Apparently it is a topic of interest and discussion in many places.
A few years ago, organizers at the American Association of University Professors had to cancel a conference on shared governance for lack of interest. This year, they gave it another shot and were pleasantly surprised, to say the least: applications flooded in and they ultimately had to turn people away….
Attendees found solidarity among others who are fed up with similar experiences. A common theme of the workshops and panels was the loss of faculty consultation during financial crises, with panelists drawing on their institutions’ experiences to offer advice and strategies to preserve shared governance. Audience members frequently chimed in with questions, and articulated their feelings of exclusion from administrative budgetary and academic decisions.
While the us vs. them mentality was certainly expressed by many attendees, it wasn’t omnipresent. A handful of panelists took the opposite approach, pairing educators with administrators to demonstrate that it is indeed possible to work in harmony — and echoing the conference theme that it’s wrong to do anything but.
The rest is available HERE.
The Harold Lounge 