Working Group F: Community Governance and Academic Administrative Structure information sheet.
Members: Ari Galper '14, Gary Granger, Paul Hovda, Keith Karoly (co-chair), Robert Knapp, Anna Levin, Nora McLaughlin MALS '10 (co-chair), Michael Mercy, Tamara Metz, Evvy Shulman '16
Group F is charged with assessing how current structures and practices are working for governance of the campus communities and administration of the academic program. We have reviewed the existing documents and institutions that govern the work of our campus community and its components (faculty, staff, students), and identified the principles of governance that we see represented in our current system. Included in our review was an examination of the committee structure and the mechanisms available to the community to enact changes. Our aim has been to identify points where we find tensions and inefficiencies within the system, and identify possible prescriptions for clarification or improvement.
We are interested in comments, questions and suggestions at the forum on any topic related to community governance and academic administration. We are particularly interested in community responses to the following observations, and what, if anything, should be done about them:
We find clear inequalities in the governance workload
We find uncertainty from members of the community about access to governance and how to affect change; moreover, not all members of the community have an equal opportunity to access the processes and propose change. We see choices for our community regarding how best to work with members of the staff given a governance structure that mainly (and perhaps properly) focuses on students and faculty.
We find inefficiencies that result from the expectation of full-participation governance and our devotion to the processes that are mandated by our current structures and practices. We see choices for our community regarding which of these inefficiencies should be understood as a necessary cost of community self-government and which should be corrected through some change in procedures or expectations.
We find a general lack of oversight of community governance, with no clear structure or process for evaluating the efficiency and effectiveness of governance structures and practices
We find limited communication between the different governing and administrative bodies
We find our current structures and practices do not sufficiently cultivate administrative and governance leadership skills