The Academic Senate's Representative Assembly voted Monday to change the process by which faculty members may appeal personnel decisions made by their Senate peers to university administration.

With the decision, the Senate's Committee on Academic Personnel is expanded to include two separate groups.

Faculty members who wish to appeal decisions on promotions or merit increases will now have their petitions heard by a subcommittee of senior faculty members with experience in the personnel process. Another subcommittee would oversee the personnel process and make recommendations on promotions and merit, as CAP now does.

The key is that the two groups would operate independently of each other, said Howard Day, a geology professor and chair of the Procedures for Appealing Recommendations of CAP committee, also known as PARC. "The faculty could be assured that advice on appeals is being rendered in an unbiased and independent way," he said.

The decision marks the latest revision of the personnel process that has occurred in the Senate over the past few years. After faculty members complained that negative recommendations on merit and promotions could only be reconsidered by the committee that had made the initial proposal, the Special Committee on Personnel Process Reform changed the process.

PARC's recommendations "vastly simplify" that arrangement, said Day, who showed a flow chart at the meeting demonstrating the different steps - back and forth from administration to Senate - of the SCPPR procedure.

PARC's recommendations passed the Assembly unanimously, with one abstention. The action was among several items presented at the Assembly's first meeting of the year.

Among other business, the Senate:

• Voted to create a new Senate Committee on Transportation and Parking. Carroll Cross, professor of pulmonary and critical medicine, led a special committee that studied parking access and cost issues over the past year. The committee's work has been effective, members said.

Through joint lobbying with the Staff Assembly, the committee persuaded the UC Davis administration to return $1.3 million to the parking budget as reimbursement for the displacement of 1,240 parking spaces for Mondavi Center's construction and new parking areas serving it. "If we didn't have that committee, I don't think we would have gotten that," said Judith Stern, a professor of nutrition and committee member.

• Heard a report on the development of UC Davis' Strategic Plan by Pat Turner, vice provost for undergraduate studies. The draft plan, available at http://strategicplan.ucdavis.edu, was compiled from existing material such as the Principles of Community and the recently developed list of core educational objectives for undergraduates.

"We're trying to get it on the agenda of as many first meetings of the year as we can," Turner said. "We want to get as much feedback as we can on the plan."

The plan will be important as UC Davis prepares for its comprehensive campaign, she said.

• Endorsed a request by the Associated Students of UC Davis' Academic Affairs Commission that notation of a student's undergraduate major be placed on a diploma along with the major.

"The students want to show that they have a body of knowledge," Stern said. "I'm in support of it."

Textiles professor Margaret Rucker said that some graduates would hang their diploma on their office wall. The listing of the minor could be helpful to clients, she said. Others said the notation was unnecessary and belonged only on the student's transcript.