After six colleges on the campus neglected to update organization plans in recent years, University Senate members are now crafting guidelines to streamline the process and monitor these colleges more closely.
Each college is required to update its plan of organization — which outlines the representation each constituency in the college holds, including students, staff, faculty and research members — every 10 ears. Previously, the senate did not have a procedure in place to ensure each college reviewed itself before the benchmark. Senate representatives said they are now in the process of creating these new guidelines since several colleges forgot to update their organization plans on time.
The senate is currently looking at plans for the Maryland Fire Rescue Institute, the School of Public Health, the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, the College of Journalism, the School of Architecture Planning and Preservation and the College of Education. Officials said if the colleges do not regularly update these plans, more comprehensive projects — such as reorganizing or merging departments — can become more difficult tasks since the colleges will have to make sure their plans are in line with current senate legislation.
Last year, senate officials reviewed plans of organization for each college and then contacted the schools that had out-of-date plans. Senate Director Reka Montfort said the senate will begin employing this method, since it’s difficult for the colleges to keep track of when its plans were last updated. In addition, the senate will provide the colleges with materials to make the process smoother.
The colleges must follow a set of rules when updating their plans to make sure they comply with current senate legislation, as well as adhere to the rules of shared governance.
But Montfort said confusing guidelines have made it difficult for colleges to take care of revisions on their own in a time-efficient manner.
“What we’re going through now is that we need to come up with a system of ensuring colleges are sticking to this timeline, so if our office is initiating the process, colleges are generally very good about what’s doing what’s expected of the process — they just don’t understand the timeline,” Montfort said. “It’s basically a much more efficient way of handling it. … We’re initiating the process and giving them the resources they need to make this all possible.”
Senate Chair and geography professor Eric Kasischke said by crafting policies that ensure the colleges update organization plans, colleges will avoid the hassle of revising their plans every time the senate passes new legislation.
“It’s a balancing act because you want them to keep their policies current, but you don’t want them changing all the time,” Kasischke said. “The senate office reorganized four years ago … but one thing they didn’t have was a way of tracking when the colleges revised their plans of organization.”
Recently, reorganizing and overhauling the College of Education — as well as merging the colleges of chemical and life sciences and chemical, mathematical and physical sciences — was made more difficult because the colleges had out-of-date plans of organization, Montfort said.
Senate Coordinator Glen Fuhrmeister, who is overseeing the committee responsible for monitoring the colleges’ plans of organization, said ensuring the colleges have representation for all constituencies is a crucial value for the university.
“Organization is important because you make sure there’s shared governance, which is a major part of our existence,” he said. “It’s important that all of the colleges have their plans up-to-date and make sure all the constituencies are represented, so it’s more of a protection for all.”
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