Faculty Senate
Welcome to the faculty of D'Youville. You will hear us referred to as "the faculty". We consider ourselves to be part of something larger than ourselves. Faculty have an integral role in the successs of the students, the institution, and our professions. Our service of the public good through scholarly research, professional activities, and education of students distinguishes our role from that of others in society. I encourage you to embrace and develop all aspects of your new role here at D'Youville. It will take time; none of us fulfilled all aspects on our first day on campus. Set a reasonable plan for yourself and ask for help when you need it. Your fellow faculty and the Faculty Senate are here to support you in your professional development.
Faculty have a unique role in the governance of higher education institutions. Shared governance structures at US institutions have three main elements: the Board of Trustees, the Faculty, and the Administration. Each is expected to participate in decision making on the campus with varying levels of authority and input based on the type of decision being made. For example, curricular and academic policy decisions traditionally are within the purview of the faculty while decisions about the mission of the organization are within the purview of the Board of Trustees.
The Faculty Senate is an important part of our shared governance structure at D'Youville and is a meaningful college service opportunity open to fulltime faculty members. The Faculty Senate is the place where faculty from across the campus come together to vote on decisions related to curriculum and academic policies that impact the campus.
You are now part of the faculty for a particular department or program. The faculty within a department are responsible for decisions related to individual programs.There will be a program director or chair of your department who reports to a dean. Each academic dean is responsible for one of the four schools on campus. Therefore, if there is a need to change the curriculum of a course within your major, that would be voted on by the faculty in your department and submitted to your school curriculum committee. Final approval would come from the dean of your school.
The Senate's role is to provide faculty voice on decisons that impact students from more than one school. A decision to change a course that is taken by students from more than one school or a new program to be offered on campus would come to the Senate for discussion and vote rather than being handled by a single department. The Senate serves as the voice of the faculty as a whole in shared governance.
I have created an 8 minute video introduction to the structure of the Faculty Senate and the Senate subcommittees. Below that there are links to our Senate Teams site where we house all of our working documents. If you have trouble accessing our team, please feel free to reach out to me at garrityb@dyc.edu. Sometimes I need to add new faculty individually to our site. I will be more than happy to do that for you.
I look forward to both meeting you in person and to working with you on our shared responsibilities for governance and service of the public good.
Bonnie Fox Garrity
Professor of Business
President of the Faculty Senate
Intro Video
Links
The Faculty Senate documents are housed on our shared Teams site at this link Links to an external site..
Welcome and I look forward to working with you.
Bonnie