The previous policy from 1974 of placing the old SIR surveys in the library had been passed at a time when they were used for teaching development. Since that time, they have become increasingly used for purposes of hiring, tenure, promotion, and salary decisions. Given this change which makes them part of a professor's personnel file, placing them in public must be kept on a voluntary basis. There have been unfortunate statements suggesting that if not enough faculty volunteer to place them in public, then the question will be revisited by the University Senate with a view to possibly making public placement mandatory. The Faculty Senate strongly defends the right of each faculty member to voluntarily decide whether to have these materials placed in public view.
A total of 167 faculty approved placing their Fall 1997 CATS results
on the web. There were a total of 796 faculty at Villanova not counting
the law school, which has its own evaluation system. This means that 79.02%
of the faculty in effect refused permission to place their CATS results
on the web.
For the past eighteen months, the working group has met many times and considered input from all constituencies, including a meeting with a member of the Board of Trustees. All governance reform plans and the various evaluations of the University Senate conducted over the past decade are being used as resources in formulating a draft report which is expected to be submitted to the Rules and Review Committee in four to six weeks and then to the Executive Committee.
The latter committee will then decide whether to submit the report to the University Senate with recommendations for changes in the Senate Constitution. If this occurs, and the Senate votes to change their constitution, those changes will have to be approved by the President and the Board of Trustees.
So far, the general thrust of the draft report is how to change the
University Senate to make it more efficient and more responsive to the
various university constituencies. The Administration is not entertaining
any channel other than the Joint Working Group through which faculty participation
in university governance can be enhanced. It should be noted that a recent
plan proposed by the VPAA includes the provision that any plan be submitted
to the faculty for a referendum conducted by the Faculty Senate and The
Faculty Affairs Committee of the University Senate.
"Cooperative." "Reliable."
"Courteous." "Patient!" Ed Castrege serves as the textbook manager of the
bookstore, and random inquiries to assess faculty perceptions of Ed's work
uncovered an unstoppable flow of praise. One faculty member launched into
a fifteen minute commendation of Ed Castrege with the words "One h--l of
a guy." As several persons testified, "when he says he will get back to
you, he gets back to you!" In fact, Ed goes beyond prompt replies, and
often initiates the call to inform a faculty or department of a developing
situation. Not only did faculty and staff praise the extraordinary service
attitude of Ed Castrege, but also he received a dozen kudos for his technical
expertise. He is "on top of his business" and "very knowledge-able about
everything." He knows the reliability of various publishers, probable time
to delivery, the current status of an order; one faculty said Ed "just
zaps onto his computer and tells me what is happening." The traditional
notion of textbook is changing, and Ed Castrege has helped several faculty
cope with coursepacks.
The Facultas Award provides public credit to those who serve the Villanova community in a particularly creative or notable was, but may go somewhat unacknowledged. Recipients of the award are announced in FACULTAS and a plaque is subsequently presented to the recipient by Faculty Senate leaders. Nominations may be submitted to Professor Robert Styer, Mathematical Sciences.
Villanova
has only recently added 2 staff representatives. Administration, on the
other hand, is represented at more than twice the rate of national norms,
13 seats rather than 6. Representation for students is also abnormally
high. This peculiarity is, however, not surprising, since, as David R.
Contosta stated in the sesquicentennial history of Villanova University,
it was the student demonstrations in April 1969 "that convinced the administration
and the Board of Trustees to endorse the idea [of the University Senate]."
The national study was conducted by Joseph E. Gilmour, Vice-President
for Strategic Planning at Georgia Institute of Technology and was assisted
by a grant from the Lilly Endowment. 402 institutions responded with a
51% response rate. The median overall size for governance bodies is 44.
Faculty are included in all governance bodies nationally, but administration
is included in only 59%, staff in 25%, and students in 28%.