June 28, 2011

Notes from shared governance meeting

Present: Rob Fleming (by conference call), Valerie Hansen, Gwynne Keathley, Barbara Kimmelman, Chris Pastore, Rick Shain, Randy Swearer, Rachel Wilson

Rough notes from “charges/key questions about shared governance” discussion

Principles and Logic to inform decisions about shared governance

We need to identify the principles and logic we intend to use for restructuring committees and their charges. These principles will describe the committee’s logic for deciding what needs to happen at what level and why.

CP: The “doing” things happen on a college level

We now have larger colleges and there will be more participation if not all at university level

Faculty Review discussions

BK: Concern about faculty review not happening at university level. Concern about irresponsibility of faculty and administrators involved (based on history).

RS: We really need to get in and fix the system at the college level. Executive deans should be held responsible for the condition of the dossiers and should rigorously oversee the faculty not participating. There could be times when the FPC and tenure committees have meetings with the executive deans about the process, faculty participation and preparation, etc.

Peer evaluation - How do we hold faculty accountable for the evaluation?

Peer reviews should not be anonymous and it should be written into faculty responsibilities that they are expected to complete the peer evaluations appropriately.

An adequate review is one that makes reference to evidence in the dossier for comments and is submitted in a timely fashion following the review schedule and deadlines. Dean can ask for revision within a particular time for reviews not completed adequately.

Penalty for poor reviews: the recommendation and vote will not be included in the review.

Moving to electronic dossiers willmake review of dossiers much better, easier access.

University level – one committee that does promotion and tenure

  • Combine the review process for tenure track and contract renewals into one committee
  • Preserve the role of the university committee to scrutinize the dossier for promotion, tenure and 7 year contracts
  • The committee will go through the dossiers and review the process. If it is not good, then they provide direct feedback to the college committee
  • The chair of the University committee would meet with the chairs of the CPC and would provide feedback to the processes happening in their colleges.
  • Include a mentoring system
  • Think about the evaluation system, annual reviews, and its role within the colleges to mentor faculty (CPC)
  • Maintain the paper trail (now part of the standard dossier)
  • Frame the committee to be about promotion (call it the Promotion Committee)
  • If you are promoted and you are tenure track, you get tenure
  • If you are promoted and you are contract, you get extended contract
  • Consideration of having a champion to speak about the qualifications of the candidate at the committee review

College level (CPC)

  • Reviews probationary reviews and contracts
  • Review tenure and promotion
  • Chairs are supposed to return dossier that have not been adequately reviewed
  • There is an assumption that this committee will do a great job

Both college level and university level committees make recommendations.

What about grievances?

  • University has lacked any coherent spell-out grievance process.
  • It is currently in 2 different places in the manual.
  • Need to clarify and make a more coherent the procedure for grievances
  • What are the remedies?
  • Need an ombudsman

Committee Membership

  • We need to make very clear who sits on what committee and the role of the dean in the process.
  • All faculty (tenure and contract faculty) serve on both committees
  • Some faculty may have concern that contract faculty are reviewing tenure and visa versa
  • Does it set up second-class citizenship?

Decisions from today:

  1. Revised and agreed on the core principles of shared governance with the addition of an introductory paragraph of terminology and definitions (to come)
  2. Eliminate the Faculty Personnel Committee and devolve to the College Personnel Committees the responsibility for evaluation of probationary contracts
  3. Establish a Promotion and Tenure or Promotion Committee at the University level dedicated to the review of promotion and corresponding long-term contracts
  4. Prescribed representation of both tenure and contract faculty on the Promotion Committee; also ensure representation from all colleges
  5. Eliminate anonymous peer reviews
  6. Need to clarify grievance procedures and where the deliberations take place
  7. Establish follow up process for addressing inadequate or inappropriate reviews (individual, dean and committee reviews) according to the review criteria
  8. Chair of CPC meet with the Promotion and Tenure Committee chair on regular basis
  9. CPC chair to review with Dean - who will follow up with faculty
  10. Refusal to improve an inadequate or inappropriate review may lead to removal of the review from the dossier and possible documentation in an annual performance review.

Homework for next meeting, July 5

  1. Review the key questions (GK to send out consolidated into one document).
  2. Randy to bring governing board and administration roles;
  3. Chris to bring faculty roles,
  4. Rick to bring what is in the Faculty Manual

Next meeting:

  • We need to describe the logic for making a university level: promotion and tenure committee
  • We need to identify the logic and guiding principles for creating the structure and representation of shared governance.
  • This will need to be included in the paper for the faculty about shared governance.