Faculty Rights Board FY2017

Committee Details:

Committee: Faculty Rights Board
Committee Category: Standing Committees of the Faculty Senate
Fiscal Year: 2017

Committee Description—

Faculty Rights Board (FRB) This board is an adjudicatory body that hears disputes and makes recommendations concerning alleged violations of faculty rights, including academic freedom, tenure and related rights, and procedural safeguards in university processes.

The Faculty Rights Board shall be composed of five tenured members of the Faculty. One member with a Juris Doctorate degree, two members from the faculty at large, and a representative from the AAUP shall serve staggered three-year terms. A representative from the Faculty Executive Committee shall serve a one-year term. Members of the Faculty Rights Board are not eligible to hold consecutive three-year terms. Nominations for the AAUP seat on the committee will be sought from both the Executive Committee and at-large membership of the University of Kansas Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). In the event that an AAUP representative is not selected to fill a three-year term, the Faculty Senate Executive Committee shall appoint an additional member from the Faculty to a one-year term on the Faculty Rights Board, and nominations will be sought from the AAUP Executive Committee and at-large membership to fill that seat in the succeeding year.

Members—

Chair: Jan Sheldon, Applied Behavior Sciences, (2018)

FacEx Rep: Tom Beisecker, Communications Studies (Fall 2016)

FacEx Rep: Ebenezer Obadare, Sociology (Spring 2017)

Paul Outka, English, (2017)

Lua Yuille, Law, (2019)

Jonathan Clark, History, AAUP representative (2019)

Charges—

Approved by FacEx: June 1, 2016
Approved by Faculty Senate: September 8, 2016

  • For further information or to schedule a meeting with FacEx  to discuss charges or the committee’s work, contact FacEx Chair Pam Keller at pkeller@ku.edu.
  • Minutes of each meeting should be e-mailed to the Governance Office (govern@ku.edu) as they are approved.  The minutes will be posted to the Governance web site.
  • If the committee is recommending a change to university policy or rules, FacEx must officially receive that recommendation by March 7, 2017 in order to meet timeline requirements for full review by Governance.
  • Please send a report of the committee’s actions on each of the charges, as well as any recommendations the committee wishes to make concerning charges or membership for the following academic year, to University Governance, at govern@ku.edu, and submit the final report by April 14, 2017.

Standing charges:

  1. Hear promptly all concerns and claims brought to the attention of the committee by members of the faculty regarding faculty rights, including promotion, tenure, non-reappointment, and academic freedom, pursuant to Article XIII, Section 3 of the University Senate Code and Article VI of the FSRR.  Report issues or problems of concern to governance to FacEx, with due regard for the confidentiality of individual cases (ongoing).

Specific charges:

  1. Be prepared to revisit policies and procedures for faculty dismissal proceedings (formerly proposed FSRR 7.3.4) and related issues.

Meeting Minutes—

n/a

Final Reports and Outcomes—

FY2017 Final Report (PDF)

Faculty Rights Board FY2017