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Hoeing suggests downsizing senate

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  • “We probably have more cookies on the table than we do have senators attending our meetings, lately. It doesn’t make sense for me to have 100 senators if 20 show up..”

    Faculty Senate Chair Robert Hoeing
By CHARLOTTE HSU
Published: April 7, 2010

Faculty Senate Chair Robert Hoeing told colleagues at the senate’s Tuesday meeting that a slimmed down version of the body might be more effective and efficient in getting business done.

The current senate structure, with about 100 senators and 100 alternates, has been “pretty unworkable,” Hoeing said, pointing out that a lack of a quorum at general senate meetings has been a consistent problem in recent years. In March, senators were unable to vote on proposed grading policy changes because only 27 of 90 representatives showed up—19 shy of a quorum.

“We probably have more cookies on the table than we do have senators attending our meetings, lately,” Hoeing said. “It doesn’t make sense for me,” he said, “to have 100 senators if 20 show up.”

At Tuesday’s meeting—also sparsely attended—Hoeing said that while he was not making a formal proposal, he has been considering a new governance structure under which “the Faculty Senate Executive Committee, a group of about 25 to 30 senators, function, really, as the Faculty Senate, per se and really does the voting.”

“Instead of the Faculty Senate, we would still have general faculty meetings at least twice a semester for any important issues that come up, get faculty feedback on anything. Any new items that would be brought up at these, that would be acted upon by the executive committee, or if you want to call it the smaller version of the senate.”

Under such a plan, the senate’s committee structure would stay intact.

Hoeing noted that some other universities have much smaller senates than UB. He said he did not believe that poor attendance at senate meetings was due to a lack of interest in institutional concerns. Instead, he speculated that the increasing responsibilities in teaching and research that many faculty members have taken on could be driving the low participation.

Hoeing said he would welcome feedback on his idea.