From The Faculty Chair

An Agenda for the Year Ahead

Lorna J. Gibson

Over the last year, a number of colleagues have asked me "What does the Chair of the Faculty do?" I'd like to begin by describing some of the main duties of the position and what I plan to work on during my term.

The Chair of the Faculty represents the Faculty in a wide variety of forums and provides leadership in faculty governance, both formally, through the committee structure and interacting with the administration, and informally, in meetings with various groups. Faculty governance at MIT works through the standing committees of the faculty (such as the Committee on the Undergraduate Program or the Committee on Curricula) and Institute faculty meetings. The Chair of the Faculty chairs the Faculty Policy Committee (FPC), which oversees and coordinates the work of the other committees, reviews proposals from committees for presentation at faculty meetings, and formulates policy on matters of concern to the faculty, for approval by the faculty [Rules and Regulations of the Faculty , Section 1.72] . The Officers of the Faculty (the Chair, the Associate Chair and the Secretary) meet with the President and other senior officers of the Institute to set the agenda of faculty meetings. The Chair of the Faculty meets regularly with the chairs of the standing faculty committees as well as with various administrators.

The Chair also addresses faculty grievances and oversees adherence to the end-of-term regulations. The Chair sits on Academic Council, acting as a representative of the faculty to the administration, and attends monthly Department Head lunches as well as meetings of the MIT Corporation.

The second question I am asked is "Why did you decide to do it?"

For me, it is an opportunity to serve the faculty and the Institute, to interact with colleagues from across the Institute, and to learn more about the administrative side of MIT.

The agenda for FPC for the coming year will include a review of some of the standing committees of the faculty, following FPC's discussions of faculty governance last year (see the article in the MIT Faculty Newsletter by Rafael L. Bras, September/October 2004 issue and a response by Lotte Bailyn, Stephen Graves, and Kim Vandiver, November/December 2004 issue). In particular, the Committee on Outside Professional Activities and the Committee on Faculty-Administration have been relatively inactive in recent years and their roles and charges need to be reconsidered. The Committee on Graduate School Programs is large, with a representative from every department that recommends candidates for graduate degrees. As a result, it is less effective than it could be. One alternative would be to develop a committee structure at the graduate level that would parallel the roles of the Committee on Undergraduate Programs, the Committee on Curricula, and the Committee on Academic Performance at the undergraduate level. For instance, there could be a Committee on Graduate School Policy that would review proposed graduate programs, develop and disseminate best practices for graduate student recruitment, diversity, conflict resolution, advisor-advisee relationships, mentoring, etc., along with a Committee on Graduate Student Academic Performance.

Last year, FPC had extensive discussions on institutional-level international engagements and the principles that such engagements should satisfy (see the article by Rafael L. Bras, MIT Faculty Newsletter, November/December 2004). The Faculty Policy Committee recommended the formation of a new standing committee of the faculty to discuss the extent to which proposals for future institutional-level international engagements satisfy those principles, while acknowledging that the decision to commit MIT to such projects lies with the top administrative officers of MIT (the President, Provost, and Chancellor).

A second agenda item, arising from meeting with faculty from various departments over the last year and from discussions with the other Officers of the Faculty (Bruce Tidor, Associate Chair, and Diana Henderson, Secretary) is improving communication between the administration and the faculty so that the faculty are more engaged in decision-making processes. FPC will be discussing how this might be accomplished. One possibility is to make better use of existing opportunities for communication between the administration and the faculty through, for instance, the Committee on Faculty-Administration or the Department Head lunches. Another is to make more effective use of the Institute Faculty Meetings, such as introducing meetings to define issues and agenda items of concern to the faculty that may not arise through the formal faculty governance committee structure.

The Task Force on the Undergraduate Educational Commons, chaired by Dean Silbey, will be visiting FPC this fall prior to giving a progress report at a faculty meeting later on in the term. I urge you to attend the faculty meeting for what should be a very interesting presentation.

If you have suggestions for other issues for FPC to consider, please contact me (ljgibson@mit.edu), Bruce Tidor (tidor@mit.edu), Associate Chair of the Faculty, or Diana Henderson (dianah@mit.edu), Secretary of the Faculty.

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