A-to-Z Index

Faculty Senate


Welcome to the home page of James Madison University's Faculty Senate.  The function of the Faculty Senate is to represent the faculty in the consideration of all policies that affect the academic climate and direction of the institution.  The Faculty Senate seeks to create, maintain and protect a university environment conductive to the growth of scholarship, learning, teaching, research, service, and respect for human dignity and rights.  Among other things the responsibilities of the Faculty Senate include:

  • Offering suggestions to the vice presidents for academic affairs and for administration and finance on matters of of university organization, budget recommendations and revisions, facilities, planning, and mission at the university level;

  • Consulting with appropriate resource persons concerning academic policy;

  • Offering recommendations about admissions policies and enrollment management;

  • Participating in university-wide curricular oversight through its representatives on the Committee on Academic Programs (CAP); and

  • Working with the Office of the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs (PVPAA) to maintain policies and procedures by which the faculty will be involved in the evaluation of academic administrators at the university level.

Meeting of the faculty senate

Links for Faculty

During fall, the Faculty Senate meets the first Thursday of each month. During spring, meetings are held the last Thursday of the month. Meetings are scheduled for 3:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. in Taylor 306 (Refreshments at 3:15). Each academic unit is represented by a voting faculty member. Meetings are also open to all JMU faculty.

The first meeting for 2011-12 is scheduled for September 1, 2011.

Charlie King Budget Presentation 12/3/09

Faculty Evaluation Criteria

Information on the Campus Master Plan

New Parking Motion from the Faculty Concerns Committee (Updated February 2009)

High School Partnering Program Information

Faculty Handbook

Excused Absence Proposal

Referrals from the Faculty Handbook Committee

  

Notes for Faculty

Updated 1/27/12 - The Steering Committee has proposed a change to the Faculty Senate Constitution and Bylaws. The reason for the proposed change is because of the extreme difficulty in getting the constitution amended to make relatively trivial changes.  The concept is to create a very short constitution, which hopefully will not need to be changed again, and put most of the substance of the former constitution into bylaws, which can be changed by the Faculty Senate without holding a vote of all JMU faculty.

  • If you have relatively non-controversial suggestions for improvement in the two attached documents (fixing typos or better conforming these documents to the way we actually run the Senate), please make these suggestions by email to mcgrawdk@jmu.edu by Thursday, February 9, 2012.
  • If you think of elements so vital to the functioning of the Senate and so enduring in nature that they should not be easily changeable, then we probably want to include these back into the constitution.  Please send such suggestions by email to mcgrawdk@jmu.edu by Thursday, February 9, 2012.
  • If you disagree with the concept of what we are trying to do, please voice your views to your Senator or show up at the next Faculty Senate meeting on Thursday, February 23.  We plan to debate and vote on whether the concept of the changes is advisable, or whether we should keep the constitution as it is.  Remember that we can’t make any changes to the Constitution without the approval of 2/3 of the JMU faculty (technically it’s “two-thirds of the faculty who vote provided that more than one-half of the total faculty have participated in the voting process”), as well as the Board of Visitors.

If you think of ways to improve the functioning of the Senate, please hold off on these until after we get the new constitution adopted.  It should be much easier to make those kinds of changes on an ongoing basis after we’ve moved the day-to-day operating guidelines from the Constitution to the Bylaws.

Proposed Revised Constitution 1/26/12

Proposed Revised Bylays 1/26/12