Brown University Task Force on Faculty Governance Minutes of Meetings

The Task Force on Faculty Governance Meeting with Provost-Designate Bob Zimmer

May 10, 2002

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

Absent: Anne Fausto-Sterling, and Michael White.

Guests: Luiz Valente, Brian Casey

We formulated the following questions to discuss with Provost-Designate:

• 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?

We agreed that much greater faculty input is needed in decision making. We have too many committees with too little clarity of purpose. We need to sharpen the roles of committees, streamline them, and increase their impact.

We identified the need for a faculty role in three areas:

1. Budget Priorities
   Such a committee would help shape the budget by making recommendations about all long term, strategic budgetary decisions. It would hear reports from all major sectors of the University, have confidential discussions, and make recommendations to the President. We discussed how many of its members would be senior academic administrators and senior faculty as well as representatives of the students and staff.

2. Academic Planning
   A fundamentally faculty committee is needed to set the academic priorities of the institution. It would consist of a mixture of academic administrators and faculty. While the recommendations of this committee would have budgetary implications, this is not primarily a budget committee. Its recommendations would be considered by a budget priorities committee. Members would include senior academic administrators such as the Provost, Deans of the Faculty, Medicine, College, and Grad School, the VP for Research and at least an equal number of senior faculty members.

   As evidence that such a committee could be very effective, several testimonials were given to the effectiveness of the Academic Council when sitting this year with the Academic Priorities Subcommittee.

3. Faculty Legislation
   Faculty committees are needed to oversee University-level activities that are purely academic such as the following:
   • a. degree programs and course approvals
   • b. policies involving the academic integrity of the institution, such as conflict of interest

   On the number of faculty committees, we started by assuming that we have no committees and adding them only if essential.

We explored alternative methods for selection of faculty to serve on key committees such as direct election and nomination by FEC or a nominations committee with the final choice to be made by the Provost. However, no conclusions were drawn.

We also discussed the possible role of a faculty compensation committee. Bob stated that the best place to make judgments about individual compensation is in academic departments. He wants to avoid creating a committee that will serve primarily to attract complaints.

In the context of a brief discussion of CONFRAT the view was expressed that we need to have uniformly high standards for appointment and promotion and we need to recruit highly qualified faculty to serve on key committees. In this context we briefly discussed alternative methods for selecting faculty to serve on such committees without coming to a conclusion.

Submitted by
John E. Savage