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Faculty Assembly

DRAFT

Colleagues-

Welcome back! This is a very impor1ant year for the campus. Last year the TLE Implementation Team, with broad input from the campus, developed a set of goals and objectives to guide the future development of the campus. This year will be a year of significant decisions and change as the entire campus infrastructure is examined and possibly changed for the purpose of implementing those goals and objectives. As your Faculty Assembly President, it shall be my primary goal to ensure that all faculty are well informed and given ample opportunity to provide input in the process.

In addition to the operations of the various committees, open forums, and personal and group meetings with the Chancellor, I am proposing that the Chancellor and vice chancellors provide email reports to the entire faculty on appropriate occasions using the faculty-l email list.

The Chancellor is strongly supportive of this, and has already published several reports on external developments affecting this campus. She has asked me, however, to work with the faculty to ensure that the reports and briefings will not become a burden to the administrators and staffs issuing them. The primary concern, I believe, is that they will be deluged with email requesting clarification and discussing the issues.

To ensure that such reports do not pose significant extra work for administrators and their staffs, and likewise do not pose a burden on faculty who want to keep their incoming email to a minimum, I am proposing the following:

1. That you NOT respond to such reports using the faculty-l email list, where every faculty member receives a copy of your email response. Rather, I ask you to respond to the faculty-d email discussion list, which faculty can voluntarily choose to subscribe. That list is to be freely used for discussions of campus and academic issues. All faculty were automatically subscribed to the faculty-d list last spring; new faculty need to subscribe. Unlike the faculty-l list, any person can unsubscribe to that list at any time.

2. That purely informational reports with no request for action be designated so by beginning the subject line of the email message with the word "Report". That way, faculty who strongly object to receiving the informational reports can either erase the messages directly from their listing or set a filter to exclude them from even the listing. Either way, no one is forced to read them to determine the nature of the contents.

3. That faculty who merely want clarification email me rather than the administrator. I will usually be able to answer your questions, and have ready access to the administrators for those occasions where I am not. This is not to say that you are not allowed to contact an administrator directly. I am only proposing that in many/most cases I am willing and able to serve the purpose.

4. That the email reports be relatively short "executive summaries", with elaboration provided through web page links that readers can click on to get more information. Usually that additional information will not be authored specifically for the report, but will consist of scanned documents (either as text or images) that are associated with the subject matter. Everyone should have email software that permits the reading of attachments or linking to a web site by clicking on a link. If you do not, and want it, please let me know. I shall be working with the support staff of various administrators to make sure they know how to post web pages, and Diana Cook is getting a page-feeding scanner to support the effort as well.

I hope these suggestions will serve to improve communications and facilitate shared decision making. As always, please feel free to pass your suggestions, opinions, and requests to me alone, or if you prefer, to the faculty-d list.

Richard