The University of Idaho Faculty Senate discussed a set of revisions to the faculty-staff handbook addressing administrative evaluations at its Tuesday meeting.
Faculty Senate Secretary Liz Brandt said the policy was changed to incorporate a process which faculty members could use to call for the review of an administrator they are unsatisfied with. The revisions propose that a review would be triggered if 50 percent of the faculty in a unit the administrator supervises signs off on a petition.
The first concern with this new policy was raised by Sen. Chantal Vella.
Vella was concerned about faculty confidentiality. The provision states that all names would be kept confidential when collected by the Institutional Effectiveness and Accreditation committee.
But Vella was concerned that there is no specific assurance in the faculty-staff handbook that the names would remain confidential after they had been processed by the committee.
Sen. Michelle Benedum added that some faculty were very concerned with putting their names on petitions like these because they believed that information could later become public. Brandt agreed that the language about confidentiality in the handbook needed to be revised to ensure faculty members that their decision to sign or not sign these petitions would be kept confidential.
Faculty Senate Vice-Chair Terry Grieb said not only names should be kept confidential, but also vote percentages. He said if there was ever a petition that garnered near 50 percent of faculty support within a unit was made public, it could heavily impact confidence in an administrator.
Sen. Charles Tibbals asked why the policy states that reviews can only be initiated by faculty members and not staff members. Brandt responded that this policy specifically refers to an administrator in a faculty appointed position, so staff can provide input, but she didn’t feel like most staff would consider these petitions directly relevant to their jobs.
She also said it could be worth making clearer in the policy that staff members can provide input if they would like to.
Brandt suggested that because of these concerns raised during the meeting the policy should be sent back to the Faculty Affairs Committee (FAC) for more revisions to be made. The Faculty Senate voted unanimously to take this course of action. The policy will be sent back to FAC with suggestions to revise the sections that raised concern during the meeting.
Gavin Green can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @gavingreenphoto