Report
of the Ad Hoc Committee on Faculty Senate Reapportionment
Gary Copeland, Chair
Al Schwarzkopf
Lucy Lifschitz
January 2010
The Ad Hoc Committee on Faculty Senate Reapportionment met
to recommend a reapportionment of the Faculty Senate. It first considered the policies found in the
Faculty Handbook. The rules for
apportioning the Senate are stated in section 10.2.1 of the Faculty Handbook:
"The Faculty Senate shall consist of 50 members of the
Regular Faculty. The senators shall be elected to three-year terms by
written ballot in the degree-recommending divisions of the University.
Members of the Regular Faculty who are not members of a degree-recommending
division of the University shall be treated as a separate division. The
electors shall consist of members of the Regular Faculty. Full-time
administrative personnel above the department level shall be excluded from
elections of the Faculty Senate.”
"In the Faculty Senate, seats shall be allocated as
follows: one seat to each degree-recommending division and the balance of
the seats according to a triennial apportionment proposed by the Faculty Senate
and approved by the Regular Faculty."
Since the last reapportionment a number of changes in the
composition in the faculty have taken place; some of the changes, we believe,
make the Handbook policy problematic.
Specifically, there is now a degree recommending division that has one
faculty member and a second division with 3.5 faculty members. By current policy each seems entitled to a
Senator. In response to this situation,
our recommendations come in two parts. First, we recommend a change in the
Handbook and, second, we recommend an apportionment based on that recommended
change.
Handbook Change
The Committee thinks it is not equitable
to faculty in general to guarantee a degree recommending unit representation
regardless of size. One option would be
to eliminate the guarantee completely and provide only representation when the
numbers of faculty in the unit merit it.
But, we recognize that such divisions might have interests that should
be represented. Therefore, we conclude
that there should be a balance between providing representation regardless of
size and representing the interests of a unit.
After deliberation, we conclude that a unit should have representation
if it reaches one percent of the total faculty (which by numbers alone would
entitle them, currently, to slightly less than a half seat). With 1013.7 faculty members currently, the
number that would entitle a unit to representation is 10.1 or more faculty
members.
Specifically, we recommend the
Handbook language be changed to:
"The Faculty Senate shall consist of 50 members of the
Regular Faculty. The senators shall be elected to three-year terms by
written ballot in the degree-recommending divisions of the
University. Members of the Regular Faculty who are not members of a
degree-recommending division of the University shall be treated as a separate
division. The electors shall consist of members of the Regular Faculty.
Full-time administrative personnel above the department level shall be excluded
from elections of the Faculty Senate.”
"In the Faculty Senate, seats shall be allocated as
follows: one seat to each degree-recommending division with at least one percent of the total
faculty and the balance of the seats according to a triennial apportionment
proposed by the Faculty Senate and approved by the Regular Faculty.”
(The deletion is struck through; the
addition is in italics.)
Recommended Reapportionment
The Committee followed a number of
past practices. Included in the faculty
count are renewable term appointments at the Assistant Professor level and
above and part-time faculty at the Assistant Professor level and above, term or
tenured/tenure-track, according to their FTE. Using the FTE is consistent
with the way we count split appointments. The “Total” column in the table provides the
total number of faculty in each unit when applying the above method of counting
faculty.
Faculty appointed to non-degree
recommending units who have joint appointments in degree recommending units are
counted in their traditional departments.
We did the same with the
There are 54.3 faculty
in non-degree recommending divisions who do not have joint appointments. Following both tradition and being justified
by their numbers we recommend allocating one seat, each, to the Library and
ROTC faculties. That leaves 14.3 faculty
in non-degree recommending divisions to whom we add the faculty of Liberal
Studies and Aviation to bring the total to 18.8. We recommend that combined faculty be
allocated one seat.
The remaining 47 seats we recommend be allocated using a proportional method. Rounding led to complications when trying to
use a direct approach because it produced 49 seats (plus the three previously
allocated for a total of 52). So the Committee used the “Webster Method”
of allocating seats. It basically gives each unit its whole number of
seats and then allocates the remaining seats to the largest remaining fraction
until all seats are allocated. While there are other methods, this
approach seems to produce the least bias. To see a discussion on this
point, go to: http://www.brookings.org/comm/policybriefs/pb88.htm.
In conclusion, the Committee
recommends the allocations in the table for the three years beginning with
academic year 2010-2011.