{"id":5426,"date":"2014-03-03T07:45:49","date_gmt":"2014-03-03T12:45:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/?p=12611"},"modified":"2014-03-03T07:45:49","modified_gmt":"2014-03-03T12:45:49","slug":"university-governance-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/first-year-seminars\/2014\/university-governance-i\/","title":{"rendered":"University Governance I"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the many years in which I have blogged about university life it has never been my practice to provide links to websites or to other bloggers, but I shall make an exception this week for Nick Falvo\u2019s recent piece on university governance, and more specifically on the challenges faced by Boards of Governors.\u00a0 You can find it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While there is no shortage of opinion on this topic, far too many writers have vested interests in some particular position, which they seek to promote, sometimes surreptitiously, sometimes shamelessly.\u00a0 If Mr. Falvo has a vested interest, I can\u2019t find it.\u00a0 His views seem spot on, summing up the situation both accurately and succinctly.\u00a0 I recommend it highly.<\/p>\n

University governance is also a topic close to my own heart, and one which I have been pondering for a very long time.\u00a0 On June 30th<\/sup> this year I will have completed 35 years as a full-time academic, and 22 of those have been spent in some administrative capacity, as a chair, a director, or a dean, at three quite different universities.\u00a0 In addition, I have been elected twice to a University Senate (University of Victoria) and once to a Board of Governors (Queen\u2019s), in both instances representing faculty members, and I am currently in my ninth year of an ex officio<\/i> appointment to Carleton\u2019s Senate.\u00a0 I should also mention that, in another life, I was a student representative on a Carleton department board in the very first year of what was then called the New University Government (NUG) \u2026 now CASG.\u00a0 So, there are not too many aspects of this subject that I have not experienced at first hand, and I shall put forward some of my thoughts in a series of musings, beginning this week.<\/p>\n

The question of how universities are managed, or to put it more bluntly, where authority resides, is as old as the institution of the university, and presumably will forever be a \u201cwork in progress\u201d.\u00a0 And rightly so.\u00a0 Times change, and universities must adapt accordingly, although certain principles must remain paramount.\u00a0 The current model employed by most if not all universities in Canada is to have two parallel governance streams.\u00a0 On academic matters, the Senate is supreme; and on administrative matters, the Board.\u00a0 And to ensure some sort of dialogue or communication between the two, most Senates have seats reserved for members of the Board, and vice versa, ensuring some overlap.<\/p>\n

The thinking here is that academic matters (programs, curriculum, regulations governing degrees, and so on) are best left to those who must deal with them on a regular basis, namely faculty and students, and in most instances a majority of the voting members belong to these two groups.\u00a0 At Carleton, for example, there are 40 seats for faculty members, and 13 for student members, with specific allocations of seats to the various Faculties, including Arts and Social Sciences, reflecting their comparative sizes.<\/p>\n

While Senate is the highest authority on academic matters, its work is shaped by, and indeed depends on, a sub-structure that includes unit-level Boards, Faculty Boards, and a plethora of Senate committees. \u00a0All curriculum proposals must begin at the unit level, and then work their way upwards, whether it is adding a new course, introducing a prerequisite, or simply changing a Calendar description.\u00a0 This usually works well to ensure that no program or other matter of an \u201cacademic\u201d nature can be imposed unilaterally on an unwilling professoriate.\u00a0 New ideas require a champion, and then must acquire support and build a consensus at various levels before they come to the Senate for final approval.\u00a0 Indeed, I can recall a university president who was personally very keen to introduce a program in sports management, but the idea died because no unit or Faculty was willing to support the notion and move it forward. \u00a0And in my view, that is precisely how it should be.\u00a0 The imposition of academic programming from the top down is a sure-fire recipe for disaster.<\/p>\n

Whether or not a Senate works effectively depends on a lot of factors, and these include the \u201cculture\u201d of the particular institution and the \u201cchemistry\u201d of the particular group of senators.\u00a0 At the University of Victoria, for example, we used to have some very fierce debates, which meant that the meetings were never dull.\u00a0 Indeed, on occasion they resembled the kind of raucous partisanship we associate with Question Period in the House of Commons. \u00a0And it probably helped that the Senate met on Wednesday evening at 7:30, allowing certain members a couple of hours to \u201cprepare\u201d beforehand in the Faculty Club bar.\u00a0 By contrast, Carleton\u2019s Senate meets at 2:00 on Friday afternoon, and gripping debates are rather rare.\u00a0 Whether that is a function of the day and time, or simply the fact that the system works \u2026 in the sense that controversial maters are ironed out at a lower level \u2026 is not for me to speculate.\u00a0 Our Senate is sedate, well managed, and certainly efficient, but I shall confess that there are times when I miss the passionate rhetoric of a good verbal dust up.\u00a0 And a bit of humour now and then would certainly not be amiss, although our Provost certainly tries his best in that regard.<\/p>\n

If there is one place where the Carleton Senate can perhaps be found wanting, it is in its composition.\u00a0 For example, some directors of Schools have ex officio<\/i> membership of Senate, and some do not \u2026 and all the \u201c\u2019Schools\u201d in FASS are in the latter category.\u00a0 When I asked about this anomaly some years ago, I was told that it was because some \u201cSchools\u201d have independent Faculty Boards, for reasons now lost in the mists of history, and consequently the director needs to be present to represent that Board\u2019s interests.\u00a0 But then the question must be posed, why do some Schools continue to have separate Faculty Boards and some do not?\u00a0 On the face of things, it seems to me that current practice is discriminatory, and needs to be addressed.<\/p>\n

And another issue which requires reconsideration is the absence of any voice at Senate for our part-time faculty members.\u00a0 \u201cContract Instructors\u201d, as they are called at Carleton, currently teach something like 25% of our credit courses, and probably a much higher percentage of actual students, given that they are responsible for delivering many of the large first-year classes. They certainly have an inherent interest in the deliberations of Senate, and many also have considerable expertise in the issues being considered.\u00a0 I am willing to believe that when Carleton\u2019s Senate was established, most Contract Instructors held full-time employment in government or industry, and consequently had little time or inclination for participation in university governance.\u00a0 But those days are long gone!<\/p>\n

[to be continued]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the many years in which I have blogged about university life it has never been my practice to provide links to websites or to other bloggers, but I shall make an exception this week for Nick Falvo’s recent piece on university governance, and more specifically on the challenges faced by Boards of Governors.  You<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nUniversity Governance I - 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