From: The Faculty Senate
Topic: The new university “Excellence Awards
Selection Committee”
The
purpose of this letter is to express dismay on the part of the Faculty Senate
about your decision to create a new “Excellence Awards Selection Committee
(EASC)” at the University level without any prior consultation with the
executive committee of the Faculty Senate.
When Dr. Myron Henry (president of the Faculty Senate) and Joe Olmi
(Secretary of the Faculty Senate) met with President Thames, Provost Grimes,
and you in the summer of 2003, it was agreed that a major goal was to stress
open communication and eliminate “sudden surprises.” This fall has been filled with sudden
surprises for the faculty at large (e.g., the alcohol and drug policy and more
appointments of senior administrators without searches).
One
sudden surprise was the pronouncement from your office that the EASC had been
created. There was no prior consultation
with any officer of the Faculty Senate.
In fact, Dr. Henry was informed about the creation of your committee
(which is apparently intended to replace the long standing
Faculty Senate Awards Committee) through a November 14 email from Associate
Provost Cynthia Moore. That email read,
We would like for each college to nominate one
senior faculty member for the Excellence Awards Selection Committee. In addition, the Faculty Senate would also
select one faculty member to serve on this important committee. Please send me
your faculty names by Tuesday, November 18, 2003.
Dr. Henry replied to Dr. Moore’s email with a
November 16 email which read,
I am in receipt of your November 14 email in which
you seem to be announcing a new “Excellence Awards Selection
Committee” without any consultation with the Faculty Senate through its
leadership. Permit me to remind you that
the Faculty Senate, which consists of elected representatives of USM faculty,
has for a long time had a standing Awards Committee. If you access the Faculty Senate Web page and
then link to committees, you can go back as far as 1998-99 to note that the
responsibilities of the Faculty Senate Awards Committee have included selecting
the HEADWAE recipient; the Excellence in Teaching and Service recipients; the
Librarianship recipient, and the recipients for the Faculty Memorial Fund
Scholarship.
For you to now create a new committee that
apparently would assume these duties and for you to request nominations
(from deans?) in the face of an existing Faculty Senate Committee that has well
established responsibilities in this arena is disappointing (If this is your
intent). And to do this without any
consultation with the elected leadership of the Faculty Senate or without
presenting a proposal for discussion to the Faculty Senate (which met on
November 14) would seem quite contrary to the principles of participatory
governance at our university.
In this context, I formally ask that you defer
indefinitely the implementation of your version of an Excellence Award
Committee until such time as conversations with the Faculty Senate leadership
and/or the Faculty Senate as a whole can occur which encompass a host of topics
and implications related to the selection of faculty Excellence Awards. Of course, others could be involved in these
conversations too.
Dr. Moore responded by emailing the following
terse message to Dr. Henry:
I have not received the name of the Faculty Senate
member who can serve on the University Excellence Selection Committee. Can you send me this today?
Dr.
Henry then re-sent his November 16 email to Dr. Moore with further
commentary. Subsequently, an effort was
made to set up a meeting involving officers of the Faculty Senate and
representatives of the provost’s office.
Specifically, Dr. Dave Beckett (president-elect of the Faculty Senate)
and Dr. Olmi met with you on November 24.
About a week later, Dr. Henry emailed the following message to you.
Late yesterday afternoon, the executive committee of
the Faculty Senate met in preparation for a special meeting of the Senate
scheduled for Friday, December 5. Among
other things, we discussed the issues surrounding the administration's decision
to form a new university awards committee, and the implications this decision
may have for the Faculty Senate Awards Committee. David Beckett, Joe Olmi, and I all shared a
sense of what we thought we heard in our separate conversations with you
(November 24 among you, David, and Joe; and yesterday between you and me.) All of those present noted that the Senate
committee has had responsibility for a host of faculty awards for a rather long
time.
All members present were troubled by the total lack
of communication with any officer of the Senate on this matter. Nonetheless, it was decided that for this
year, we would be agreeable to merging the membership of the committee formed
by Dr. Cynthia Moore, and the Faculty Senate Awards Committee. That would mean the merged committee would
have a total of ten members on it. We
would then agree to engage in timely discussions in spring 2004 about
possibilities for next year. What we
propose would allow the temporary, expanded committee to continue working on
the awards for the remainder of this academic year (the HEADWAE award recipient
for this year was already determined by the Senate Awards Committee, and he is
not a faculty senator.)
As
of our December 5 Faculty Senate meeting, Dr. Henry had received no response
from you. The Faculty Senate as a whole
now formally requests that you respond to Dr. Henry’s suggestions in a timely
way. We hope your response will
demonstrate a commitment to participatory governance and open communication
that has been lacking in this entire awards committee issue. Thank you.
xc
President Shelby F. Thames
Unanimously
passed by the Faculty Senate at its