Semester conversion changed in February, 2000 and approved by the Department in February, 2001; revised in accord with the CBA and approved by the Department on January 23, 2002.
Adopted by the Department, February, 1994
In conformity with the University of Toledo Manual of Policies and Procedures, throughout this document, faculty shall designate all those persons holding a full time appointment in the department who are tenured or have a tenure track position. The terms department or department faculty are to be synonymous with the term faculty, as defined above.
The associate chairperson shall assist the chairperson in the administration of the department. The associate chairperson shall be appointed by the chairperson in consultation with the department faculty, and shall serve at the discretion of the chairperson.
Various personnel actions are best handled by differently constituted committees. Because of this fact, the department has established four committees as described below. It is the function of these committees to make personnel action recommendations to the chairperson. Any report on tenure, nonrenewal of contract, or promotion, sent by the chairperson to the college dean must include the following items: (1) the vote of the appropriate personnel committee, (2) a report drafted by the appropriate personnel committee in support of their recommendation, and (3) any minority position statements.
This committee shall concern itself with matters pertaining to salaries - particularly, the periodic merit evaluations - the department budget, leaves, and the appointment of new department members, and it will monitor the progress towards tenure of all untenured tenure-track faculty. Personnel Committee A shall not be a legislative body. The Chairperson of the department may ask Personnel Committee A for advice on matters outside the scope of the above listing of the duties of this committee, but such advice shall not be a matter of record. In particular, Personnel Committee A shall not overrule the decisions of other duly constituted bodies or committees of the department except insofar as those decisions concern the matters explicitly listed above as falling within the province of Personnel Committee A.
This committee consists of all bargaining unit tenured faculty. It will make recommendations to the chairperson regarding the granting of tenure.
This committee consists of all bargaining unit tenured full professors. It will make recommendations to the chairperson regarding promotions to the rank of full professor.
This committee consists of all bargaining unit tenured faculty at the rank of associate professor or above. It will make recommendations to the chairperson regarding promotions to the rank of associate professor.
In addition to the personnel committees described in section 2.3, the other standing committees shall be the Computer Committee, the Graduate Curriculum Committee, the Graduate Student Affairs Committee, the Mathematics Majors Committee, the Research and Scholarly Activities Committee, the Teaching Evaluation Committee, and the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee.
Shall be responsible for the utilization of computer labs in the department, shall keep an inventory of computer equipment in the department, and shall make recommendations to the department on purchasing and maintaining computer equipment.
Shall oversee all graduate courses and programs, including reviewing and initiating course proposals, reviewing examination syllabi, and recommending guidelines for the Graduate Student Affairs Committee and graduate advisors.
Shall be in charge of the admission of graduate students and making recommendations for assistantships and other graduate awards. Shall also monitor progress of graduate students. Has responsibility for arranging graduate preliminary and comprehensive exams.
Shall recruit and work towards the retention of talented undergraduate students in mathematics. Shall oversee the Honors program and courses, recommend instructors for such, recommend nominees for any undergraduate awards and coordinate the activities of the honorary mathematical society Pi Mu Epsilon (PME) and the mathematics club Delta X ($\Delta X$) The faculty advisor to $\Delta X$ and the faculty advisor to PME shall be ex-officio members of the Mathematics Majors Committee.
Shall organize colloquium procedures and programs, suggest travel allowances, act as liaison with the library relative to books and journals, and suggest other items which may enhance scholarly activity. It may review requests for sabbaticals (if the person applying desires it) for the purpose of helping to strengthen proposals. May also help to arbitrate, among faculty members who wish to apply for sabbaticals, a mutually agreeable schedule of application.
Shall be responsible for the administration of teaching evaluation procedures adopted by the department, and shall study the performance of those procedures and possible alternative procedures. Shall be responsible for monitoring and shall develop procedures for optimizing the teaching performance of the graduate assistants.
Shall oversee all undergraduate courses and programs. Shall initiate and review for submission to the department undergraduate course changes and additions. Shall select textbooks for courses below calculus and recommend to the department textbooks for the calculus sequence.
The membership of Personnel Committee A is elected by a process described in Appendix A. The membership of the committees other than the personnel committees is to be partly elected, by a process described in Appendix A, and partly appointed by the chairperson. The department chairperson may appoint two or more members to each of the standing committees with the provision that each faculty member has the right to serve on a committee, if he or she so wishes, and in making the appointments the chairperson shall follow the preferences of the faculty member where possible. The chairperson will appoint more than two additional members to any committee only if it is the only way for particular individuals to serve on a committee, such individuals being faculty who wish to so serve. The committee elections will be held each year during the month of March.
The faculty, as defined in Section 1 above, are the voting members of the department.
A quorum shall consist of a majority of the faculty teaching during that semester. The number for a quorum shall be announced by the chairperson at the beginning of each semester. The chairperson or any subset of the faculty in excess of 25% may call a special meeting. Any faculty member may ask for a mail ballot on any issue. At any time after a meeting if at least ten (10) faculty members petition for a mail ballot, a motion considered at a meeting can be reconsidered and put to a mail ballot. Motions voted on at a meeting or by mail shall pass by a majority vote (here majority means more than $\frac{1}{2}(T-A)$ where $T$ is the total number voting and $A$ is the number of abstentions).
The faculty shall have responsibility for all academic and curricular matters.
