Each year, the Academic Senate sponsors an Annual Meeting of the Faculty featuring remarks by the chancellor and the president. This is an open, public meeting outside of the regular Academic Senate business meetings.
Full archived and captioned video of the Oct. 29, 2018 meeting can be viewed here.
- Chancellor Robert Jones' introductory remarks run from 1:00 - 8:40.
- President Killeen's remarks run from 8:40 - 27:30.
- Chancellor Jones' remarks on shared governance and collaborative priority-setting run from 27:30 - 43:00.
- Audience questions begin at 43:00.
You can also read the full text of Chancellor Jones' remarks as delivered below.
2018 Annual Meeting of the Faculty
Oct. 29, 2018, 3:10pm Illini Union Ballroom
Chancellor Robert J. Jones Remarks
FINAL – As delivered
Thank you Bettina for the introduction and thank you to the Academic Senate for hosting this annual meeting with our faculty and staff.
Before I go any further, I think it is important to recognize that while we are gathered here today to talk about the future of our university, others around the country are coming together to grieve for family and friends who were victims of hate-fueled shootings in Kentucky and Pittsburgh. I would ask us to join together in a moment of silence in support of those who are suffering under such a heavy burden today and in the weeks and months ahead.
President Killeen, it is always a pleasure to have you join us for this event. We appreciate your time and we look forward to hearing your thoughts, perspectives and hopes for this university and for the entire University System.
Before I ask President Killeen to offer his remarks, I want to take a moment to talk about the issue of inappropriate behavior by a faculty member in the College of Law that has been in the news recently.
The thought that some of our students, faculty or staff have been made to feel uncomfortable, hurt or intimidated by the actions of another, including and especially a member of our faculty, is saddening and it makes me angry.
Our values stand upon the fundamental and essential trust that we will be a university community where everyone feels safe to work, study and live.
I am sorry that individuals have had their lives disrupted and found their educational and professional experiences here impacted by unacceptable and inexcusable behavior. The College of Law is taking steps to address student concerns in the current semester and is reviewing options to ensure student needs are met in future semesters.
This isn’t just about or just limited to one incident in the College of Law. We know others across the university – students, faculty, staff and even members of our own public safety team - are reporting similar and equally objectionable experiences.
We have also been working at the university level since I arrived here at Illinois to address systemic issues that create unnecessary delays and administrative gaps in how our investigations are managed across all of the units and offices that must be involved.
- We created the Title IX and Disability Office.
- In the past year, we conducted a broader examination of our investigative processes to see how they can be conducted in a more transparent, expedient manner while ensuring due process for everyone involved.
- We’re increasing the staffing in the Office for Access and Equity to reduce the time it takes to conduct these investigations.
- We’ve reorganized reporting lines and responsibilities to ensure the information and resources needed by staff are accessible and available where and when they are most needed.
- We’ve enhanced existing and added new training programs for the Office for Access and Equity staff.
- And later this week, we’re going to start meeting the finalists for our Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion – a position we created explicitly to give us central oversight to better address these and other concerns.
It is unacceptable and alarming to me to know that members of our community do not feel empowered to report incidents or have reason to believe that concerns of such a serious nature would not be addressed. I am certain it is equally unsettling to every person in this room today.
In fact, today, the provost and I both received a letter co-signed by all of the deans that supports the Illinois Student Government and College of Law faculty condemnation of sexual misconduct on the campus. They express their collective advocacy for review and revision of our processes and procedures for addressing allegations of misconduct.
Working together with our faculty through our shared governance system - we have the power to change as a university community.
And with that power comes an inarguable obligation to exercise it without delay and without excuse.
These aren’t just processes or policies to be debated. They are the means by which we deliver on the promises of educational opportunity and personal safety that we make to every student, staff and faculty member when they come here. As we’ve seen these past weeks, for some in our community, we aren’t keeping those promises. We must do better. We will do better.
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is truly a place where amazing ideas, discoveries and accomplishments are just part of the daily routine. The work done here – the achievements of our alumni around the globe – add up to an unmatched societal impact in which everyone affiliated with this university should take pride. It is also our shared responsibility to ensure that we create and sustain a community that fosters the creativity, spirit and drive that have defined us for the past 151 years.
