Senate, Academic Council to explore faculty governance
By JASON McFARLEY
News Editor
At the recommendation of Provost Nathan Hatch, nine faculty senators and Academic Council members will explore the possibility of a joint committee between the two bodies, senate chair Jacqueline Brogan said.
The move advanced the cause of an embattled senate to this year redefine its role in faculty governance at the University.
"The Academic Council is incredibly interested in keeping the senate going," Brogan told the senate at its regular meeting Wednesday.
At the Academic Council's meeting this week, the provost encouraged the formation of a of the nine-member board to look into the restructuring the senate. Seated will be the five members of the senate's executive committee, including Brogan, and the Academic Council member's who sit on both that body's executive and faculty affairs committees.
The senate at its Oct. 10 meeting announced plans for a joint committee with the Academic Council and intentions to cut the senate's membership by nearly a third.
For a body that has fought with itself over the issue of whether to continue its existence, the plans are perhaps an ambitious plan to restructure the senate and to realign power at the University.
"There are issues on which the faculty neds an advocacy body for its own interests," said senator Michael Zuckert, who last summer helped outline plans for the restructuring plan. "There are lots of University issues on which a faculty perspective is needed ... academic freedom, student life issues."
The senate is essential to the University's well-being, according to Zuckert, because a faculty-only body provides a far different perspective from mixed-representation groups such as the Academic and Campus Life councils, which include students and administrators in their memberships.
Prevailing sentiment toward the senate, however, is that the group is powerless and ineffective. That was the impetus for the move in May to dissolve the body.
"The senate is widely received to be powerless. It only debates things and passes resolutions that are then ignored," Zuckert said.
He likened being in the senate to serving on an elementary school student council.
Zuckert said opening the lines of communication between senators and their consituency as well as linking the senate more tightly to a group with more power —namely the Academic Council — were the cornerstones of the restructuring plan.
Drafted by a senate ad hoc committee last summer, the plan would cut the senate's membership from 53 voting members to 37. It would also seat an additional four faculty representatives on the Academic Council.
Contact Jason McFarley at
mcfarley.1@nd.edu
All News Stories for Thursday, November 8, 2001
