GovernanceB1

The department is currently very involved in university governance and has long been active in this way.  The Faculty Senate representative and alternate report(s) at departmental meetings and via email.  One of our faculty is currently on the Faculty Senate Executive Committee.  We consult, usually monthly, with the Dean regarding planning and budgeting and otherwise as needed.  The department provides program directors for Resource Management, Primate Behavior and Ecology and American Indian Studies.  The current chair is also the president of ADCO, the Academic Department Chairs Organization, which provides inter-college discussion of academic issues and governance and consults with the deans and provost and the President’s Advisory Council.  

Despite this participation it has been difficult to bring issues to the attention of the Administration.  The newly formed Labor Management Council is a useful beginning at better communication between faculty and administration, as is the willingness of the Provost and Deans to hear the concerns of ADCO.  We hope this will continue.

Department Faculty Committee of the Whole - The Biology faculty meets regularly (currently we have been meeting once each week). At these meetings final decisions on curriculum, personnel, and other departmental concerns are made. Often groundwork and recommendations from other committees and/or the chair precede these decisions. (membership -- all faculty)

Curriculum Committee -- This standing committee examines and makes recommendations to the faculty on all matters concerning our undergraduate curriculum. Proposals for course and program changes are submitted through this committee. When not handling specific proposals, this committee discusses broader and more philosophical issues concerning our curricula (assessment, course and program outcomes, etc.) and organizes department- wide discussions on these issues. (membership -- four to five faculty)

Personnel Committee - This standing committee establishes policy and procedures for the regularly occurring faculty personnel issues with which all CWU departments deal. These include reappointment, promotion, tenure, merit, post-tenure review, etc. The committee attempts to fulfill its role in reviewing faculty performance while promoting the mentoring of especially our junior faculty. Graduate Committee - This standing committee examines and makes recommendations to the faculty on all matters concerning our graduate curriculum. These matters include graduate program policy and procedures, graduate curriculum, and graduate admissions. (membership- four to five faculty)

Working Groups - Three working groups have recently been established in the Department: (1) Cell and Molecular WG, (2) Organismal WG, (3) Ecology WO. These groups sometimes meet on their own accord to discuss curriculum and advising issues in their respective areas. At other times, they are called upon by the chair or department to discuss and give recommendations on issues of more broad concern in the department. Recently, these groups have been examining the need for a potential reorganization of our B. S. specializations. (membership -- faculty members whose expertise lie in each area)

Search Committees -- In recent years we have hired many new faculty, and these searches are organized and conducted by search committees. Search committees do much of the work involved in this process while regularly reporting to the faculty as a whole. (membership - - three to four faculty or staff members appointed by the chair)

Other Committees - When specific situations dictate, ad hoc committees are formed by the chair or by consensus to discuss and make recommendations on various issues, e.g. space allocation, staff hiring, etc.

Department Committee of the Whole – All Chemistry faculty and staff meet at least twice a month to discuss department business.  These meetings consist of information items, reports from department representatives (e.g., Faculty Senate), committee reports, and action items.  Business includes strategic planning, curricular improvements, resource use, student scholarships, department policy, and prioritization of work.  Committee recommendations are discussed and approved or sent back to committee.  The faculty feel strongly that the staff should participate in appropriate decisions of the department.  Staff do not vote on faculty issues or curricular issues and they do not participate in chair elections.

Chemistry faculty are highly engaged in institutional governance.  Currently faculty are serving on the Faculty Senate, Academic Appeals Board, General Education Committee, Academic Advising Committee, Ad Hoc Health Careers Education and Resource Committee, Center for Teaching and Learning Advisory Council, among others. Faculty also serve at the college level on numerous faculty evaluation and professional development committees.

January, 2008
Computer Science faculty members are involved by their participation on university and college committees as part of their service.  As a small department, we rotate membership on the Faculty Senate.  At this point, all faculty have had an opportunity to serve as senator or alternate senator.  All faculty are involved on at least one other university or college level committee and the faculty average almost two university or college committees per person.

