Shared Governance

As former Apple CEO Steve Jobs famously said “it doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”  To a great extent this statement embodies the idea behind shared governance.  Our faculty are some of the smartest people on the planet and we need to listen to them.  They are also on the front line, delivering our curriculum and interacting with our students.  To strengthen this communication between the faculty and administration I implemented the shared governance committee at FHSU – monthly meetings between the University Executive Leadership Team and the Faculty Senate executive team.  The photograph shows the inaugural meeting of this group.  At Radford, I invited the Senate President to participate in my weekly meetings with my leadership team and was in turn invited to attend Senate Executive Team meetings. I have also broadened faculty participation in shared governance more generally by increasing the number and scope of University committees.

I have significant experience with shared governance from the faculty perspective.  As a faculty member I served on the Senate Executive Committee at Creighton and the Faculty Senates at Ferris State and Penn State.