Task Force on Faculty & Shared Governance
Task Force Bulletin Board
Task Force Bulletin Board
- Last updated on September 27, 2004 by Sarah Holloman. Copyright 1999-2004 Rice University
ISSUES UNDER DISCUSSION
The Faculty Senate's agenda would be set by an Executive Committee chosen by Faculty Senate. It would be chaired by the President or the Faculty Speaker. If the latter, the Speaker would confer in advance with the President and Provost on the agenda proposals.
One advantage of the Faculty Senate model is that it would overcome the perceived unrepresentativeness of plenary faculty meetings. A second advantage is that senators, being elected by their school would feel more responsibility in carrying out their duties. Thirdly, senators would have more influence than current Faculty Council members since Senate votes would decide important matters.
Question 3. What is your opinion of the principle of a Faculty Senate model?
POSTED FACULTY COMMENTS
(Posted according to date received)
Date: 09/01/2004 From: John Greiner <greiner@cs.rice.edu>
A disadvantage of this approach as stated is that non-tenure-track faculty would be disenfranchised. Currently, non-tenure-track faculty who have been at Rice for 2 years can vote on most issues.
Date: 09/03/2004 From: Jane Chane <jchance@rice.edu>
The problem with all the plans listed is that all faculty ought to have the opportunity to participate in curriculum discussions and other matters that concern them (admissions standards, teaching, students, and the like). We don't need more administrative appointing of so-called representative faculty (and the same people over and over again), nor do we need a closed body of elected faculty, with no opportunity for real debate by non-elected faculty.
The reason faculty don't come to meetings and don't vote is because we don't believe the administration really wants faculty governance at this university. If it did, it would insist on chairs and other officials being elected by their constituents. This is a top down university, folks. Note items on the agenda yesterday: reports, reports, reports. No debate allowed. Questions only. Of course, many of us thought the new president would deliver an Address (rather than an address) and we wanted to hear that, I'm sure.
Date: 09/10/2004 From: James Thompson <thomp@stat.rice.edu>
In my opinion, the Rice Faculty would be unwise to give up its right to direct voting in open meetings of the general faculty on important university matters such as curriculum requirements. One of the advantages in teaching in a small university is the opportunity to employ an approximation to the democracy of the ancient Athenian polis. The total Rice faculty numbers no more than the polis of Athens, no more than the citizenry of a number of townships which still use town meeting voting as a means of making important decisions.
Faculty senates are frequently (and naturally) co-opted by the executive branch. Please recall the highly structured "Five Ways of Knowing Curriculum" of a few years back. This curriculum, which was clearly favored by the Gillis Administration, was brought forward with the unanimous support of the Faculty Council (a prototype version of a faculty senate). Yet the faculty voted it down in favor of a very different curriculum which is close to the laissez-faire curriculum used for many years at Brown University. Did the Faculty Council, in giving its full support to the Five Ways of Knowing Curriculum represent the wishes of the faculty? Apparently not.
Rice will function best if policy is made on the basis of open discussion and open voting. It takes a bit of our time to attend meaningful policy meetings of the general faculty. In the long run however, I have little doubt that this is time well spent.
Date: September 14, 2004 by Moshe Vardi <vardi@cs.rice.edu>
Current attendance in faculty meeting is too random. I favor the idea of a senate, but Senate meetings should have a fairly high quorum to ensure consistent attendance.
Date: September 17, 2004 by Meredith Skura <skura@rice.edu>
The Rice faculty has become too large to run successful discussions and votes. It is difficult to get enough people together for meetings in the first place, there are still too many people for meaningful discussion let alone for directed problem-solving, those who do come to meetings tend to be the ones who feel most strongly or have the most invested in an issue, rather than those who are disinterested and objective. We should have organized a switch to faculty senate a while ago.
The senate could be fully representative-for non-tenured as well as tenured faculty; all we have to do is design an appropriate system of representation. If run by the Speaker rather than the University President, it could be indepent of the administration.
Date: September 22, 2004 by Gale Stokes <gstokes@rice.edu>
I truly believe the current system is broken. Decisions "by the faculty" are, in the current system, actually decisions by a handful of regular attendees, supplemented by interested parties when a controversial issue is brought forward. Besides being unrepresentative of the whole faculty, faculty meetings often engage in discussions that are not well informed and under time limits that are usually unduly restrictive for making difficult choices. A senate would be more representative, the executive committee would be better informed about alternatives, and decisions could be made in a more considered and timely manner than is now the case.
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