Alabama public universities reach different conclusions on faculty senate, tenure law

A state law that weakens faculty senates at public universities formally took effect last week, but Alabama’s public higher institutions have reacted in starkly different ways to it.  

HB 580, sponsored by Rep. Troy Stubbs, R-Wetumpka, and signed into law by Gov. Kay Ivey in April, limits the power of faculty senates and also requires staff to submit to post-tenure reviews. The law went into effect on Oct. 1.

The law gives governing boards of colleges and universities more control over tenured professors and faculty representation on campuses, including dismissal of tenured professors, abolition of faculty senates and requiring the creation of a post-tenure review process for schools.

But school administrations have reacted differently to the law. Some moved over the summer to abolish their faculty senates. Others have committed to maintaining them, either as they are or in a weakened form.

Stubbs said in an interview last week he was “pleased to see that they are looking for ways in which they can apply House Bill 580 to the betterment of their universities.”

“Each university has had numerous opportunities to work with us and our team to assist them along the way if they had any needs or requests to gather information or to ensure that they were in compliance,” Stubbs said. “But the bill was written and presented and amended through the process to ensure that we provided the universities with a level of autonomy to allow them to address the things that we wanted them to focus on, but in a way that fit their university.”

Stubbs did not say what the Legislature wanted universities to focus on.

But several universities began moving to implement the bill long before it went into effect. 

In June, Auburn University Board of Trustees voted to dissolve its University Senate and take direct control of curricula, despite an exemption in the law for Auburn and the University of Alabama, which have standing in the state constitution. Shortly after, the Jacksonville State University Board of Trustees voted to dissolve its faculty senate. 

Auburn University faculty protest Board of Trustees’ dissolution of university senate

Auburn’s decision to dissolve the University Senate prompted backlash from faculty members last month, with some saying they didn’t feel like they were being included on campus.

Stubbs said the bill doesn’t stop faculty from expressing themselves on campuses.

“We, as a legislative body, and myself as a legislator, recognize and want the individuals who are responsible for what’s happening on campus— the trustees, the university leadership— we want them to be empowered to address and to be accountable for the things that are occurring on their campuses,” Stubbs said. “Nowhere in the bill does it minimize or eliminate faculty senates. Nor does the bill address that faculty members cannot communicate or share their feelings.”

According to the legislation, faculty senates must “ensure adequate representation of each college and school of the institution; except as otherwise provided by the governing board” and  “require faculty senate leadership positions to be appointed by the university president.” It also requires that faculty senates be limited to no more than 60 members with two members per college or school one appointed by the university president and the other elected.

If a faculty senate body meets the requirements, the university board of trustees does not have to abolish the organization.

‘Far beyond what they were required to do’

Beth Davis-Sramek, president of Auburn’s American Association of University Professors chapter and a business professor at the university, said in an interview Wednesday that the Auburn trustees “went far beyond what they were required to do in that law.”

“There’s nothing in the bill that would suggest that faculty don’t have representation. Our board just decided that we didn’t,” she said.

According to university policy, Auburn’s faculty senate replacement, the Presidential Academic Advisory Council, will have a strictly advisory role despite having some faculty members being elected by their peers. Davis-Sramek said having the elected members serve in an advisory-only capacity could negatively impact the university.

“When faculty are stripped of our collective voice and any kind of meaningful sense of ownership in the direction of the programs in curriculum, because the board has now taken over the curriculum, then that is going to have a really negative impact on the university,” she said. “And more importantly for me, what breaks my heart is that this is going to impact the students.”

Jacksonville State University Board of Trustees dissolves faculty senate, staff council

The JSU Board of Trustees will be presented with an alternative board to represent faculty during a board meeting scheduled for Oct. 19 and 20. The Chanticleer, JSU’s student newspaper, reported last week that the new board will be composed of six elected and seven appointed faculty members.

Lance Ingwersen, a history professor at JSU, said in an interview Tuesday that  “there is no plan B that’s been communicated” if the board does not approve the Presidential Faculty Academic Roundtable.

Some senates remain

Not all colleges disbanded their faculty senates. Troy University announced Monday that its Board of Trustees voted to maintain theirs.

A message seeking comment was left with Lenetra Jefferson, president of the Troy University faculty senate, Tuesday. Jefferson said in the university’s statement the faculty senate “provides the faculty with a voice that can help support both academically and, on the student-supportive side, with the university.”

“We not only share governance here at the university, but we also try to be supportive of the university community as well,” Jefferson said. “We are not the final decision-making body at the university in any way, shape or form, but we’re kind of an advisory council to the administration, and we appreciate that we do have this working role with administration here at the university.”

Ingwersen said the universities deciding to keep a faculty senate showed that other institutions didn’t have to dissolve them.

“It means that the law allowed for faculty senates to continue, and that boards made decisions not to continue them because those are also statutorily created institutions,” he said.

The University of Alabama Board of Trustees also voted to maintain the faculty senate on all of its campuses but will limit the organization to an advisory role. Amber Buck, an associate professor of English at UA, said the board’s decision didn’t change anything the faculty senate was doing on campus.

“Essentially, the board of trustees passed a statement that said the role of the faculty senate is advisory and that it doesn’t make final decisions or speak for the institution itself, which actually has always been the case,” Buck said.

The more pressing changes made at UA, Buck said, come through the post-tenure review portion of the legislation. Under the legislation, governing boards of colleges and universities must have a policy for post-tenure review which includes, but is not limited to, the professional responsibilities of a faculty member; a faculty member’s professional development and revocation of tenure status or other disciplinary action if during the review “incompetency, neglect of duty, or other good cause is determined to be present.”

Buck said that was causing “the most consternation at UA at the moment.”

“I think everyone who has tenure at UA, including myself, works very hard and thinks that we’re continuing to produce research and be excellent teachers,” she said. “And so it feels a little bit like a solution in search of a problem, because we already did have a pretty thorough annual review process for all tenured faculty.”

Auburn has not changed its post-tenure review policy. Davis-Sramek said the board of trustees has signaled a change to the policy is coming in the future.

“They could, for instance, go ahead and adopt our promotion and tenure policy. They could go ahead and adopt our dismissal policy that has academic due process protections in it and just do enough with the post-tenure review policy just to make sure that it is reflective of the law,” she said.