Council Moves Forward on Plan to Revise Faculty Governance Committees

The Academic Council last week moved ahead on plans to reorganize two important faculty governance committees so members can consider budget considerations when setting academic priorities.

The proposal was presented for a first reading to the Academic Council Jan. 23. The reform addresses faculty concerns about the current Academic Priorities Committee (APC) and the President's Advisory Committee on Resources (PACOR).

The strong division of responsibilities between the two committee ensured that there was no faculty forum that could address both budgetary and intellectual issues.

"What we thought we needed was an APC that considered the budget at the same time," said John Simon, chairman of chemistry and of the current APC.

Combining the committees was not an option, he said, because the workload would be so great that nobody would serve on it.

Instead, the plan calls for creation of a new University Priorities Committee that would work with senior administrators on academic priorities and ensuring the budget reflected these priorities. The UPC would be helped in its work by creation of a budget subcommittee responsible for reporting to the UPC on how university budget issues would affect priorities.

The reorganization addresses another faculty concern: That both committees are loaded down with tangential roles that mean that they are out of the loop on significant academic issues, such as development of the central campus or enhancing student intellectual life.

A second new committee, the Academic Programs Committee, would take on one of the APC's current roles. It would be responsible for overseeing departmental reviews, which are important for how the provost's office and the department come to agreement on setting the growth and direction of the department.

Simon said the proposal's planners spent a lot of time discussing how to keep these committees focused on the most critical issues, and in the end built significant flexibility into defining the committees' responsibilities and their agenda.

"For example," Simon said, "the UPC agenda will be set by the committee chair in consultation with the senior administrators and the Executive Committee of the Academic Council (ECAC)."

Previously, he said, the APC's agenda was largely set by the provost. "After chairing APC for four years, I felt like I was getting a lot of things on the agenda, but there were other important issues that went the other way. By getting ECAC involved in the process, it makes it more likely that the issues that are important to the faculty will be addressed by the new committee."

Faculty members were receptive to the idea of a committee that had overview of both budgetary and priorities issues, but several wanted to know more about the specifics of how the committees would work and what issues would come before them.

Earl Dowell, J.A. Jones Professor and dean emeritus of engineering, used the current example of a possible downsizing of Biological Anthropology and Anatomy. He questioned Simon as to whether the tendency would be for UPC to start looking at too many issues. He wondered if the responsibilities should be more strictly defined. "As important as an item as BAA is, this committee will have too much on its agenda if it starts looking at that kind of issue," Dowell said.

Simon responded by emphasizing the flexibility in the agenda-setting means the committee will be able to pick and choose issues according to their needs. He cautioned against setting the committee charge too rigidly. "My concern is if we say UPC will deal with these set of issues, then five years from now the chairman of the committee will feel the same way that I felt about APC: that there are all these other fascinating issues out there that I'd like to address but can't because my hands are tied with all these other issues that it's written that I'm obliged to consider."

The council will discuss the proposal again at its February meeting before taking a vote.

In other action before the council, the Faculty Compensation Committee (FCC) presented a salary equity report indicating that there was no significant distortion in faculty salaries because of race or gender.

The study was conducted by the committee with the assistance of David Jamieson-Drake of the provost's office. Using two types of statistical analysis, the study "did not find evidence of systematic inequities in salary based on the information provided," said Thomas Metzloff, chair of the FCC, in a letter to the council.

The study also provided historical data to show that in general any disparity based on race or gender had been declining. For a copy of the study, contact the Academic Council office, 684-6447 or e-mail acouncil@acpub.duke.edu.