Meeting Minutes
Minutes of May 2, 2006 University Coordinating Committee Meeting
Present: Charles Webber (Chair), John Frendreis, Gerry McDonald, Lorraine Snyder and Rebecca Stolz
Guests: Michael J. Garanzini, S.J. (President), Linda Health (Co-Chair of Shared Governance Task Force), Kelly Shannon (Marketing and Communications Chief), and Fred Wezeman
(Co-Chair of Shared Governance Task Force)
Absent: Anthony Barbato and Dow Scott
- 1. Chuck Webber opened the meeting at 9:05 a.m. and invited Father Garanzini to offer his comments and observations on the final report of the Task Force on Shared Governance System Evaluation which was submitted on April 26.
- 2. Father Garanzini began by thanking Fred, Linda and their colleagues on the Task Force for the excellent report. He noted that responsibility for implementation of the recommendations falls mainly to the UCC, with the support of the three key affinity groups on campus—Faculty Council, Staff Council, and Unified Student Government. He briefly addressed the three sections of the report, namely: knowledge and communication, composition, and compensation/support. Father Garanzini agreed that much more needs to be done on communication, and he asked Kelly Shannon to take the lead on dissemination of the report and on working with the UCC to develop a communications plan for getting the word out during the year on UPC discussions. He added that he recommends the governance Charter be amended to include a requirement that each UPC develop a communications plan so that they keep relevant affinity groups and constituencies appraised of their discussions.
- 3. On the issues of UPC composition, Father Garanzini noted that much more direct representation of the three key affinity groups on campus is something he favors. With that in mind, he said he would adopt the recommendation in the report that these three elected affinity groups directly elect/appoint faculty, student and staff to the UPCs. Additionally, he recommended that the Charter be amended to note that key administrators in each area will need to designate his or her representative in lieu of serving on the UPC. In areas where the administration wants to make an administrator an ex-officio member of the UPC they will do so. To expedite the creation of a re-vamped UCC, Father Garanzini then proposed that each campus elect a faculty member to represent it, along with the chair of Faculty Council, or that the Faculty Council select a representative from each campus and its chair to be the members of the UCC. He also adopted the Task Force’s recommendation that the USG president serve on the UCC.
- 4. Lastly, Father Garanzini said that he feels that service in the shared governance system is a duty that all of us have and share. He emphasized the need, as noted in the report, for greater recognition of individuals serving on UPCs and asked the UCC to consider this as part of the implementation of the Task Force’s recommendations. Additionally, he agreed with the recommendation that an online survey assessing Loyola’s shared governance system again in three years would be valuable.
- 5. John added that one factual correction was necessary before the report could be disseminated to the University community. In the report, non-elected groups were listed in a table titled "Elected Affinity Groups" and Fred and Linda offered to modify the language here to read "Illustrative Affinity Groups." The one additional change to the report was a suggestion by Rebecca that Staff Council be included in the table as a group that the Budget and Finance UPC should liaise with.
- 6. The UCC and guests then reviewed a draft revised Charter document, and made suggestions in keeping with the recommendations in the task force, including adding administrator’s designees in lieu of administrators onto UPCs and having all faculty, staff and students be noted as elected by their constituencies.
- 7. Gerry asked why the Faculty Affairs UPC couldn’t serve as a subcommittee of Faculty Council, and Father Garanzini said that the idea of shared governance was to have faculty and administrators at the same table when discussing policy and other issues in lieu of returning to the situation we had five years ago where faculty and administrators were not working together on important issues.
- 8. On next steps, Father Garanzini said he would prepare a formal response on the report to send to Fred and Linda, and that he would also like to ask each elected affinity group (FC, SC, and USG) to review the report and offer their observations. He said he was hopeful that the UPCs could be reconstituted and the Charter revised this summer so that we might begin running under the new Charter in September.
9. Chuck adjourned the meeting at 11:00 a.m.