Transcript Senate Meeting
June 12, 2018

Daniel Svyantek, Chair: Welcome to the June 12, 2018 meeting of the University Senate. This is our tenth meeting of the 2017–18 academic year.

First, if you are a senator or a substitute for a senator please be sure you sign in onto the sheet at the top of the room. Be sure you have your clicker, because we have one action item today.
Second, we need to establish a quorum. We have 86 Senators in the Senate and we need 44 for a quorum. Please press A on your clicker to show you are present.

(Some trouble with a few clickers without battery power. Time needed for senators to change out clicker for another with working batteries.)

Let the record show that we have 36 present, so a quorum is not established. We cannot do anything action oriented, only information items. (Clarification with Parliamentarian on the pending action item status. It can be presented, but without any motions related to it.)

We currently do not have a quorum but we do have a way to test again.

I would like to remind you of some basic procedures for the Senate meeting for senators and guests. Let me explain the Senate rules about speaking. If you’d like to speak about an issue or ask a question, please go to the microphone on either side aisle. When it is your turn, state your name and whether or not you are a senator and the unit you represent.

The rules of the Senate require that senators or substitute senators be allowed to speak first and then after they are done guests are welcome to speak.

Without a quorum we cannot vote on the minutes for the meeting of May 15, 2018.
The only information item is my remarks. We will try one more time for a vote for a quorum.

The rules of the Senate require that senators or substitute senators be allowed to speak first and then after they are done guests are welcome to speak.

Dr. Leath and Dr. Hardgrave have business which keeps them from attending this meeting. The first item of business is my remarks.

First, I would to introduce the officers of the Senate and our administrative assistant. James Goldstein is the immediate past chair and Michael Baginski is the chair-elect. Donald Mulvaney is the secretary this year: Unfortunately, he is absent today for personal reasons. Beverly Marshall is the secretary-elect and will be filling in for Don today. James Witte is our Parliamentarian. Finally, our administrative assistant is Laura Kloberg.

I would like to note that this is the final Senate meeting for James and Don as officers of the Senate. I want to thank them for their efforts for the Senate and the help they have given me during this year.

One information item that you haven’t seen From the Board of Trustees meeting; the strategic planning initiative that will be led by faculty members Dr. Guertal and Dr. Tatarchuk is ongoing. They presented a beginning preliminary plan at the Board of Trustees workshop and it was discussed briefly at the BOT meeting. I urge everybody to participate in this as it goes on during the next 8 or 9 months.

This my final meeting as Senate Chair.
Being Senate Chair is an interesting position. A year is not a long time. At about the time you get comfortable in your role, it is time to step down. But we can pass on knowledge to our successors. Therefore, I hope Mike finds these thoughts helpful as he takes over the position of Senate Chair for 2018-2019.

My Masters’ degree is from Ball State University. I have used another Ball State alum’s method of analysis for providing this information. With apologies to David Letterman, here is my Top Ten things to remember for Mike, Senate officers and Senate members.

Number 10. There are a lot of meetings. Many of these you do not know you will be attending yet. Make sure every device you use syncs up well because your calendar will be full.

Number 9. Be sure and read the Senate Constitution thoroughly. For example, 5 and 15 may look similar when skimming—but one is the days prior to a Senate meeting for an agenda to be posted and one is the time for the General Faculty meetings! Avoid my mistake on this!

Number 8. See the forest and the trees. While responsibility for details is yours, you also have to set the direction of the Senate. This will be a critical balancing act for you.

Number 7. Remember the iceberg! An old organizational change metaphor is that organizations are like icebergs. The formal part is the top that you see above the water. The informal part is below and much larger. Getting things done in any organization consists of using formal mechanisms to achieve informally generated goals. Good luck!

Number 6. Watch the movie, Rashomon. Rashomon is a classic film in which multiple, subjective interpretations of the same event are described. This is a good metaphor for some of the informal issues that may arise. Be sure and get information from all parties.

Number 5. Good intentions should not outweigh procedure. A friend recently pointed out an important reason for procedure to me. He noted that even actions leading to good outcomes should follow procedure so that bad outcomes may be thwarted by procedure.

Number 4. Get a copy of Roberts’ Rules of Order. Be sure it is the full, unabridged version and not an abridged version. Besides being a wonderful soporific at bedtime, this will be helpful for two primary things I have discovered are critical. These are:

Number 3. Understand the rights of all parties in the assembly. Roberts’ Rules codifies parliamentary law. It carefully balances the rights of all persons and subgroups within an assembly. These groups include individual members, minority subgroups and the majority. While one of the primary roles of the chair is to insure that individual and minority opinions are heard, the chair also needs to insure that the majority are not forgotten.

