This year, the Faculty Senate Planning and Development Committee dealt with a couple issues of broad interest to the University Community. We were asked to contribute ideas to the University’s master plan. This was a prolonged process that required several committee meetings in the fall and early spring. The P&D Committee met after each Steering Committee meeting in order to help refine the overall master plan. I am happy to report that most of the suggestions that we made were eventually added to the Master Plan. There is of course no guarantee that our ideas will ever see the light of day, but it is nice to see that Administration respected our input.
That being said, the most important activity that we were involved in this year was the proposal for a University Faculty Club. We knew that this was going to be a long term goal and I suspected that there were going to be numerous hurdles that we would have to leap before anyone would take this idea seriously; however, those hurdles did not really materialize and the P&D Committee successfully added the Faculty Club to the University Master plan. This is not a commitment to establish a club on campus, but it is recognition by the University that such an establishment is possible. Moreover, it is the first major step in the Faculty Club process. Over the next year, it is my hope that the P&D Committee will undertake several other preliminary actions in support of the Faculty Club. These include:
The current P&D Committee did some preliminary detective work by surveying several 4 year institutions about their faculty clubs (see Table 1). This was by no means comprehensive, but it did lead to a few surprises. In Alabama, only the University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa) seems to have a "classic" Faculty Club. By this, I mean that they have a meeting place for faculty, staff and administrators on the main campus. There you would be able to obtain a variety of beverages, buy lunch etc. A monthly charge pays for this establishment. UAB and UAH apparently have no such place and Auburn’s club sounds more like a room than a true club. The University of South Alabama’s proposed club is unlikely to get to the level of UA’s anytime soon, but I sincerely hope that we leap beyond Auburn’s example.
The one disturbing thing about our proposal so far is the lack of a suitable site. Everyone on the P&D Committee prefers a central site. The ideal location is the Townhouse, but others have claimed that building. I still think there is room for negotiation and this will doubtless occupy some of the P&D’s
Table 1: Results of a quick and dirty survey of Faculty Clubs at select Alabama 4 year institutions.
|
University |
Faculty Club? |
Comments |
Cost |
|
Auburn |
Yes? |
Their club sounds more like a meeting area. It’s housed in the Student Union Building and is available for meetings. Requests for additional information were not answered |
Unknown |
|
UAB |
No |
||
|
UAH |
No |
||
|
UA |
Yes |
John Sachs did a great job with finding out about the UA club. It is open to Faculty, administrators, staff, alumni etc. They also have associate Members who have to be recommended by a regular member and pay $ 300.00 one time fee plus $ 20 per month. Their hours of operation are usually from noon and they are open in the evenings for drinks etc. Sunday Lunch is also available and many functions can be booked=even for breakfast. The club has a reading room and a meeting room that can handle receptions up to 400 people. The club is a separate corporation that contracts with a food service. They were just renovated to comply with code and put in an elevator using $3.5 million of borrowed money. One person is actually a university paid employee. |
$12-$15 month |
mandate next year. The main thing to remember is that we are a lot further along with the idea of a Faculty Club now than we ever were before. I am optimistic that we will be even further along next year.
The P&D Committee only really had one more issue this year. A faculty member asked us to look into a problem with one of the University Standing Committees. The Traffic and Parking Committee went chair-less earlier this semester and several decisions were being made by subcommittees lacking faculty participation. We raised this issue with the President (specifically we asked that a Chair be appointed to the committee), but as of yet, nothing seems to have been done to remedy the problem.
Submitted on behalf of the Faculty Senate Planning and Development Committee.
Committee Members: Nick Aronson (Medicine); Ross Dickens (Business): Frank Donovan (Engineering); David Gray (Education); Randall Powell (Medicine); Charles Rodning (Medicine); John Sachs (Education)
Dr. Doug Haywick
Chair