Office of the Provost
Accreditation
Ensuring Supportive Community for Faculty
Topic: What has WSU been doing to ensure a supportive community and climate for faculty?
Challenges/Opportunities: WSU strives to create a cohesive and inclusive climate given the size, complexity, and geographic dispersion of WSU. Challenges include:
- Getting faculty together given multiple locations.
- Building networks of faculty with different priorities and appointment types.
- Creating and supporting a diverse faculty.
Opportunities include:
- Developing collaborations among highly capable and qualified faculty.
- Building on the talent and diversity of WSU faculty.
- Further development of a community based upon the principle of shared governance.
- Building on administrative commitment to create and support a diverse and quality faculty.
Recent actions/outcomes:
- Monthly gatherings of faculty at “Crimson Club” events to bring faculty together (held in Pullman and at campus locations during administrator visits).
- Ongoing garnering of input from faculty to guide administrative decisions.
- Intentional development and recognition of faculty regardless of appointment type.
- Regular (monthly) communications to faculty from both president and provost.
- Transparent messaging to faculty about fiscal affairs.
- Separate monthly meetings between Faculty Senate leadership with provost and president.
- Adoption of campus policy (EP#29) to intentionally include all campuses in shared governance and decision-making.
Current/Future emphasis or next steps include:
- Ongoing commitment to promotion of “one WSU” throughout the state.
- Supporting administrators to travel to location around the state.
- Supporting teams of faculty from all WSU locations to work together.
- Create hiring and retention plans to help build and maintain and diverse and quality faculty.
For more information at WSU:
NWCCU Standards References:
- 2.A.22 Institutional Integrity
- 2.A.28 Academic Freedom
- 2.B.3. Professional Development
- 2.B.6. Evaluation of Faculty
- 2.C.5. Faculty oversight of curriculum
- 2.G.6. Instruction and support for uses of technology