Resolution of the UH Manoa Faculty Senate on Faculty Governance of Cirriculum

Presented to the Mānoa Faculty Senate by the Committee on Administration & Budget (CAB) and the Committee on Academic Planning & Policy (CAPP) for a vote of the full Senate on September 15, 2021, a resolution of the UH Mānoa Faculty Senate on faculty governance of curriculum. Approved by the Mānoa Faculty Senate on September 15, 2021 with 49 votes (94.23%); 3 votes (5.77%) opposed and 1 abstention.

                        Resolution of the UH Mānoa Faculty Senate on Faculty Governance of Curriculum

WHEREAS, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior College and University Commission (WASC WSCUC) WSCUC, in its 2013 Handbook of Accreditation (revised in 2015 and edited in 2018) specifies in its “criteria for review” Criterion 3.10: “The institution’s faculty exercises effective academic leadership and acts consistently to ensure that both academic quality and the institution’s educational purposes and character are sustained.” The guideline for demonstrating compliance with criterion 3.10 states: “The institution clearly defines the governance roles, rights, and responsibilities of all categories of full-time and part-time faculty.”

WHEREAS, the US Supreme Court has identified academic freedom as a right protected by the First Amendment. As the Supreme Court said in Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385 US 589 (1967), “Our Nation is deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned. That freedom is therefore a special concern of the First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.”; and

WHEREAS, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), along with the American Council on Education (ACE) and the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB), in their 1968 “Statement on government of Colleges and Universities,” said: “When an educational goal has been established, it becomes the responsibility primarily of the faculty to determine the appropriate curriculum and procedures of student instruction.”; and

WHEREAS, the Mānoa Faculty Senate has “the responsibility to speak for the faculty on academic policy matters such as: (1) Determining the initiation, review, and evaluation of proposed, probationary, or authorized research, instructional, and academic programs.” (BOR Policy 1.21, B.3.b); and

WHEREAS, “The faculty has primary responsibility for such fundamental academic areas as curriculum content, subject matter, and methods of instruction and research.” (UH Mānoa Faculty Senate Charter Preamble); and

WHEREAS, the February 5, 2015 agreement between UHPA, the Faculty Senates, and Administration (UHPA/BOR Contract, section R-20, Part 1) specifies that: “The University will refer the following topics to Senates ….1) Initiation, review, and evaluation of proposed, probationary, or established research, instructional and academic programs.”; and

WHEREAS, the President of the University of Hawai‘i called for a Summer Institute at the System level to brainstorm on General Education, and

WHEREAS, the UH Mānoa Faculty Senate appreciates the President’s concern for General Education, and

WHEREAS, curriculum decisions for the University of Hawai`i are made by faculty at the campus level, therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED, that the UH Mānoa Faculty Senate reminds the President and the Administration that any results of the Summer Institute, insofar as they involve proposed changes to the Mānoa General Education curriculum and requirements, must come to the UH Mānoa Faculty and, specifically, the UH Mānoa Faculty Senate for discussion and consideration of approval.