MILWAUKEE (WTAQ) – The UW Board of Regents will consider giving less power to faculty in choosing their new campus chancellors.
The Regents will consider a new selection policy for chancellors this week, when they meet in Milwaukee.
It comes after the state Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee watered down the university’s long-time “shared governance” principle on Friday night.
Majority Republicans decided to give faculty members an advisory role in major campus decisions, instead of the guaranteed voice they’ve had for years.
UW-Milwaukee faculty leader Mark Schwartz says lawmakers want to make chancellors the CEO’s of their schools — and while the new state budget technically keeps the shared governance concept, Schwartz says it will restrict what faculty do and make the concept more of a hindrance instead of a rallying point.
Under the new chancellor selection plan, a regent would replace a faculty member as the chair of search and screen committees to find new chancellors. There would still be faculty members on the search panels, but they would no longer make up the majority.
Also, the UW System president could add up to two finalists on top of what the search committee recommends.
(Story courtesy of Wheeler News Service)
