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From: John_Savage@brown.edu
Sender:
owner-facgov.announce@canis.services.brown.edu
To:
facgov.announce@canis.services.brown.edu
Subject: Update from Task Force on
Faculty Governance
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 13:33:06
-0400
Dear Colleague:
We are writing today to provide you with an update on the work of the
Task
Force on Faculty Governance. In this
letter we summarize our recommendations
to the Faculty and seek your
comments. A FACULTY FORUM will be held
on
Tuesday, SEPTEMBER 10 at 4pm, in
Salomon, to discuss our recommendations.
When the Task Force first reviewed our existing committee structure we
agreed immediately that faculty
governance was burdened with two basic
problems: 1) there was too much of
it, requiring no less than 237 faculty
members in any given year to staff
the various committees now described in
the Faculty rules, and 2) faculty
governance was not sufficiently authorized
to bring the expertise of the Brown
faculty to bear on the decisions that
most affect its members.
The committees and boards outlined below are designed to put the most
appropriate faculty to work
effectively on the major issues where faculty
expertise and perspective are most
essential to maintaining the quality for
which Brown University is
known. We took the injunction of the
President,
the encouragement of the
Corporation, and the collaboration of the Provost
to heart in constructing a set of
committees that balance the
responsibilities of an effective
administration with the traditions of
faculty self-governance. Our intent is to create committee structures
that
encourage cooperation and shared
decision making among faculty and
administrators.
We are recommending a dramatic reduction in the number of committees and
the number of faculty members
sitting on them. Some of the new committees
are demanding and for which release
time is appropriate. Some functions
that presently require committee
assignments are assigned to the appropriate
administrative advisory board and by
a mechanism whereby the APC and FEC can
appoint ad hoc committees to deal
with issues requiring a faculty
perspective as they arise.
We have drafted descriptions of seven key Faculty committees that we
deem
absolutely essential to fulfilling
President Simmons' advice to the Task
Force, namely, to make revisions
that will help all of us to make better
decisions. These are the
o Academic Priorities Committee (APC),
o Tenure, Promotion and Appointment Committee (TPA),
o University Curriculum Committee (UCC),
o Faculty Affairs Committee (FAC),
o Faculty Executive Committee (FEC),
o Nominations Committee for the FEC (NCFEC)
o University Resources Committee (URC).
Our website at
http://facgov.brown.edu/recommendations/facgovminutes.html
has draft descriptions of these
committees. These will be converted to formal
Faculty Rules format once the
Faculty has agreed upon their content.
We recommend that APC be responsible for setting all major academic
priorities at Brown, consists of six
faculty members and six academic
administrators, and be chaired by
the Provost. TPA would replace CONFRAT,
have twelve faculty members and four
administrators and be chaired by a
faculty member. UCC would be
responsible for coordinating both graduate and
undergraduate curricula. FAC would
deal with the professional affairs of the
Faculty including general
compensation surveys and policies, recruitment and
retention, diversity, and
grievances. FEC would steer Faculty business,
handle issues not assigned to other
committees, and make nominations to
other committees. NCFEC would generate nominations for
FEC. Finally, URC
would replace ACUP but hold most of
its meeting in private. Both APC and URC
would be chaired by the Provost but
would have faculty vice chairs.
In addition, we recommend the creation of administrative advisory boards
reporting to and appointed by a
relevant administrator upon recommendation
from the constituencies sitting on
these boards. We recommend that the
Faculty Rules and Regulations
contain a general description of these
advisory boards, that they have at
least four faculty members, report
annually to the Faculty, and have a
faculty vice chair. The Provost has
accepted these recommendations. The
proposed list of boards and the senior
administrator to whom they report is
shown below. (Titles may change.)
Benefits Advisory Board VP
Administration
Campus Planning & Resources Adv Brd VP
Administration/VP Planning
College Council Dean
of the College
Computing Advisory Board VP
Computing and Information Services
Diversity Advisory Board Senior
Administrator
Graduate Council Dean
of the Graduate School
Library & Information University
Librarian
Resources Advisory Board
Research Advisory Board VP
Research
The Task Force on Faculty Governance has met alone thirteen times, twice
with FEC, twice with Provost Zimmer,
and once with the President and
Provost, all since May 2. We also
met once with selected members of the
Corporation. We have prepared a comprehensive set of
recommendations for
replacement of our committee
structure that will be described briefly at the
4pm Special Faculty Meeting on
Tuesday September 3 in Salomon 101. You
may
recall that on July 30 we sent you a
preliminary description of our
recommendations. The purpose of this letter is to bring you
up to date.
The Task Force website at http://facgov.brown.edu/taskforce.html
contains
information on the Task Force
including the charge given to us by the FEC,
the names of our members, background
information on other universities, our
recommendations, and the minutes of
our meetings. We hope that you will
take the time to consult this
website.
To complete the consideration of these proposals before the end of the
first semester we plan to use the
following schedule:
o Overview at Special Faculty Meeting on September 3
o Faculty Forum on September 10
o Discussion of draft formal language on September 24
o Presentation of draft formal language at Faculty Meeting on October 1
o Formal vote by Faculty on November 5
This schedule is flexible in order
to allow full consideration of these
important changes by the Faculty. If
desirable, we will hold additional
Faculty Forums.
We encourage you to contribute your views on any relevant governance
issue
by sending e-mail to
John_Savage@brown.edu or any other member of the Task
Force. We are particularly interested in hearing what you think about
the
balance of responsibility between
faculty and administration by which we've
sought to ensure both collaboration
and the integrity of each perspective.
We are also interested in having you
identify areas that we haven't
mentioned but where a faculty
perspective is necessary.
The Task Force on Faculty Governance