Graduate Council Minutes
| Meeting Date: | 11/03/2023 |
|---|---|
| Meeting Time: | 10:00 AM |
| Meeting Location: | ZOOM |
Attendance
Other Attendance Information
Four guests were present, regarding the approval of the Faculty Grievance policy. Dr. Noel Wilkin, Provost Dr. Angela Green, Writing Enriched Curriculum Senior Lecturer, Writing & Rhetoric Dr. John Lobur, Professor of Classics Dr. Hans Sinha, Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Clinical Externship Program, Law School
Additional Minutes Notes
Regarding the proposed faculty grievance policy, the Council decided to postpone a vote approving the policy until the December meeting, to allow time for councilors to consider how best to proceed. At the meeting, the guests presented the following: The senators supported the current version of the policy. The provost stated that he felt it needs further work on it. He suggested several concerns, including: --AAUP guidelines that the faculty grievance committee should include faculty members only applies regarding tenure and promotion but not other workplace school and departmental standards. --are chairs and deans to be included or excluded as faculty that can have grievances considered? If so, then why can’t some of their peers be on the committee to help ensure that their cases are dealt with fairly? --how can faculty be expected to know all the policies of the university? The Provost advocated for one or administrators being on the committee to help provide technical info about issues related to the grievances received. He advocates including true experts for the particular cases that are to be considered. --what are grievable issues? Two categories of items are ruled out in the proposed policy, but there could also be more categories of exceptions needed to added in to the policy. --he thought the result of the committee’s decision should be a recommendation by the grievance committee to the provost, not should not be binding to UM. He thinks that the committee and its members might face liability charges if there is a lawsuit, if the committee is actually making the final decision. --why not allow HR to provide advice in the various cases? They are campus experts on many personnel and other subjects. --why is the policy set up such that the grievant can bring a resource person with them to the hearing, but an administrator who is the accused cause of the grievance cannot bring a resource person with them? --the policy suggests that the provost check back with the committee after the final decision has been made to try to get consensus. The provost felt that adding in a step like that undermines the authority of the provost. He thinks it would be best to describe how the provost can explain his decision to interested parties. He thinks that if the committee makes a final binding decision then the committee members may be legally liable in the case of a lawsuit disagreeing with a decision the committee made. Prof. Luber pointed out that most of UM’s peer institutions (they compared to 28 of them) have the grievance committee as faculty only. The AAUP wording is “no officer of the university shall serve on the committee”.