Faculty Governance Review

Purpose:

Per the revised HOP 2-1310, the faculty of an academic department or other academic unit that hires and evaluates faculty must review their faculty governance at least once every three years. As a departmentalized college, the governance reviews must include a dean's level review before routing to the Provost's Office for final review and approval.

This article describes the process for conducting and reporting review results for faculty governance.

Relevant Definitions:

Faculty Governance Committee: per the revised HOP 2-1310: "A committee that offers recommendations to the unit supervisor for faculty employment and faculty review. The two kinds of Faculty Governance Committees are Budget Councils and Executive Committees. A Graduate Studies Committee is not a Faculty Governance Committee. (See HOP 9-1240)."

• Budget Council (BC): a committee made up of all tenured Full Professors of the department
• Executive Committee (EC): a committee that may be made up of tenured, tenure-track, or professional-track members; each unit governance's document must describe the composition of this committee, how it is formed, and its responsibilities. 
  • Extended Budget Council (EBC): This form of governance committee is no longer recognized as its own type of governance mode, but is considered a form of EC.

Governance Review: Governance committees must be reviewed at least once every three years. Therefore, a current approved governance committee must be reviewed by its relevant faculty no later than its third academic year of operation. Governance committee and voting rules approved by the unit must then be approved by the dean and EVPP as well.

Governance Document and Voting Policy: a written description of the unit’s mode of governance committee, the responsibilities of the governing committee, voting requirements and practices for the different advisory tasks (hiring, promotion, etc.), and the method by which said rules or practices will be adopted, reviewed, or amended by the unit. 

• This document is required to be submitted for Provost's Office approval as part of the governance review process.
• The Provost's Office has established a set of requirements for faculty governance committee and voting policies, available here.

Department: For the purposes of this article: the person(s) responsible for communicating on behalf of an academic unit within our college.

• Note: Prior to the revision of HOP 2-1310, Faculty Governance Committees were not explicitly required by non-department academic units, but as of AY24-25, all units that hire and evaluate faculty are required to have a faculty governance committee and voting policy approved by EVPP.

COLA: the person(s) responsible for communicating on behalf of the Dean’s Office; for this process, this is currently Ann Kelble.

EVPP: The Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost, a.k.a. the Provost's Office; this particular process is managed by a subset of EVPP called Faculty Affairs.

AY: Academic year; Aug. 16 through Aug. 15

FY: Fiscal year; Sept. 1 through Aug. 31.

Process:

COLA Deadline: June 30 (of the FY in which approved mode of governance expires)

1. Units whose governance is set to expire at the end of the academic year should prepare a review of their governance mode and voting policy.
   1. To check expiration, please refer to the table below. 
   2. Note: As of Spring 2024, academic units that hire and review faculty but who do not currently have a provost-approved governance model must establish a faculty governing committee and voting policy compliant with the new guidelines. These new governance documents are due to COLA by August 31, 2024. Once established, these governance committees will follow the typical June 30 deadline.
2. The chair or other appropriate department contact should notify those responsible for undertaking 
3. Most, if not all, departments and academic centers/programs already have a governance document and established method by which this governance is reviewed for renewal. Historically
4. To prepare the review, the unit must first go through the new (2024) Faculty Governance Committee Structure and Voting Policy Checklist to ensure that their existing 

3. Once COLA receives all governance review results, a summary memo will be prepared for the Dean’s review and approval and then sent to the Provost's Office for final approval.

4. Once the department governance models have been approved by the Provost Office, COLA HR shall notify the departments involved.

5. Note: Since departments don’t have to wait until their governance is up for renewal to review or make changes, please notify COLA HR with the above information (B.e.) if the faculty decide to make off-cycle changes to their governance structure. [We don’t have to know about by-law changes as they happen, unless you just want to give us a copy for kicks. We’ll take it!] The proposed changes will be submitted along with the regularly scheduled reviews for that year, and the department’s review cycle will be updated once approved.

Some General Notes about Governance:

• A department’s governing body shares the responsibility, with the Chair, for keeping the department functioning.
• A department’s rules are generally only as enforceable as written. It is helpful, therefore, for departments to record the rules they want to ‘live by’. It’s also important to record how/when new rules can be made, or how they can change or amend existing rules/practices.
• Words are important; only write the things that matter.
• Less is often more. [Not necessary to codify everything—put another way, every rule that is written and adopted then has to be followed/enforced, so…]
• At minimum, departments will need to review their governance document alongside their governance review, to ensure the two remain consistent.
• The rules (HOP) specify what must happen if a department wishes to modify its mode of governance. However, the rules do not specify a process or requirements for how a department decides whether to consider changes or solicit proposals for change – departments must on their own make decisions and implement a plan surrounding this process, and are responsible for ensuring enough time is built into their process to comply with HOP requirements and allow for an acceptable (to the department) level/amount of deliberation
• A change is a change is a change: for the purposes of policy compliance, changes within modes of governance must be treated the same as changes between modes of governance.

