Survey
on Governance 51 responses
FEC April 22, 2009
1) Average
Satisfaction: 0 (dissat) – 5 – 10 (satis)
Faculty Meeting 5.78
Faculty Handbook 6.42
Faculty Committee Structure 6.02
2)
Needs most immediate attention
Meeting 21 45.7%
Handbook 13 28.3%
Committee Structure 12
26.1%
5 skipped
3)
Elements of Meetings that should be addressed?
29 responses
4)
Should FEC report changes to the Handbook?
Yes
48 96%
No 2
4%
1 skipped
5) What
process to amend Handbook? 31
responses
6)
What problems with Committees? 26
responses
7)
Task force to evaluate committee structure
Yes 30
69.8%
No 13
30.2%
8 skipped
Free Responses. Skipped lines represent no response.
1. Which needs immediate attention? column N
The business action of the faculty needs to
be separated from the debate on issues.
Perhaps a forum for discussion of issues 1-2 days prior to faculty
action meetings might be an answer.
There are committees that are badly
dysfunctional, such as the ARC, that needs to be
either re-organized or, as I suggest, terminated. There are committees that are
undervalued, such as the FDRC, and should be raised to the same level with
committees whose members are nominated and elected in the Faculty Meeting.
It would be nice if there was more of a web-based
version that was user friendly for finding sections.
What
Faculty Handbook?
In addition to the fact that much of the
business at the meeting can be done through e-mail or in open committee
meetings, the 4:00 time that the meetings are schedules is extremely
inconvenient for those who have worked a full day (beginning with 7:30 a.m.
classes) and/or have late-afternoon responsibilities elsewhere. There is no
reason why the meetings cannot be scheduled for mid-day on Tuesday or Thursday
when faculty are prohibited from teaching to allow for meetings.
Like the Bible, the handbook sits on the
shelf and is pulled out for quotes or rhetorical reasons. What is its status as
a document?
Meetings should be held to discuss
substantial academic issues and do business (curricular approvals, etc.). We don't need reports read to us or to have
students paraded in front of us.
Long, discussions drawn out to excess.
The faculty handbook is always in transition,
especially the parts about "tenure and promotion process." First we had the three year revision, then it was changed to four.
Now, is in the process of changing back to "three years"
again. I understand we have to make
revisions and some changes to our handbook, but it's so confusing when not even
the people in APC can keep up with these many changes.
There are too many faculty meetings and they
should be anytime other than Thursday afternoons---everyone is worn-out by that
time and there are usually too many other meetings that happen during the day on
Thursdays. Why not try Mondays at 4, Tuesdays at 11:30am or 4 pm??!!! Important committees---always the same
people being elected to these committees.
time limit placed on
discussions so meetings dont last longer than one
hour. - if possible.
Faculty handbook needs to be on AMOS. If it is there, I can't easily find it. I thought the P-drive was dead, and all info
was going to be in one place....that being AMOS.
As a new faculty member I feel I do not have
enough background to comment
A review of all the committees to see if they
are all relevant for the problems we have at this time.
Will the real faculty handbook please stand
up?
The faculty meeting as it stands fulfills few
or none of the essential aspects of self-governance in an academic
institution. It is a lecture given in a
lecture hall in which administrators lecture to faculty. Faculty contributions are often sidelined or
squeezed in. I have seen senior faculty
apologize for needing a few minutes of faculty meeting time. Major campus issues requiring discussion and
a community response are often avoided altogether for the sake of the meeting
program. In its current state, the
faculty conveys that administrators (who may or may not have academic training
or exposure to academic culture beyond Moravian) are the determining voice on
campus. This may undermine the integrity of
We have altogether too frequent faculty
meetings and then fritter away the time on listening to people offer reports
and poorly executed PowerPoint presentations on stuff that could be distributed
using media from which we could all benefit and that didn't require everybody
to show up in one room at a relatively inconvenient time of the day and endure
the performance. There are occasionally things that need to be voted on or
presentations that really need to be made in person for proper impact (like the
Global Issues one recently, for example) but they're the rare exception.
