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Faculty Assembly Representative Committee

February 13, 2004

President’s Report

The faculty executive team (president, vice-president, past president, secretary, and chairs of Budget, EPUS, and Personnel & Benefits committees) met in a retreat to review the constitution and by-laws as well as discuss ways to strengthen faculty governance. The Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs joined us for part of the retreat. There are some ways that the constitution and by-laws need to change in order to reflect what we are doing (and some ways that we need to change in order to reflect the constitution and by-laws). The executive team will be bringing a set of motions for the consideration of the Representative Assembly committee, but any recommended changes must go to the full assembly. Such changes could include increasing the number of representatives, aligning our committees with the system committee, including the Research Council and LETTS (Learning, Education, Teaching, Technology, Scholarship) as assembly committees.

The faculty executive team is also looking at ways of strengthening faculty governance. Currently we have some procedures in place that makes for a strong faculty governance structure (e.g., regular meetings with administrators, strong role for budget advisory, oversight of faculty appointments to committees); however, these procedures are not formalized in any way. We are looking at ways that this can be done.

Faculty council approved two new resolutions in the last council meeting:

One (attached) is from the Ad Hoc Strategic Issues Committee concerning Supporting Higher Education. The ad hoc strategic issues committee is a committee that is trying to develop position statements on matters that have a broad concern for faculty and are being addressed by legislators or regents.

The second resolution came from the Faculty Council Executive team and was concerned with the Academic Bill of Rights (see attached HB 04-1315). The rules of the council were suspended in order to address concerns that people had about the Academic Bill of Rights. The passed resolution concerns supporting academic freedom for all people on campus (faculty, students, and staff), acknowledges that CU has procedures for handling violations of such rights, and requests that all campuses make such procedures available and well known to students. This bill is in committee and there is a hearing next week (2/18/04; see attached memo from American Association of University Professors). President Hoffman and Faculty Council President Mark Malone are supposed have been asked to talk at this hearing, as well as students.