Governance Retreat Planning Committee Report

Given at the 10/30/06 University Senate Meeting

Submitted by Dr. Karynne Kleine

The Governance Retreat is an annual event that offers the University Senate an opportunity to orient incoming members as well as to assess its performance of the previous year with an eye toward continuous improvement.  The Governance Retreat Planning Committee, which has registered as an administrative committee reporting to President Leland, has met on two occasions, 29 September and 19 October.  We are scheduled to meet again on 2 November.  Our charge is to: 1) review the data from the last retreat, and 2) plan the retreat for 2007.  As such we have tried to make representation within the group broad.

We have used the process of locating and reviewing both qualitative and quantitative data that emerged from last year’s retreat.  Data can be found at http://info.gcsu.edu/intranet/univ_senate/Retreat_07/  Through this process we have been identifying “big picture” thematic-type items that could be addressed throughout the year as well as items that will need to be addressed at the next retreat.  We have not completed this process but are fairly far along.  We have also looked at the information paying attention to particular aspects that we can use to plan the upcoming retreat, which we will begin in January.  The only headway that we’ve made on this latter item is to inquire about potential sites for the retreat.  When the potential sites have been identified Senators will be asked to give input before a final decision regarding location is made.

So far we have identified the committee restructuring proposal that you heard about today as one "success" that came out of last year's retreat.  It is a success because a major amount of time during last year’s assessment was devoted to discussing ways to make committee organization more effective.  We have also identified a continued concern with 1) status/recognition/identity/budget for the University Senate and Senators, and 2) acknowledged a need to address the issue of continuity to the governance process.  This includes the attention that is given to orienting incoming Senators but also includes the fact that few to no outgoing Senators participate in the retreat.  There may be a third broad area of concern that could be labeled communication with constituents.  Anyhow at our next meeting we'll spend a bit of time making sure that we've pulled out all of the big picture items before starting to actually plan the 2007 retreat.  There is the possibility that these "big picture" things can get some reasoned response before the retreat.

The Senate should expect to hear from the group in January of 2007 to ask for input on the decision about where to hold the next retreat.

Respectfully—Karynne L. M. Kleine