Choose
one? They are related.
The section concerning retirement is
incomplete, with portions that concern the rules and regulations scattered in
several documents that are to be found in several locations.
Waste less time on issues which only concern
certain faculty members or groups.
Needs to be consolidated
and readily available on AMOS. If
it is available there now I have not been able to find it.
The advent of email, PBC, surveys like this
one, and the hard work of the Dean's Office has
changed (unintentionally) the tenor of faculty meetings. We don't seems to do
as much "decison making" in faculty
meeting--we hear (too many) reports we could read and seem to have (way too
many) introductions from new hires. I think many of the documents we must
approve (e.g., new courses) could be done via survey. I mean no disrespect to
anyone involved in planning them, but faculty meetings are simply less dynamic
and interesting than there were, say, 10 years ago. We changed and that's OK. I
think we could meet less or only when we have serious and substantive matters
to discuss.
The Handbook is either poorly organized or in
need of a thorough index.
We need to use microphones during the faculty
meeting to allow all present to hear/participate fully.
2. Aspects of Faculty meetings. Column O
Sometimes now with e-mail, I"m not sure what needs to be done electronically
ahead of time, and what is being done at meetings. Chairs need to make that clear
...
Less time spent on announcements and other
inconsequential items. Let's not have 2 per month if we only need one.
Materials for meetings is
received too close to the meeting to allow for adequate preparation.
In general, meetings at Moravian are
ill-prepared. Often there is no agenda. Much of the talk is informative,
the faculty is informed about the decisions being made elsewhere. This is
materials that could be distributed by email.
What I would like to see is more active
participation during the meetings. Too
many faculty members are correcting papers or doing other things and not
engaging in the conversation. And too
much time is spent on "making announcements" instead of discussing
substantive issues.
Meetings of the entire faculty have become
increasingly meaningless. When
announcements about upcoming events are allowed to drag on simply to allow
certain faculty to hear themselves announce for the umpteenth time something
that they have already send several dozen e-mails about, there is something
wrong with what these meetings are supposed to be about. Why don't we move to an elected Faculty
Senate?
Ongoing discussions about pedagogy or
philosophical understandings of issues such as "scholarship" should
be reserved for open committee meetings. The faculty meetings should focus upon
providing the faculty with needed information, not ongoing, rambling,
discussion.
Librarians should vote with teaching faculty.
Handbook is cumbersome, hard to find things
in. Faculty meeting agenda should be
determined jointly by FEC (or some faculty leaders) and dean's office. Too many visits by CIT
Many things must happen at faculty meetings,
but it must be clear that reports by faculty committees and faculty discussion
have top priority.
Time limits should be placed on discussion
and faculty meetings should be once every 6/7 weeks and not on Thursday
afternoons!
Faculty meetings seem to be a forum for
discussion. This is fine once the
business part of the meeting is done.
Taking 45 minutes to discuss and inform each other should happen in the
"second half" of the meeting, not the "first half"
I don't think that we need to have remarks
from the President and the Deans at every meeting. Bringing people together physically for every
meeting seems inefficient....could there be more processing of issues in an
on-line format?
No
I consider 99.9% of my time in faculty
meetings to be wasted. Do we have a
well defined purpose for the faculty meetings? 1.
You cannot have an open ended conversation, discussion, or interplay
with 100 people in a room. It never
works well. Never. Ever. That's why we restrict the size of our
classes to 20 or so! Each item in a
faculty meeting should be either informative -- presentations, committee
reports, etc -- or based on concrete discussion of a proposal brought forward
by a committee. There is no way 100
people can interactively share their ideas in our current format. There are several ways in which our meetings
currently violate this principle. I'll
provide two examples below. * Example
1.1: If someone is looking for input on
a proposal to bring to the faculty as a whole it makes much more sense to
approach smaller groups first. For
example: Gordy took his rewrite for the tenure
process to several committees, then to the untenured faculty in small
groups. This allowed for input and a
real sharing of ideas so that when he took the proposal to the faculty as a
whole there were much fewer issues raised.
