It is a season of change this fall for MSU faculty, which approved five new task forces that will examine such university components as the Academic Governance system, communication and evaluation of academic programs and administrators at a Faculty Council meeting Tuesday.
The approval of these task forces is a step toward solving problems that some faculty members say have been bothering them for years - namely, their role in important MSU decisions.
All five of the approved committees, composed of faculty, students, administrators and MSU Board of Trustees members, will now begin to look at these issues. Task force members have not yet been chosen.
The task forces were created as a result of the Faculty Voice report, which was released by faculty members last year and voiced concerns and problems they had with the administration.
The Executive Committee of Academic Council, a group within the Academic Governance system, created the task force proposals following the release of the report.
At Tuesday's meeting, task force proposals that dealt with academic program reviews and overall communication were approved without discussion. The possible creation of a task force that would aim to reorganize the current Academic Governance system by eliminating the Executive Committee of Academic Council and replacing it with a new six-person, faculty-only executive committee was debated.
Executive Committee of Academic Council Chairperson Jon Sticklen said he had a problem with the reorganization task force, because it was unclear how included students will be and what will happen as a result.
ASMSU's Academic Assembly Chairperson Bob Murphy wrote a letter and presented it to all members of Faculty Council, requesting the Academic Governance system reorganization task force be eliminated. After Murphy said the task force "was leading down a very dark path," Faculty Council members still approved the reorganization task force.
The debate about who should be a part of each committee did not end with just students.
Philosophy Professor Richard Peterson was worried that the faculty will end up not having the final say at the end of the committee process. He said he wanted faculty to be the only ones allowed to vote on the results of each of the individual committees, while students and administrators would just be represented.
However, several faculty members, such as Terry Link, director of the Office of Campus Sustainability, thought students should remain allowed to vote on the task forces' decisions.
"If students are going to have any changes in governance, we must have some sense of a growing culture and inclusiveness," Link said.
Right now, a trustee will sit on each task force, prompting some faculty members to question whether they will remain the dominant group on the committees.
MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon said it is common to have the student vote in governance, but "unprecedented" for administrators to do the same.
"There is a history of dysfunctionality between the Board of Trustees, faculty and administration," art and art history Associate Professor Phylis Floyd said. "If the Board of Trustees is invited (to be on the task forces), it might be a benefit of the whole institution to readjust the way it looks at governance."
Journalism Professor Steve Lacy also questioned the composition of some of the task forces. He moved to have a specialist and an additional faculty member be added to the task force that would look at administrators' evaluations, while still maintaining a faculty majority in the group.
Nominations for the task force members will be collected until Oct. 7 and are open to all regular faculty. A form for nominees will be available on the Academic Governance Web site, www.msu.edu/~acadgov.
