Manoa Faculty Senate Executive Committee Summer Actions

Appointments

The Manoa Faculty Senate Executive Committee members have made the following appintments.

General Education Committee and Boards:
Helen Baroni, Carlos Andrade, Jim Marsh, Stephen Canham, Naomi Losch, Nick Schweizer, Dean Alegado, Joan Dodgson, Byron Gangnes, Ruth Bingham, Puakea Nogelmeier, Andrew Crislip, Rober Babcock, John Zuern, Lydon Wester, Richard Bigus and David Bess

UARC Committee:
Roy Wilkens (HIG), Danielle Conway-Jones (Law), Calvin Pang (Law), David Ross (Mathematics), Sara Rutter, Chair (Library), Jon Osorio (Hawaiian Studies), John Learned (Physics) and Jim Tiles (liaison to SEC)

Food Services Advisory Committee:
Continued appointment of Swee Berkey pending new appointment from CFS.

Search Committee for Vice Chancellor for Students:
Jeff Brooks-Harris (OSA), Ann Bayer (ED), Linda Duckworth (ISS)

Athletics Advisory Board:
Barry Baker, Gay Satsuma, Brent Sipes, Larry Nitz

Council on Intercollegiate Athletics:
Referred the matter of choosing the Senate's representative to Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics (COIA) to the Committee on Athletics

All Campus Council of Faculty Chairs:
Robert Bley-Vroman is a representative by virtue of being Senate chair. Jim Tiles will serve as second representative.

Chancellor's Special Committee on Faculty Housing:
Eric Guentner

Miscellany

Transmitted to the administration: Faculty Housing Life Cycle Cost Analysis by the CAB subcommittee on Facilities, Auxiliary Services, and CIP

Transmitted to the administration: Interim Report on Faculty Housing Qualitative Survey by the CAB Subcommittee on Facilities, Auxiliary Services, and CIP

Concurred with the proposal to award an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters to Madam Shen Xiaomei Master Jingju (Beijing/Peking Opera) Artist and Teacher

Chancellor Search

Stated a position on the transition in Manoa chancellorship and the process of appointing an interim chancellor. Wrote a memorandum to the President stating this position. Posted this to the faculty list-serv for comment.

29 June 2005
TO: David McClain, Interim President
FROM: Robert Bley-Vroman, Chair, Manoa Faculty Senate
RE: Transition in the Manoa chancellorship

On June 22, 2005, the Board of Regents reached a decision not to renew the contract of Chancellor Peter Englert. Chancellor Englert's term will end July 31. You have told us that you expect to recommend the appointment of an interim chancellor, with a term of two years, at the Board of Regents meeting of July 18-19, 2005. You are now considering who should fill this position.

The Executive Committee of the Manoa Faculty Senate has considered the matter of the leadership transition at Manoa, especially the process by which this transition should be made, and the role of the Faculty in this process. Rather than make a two-year interim appointment in July, the SEC feels that an alternative approach should be adopted.

We request that time be made on the agenda of the July 18-19 Board meeting for the Senate to present its view.

The transition has two components: first, the process for filling the Chancellor's office temporarily, and, second, the process for selecting a permanent Chancellor. We present our positions on each of these matters separately, below.

1. Choice of a temporary chancellor.
   1. The SEC strongly feels that an appointment should be made of an acting chancellor with a term limited to the duration of a search for permanent chancellor; an appointment should not be made of an interim chancellor with a longer term.
   2. The process for selecting a permanent chancellor should begin immediately.
   3. The choice of an acting chancellor should respect the following guidelines:
      • The acting chancellor should be understood not to be a candidate for the post of permanent chancellor.
      • The choice should not be made from among the ranks of current deans or directors. A dean serving temporarily as chancellor will have difficulty (or will at least be perceived as having difficulty) in balancing responsibilities to the college and to the campus, especially in making difficult decisions which may affect the home college.
      • The acting chancellor should not be thought of as a "change agent." The chief responsibility of the acting chancellor will be to hold the course and to consolidate gains. We are interested in achieving stability and continuity, especially with respect to the implementation of the Board-approved organization of the Chancellor's office, and with respect to moves toward greater transparency, and efficiency.
      • The acting chancellor should be broadly trusted and respected within the Manoa community.
      • The acting chancellor should be committed to Manoa's mission.
   4. Based on our conversation, we expect the President will inform the SEC, in advance of any public statement and in advance of any recommendation to the Board, of his recommendation for an acting chancellor. We anticipate that the President will want to make public his recommendation about July 11. Toward the end of the preceding week, perhaps on July 7 or 8, we expect that the President will submit a name or names to the SEC. The SEC will inform the President if it feels that a candidate is unacceptable.
   5. At the July Board meeting, the SEC will present the Senate's views on the transition process.

      These proposals are based on the assumption that the University will be appointing a temporary chancellor to act only during the search process for a permanent chancellor. If the Board should decide for a less limited acting appointment, or to delay significantly the search for a permanent chancellor, then a much more elaborate search process for an interim will be necessary; it is impossible that this can be completed in July; it would have to wait at least until faculty are present on campus in the fall.

2. Selection of a permanent chancellor: Manoa-driven and faculty-led.
   1. The process for selecting a permanent Manoa Chancellor should begin as soon as possible. It is not necessary to delay the process so that the next System president can participate.
   2. The process for choosing a permanent chancellor must be Manoa-driven, and it must be faculty-led. We contrast this with a selection process initiated and led by the System administration. We accept that the final recommendation to the Board will be made by the President. However, the Manoa campus, and specifically the Manoa faculty, must be in charge of the process by which candidates are identified and evaluated.

