Resolution

1. WHEREAS faculty are committed to change, including structural change, aimed at educating more students at SIUC, and furthering the mission of the university; and

2. WHEREAS faculty are uniquely positioned to shape the academic structures designed to further that academic mission; and

3. WHEREAS departments are based on faculty expertise, devoted to the academic disciplines and majors pursued by students, and designed to provide institutional stability to the diversity of programs suited to a diverse student body; and

4. WHEREAS the elimination of academic departments would produce small savings, while causing disruption across campus; and

5. WHEREAS the dissolution of every department on campus may sow avoidable confusion and worry among both undergraduate and graduate students about the future of their majors and degrees; and

6. WHEREAS potential students and faculty will doubt the stability of programs lacking the institutional status of departments, and question the stability of a university that appears to lack the resources to support departments; and

7. WHEREAS no model for the universal elimination of academic departments at a peer institution has been presented, nor any other evidence that elimination of all departments will further our mission; and

8. WHEREAS a unilateral decision to eliminate all academic departments, regardless of disciplinary differences, and with no opportunity for substantive deliberation or debate, contravenes basic principles of shared governance;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Faculty Senate opposes the universal elimination of all academic departments on campus; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Faculty Senate recommends that faculty be encouraged and allowed to pursue all productive proposals for change, including those that retain academic departments.