Auburn University trustees dissolve faculty senate, take more direct curricula control

The Auburn University Board of Trustees Friday dissolved the university’s faculty senate and replaced it with a body appointed by university officials, a move that drew criticism from educators at the school.

The board also voted to implement a new policy giving the board and university officials more direct control of the curriculum.

Auburn University said in a statement Friday the policy is “intended to advance academic quality, transparency, consistency and institutional alignment while preserving meaningful faculty participation.”

According to the board’s meeting agenda, the university president and the provost are allowed to administer curriculum and course review processes including approval of individual courses; course revisions, inactivations, removals, scheduling, descriptions, prerequisites, credit hours, syllabi and instructional modality.

Auburn’s decision came a few months after the Alabama Legislature passed HB 580 putting limits on the powers of faculty senates. However, that bill specifically exempted Auburn and the University of Alabama, both of which have standing in the state constitution.

The board of trustees voted to replace the University Senate with a new body called the Presidential Academic Advisory Council Policy. According to the board’s agenda, the council will advise curriculum and faculty tenure among other matters the president and provost may request.

Auburn said in a statement Friday that the new council is intended to give university leadership, including the president and the provost, “faculty expertise and perspective on matters including curriculum, educational quality, faculty affairs, student success, accreditation and institutional effectiveness.”

Alabama Senate passes bill changing tenure, limiting faculty senates

“Auburn is strengthened by faculty whose expertise, dedication and scholarship sustain the excellence of our teaching, research and service to students,” said Vini Nathan, provost and senior vice president of academic affairs in the statement. “As this work moves forward, it will be guided by academic quality, intellectual rigor, educational excellence and clear communication so that the resulting processes reflect both institutional purpose and the values that have long shaped Auburn’s academic community.”

Auburn President Christopher Roberts will appoint or approve members of the council, which will be made up of one elected faculty member from each college through a process approved by the president; one faculty member from each college appointed by the president and additional members appointed by the president who may be faculty or non-faculty members.

Jennifer Brooks, a history professor at Auburn, said in an interview Monday one of the distinct differences between the University Senate and the council is the number of members.

“My department has a faculty senate, so every department has a faculty senator,” she said. “So that would mean, for the College of Liberal Arts, if we have 30 departments, and that’s an arbitrary number, I’m just making it up, but that would mean we would have 30 faculty senators versus one.”

The Auburn American Association of University Professors said in a statement Monday afternoon the new policy was “adopted without meaningful faculty input.”

“Faculty are not employees in a corporate structure to be managed through top-down authority,” the statement said. “They are experts entrusted with educating students and advancing knowledge, and that work depends on collaboration, shared governance, and strong academic freedom protections.”

Brooks, who served on an ad hoc committee that was started during the spring semester, said now that the University Senate has been dissolved, some committees can’t complete the work they planned to do this summer.

“We’re all doing independent research on this particular issue, all of it basically unpaid work that we were doing for the University over the summer through the faculty senate to try to improve external responses to external communications and things like this is ad hoc faculty senate committee put together by the chair of the faculty senate, and that’s dissolved now, so that work will not be done,” she said.

HB 580, sponsored by Rep. Troy Stubbs, R-Wetumpka, limited faculty senates to advisory roles and made changes to tenure programs at public colleges and universities. The bill does not make requirements for constitutionally mandated universities, which include Auburn and The University of Alabama.

The AAUP statement cited several “institutional risks” from the changes, including a decline in participation, effects on hiring and retaining faculty, accreditation and faculty morale and listed several questions about how the new structure would work.

“Until they are answered comprehensively, uncertainty about the future of shared governance and academic freedom at Auburn University will remain substantial and justified,” the statement said.