Ohio University Provost Kathy Krendl was faced with a decision to allow faculty to formally evaluate her and OU President Roderick McDavis, but the Board of Trustees made that decision for her.
The trustees rejected a resolution that would have enabled faculty to circulate six-item questionnaires about the performance of the president and provost. The questionnaires would be filled out by Group I, tenure-track, faculty and sent to the board.
The trustees' decision not to honor the resolution, which passed through referendum by an 80 percent vote of faculty, means Krendl's ruling on whether to institute the evaluation process into the Faculty Handbook is irrelevant, said R. Gregory Browning, Board of Trustees chair, in an open letter to Faculty Senate chair Phyllis Bernt.
(The letter) answers the question that (Krendl) would have been left to answer on her own
Browning said.
The board recently instated a 360-degree review of the president, which differs from past evaluations by including input from six campus groups, including Faculty Senate. The Executive Committee of Faculty Senate met with the trustees last Friday to discuss how best to include faculty views in the board's evaluation, Bernt said.
As part of the Executive Committee, Bernt attended last Friday's meeting and said the discussion was candid.
We told Trustee Browning that we felt we would need to survey our constituents about their views Bernt said.
The decision on the part of the board strikes her as unusual, she said. But senate, which meets in Walter Hall tonight, is behind the trustees' decision to institute the 360-degree review, she said in a response letter to Browning.
Although the trustees respect the spirit of the faculty referendum, they have their own idea about how to evaluate the president, Browning said.
Our message is that we support the principle that is driving that referendum namely that Faculty Senate
faculty and all the major constituents of the university are important in evaluating the president and provost
he said.
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