The Faculty Senate Executive Committee (FSEC) has been participating in Joint Strategic Planning Committee (JSPC) sessions during this summer.  The JSPC is an unprecedented entity at URI and, indeed, is rare among academic institutions.  The JSPC is a formal means of accommodating real shared governance between the faculty, as represented by the FSEC, and the university administration. The Office of Planning Services and Professional Development  (PSPD), directed by Abu Bakr and Ann Morrissey, recently distributed a flyer through campus mail that describes the JSPC and its members and the committee's plans to communicate and interact with the URI community. As well, JSPC Minutes have been posted throughout the summer on the Faculty Senate business list (FacSen-Bus).  Our meetings throughout the summer have been aimed predominantly at establishing the process by which the JSPC will accomplish its mission.  The JSPC can have the kind of impact we need for true realization of shared governance: involvement in, and monitoring of, strategic planning that adheres to the university's mission and leads to the policies ultimately reflected in budget requests, funding allocations, and the general health of our university.  However, that process occurs gradually and far in advance of actual budget requests:  in our last JSPC meeting, we discussed the fact that our work during the upcoming academic year (AY) will impact the fiscal year 2005/06 budget.  We, the FSEC, would like to describe the history behind establishing this progress towards shared governance and invite the university community, and particularly its faculty senators, to contribute to this shared governance process.

Since 1991 at the instigation of the Faculty Senate, the University has had a committee entitled the Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation (ACRA), for which the committee charge was essentially designed to enhance the faculty's input to the budgeting process. But the timing of our participation in the process was too late-the strategic decisions behind the budget were already made by the time the budget was instituted.  During AY 2002/2003, faculty senators participated in what may be viewed as a predecessor activity to the JSPC:  we participated in meetings, chaired by President Carothers and attended by university vice presidents and several other administrators, to address both long-term and short-term strategic planning issues that were anticipated, at that time, to have a significant budgetary impact for AY 2003/2004.  Some of the ideas that arose from those strategic planning meetings clearly have been included in the budgeting process, and the University's 3-Year Strategic Plan, for the upcoming and future academic years.  (For example, it was a faculty member who suggested, and the budget request for AY2004/2005 includes, additional scholarship funds for transfer students who previously have had no access to Centennial Scholarship types of funds.)  Following those strategic planning meetings, and pursuant to an organization change, President Carothers proposed formation of the JSPC and the Faculty Senate voted it into existence in the Spring of 2003.  The JSPC has meet nearly ever other week during the summer and will meet almost as often during the upcoming academic year.  We publish JSPC minutes on FacSen Bus-L and we will allow time at the beginning of each Faculty Senate meeting to discuss issues arising from the work of the JSPC.

Recently, there have been discussions on TheForum-L that concern topics of interest to the Faculty Senate.  Postings of the summertime JSPC Minutes to FacSen-Bus, and the recent ProJo article on matters of strategic interest at the university, have prompted these discussions. The members of last year's Faculty Senate Executive Committee (FSEC) believed that FacSen-L never served its original intended purpose-to provide a means for discussing agenda items for upcoming Faculty Senate meetings and replaced FacSen-L with two new lists. TheForum-L was established as a separate discussion list for members of the university community to discuss any topic of interest. FacSen-Bus has replaced FacSen-L as a vehicle for communicating Senate business and university announcements.

We look forward to receiving contributions from faculty who would like their views heard as we represent your interests at upcoming meetings of the JSPC.  To contact the FSEC regarding the work of the JSPC, or other matters, you may write directly to FSEC@etal.uri.edu. Also note that there individual e-mail addresses are provided in the flyer from the JSPC that was distributed in campus (paper) mail last week.

Our next meeting will be held on Thursday, September 4.  At that meeting we plan to discuss the continuing efforts to measure implementation of the 3-Year Strategic Plan, how we will have input to the budgets for AY 2004/2005 and 2005/2006, and an update on the status of university capital projects.  You will soon see minutes of our last JSPC meeting, held on August 20, posted to FacSen-Bus; you'll note there also the same description of the topics we plan to address.  Further, minutes of all JSPC meetings are available through the Faculty Senate website at http://www.uri.edu/facsen/JSPC.html Please familiarize yourselves with the work that we have accomplished this summer towards our goal of establishing shared governance at URI.