The DOE includes two working groups: 

• Department Faculty Committee--meets periodically to discuss departmental matters and form policies concerning curriculum, allocation of finds, purchase of equipment, and the like. This committee includes all faculty members of the DOE. Because the DOE is relatively small, the chairs are able to discuss many issues with faculty on a frequent and informal basis. Therefore, formal meetings involving the Department Faculty Committee are held to a minimum and used only when topics of major importance must be considered. 

• Personnel Committee--establishes policies and procedures concerning teaching, scholarship, and service for department members. The committee also makes recommendations regarding reappointment, promotion, and merit salary increases as well as conducts faculty searches. The members of this committee include all tenured faculty of the DOE.

The department has a faculty senator and alternate.  Through these individuals, department members are informed about university policies on academics.  Votes for various resolutions are made on the department behalf by the senator or alternate.  The department also has a union steward, who informs department personnel about activities related to the collective bargaining agreement. 

Department members, including staff, contribute to the governance of the university by accepting positions on numerous committees (see CVs of faculty for full listing of all assignments). Recent university committee membership by Geological Sciences members include search for the COTS Dean, associate COTS Dean, interim COTS Dean, CWU President; Science Phase II Building Committee; Carbon Reduction Initiative Committee; Collective Bargaining Team.  Some department members also take leadership roles as Director of a program (e.g., Environmental Studies, Undergraduate Research), thus contributing to academic policy development.

Graduate Committee:  Three faculty members and the department chair as ex officio member are responsible for admitting students to the graduate program, awarding teaching assistantships, advertising our programs, and recommending policy changes to the department.

Personnel Committee:  Three tenured and one tenure-track faculty members are responsible for the review of non-tenure track faculty and recommending tenure-track and tenured faculty to the college dean for reappointment, tenure, and promotion.  When the department has fewer than three tenured members, a tenured outside member is added to the committee in place of the tenure-track faculty member.

Scholarship Committee:  Three faculty members are responsible for awarding departmental scholarships that are disbursed annually to history majors.

Faculty members participate fully in the day-to-day running of the program.  Faculty meetings are held weekly, with one meeting a month reserved for committee work.  The standing committees of the department, the Personnel, Curriculum, Graduate, Scholarship, Music Education and Faculty Relations committees each have at least five members, and are called upon in their areas of domain:

· The Personnel Committee is chiefly responsible for governing faculty participation in Reappointment, Promotion, Tenure and Merit procedures, and developing its own independent recommendations.  Other duties include confirming the qualifications of adjunct faculty and administering chair elections.

· The Curriculum Committee vets each proposal involving undergraduate curriculum change, the proposals coming from faculty, students or administration, and offers a recommendation to the faculty as a whole.

· The Graduate Committee deals with questions of graduate curricula, graduate policies and Graduate Teaching Assistantships.

· The Scholarship Committee attempts to keep track of the Foundation Scholarship account balances, receives recommendations for scholarship from faculty in the various performing areas and develops a plan for distributing scholarship offers, primarily to entering students.

· The Music Education Committee considers question of policy regarding certification, student teaching and curricular issues and the ongoing matter of the relationship with the Department of Education

· The Faculty Relations Committee attends to social functions that occur in the department: receptions for retiring faculty members, gifts for support staff, organizing the fall all-faculty family picnic, etc.

· Other ad hoc committees are formed as the need arises.  The move into the new Music Building created a need to develop polices regarding the scheduling and use of the new performance halls, and a Concert Committee was formed to address those issues.  The superb visual and acoustic properties of the new Concert Hall have created much demand for its use, and the ad hoc Concert Committee has become a de facto new standing committee of the department.  Search Committees, whose members are approved by the Dean, are formed whenever the need arises, and are responsible for the complete search process.

The Department has a taken an active role in governance of the University, as befits our field, though the effectiveness of that involvement might be open to question.   At different points in time over the past 6 years, 2 of our members of the Faculty Senate took active roles on key committees, including the Executive Committee; Prof. Manweller currently (07-08) serves as Senate Vice-Chair, and will take over as Chair next year. Of course, part of this has changed with the Collective Bargaining Agreement, and it is unclear how the Faculty Senate and CBA interact or have separate jurisdictions, as this is still being worked out.

