Faculty Senate: a short primer

What the Senate is

The Senate reviews and approves academic and academic personnel policy, works on budgets and strategic plans, takes part in recruiting and reviewing department heads, deans, vice provosts, and vice presidents. It carries faculty opinion to the administration.

The Senate is the elected body of the faculty. It exists because Arizona law (A.R.S. 15-1601.B) says the faculty share responsibility for the academic and educational activities of the university. How that sharing works in practice is set out in the Faculty Constitution and Bylaws. It is also summarized in a Memorandum on Shared Governance signed in 2005 and renewed in 2018.

Currently, fifty-two faculty seats are elected, thirty-two by college and twenty at large. Students and staff hold seats too. A group of administrators and committee chairs sit as ex officio members, including the President, the Provost, and the Chief Research Officer. Elected senators serve two years. At-large seats are filled in odd-numbered years. College seats in even-numbered years.

Where I sit

I hold a General Faculty seat in the Senate, and I serve on two committees. If something in those areas is going wrong in your unit I'd be happy to bring any of your concerns up into those spaces.

• The University Community Relations Committee (former DEI committee) considers issues that affect the university as a whole and forwards action items to the Senate. Its stated examples include policies that support civility and mutual respect. It has seven faculty members, a majority of whom must be senators, plus two student representatives.
• The Research Policy Committee covers research, conflict of interest, intellectual property, research ethics, human and animal research, safety, data retention, research parks, industry interaction, patent policy, and research institutes.

What I can do for you

• I can ask the Vice Chair of the Faculty to include an item on the Senate agenda. Given that the Senate Executive Committee sets each agenda about two weeks out, a request works best about three weeks before the meeting.
• I can raise an issue inside the two committees I sit on. Discussions within these spaces often happen faster than the full Senate. Committees also forward action items to the Senate as seconded motions.
• I can ask a question of the President, the Provost, or the Chief Research Officer in a setting where the answer is recorded in the minutes.
• I can tell you what is coming before it arrives if it has been discussed in Faculty Senate. Policy changes generally get to Faculty Senate first (publicly).

What you can do without me

Representation is not a substitute for participation.

• You can attend Senate meetings. They are generally the first Monday of the month, 3:00 to 5:00 p.m., in the Silver and Sage Room in Old Main (also on Zoom). Agendas and minutes are posted on the faculty governance website before and after.
• You can speak at a meeting. Recent agendas include an Open Session at the beginning of the meeting (~ two-minute limit). Because no vote is taken on what you say, you should treat it as putting something on the record and in front of the administration at the same time.
• You can vote in faculty elections, and you can run. A number of at-large seats are elected by the whole General Faculty.
• You can serve on a committee without being a senator. Most committees reserve seats for General Faculty members who are not in the Senate. Appointments are made by the Vice Chair of the Faculty in consultation with the Senate Executive Committee. Names come from the Nominating Committee or from faculty who put themselves forward.
• You can write to the Chair of the Faculty directly. The Chair is the chief representative of the faculty to the administration, the Board of Regents, and the legislature, and sits on the President's Cabinet. You do not need a senator to make that introduction. They are a colleague and faculty member.
• You can sign or start a petition. Signatures from five percent of the General Faculty are enough to call a meeting of the General Faculty. The petition goes to the Chair of the Faculty, has to state its purpose, and gets checked against the official census. That meeting can then send a pending action to a ballot of the whole General Faculty. This is the strongest instrument the faculty holds. It does not run through the Senate at all.
• You can use the support routes that exist for individual problems. These routes include the Grievance Clearinghouse Committee and the Ombuds office, which are separate from policy work and are not something a senator handles for you.

Are you in the General Faculty?

Membership is what lets you vote, sign a petition, and hold most seats. Membership is defined in Article II of the Constitution and maintained as an annual census by the Committee on Faculty Membership.

The categories cover tenured and tenure-eligible faculty at half time or more, continuing and continuing-eligible appointments at half time or more, multi-year career-track faculty with multi-year contracts, longer-serving year-to-year career-track faculty holding lecturer or professorial titles without an adjunct or visiting modifier, and emeritus faculty. Adjunct and visiting titles and appointments below half time are generally outside it.

The wording has been amended multiple times. Check the current Constitution or ask the Faculty Center if you have questions.

During a search

Searches for deans, vice provosts, and vice presidents fall inside shared governance, since the faculty take part in recruiting and reviewing those positions. If you have something to say about a search that affects your unit, the useful routes are the Chair of the Faculty, your college senator(s), and the Open Session at a Senate meeting.

Cristian Román-Palacios
College of Information Science
cromanpa@arizona.edu

Written for colleagues inside and outside InfoSci. Details here come from the faculty governance website, the Faculty Constitution and Bylaws, and the Senate orientation materials. Procedures change, so please check the current documents before relying on a specific number.