Contrast that to the process that was used for the re-write immediately
preceding Gordy's.
We spent interminable hours in faculty meetings attempting to write and
rewrite whole section as a group. A colossal waste of time that ended with an unwieldy and broken
system. This leads us to example
2... * Example 1.2: When someone brings a proposal to the faculty
of course we should discuss it, but standing in front of 100 people is not the
time to rewrite things. If someone has
specific ideas about wording then they need to send those ideas directly to
whoever is bringing the proposal forward.
If they are not incorporated at the next reading then we are free to
vote against the proposal if we wish.
* Example 1.3: Just throwing out
an idea and saying "discuss" does not work. If there are no concrete
questions for folks to think about _ahead of time_ many will not be prepared to
contribute. Of course there will
always be a vocal minority that is willing to speak even if they are unprepared
and unfamiliar with the topic, but that does not lead to productive
discussion. 2. Everyone who
speaks at a meeting should keep in mind their audience. Is what you're about to say of interest to
most of the people in the room? 100
people don't need to hear an issue that one person is having with a committee
-- perhaps that committee needs to hear it, but that can be accomplished in a
much more directed communication by phone or email. If you have an event coming up then post it
to the campus calendar and/or send an email.
Quite frankly, if I'm not interested enough to read your email then I'm
certainly not interested enough to pay attention to you at the end of a long
meeting. I think that many of our
traditions in these meetings are hold-overs from when
Moravian was a much smaller place.
Perhaps if this were a smaller group we could feel free to speak
whatever pops into our minds, but given the current size I feel the act of
speaking up in a meeting should be much more formal..
Just to keep the faculty meetings within the
scheduled time, while allowing for adequate discussion time.
No
Meetings should be more focused.
I would like to see the faculty have greater
control of the agenda of the faculty meeting.
I would love to see more meeting time
dedicated to substantive issues; I thought the last meeting was a good start on
that, although it devolved into prolonged anecdotal monologues rather than
serious discussion. I don't care for starting it with a prayer or a long speech
from the president. I also think that, in general, they should be for the
teaching faculty, not for administrators, except for portions that may reflect
a given office's work.
I appreciated the most recent meeting in
which it was possible to have a faculty discussion about matters of
importance. The discussion regarding the
imperative of global education was excellent. I like hearing what intelligent
and engaged colleagues are thinking and doing. I came away with a sense of
pride about the community. I would say that it was the best and only real
faculty meeting I have ever attended.
What I do not like is when major issues requiring a community response
are managed to contain emotion or massaged into PR messages.
Demand that all reports be circulated using
AMOS or e-mail or snail-mail or something rather than blathered on at faculty
meetings. We can all both read and write.
If it's necessary for some reason to use projection onto the screen,
demand that it be done in a useful way.
If people are using technology in their classrooms the way we've seen
demonstrated over the past year or two in faculty meetings it's no wonder
students are having problems. An 8-1/2 x
11 sheet of paper full of 12-point type is nothing but dots on the screen for
some of us if we're not physically within three feet of it. If it doesn't matter if we read what's there
why is our time being wasted with it?
I don't need someone to read to me. Circulate the report,
show the power point, etc. Don't read
it.
Reportable items need not be discussed - they
could be distributed before meetings with chance to ask questions if
necessary. less
time on minutia E.G. the 30 moines spent on approval
voting.
Cut through the chaff - announcements etc.
can best be left to e-mail. Sometimes
people just take too long and it's near the end of the meeting.
I think faculty meetings could be expedited
if they were only attended by the full time teaching faculty--key
administrators could be invited to attend as needed, not every meeting. It is
not a good use of their time, for example, to spend the 1-2 hours in Dana Hall
once a month in the academic year.
I would like to ban reports, unless a
colleague has questions, and all announcements. Given the variety of channels
to distribute information about and invite attendance at events of all kinds,
announcements during faculty meetings amount to begging or nagging.
