed by J. Jones), removes the Affirmative Action Committee from the bylaws (changes in IV.B.1). The committee rarely meets, so it does not need to be a standing committee. It can be created by the Director as an ad-hoc committee as needed.

Version adopted 11/18/11: pdf
Revision 2 (current proposal) 11/7/11: clean version and a version showing changes (all changes are in VIII). Description of changes:
- Added a quorum for all issues related to voting on bylaws, and removed the date restriction for having bylaw related votes.
Revision 1: 10/27/11 (all changes are in I.B). Reasons for changes
- Included all contract faculty in the School Assembly for consistency with ACD 111-02 on who votes on the bylaws. (Note the primary role of the school Assembly is to vote on the bylaws and its amendments.)
- Removed "research faculty" from School Membership since it was redundant, they are already part of faculty since they are part of the contract faculty.
Initial proposal: 10/26/11