Subject: Re: Conduct in the UO Senate meeting 27 May 2009
To: Franklin Stahl
From: Paul van Donkelaar
Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 18:13:56 -0700

Dear Colleagues:

I wanted to take the opportunity to provide input into the discussion surrounding this issue especially as it appears to pertain to my ability to accomplish a task that I have set out to do. The facts to me are clear: last summer I set as a goal for this past academic year the restructuring of internal governance. I spent a great deal of time in the fall term laying the groundwork for this goal - I met with the leadership and/or the faculty of each of the professional schools as well as the department heads within CAS to outline a plan for moving forward. There were countless discussions within the Faculty Advisory Council surrounding this complex issue as well.

Towards the end of Fall term, the amount of time and energy that I was able to devote to this important issue were overtaken by events that were partially outside of my control. The first was my service on the Presidential Search Committee. This was a very challenging but ultimately very rewarding experience that resulted in the selection of a very impressive candidate for our next President: Richard Lariviere. My role on this committee was slightly different than those of the other faculty members as I attempted to express to the committee and the Chancellor the concerns I had heard from UO community members regarding the closed search process. Thus, I had to balance my service to the Committee with my commitment to my Senate colleagues. This was not a easy thing to do, but in the end, I think we were able to reach a compromise that was palatable for the majority.

A second major issue that arose at around the same time was that surrounding Conflict of Interest/Conflict of Commitment policies and procedures. This issue was very volatile with rather extremely differing opinions from both the faculty and the central administration. I found myself along with a number of other faculty leaders between these two extremes and did my best to bring the two sides together so that a level-headed discussion could take place. There were a few bumps along the way, but, I think ultimately, all concerned have been very pleased with the outcome. As I said in the meeting yesterday, although I was not directly involved in the details of the work surrounding this, I do think I was able to make a significant contribution to shepherding it along from its rather rough start to its much more collegial ending.

Finally, over the last 2-3 months, faculty leaders have been spending a great deal of time and energy working with the central administration over budget issues. Again, we are faced with a series of moving targets and difficulty in getting our arms around the depth and breadth of the issues. One of my roles in this difficult process is to bring faculty and staff concerns to the attention of the central administration and help them to communicate their decisions surrounding budget issues as effectively as possible.

The bottom line is I felt that my time and energy was much better spent working on these issues than those surrounding restructuring internal governance and revising the enabling legislation. So, yes, in the end, I ultimately failed to reach the goal I set out for myself at the beginning of last year. But I like to think that I failed for all the right reasons. If I had chosen to spend more time and energy on internal governance issues last year, then we would have had a Presidential Search that was less (or not) informed by Senate concerns, a potentially failed attempt to bring faculty and the central administration together over the COI/COC issue, and less effective communication from the central administration regarding the budget.

I hope this makes it clear to you why I chose my priorities the way I did.

Now that I am no longer Senate President, I look forward to having the time and energy to spend on working on revising the enabling legislation during next year. The statutory faculty delegated their authority to the University Senate at the Assembly meeting on May 6th - so the current governance structure is valid in the eyes of the Oregon Department of Justice. Now we need to make additional changes to the enabling legislation so that our internal governance structure can be improved. I will be working with President Frohnmayer along with input from the Faculty Advisory Council to pull together the rest of the committee in the coming weeks. The committee will be faculty-centered with little or no oversight from the Central Administration - this is the desire of incoming President Lariviere. I heard several of you yesterday state loud and clear that you would like to see as diverse a committee as possible. I ask at this time, that you forward to me or President Frohnmayer names of colleagues that you think would be able to make informed contributions to the work of this committee while still satisfying the desire to have a diverse membership.

My goal is to make this process as open and transparent as possible. The committee will post to a blog the ideas they are working on with respect to potential revisions for comment from the broad community. I certainly have my own opinions about what I think any restructuring should look like, but I have no intention of imposing those on anyone - I have no personal agenda here other than to do what's best for the UO. I look forward to broad input from the entire community and will use that input to make the revision work for as many people as possible.

Thanks again for serving on the Senate - it was a pleasure being your President. Yours, Paul van Donkelaar