I'll repeat my above comments. Not all faculty present at our meetings can hear all comments
effectively. The use of microphones for all public discussions during meetings
would solve this issue. I would suggest a microphone at the front and perhaps
two roving microphones.
Too much of our meeting time consists of
briefings & personal anecdotes from the president with little chance for
sincere discussion. It doesn't help that
the president has in the past silenced those who disagree with him & people
are sometimes fearful to do so now. Does
he really need to come so often?
Shouldn't he be *listening* rather than talking more? And do we need all those other
faculty-hostile administrators present?
We should also eliminate the multiple self-serving announcements (mostly
by faculty) & insist that people use email instead. Too often the announcements are
self-promotion rather than real information sharing.
3. Notification of changes in Faculty
handbook. Column Q
Electronic notification would be sufficient.
The FEC should assume a much more active role
in shaping the faculty self-governance than what it has done previously. Too
much energy has been wasted on salary issues that are simply technical.
This is a no brainer
and should be a mandate.
Again, what Faculty Handbook?
FEC was made largely ineffectual under Rokke and doesn't seem to know what it is charged to do.
Perhaps we need a faculty Senate or some body with clout. Do faculty members
really want or trust FEC to represent their interests? Does the administration
take FEC seriously or regularly bypass it? The trustees generally ignore it.
Just send an electronic message via email
with link to the policy change.
These changes can be reported via email.
Changes that are made to reflect decisions
made elsewhere (by the Dean, by faculty vote, etc) do not necessarily need a
vote by the full faculty. Nor do minor
corrections (proofreading, editing, etc.).
Larger issues (rewriting an entire section, substantive revisions)
should be brought before the faculty.
Perhaps with an email would be sufficient.
Few faculty have
read the handbook from cover to cover.
Changes should be reported as soon as they are made.
Yes, I have very little sense about the
contents or importance of the faculty handbook.
Why does it matter? What should
faculty be aware of? I would like to
learn more.
But not during faculty
meeting. Send a memo.
Who makes the changes? When? Why?
I suppose FEC could do it--but does it matter
who reports as long as the report occurs?
At least to the extent of
announcing by email that a change has been made, its location, and purpose.
4. Process to Amend Handbook. Column
R
a committee of
faculty and relevant administrators
Changes made by the relevant committee and
brought to faculty either as a reportable item or for vote, depending on the
ramifications of the change.
This is a matter of faculty decision making
and administrative deciison making. Who decides what relative to authority? Administrative policy relative to faculty
needs to be communicated electronically, if it needs faculty input, call for it,
then decide and publish change. If it is
under faculty authority,then
delegate the matter to the appropriate committee and process it as any other
faculty business/action.
A. Good preparation in appropriate
committees. B. Reasonable distribution
of the appropriate materials. C.
Succinct but open discussion in the Faculty Meetings.
not sure - current
process seems to work: proposal vetted by faculty
For the third time, what
Faculty Handbook?
Depends on which section.
Seems as if the administration can pretty well render it moot
if they want to for financial or other reasons. Who reads it? We need to
spend some time during faculty meetings to review it.
committee to do
systematic review and update each section
Peer review (small cohort), approval by FEC,
Deans and president
This is unclear. Different parts of the Handbook may require
different procedures for changes.
continue discussions
in faculty meetings.
A process that is fair...and uncomplicated as
possible!
proposal to the faculty
with a vote
FEC should propose to faculty - faculty vote.
I believe that a majority of the items in the
handbook are policies that are implemented by administration and the faculty do not vote on them.
It seems they are simple reportable when changes are made. It would be good to have a sense of the
faculty for each change to see if the faculty support
each change. At least this would send a
message to administration when unwelcome policies are made.
2/3 Vote of Faculty
This is the critical question – there
should be clear processes for amendment.
