Minutes - January 28
Faculty Governance Restructuring Committee
January 28, 2008
Present: J. Bulen, D. Hayes, D. Johnson, B. Jones W. Miner, J. Neitzke, J. Pauls, V. Pultz
Minutes of the December 12 meeting were not available for approval. They will be discussed at the next meeting.
We have approximately five meetings left until our deadline for a draft to be presented to Faculty Senate. We have discussed several subjects broadly in the past months, have completed research in terms of background documents and peer institutions. J. Bulen and V. Pultz have helped with peer institution and Rolla data, respectively, and we acknowledge the invaluable assistance of Karen McClaskey in Pickler Memorial Library. We have received a few comments on the committee blog and one proposed model. Another partial model is under development. We need to begin proposing specific questions to faculty to gather input before we finalize any recommendations. The chair will begin that process.
We discussed the threshold limit factor in terms of an effective and efficient Faculty Senate. Structures at other institutions range from executive committee size (3-11 members) to the full faculty (more than 100). We feel that less than 10 is not effective in terms of representing viewpoints fully. As we consider larger numbers than 10, for example, 20 to 40, we begin working with the ideas of representativeness and proportionality. We believe that representativeness (each department being represented) is more important than proportionality (larger departments having greater numbers of representatives). If the faculty as a whole feel that proportionality is more important, one option would be for smaller departments to combine to have a greater voice. Even if the full faculty is considered the Faculty Senate, a smaller working group must be in place, and the same problems arise – best option for total size, handling representativeness and proportionality.
It seems that most of the time, UGC and Faculty Senate have full plates. Before UGC was empowered to deal fully with curriculum, Faculty Senate was overburdened and was not able to take on planning and other important institutional work. The “consent agenda” now in place appears to work well, so long as the UGC members feel that they can ask for full Senate involvement on some issues (e.g., n-1 change in the curriculum).
If we were to consider a fully bicameral system, with UGC as a separate and equal body with Faculty Senate rather than a standing committee under Faculty Senate, we would need to recommend a system for negotiating differences. In that case (and possibly in any event), UGC would need to be representative of all departments, proportional, and empowered with full authority.
We will continue this discussion at our February 11 meeting. We will study the materials from our institutional peer group and each committee member will come with a list of likes and dislikes from those models. In addition, we will discuss one of the models that is currently under development.