The Department Chair is involved indirectly in planning and policy development matters through interaction with the Dean and other College chairs, and participates in the Academic Department Chairs Organization (ADCO). These are mainly advisory roles, however.

It is the opinion of this Department that the faculty are not fully consulted on budgeting matters, and are largely kept in the dark.
 Jan. 08

(January 2008)
Our first faculty union contract was adopted in 2006. Matters relating to salary and working conditions are now negotiated by teams representing the union and the university administration. The psychology department’s union steward carries concerns to the union leadership and makes reports at department meetings. 
The following matters fall primarily under the purview of the Faculty Senate and its traditional shared governance mission:

a) curriculum, including program revision, criteria for addition and deletion of courses, and standards for granting degrees;

b) subject matter and methods of instruction, including educational policies, assessment of student learning, and grading standards;

c) governance of the General Education Program at the university;

d) scholarship including research and creative activity, freedom of scholarly inquiry, and standards for evaluation of faculty scholarship;

e) implementation of CBA processes, including development of substantive content regarding faculty status, including faculty ethics, peer review in hiring, tenure, promotion, post-tenure review, and merit;

f) those aspects of student life that relate to the academic experience, including student academic ethics and academic co-curricular policies;

g) criteria for admissions to undergraduate majors;

h) criteria for admission to graduate programs and selection of graduate students;

i) participation in accreditation and assessment.

We participate through the Faculty Senate and faculty members who serve on university committees. The department has two faculty senators who represent and report to the department. Shared governance at the institutional level is conducted through committee activity. At present, psychology faculty members are serving on the following university standing committees: Academic Appeals, Budget Advisory, Center for Teaching and Learning Advisory, Commercial Activities, Diversity Council, Human Subjects Review (2), Animal Care and Use, Faculty Development and Research, Library Advisory, President’s Advisory Council. 
Psychology faculty members serve on ad hoc committees of the university and the College of the Sciences, for example, the NWCCU accreditation committee, the college personnel committee, the college summer grant committee, and the university history book committee. 

The department chair has a good working relationship with the dean. She actively participates on the college’s Council of Department Chairs.

The department is rather small, which allows it to use a committee of the whole approach to most other issues.  Therefore, when addressing curriculum, programs, and policies, for example, all full-time faculty are allowed to participate in the discussions and have voting rights.  Part-time faculty are permitted to take part in such discussions, but are not allowed to vote.  Any alteration or change in policy or program requires the support of a plurality of department members.  Occasionally the department creates ad hoc committees.  These committees may not include all faculty members but instead be composed of interested parties who volunteer to take on a particular task.  No formal voting is involved in selecting the membership of an ad hoc committee.  The department is occasionally asked to provide a representative to serve as a liaison between the department and another university unit (e.g., the department’s library representative or Faculty Senator).  In these instances the chair calls for nominations and volunteers.  If multiple parties express interest in the position, a vote by all full-time faculty is held to determine who the representative will be.

Faculty members are current members of the following University committees:
  Graduate Council
  Faculty Senate
  Student Services and Activities Fee Committee
  Student Judicial Committee
  Farrell Scholarship Committee
  Grievance Committee
  


Governance in the Department is usually by a committee of the whole, however there are several standing committees:
Executive Committee:  Chaired by the department chair and consisting of all FTTT faculty.  Responsible for all executive decisions regarding the department as a whole.

Budget Committee:  Chaired by the department chair, membership includes the AD, PM, all Shop Heads [staff]

Personnel Committee:  Chaired by a tenured faculty member, other than the department chair, committee membership consists of two other tenured faculty.   Responsible for the review of non-tenure track faculty and recommending tenure-track and tenured faculty to the college dean for reappointment, tenure, post-tenure and promotion.  Also guides the Merit process for the department.

QUESTION: GovernanceB1