Prioritization of Senate Workload

Prioritization of Senate Workload

The Senate often receives a variety of issues from various sources. These issues must be assessed so that Senate workload is prioritized in a way that allows time-sensitive issues to be addressed efficiently and effectively and recognizes that not all issues can be prioritized at once.

Factors that Influence Prioritization of Issues (In order of operations or a decision tree)

  1. President’s or Provost’s Initiatives
  2. Submission Date of Proposal
  3. Overall Senate workload & timeline
  4. Complexity of charge
  5. External deadline requirement
  6. Workload level within a particular committee
  7. Order of a committee’s charges 
  8. Charges that span multiple committees
  9. Availability of subject matter experts or administrators

Prioritization of Types of Issues


High Priority (in rank order)

  1. Temporary Policy Changes (immediate policy changes needed for a defined period of time)
  2. Faculty Grievances*
  3. Student Conduct Appeals Cases
  4. Senate Membership-Related Processes (general elections, committee volunteer, transition elections)
  5. Annual Processes or Tasks
  6. Joint Task Forces
  7. Interim Policies
  8. Proposals Related to Policies, Procedures, & Guidelines that:
  • Identify conflicts between policies
  • Identify gaps in policy
  • Revise existing policy to address specific issues 
  • Revise existing practices, procedures, or guidelines to address specific issues

*Proposal to amend the faculty grievance policy to remove the Director as the administrator responsible for the process is forthcoming.
 

Medium Priority (in rank order)

  1. PCC Actions
  2. Policies from University Councils
  3. Senate Procedural Issues
  4. Proposals Related to Policies, Procedure, & Guidelines that:
    1. Convert current practice into policy
    2. Align policy with current practice
    3. Develop or revise guidelines or procedures for existing policy
    4. Create new policy
  5. Policies and Plans that have Required Review Cycles
  6. Senate Actions with Provisions Requiring Follow Up

Low Priority (in rank order)

  1. Technical Amendments to Policies
  2. Resolutions
  3. General Inquiries from Campus Community Members
  4. Deactivation of Policies