10/28 Notes
- Bok
- Shared governance, collaboration of all parties involved
- Academic leaders, students, professors, board of trustees, president
- Identify benefits & blind spots in all the token groups
- Why its important to affectively balance all of the governing bodies
- Faculty role – with connection to students
- There is no pretense of democracy. Colleges & universities are not democratic at all
- There’s a lot of confusion about governance too
- Roles are not really clear
- It is more successful when faculty voices are heard. Curriculum.
- The board relies heavily on senior staff, deans
- The presidency role
- Limited authority. Needs to please the board, the students
- Keep their heads low, avoid major conflicts, build a resume, and move on.
- Tenure
- Professors being willing to stand up and express something in the institution, but need the job security
- Part is embedded in the institution itself, but there is also an external aspect with publishing journals and the larger academia.
- Faculty-governance
- Mostly restricted to the curriculum
- Where would you like to see it?
- Some decisions are limited to the authority of the president or the board, and would have a richness if faculty opinions were brought into the conversation
- The Law
- Presence of police on campuses. How does this affect the classroom environment?
- How much does discipline and socialization come into play?
- Diversity
- The board of trustees. What does it do?
- Is the selection process heavily influenced by money
- To have an outside perspective
- Sense of responsibility to the organization
- Often presidents will try to keep faculty & trustees away from each other. to maintain that power
- Board composition
- Less of an advisory committee
- Misused: more of an expectation that those who commit to boards are rich and have time.
- Neoliberalism – private, capitalistic systems are thought as most efficient models
- Accountability and efficiency
- The blurring of culture and economics.
- Neoliberalism as a cultural shift
- Financial pressure as an economic shift
- Which is influencing which?
- How it influences tenure policies & academic freedom
- The board of trustees. What does it do?
- Student Senate & Protests
- Students don’t really have a role in the “shared-governance” system
- Protest is the only way we can assert our power, according to Bok
- Student demand has shifted lots of decisions and made a huge impact on the institution. Many of these changes will never happen for current students to experience their benefits
- Fred Star
- Tenure is dying out.
- K – 16
- Everyone gives over their children to be educated by teachers
- This is the reason why this vital role will receive specific attention that other professions [doctors, dentists, etc]
- Faculty have a veto power that can accomplish quickly made decisions
- As a body of equals, there are ways to check each other but still not get anything done.
- The answer is to have more democracy
- Shared Governance is like an 8-part harmony, trying to have individual voices come together in the right way
- Why is it getting harder and harder?
- Financial and demographic pressures that so many institutions are under
- As we tighten up, we don’t stay as open to a broader range of voices
- Teaching people strategies how to work together
- The conservatory has been a little pocket to learn how to collaborate
- Faculty demands have gone up and loyalties have gone down.
- We have to construct our own forms of self-governance that actually meets the needs of our specific academic community