Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Faculty Senate Reapportionment

Al Schwarzkopf, Chair

Gary Copeland

Valerie Watts

January 2007

The Ad Hoc Committee on Faculty Senate Reapportionment proposes a reapportionment of Faculty Senate seats as indicated in the table. The Faculty Senate, of course, has 50 members. The Faculty Handbook allocates one member, each, to the Graduate College and to Liberal Studies. The remaining 48 seats need to be allocated in a manner that is fair and that reflects the size of the faculty within each unit.

Included in the faculty count are renewable term appointments at the Assistant Professor level and above and part-time faculty at the Assistant Professor level and above, term or tenured/tenure-track, according to their FTE. Using the FTE is consistent with the way we count split appointments. The “Total” column in the table provides the total number of faculty in each unit when applying the above method of counting faculty.

The non-degree units (Library, Honors, President, Provost Direct, and ROTC) are treated as a separate division. Honors, President, and Provost Direct are combined and allocated one seat.

Rounding led to complications when trying to use a direct approach because it produced 52 seats rather than 50. Instead the Committee used the “Webster Method” of allocating seats. It basically gives each unit its whole number of seats and then allocates the remaining seats to the largest remaining fraction until all seats are allocated. While there are other methods, this approach seems to produce the least bias. To see a discussion on this point, go to: http://www.brookings.org/comm/policybriefs/pb88.htm.

In conclusion, the Committee recommends the allocations in the “Rec Alloc for 2007-10” column of the table for the three years beginning with academic year 2007-2008.