*Re: Clear description: It needs to be possible to determine from the description:

• how many members of the governing body there are,
• if they have to be of specific ranks,
• whether there are non-voting members,
• how members are chosen, if applicable
• who is or is not a member

Budget Council (BC) is the most straightforward model = all Full Professors in dept. (Or all Associates, if no Fulls.)

Extended Budget Council (EBC) can be straightforward, but may also be nearly as complicated as a proposal wants it to be. A standard EBC, for example, would = all Fulls plus all associate professors. However, the rules do not strictly limit to whom membership can be extended, and can include individuals from other departments. EBC’s can be simple, if, for example, merely extending membership to all members of particular ranks in the department (e.g., all associate professors or all associate and assistant professors), but need to be overly clear and specific in all cases.

            Ex. All tenured and tenure-track faculty with at least a 50% appointment in the department, as well as specific courtesy faculty granted voting rights by the EBC upon appointment. [And you would need to tell us which of your courtesy faculty had those voting rights, if any.]

Executive Committee (EC): needs to have a defined number of members; the rank(s) of the members need to be specified and adhered to (as defined); the length of service/term/method of choosing members needs to be specified.

            Ex. Consists of 6 members: 2 Full Professors from any area, elected by majority vote of all GSC faculty and serving 2-year staggered terms; the 3 area heads representing the 3 major disciplinary areas of the department, chosen by each area from among their tenured faculty, serving 2-year terms; 1 tenure-track or professional-track member (any rank), elected by majority vote of all voting faculty for a 1-year term; may not serve more than 2 consecutive terms. Chair will serve as ex-officio member, only voting in cases of a tie (and not on matters where they have a separate vote). Voting eligibility for promotion and salary matters shall follow HOP guidelines.

Re: promotion voting:

1. If a department’s promotion cases are not voted on by the governing body as described, this information needs to be conveyed clearly, along with the governance description.
   1. For example, some departments are governed by an EC, but specify that promotion cases will be considered and voted on by the tenured faculty of the department.
2. The words used in these descriptions are important and should be considered binding. As in the above example, where “promotion cases are voted on by the tenured faculty of the department”: this would mean that, for promotions of Associate Professor to Full, the department would need to report the total number of tenured faculty of the department as voters, though all of the Associate Professors would be recorded as ‘ineligible.’
   1. If the department intends that promotion cases will be reviewed only by members who are eligible to vote on the case, that should be spelled out as part of the governance definition.
3. Some units’ faculty governance policies include a requirement that faculty be “present” to vote. Some faculty members might be working remotely (approved to do so whether for a conference, keynote, field work, etc.) or have to work remotely for accommodation reasons (COVID or other). The Provost's Office has requested that the interpretation of “present” be expanded to include synchronous Zoom involvement for important votes and discussions (including promotion, annual review, etc.) for faculty approved to participate remotely for professional or personal circumstances.

4. As of FY22-23, a minimum of five eligible voters are required at the department level for any promotion case, so it would be advantageous for departments to determine in advance how they would plan to handle situations where they might fall short of the required votes. For example, if a department has a 7-member EC, including individuals from multiple ranks, the department might wish to state that promotions to Full Professor or Professor of Instruction will be considered by the Budget Council (all of the Full Professors) of the department. [*Note: if a department has fewer than 5 full professors eligible to vote, the department could consider whether it would want to extend voting rights to any affiliate Full Professors; or whether it would prefer for the Dean to appoint additional voting members on an ad hoc basis...] [Another Note: per the Voting Table, Assistant Professors and Assistant Professors of Instruction (or other PTF at this rank) are ineligible to vote on any promotion case.]

Current COLA Department Governance Modes:

Policy:

HOP 2-1310; About Budget Councils, etc.: https://policies.utexas.edu/policies/budget-councils

Related Policies:

HOP 2-1010; Defining Faculty & their Voting Rights: https://policies.utexas.edu/policies/general-faculty-membership

HOP 2-1020; About Academic Units: https://policies.utexas.edu/policies/colleges-schools-and-departments

HOP 2-2160; Recommendations for Hiring, Tenure, Raises, etc. [An example of some of the governing body responsibilities]: https://policies.utexas.edu/policies/recommendations-regarding-faculty-compensation-faculty-promotion-tenure-renewal-appointment