A discussion of ways to get more faculty members to attend Academic Senate Representative Assembly meetings topped the debate at Tuesday's gathering of the UC Davis group.

The assembly failed to meet or hold a quorum - a simple majority of designated departmental representatives and at-large members - at two meetings within the past year. Quorum is currently reached when 59 out of 117 representatives are present. Without that presence, no action can be taken at a meeting.

Kevin Hoover, professor of economics and chair of the Committee on Elections, Rules and Jurisdictions, said that some faculty members had discussed lowering the quorum. He worried, however, that such an action would create an assembly body that was not representative.

Instead he proposed several amendments to the Senate bylaws:

• Removing two ex officio members of the assembly, the UC President and UC Davis' chancellor, from the quorum count.
• Creating alternates for ex officio members.
• Forming a pool of alternates for at-large representatives unable to attend meetings.
• And providing for the dismissal and replacement of at-large or departmental representatives who fail to attend and find an alternate.

"I hate to sound cranky, but this is a terrible idea," said Steven Carlip, a physics professor.

He almost missed a recent meeting because of the impending birth of his baby, he said. If his son had come any later, he wouldn't want to have to worry about informing his alternate or the assembly secretary that he could not make the meeting.

Carlip believed whether a representative should be dismissed should be decision of his or her department.

Hoover said he understood Carlip's concern, but that the Senate had a duty to carry on business.

"It is a bit of service in our job, one way or another," Hoover said. "This is not a club. This is our work."

The measures passed with only a few dissenting votes.

In other action and discussion, the Representative Assembly:

• Honored winners of the Senate's Distinguished Public Service Awards. They are Norman Matloff, professor of computer science; Cruz Reynoso, professor of law; and Steven Tharatt, professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine.
• Recognized winners of the first Graduate Mentoring Award: Janet Momsen, professor of human and community development; Charles Goldman, professor of environmental science and policy; and Jerry Hedrick, professor of molecular and cell biology.
• Unanimously voted to allow the Senate Executive Council to conduct a comparative review of faculty salaries at UC Davis on the same five-year cycle as the review of general personnel procedures for faculty.

Associate Professor of History Cathy Kudlick also spoke about the Community Book Project, an effort to have all campus community members read the same book - The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman - over the summer. The non-fiction work discusses the intersection of culture and medicine as it related to the treatment of a young Hmong girl in Merced several years ago.

In the fall, the campus will host discussion groups related to the book. Fadiman also will visit campus Dec. 2 as part of the Mondavi Center's Distinguished Speakers Series.

Senate Chair Jeff Gibeling also made couple of announcements prior to the meeting:

He and Provost Virginia Hinshaw will soon convene a joint Senate/administrative committee to look into developing a non-resident tuition remission policy for graduate students. Under the plan, faculty members could help fund students from their research grants.

UC Davis, Gibeling said, is the only UC campus without a policy, which allows for the tuition remission without the express permission of the agency making the grant.

Gibeling also said that the English department and the College of Letters and Science will discuss the composition program's place on campus. At an April 22 Senate meeting, he had announced that the Senate's Committee on Educational Policy would take up the issue of which academic department the program best fits in.