Board Presentation February 21, 1997

President Aschkenasy, Members of the Board, Chancellor Cox

The Interinstitutional Faculty Senate held its regular meeting on February 7-8 1997 on the WOSC campus at Monmouth. Representatives Peter Courtney and Dennis Luke and Peter Callero, President of OFT, spent time with us Friday afternoon as we discussed the political climate for higher education. Clearly the interpretation of measure 47's impact will strongly influence the final budget and agreement on that impact has not been achieved. We discussed the chances of prepaid tuition, long term investment in state infrastructure, environment, and social services and we considered transferability of credits from community colleges to OSSHE institutions. Legislators are still concerned with articulation between the two levels of higher education in the state. Grattan Kerans joined our discussion Saturday and gave us an update of higher education's budget. Following that much of our business meeting was spent on the following issue.

The AAUP and AOF have arranged to have a bill submitted to the legislature to add two faculty members as voting members of the OSBHE to be appointed by the Governor. Because the Interinstitutional Faculty Senate has discussed this possibility over a number of years, we raised the issue at our 7-8 February meeting and voted to support the bill. The IFS invites the Board to lend your support as well. We understand the members of the Board have varied opinions on the advisability of the move to add faculty members to the board, either as voting or non-voting members. However, we believe the following points are strong reasons for adding faculty representation to the OSBHE.

Our position in support of faculty members on the board is based on the belief that we, who are the practicing professionals delivering the services of higher education, have much to offer as insights into the practical workings of the system. We are responsible for providing the educational, research and consulting services expected from higher education and know from practical experience what works well. For that reason, we believe our full participation in board activities and deliberations will add to your own expertise drawn from areas outside higher education. The integration of these multiple viewpoints should provide a richer context within which the decisions directing higher education will be made in the future.

We recognize and admire the skill, intelligence and dedication the members bring to the Board. It is for structural reasons we find faculty continually returning to the proposition that they should be represented on the Board. Most of us belong to associations that regulate how we conduct our professional lives. Lawyers are on Bar Association boards, doctors are on Medical Association boards and some doctors and lawyers are also faculty. Even Anthropologists such as I, belong to American Association of Physical Anthropologists and American and International Associations of Primatologists. The same is true from Anthropology to Zoology. We are accustomed to having votes on these boards and associations that strongly influence our professional lives. From our point of view, membership on the Oregon State Board of Higher Education is a similar proposition.

At another level, the charter of the U of O, later extended to the other campuses in ORS 352.010, 352.004, 352.006, states, “The President and professors constitute the faculty of the University, and, as such, shall have the immediate government and discipline of it and the students therein. The faculty shall also have power, subject to the supervision of the board of regents, to prescribe the course of study to be pursued in the University, and the text books to be used.” This has placed faculty in a position of voting on issues vital to the operation of their institutions and implies, in the eyes of many faculty, a mandate to govern or at least participate in their own governance.

In 1991 a survey by the Arizona AAUP of 485 institutions listed as the best in the US by "US News and World Report" yielded replies from 272 of them. At that time 104 or 38% had faculty on governing boards. On some of these boards faculty have the right to vote (Harvard, Temple, Cornell for example.) On others, faculty vote on board committees (Brandeis, City University of New York for example.) In a third category, faculty can speak but not vote from their seat on the board (University of California System, Michigan State, for example.) Other constituencies represented on governing boards include students (64), alumni (49), staff (20) and administrators (13). Faculty membership on boards governing higher education, even with voting rights, is a feature of higher education governance in this country.

Oregonians are rethinking education from kindergarten through graduate school. Here is an opportunity to examine higher education governance and to ask how its effectiveness could be improved. The IFS believes the best way to achieve this objective is to strengthen the partnership between citizens, students and faculty by adding two voting faculty members to the board. I again invite your support.