First of all, let me thank all new and returning senators for making the commitment to university governance. Your time and effort are greatly appreciated and I will do my best to make sure that they are put to good use. Next year will be an exciting year full of many challenges. In my view there will be three topics that will occupy most of my time as Senate president and two topics that I want the Senate to spend considerably less time on than we have in the recent past.

Let me start with the latter two topics first. One thing I want the Senate to spend very little time discussing next year is athletics. To the extent that the Legacy Fund will allow the athletics department to maintain financial self-sufficiency, I feel that we are at a point where the Senate as a whole doesn't need to dedicate a great deal of time to issues directly related to athletics. That doesn't mean that there won't be checks in place. In fact, last year's senate budget committee subcommittee on arena financing of which myself and outgoing president Sayre were and will continue to be members is in the process of evolving into a subcommittee tracking the budget of the athletic department as a whole. This is necessary because the financing of the arena, the Legacy Fund, and the athletic department budget are intricately intertwined. Our subcommittee will meet with athletic department representatives and vice-president for finance and administration Frances Dyke at regular intervals this coming year and into the near future to transparently monitor the impact of the arena construction on the Legacy Fund and the athletic department budget. We will provide annual reports to the Senate and the Intercollegiate Athletic Committee to keep these bodies up to date on the latest most relevant information. If everything goes the way the athletic department envisions, then these reports will be very positive. If, on the other hand, things don't work out as well as the athletic department had hoped, then our reports will reflect that as well. The benefit of the presence of the Legacy Fund is that it will provide a temporal buffer of 10-15 years during which the athletic department can make the adjustments necessary to right the ship - and President Frohnmayer has made it very clear that such adjustments are the responsibility of the athletic department and the donors who support the athletic department mission, not the general university budget. Having said this, I think it would be very beneficial if the athletic department could provide the relevant faculty governance bodies with a strategic plan which outlines their goals for the next decade both in terms of the addition of any new teams and the construction of any new facilities. Such a plan would provide a framework for faculty governance bodies to truly advise the athletic department and the administration in a proactive manner rather than simply react on short notice to the latest announcements. A more general issue indirectly related to the Athletic department that the Senate should be aware of is the pressure on donors to maintain the Legacy Fund and how this affects the potential for giving to the academic components of the University. In our current financial environment in which state support is dwindling and philanthropic sources are increasingly relied upon to support different aspects of the academic mission of the university, the effects of this pressure should not be ignored. As senate president I would like to work with the vice-president of advancement Allen Price to monitor this potential issue and, through the Senate, contribute to the discussion of how best to mitigate it.

A second issue that I would like to see substantially less discussion of is the Assembly. We have spent a great deal of time and effort both within Senate meetings and behind the scenes attempting to more clearly define the role and legislative authority of the Assembly relative to that of the Senate. In my opinion, it is time to stop doing so. The Senate IS the body of faculty and university governance on campus. It more than adequately represents the wishes of the faculty and other university constituents to contribute to the decisions affecting campus. An additional level of governance structure embodied in the Assembly will not add to this decision-making process in any appreciable manner and, therefore, is not worth the considerable effort required to make it functional. There are many other important issues that would be better served by the finite amount of time we have available to us. In this regard, there will be a motion brought to the 1st senate meeting in the fall that will ask you to consider abolishing the Assembly. When making your decision on this motion, I urge you to consider the costs in terms of the considerable time and effort it would take to make the Assembly functional relative to the seemingly negligible benefits that would accrue as a result.

The three main issues that I would like to focus on next year are the renovation of faculty governance, a commitment to addressing faculty salaries, and a successful search for a new university president. At many different levels, these three issues are remarkably interrelated - and the thing that really ties them together is money, or a lack thereof. Last fall, President Frohnmayer presented to the SBHE a proposal that calls for the UO to become more autonomous from the state system. This would free the university from the financial shackles imposed by the state and allow us to set our own course with respect to tuition rates. Such a plan is not without risks as there is the possibility that in difficult financial times underperforming units and programs would be in jeopardy of being cutback. However, I think the potential short- and long-term benefits associated with financial autonomy from the state substantially outweigh the possible costs. Indeed, similar arrangements have been implemented within a number of different state systems throughout the nation with positive benefits for institutions not unlike the UO.

Thus, I think the possibility of a more autonomous UO should be pushed forward at at least two levels in the coming year. First, President Frohnmayer should be urged to continue to raise this scenario with the SBHE, the OUS, and the legislature. By keeping it at the forefront of their thinking, it is more likely to become a reality in the next 5-10 years. Second, I think that the university presidential candidates identified in the upcoming search should be ready to support the implementation of this plan, or provide very compelling reasons why they would not like to push it forward.

Whether through financial autonomy from the state system or some other means, more money needs to be dedicated to improving faculty salaries. The report of this year's SBC examined this issue and provided a number of alternative scenarios through which the salary issue can be addressed and I urge you all to read it if you haven't already. The report makes it clear that the focus should be on salaries and not total compensation. Moreover, it also makes it clear that any additional funding for salaries needs to be distributed in a strategic manner - in particular, underpaid units and/or categories of faculty should receive a larger proportional salary increase than faculty whose salary is already at or near those of colleagues at our comparator institutions. This strategic targeting needs to be balanced of course with the need to pay new faculty at rates which makes their retention more likely.

I think a concerted effort on the part of the administration to address faculty salaries will go a long way in reinvigorating faculty governance. During this past spring's university elections there was a remarkable lack of people putting their names forward as candidates for both university committees and the senate itself. As a result, we have a record number of vacancies that I will be attempting to fill in the coming weeks. There are any number of reasons why this may have occurred, however, I think the main one is a real or perceived lack of trust in the process of faculty governance. Part of this may be due to the sheer magnitude and complexity of issues that the administration and faculty leaders deal with throughout the course of the academic year. This can make it difficult for an individual serving on a committee or the senate to be as up to speed as required to make a truly informed decision on a particular issue. I think there are a number of short-term and longer-term solutions to this problem. A short-term solution for the senate is to simply reduce the number of issues we discuss at each meeting, but discuss them in much greater depth.

A longer-term solution is actually provided by the fact that we will hopefully be successful in our upcoming presidential search. The enabling legislation of the senate provides the opportunity for a new university president to revisit and revise the mechanism of faculty governance. And there are a number of faculty leaders who feel that we should take advantage of this opportunity to redefine the means by which faculty governance occurs. The ultimate goal of this would be to engage the new university president in a revised governance structure and, in the process, revitalize the contributions of the rest of the university community to the process of governance itself.

With this in mind, I thank you again for agreeing to serve on the senate and look forward to working with you in the coming year.

Senate President Paul van Donkelaar