Month: September 2013

Welcome from the Chair

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Welcome to the new academic year! The Faculty Council began 2013-14 by receiving 1084 responses to an online governance survey—modified from an Association of American University Professors survey—circulated to all faculty in early fall. To me, this 33 percent response rate indicates the growing interest in shared governance on our campus. We will be reporting on the results next month. Beginning with that momentum, I hope this year for the Faculty Council will be characterized by open communication, transparency, and trust between the council and the general faculty. In that spirit, we have made some recent changes to the council website, facultycouncil.emory.edu, where you can now find minutes for the past year’s meetings (use your Emory ID/password to login to the pages). Please also use the “Join the Conversation” links throughout this publication to comment on the articles through the Council Concerns blog. We welcome your input, feedback, and ideas. Please do contact me at dhoury [at] emory [dot] edu.

 

Faculty Handbook Reviewed, Revised, Approved

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After a summer-long review undertaken by the Faculty Policies Committee of the Faculty Council, the council voted at its September meeting to approve the revised Faculty Handbook with the caveat that the document is to be reviewed and re-approved annually.

Through the revisions, two-thirds of the content of the handbook were removed. “The committee thought the document should be targeted to faculty as specifically as possible,” explained council chair Debra Houry. “We cut information that is not faculty-specific and that can easily be found from other sources.”  The committee also separated the Gray Book, the statement of principles governing faculty relationships with the university, from the Faculty Handbook. “The Gray Book is under the authority of the Board of Trustees,” Houry said, “and therefore the Faculty Council does not edit it.” The revised 65-page Faculty Handbook will now go through review processes with the Council of Deans and the President’s Cabinet. The final version of the handbook will be posted at this link.

 

President to Council: Ask the Bigger Questions

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Emory President James Wagner addressed the Faculty Council in September with the observation that higher education is very much a part of the public discourse of the nation currently. While the great interest is good, he said, the challenge is the narrow conversation: “We have an additional calling, and it’s actually our older calling, which is the calling around preparing folks to be not just job-ready, but citizenship-ready. We do so much around what it means to be a human being. A lot of the great questions that are confounding Congress right now aren’t going to work out on the spreadsheets. They are going to require judgment, values, and character. We need to be asking the bigger questions.” He encouraged the Council to help “expand the conversation” both on campus and beyond.