Faculty Council

Thursday, April 22, 2004, 11:45 a.m.

Cohen House, Esther M. Cohen Dining Room

Present: Ed Akin (Speaker), Stephen Baker, Michael Emerson, Tom Haskell, Lynne Huffer (Deputy Speaker), Bob Patten and Caroline Quenemoen. Absent: Marjorie Corcoran, Steven Crowell, Rebekah Drezek, Deborah Harter, Hannah Landecker, Julia Morgan, Patricia Reiff, Herb Ward and Mark Wiesner. Guests: Carl Caldwell and Melissa Kean.

(1) Minutes (04/13/04): Due to technical difficulties, the minutes from April 13 were unavailable. The meeting minutes will be approved at the next scheduled Faculty Council meeting.

(2) Faculty Council Meeting Canceled: Faculty Council members decided to cancel the business meeting scheduled for May 4, 2004.

(3) Faculty Governance: Business meeting dedicated to discussing Faculty Governance with invited guests Carl Caldwell from the Governance Committee and Melissa Kean from the Presidentπs Office. Discussion to include proposed changes to Faculty Governance, means of communication and addressing low faculty response to governance issues. Patten, as Chair of the Governance Committee opened the discussion with a brief summary of the work of the Governance Committee. In summary, Gillis granted a three-year commitment of funds for reconsideration of Faculty Governance. Currently we are in the second of the three-year commitment with the first year dedicated to finding out what other universities were doing. That information was reported in a summary report by Ambler. It was determined that no school is quite like Rice, so no ≥perfect≤ model exists to copy. The second year has been dedicated to inviting guests from other institutions to discuss governance issues. The first guest speakers were Larry Gerber and David Reban who talked from perspective of AAUP and constitution of faculty governance as a concept. Key areas addressed were: how faculty became participants in governance, legal status in terms of governance and possible models of governance. At that point, Caldwell and Quenemoen were drafted to come up with proposals to rethink and restructure governance. The second speaker was John Savage from Brown University who discussed his personal experience of creating a Task Force to restructure faculty governance. The Governance Committee has developed several ideas for addressing faculty governance, which are all functional and not mutually exclusive. One proposed set of actions is to ask the new administration to follow the governance that has been established and is currently posted on the web, which would lead to a revival of the University Council as the principal advisory body to the President on issues that are University wide. For example, some areas for review under this proposed set of actions would be a review of the current by-laws to consider electronic voting for at least Faculty Council elections and readdressing the required quorum.

The second proposed level of restructuring would be to create a Faculty Senate of some kind. The Faculty Senate would be a cumulative body that represents all knowledge bases of the University. The third level of restructuring would be to resemble the Brown System of Governance, which tends to merge faculty and administrative interests in ways that allow all levels to address and endorse policy issues when presenting to the President. In this system, these players are both principal advisors and participants. During the meeting with Savage it was determined that Faculty Council needs to increase visibility of the Governance committee; therefore, the committee recommends establishing a web site that will explain what the committee has been doing and reference research documents and other governance related sites. In addition, the committee recommends that Faculty Council commission a Taskforce to take into consideration all the issues, evaluate these issues, and come up with a plan to address the issues. Caldwell presented a document listing some of the issues that need to be addressed by the recommended Task Force.

A motion was made to establish this Task Force on Faculty and Shared Governance that 1.) will report directly to Faculty Council, 2.) present recommendations to Faculty Council during the fall semester, 3.) establish a web page which communicates the history and becomes an interactive site for conversations about these issues. The motion was understood by Faculty Council members prior to voting and will be circulated to all members. The motion passed unanimously without further discussion. It was agreed by Faculty Council that the Task Force commissioned would consist of a select number of highly regarded members of the Rice Faculty with a current member of Faculty Council serving on the committee as a liaison. This task force will work directly under the scope of the Faculty Council. Presidential support from both the present and new administration is critical to the success of the task force. Several possible members of the task force were identified. In selecting members, Council must take into consideration representation of school, willingness to serve, and faculty classification. It was agreed that the Speaker of Faculty Council will send an announcement stating the resolution to create a task force to all faculty soliciting nominations. The Governance Committee along with the Speaker and Deputy Speaker will be responsible for contacting the potential members and compiling the Task Force.

(4) Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 1:00 p.m., with the next Faculty Council business meeting scheduled for May 4, 2004 has been canceled. The next Faculty Council meeting will be held in Fall 2004 unless an emergency session is necessary.

Sarah Holloman

Executive Assistant

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