The chairperson and Personnel Committee A shall oversee faculty appointments, other than graduate assistantships. In the case of regular appointments, a discussion by the entire department shall be held to help determine areas of specialization, rank, etc. An Ad Hoc search committee appointed by the chairperson shall screen applications and arrange interviews with applicants in conjunction with the chairperson and Personnel Committee A.
Amendments to these Bylaws must be proposed in writing and circulated to all faculty members at least one week prior to departmental consideration. Proposed amendments will be decided by a mail ballot: they must be passed by a majority of the faculty voting, i.e., by there being more affirmative votes than negative and abstentions together.
The memberships of Personnel Committees B, C, and D are determined by the definitions in Sections 2.3.1 (2), (3), and (4) of these Bylaws. An annual election held during the month of March determines the membership of Personnel Committee A and three members of each of the other (non- personnel) standing committees. In addition, the Department has several representatives to the Arts and Sciences Council (the number of representatives is a function of the size of the Department).
The method which is used to elect members to each of the above mentioned bodies is the same. Each faculty member will be asked to tell on which committees they wish not to serve. This information is used to construct the ballots. On each ballot the candidates are arranged in a random order. Each voter votes for up to 5 candidates on each committee ballot. These votes are ordered according to the preferences of the voter.
The counting of the ballots is performed by a computer program written in Assembler language in 1979 by Gina Bentley.
As previously stated, 5 candidates get elected to each committee; 3 are actually elected and 2 are runners up in case one or more of the 3 actually elected cannot serve. The last clause in the preceding sentence does not apply to the election for members of Personnel Committee A - that committee is under a special rule (see in the Bylaws, Section 2.3.1 (6). Also, in the case of the Arts and Sciences Council, the number "actually elected" to the Council may vary slightly from the number 3, as was already mentioned above.
For each committee, the election is a five stage process. At each stage, a single additional candidate gets elected. Several variables are defined and these variables change (more precisely, may change) as we pass from a stage to the following stage.
Let $I$ denote the set of all voters. Each voter $i\in I$ is assigned a voting strength $s_i$ where $0\le s_i \le 1$
During stage #1, we have each $s_i=1$: all voters have the same voting strength (i.e., the same loudness of voice in shouting out their votes; i.e., the same say in who gets elected next). But if one of the choices of voter $i$ wins, then the strength $s_i$ decreases for the next stage, and in that event voter $i$ will have less say about which candidates are subsequently elected.
More precisely, we let $J=$ the set of all voters who voted for the most recently elected candidate, and $N=$ the number of positions yet to be filled. We then set
$T = \sum_{i\in I} s_i, \quad$ $V = \sum_{i\in J} s_i, \quad$ $Q = \frac{T}{N+1} \quad$ and $\quad w = \max\left\{0,\frac{V-Q}{V}\right\}$
After a candidate gets elected, we make the replacement $s_i := ws_i$ for each $i\in J$.
During each stage, a single candidate becomes elected as follows:
Vote counting is carried out by assigning to candidate $C$ the votes total
Votes$(C) = \sum_{i\in L} s_i$ where $L=$ all those voters who listed candidate $C$ as one of their preferences.
Initially the voters' orderings of their preferences is ignored; i.e., the candidates selected by each voter is regarded as a set, not as an ordered set, and the one candidate who has received the largest number of votes is declared to have been elected.
If there is a tie for the greatest number of votes, then the preferential orderings are used. We modify each voters ballots by erasing their vote for their least preferred of the tied candidates. Then the process described in (1) and (2) is repeated - this might determine a winner.
If there is still a tie, then a random choice of the tied candidates is used to declare a winner.
Each time a candidate gets elected (i.e., a stage ends), the whole process is begun again (i.e., a new stage starts) to elect another candidate. Of course, as we go through the five stages, we may see a particular $s_i$ become progressively smaller, e.g., $1, 0.732, 0.397, 0, 0$.
The rationale for the use of the above described rather strange election procedure is that, while it allows a majority of like minded voters to determine the first few winners, still it decreases their voting strength progressively so that a sufficiently strong minority of like minded voters can manage to get at least one of their common preferences elected. Thus, this system is a form of "proportional representation".
This voting system is modelled after a village voting system which was used in some parts of Europe during medieval times. For example, let's say that five officials are to be elected to some body. At a preassigned time, the various candidates would appear in the village square and all of the eligible voters would assemble there. The candidates would spread out and the voters would stand nearby their one most preferred candidate. Of course, the candidates would normally be giving speeches, trying to attract more voters to stand nearby them. After the passage of a few minutes, it might be obvious that not many other voters share your views because only a few voters are standing with you nearby your preferred candidate. Not wanting your views to be unrepresented, you would probably move to some more popular candidate that you like (although somewhat less than your first preference). On the other hand, perhaps you are standing nearby one of the most popular candidates and you notice that considerably more than $\frac{1}{5}$ of the voters are standing there with you. Several of you are desirous that some particular other candidate also be elected. In order to accomplish that, just enough of you leave the group supporting your first choice (who will be elected anyway since even though some leave there will still remain at least $\frac{1}{5}$ of the voters) and move to support a second preference candidate.
When this process stabilizes, there will likely be five candidates, each with roughly $\frac{1}{5}$ of the voters support, plus perhaps a few straggling die-hard groups of negligible size. These five candidates are declared winners of the election.
Naturally there had to be some modifications of this model in order to arrive at algorithms which could be suitably programmed for the computer, but the computer model is still surprisingly close to the original.