Number 2. Understand the role of the chair better. The Senate functions best when parliamentary procedures are followed and the rights of all groups are respected. Insure that these procedures are followed so that the rights of all parties are respected. And, Mike, I am currently working on “flash card” versions of some of these for you. These would have been helpful for me and I hope they are for you.

Number 1. And the most important thing for a constructive term as chair—Keep Laura happy!  Laura is the part of the iceberg that keeps the Senate afloat. She has my strongest appreciation for her efforts and my thanks for all her work this year.

Calling the vote for a quorum again. (more trouble with clickers, some did not pick one up) [11:55] Only 40 showing and another says he is getting a clicker, so we are at 41 senators. Still no quorum.

James Goldstein, Immediate Past Senate Chair: Good afternoon everyone and thanks for those that did turn out. [14:00] A reminder of why the e-mail always says if you are a senator and are not going to attend please send a substitute, but I am preaching to the choir because you’re all here.

I was trying to study Robert’s Rules to figure out procedurally how to even do this and obviously without a quorum we are going to have a slight departure from that, but in Robert’s Rules it says that the officers of a body can issue a report and that if there are recommendations that follow from the information in the report those should go at the end of the report and then there would be a motion to adopt the recommendations of the report. So we are going to postpone the actual motion to adopt the recommendations until the next Senate meeting and then go ahead and vote on the same day because departments will have had the same amount of time to study these and discuss them if they want to, and so on.

So this goes back to conversations that I’ve been a part of for several years now and it began when I was an officer in the AAUP Chapter and would meet with the former Provost, but then once I became a Senate Officer I continued these conversations. So, these conversations have taken place with 2 different Provosts now. So, we gathered the by-laws or by whatever other name they go by that are on campus. I had been under the mistaken impression that all departments were required to have by-laws many years ago, but once they came in from all around campus it seems that that must have been a College of Liberal Arts directive rather than a full university one from the Provost’s Office. So, in the appendix to this document there is a list of all the units that we could find that do have by-laws. Everybody in Liberal Arts does, there are several departments in the College of Agriculture that do, COSAM the department of Math turned out to have some even though they didn’t initially come in last year when the call went out. So, mostly Liberal Arts and a few other units on campus.

I want to make clear that these recommendations are just that. They are just recommendations. This is not going to be a policy. No department is going to be required to have by-laws that don’t have them already. [16:53] But the Senate Executives did study the matter and we came to the consensus that we think it’s a good idea and so we want to recommend them to the Senate and when the Senate votes in August it can decide whether the Senate wants to recommend that departments and comparable units should have by-laws.

So, I thought, okay, since there are many departments on campus that have never had them, I wanted to come up with some reasons why it might be considering to have by-laws. The rationale, we are already there.

So, for one thing, for a new faculty member of a department it is a quick way to understand how things operate in the department. Many of you have probably had the experience of seeing junior faculty rather shy and concerned about making waves and not really participating as much actively in the department governance. So, this would be a way that new faculty members could just see what the ground rules are. It certainly provides a level of clarity and transparency to faculty members about how decisions are made in a department in all kinds of areas where the department does meet, whether they follow by-laws or not, to discuss matters of interest to the department as a whole. It’s a way to find out how your department’s internal governance compares to other departments. I know that when my department, English, years ago was revising by-laws we were very interested in gathering other examples of department by-laws to see are other departments doing things a little differently that we could benefit from following their example? And while we were, the Steering Committee was discussing this report last week the suggestion came out that we should have central location where the department by-laws could be archived so that if a department wants to have a look at a few sample department by-laws, they are writing some for the first time, they can see some examples of those. So obviously the Provost’s Office would be the logical place to do that.

If the Senate, at its next meeting, votes to accept the recommendations of this report, then at that point the Provost’s Office could consider the possibility of housing them and possibly even putting them on the Web. The P&T standards for all the units are now archived centrally through the Provost’s Web site. So, there is kind of a precedent for having an archive of things where all the departments are different but they are all doing something, so it might be useful to have an archive if the Senate wants to recommend these recommendations.

Finally, it’s…writing the by-laws particularly for a department that has never done it before, although it is a hassle to be sure and depending on the size of the department it might take and ad hoc committee rather than a committee of the whole or something like that to do it, but it does give an opportunity for a department to think in a deliberative way about how do we run things in this department? So, it can help to clarify those expectations and articulate them in writing.

