Minutes - March 3
Minutes – 3/3/08
Faculty Governance Restructuring Committee
Present: All members. Guests: Randy Hagerty, Amber Johnson, Tom Marshall.
Miner moved, Neitzke seconded that minutes be approved. Unanimous approval.
Guests were present from the “small” departments who had been contacted by the committee and asked to give their points of view regarding representation on Faculty Senate and Undergraduate Council. The context of this request was the committee’s dual concern with transparency/accountability and the burden that representativeness may place on smaller departments. Pauls noted that the chair of the Theatre Department wanted to attend our meeting, but could not and could not find another representative from the department who was able to come.
Randy Hagerty said that the departments all have different needs and that he had no desire to speak for other departments. Political Science wants its own representatives, who will take the responsibility for communicating one-on-one with faculty members. Tom Marshall noted that Agricultural Science shared the feelings of the Political Science faculty, that direct representation was a burden worth bearing.
Amber Johnson noted that the committee had some discussion about whether chairs would be eligible to serve on Faculty Senate or UGC. She said that if the committee recommends that chairs not be eligible, this would pose an additional problem for smaller departments. She said that Anthropology/Sociology/Geography had held some initial discussions with Justice Systems, and that the two units would like the option to combine representation on both Faculty Senate and UGC. She said that A/S/G had not been directly represented in the past. The department’s size has been directly affected by the 16:1 ratio, even more than restructuring. They’ve tried to minimize that impact on students in the LSP as well as their majors. In doing so, they have not been able to participate as much in governance.
Bryce Jones suggested that the option to combine might be something that we would wish to consider for all departments.
Tom Marshall suggested that the committee look at other possibilities for representation, including by college or schools, at large representation, etc. The committee members reported that we have done that, as well as examining models where all faculty were considered Faculty Senate. We shared the research that Karen McClaskey provided through Pickler Library about comparable institutions.
The subject of interdisciplinary studies was also briefly mentioned. IDS has acted something like a department in the past. Email traffic substituted for meetings of the whole group and the Interdisciplinary Oversight Committee acted with the coordinator to address executive committee-level issues. If IDS were to be considered a department, there might be more direct communication and accountability.
The chair reported that she had some initial discussion with Michael Kelrick and Scott Alberts about interdisciplinary studies. The group decided to invite Kelrick to the next meeting (March 17) and to review models for representation and standing committees at that time.