As a process of decision-making and representation, the shared governance system encourages community members to participate and share their perspectives on policies and processes that impact them. This system encompasses all five major constituent groups of the university — faculty, staff, administrative and professional faculty, undergraduate students, and graduate and professional students, each of which has its own senate — as well as administrators. It requires an informed and knowledgeable community and allows for transparent and open two-way communication between representatives and their constituencies and amongst governing bodies and the Virginia Tech community. 

Those who take part in shared governance structures have a unique opportunity to make their voices heard and advocate for decisions that matter to them.  

Faculty Senate member James Hawdon shared insights into his experience working in governance structures over the past eight years. Hawdon is a professor of sociology in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences and serves as the director of the Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention.

Hawdon reflected on the importance of participation in our governance system from the perspective of a faculty member.

How long have you been involved with the Faculty Senate? 

I first joined the Faculty Senate in 2016 as a substitute for our department representative, and I went to three or four meetings. After that, I started my first term in 2017. So, I got involved by serving out somebody’s term.

What sparked your interest in becoming involved with the Faculty Senate? 

I’ve always been interested in shared governance, but when I got here [in 2004] my department had a person who had been very involved in trying to redo our system at the time, and he was very passionate about it.

What did you learn in your first term on Faculty Senate?

The Faculty Senate was largely outside of shared governance at that time. Under the commission-based system, faculty were well represented on many of those commissions, but the Faculty Senate was not part of that, and that seemed odd to me.

There were efforts at that time to rethink the system of governance, and I thought that was an important thing to do, so I got involved with that. I was also involved in a couple of working groups looking at how faculty were assessing productivity. 

What qualities do you think make an effective representative?

The most important thing is being willing to do the work. A lot of the working groups and the Faculty Senate in general require doing a little homework before the meetings, paying attention to what’s going on, and doing that background work so that when you go into the meeting you can participate in a meaningful way.

The second thing is being willing to take the time to report back to your constituency. It’s a representative system, and that requires communicating to them not only what’s happened, but also what’s going to happen. 

I think those are the two main things that are needed for someone to be an effective representative.

What are you excited about on the Faculty Senate this year? 

The work of the Faculty Senate on a day-to-day basis is attending to the evolving environment of higher education — reacting to changes or cleaning up and making consistent policies across the many levels of shared governance. So that’s a lot of work.

But every now and then, something really big comes along. With the new system that was put into place three years ago, we created a process called University Mission Initiatives [UMI]. Those are changes that transcend the charge of more than one commission. The Faculty Senate has four commissions that report to us, and if there’s something that bridges multiple commissions, it rises to a UMI.  

With the new system of governance and UMIs, we get to influence how this is going to work. We get to collectively debate it as a faculty. This new system elevates the faculty collective voice, and I think we’re seeing better outcomes. There’s greater input from those people who will implement the work. The new system is designed to hopefully give faculty more voice and therefore lead to more faculty buy-in and a better process to reach our goals. 

[Under the new governance system implemented three years ago, each senate has at least one commission that reports to it. Commissions draft policies for their senate’s endorsement before advancing to University Council for consideration, and each commission has representatives from all five constituent groups.]

Why should faculty members get involved in shared governance?

Because I think it matters. The faculty is the heart of any university.  We all have to navigate the ever-changing environment around higher education, but how that plays out in day-to-day life has to be informed by the faculty. The health and quality of a university is only as good as the policies and procedures and practices being implemented by the faculty, and you have to be willing to engage in the work to help the administration figure out how best to implement those. 

You know the saying “think global, act local”? Well, this is as local as we get, and I think you should be involved because it can make a difference. 

How to get involved

There are always new opportunities to take part in shared governance and to make your voice heard at Virginia Tech. If you’re interested in any of our governance bodies, learn how to get involved. For specific information on each senate, check out these pages:

The Governance at Virginia Tech website features several additional resources, including Governance 101 tutorials for community members who are interested in growing their understanding of governance structures and procedures, and the recently launched Governance Corner includes important information about governance at Virginia Tech. To stay up to date on resolutions, check out the Resolution Tracker. For more information about governance at Virginia Tech, email abmyers@vt.edu.

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