Members of the Shared Governance Taskforce convened on Tuesday to discuss the results of a survey given to Missouri Southern State University employees since the fall of 2010.  The survey was the result of concern raised by the Higher Learning Commission in 2008 about the Shared Governance Climate at Southern. 

The implementation of shared governance in the University setting generally ensures that the faculty and staff of a school are able to voice their opinion on prevalent issues. Over time, the idea of shared governance has evolved to include as much participation as possible in the decision making process. 

Dr. Jack Oakes, professor of computer information sciences, believes that the shared governance survey “creates a tool that helps the taskforce gauge the over all shared

governance climate, and how employees feel about their rolls in shared governance.”  

Dr. Paul Teverow, professor of history and social sciences, “If you want to create more of a genuinely shared governance, you need to develop the structures and procedures for doing so, and that’s important.” 

“Another important gauge is whether the people actually out there working feel that their input is meaningful, because no matter what you do in terms of establishing structures and policies, if people still don’t feel like they have the opportunity for input then you haven’t succeeded.”

Results of the survey showed an overall increased participation in the survey, from 51 percent to 65 percent in three years. The targeted groups for the survey consisted of administration, faculty, professional staff and classified staff. 

Among those groups, faculty members consistently had the lowest satisfaction rates, only 30 percent of contributing faculty members showing satisfaction with their role in shared governance this year while 90 percent of administrators this year said they were satisfied with the shared governance climate at MSSU. 

“I think that half the campus is happy, and the other half is pissed off.” Oakes said

Oakes also believes that the evaluation of factors leading to the dissatisfaction of faculty members is an institutional challenge, but did note,  “One of the key areas that needs improvement is communication.” 

However, Dr. Teverow suspects “a few members of the faculty come from institutions… where there were different expectations regarding the faculty’s role on governance than has been true at Missouri Southern.” 

Teverow also said “the notion of having a staff senate is much more recent, not just for Missouri Southern, but campuses in general.  For many staff, the idea that they would be consulted at all is pretty novel. Whereas faculty members are expected to have input.”

Dr. AJ Anglin believes another factor in the faculty dissatisfaction to be compensation, saying “the longer you keep a work force without raising their salaries, the less they are likely to participate.”