The Faculty Senate’s Committee on Research concluded that a high-tech computing grant funded by the U.S. Army did not violate the University’s prohibitions against conducting secret research, according to a report by Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Stephen Monismith, the committee’s chair, during a Faculty Senate meeting on Thursday.

“There will be no classified research at Stanford,” Monismith said. “The proposal is consistent and the agreement is consistent with our policies.”

The research committee report came a year after the Army announced that a consortium led by Stanford had been awarded a $105 million contract to develop a new site for the Army High Performance Computing Research Center, previously housed at the University of Minnesota. In June 2007, 60 faculty members called for publication of the grant proposal and an open discussion of the project’s merits.

Monismith and his committee were assigned the task of reviewing the Army agreement’s compliance with Stanford’s research policies, which prohibit researchers from receiving funding for projects whose findings are not freely publishable and available to everyone.

After reviewing documents related to the proposal, the Committee on Research issued a 19-page report confirming that the project complies with the University’s research policy.

The committee’s report dismissed fears that the project would be too closely directed by a military liaison, the Cooperative Agreement Manager. Stanford Mechanical Engineering Prof. Charbel Farhat would instead play a key role in directing research, according to Monismith.

“They’ve got quite a detailed structure for formulating an annual research plan, and it’s in fact produced by a collective effort of the consortium. Professor Farhat has a large say,” Monismith said. “It’s not out of the ordinary.”

Despite their findings that the program does not violate Stanford’s rules, the committee’s report signaled they were realistic about the ultimate uses of the technology developed by the Center.

“It may lead to future classified research,” Monismith said. “The Army isn’t funding this out of the goodness of their heart. They think there’s something in this for them.”

Mechanical Engineering Prof. Bernard Roth, who organized the faculty petition last June, said that he remained unconvinced that the project was ethical. He remained especially concerned about the role of the project’s staff scientists. These scientists are employees of consortium member High Performancy Technologies, Inc., a private consulting firm that works with the Department of Defense.

“They have security clearance, they’re working on secret things and three of them are stationed at consortium sites,” Roth said.

Roth said he also remained concerned about a provision of the grant agreement which provides for summer math and science programs for students from middle school to the undergraduate level.

“This is not to teach these people math skills,” he said. “It’s to begin getting them tuned into this kind of work so they’ll choose that as part of their careers.”

Members of the Faculty Senate also heard an annual report on the status of women and minority faculty by Patricia Jones, vice provost for faculty development and diversity.

The proportion of underrepresented minority faculty has remained stagnant over the past decade, Jones said. The number of black faculty expanded from 40 to 48 since 1997, but the total number of faculty grew from 1,528 to 1,829 over the same period — meaning that the percentage of black faculty remains virtually unchanged at 2.6 percent. Hispanic faculty members, who made up 2.9 percent of faculty ten years ago, hold the same percentage of positions today.

According to Jones, retention problems make minority faculty hiring a “revolving door,” where new hires are offset by departures or retirements. Last year, for example, Stanford hired three Hispanic faculty members but lost four.

“We need to focus on more attempts on the retention side as well as on the recruitment side,” she said.

Jones also reported continuing steady growth in the number of women, who currently make up 24.5 percent of all University faculty. Last year, the University hired 42 women faculty, “the highest number we’ve ever hired,” Jones said.

Women hired since 1975 have also received tenure at about the same rate as men, Jones noted.

“This is certainly reassuring and says good things about recruiting to Stanford both young men and young women who will go on to succeed,” she said.

Jones did identify one area where female representation lags behind other statistics: only 14 percent of department chairs in the School of Humanities and Sciences are women.

“We hope this is something that will change and we’ll have more of them in chair positions,” she said.