Memorandum

To: Faculty Governance Committee

From: Susan Gary

Date: October 13, 2009

Re: Thoughts about Faculty Governance at the UO

After reviewing the documents distributed in advance of our first meeting, and even after our first meeting, I confess to being somewhat confused about our purpose. I suspect that trying to understand the opinion from the Attorney General’s office contributed to the problem. When I reread the charge to our committee that helped.

At our meeting we talked about the importance of getting input from faculty members. To help me understand some of the issues and concerns that led to the creation of this committee I had a number of conversations that proved helpful. In thinking about how we might proceed, I began thinking about a possible governance structure, informed by the concerns I heard and also by the legal requirement that the faculty govern the university. The product of this thinking is this memo. Because I will be unable to attend the second meeting (I was one of the two whose schedules did not work with the other schedules), I am sending this memo to all of you.

A. The Issues

A review of the documents circulated to the committee and conversations with faculty members not on this committee suggest that there are two issues this committee should address:

(1) changes are necessary so that certain decisions are made by “the faculty” in order to meet State requirements

(2) a new decision-making structure should ensure that decisions that affect the academic mission of the University are made only with the advice and in some cases the approval of faculty. Faculty must be consulted in a meaningful way. The administration should get input from the faculty and use the input in formulating policy changes or in making major decisions and should not simply report decisions to the faculty or ask for input and then make decisions without regard to the input. A discussion with the FAC or with a single unit of the University of a decision that has already been made or that will be made without faculty approval is not sufficient.

To address both these issues, we could consider the model described below. I wrote this memo before I saw the proposal from Frank Stahl and Nathan Tublitz. My proposal is not inconsistent with theirs, although I wonder whether the Statutory Assembly can delegate “all matters of university governance” to the Senate, even with oversight. I think the Statutory Assembly may need to be more involved in governance than that.

B. A Possible Model for Faculty Governance

University Senate

Consultative body only? Are there some things that can be decided by this group? At a minimum this group could vote on recommendations to the Faculty Senate. (Again, I wrote this before seeing the other proposal which suggests that the Senate can continue to do what it has been doing. I am not certain whether that complies with the spirit of the law.

Faculty Governance Committee

A committee of [9][12] faculty members, with positions determined by election as follows:

CAS (3)(6)

Business School

Law School

Architecture and Allied Arts

Journalism

Education

Library

This committee meets with the President [and senior staff] bi-weekly. Any major policy decision affecting the academic mission of the school is brought to the FGC and then brought by the FGC to the Faculty Assembly. Decisions are not merely reported to the FGC and the FGC is not merely an advisory group. If a decision needs to be made quickly, the FGC can vote to approve the decision and then report the decision and the reasoning for approval to the Faculty Assembly. If possible, and in most situations, the FGC will discuss the proposed action with the Faculty Assembly and the Faculty Assembly will vote to approve or will recommend modifications to the proposal.

Faculty Assembly

This body votes on all matters involving the academic mission of the university. The administration will need to be able to manage the university without asking for approval for every action taken, so guidance on the level of decision-making that requires approval by the Faculty Assembly should be provided.

Guidance on issues that require Faculty Assembly approval (examples):

A decision to change the reporting relationship of the Art Museum from an academic unit to the Vice President for University Advancement (i.e. development).

A decision to hold graduation before the completion of final exams so that graduation would not conflict with a track meet.

A decision to promulgate the COI/COC policy without consulting more than one unit of the faculty. (The College of Education was involved in the drafting of the original policy; other units were told that the plan would be promulgated but were not consulted until there was pushback from the faculty.)

C. Membership in the Assembly and Faculty Participation in General

The Faculty Assembly could be a representative body of the faculty or the Faculty Assembly could mean all faculty members. If the latter, then the term “faculty” would have to be defined. A starting point is the definition from the Tublitz-Stahl proposal.

Tenure-stream faculty

Emeriti faculty

NTTF with long-term contracts

One issue we need to discuss is how to provide for meaningful faculty governance while recognizing the fact that faculty have many demands on their time. The proposed structure outlined above would give the FGC more authority than it currently has. Members of that committee would make a serious time commitment. The difficulty for the faculty as a whole is that the committee, while representative of units, may not be representative of groups of faculty. As in high school, the “student government types” may be the ones willing to put in the time. Perhaps if the FGC is seen as something that matters, more faculty will be willing to serve. Providing a course release for service would be difficult (although wonderful), but perhaps it would be possible to provide some benefit in addition to the benefit of serving the University.

Faculty would also be needed to serve on the University Senate, if that body remains as it is but with more of an advisory role.

And all faculty would be encouraged to participate in the Faculty Assembly, if that remains a body of all faculty members. If not -- if it became representative – then more faculty would be needed to fill those slots.

D. Input for our Committee

I think it would be helpful for our committee to hear from people who have served on the FAC in the past. They could provide information about what works and what does not work well, and they would be good resources for thinking about improvements to faculty governance.