The Faculty Senate looked at the proposed 360 review for administrators and the contractual language of the combinations of the Academic Program Elimination Reorganization Committee and the Sanction Termination Hearing Committee at their meeting Tuesday.

The original proposal to update the review process for administrators was passed by the senate on Nov. 17, 2015 and was looked at by Eastern President Glassman earlier this year, who gave the proposal the go-ahead.

Teshome Abebe, senator and economics professor, proposed six different possible versions of the review process at the senate’s Oct. 17, 2018 meeting.

The current review system employs a survey, which allows the taker to identify strengths and weaknesses of the person being evaluated, which will then be submitted to the next highest administrator.

In the proposal Abebe shared with the senate at their Oct. 17 meeting, he wrote that the current system, while being efficient and allowing direct input from the person being supervised to the supervisor of their supervisor, it can lead to suspicion from faculty as they have no say in the evaluation of the dean, the president or the vice president.

Of the six submitted proposals, the senate voted to send two to Glassman to look at.

One of the two proposals sent was described, in Abebe’s proposal, as “continuing using the current system but allowing all faculty to have input in evaluating administrators above chair levels (to include the relevant dean).”

The other proposal that was recommended was to “implement a different form of evaluation, which allows input for faculty at all levels.”

The executive committee of the senate, staffed by Todd Bruns, senate chair and scholarly communication librarian and institutional repository director, Jeff Stowell, senate vice-chair and psychology professor and Billy Hung, senate recorder and biological sciences professor, had its meeting with Glassman earlier this week and they looked at the recommended review processes.

Bruns said Glassman raised concerns over how faculty would be invited to review administrators.

“It makes sense if it’s a dean of a college, you would have the faculty of that college be a part of that review, if it’s a vice-president of business affairs, how would you do that,” Bruns said. “My understanding … is that the Provost would select faculty to make a group of faculty who would then be a part of the 360 review of the vice president, for example.”

Abebe said he feels this solution is a smart one, and now he just wants the proposal to be completed.

“I would like this thing to be implemented,” Abebe said. “It’s been three years, I think there is a tendency here to turn it back to the senate to say, ‘What (other) ideas (do you have)?’ I think that just buys (administrators) more time. I think we need to move on with it.”

Also discussed during the executive committee’s meeting with the president was the recent combination of APERC and STHC the senate just approved.

There was no specific language in the approved proposal that stated if a member of the pool was chosen to be on one of those two committees and they had any conflicts of interest, they would have to withdraw themselves from serving.

The senate decided to allow that conversation, and the specifics of the new contract this combination will create, to happen between the union and administration.

The senate also approved Melissa Ames, professor of English and director of English education, as the recipient of the Luis Clay Mendez Distinguished Service Award.

Brooke Schwartz can be reached at 581-2812 or at bsschwartz@eiu.edu.

https://www.dailyeasternnews.com/2018/10/17/faculty-senate-looks-at-solutions-with-shared-governance-think-tank/