Academic Support Committee
Recommendations
We applaud the efforts of Dr. Tom Burns and his Academic Support Committee colleagues to strengthen the voice of the Academic Support Committee within our system of shared governance. The regular review of non-academic University offices by faculty can only contribute to the improvement of our service to students and colleagues. We recognize, though, that this is not the first attempt to create such a review cycle on the committee. The 1995-1996 Academic Support Committee recommended that the Committee do exactly this in the course of its work. While the Committee did attempt from time to time to realize this goal, there was often confusion among our faculty colleagues about the actual role of the Committee in our shared governance system. This confusion led more than a few members to question why the ASC should exist at all.
The November 2003 proposal presented to the Faculty Assembly by Dr. Burns addresses a weakness of the 1995-1996 ASC revision: the regular review cycle promoted within the ASC in 1995-1996 has been articulated explicitly in the November 2003 handbook revision proposal. This act goes a long way toward providing the Committee with some structure and purpose.
The Faculty Handbook Committee recommends that the ASC proposal be enhanced in the following ways:
make explicit the objective to review these offices' policies to ensure consistency with the University's mission
create a review system very similar to that of the program review system of the Educational Policies Committee, including a five-year cycle with a written review by the office and a presentation to the ASC
reviews presented to the ASC would become part of the institutional assessment data collected by the administration for use by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association and other external accrediting agencies for individual academic departments and programs
a set of procedures for such reviews would be prepared by ASC and recorded on the Academic Vice-President's website (just as EPC's procedures are published on this website)
We submit for faculty consideration a proposal for Academic Support Committee revision and solicit comments to be collected and posted on this site.
(Created: 3/18/04)