The Academic Senate's Executive Council, expressing concern about the "health" of shared governance at UC Davis, last year commissioned a report from a special faculty committee. That report will soon be ready for review and comment at the Academic Senate Web site: http://www.mrak.ucdavis.edu/senate.

Incoming Academic Senate Chair Dan Simmons and Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef recently sat down with Dateline to discuss their views of shared governance, how it's working and how it might be improved.

DATELINE: What does the term "shared governance" mean to each of you?

VANDERHOEF: Shared governance is a concept that varies across the country. At UC, it means that no single campus constituency has full authority for everything that happens within the university. Final authority rests with different entities in different cases. Briefly, the faculty controls admissions, courses and curricula, and graduation requirements; the administration has authority over resources; and on everything related to these and other matters we must consult. But, Dan, you've written the definitive paper on this.

SIMMONS: The University of California is unique in higher education because of the specific delegations of authority from the Board of Regents to the Academic Senate. The Senate has a defined role in the governance of the university, just as the chancellors and administrators do. In that sense, governance is shared.

The delegations of authority to the senate represent a responsibility to maintain the quality of the university's teaching and research programs -- an important shared responsibility between the faculty, acting through the academic senate, and the administration. I like to think of that responsibility as a partnership -- a partnership aimed at moving the university and our campus forward toward the academic excellence we all strive for.

DATELINE: Are there misperceptions about shared governance you believe need to be corrected?

VANDERHOEF: "Misperceptions" isn't quite the right word; it's "lack of knowledge." I seldom run into people who understand shared governance. Some faculty think it means the administration must consult on every issue. Others think it means the administration need only consult but never necessarily heed any faculty advice. As Dan notes, it certainly is true that the faculty is the core of the university, but there is no single group of faculty on any part of the campus that can really fairly assess the needs of the entire faculty. That's not their day job and they don't want it to be. That's the administration's business. The administration is responsible for distributing resources as appropriately as it can so faculty can do teaching and research.

SIMMONS: Rather than "misperceptions," probably the better word is "misunderstandings." There are misunderstandings of the senate's role among the faculty, particularly as we have hired many faculty and administrators from institutions that lack as robust a system of shared governance as the University of California's.

The responsibilities delegated to both the senate and the administration are shared responsibilities to provide for academic excellence. Clearly the administration is responsible for the resources, but the senate is delegated the responsibility to advise the administration on the budget to help assure that the senate's priorities in terms of maintaining academic quality are respected in budgetary allocations.

VANDERHOEF: That doesn't mean there won't be disagreements, but there should be consultation before those decisions are made. It's not uncommon for people to ultimately disagree, and that's why there have to be these designated authorities. For example, I've always had strong feelings about offering courses related to international study. I can do certain things, but it's not my final authority. If the appropriate senate committee says no, that's it -- they have the final authority, not me.

SIMMONS: The surest sign of the health of shared governance is that the senate and the administration can recognize their disagreements, have open conversation and fully understand the basis for decisions. The key to making the system work is that those decisions are made in partnership with full knowledge of the grounds for the decision on both sides of the table and with a healthy respect for each other's specific responsibilities.

VANDERHOEF: Still, there are literalists on either side who think there are always clear answers with sharp lines of demarcation. Life would be a whole lot easier if we could just look on page 37 for the answer, but it's just not that way.

SIMMONS: The faculty has to understand that most of the kinds of decisions we're making in conjunction with each other are decisions involving judgment. You cannot be 100 percent right in all of those decisions. It's very hard for faculty to think in terms of the exercise of judgment because our professional work has to be 100 percent right before we can publish it. That doesn't work in the context of managing an institution. That's where respect becomes important -- respect for each other's good faith in the exercise of judgment, with each side being fully informed of the calculations of the other so that there is open and honest negotiation.

DATELINE: How well do you think shared governance is working at UC Davis?

VANDERHOEF: There are things that everyone will agree can be improved and there will be other things not so. The senate's report will inform the debate. But, in my view, shared governance works quite well. For example, in personnel review the administration has the final decision, but we depend on faculty advice, and it is a rare day when we disagree.

SIMMONS: I would put the personnel process on the top of my list of places where shared governance is working very well. The faculty has a voice in maintaining the quality of the university through its advice in the appointment and promotion of faculty. On our campus I think the relationships between the Graduate Council and the dean of graduate studies, between the Under-graduate Council and the vice provost of undergraduate studies, and between the senate Admis-sions Committee and the admissions office also work very well.

VANDERHOEF: And just those three examples touch on all our students and the faculty.

SIMMONS: Some pieces, though, don't work very well. I would put the budget process and the senate's ability to give competent advice on the budget as first on that list. I have had conversations with the provost and a number of the deans about improving the process, and we are close to putting a new process in place for the senate review of budgetary requests. That review will start with the school and college faculties and their executive committees.

