The Faculty Senate will vote through 8 a.m. June 3 on a resolution to expand the University of Michigan’s central faculty governance system to include clinical professors, archivists, curators and lecturers.
If the resolution passes, the Faculty Senate effectively will increase its size by about two-thirds.
The vote, which begins at 8 a.m. May 31 and continues for 72 hours, comes after the Senate added lecturers to the list of those covered by the proposed resolution.
The Faculty Senate currently includes more than 4,269 tenured and tenure-track instructional faculty, research faculty, librarians, deans and executive officers from the Dearborn, Flint and Ann Arbor campuses, including Michigan Medicine.
According to the Faculty Senate Office, U-M has approximately 1,810 clinical professors, archivists and curators, and about 1,056 lecturers covered by the resolution — those with at least a 50% appointment as lecturers I, II, III or IV.
The Faculty Senate met May 25 to discuss the resolution and the proposed amendment to include lecturers. Following the meeting, Senate members voted on the amendment via electronic ballot.
Of the 1,709 Faculty Senate members who cast ballots, 1,018 favored the amendment, 653 opposed it, and 38 abstained.
With the amendment now added to the resolution, Faculty Senate members will have 72 hours to vote online. Results will be announced at 9 a.m. June 5.
During the May 25 meeting, members spoke in favor of and against the resolution.
Those who supported the resolution argued that clinical track faculty, archivists, curators and lecturers are an integral component of U-M’s international reputation, scholarship and excellence.
Others said lecturers already have sufficient representation through their union, the Lecturers’ Employee Organization. There also were concerns that the resolution would give too much power to the Medical School.
If the Faculty Senate approves the resolution, the Board of Regents will be asked to change the Regents’ Bylaws, which describe Senate membership.
The Faculty Senate is the largest of three components in U-M’s central faculty governance system. The others are the Senate Assembly, which consists of 74 elected faculty members from the three campuses, and the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs, the system’s nine-member executive arm.
