When Chancellor Vanderhoef and Academic Senate Chair Dan Simmons discuss the concept of "shared governance" in the Oct. 1 Dateline, they use the phrase "the faculty" to mean "senate faculty" only, and they frame the concept in simple either-or terms: Anything not the administration's responsibility is the concern of the senate. This overlooks and largely disenfranchises the large and well-educated corps of lecturers and other non-senate faculty whose main business is teaching ever larger numbers of undergraduates and graduates.

An important constituency of the university, the Academic Federation is an organization created under former chancellor James Meyer to recognize the growing role of non-senate faculty, librarians, academic coordinators and researchers. There are many reasons to include the Academic Federation more fully in the governance of the university.

Even the narrowest reading of university by-laws or regents' standing orders fails to place complete control over the curriculum and personnel in the hands of the senate alone: This "faculty" control was instated early in the UC's history as a way of keeping politically or ideologically motivated administrators from hijacking course content, curricular priorities or hiring decisions for their own ends. At the time there were no significant numbers of faculty who were not a part of the senate. Yet now the language vesting curricular control in "faculty," as opposed to administrative hands, is being misread as vesting all curricular and personnel decisions exclusively in the senate as opposed to non-senate faculty. How ironic, that a manifestation of academic freedom is now being used to justify ignoring the concerns and denying a full participatory role of a significant population of teaching faculty.

Make no mistake: I am not suggesting that senate faculty give over or share control of their particular tenure or curricular decisions -- but clearly, the rigid reading recently propounded by some (that lecturers may not even vote in merit and review of other lecturers) is both illogical and untrue to the essence of shared governance. Are federation members really supposed to be satisfied just with "consultative" or non-voting roles on committees? Why? Expertise is vested not in a title or a funding source, but in performance and one's record, and to suggest otherwise is untenable at best, ludicrous at worst.

Lecturers are responsible for some of the most important courses and the bulk of instructor-student contact hours in many departments; most of us keep up with the research in our fields and are constantly honing the craft of our teaching, something senate faculty are not always inclined to do, with the considerable pressure to publish or perish (and with publications in "mere" pedagogy less valued than purer research efforts).

Yet according to the exclusivist construction of shared governance, lecturers may not lead curricular reform, may not shepherd a new course through committees for approval, and must seek the sponsorship of a senate colleague who may not have the requisite expertise or interest. Paradoxically, highly qualified non-professors are fit to deliver the bulk of the undergraduate curriculum, but not fit to vote on their own personnel matters or shape curricular change.

My former department, English, illustrates how this mindset can shortchange students and stifle innovation. With the expertise in real-world writing and computer-aided instruction concentrated in the lecturer corps and not amongst literature or theory professors, graduate pedagogy courses in computer-assisted composition and interdisciplinary writing practice were never even seriously considered, much less formally proposed; a practical undergraduate writing minor met the same fate, so long as "sole curricular control" rested exclusively with one kind of faculty.

With the formation of the University Writing Program, and the authorizing of several senate positions in writing pedagogy, the campus has taken a significant step toward recognizing the importance of writing instruction on this campus; some of the lapses in curricular development may indeed be belatedly redressed. But senate positions in the UWP do not solve the broader problem of faculty governance. Budget and curricular realities mean UC Davis will continue to rely on lecturers for a significant portion of its coursework -- professors teach less and are more expensive per class than lecturers -- and the university would do better to tap in more fully, not less fully, to the know-how and collegial resources represented by the entire teaching team.

To maintain an artificial distinction between senate and non-senate colleagues, especially without coherent logical basis, is not good stewardship of an important resource, and does not serve the university's many stakeholders in a responsible way. To enfranchise "the faculty" in the broadest sense of the word, the university must recognize the expertise and the institutional commitment of its corps of non-senate faculty (many of whom have maintained consistently excellent teaching records for 10 years or more). This means embracing meaningful change, not perpetuating mild but familiar forms of institutional apartheid.

Together we must honor the spirit of truly shared governance: Excellence, whatever its rank and title, should be valued in actions and duties, with power and responsibility shared for the benefit of the students and the university as a whole.

-- John Stenzel, lecturer and assistant director, University Writing Program

As part of Dateline's commitment to the campus's respect for intellectual debate, forum pieces are published periodically in the newspaper. Forum pieces, at 800 words or less, are accepted from current or retired UC Davis faculty and staff members. All submissions are subject to editing. Dateline does not guarantee publication.