End of Year Review: What We Accomplished

I went into this year without a particular agenda, aside from maintaining the healthy operation of the Faculty Senate, its standing committees, and the shared governance structure as a whole. My plan was to deal with other issues as they came up. That is how I proceeded, following my conscience and doing my best to represent the views of all faculty at Western. This academic year turned out to be challenging beyond expectations, and yet also incredibly productive in terms of the amount of work that the Faculty Senate and its various shared governance committees accomplished.

I am particularly proud of the following accomplishments of the Faculty Senate this year:

Some other accomplishments of the Senate that I helped spearhead, usually with extensive support from colleagues, include:

  • Rectifying a long-standing gap in shared governance by ensuring that every senator was matched to a constituent group and knew who they were to report to and supporting Becky Johnston in creating a webpage for faculty to find their senator and committee representatives
  • Organizing and facilitating a six-event series in support of healthy civic discourse in partnership with the Office of Equity (Becky Johnston and Anita Rodrigues contributed much behind the scenes)
  • Submitting a proposal for the Fraser Lecture Series with Kate Destler (Political Science) in support of healthy civic discourse, a process that including many meetings and many more emails
  • Facilitating numerous contentious discussions on the University budget and pressing the administration to ensure that the process was as fair and as transparent to faculty as possible, and as supportive of the overall health of the institution as possible
  • Participating on numerous councils and committees in support of shared governance
  • Keeping the Senate abreast of and helping to navigate manifold threats to higher education from our own federal government (Becky Johnston's daily digests of news reports were essential)
  • Working with the Ira Hyman (Psychology), Provost Johnson, and Tonya Alexander (Faculty Relations) to create a centralized external harassment reporting system following survey data revealed extensive problems in this area
  • Drafting, with the invaluable assistance of Becky Johnston, and passing new Section II.B.3 of the Faculty Handbook, laying out principles and critical elements of consultation in support of shared governance at WWU
  • Passing a resolution in support of development of “Mutual Academic Defense Compacts” with major facilitation from Faculty Legislative Representative Bidisha Biswas (Political Science)

Aside from the work of the Faculty Senate itself, our various standing committees and their subcommittees also have reported numerous accomplishments. The Academic Coordinating Commission (ACC) reported that it approved 673 curriculum proposals via Curriculum (Western's curriculum management software tool), 908 total if largescale memo approvals are included. ACC averaged 51.8 curriculum approvals per meeting. They also passed over a dozen motions relating to policy work.

The Academic Technology Committee (ATC) has continued discussions of AI, with its chair Derek Moscato and chair of its AI subcommittee George Zhao reporting on their findings about AI-detection software to the Faculty Senate in the Winter quarter. Among its other duties, the ATC also plays a pivotal role in reviewing and ranking proposals for use of the Student Technology Fee.

The Senate Outreach and Continuing Education Committee (SOCEC), chaired by Shawn Knabb (Economics) has also interfaced with the Senate in several ways this year, including speaking with us regarding the status of the WWU in the High Schools program. As is detailed in Robert Squires' report to the Senate committee, Outreach and Continuing Education has undergone numerous changes in the past year as a result of significant restructuring related to budget reductions.

The Senate Library Committee has also been occupied this year with issues such as turnover in the Dean's role, staffing reductions, collections budget shortfalls, and issues relating to the Operational Student Employees strike.

As representative of nearly 1,000 faculty to the Board of Trustees and the President's Cabinet, I take pride in having been responsible, honest, and direct in holding colleagues accountable, even when that approach was not welcomed and was perceived as crossing “out of my lane” or “throwing people under the bus” to use phrases that were popular this year. But in my view and the view of many faculty colleagues who have expressed appreciation, standing up for—and taking risks on behalf of—the faculty is exactly what shared governance at WWU needs. Politely ignoring problems promotes a comfortable feeling for some people but leads to a resentment that slowly erodes the integrity of the whole system.

There is more I could say about recent happenings in shared governance at Western, but probably by this point I have said enough.

I am happy to report that Erika McPhee-Shaw (ESCI) will soon be taking over as the next Faculty Senate President. She is looking forward to the new role and I am confident that she will serve the faculty well. I am also pleased that James Ray (MUS) is stepping up as Faculty Senate Vice President/President Elect. 

Let’s keep up the good momentum!

Michael Slouber
Faculty Senate President
Professor in Global Humanities and Religions

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