First, from a faculty perspective, the tuition waiver affects two areas of concern to Senate and its committees: faculty welfare/compensation and academics. Obviously, the tuition waiver is a benefit that has made a positive difference in many faculty member's lives. Moreover, the waivers are an academic issue since the waiver attracts and retains adjuncts. Though only 20 people take advantage of this benefit, many of those are our best adjuncts, and those graduates accrue over the years, so that now there are many in the adjunct ranks with doctoral degrees from us.
Of course, we need to consider whether we need this many of our own graduates, but that is a separate question. Putting aside that issue, it's clear that our tuition-paying graduate students benefit from the faculty in their classes. More importantly, the solution of cutting waivers does nothing to address causes of some programs having very few tuition paying students in their cohorts. This policy does nothing to address the need to ensure that all of our programs are vibrant and attractive to students and enroll sufficient numbers of tuition-paying students. We have great programs but they are not enrolling enough tuition paying students, which is a problem that is not being addressed right now.
At the FWCC meeting, administrators raised the issue of fairness. They questioned whether only faculty should give advice in matters such as this. This argument is a non-starter for me because it calls into question the very notion of shared governance we are trying to develop, rather than working in a shared governance way. It seems like all employee groups should have an advisory voice if we are really going to have shared governance.
Nevertheless, this position did not stop administrators from making a contradictory argument that an employee group should not be allowed power over its pay or benefits. If this were the case, then there would be no basis for having a Faculty Welfare and Compensation Committee in the board-approved Constitution. If we have such a committee, what is its role? It seems that at times the committee represents faculty interests, but it also needs to stand for the good of the institution from a faculty or an academic perspective. The institution needs to have pay and benefits that attract the faculty we need and are compatible with the institution's academic mission. Faculty have a role in offering advice on these matters. We need to remember to be motivated for the good of the institution, that is, stewardship, and not self-interest, in addressing these issues.
Though faculty and administrators have strong emotions about this issue, it's good that at least some of the debate is over the notion of shared governance. Shared governance is a common goal, and a notion we can co-construct with all stakeholders at NLU, not only in University Leadership Council, but in all areas. Faculty complain about administrators' actions, but we, too, probably need to act differently. During these discussions, it has been pointed to me that the development of the Promotion and Tenure policy has not modeled shared governance. In retrospect, I cannot disagree, and I have started to work to ensure that we have a collaborative process from now on. That being said, we were more open to administration in this process than adminstration was in the tuition waivers. We involved administrators from the start, had them provide written input, and they met with the task force on several occasions. That being said, the Academic Planning Task Force, which was formed about a year after the P&T Task Force, IS a an example of shared governance and a model for us going forward. So we are making progress, and every stakeholder needs to hold itself and one another accountable.
I hope that we can continue to frame our challenges at least partially in terms of shared govenance, and work toward a shared understanding of how we can work together more effectively. No one can happy about what happened to the tuition wavers, for in the best possible world we would not have to cancel then. No one became an administrator because that's how they wanted to spend their time. But we can use our discussion to continue to figure out how to construct shared governance here at NLU.
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