YES Committee seeks comments on "shared governance" document

The YSU Excellence Steering Committee is seeking campus input on a draft of a document that defines "shared governance" on campus.

The draft is available from the Office of the Provost's webpage.

"In order to engage our faculty and staff in this process of defining shared governance, the committee asks that the entire university community take time to read and comment upon the draft document," Provost Martin Abraham and Chet Cooper, president of the Academic Senate, said in an email to campus. "We wish to hear from the university community."

The deadline to respond is no later than May 15. Comments can be anonymously submitted at
http://www.surveygizmo.com/online-survey-not-found/?utm_source=Customer%2BSurveys&utm_medium=Redirect&utm_campaign=Online%2BSurvey%20Not%20Found&__sid=www.surveygizmo.com%2Fs3%2F3505115%2FShared-Governance-Feedback. The comments will be compiled by the Office of Assessment and presented to the committee, which will then work to incorporate the suggestions into the document. Following review by the Academic Senate, the document will then be presented to the Board of Trustees for final action.

In response to the Great Colleges to Work for Survey results released this past fall semester, the Office of the Provost and the Academic Senate jointly formed the YES Committee to address the concerns identified. The committee is composed of faculty, staff, students, trustees, and part-time faculty who have met biweekly for the past five months. The agendas and minutes of the committee’s deliberations and actions are available on the Academic Senate’s website.

"One of the main issues identified was to improve shared governance at YSU," Cooper and Abraham, co-chairs of the committee, said in their letter to campus. "As the committee began to discuss this matter, it became clear that there were many different ideas about what constitutes shared governance. To this end, the committee concluded that a definition of shared governance was essential to serve as a foundation 'to foster mutually reinforcing relationships that expand the opportunities for cooperation and leadership while facilitating judicious, yet creative, university governance.'"

The draft definition of shared governance was adapted from a similar document originally developed by the University of Louisiana – Monroe.