The SEC would welcome working with you toward agreement on the process of selecting both a temporary and permanent chancellor prior to the meeting of the Board of Regents.

Addressed the Board of Regents at the meeting at which the appointment of Denise Konan was announced

Madam Chairman, members of the Board of Regents, my name is Jim Tiles. I am a professor of philosophy at Manoa and, in the absence of Robert Bley-Vroman, am acting chair of the Executive Committee of the Manoa Faculty Senate.

I wish to convey the gratitude and satisfaction the Senate Executive Committee (SEC) feels over the proposal to appoint Professor Denise Konan as Interim Chancellor of Manoa and over the process of consultation that led up to this proposal. The SEC did not itself did not constitute as search committee, nor did we adopt a position on the merits of particular candidates. Instead, in a memorandum to the President, we articulated a set of principles to govern the process of filling the Office of Chancellor of Manoa, both in the immediate future and in the long-term. We have provided the Board secretary with a copy of this memorandum. (The text of this memorandum was also distributed to faculty senators and other interested faculty members to see if faculty objected to the position taken by the SEC. No objections were expressed.)

The President met with the SEC before making his final recommendation, in order to ensure that his recommendation would not conflict with the general principles we had agreed on. The SEC is content with the role it had in the process and convinced that the proposal the President has made is in the best interests of our campus.

Manoa is at a crucial juncture. Throughout the 1990s faculty had called earnestly for the offices of President of the UH System and Chancellor of the Manoa Campus to be separated. Whatever problems there have been in the four years since the separation of the offices, faculty at Manoa appear now to be more firmly behind this arrangement than ever before. Having in the Chancellor's Office a staff focused on the administration of Manoa has started to correct a number of long-standing problems of governance and operational management, which have plagued our campus.

Professor Konan's experience of working in the Chancellor's Office, her tactful handling of many difficult problems during her time there and her evident commitment to improving the performance of all units of the campus suggest that the progressive trends the faculty have seen coming out of the Chancellor's Office will not be seriously disrupted while a search is conducted for a permanent chancellor. Confident as we are that the campus has been placed in good hands, we ask that you join with us in carefully charting the course to an expeditious appointment of a permanent chancellor.

Central to this next crucial appointment for Manoa lie a number of unresolved questions about how our campus relates to a System, of which it alone represents almost all its the research resources and over half of its instructional resources. How that relationship is perceived will influence how it is thought best to proceed with the two appointments to permanent positions now facing you, the President of the System and the Chancellor of Manoa.

It has been argued that to ensure the best pool of candidates for the post of chancellor, the prospective candidates should know who is to be the President of the System. The SEC believes to the contrary that the best pool of candidates for the post of Chancellor will depend on the perceptions of prospective candidates of the degree of managerial autonomy they will be able to exercise. To this end, it would be best for the search for a permanent Chancellor to be Manoa driven and faculty led and we urge that it be made clear to candidates that in assessing the performance of the person who is appointed Chancellor, the Board of Regents will listen to the judgement not only of the System administration, but views of the major constituencies on campus: the students through their Senate, the faculty through their Senate and the Council of Deans and Directors.

Although her colleagues in the Faculty Senate will miss the contribution Professor Konan would have made to the work of the SEC in the coming year, we are confident her appointment will place the campus in extremely capable hands and we warmly support the President's appointment of Prof. Konan to be Interim Chancellor of Manoa.

Task Order Review Committee

Vice Chancellor Gary Ostrander approached the SEC to float the idea of a review committee for task orders as a potential component in administering an eventual UARC. The SEC advised him that it was not clear that a UARC was a good idea, or given a UARC, whether such a committee was a good idea. However, if he were to propose a review committee for task orders (or for any similar committee to review proposed research projects), then such a committee should be a faculty committee, not a faculty-administration committee, that it should have a restricted and clear charge, that it should be required to make regular reports to ensure transparency and openness, that it should have sunset clause, and that the Senate should have to authority to decide whether to continue such a committee. Below is the memo sent to Ostrander summarizing the SEC's response.

Response to Vice Chancellor Gary Ostrander's request for comment on the membership and function of a possible Task Order Review Commitee for the UARC. Manoa Faculty Senate Executive Committee, June 27, 2005.

In commenting on this proposed hypothetical mechanism, the SEC is not endorsing the establishment of a UARC. The SEC only says that if there were a UARC, and if there were a committee reviewing task orders, then the system outlined below seems a good one.

Task-order review mechanism

1. [Appointment] Review of task orders for the UARC program shall be conducted by an ad hoc committee appointed by the Faculty Senate.
2. [Composition] The committee shall consist of a diverse selection of seven faculty.
3. [Charge] The Committee is charged to advise the Vice-Chancellor for Research as to the whether each task order complies with applicable University policies.
4. [Reporting] The Committee shall report the results of their review to the Faculty Senate on a quarterly basis during the initial year of UARC operations.
5. [Term and Sunset] The Committee shall be appointed for a term of one year. At the end of a year of operation, the Committee shall advise the Senate whether to institutionalize a review of UARC task orders.

Comments:

There is a question as to whether a committee appointed by the Senate appropriately reports to a Vice-Chancellor. We would like to hear the Vice Chancellor's views on this matter.

After weighty deliberation, we offer that the BoR policy on classified research is the only hurdle currently in place that would justify a faculty committee's advice to reject a contract or task order.