Chapter 17: Faculty Senate and Changes to the Shared Governance System

Chapter 17: Faculty Senate and Changes to the Shared Governance System

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Description

In this chapter, Dr. Holleman observes that representatives of the University of Texas System intervened in Dr. DePinho’s style of addressing the promotions and tenure system. He explains that Dr. DePinho had diminished the role of the Faculty Senate, and UT System’s Chancellor McCrave expanded its original powers under the reorganized shared governance system. Dr. Holleman notes that the Faculty Senate continues to discuss and refine how this system should work. He praises Faculty Senate and observes that this new system has allowed new faculty leaders to emerge. He cites studies that have found that the effectiveness of leaders is dependent on burnout, and that empowering faculty leaders is key to reducing burnout at the institution.

Identifier

HollemanWL_03_20170427_C17

Publication Date

4-27-2017

City

Houston, Texas

Topics Covered

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center - Building the Institution; Working Environment; Building the Institution; Institutional Politics; Growth and/or Change; Critical Perspectives on MD Anderson; MD Anderson Culture; Critical Perspectives; Understanding the Institution

Transcript

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Would you talk about the shared governance system a bit?

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

Sure. I'm not a part of it, obviously, so I don't know a lot about it. But I can give the perspective of a faculty member who's been a cheerleader for it.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Sure.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

So I think shared governance was theoretically in place, historically. It's a part of the UT System way of doing things. But it kind of had a demise over the last few years. Then when Dr. DePinho came in, I think there was a perception that he very deliberately marginalized whatever governing role the Faculty Senate might have. And so as I think I discussed before, Chancellor McRaven reinstituted and reenergized the shared governance process, and said, "I want the president's office and the executive leaders to partner with faculty leaders, and to work together to fulfill the mission of MD Anderson. And since then, they've been reinvigorating shared governance throughout the UT System. In fact, there's a group that's touring around and talking about what shared governance should look like. It's kind of a dance, because the president of each institution has sort of—I'm not sure if they have the right, but they do push back, or they might push back. So they're not trying to bully the president into changing the governance, they're trying to make it a collaborative process. But the chancellor has made it very clear in his memos to the presidents—which are public—that he wants some type of shared governance model. And what shared governance is, is you identify faculty leaders, that can be division heads, department chairs, leaders in the Faculty Senate, other leaders in the institution—they don't even have to be faculty. Say, the head of HR, or something like that. And they meet, I think, a couple of times a month to guide the institution, and to guide the president, really, on what they think needs to be done. And I think it's a great idea. I think it's evolving still. Just this past week, the Faculty Senate discussed a proposal to tweak the system. There's a concern that maybe the Shared Governance Committee is too large, and so it's hard to get things done. So they had a proposal for how to make it smaller, but still be representative. I think the amazing thing the Faculty Senate leadership has helped bring about in collaboration with the chancellor is that they've really reinvigorated the leadership role of our institutional leaders that are not executive leaders. I'm talking about division heads especially, and perhaps department chairs. MD Anderson is so big, there's 70-some departments. So that's a big group. But there are only a handful of divisions, I don't know, maybe eight or nine. What the Senate—I think the wisdom of the Senate leadership was when they were given sort of the support, Chancellor McRaven, to be a part of the leadership of MD Anderson, they realized that they weren't the only group that had been marginalized. The division heads had been marginalized. It was just—the division heads sort of had this role of kind of carrying out the will of the president, rather than giving input into the decision-making process. That's my perception. I may be wrong, but that's my perception. Here you've got eight or nine of the people who would be viewed by anyone in the world as leaders in their field, people who, if you're the head of a particular division, in all likelihood, you know more about what goes on in that field, than just about—than only a handful of people in the whole country, if not the world. So you're really tops in your field. You're really good at what you do. But you're not really being given any—you're not being given a lot of power. Power is not quite the right word, but you're not being utilized. You're kind of being treated as just sort of a deputy for the executive group, for the president. So I think the Faculty Senate leaders started meeting with the division heads and saying, "We're in this together. We all have the same goals. Let's work together." And that happened. And that was a very impressive process. So I think from a distance, I mean, say—I don't know if you even want to go there. But this blog that Len Zwelling writes, people who read that might just see this as an attempt to overthrow the president, you know, or to limit his power. I don't see it that way at all. I see it more as an attempt to invigorate the leaders who were there, like the division heads and department chairs, and the Senate leaders.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Well, it seemed as though under Dr. DePinho, there was a demotion, in a sense. Not practically, but in terms of the influence of division heads, they were demoted. Their role was changed. So rethinking that, now that Dr. DePinho is gone, that makes perfect sense, that there would be kind of a recoil; all right, now let's get out of this and move to something different. I don't know if I would hold to the conspiracy theory thing, either. It is a natural process that the institution is going through, kind of reorganizing all the wheels.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I wasn't here very long before Dr. DePinho came, so I can't speak to the role of the division heads before that. But it just seems natural that you would want them to be giving a lot of input into the governance.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Well, it seems—

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

As well as the department chairs.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Sure. I mean, it seems very healthy. Yeah.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

And to circle it back to my mission, there's been a really, I think it's going to be an impactful study out of the Mayo Clinic, [ ] Tate Shanafelt and his group, showing that the effectiveness of your leaders, your supervisors—for faculty, your [ ] department chairs—is directly proportional to the level of job burnout. So if you have a good department chair, one who has just basic leadership skills, and the institution is supporting that chair's efforts to make their faculty successful, then you're going to have lower burnout scores by your faculty.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Yeah.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

So equipping and empowering our faculty leaders, department chairs, section heads is really the key to reducing burnout and improving job satisfaction among physicians.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Creating a much more functional institution, for sure.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

Yeah. Because if they are equipped and empowered and trained and good, they can identify the drivers of burnout and low job satisfaction and address them.

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Chapter 17: Faculty Senate and Changes to the Shared Governance System

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