coe-fac: COE Internal Governance Revisions

[Randy Kamphaus]

Dear COE Faculty:

In the winter and spring of this past academic year, our college began to engage in the important work of fully articulating the policies and processes by which we will govern ourselves in the future.  That work continues, and will require commitment and a sincere effort from us all going into the future.  I am writing today with some updates on the process of implementation of the faculty collective bargaining agreement that went into effect at roughly this time last year.

First, the CBA implementation team, made up of representatives from United Academics and personnel at Academic Affairs, has reviewed our internal governance documents and provided feedback designed to assist us in ensuring that the requirements of the CBA are not lost or overlooked as we codify our practices.  The most significant of these requirements is the necessity to ensure "appropriate and equitable participation" in governance for both tenure-track and non-tenure track faculty, and I have attached language regarding this from the implementation team to this message.  This mandate exists both at the college level and the unit level, and the important first step in our work this fall is to return to the documents we developed last academic year to make necessary revisions in keeping with the CBA.  I have attached a line-numbered version of the COE Internal Governance Framework with some tracked edits and notes calling attention to areas that must be addressed.

While the college's policy work is the purview of all faculty, I understand that gathering the 500+ members of the COE faculty in one place for a productive discussion is an impossible task.  That being said, I am asking for volunteers among the faculty to step forward and make their voices heard as part of a college-wide workgroup similar to the one that was convened last year to provide revised language to this office for review before we send the document back to you for your ratification.  Academic Affairs expects a ratified document by November 1, so our work must begin quickly and proceed quickly.  I propose the following:


1.       Any faculty member interested in immediately beginning work on revising our COE Internal Governance Framework document should email my assistant Shaun Haskins (haskins at uoregon.edu<mailto:haskins at uoregon.edu>) directly to indicate their desire to participate in a college-wide workgroup.  In order to ensure that its work is undertaken quickly, requests to join this group will only be accepted until 5pm this Friday, October 3, and the first meeting of this group will take place 3:00-4:30pm next Wednesday, October 8.

2.       This college-wide workgroup will have its membership announced broadly once it is assembled so that all faculty members can provide input and feedback to the members of the workgroup directly.

3.       The workgroup shall be substantively finished with its policy development and submit the results to my office as soon as feasible.  At that time,  my office will make a review of the document and then submit it for college-wide ratification.  This will provide necessary time for unit-specific policies to be modified to be in accord with both the feedback provided by the implementation team and the COE-level policy document and to be ratified at the unit level.

Unit-specific policies will need to be revised as well.  Brigid Flannery, our Interim Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs, will send the implementation team's feedback and some supporting documents to individual unit heads in the coming days, along with guidance to assist the unit faculty in revising and ratifying those documents.  I would ask you to return your revised unit-level policies to my office for review before the November 1 deadline.

Once we have successfully completed a revision of our internal governance policies that ensure appropriate and equitable participation for both TTF and NTTF, we will spend the remainder of the term engaged with the equally-important work of establishing policies around the assignment of professional responsibilities (workload) for NTTF.  My office and Academic Affairs will assist units in organizing to prepare for this work during the month of October, so that it will go as smoothly as possible during November and December.

For a view of the year's CBA implementation-related activities, you can refer to the timeline on the following website: http://academicaffairs.uoregon.edu/cba-implementation-calendar

I look forward to working with you all this year on these important activities.

Randy
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