At its November meeting, Ohio University Faculty Senate will hear from members of the university’s Board of Trustees and discuss four resolutions.
On Monday at 7:10 p.m. in Walter 235, Board of Trustees Chair Janetta King and Vice Chair Dave Scholl will open the meeting by answering questions from faculty.
As OU President Duane Nellis will be traveling, interim Executive Vice President and Provost David Descutner will follow the trustees in fielding questions about the university’s budget planning process.
“They might get questions about how research fits into (budget) things. It’ll be interesting to see what people ask them about,” Faculty Senate Chair Joe McLaughlin said. “There’s been a lot of talk on campus this fall about the free speech issue and the policy, so I imagine they could get asked about that.”
The Promotion and Tenure Committee will present a resolution that proposes only tenured faculty should be involved in making appeals and decisions around promotions to tenured positions.
“We now have a process in which our Group II and (tenure)-track faculty can get promoted, and, once you have a process to get promotion, there’s probably some of them are going to be turned down — and some of them are going to want to appeal,” McLaughlin said.
Tenure-track faculty members have either achieved or are pursuing tenure, while Group II refers to non-tenure-track faculty members who are on renewable contracts.
Because there is no appeals process yet, Faculty Senate is working to decide who should be allowed to make decisions about tenure.
The Promotion and Tenure Committee and the Professional Relations Committee joined forces to present a resolution about teaching intensive tenure-track faculty.
The joint sense-of-the-senate resolution will address how teaching hours are influential to hiring decisions because Group II faculty are required to spend 60 percent of their time teaching, whereas tenured and tenure-track faculty are required less.
“I think there’s nothing in the (Faculty) Handbook right now that would prevent departments from bringing in faculty in teaching intensive, tenure track lines,” Professional Relations Committee Chair Sarah Wyatt said. “I think we need to preserve tenure to preserve shared governance on campus, to preserve the integrity of the institution.”
Wyatt will also present two resolutions which clarify language in the Faculty Handbook and on the College Professional Ethics Committees.
“The handbook still has the old language in it, so if you go to the handbook and say, 'Well, what should I do,' it says you should go to an office that no longer exists," Wyatt said. "So obviously, we have to clarify that in the handbook and update it to make sure it’s clear. ... If you don’t keep updating these kinds of documents, they become completely worthless.”
Resolutions introduced during the November meeting will not be voted on until December.