By laws can also strengthen the understandings between the department or unit and the higher levels of the administration; the dean in the first instance, the Provost’s Office on the other, so that everybody is on the same page about the kinds of decisions that the department makes and how those decisions are made. Who has responsibility for what in the department and that sort of thing. So, in short, there are a lot of good reasons for departments to have by-laws. And I think the departments in the College of Liberal Arts, especially, have years of experience with this and could speak to the benefits of these for sure.

One thing became clear very early in discussions with the previous Provost, that the idea of requiring all departments to have by-laws was a non-starter. It just doesn’t make sense. You generally don’t want to force the unit to do something that it doesn’t want to do if there isn’t a good reason to do it. So, units are different sizes, have different histories, different internal cultures and so on.

So, there is no one-size-fits-all, but for departments that are considering doing this for the first time, I’ve reviewed all the ones that came in last year when we were gathering the information to look at the different kinds of things that are in by-laws. That’s what I am labeling “typical content of department or unit by-laws”. I don’t even want to describe it as a template because a template implies a certain skeleton that you have to follow and then plug things into it. This is just meant to be suggestive, to show departments that are considering doing this the kind of things that typically are in by-laws. [22:55] But there is probably no department by-laws that have all of these things in there. I was trying to gather some of the varieties so people could see a range of the kind of things that were in there.

The first thing, the first bullet item is date. That came to my mind when Nedret, the chair-elect-elect of the Senate, who by the end of the meeting will officially be the chair-elect, her department of math and statistics had a document it didn’t even get returned last year, but then it surfaced and she said, nobody knows when this was written. So it’s a good idea just for historical/archival purposes to put the date of the creation of the by-laws there because people come and go and it could be lost to history. I am not going to go through all the bullet points, but things like who are the faculty, who gets to vote and on what kinds of things. In my department in the last several years we’ve greatly increased the number of lecturers and we decided as a department that for some kind of matters we wanted to be as democratic as possible and lecturers are allowed to vote for example, on who the department chair is. Because that is the person who does their annual reviews.

This is meant to be suggestive, not that anybody needs to imitate the practice, that when the department is deciding that we need to hire a new tenure-track faculty member, lecturers get to vote on that decision, yes, we need a new person in rhetoric and composition for example, but they don’t actually get to vote on the personnel hiring decision and so on. So, our by-laws are very clear about what lecturers can vote on and not. So, it helps to clarify who gets to vote and for what. I believe there are other departments where non-tenure track faculty don’t ever vote on anything and that’s an internal decision for the most part, but just to let everyone know that it is not inevitable.

So internal organization is it a head or chair or director, how does the election work, what’s the term of office and so on and so forth. [25:21] Other administrative officers, a director of undergraduate studies, a director of graduate studies, there are all kinds of other internal officers and responsibilities depending on the kind of department it is. Standing committees, an undergraduate studies committee perhaps, a graduate committee, etc. Some of the examples that come at the end of that list tend to be ones that there weren’t a lot of by-laws that had them, but thought they were interesting. Some might have had one set of by-laws, an honors and awards committee or a diversity committee, but just to let people know that at least one set of by-laws does have such a standing committee. Ad hoc committees for things that come up that are not part of the purview of a standing committee. There should definitely be a procedure for amending the by-laws because these are not set in stone. It could be a good idea to have either the dean or the dean and the Provost approve the initial by-laws and amendments. In my own department’s case it certainly says that the chair and the dean have to approve amendments. It doesn’t say anything about the Provost, but I think even if it’s not in the by-laws a dean might reasonably think that it is still their prerogative to suggest tweaks to by-laws that a department creates because often a dean will have more perspective on how different departments are doing things. [27:12] Then, some by-laws have different policies in them, but others separate that out to a different place or different document and so on.

Up above under introduction, it kind of goes without saying but some departments and/or deans would be more comfortable with this being explicit, that a department cannot create a set of by-laws that contradicts the Faculty Handbook or if there is a governing document for the college. So even if they don’t say that in the by-laws, that’s understood, you can’t suddenly decide “everybody has tenure,” because we decided. That is not how it works. So whether you have an explicit proviso that department by-laws conflicts do not take presidence over the Faculty Handbook or the College policies. Just so everybody is clear that nothing bad should be happening through the creation of by-laws.

