11/7/2012: Both the measures below, on faculty input into admin evaluation and hiring, were passed unanimously by the UO Senate today. Next up? Nathan Tublitz’s call for an immediate comprehensive performance review of Interim Provost Bean will be voted on at the Jan 16 Senate meeting:
The Senate requests that President Gottfredson immediately initiate a comprehensive performance evaluation of Provost James C Bean, the chief academic officer at the University of Oregon. The review of the Provost shall focus on decisions, policies and leadership issues impacting academics and shall contain substantial input from faculty, staff and students. The review shall be completed no later than March 31, 2013 and an extensive executive summary of the review shall be presented by President Gottfredson to the Senate at the April 2013 Senate meeting.
Judging from the expressions on people’s faces today when Bean tried to defend his record on evaluations the debate on Tublitz’s motion will be short. Patience for Bean’s nonsense wore thin long ago, and Gottfredson did not spend any political capital trying to support him. Bean has two months and eight days to do the honorable thing and announce he will step down as Provost on 7/1/2013 and return to teaching, giving Gottfredson plenty of time to find a competent replacement.
11/5/2012: The last time a related measure came up in the Senate was 1996. The vote was unanimously in favor, but Lorraine Davis didn’t follow through.
I hope all Senators will attend Wednesday’s Senate meeting, which will include a vote on two motions to develop university policies requiring faculty and Senate input into searches and regular performance reviews of executive administrators. Suggestions on the wording are welcome! The complete meeting agenda is here.
President Gottfredson endorsed the principle behind these motions in his remarks to the Senate last month:
So there’s an essential advisory role for the senate, even on administrative matters – an essential role on those matters that are central to the execution of our mission, like budget and finance, space and capital planning, athletics and of course participation in the selection and the evaluation of academic administrators.
Motivation: The UO currently has a number of senior administrators who have been appointed without systematic faculty input, and/or who have served for long periods of time without performance reviews that incorporate input from the faculty or other Senate constituencies. Policies for faculty input into searches and performance reviews are common at other universities. Regular “360 degree” performance reviews are a basic good management practice. UO policies on these matters, to the extent they can be found, are conflicting and incomplete. These two motions aim to regularize these policies for UO.
1) A motion to ensure faculty and Senate input into the hiring of executive administrators:
The UO Senate moves:
a) That the UO faculty and Senate should have input into the hiring of executive administrators, including the Provost, Deans, and Vice Presidents and Provosts or equivalents such as the General Counsel and Athletic Director. This input should be a part of regular searches, interim appointments, and “special assistant to the provost” TRP type appointments.
b) That to accomplish this goal the Senate President will appoint an ad hoc committee of UO faculty and Senate constituents to develop a formal but flexible university policy that includes representation on search committees and where appropriate public presentations to the relevant constituents and the university community. The Senate requests that President Gottfredson appoint 2 administrators or staff to this committee, and that he instruct them to cooperate with the committee on the development of an appropriate university policy.
c) The committee will present a policy proposal for a Senate vote by the February meeting, to be forwarded to the administration for incorporation as an official policy.
2) A motion to ensure faculty and Senate input into performance reviews of executive administrators
The UO Senate moves:
a) That the university should conduct regular major “360 degree” performance reviews of executive administrators, including the President, Provost, Deans, and Vice Presidents and Provosts or equivalents such as the General Counsel and Athletic Director.
b) That to accomplish this goal the Senate President will appoint an ad hoc committee of UO faculty and Senate constituents to develop a formal but flexible university policy for regular reviews. The Senate requests that President Gottfredson appoint 2 administrators or staff to this committee, and that he instruct them to cooperate with the committee on the development of an appropriate university policy.
This policy should include a regular public schedule of major “360” performance reviews of executive administrators, on a three-year cycle. The reviews should include representation on review committees by faculty and other Senate constituencies, as well as procedures to collect and incorporate input from faculty, OAs, staff, and students and other interested parties. The policy should include provisions for catchup reviews for administrators who have not had major reviews within the past three years. The reviews will be followed by summary reports to the Senate on the outcomes.
c) The committee will present a policy proposal for a Senate vote by the February meeting, to be forwarded to the administration for incorporation as an official policy.
It’s hardly comes as a shock that Loraine Davis didn’t follow through on this in 1996…
The issues are not usually the absence of rules, policies and procedures. As noted, the Senate had a policy on executive reviews. Similarly on budget matters, the Senate has a budget committee. Instead, the usual problems involve systematic follow through and in the case of budgets, expertise and non massaged accounting data. To be truly effective, the Senate will need to be better organized, and more systematic, with greater continuity–serious challenges for us as faculty. These are also things that would make it harder for administrators to dismiss or ignore faculty and more likely to respect what we have to offer. Remember the Senate white paper on salaries? systematic follow through and monitoring might have made it more effective past its initial positive effects. Granted, effective administrators could help us in all these areas, by working with us, but that is the catch22, right? on person/s opinion.
Follow-through could be facilitated by a Senate-operated website that kept a record of all Policies, Legislation and Resolutions passed by the Senate with a time-line on Administrative follow through. The UO Constitution mandates schedules for such follow-through. The existence of such a running record would make it easier for the Senate (and others) to put pressure on Prexy. Unexcused, repeated or prolonged failure by the Administration would lead to a vote of no confidence that was well-documented.