There should be transparency and accountability to any changes made to
the handbook. The handbook should be
easily accessible to all faculty (at the very least, it should be available on
both the P-drive and AMOS as a single searchable PDF document – the
current state of 8 separate searchable PDFs is an
improvement), and there should be a regular schedule for updates (much as there
is for the Student Handbook). Whatever
amendment process is agreed upon, it should be included in the handbook itself.
proposals should
come through the dean or a committee to the faculty for a vote.
I would think that proposals need to be aired
to the entire faculty and voted upon, but I do not know if that is already the
procedure. At the least, allow time for faculty viewing of changes and
comments.
Committee submissions and 2/3 faculty vote on them.
Appropriate committee work with approval of
full faculty after.
It would be nice to actually have a clearly
defined process. I believe that all
changes to the handbook should be reported and/or discussed and voted on at a
faculty meeting. We should also be able
to clearly see when changes were made and by whom.
Broad discussions in the FEC and focused
discussions in the faculty meeting.
The one we're using (I think, though I wonder
sometimes). First and
second reading followed by vote.
What doesn't matter to one might be significant to somebody else.
2/3 faculty vote on proposed amendments prepared
by the propser(s), not the entire faculty
It's a contract (or is it?). The Dean's office and HR should be the ones
who handle this with input from APC and FEC.
Have the Dean of Faculty review it, propose
the necessary changes and bring them to the Faculty Meeting to have the faculty
give their feed-back and reasons why they would like to see some items or
procedures changed. Then, the Dean could
prepare the final version having the faculty opinion in mind.
Revisions should be submitted to FEC for
consideration and finally voted on by the whole faculty. There should be an explicit policy governing
revisions of the faculty handbook.
Faculty should meet to hear of the intended
amendment, vote on proceeding (or not), and allow the person(s) to draft new
text or revise the old. The text should be shared via email and then discussed
and subsequently voted on during faculty meeting (it should be shared as
appropriate with the President, HR Office, faculty, etc.) based on the nature
of the item. Eventually, the recommended text would, I assume, be sent to the
Board of Trustees for approval.
Although the College is a private
institution, I suppose the Handbook is at least a quasi-contract between it and
its faculty. If nothing else, it guides APC and the Dean, President, and
Trustees in questions affecting tenure, promotion, and other faculty personnel
matters. APC represents the
faculty, and is a necessary part of Handbook development. I would like to hear
discussion about whether APC's representation is
sufficient, and what other participants might be desirable. Faculty
participation as a whole is clearly (it seems to me) unworkable.
a 2/3 vote of the
faculty
5.
Problems with Faculty Committee Structure. column S
Overlap, lack of power to effect change, more
effective communication strategies to faculty, gaps in coverage.
Many faculty committees never meet or have
any business.....kill them (the committees).
1) which ones are needed 2) what unnecessary functions do they have in
their charge and where is there redundancy
3) Should a faculty member have to serve on a committee each year or can
there be a rationale to waive this requirement?
4) How can committees be held more accountable for their collective
performance? THIS ONE IS HUGE!
Why are some faculty allowed to get out of
serving on any committees while other faculty are overburdened on having to
serve on so many?
Effectiveness, efficiency,
There are too many committees, and there is
not enough use of standing committees for tasks and new issues that arise. For example, APPC could serve as the point of
communication for discussions about the academic calendar and the class
schedule. Yet, despite its name
(Planning) these tasks aren't considered APPC's,
simply because they haven't theirs in the past.
Making sure committees have "new faces
and new input." Term limits for
serving on important committees: ie--if you just get
off of APC then you need to take a break for 2 years before being eligible for
PBC.
who is eligble adn why just tenured
faculty on some
How much time is involved in each committee -
how many times the committees meet.....how someone's strengths, interests, and
expertise be best used when being placed on a
committee.
The committee structure needs to be evaluated
and updated. There are too many
committees and the work of committees eats up valuable time that could be used
for student engagement and teaching.
Sometimes it feels like teaching is the last thing on the priority
list! This causes me great frustration
because my department meetings and committees are also work
intensive.
