The Faculty Senate will appoint a member to the registrar advisory group and hear a proposal from Faculty Senator Grant Sterling at their meeting 2 p.m. Tuesday in 4440 Booth Library.

Sterling, a philosophy professor, sent a resolution proposing faculty senate give the strongest possible encouragement to all faculty members to cast an informed vote in the referendum.

The referendum is the vote of confidence or no confidence in Provost Blair Lord, the vice president of academic affairs.

The vote will take place Nov. 2 through the 6th.

Jemmie Robertson, the faculty senate chair, said no one has come up to endorse people voting one way or another.

“It will make for an interesting discussion,” Robertson said.

Robertson said Sterling is proposing the faculty senate discuss and adopt the resolution.

The vote of confidence\no confidence was first brought up at last week’s faculty senate meeting.

In the meeting, a petition was brought up to have the vote, which was signed by at least 20 percent of the faculty.

Physics professor James Conwell and philosophy professor Gary Aylesworth talked to the faculty senate about the petition at the previous meeting.

Conwell said when he left, people approached him saying they had an opinion on faculty governance and transparency. He said the vote would be on whether or not Lord has done a good job over the last 12 years and if the faculty thinks he will do a good job in the future given the present circumstances.

The voting for the confidence vote will be online and the faculty will be able to log in to the voting site with their university ID and vote on the referendum.

“We’re encouraging people to vote early and vote often,” Robertson joked.

Robertson said all faculty members could vote whether they were Unit A or Unit B faculty members.

Robertson said that he assumes faculty senate will know the results of the vote fairly soon if not immediately after voting is completed.

After the vote is conducted, the results are sent to the president, who reports them to the Board of Trustees.

“At the next board meeting I will also be speaking, so I will mention it then,” Robertson said.

Robertson said if the faculty votes confidence in Lord, the president would have affirmation that even though a vote happened, a large amount of the faculty supports the provost and understands there are other pressing things for concern.

“If it happened to be in favor of a no-confidence vote, that would be a different scenario,” Robertson said.

The other item up for discussion is appointing a faculty senate member to the registrar advisory group.

Faculty Senate makes assigns someone to be on the group each year.

Cassie Buchman can be reached at 581-2812 or cjbuchman@eiu.edu