Consultants can help identify problems and recommend a path forward, but they cannot rebuild trust on behalf of the university. That work will require the Board, administration, faculty, and other shared governance partners to engage in good faith, examine their own roles in how trust has eroded, and demonstrate through their actions a willingness to make meaningful changes. We are ready to invest fully in the upcoming consultant processes and sincerely hope that others do as well. We are concerned about the messaging and timeline related to the shared governance work. At the July Board meeting, after describing the timeline for Dr. Bahls' work, Chair Hensler said, the "Faculty Code will then be revised and aligned with the draft statement in a collaborative fashion." This statement presumes the Faculty Code will need to be revised, rather than entering into the shared governance consultant work with an open mind and willingness to consider the possibility that the Code does not need to change. Additionally, this statement implies that the established Code amendment process may not be followed, and a new process will be employed. The timeline laid out by Chair Hensler similarly violates the established Code revision process, and so is not feasible. These assertions mirror those of President Wohlpart last year and are core issues that led to the vote of no confidence. We are concerned that the core issues raised by faculty remain unaddressed, despite months of ongoing dialogue between the Board of Trustees Academic Affairs Committee and the Faculty Senate Executive Committee. Our concerns related to the trust-building consultant work are primarily related to the lack of transparency and clear communication. Despite asking questions about the process of Cat Crosslin’s hiring and the goals of her work for several months in meetings with the Board AAC, we have received no clear answers. The email from the Board announcing her as the consultant did not include details about the deliverables or timeline of her contract. The goals of her survey and interviews with a small subset of university employees have not been explicitly articulated, and the process of selecting participants has been opaque. For example, we were asked to provide three faculty member names for participation in the survey, but only one person from our list received the survey. We are highly concerned that the findings from the survey and interviews will be unrepresentative of the faculty population and will not reflect the concerns of the faculty, which will make rebuilding trust difficult. We worry that the consultant process may serve to grow mistrust when its foundation is built on a lack of transparency and clear communication. We have shared these concerns with Ms. Crosslin and requested to meet with her. While we are very impressed with Ms. Crosslin and her willingness to discuss the issues that we have raised, we ask for much more clarity and transparency from the Board about the intended goals and outcomes of her work.
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