VANDERHOEF: So it will be recommended that the deans consult with their executive committees?

SIMMONS: Yes. There are two sides to the shared governance equation -- the administration's ability or willingness to consult with the senate and the senate's ability to consult with the administration by processing information and taking actions that are meaningful. It is the senate's responsibility to be fully informed in a meaningful way, and we need to do some work in that area.

DATELINE: Dan, you've noted in a recent Dateline interview how challenging it is to motivate talented faculty to become involved in senate activities. Without faculty engagement, isn't a strong shared governance system an impossibility?

SIMMONS: Absolutely. Faculty engagement is critical. That engagement requires faculty members to understand the importance of their responsibility in the governance of the university. We also need to ensure that the work of the senate is meaningful, that the faculty are engaged in decisions and reviews that will have an impact. The committees where people can see the immediate impact of their work easily attract smart and dedicated people. Making sure the faculty understand the scope of their responsibilities through the senate will take us a long way toward involving an engaged faculty.

VANDERHOEF: The faculty and all of us seem to be working harder than ever and there are only so many hours in the day. I've talked to people who would have liked to have gotten engaged in senate activities, but it's just becoming too difficult.

It takes time to understand complex matters. I came here in 1984 and had primary responsibility for the budget. It was three years before I had a handle on it and five years before I really felt expert. Faculty have their own important jobs to do, and we can't expect that kind of knowledge of them, so how faculty will have the greatest impact without having to understand the detail of the budget is very important.

SIMMONS: That's clearly the challenge. The faculty reviewing the budget have to focus on the campus's priorities. We affect those priorities when we reallocate FTE and other resources. That is the piece of the budget I think the faculty ought to be engaged in. But no one faculty member is going to get enough of a handle on the budget to be digging very deeply. The focus has to be on the university's academic mission and our budgetary priorities.

VANDERHOEF: On occasion the faculty will get all engaged on what is a minor budget matter.

SIMMONS: I think some of that happens because of insecurity over not being engaged in the budget process. When you don't have a sense of the big picture, you start picking at little pieces. Part of what I hope we can accomplish is to give faculty confidence in having a sense of the big picture and having a voice in it.

VANDERHOEF: I guess what you're saying is that everyone should be able to say, "You know, that administrative or faculty action doesn't look good to me, but I know enough that I am going to trust them. I'm not going to get into the detail." If people don't have that confidence then we have problems.

SIMMONS: I believe that a better informed faculty will work to the advantage of the administration. I think it will make your job easier because it will help make the senate more confident in its role, its participation and its direction.

DATELINE: What might the administration do to encourage productive collaboration with the faculty Senate?

VANDERHOEF: Insofar as the faculty feel they will have an impact, there is an increasing likelihood they would participate in senate activities. But it may be that some are discouraged with the pace of senate deliberations. We must remember that time is a valuable resource that we don't want to be wasting.

SIMMONS: One of the wonderful things about the senate is that people participate voluntarily. It is not a career-enhancing occupation for the most part. People who serve the senate serve out of a love for the University of California. Nonetheless, it takes a huge bite out of the time of the chairs of the principal senate committees and the people who serve on the Committee on Academic Personnel or the like. We need to think creatively about ways to compensate that service -- both to avoid harm to people in the personnel process and to recognize that people are devoting time that should be compensated.

VANDERHOEF: Well, if we believe that serving in the senate is part of the job of being a faculty member, why would they receive extra money? On the other hand, I know some of these chairmanships are especially heavy duty. We might compensate in different ways that make sure promotions and merit progress are not impeded.

SIMMONS: At a time when we were a campus of 6,500 students, we had a much smaller community. Now, we are a campus of 30,000 students. The difficulty of the issues and the distances over which people have to communicate are entirely different. The dedication of time and effort to chair the Committee on Planning and Budget or CAP, for example, is exponentially different.

It's asking too much of people to do those kinds of jobs on a purely voluntary basis. General service to the senate, as a member of most senate committees, is part of the faculty's job, but at some point you cross a line where the service becomes extraordinary. We need to devise principles to identify that service.

VANDERHOEF: We do need to identify where that line is.

DATELINE: How do you anticipate interacting in your respective roles this academic year?

VANDERHOEF: Dan and I go back a long way. I think we will do well together because we have always communicated well.

SIMMONS: We worked well together during very difficult times, during the Phase 3 budget-cutting process. And I think we have a mutually consistent understanding of how shared governance works and a common desire to see the campus progress.

VANDERHOEF: I don't expect we will agree all the time but we'll never have to worry about our communicating.

SIMMONS: Conflicts over specific issues are inevitable, but that's good. If we didn't have conflicts, one of us is not doing his job. But we have enough understanding of each other to work through those conflicts and respect each other's decision-making.