OU administrators are forming a committee to examine budget and program revisions across academic departments.
Members of the President’s Academic Program and Budget Advisory Committee will evaluate possible budget revisions and assess potential impact to academic programs, according to the OU Faculty Senate meeting agenda.
Joshua Nelson, Faculty Senate chair-elect, said the senate first proposed the committee to OU President James Gallogly in early September.
“Faculty have suspected that potential changes or restructuring might be considered for academic programming, and we wanted to be sure that faculty would have the opportunity to weigh in,” Nelson said.
The committee will be composed of 10 faculty members, with at least one member representing each area of scholarship occurring on OU’s campus, according to an email sent out by the OU Faculty Senate and Provost Kyle Harper Oct. 9.
The email sent out to faculty welcomed nominations for the committee from all colleges as well as the Tulsa and Norman campuses and also included information regarding its possible roles and responsibilities.
Wayne Riggs, 2016-2017 Faculty Senate chair and member of the Faculty Senate executive committee, said the motive behind the committee's formation is shared governance.
“The executive committee has been working really hard to establish itself, and the Faculty Senate at large as a real group that can really be at the table when major decisions are being made,” Riggs said.
Riggs said the committee will allow for faculty to be involved in major budget and program changes for the university.
“The hope is that the decisions will be made with broad input from faculty, and hopefully it will make for better decisions because it will include a broader range of folks,” Riggs said.
The committee will be co-chaired by Harper and a faculty member chosen by the Faculty Senate Executive Committee, according to the agenda. The executive team will appoint five faculty members, and the other five members will be appointed by the president.
Hunter Heyck is an at-large member of the OU Faculty Senate Executive Committee and said the committee will act as an additional aid to Gallogly when reviewing organizational change to budget plans and department programs.
“As the word 'budget' is in the title of the committee, one of the missions of the committee would be to examine potential cost-saving or efficiencies that might come from organizing things differently,” Heyck said.
Heyck said nominations from the faculty will be vetted by the senate committee on committees, which considers broad and balanced representation for the entire university.
“I hope that discussions in this advisory committee will be about finding ways to be more efficient in helping OU take the next step forward in achieving our goals as an institution,” Heyck said.
A slate of nominees will then be passed on to the full faculty senate executive committee, which will choose five nominees to be reviewed by the president.
