Faculty Senate 2/14/12

A report on this month's Faculty Senate Meeting.  (Agenda here.)

Upcoming events

• On Friday, February 24, at 3:00 G. W. Reid, the executive director of the IBHE (Illinois Board of Higher Education) will speak on performance based funding, and take questions. Faculty were encouraged to attend; he's not going to every campus, and this will be a good opportunity for SIUC faculty to give him our input and show our interest in this process. 
• On February 29 President Poshard will speak on campus about employee pensions, from 1:30-3:00 in the student center auditorium.   

Program review. For me the highpoint of yesterdays' Faculty Senate meeting was what didn't happen: there was no significant discussion of the draft document on program review, despite a lengthy and somewhat critical review of the draft document circulating about that process. This was in large part due to the unspoken rule that after a meeting has gone for over an hour, everyone starts to clam up, together by Senate President Bill Recktenwald's urging us to submit comments in writing rather than engage in an extended discussion. The Chair of the Undergraduate Education Policy Committee, Stephen Ebbs, had to buck Recktenwald a bit to say anything at all.  He was answered, cordially, by Alan Karnes, co-chair of the committee that produced the Program Review Report; Karnes said that this was just the sort of feedback his committee wanted. Karnes also made the smart observation that the Public Act's requirement that universities report underperforming programs directly to the legislature, rather than merely to the IBHE, was particularly scary. It was unfortunate, though, that there was no more discussion. I don't entirely blame Recktenwald for this--he is also responsible for organizing the faculty panel on program review earlier this month, and so is hardly suppressing debate on this. It is rather probably part of the m.o. of the organization to have meetings consist far more of reports (mainly by the Chancellor and Provost) rather than discussion, much less debate—especially debate, which is scary.  But reports, unlike discussion and debate, would perhaps be better left to written form, perhaps with quick oral summaries; we don't need to hear which streets are going to be repaved this summer, etc., when we could be discussing more pressing matters. More on program review, perhaps, in another post. In what follows I'll try to cover other highlights of the meeting.*

Agreement between FA and FS

I've received a request to post the "Principles of Agreement" (a.k.a. "Memo of Understanding") between the FA and the FS. It's embedded below. This memo dates to the origin of the Faculty Association in 1996.

Principles of Agreement

The Silence of the Faculty Senate

The Faculty Senate this afternoon passed a resolution calling upon the IEA unions and the SIUC administration to "resolve their differences in good faith and with haste in order to protect the immediate and long-term interests of the university’s academic community." It did so without any debate, and without anyone mentioning the faculty group calling for the Faculty Senate to usurp the role of the FA and take control of negotiations with the administration (Faculty for Sensible Negotiations--FSN). I think what the Faculty Senate didn't say is the real story here. 

The executive committee of the Senate had spent over three hours hammering out the draft resolution, which is modeled on the very similar resolution passed during the 2002-2003 crisis. And the president of the Senate, Bill Recktenwald, was clearly worried that the debate might be heated; he limited debate to 30 minutes, and each speaker to two minutes. Instead there was all of one comment--noting the absence of the NTT union from the 1996 Memorandum of Understanding the motion began with. The motion then passed unanimously.

As the Senate's secretary, Jonathan Wiesen, suggested as he introduced the motion, its main purpose was to show the relevance of the Senate, the only body to represent the "academic concerns" of all faculty at SIUC. Silence on the part of the Senate during the current crisis would risk labeling the Senate irrelevant. As there was no debate in the Senate about the resolution, readers will have to determine its meaning for themselves. After the break, I'll discuss what the resolution means to me--and what the silence in today's meeting said about the FSN, the Faculty Senate, and the FA.

Overload update: The FS and the FA on the same page

Vero Maisier of the FA bargaining team notes that SIUC has a new overload policy. And one of our more indefatigable commentators, "paranoid", has well noted that the Faculty Senate proposed changes very close to the bargaining position of the FA, and even linked to the relevant FS minutes for December 14, 2010.  Scroll down to the Faculty Status and Welfare committee, and click on the pdf attached there for details. 

If one studies the pdf, which shows the original proposed policy and suggested changes, and compares and the overload policy now posted on the SIUC website, one can see that the administration did indeed respond to some of the concerns raised by the FS. It did not, however, alter its original compensation proposal (half to one month's salary). Among the many other changes the administration did not accept were proposals by the FS to change various clauses indicated that overload compensation "may" be paid to clauses saying that overload compensation "will" be paid.

1. The FS and the FA both take seriously their roles of representing faculty. The position of the two bodies here is essentially the same (whether through coordination or not I frankly don't know). It is not necessary to play one body off of the other, as some on both side too often do (FA members characterizing the FS as a group of lackeys, and Professor Eichholz of the "Faculty for Sensible Negotiations" characterizing the FA as a bunch of uncivil louts).

2. The FS can only advise. The administration, to its credit, did make some changes in its original policy. But on the bottom line issue of funding, it gave no ground. Without the collective bargaining rights of the FA, that would be the end of the story. Unless or until the Sensibles call for converting the Faculty Senate into a faculty union, that is all the FS will be able to do. This advisory role is important, but it is obviously limited.

Wednesday's News

Too much news, too little time.  

• Jyotsna Kapur's letter in the DE: Cheng's promotion of doublethink.
• DE: Faculty work conditions linked to student success. 
• DE: University 101 made mandatory (I here find myself somewhat troubled by the same thoughts expressed by Geology Professor Ken Anderson in the story: see my post Who's Afraid of University College?)
• Southern: Cheng at the faculty senate. (Worth more comment than I can give it here: those in attendance are hereby encouraged to provide commentary.)
• Southern: Mortenson attacks low higher ed funding as "intergenerational cop-out".
• NY Times: Survey finds small increase in faculty pay.