Creating a Faculty Senate: First Principles and First Steps
By Kevin L. Cope, AAUP-LA Treasurer, April 30, 2021 Anyone who serves for long as an AAUP Chapter, Section, or Conference officer will experience the synonymy of the individual with the universal. Problems are about the only things that are not in short supply in contemporary higher education. Many colleagues seek help with what they regard as unique troubles, not knowing that many others have faced those same challenges and that the AAUP has plenty of pertinent, collected and collective wisdom to share. One of the most common difficulties facing governance-minded academic professionals is that of irregular (or, worse, non-existent) “faculty” or “shared” governance institutions. Some institutions regard the faculty as little more than hired labor without a voice in campus affairs; others create hybrid or chimerical governance bodies such as “university senates” that seem to include everyone but that end up, in their piebald character, representing no one. It is easy to understand why a clear-thinking faculty member working in such an institution might propose the creation of a faculty governance entity while simultaneously being daunted by the difficulty of that task. Uncertainties concerning best standards and practices for faculty representation in college and university management make the challenge…