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November 28, 2006
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October 17, 2006
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AAUP at CalArts
October 26, 2007

Dear Friends and Collegues,

This coming Monday (October 30) at 6:00 p.m. in Langley, the AAUP will
be sponsoring its first guest speaker of the year. All faculty are urged to attend. Janis Lipzin from the San Francisco Arts Institute will be speaking about Peer Review. Janis has been invited to help us begin an open dialogue among the faculty in response to the following statement that appeared in the WASC Proposal Narrative Draft that was sent out to the faculty on September 13, 2007 (on see page 6 of that draft):

"Standard 3:3: In its last Commission Action letter following the 1999 renewal of accreditation process, WASC urged CalArts to continue exploring ways of integrating peer review into its faculty culture. It is apparent that the Institute has not made substantial progress in this area. CalArts remains steadfastly non-hierarchical and the majority of the faculty has resisted a peer evaluation practice, in part due to the lack of traditional merit-based incentives for participation. However, the CalArts community has agreed that options could be explored that would encourage faculty development without leading to traditional models of evaluation. As a result, the WASC Steering Committee proposes to address this as part of one of its institutional themes."

Peer Review is truly a hot-button issue here at CalArts, with strong opinions both pro and con. I sincerely hope that you will join me and members of the AAUP in Langley on Monday at 6:00 p.m. to welcome our guest and to become a part of the decision-making process. It is important that all concerned faculty be involved in this discourse or we can expect that a decision will be made for us without our input.

Yours truly,
Bill Powell, President
CalArts Chapter of the AAUP