Bob Murphy is worried about the future of his involvement in the higher levels of the Academic Governance system.
The main feature on the agenda for today's Faculty Council meeting includes discussing and voting on five different task forces, one of which could have major implications on Murphy's role in Academic Governance.
The task forces are geared to improve areas highlighted in the Faculty Voice Report, a result of a committee of faculty that met last year to troubleshoot ways to give the faculty more voice in university issues.
The Faculty Voice Report recommended that a task force restructure Academic Governance by creating a new executive group, called the Faculty Executive Committee.
This group would be composed of only six faculty members.
A committee made of solely faculty members has Murphy, chairperson of ASMSU's Academic Assembly, wondering where he gets to participate.
"It completely destroys any sort of student input we have as part of (Academic) Governance," Murphy said. "What they are doing is really quite slick - they aren't removing seats from Academic Council, they are just making them useless. They won't have a say in the matter."
In addition to a task force looking to restructure Academic Governance, there are proposed task forces that will focus on making faculty reviews of administrators stronger in quality, developing and changing regular program reviews, improving communication and changing the role of fixed-term faculty in Academic Governance.
"At this point, there is a problem with Academic Governance that was identified with medical school issues and fooling around with the (College of) Arts and Letters structure, and faculty felt like they had little input," said Dick Weber, an associate professor in the Accounting and Information Systems Department. "If it works like we would like it to, faculty would have input in those processes."
Executive Committee of Academic Council Chairperson Jon Sticklen said he can see how the students' role might have been overlooked in developing the task forces, because they were created by faculty.
"The Faculty Voice made recommendations from one viewpoint," Sticklen said. "It is up to the task force to model and mold recommendations.
"I suggest that the relation between (students and faculty) is an absolutely key ingredient to get it worked out."
During today's meeting, the task forces will be debated and either adopted or rejected.
While the timeline for the Academic Governance reorganization task force is the longest and appears to carry the most weight in change, Weber thinks that some of the other task forces carry as much importance.
"Faculty's evaluation of administration, depending on what is set up, is a fairly easy thing to deal with, but one that has a very large impact," Weber said.
While these task forces might be put into operation if approved at the meeting, it is up to those nominated to be part of the task forces to make the big decisions about the future of Academic Governance.
"They will … do some background investigation, look at situations at MSU and look at changes," Weber said. "If no change (is) needed, they won't recommend anything."
