LFA Annual Report - Fiscal Year 2021-2022

Library Governance - LFA Executive Committee Final Report

 

Committee Name: LFA-Executive

Fiscal Year: 2021 - 2022

Committee Chair: Angie Rathmel

Members (with terms): 

  • Angie Rathmel, chair
  • Scott McEathron, vice-chair/chair-elect
  • Sara Morris, secretary
  • Erin Wolfe, assistant librarian representative
  • Deborah Dandridge, associate librarian representative
  • Lea Currie, librarian representative

 

Standing Charges:

  • Ensures the orderly and effective operation of LFA.

  • Is the first point of contact for any matters referred to the attention of LFA, save those which are specifically assigned to standing committees in the Code and, where appropriate, assigns such matters to standing or ad hoc committees.

  • Brings governance issues concerning all faculty and staff to the LFSA Executive Committee.
  • Designates a liaison to the Organizational Development Unit and an ex officio liaison to LSA to ensure communication and information sharing.
  • Monitors KU governance issues that may affect LFA, including the Faculty Senate and the University Senate Committee on Libraries.
  • Takes no action contrary to the desires of the LFA.

 

Standing Charges Progress/Accomplishment Summary:

The following issues were referred to the LFA Exec Committee by members of the Assembly during 2021-2022:

  • CMS migration and updating documents
  • Libraries’ Fall Transition Plan concerns
  • Faculty turnover concerns, and:
    • the urgent need for STOP doing analysis
    • Pay equity/career movement
    • mentoring and retention
    • Committee membership, stipends?
    • Policies for faculty searches and dinners
  • Call for membership for Dean’s Five-Year Review Committee
  • Equity issues in language of the Code of Governance
  • Governance contact webform
  • MLS vs PhD requirement for tenure track librarians
  • Role of LCPT in Dean’s decision to award new hires with years of service

Committee Appointments and Charges:  

Most of the matters referred to LFA-Exec (above) concerned all faculty and staff, and were thus brought to LFSA-Exec, including turnover concerns shared by staff.  Those that were LFA-specific included the following:

  • LFA-exec's representatives to LFSA-Exec made appropriate recommendations for faculty membership on appointed committees as needed, including the Dean’s 5-year review elected committee.
  • New Ad Hoc committee was appointed in June 2022, charged with reviewing the Criteria & Discipline Expectations related to the degree requirements for library faculty.

 

Meetings:

LFA-Exec met monthly (10 meetings total) from August 2021 to June 2022 and held two General Assembly meetings.

 

LFA chair and LSA chair coordinated monthly meeting times and General Assembly dates/times to improve efficiency in communicating and addressing shared assembly needs. LFA-Exec also joined LSA-Exec by invitation to the final meeting of the LFSA-Exec committee and will join the transition meeting in July.

 

General Assembly meetings were coordinated to occur on the same date and at adjacent times to the LFSA-Exec General Assembly meeting.

Special Charges:

  • To Committee on the Code regarding:
    • Equity in language between faculty and staff sections
    • LCPT and SLPTR membership sections re: restrictions vs recusal.
  • To Nominating & Ballot regarding:
    • voting for faculty membership to serve on the Dean’s review committee.
  • To new AdHoc Committee for Faculty Cirteria Review

Progress/Accomplishment Summary: 

The cooperative work between LFA-Exec and LSA-Exec in this year was remarkable and helped facilitate progress on the shared issues that came up this year.  Three examples stand out.

In the process of nominating members to the Dean’s 5-Year Review, both groups identified equity concerns in the Libraries Code and University Policy and sought to remedy it both in the nomination process and in securing membership on the committee, as well as creating a special charge for Committee on the Code to examine other areas of potential inequity in the language of the Libraries code.

Faculty and staff shared both unique and common perspectives on the Libraries decision for transitioning to hybrid work in 2021.  In collecting feedback from the assemblies, combining governance effort streamlined the analysis and reporting of this data to the Libraries administration.  Faculty highlighted issues of responding to the need to enhance shared governance in decision making.

 

Other Activities or Accomplishments:

 

Potential Charges for Future Committees/Recommendations:

  1. Follow progress on ad hoc committee to review faculty degree requirements.
  2. Review all committee Annual Report recommendations for future.

 

Please review the Committee’s portion of the Library Governance website and the Code.  Does it need updating/correcting? 

 

Prepared By: Angela Rathmel, Associate Librarian