The Faculty Senate discussed challenges of potential changes to Eastern’s governing bodies such as creating a university council to represent the entire university community.

The Committee to Study Shared Governance, which was formed in Spring 2011, recommended seven potential changes, and the Faculty Senate reviewed the committee’s report along with President Bill Perry’s recommendations at its meeting on Tuesday.

The formation of the University Council is one of the committee’s recommendations.

The University Council would have the authority to determine what governing committees and councils are necessary to the university and remove those it deems unnecessary.

Diane Jackman, the dean of the College of Education and Professional Studies, presented her concern to the Faculty Senate about the possibility of the University Council having the ability to dissolve committees and councils.

Jackman said it would be harmful if the Council on Teacher Education could potentially be dissolved because a requirement of the College of Education and Professional Studies accreditation process is to maintain a governance structure for teacher education programs.

“We need to be open to looking at new things, but we need to be making sure that we don’t disrupt programs on campus,” Jackman said.

According to the committee report, the University Council would consist of: five members from the Faculty Senate, five members from the Staff Senate, five members from the Student Senate, a vice president, a dean and a member from the Council of Chairs.

President Bill Perry recommended creating the President’s Round Table in place of the University Council, which would contain the same guidelines for representatives, but would change its authoritative role.

Its role would be to offer advice and recommendations for the structure of committees.

Another recommendation that was discussed is to create a universal meeting time for governing structures to meet.

Rebecca Throneburg, a member of the Council on Academic Affairs, said the council members thought a universal meeting time could cause several challenges, including limiting committee involvement since many people choose to serve on multiple committees.

Andrew Methven, the chairman of the Faculty Senate, said a universal meeting time could also conflict with other commitments that faculty members have.

“Those in the sciences have lab days Tuesdays and Thursdays that could be all day long so if the meeting time was set on Tuesdays or Thursdays that would immediately eliminate a large group from participating,” Methven said.

Methven is the chairman of the biological sciences department.

The Faculty Senate members also discussed the committee’s recommendation to implement a delegate system where there would be equal representation from different departments.

David Viertel, a Faculty Senate member, said he thought the delegate system might create future problems.

“We might be narrowing the pool with the delegate system if we have to worry about having representation from each of the colleges,” Viertel said. “I would rather the composition of Faculty Senate not to have representatives from every college, but instead to have representatives who want to be here and who actually want to participate instead of having a representative whose arm was twisted into running.”

The other discussed recommendations were to: reconfigure the Faculty Senate into a council that follows the mentioned recommendations, implement new policies to the role of hiring committees, establish a website on university governance and retain the Committee to Study Shared Governance.

According to the report, the timeline for possible implementation of these recommendations is three years.

The recommendations will be further discussed at future meetings.

Rachel Rodgers can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].