Brown University Task Force on Faculty Governance Minutes of Meetings

Attending: Nancy Amstrong, Russell Church, Richard Fishman, Peter Gromet, John Savage, Rajiv Vohra, and Michael White.

Absent: Anne Fausto-Sterling

John Savage was asked to serve as Chair and Nancy Amstrong was asked to serve as Vice Chair.

We agreed upon the following message to be delivered by Savage to the Faculty at the May 7 meeting. This message summarizes most of the important business of the meeting.

As the Task Force on Faculty Governance begin its study of Faculty governance we are delighted to have the encouragement of the President and Provost-Designate. We are heeding President Simmons' advice to us that we should devise a system that will help Brown to make better decisions. We share the view that having Faculty representatives participate when important academic decisions are being made leads to better decisions.

We plan to consult regularly with the Provost-Designate as well as the keep the President fully informed. We will also keep the Faculty informed throughout the summer via email and our web site which you be visited via the Faculty Governance web site. The Faculty is encourage to visit our site and communicate with us.

The Task Force has had two meetings, the second this morning. We have a meeting planned with the Provost-Designate on Friday.

One of the first issues that we will address is the makeup of faculty/administration committee charged with making university-level academic decisions.

We expect to have a Faculty Forum on governance in September and to bring legislation to the Faculty in October and subsequent months.

We also prepared for our meeting with the Provost-Designate on May 10 by formulating the following questions.

• a. What are his impressions of Brown's current system of governance?
• b. What functions does he believe governance should serve?
• c. How would he choose faculty for committee service?
• d. What committee service by administrators does he think desirable?

Other matters we discussed were

1. We should avoid changes altering the best of our Faculty culture.
2. We need to reduce the number of faculty slots on committees.
3. We need to attract the best people to university committee service.
4. Has a survey been done of the Faculty recently? If so, get it.
5. It was said that two models of governance that stand out are the
   • i. Divisional Model - they have deans and faculty advisory committees
   • ii. Traditional Model - Dean of Faculty, Grad School and various types of joint faculty/administration advisory committees
6. Brown's Faculty committees currently divide into two categories:
   • i. Academic - focusing largely on academic issues
   • ii. Administration/Academic - involving resources and academics
7. We should identify functions that need to be served by committees.
8. Some committees with faculty slots are beyond our ken.

We are going to meet for lunch at the Faculty Club after our May 10 meeting with the Provost-Designate.

Submitted by
John E. Savage