For Discussion:
Standards for Governance on UNC Campuses
The
Assembly will, on November 15, consider the proposal to establish a standard for good practices
of shared governance on the campuses. Our discussion will be advisory to the
Governance Committee, which will draft a proposal for the Assembly's future
consideration.
The Assembly policy would create a checklist of
certain
minimum criteria for governance that are expected to exist on every UNC
campus. It should
comprise the best practices that currently exist
on our campuses. Criteria should be concrete and specific,
so that they
can function as a checklist for the campuses. A few possible examples
of what we might include are:
- Through its
elected senate or council, the faculty of
each campus:
- is responsible for campus policies of
promotion, tenure, and reappointment, consistent with policies in The Code.
- approves
all campus curricular policies,
including graduation requirements, "basic studies"/"general education"
requirements, residence requirements, ...
- approves academic policies such as campus
admission and retention policies, attendance and grading policies, grade-appeal
procedures, drop/add policies, course-repeat policies, honors policies,
honor-code policies, ...
- approves
the establishment of new departments, degree programs, majors, courses, and
course prefixes; in some cases, the
senate/council may delegate some review/approval to elected
campus/college/school faculty committees.
- approves
the elimination or consolidation of degree programs and departments, except
in cases of declared financial exigency.
- approves faculty handbooks, manuals,
and unit codes (and campus policies therein).
The professorial-rank faculty of each
department approve appointments of department heads/chairpersons and their
terms of office.
Each full-time
faculty member annually evaluates senior administrators, including the
chancellor, provost, the faculty member's college/school dean, graduate
dean, and department head/chair, with
results made available to, at a minimum, the person evaluated and that
person's immediate supervisor.
The above is for
illustrative purposes only and is not intended to be definitive or complete.
Other criteria, such as faculty involvement in the hiring of new faculty
and in the appointment of academic deans and provosts, would presumably also be
included.