Office of the President: Faculty Minutes

The Office of the President: Faculty Minutes, 1909-1998, are comprised of six bound volumes of minutes and numerous folders of unbound minutes and memoranda of the faculty of James Madison University and its previous iterations. The bound volumes also include related tipped-in documents and correspondence. Loose documents, once laid in the bound volumes, were removed during an early processing campaign. These include draft minutes and other related and supplementary material. Photocopies of the original inserts were made and include annotations noting the location from where the original insert was removed. Abstracts created by Nancy Bondurant Jones provide brief synopses of general faculty meetings from 1927 through 1946.

The faculty minutes begin with the first meeting of the faculty of the State Normal and Industrial School for Women at Harrisonburg on September 28, 1909 and continue through November 5, 1998. Gaps are present between the years of 1969 and 1998. Further, there were no official faculty meetings held during the 1997-1998 academic year.

The subject matter of the minutes reflect and document the happenings in the faculty meetings. Topics include approval of degree candidates, general announcements, enrollment numbers, curriculum and program proposals, student rules and regulations, salary increases, reorganization and administrative changes, the pass-fail initiative, faculty handbook revisions, the Jay Rainey case (September 12, 1969 meeting), and sit-ins and protests (May 9, 1970 meeting). Minutes of the Committee on Curriculum and Instruction are also interfiled.

A talk entitled “The Faculty Senate” dated December 12, 1967 given by Dr. Francis W. Warlow at a faculty dinner is included and appears to document some of the early discussions toward creating JMU’s Faculty Senate.