In my own comments following President Killeen’s, I’ll offer some more specific thoughts on how we can all work together – through the Academic Senate and administration – to use our shared governance to address issues like these that are so critical to our university.
So, thank you for joining us today, and it is my privilege to introduce the 20th president of the University of Illinois system, Tim Killeen.
(FOLLOWING THE CONCLUSION OF PRESIDENT KILLEEN'S REMARKS)
Thank you President Killeen for your perspective and for your constant enthusiasm and support for our students, faculty and staff.
As is traditional at these meetings, after my own remarks, the president and I will then open things up for questions and conversation with all of you around the issues we’ve raised or ones that you wish we had.
I want to expand upon my opening words of gratitude to the Academic Senate. To all of you who have made the choice to serve in the Senate, I just want to say “thank you.”
It is both my personal expression as a faculty member, and one I make on behalf of the entire university community as chancellor. From Chair Bettina Francis and Vice Chair Rob Kar, to the members of the Senate Executive Committee, to all who participate in the many committees that do so much work for all of us throughout the year, your time and commitment deserve far more public recognition than you ever receive.
For those of you who have not previously considered contributing your skills and expertise to this key mechanism of our shared campus governance, I hope you’ll give it serious thought. Our shared model works best when that responsibility really is shared and representative of the whole University.
As I said in my opening comments the work we do together matters. Our students, faculty and staff trust this university to make decisions and take actions that are in the best interests of the entire community and that advance the educational and scholarly impact of Illinois.
When we look at our best decisions, those that stand out are the ones where we didn’t just talk about shared governance, but where we demonstrated exactly what it can - and should - look like for a world-class public university.
Look at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine that welcomed its inaugural class in July. It is a game-changing new kind of college with the potential to revolutionize medical education and global health care. I believe it will also catalyze a unique biomedical research and innovation ecosystem that will, in part, define excellence at the university for decades and centuries to come. This university hadn’t created a new college in more than 60 years, much less a dramatically different kind of college. And it came about only through intense, sustained collaboration between the Academic Senate, University administration and our academic leadership. Carle Illinois was a brilliant idea. But it was built through shared academic vision and shared governance.
If you want a more personal example of the permanent and positive impact of what shared governance with a common purpose can achieve – you’ll find it in Provost Communications 25 and 26. These established our policies around the hiring, promotion, compensation and academic rights of our Specialized Faculty. This initiative that started with the Academic Senate has a daily impact on the lives and careers of more than 1,000 members of our community.
To me these examples represent the vision of shared governance put into real and measureable practice. They demonstrate the enormous potential of operating where shared governance intersects shared administrative and Senate priorities. This is a nexus where, working together, I believe we can be operating more effectively, more consistently and more strategically.
We all share a common purpose here at Illinois. I hope I am correct in saying that we all have an interest and desire to be a university organized in ways that allow us to innovate and adapt – even as we remain steadfastly true to the principles of academic freedom, integrity and scholarly excellence that have built our global reputation. Shared governance is a powerful tool. It helps us align the delivery of our land-grant responsibilities in the 21st century with the academic and educational aspirations that are driven by our faculty.
I want to use today’s meeting as an opportunity to lay out some of the priorities for collaboration with the Academic Senate that my leadership team and I believe will be critical to our collective future. I see today as a chance to lay out a possible shared legislative agenda for the Senate’s consideration and comment.
I don’t believe this is something we’ve ever formally done before. But when you look at the kind of major issues that come up and distract us from focusing on our academic missions – they tend to share a common element. They are found when the policies and actions we take in response to the shifting and rapid demands of operating a university today are not aligned with our governing statutes, principles and rules. And we repeatedly find ourselves resolving these misalignments on the fly, without all of the careful thought we would like, and often in ways that are more divisive and adversarial than any of us would like.
That is a cycle we need to break. It is one I believe we can mitigate by anticipating and identifying where we will find these gaps sooner – and to begin working together to address them in collaboration rather than in crisis.
