Building New Relationships with Governing Boards

One of the most daunting challenges in creating bona fide shared governance on campuses is the absence of established means for a faculty to communicate with its institution’s governing board. To be sure, faculty may sit on a governing board committee, or hold courtesy meetings with board members at a few schools (e.g., Occidental, Skidmore, Muhlenberg, Kalamazoo, Wabash, and Bowdoin).

Unfortunately, this is not the case for the vast majority of higher education institutions where there is either no formal relationship or, at best, a spotty one.

The mission of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is to advance academic freedom and shared governance; to define fundamental professional values and standards for higher education; to promote the economic security of faculty, academic professionals, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and all those engaged in teaching and research in higher education; to help the higher education community organize to make our goals a reality; and to ensure higher education’s contribution to the common good. Founded in 1915, the AAUP has helped to shape American higher education by developing the standards and procedures that maintain quality in education and academic freedom in this country’s colleges and universities.

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