So, the Senate Executive Committee offers the following recommendations to departments, after discussions I thought I’d break it out into 3 things that the Senate Executive Committee does recommend that departments adopt by-laws, and once they have them that they review them from time to time, and that it should be understood although not necessarily written into the by-laws themselves that things can come up where the reasonable thing to do would be to have a temporary suspension of the by-laws when extraordinary circumstances and common sense dictates. So this is not Moses on Mt. Sinai, there can be a time where the reasonable thing to do is to depart from the by-laws in an exceptional case and my own department this semester is a perfect example of that. Because our department chair was term-limited we couldn’t successfully elect someone to succeed the chair. So, the dean came to the department, our by-laws said when we can’t elect internally a new chair then we go for an external hire to be chair. So, the dean came to the department and said, I’ll do that if that is what you want me to do, although there would be certain consequences that he spelled out, but he thinks it would be better if we could all agree for this one-time-only to suspend the by-laws to make it possible for the term-limited chair to have another term. So, the department voted to accept that recommendation, yes let’s suspend the by-laws, and then the term-limited chair successfully was elected to a third term. So, that’s a perfect illustration where circumstances meant it was better with a full agreement of the department to suspend the by-laws just for that one special case and normally the by-laws still continue to run. I just thought it would be useful to illustrate from a concrete example when it might actually make sense to suspend the by-laws.

Okay, I would be happy to take any questions or hear comments. I would be especially grateful if any senators from departments that have by-laws, if you would be willing to step forward and help share your perspective on what it is like to be in a department with by-laws for the benefit of units that don’t have them. But no pressure of course, I can’t make you share your experiences, but it would certainly be a relevant thing to do here.

So, because we don’t have the quorum, instead of going after questions with a motion to adopt the recommendations at the end of the document, we will just wait until the August meeting to have that motion and then vote in the same meeting because we wanted to make sure that the departments had time to study these and think about them and decide whether they could get behind recommending this. Even though, just to reiterate, nobody’s going to be required to have by-laws. It will not be a policy it is just a recommendation.

Okay, so any questions, or comments, or sharing of thoughts? [32:08]

David Vertue, not a senator, head of the department of Curriculum and Teaching: Just want to raise a point of information and then make a comment about by-laws.

In calculating the number required for a quorum were you including the ex-officio members? Because my count of the roster looks like excluding ex-officio members, there are 76.

James Goldstein, Immediate Past Senate Chair: Ex-officio are voting members of the Senate.

David Vertue, not a senator, head of the department of Curriculum and Teaching: Is that right?

James Goldstein, Immediate Past Senate Chair: Um-hum, yep. So even the Provost is an ex-officio senator, who I observe has not sent a substitute, I believe.

David Vertue, not a senator, head of the department of Curriculum and Teaching: With regard to by-laws, I came from an institution about 2 years ago where we did have departmental by-laws, and it was very helpful in providing transparency and how decisions get made. It is something in our department I think we are going to look at as well, so I appreciate what you’ve shared and the work you’ve done to examine sets of by-laws and making these recommendations.

James Goldstein, Immediate Past Senate Chair: Thank you for that comment. Any other comments or questions?

Mike Baginski, chair-elect: I have a question that I think should be addressed to you Dan, but how many here have actually seen in your departments if they have by-laws, charters, best practices, or whatever they are called? I am curious and would like to see a show of hands. To me it looks like less than half. It’s important to me personally, when I came here we had a head in Electrical Engineering who more or less runs the place as he sees fit and the only way I found out about the information of how it ran was by asking and half the time I didn’t know who to ask. It is really helpful for young (new) faculty to have that kind of information, especially who to go to, how to call a meeting and things like that is valuable. Now, if you’re a tenured full professor you may not care as much, but it really does make a difference.

James Goldstein, Immediate Past Senate Chair: Thank you Michael. Any other questions or comments? (pause) Okay, thank you.

And with that I conclude my time in front of the microphone before the Senate since this is my last meeting as a senator. So, it’s been a good 9 years, six as an ordinary senator and three as an officer, I’ve given a lot to this institution and I am happy to say farewell. (applause)

Daniel Svyantek, Chair: This concludes our formal agenda for today.

However, we do have a tradition at the last meeting and that tradition is that the gavel is handed over to the incoming Senate Chair. So, just like Thor, Mike Baginski is worthy now and receives the gavel. You may have an exhibition adjournment.

Mike Baginski, Chair-elect: The meeting is hereby adjourned (with a bang of the gavel).