The Faculty Council spent the first hour of its October 22, 2013, meeting in a faculty-only session to review and discuss the results of the faculty governance survey conducted in early fall. Of the approximately 3,000 surveys sent, 1,084 faculty responded. Half of the respondents were in non-tenure track positions, more than half were male, and more than half were in the School of Medicine. More than three quarters reported their race as “white.” In the closed session, Council chair Deb Houry says, the group discussed “the lack of visibility of University Senate and Faculty Council work, which we could interpret as a call for members to report more to colleagues and to improve school-specific communications.” Also discussed, she added, was the role of these governance bodies: “What needs to be dealt with at an individual unit level, and what rises to the university-wide level? And what are the mechanisms for those larger discussions?”

Additional reports from survey results are available in the below post.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emory Provost Claire Sterk joined the October Faculty Council meeting after the faculty-only session to further discuss and respond to the results of the faculty governance survey. “If we can reach a shared understanding of what we mean by faculty governance, I believe we would be in a much better place to have constructive conversations moving forward,” she said. “By ‘shared’ I don’t mean that everyone must agree to every word but rather that we agree on the principles at the university level and within each academic unit. In five different conversations, I might hear five different meanings of the term. The issues raised are always important. But what we should consider is, are the issues tied to faculty governance or to something else?”

 

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.