Chatham University’s shared governance committee is proposing the creation of a faculty senate to increase faculty participation in University decision making.
Committee Chair Dr. David Rossbach met with the Board of Trustees in October to discuss the committee’s proposal, in preparation for a final presentation and a Board vote in the spring. Rossbach said a faculty senate would be a significant change to the current governing structure of separate and disconnected committees, increase transparency and give faculty more input in decisions, including in regards to admissions, hiring, curriculum and class schedules.
The five-member shared governance committee has been meeting since it was formed in June 2023 as a subcommittee to the University’s main governing committee at the request of thenVice President of Academic Affairs Lisa Lambert. The committee was tasked with considering what could be done to give the faculty more input in how the University operates and make recommendations to the Board of Trustees about how to enhance shared governance.
“Chatham’s president, leadership team and Board of Trustees have supported the effort to form a faculty senate since it was first introduced,” said Bill Campbell, vice president of operations & communications, in an email.
The committee’s first task was to survey other universities’ approaches to shared governance and consider potential models that Chatham could adopt.
“We’re an outlier in the fact that we don’t have a faculty senate,” Rossbach said. “Having a faculty senate of some type is very much the norm in higher ed, and shared governance is a guiding principle across higher education.”
Rossbach said that the faculty pushed for greater shared governance because their voices are not fully heard when they make recommendations to the administration under the current structure of faculty committees.
“The current structure is very explicit in the faculty manual that committees are an advisory role to the administration and as such our recommendations can and have been ignored in the past,” Rossbach said. “Our processes in the past have not always been particularly transparent, and I don’t think that has served the decisions of the University very well.”
The shared governance committee is exploring revisions to the faculty manual, which is the governing document for the University faculty, that would codify the creation of a faculty senate to give the faculty more participation in the decisionmaking process.
“I think the quality of decision making will increase greatly,” Rossbach said.
The recommended changes to the faculty manual must first go before all full-time faculty for a vote. Then, they must be presented to the Board of Trustees for a final vote on whether the University will adopt the proposed model of shared governance.
“Chatham looks forward to this process continuing and to the committee’s presentation of a formal proposal in 2026,” Campbell said by email.
Rossbach emphasized the importance of decision-making being a collaborative process and the ability of a faculty senate to enhance that process.
“Shared governance is about the various stakeholders of the University all having a voice in decision making, having their voices heard so that at the end of the day, the best decisions can be made,” Rossbach said.
