Dr. Susan Greenbaum provided the following report:
The main project of the USF Faculty Senate this year has been shared governance.
In September, we received the report from the ad hoc committee on departmental governance. This was a very substantial effort that involved reviewing existing governance documents for USF departments, literature about departmental governance in general, and a survey of the faculty about their experiences and attitudes regarding decision-making in their departments. We found that many departments do not have any written governance documents or have not updated or followed their documents. We also found that faculty are very concerned about this issue and would like to see Senate action. The report resulted in a resolution by the Senate at the October meeting that called for the creation of two new committees comprised of the both faculty and administrators. One committee will develop procedures for writing a new constitution for USF that defines and codifies shared governance. The other committee will follow up on the issue of departmental governance to ensure that departments develop faculty-driven documents and procedures for various kinds of decision-making. These committees, which will be composed of equal numbers of faculty and administrators, will begin meeting in the spring semester and will conclude their work by May 2006.
Other
concerns involved USF efforts to define relations among regional campuses and
the overall basis for “system” development.
We are still trying to finish collective bargaining. There are two issues about which we cannot reach agreement; domestic partner benefits and including shared governance in the CBA.
USF is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. The Senate is participating in the celebration; the Senate President was co-chair of the planning committee.