Straight Talk from the President - March 11, 2009
Dear Colleagues,
I know many of you saw news stories this weekend concerning the budget for next fiscal year. The reports I saw indicated that higher education was scheduled to take an additional reduction in state appropriations of $219 million. At the current time, that is all the information that is available. Governor Jindal is scheduled to present his budget to the Legislature on Friday, March 13, 2009. The allocation of the reduction to individual campuses has not been determined. As always, we will keep you informed with the latest information as it becomes available.
On another note, the Shared Governance Committee completed the latest phase of its task and recommended that we develop a Staff Senate to compliment our current Faculty Senate. The Shared Governance Committee was assisted in arriving at this conclusion by a subcommittee of professional staff that developed the staff senate concept, I want to thank the Shared Governance Committee, ably chaired by Dr. Paxton Oliver, for its tireless devotion to improving the governance climate of the university. The members of the committee worked many hours reviewing sister campus governance structures, holding forums to solicit your input, and developing a set of policies that will serve us long into the future. I also want to thank the staff sub-committee for accepting the responsibility to represent all the staff, both classified and unclassified, in moving to a new level of commitment in developing a better ULM.
In the spirit of the recommendation from the Shared Governance Committee, I recently appointed a representative group of employees to begin to develop the constitution, bylaws, membership, responsibilities, and operational details associated with the new staff senate. The members of this committee, who will also operate as the interim staff senate are: Susan Duggins, Allison Bryant, Brenda Allen, Cori Scroggins, Pamela Saulsberry, Chris Ringo, Tasha Fisher, Lindsey Wilkerson, David Nicklas, Lillian Brown and Camille Currier.
You will notice that this committee has Academic Department Heads, Executive staff, Directors, and professionals as well as classified employees. At the conclusion of their work, I would expect that the membership will be more clearly defined, but I wanted to make sure that all groups were present at the table in the beginning. I asked Susan Duggins, a member of the original Shared Governance Committee, to Chair the initial Staff Senate. The current thinking is for this group to deliver by the beginning of the fall semester a fully functioning staff senate model. Please give the members of the group the benefit of your ideas as they work to improve our governance environment.
In addition, the Faculty Senate, earlier this year, delivered a report to me and the Shared Governance Committee. The Faculty Senate report included welcome improvements to the governance and communication processes currently in use at ULM. I want to thank the Faculty Senate, again ably led by Dr. Donna Rhorer, for their invaluable suggestions. The Faculty Senate suggested, among other things, that we have a biannual forum of all of those included in the decision-making process on campus. The forum would include representatives from the Faculty Senate, the Staff Senate, Student Government Association, Alumni Association, University Committee Chairs and the Administration. It would provide a continuing and open dialogue of our decisions, our decision-making process and ways to improve the governance culture at ULM. The Faculty Senate also suggested that we develop a Governance Newsletter by which we could inform the campus community of each entity’s actions and the actions of the Governance Forum. All of the recommendations of the Faculty Senate are directed at improving our shared decision-making and communicating those actions to the larger community. I applaud the Faculty Senate for its insightful and collegial recommendations. Again, I will keep all of you posted as this governance process develops.
What comes to mind is the old story of watching the duck swimming across the bayou. While the duck is gently gliding across the top of the water, it is paddling as fast as it can under the water. So are the activities at ULM. This has been, except for the budget cuts, a wonderful and peaceful year. But, all of us are working as fast and as diligently as we can just below the surface to make ULM a better place to work and learn. As your president, I say a heartfelt thank you.
James E. Cofer
President