Governance Effectiveness and Clarity (2011 Strategic Plan)

From its inception Hampshire College has valued participatory governance, as stated in its 1970 catalogue. Also as stated the College values expertise and leadership. However, the articulation of how those two values function in decision making has been muddy. Governance should be streamlined yet more effective. We need to support the concept that administrators and managers should be able to make decisions appropriate to their experience, expertise, and responsibilities, while upholding the participatory democracy of Hampshire. Time and effort must be utilized more effectively and with an eye toward decreasing governance workloads. Deliberation and decision making must be effective and timely, based on clear procedures. The following recommendations are designed to improve effectiveness and clarity: • Develop a process to review governance regularly.

• Expand governance time and ensure that it remains sacrosanct.

• Clarify the authority of administrators and managers. Participatory democracy should provide opportunities for managers to invite feedback while allowing those managers to make the decisions called for in their job descriptions. • Develop or revise policies and procedures for dealing with grievances against faculty, students, staff or governance bodies that are not adequately covered in the current College documents, including procedural violations of governance. • Conduct a space audit to provide concrete information about the spaces we have, how they are used and should be used, what problems exist, and the processes to make decisions for access and allocation. • Change the voting options in the FM. Faculty Meeting (FM) is the decision-making body of the faculty and discusses and votes on motions brought to it by FAB or EPC through FAB. Since limited time inhibits thorough deliberations, the GTF recommends that the FM may vote on motions from FAB or EPC up or down or may vote to return the motions to committee for further work. FM may not alter those motions from the floor without the unanimous approval of members of the authoring committee. Unanimous approval allows the motion to be considered a friendly amendment as defined by Robert’s Rules.

• Implement membership changes to EPC to provide a more appropriate balance between faculty and students (given the faculty’s responsibility for the academic program) and to install the proposed associate dean for academic affairs as co-chair to assist with workload and to provide liaison with the office of the VPAA/DOF.

• Clarify the roles of academic administrators and ensure that College governance documents reflect those roles, particularly the position of the VPAA/DOF, the deans, and the president’s relationship to the FM.

• Institute a clear process for forming presidential committees. While the method of determining committee membership may be different from case to case, the GTF recommends that since presidential committees are advisory to the president, membership should reflect the president’s needs. If work involves the College as a whole (most do), membership should be representative of the community, offer appropriate expertise, be as diverse as possible, and be selected by the president based on nominations. However, the SPC governance subcommittee would argue that all major committees should have either open memberships or elections. The SPC, therefore, underscores the need for ongoing, campus-wide discussion about representation. We agree with the GTF that the composition of committees will vary with their charges. At the same time the SPC affirms the importance of ensuring that all sectors of the community have input concerning major campus initiatives. • Institute the position of associate dean for academic affairs to provide dedicated leadership for academic projects and to relieve workload in the VPAA/DOF office. • Revise the Faculty Handbook, including determining a process by which it may be amended to address risk issues, missing or outdated policies, and inconsistencies and confusions.

• Streamline faculty committees and ask faculty to determine if all five schools must be represented on all committees.

Comments
Please include your thoughts on the importance of the initiative, how to frame the issue, things that may be missing, and any additional comments here (you can do so by logging into Hampedia and clicking edit):


 * I strongly agree with the following statements: 1. "We need to support the concept that administrators and managers should be able to make decisions appropriate to their experience, expertise, and responsibilities, [while upholding the participatory democracy of Hampshire]" (emphasis mine). 2. "Since limited time inhibits thorough deliberations, the GTF recommends that the FM may vote on motions from FAB or EPC up or down or may vote to return the motions to committee for further work. [FM may not alter those motions from the floor without the unanimous approval of members of the authoring committee]" (again, emphasis mine). 3. As for the issue of presidential committees, I agree that this issue needs to be discussed across the community more thoroughly. A presidential committee is generally responsible for making decisions that impact the entire community, so for reasons of both representation and trust I am not sure appointment-only is a wise choice. - Alynda Wood, Student
 * "Implement membership changes to EPC to provide a more appropriate balance between faculty and students (given the faculty’s responsibility for the academic program)..." Assuming this section is in reference to the GTF recommendation to cut the number of students on the EPC down to 2, I strenuously object to its inclusion in this Strategic Plan. In my time as a student member of the EPC it has consistently been one of my most hopeful and rewarding governance experiences at Hampshire specifically because of the respect and inclusion shown to students. I have never had any of the faculty or staff members on this body (who do, in fact, still clearly outnumber the student members) indicate that they felt my role as a student voice in the room was somehow inappropriate. I am shocked and rather hurt that a section purporting to advocate for representation is attempting to decrease student representation on one of the most important bodies at Hampshire. Calling for the elimination of student spots because of some perceived threat to faculty power over the academic plan is, quite frankly, both illogical and actively silencing. Claire Oberholtzer, student F07
 * I actively agree with both Alynda and Claire's comments. In addition, I support the point regarding an ongoing discussion and review of governance structures and processes. - Sarah Gordon, student F09
 * I would like to emphasize Claire's cogent points. When the GTF report was discussed in the EPC this Spring, the EPC unanimously (faculty, staff, AND students) concluded that they wanted to keep the full student representation, not limit it even further. (The minutes reflect this.) The recommendation to drastically cut student membership is, quite frankly, absurd. - Ananda Valenzuela