Service and Shared Governance, December 17, 1997

SERVICE AND SHARED GOVERNANCE

What is "service?"

Service is non-teaching, non-research, job-related work. Many service activities support the internal functions and governance of the university. These include:

Advising and counseling students.
Sponsoring, advising, or speaking to student organizations.
Chairing and participating on student admissions committees.
Writing letters of recommendation for students and colleagues.
Supervising the development of new courses and programs.
Participating in hiring new colleagues.
Serving on tenure and promotion committees for colleagues.
Holding elective offices on a department Executive Committee or the Faculty Senate.
Holding administrative positions, such as supervising a department's graduate program or a research center.
Serving on state, regional, or national professional organizations.

Is service restricted to university activities?

No. As befits a nationally ranked university, much service takes faculty beyond the campus. These activities include:

Serving on editorial boards of journals and scholarly publishers;
Evaluating research proposals;
Evaluating papers for publication;
Holding offices in state, national and international professional organizations;
Sharing knowledge with farmers and ranchers, businesspeople, educators, and other members of the general public.

What is "shared governance?"

Briefly defined, "shared governance" means that the administration and faculty engage in a joint effort in governing the university. Thus faculty (through the Faculty Senate and various committees on which faculty serve) have a meaningful role and voice in determining the institution's curricular issues; longe-range plans; use of physical resources; budgeting priorities; selection of the university's officers; and all other aspects of life related to the educational process. The following paragraphs give some specific examples of the sorts of activities included in shared governance.

As professionals, university faculty bear primary responsibility for choosing new faculty, evaluating colleagues for promotion, tenure, and salary increases, and overseeing university regulations.

Faculty are also responsible for the curriculum, creating new courses, deleting outdated ones, and minimizing course overlap. Sometimes this means creating a whole new program, such as the George Bush School of Government.

Faculty serve on a network of permanent committees at each level - department, college, and university - to keep the university machinery running smoothly and ensure the quality of the students and curriculum.

This service commitment is perhaps the least visible of faculty efforts, yet it can consume as much time as teaching or research.