Provost tackles governance issue

Ohio University's first-year provost and executive vice president earlier this week took a step toward achieving "œshared governance" at the university.

The perceived lack of shared governance has been a persistent criticism of the Roderick McDavis administration and Pam Benoit's predecessor as provost.

To address this issue, Benoit sent out a notice to students explaining that she has been meeting with faculty, students and staff at the university over the past two months, and noticed that a repeated theme has been the need to work on shared governance.

As a result, after consulting with the Senates of constituent groups on campus and President Roderick McDavis, she said, "an approach to building a consensus on shared governance has been constructed."

The process she outlines includes:

"¢ A shared-governance blog to be launched in October 2009 (http://ohioevpp.wordpress.com/). Questions and readings will be posted to help encourage thoughtful and fruitful discussions across all Ohio University campuses.

"¢ Campus survey on shared governance to be developed in conjunction with constituent Senates and administered in February 2010.

"¢ Stakeholder committee to be appointed in March 2010. Committee to use the results of the survey to shape forums to be held in April and May.

"¢ Draft of a shared-governance concept paper to be presented for comment to the campus community in September 2010.

"¢ Shared governance concept paper finalized and recommendations implemented in October 2010.

In her e-mail, Benoit acknowledged that some might wonder why such a lengthy process is needed to accomplish something so seemingly simple.

"The problem with such a modus operandi," she said, "is that in my discussions with members of the campus community, it is clear that there isn't a consensus on what shared governance should be at this institution. Before we can share, we need to know what we are sharing.

The Faculty Senate Executive Committee for agreeing to co-sponsor the blog where some readings about shared governance, discussion prompts, and questions have been posted.

"In order to have a meaningful discussion of the important issues that surround shared governance," Benoit stated in her message, "student participation is essential. Please become part of the conversation."

At the end, she listed the goals of the effort as the following:

"¢ To have a substantive, university-wide conversation on shared governance.

"¢ To use that conversation (conducted in multiple ways) to help construct a shared-governance concept paper that will help guide decision-making at OU.