President Schmidly had a rough Wednesday.
Several hours after fielding questions from reporters at the press conference regarding the Sept. 20 Locksley incident, Schmidly walked to Woodward Hall to listen to the concerns of more than 300 faculty members at their general faculty meeting.
The voting faculty called the special meeting to check on Schmidly’s progress in fulfilling resolutions they passed in February.
Faculty Senate President-Elect Richard Wood said the meeting Wednesday was a step in the right direction.
At the meeting, Wood said it was necessary for faculty to have “a real commitment to recognizing positive changes have happened and that we insist together on the faculty voice as co-architects of bringing this University into the future.”
Schmidly said that he made significant progress in three of the faculty’s six recommendations at their Feb. 25 meeting. In particular, the president said he’d made strides to providing a means of “360 degree” evaluation for the University administrators. Also, the president had reached a decision on the faculty’s suggestion that the Office of Facilities and Finance report to executive vice presidents rather than Schmidly himself.
This summer, Schmidly asked for input from faculty members by distributing surveys about the administration’s performance to the Faculty Senate.
“I did incorporate 360 degree evaluations during the summer of ’09 by soliciting Faculty Senate input on all upper-level administrators,” he said. “I recognize the time frame was not ideal since many senators were off campus in the summer.
Therefore, it is my intention to implement the process during the academic year at a time that will be conducive to academic input.”
Later in the meeting, Professor Maggie Werner-Washburne, who is not a member of the Faculty Senate, said she was concerned that she didn’t hear about the summer evaluations.
In response, former Faculty Senate President Howard Snell suggested the evaluations seek input from all members of the general faculty — not only members of the faculty’s
governing body.
Also, Schmidly cited the financial climate as reason to disregard a request in another of the faculty’s recommendations. The recommendation asked for the Office of Facilities and Finance to report to two executive vice presidents — one for Academic Affairs and another for Health Sciences — instead of Schmidly.
“These are difficult financial times,” he said. “The finances of the institution are my responsibility. … For that responsibility, I must have the CEO reporting directly to me.”
Faculty Senate President Doug Fields told the faculty about the status of the audit they requested during February’s meeting.
The Senate secured a place at the table during audit meetings just in case it is necessary for the auditing firm to meet with the University.
At the meeting, Fields summarized the Senate’s resolution on the matter.
“We further authorize the Faculty Senate President to withdraw the faculty support for that audit process if, in his judgment, it is not pursued in a reliable and transparent way,” he said.
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Several components of the audit resolution have been modified since then, including getting rid of fiscal years 2003 and 2004 in the scope of work for the hired audit firm.
At the September Audit Committee meeting of the Board of Regents, the two fiscal years were removed because the University used a different accounting system then, making it difficult to provide relevant comparisons between the time before and after the transition.
The Nov. 4 meeting was the first time many faculty members had heard of the removal, judging from the reaction in the audience, and several asked Faculty Senate President Doug Fields — who was present at the September Regents meeting — to reconsider omitting the years from the audit’s scope.
At the end of the meeting, the faculty passed all three resolutions regarding their commitment to shared governance and their stances on the Higher Learning Commission accreditation report and UNM’s financial situation.