From the administrative side of this, it means my leadership team must accept responsibility for outlining priorities and plans annually and working earlier with the Academic Senate. We also need to communicate these possible issues to our faculty by way of the Academic Senate sooner, so we can work with the appropriate committees to initiate processes to resolve and mitigate these misalignments together. But, we also need the Academic Senate to recognize and account for the need to navigate and resolve issues in a manner that aligns with the real operational environment and timelines in which the university must function.
This approach requires all of us to be proactive and more efficient in analyzing the governance issues in play and to navigate them together. The goal is to recognize our gaps and misalignments at a point in time when we can address them comprehensively and carefully with solutions that will endure.
The top priority for me is asking for the Senate’s assistance in a review and clarification of our statutory disciplinary processes. Our goal must be to provide fair and full protection of academic rights while ensuring alignment of governance rules with university HR policies and employment regulations, as well as the expectations set by our own community.
The recent events and discussions around sexual misconduct allegations demonstrate that many in our community question whether our standards are sufficient to address the needs of a 21st century university. Our commitment to academic freedom must be constant and clear. It is the foundation of the scholarly and educational missions of a university like ours. But we also need to ensure that our rules and Statutes provide the protection for our students, faculty and staff to pursue their studies and careers here in a way that is safe and in compliance with the standards of conduct we establish as a community.
We have already begun initial discussions with the Senate leaders and the Faculty Advisory Committee to determine an appropriate process to move forward quickly on these issues.
Another critical priority for us is ensuring that our administrative policies are aligned with our governance rules – as they relate to the intersection of philanthropic and corporate support with our academic operations. And, I’m happy to report that this item is well on the way to being resolved. We saw this issue emerge last fall with several gifts that included naming rights of some academic units. The Senate, deans and provost office went back to work immediately after this to identify the actual misalignment issues and to find a mutually shared – and permanent approach that we can apply going forward. I need to take a moment and publicly commend Sean Gilmore, William Maher and the members of the USSP committee, as well as Bill Bernhard and the staff of the Office of the Provost for their tireless and productive efforts on this during the past year.
I believe we are very close to presenting a series of changes that will address everyone’s concerns.
Another high priority is to define more clearly where the authority over the creation and operation of academic programs resides.
I think most of us can agree we have a shared interest in sustaining our institutional excellence. Remaining competitive with our peers in today’s higher educational landscape requires a kind of adaptability, nimbleness and innovation that perhaps wasn’t so imperative 50 or 30 or even 10 years ago.
That entrepreneurial spirit fits well with our historic organization. It has empowered and entrusted our academic units – our colleges – with the responsibility to govern the creation and operation of their own programs. It fell to the Senate and the administration to ensure that these activities and programs were implemented consistently to maintain rigor and quality. The interpretation and implementation of Senate Standing Rule 13 that deals with changes to academic units will have a significant impact on that independence and on how our programs might be organized in the future. We need to come to a clear and shared understanding of the meaning and intent of that part of our governance system, and we need to have clear direction as to how this authority is executed.
And finally, I am asking for the Senate to work with my office and the Office of the Provost to help us create consistent and efficient joint communication and management processes.
How do we work together to determine a common list of shared working priorities for the year? How do we go about addressing those priorities within our administrative frameworks?
How can we identify potential conflicts earlier?
What do we need to do to build management and reconciliation procedures that ensure the correct campus offices and Senate personnel are convened to address them earlier and in a more efficient fashion?
I realize this might seem like an ambitious list.
It is. But every item on it is important and critical to our future success and to our ability to make this a community where every idea can be explored and where the impossible is regularly redefined.
I don’t know if we can get through all of these in this academic year.
I don’t know if this is even the same list of priorities that the SEC and the Senate would create.
That’s what this meeting is about.
It is about taking some first steps together in a new approach to how we go about putting our principles of shared governance into practice here at Illinois.
As we see time and time again, when we are truly working together in that intersection of shared governance and shared priorities – amazing things happen here at Illinois.
Thank you all for your efforts and your commitment to this university.