Encouraging more
involvement from some faculty who rarely serve on committees.
Do we need so many? Does everyone need to serve on a committee every
year? As for question 7 though, Why
form another committee (even if we call it a taskforce). Doesn't this fall under the purvue of the FEC?
"to formulate specific proposals for
review and consideration by the
president, by the full faculty, and, through the president, by the Board of Trustees as a contribution to
decision-making within the College.
"
An orientation to the faculty committee
structure as part of the orientation for new faculty would be helpful to
understanding the culture of the college.
That entirely depends on what the committees
think of the work they're doing.
However, the Academic Personnell Committee
should be continually monitored to make sure they are being as open and as
encouraging to faculty coming up for promotion and tenure.
The committee structure should be
simplified. There are too many
committees, and some of them have overlapping functions (APPC and PBC, for
example). We could also use a clearly
defined process for making changes to the committee structure. For instance, what process was used to
determine that the Interdisciplinary Committee should eliminated? What process is used to determine which
committees are elected and which are appointed?
I do not see the point of having everyone
serve on multiple committees simply for the sake of serving on committees. Why
not streamline the organization, making sure that if a committee exists, it
does substantive work. If it should exist, make sure that it has the power to
do something. I also think that incoming junior faculty should have at least
one year committee-free before asking to perform that service.
Too
much fragmented work, too many fragmented missions, and too few actual
resources (money, time, information, power to decide) to get the job done. The irrelevance of some committees needs to
be addressed. The relative powerlessness of the committees to fulfill stated
aims should also be considered. It's frustrating to be charged with a task and
objectively not be in a position to deliver.
The ARC needs to be reviewed.
I'm not aware of any.
Why we have committees that do not have a
clear role, or the authority to fulfill their stated role.
too many.
Are
some committees unnecessary, and are there ones which should be
created/combined/abolished?
There are too many committees and the
meetings are, many times, inefficient.
Less committees and more focus on the issues at hand should be the rule.
Are there too many people on committees?
Could a leaner (smaller) committee (FDRC) be faster and more efficient? Is
representation by the 3 divisions necessary for all committees? I don't think
so, and I think we should discuss this matter. Must every faculty member be on
a committee? Again, I think untentured people should
be exempt from most committees--their time should be used primarily for
teaching, preparation to teach, research, and publication (or the equivalent,
such as rehearsal and performance). Are there too many committees? Possibly. Can we eliminate some or reduce the number of
people on them?
What are their charges, formally and in
practice? How much time does service on
each one require? How do current members
view their service in terms of efficiency and effectiveness? How do Deans Weil and Traupman-Carr
view each faculty committee in terms of efficiency and effectiveness? How does our committee structure compare with
similar institutions in terms of numbers, responsibilities, and selection of
members (especially by election)?
I'm new; I have no substantive feedback.
They don't have any power! The administration does not seem receptive to
faculty concerns, so (both in faculty meetings & in committees) we waste
time on trifling details. Divide &
Conquer!
6. Task Force on Committee Structure? Column
U
No, the FEC as an elected committee and
responsible to the Faculty Meeting, should do it. There are too many task
forces, hand-picked by the Dean or other Vice Presidents.
I think it depends on what the outcome of
this survey is and whether or not he / we can articulate a clear vision for
what criteria we want to use as the standards for determining what is the optimal structure at the college
It needs to happen, but not just yet.
FEC could also do this.
No opinion
The FEC was also supposed to moitor committee efficiency. This monitoring should continue.
Not sure if needed but if needed task force
is good idea
Not to evaluate, but to change.
Even though this sounds contradictory to
streamlining the comm. structure (creating another committee to study
committees), I think it would be well worth it.
FEC has looked at this is the past and it is
a complex situation. I believe that
there are more perceived problems with the committee structure than actual
problems.
Come speedily within our days.
I don't understand the structure sufficiently
well to have a useful opinion at this time.
Yes, but let's make it meaningful, efficient
& streamlined, like the (hopeful) outcome.