GOVERNANCE TASKFORCE

MINUTES, Sept. 21, 2004, 4:00-4:50

AGENDA

DISCUSSION WITH PRESIDENT LEEBRON

Attending: Braam, Caldwell, Cooper, Grandy, Long, Scott, Zeff, Crowell (FC liaison)

Guests: President David Leebron, Dr. Melissa Kean

President Leebron opened by noting that he was not yet fully familiar with the system of faculty governance at Rice, and really only had the system at Columbia to draw on from experience. He stressed, however, that governance institutions develop in specific contexts, and welcomed a conversation on the best way to organize the community of Rice University.  The Committee members asked President Leebron a number of questions, and he engaged in a broad ranging conversation with the Committee about some of the specific governance questions that had been raised by the committee and the faculty.  In the course of that conversation, the President made the following points, among others.

All systems, President Leebron stressed, have shortcomings as well as advantages. When considering whether Rice should be organized around a plenary or a representative system of governance, he stated, one should examine where weaknesses can arise in institutions. The following issues are especially important in this regard:

• Decisions taken in a plenary session of the entire Faculty are determined by individual Faculty members' decisions either to attend or not to attend, which opens the door to decision-making by the best organized group able to draw the most people to a meeting.
• Smaller representative groups are often better able to formulate problems and work toward a solution than larger ones.
• It is easier for both administration and faculty members to work with a smaller governance body than with a large group, since it is clearer who ultimately is responsible for making the decisions.

President Leebron concurred with the Task Force consensus that the Promotion and Tenure Committee should be separated from the main institution of faculty governance.

President Leebron discussed the problem of how a representative body should be chosen, if the University turns away from the existing system. (He noted that since arriving at Rice he had not met anyone who had asserted to him that the existing system was wonderful). He addressed the following issues:

• Central to setting up a representative system is the question of what the constituency is that elects a representative. President Leebron suggested that at-large elections may not be the best way to elect representatives, since the contact between the disparate communities of faculty and the representatives would be distant and less than immediate.
• At the same time, he cautioned against election directly by department, fearing that the elected representatives would bring a parochial rather than a wider University perspective to their position, that they would approach matters more in the interest of their department than the University as a whole.
• President Leebron suggested that School-level elections might make the most sense: at levels that are above the potentially parochial level of the department and below the level of the entire faculty.
• President Leebron questioned the idea that individual Schools might devise their own plans for representation and election; it is probably better that the Faculty as a whole rather than the individual School determine the basic procedures for how Faculty representatives are chosen.
• President Leebron suggested that with smaller governance bodies, such as the Faculty Council, it may be desirable for the President to be able to nominate several representatives to ensure diversity of representation.
• Finally, President Leebron suggested that to avoid the possibility of pure self-selection, in School-wide elections the Deans might play an active role in suggesting to people that they become candidates.

It remains important, President Leebron asserted, for the assembled faculty to have some role at Rice; he expressed his impression that Rice, unlike many other universities, continued to have a sense of collegial unity across schools, and that this was one of Riceís great strengths.

President Leebron had no strong feelings on whether President or Speaker of the Faculty should chair Faculty (or Faculty Senate) meetings, but he did suggest a term limit for Speaker. Whichever situation obtained, good communication between President and Faculty should be maintained.

In an extended discussion of committees at Rice, President Leebron

• expressed his concern that staff (below the level of administration) also have opportunities to participate in governance mechanisms;
• suggested that different committees have different functions, and should accordingly be structured differentlyóas advisory or consultative groups, as committees that involve staff or students, and so on.
• stated that some decision-making powers, e.g. on whether to build a building, cannot rest with the Faculty while others, e.g. curriculum reform, may require strong Faculty leadership and governance.

The meeting ended with a discussion of the new position of Dean of Undergraduate Education and potential impact on curricular and other decisions. He stressed that the new position should be held by a tenured faculty member.

The Task Force thanked President Leebron for his help in our ongoing discussion of faculty governance.

The meeting adjourned at 4:50.