Minutes, Truman State University Chapter of AAUP
December 12, 8:00 a.m.
Washington St. Java Co.
Meetings are open to all University faculty members.
Members present: Talie Alexander, Martha Bartter, Marc Becker, Chett Breed,
Suanna Breed, Jan Grow, David Gruber, James Harmon, Kathryn Kuhlman, Judi Misale,
Peter Rolnick, Jan Saffir
We began with a discussion about issues of shared faculty governance. We need
to pay attention to developments with the absentee policy that is going to
Undergraduate Council, especially since there are continuing problems with the
policy including the fact that it will be difficult to apply it universally
across disciplines. Discussion followed about submitting through divisions a
resolution requesting that faculty be surveyed before enacting university-wide
policies.
A Truman tradition is not to communicate well, and we need to work to improve
that communication across faculty.
There is a sense that Faculty Senate is not functioning properly, and perhaps
we need to look at changing its composition, especially since one-third of the
senators are not faculty members.
In order to address these issues, we agreed to do four things:
1. We scheduled two town meetings during the Spring semester. These will be
on Tuesday, February 19 and Wednesday, April 10 from 4:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. in
VH1000. We will solicit specific topics for discussion as we approach these
dates.
2. We will request that the ten faculty members who spoke to the Board of
Governors on Saturday, December 8, submit their comments for posting on the AAUP
web page (see aaup.truman.edu, and click on “Summer
School and Governance“).
3. We will try to organize a campus-wide convenors meeting.
4. We will regularly make AAUP statements targeted to the general faculty,
probably in the form of an email newsletter.
Meeting adjourned at 9:00 a.m.
Respectfully submitted by Marc Becker, Secretary