From the Chair

It's 11 PM - Do you know where your Handbook is?
 
       The Handbook for Faculty and Academic Administrators: A Selection of Policies and Procedures of the University of Pennsylvania is one of the most important references for most faculty and academic administrators.  It contains the procedures and rules under which the University runs.  These include a description of the Tenure system, Procedures for Appointments and Promotions, Procedures for Sanctions against Faculty for Just Cause, Maternity Leave, Sabbaticals as well as descriptions of the powers of University Officers (President, Provost, etc.), the Senate, University Council, an so on.

Faculty refer to the Handbook in times of crisis (e.g. when it is proposed that departments be closed) or transition (e.g., promotion, retirement).  Over a career at Penn most non-administrators probably don't open the Handbook more than a dozen times.  The Handbook is updated on a periodic basis - usually through the process of sending replacement pages.  Do you know where your copy of the handbook is and whether the rules contained therein are current?  

By the end of the academic year the Handbook will be available on-line through Penninfo.  In this form you will be assured that the most current version is available twenty four hours of every day.  Particular policies can, of course, be downloaded and printed if you prefer to read them on paper rather than on the screen.

What does this mean about future editions of the Handbook?  Does the University ever need to publish another paper version of the Handbook?  Will the electronic version of the Handbook allow us to save the cost of printing or is it simply an add on cost?  

It seems likely that for the immediate future a paper copy of the Handbook will be available even if it is no longer distibuted in this form to all faculty and academic administrators.   However, the decision on the Handbook is but one of many decisions that need to be made about University publications.  Printed course catalogs are usually out of date by the time they are published and many printed booklets are distributed throughout the University when only a small percentage of individuals actually use them.  The potential savings, both in dollars and environmentally, are substantial.

The Executive Vice President, Janet Hale, has appointed a committee of faculty and administrators to review University publications with a goal of achieving savings through electronic publication and distribution of documents.  A list of the members of this committee appear elsewhere in this Almanac.  Please let them hear your opinions on this subject.

Of course, for faculty, staff and students to access publications stored electronically they must have access to computers connected to PennNet.  For many faculty the computer has become more essential in their everyday academic life than their telephone.  With this in mind the Senate Executive Committee passed the following resolution:

E-mail and electronically stored information are essential to the research and instructional activities of all faculty. The Faculty Senate urges that all schools within the University make available a computer, (an e-mail account) and PennNet connection for each member of the faculty.

There remain some people who refuse to access information electronically and who will not use e-mail.  When the library closed the card catalogue, individuals had the choice between adapting to the new environment or not using the library. The mode for dissemination of information has changed.  Individuals once again have the choice of either adapting or denying themselves access to information.  That choice is theirs to make.