Penn State’s faculty senate seeks more involvement. But will president, trustees agree?
Amid growing concern over issues like budget cuts and academic program reviews, Penn State’s faculty senate is seeking greater involvement in university decisions — and is now asking for signatures from the university president and board of trustees chairman to formalize an agreement that grants greater “shared governance.”
The University Faculty Senate, comprised of elected faculty members from Penn State’s 23 campuses, passed a five-page “Agreement of Shared Governance Cooperation” on Wednesday afternoon that presents several requests and ideas to the administration and trustees. Among those are a request for a campus-by-campus breakdown of the planned $54 million in cuts to the commonwealth campuses and for the trustees to table, or delay, $700 million in Beaver Stadium renovations until a “sustainable pathway” for the Education and General Budget is achieved.
The agreement passed the faculty senate in a special meeting by a vote of 69-49. Michele Stine, chair of the faculty senate, told the CDT that the document would be delivered to the trustees and president no later than Monday.
“We’re trying really hard to engage and not be adversarial because we understand a lot’s happening at Penn State,” Stine said. “This is a really stressful, trying time for everybody, and we want to roll up our sleeves and work too. We want to make sure we’re part of the solution. We want the administration to be able to work with us to do the things that we need to do.
“So sometimes it feels like it’s adversarial ... but that isn’t what we want. We want this to be a working relationship. We want to be partners. We want to do the things that will make this the best place for people to work and go to school.”
Why now?
The faculty senate’s vote comes three weeks after the university announced $94 million in planned cuts for the 2025-26 fiscal year, including significant cuts to the commonwealth campuses. Stine acknowledged that, if anything triggered Wednesday’s vote, it was likely the university’s handling of that information.
Penn State communicated the cuts by issuing a nearly 5,000-word news release that included five embedded videos and multiple hyperlinks. It was followed by a 1,000-word email from university President Neeli Bendapudi. That all came less than 24 hours before Bendapudi and the provost were set to take questions from the faculty senate in an already-scheduled senate meeting.
“In retrospect, that probably sparked some of this frustration and really amplified a lot of that frustration,” Stine acknowledged, adding some of her colleagues felt ill-prepared to even ask questions.
Stine said the mounting frustration predates Bendapudi, who assumed office in May 2022. Faculty members organized protests and rallies when the previous president, Eric Barron, refused to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine. And the faculty senate passed a vote of no-confidence on the university’s pandemic plans for fall 2021.
When Bendapudi did take office, she rankled many faculty members before she was even on the job six months — when she canceled the Center for Racial Justice, which was championed by the previous president and a university committee. Others were displeased with the decision to consolidate Penn State’s two law schools.
Many faculty members have since expressed the sentiment that the Penn State administration tends to make decisions first and ask for input later.
“Right now, if I had to give a mid-semester report on the administration of this university and its participation in shared governance, I’d be telling them they are in danger of failing,” faculty senator Victor Brunsden, from Penn State Altoona, said at Wednesday’s meeting.
What does the ‘agreement’ say?
The “Agreement of Shared Governance Cooperation” took just under two weeks to go from an idea to something set to soon be delivered to Bendapudi and trustees chair Matthew Schuyler.
Two or three faculty senators helped develop a draft. And, once finished, a team of faculty senate officers, committee chairs and members of the relevant rules committee workshopped the draft before presenting it to all elected senators Monday. It was then publicly discussed and voted on Wednesday.
In the agreement, the faculty senate “politely” requested the following information:
- Rationale, design, inputs, weighting and output of the budget models used to calculate the 2025-26 college and campus budgets
- Details on each individual commonwealth campus’ cuts as part of the overall $54 million cut to commonwealth campuses that is planned for 2025-26
- Details and organization of the Academic Program Review Process
- Information about campus alliance or consolidation plans
- Inclusion on any plans to close commonwealth campuses
- Potential changes on health care benefits
The faculty senate also “humbly” offered the following ideas:
- Contact Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration in hopes to include commonwealth campuses in the recent proposal for additional investment and support of PASSHE schools and community colleges
- Consider a plan that raises Administration Unit cuts from 3.5% to 7% to help reduce cuts to commonwealth campuses
- Have Penn State Health cover the College of Medicine costs not met in its budget
- Table the proposed $700 million in Beaver Stadium renovations until a “sustainable pathway forward” for the Education and General Budget is achieved
- Minimize the use of external consultants whenever possible
Not all faculty senators were in favor of the agreement. One expressed displeasure over a last-minute amendment that addressed minimizing consultants, while another labeled the meeting “dysfunctional” and believed the agreement was developed without due diligence.
No faculty senators publicly disagreed with the sentiment of wanting more shared governance.
What comes next?
No deadline was imposed for the administration or trustees to respond. To avoid coming off as adversarial, the agreement notes the possibility that specific wording — or requests — might even prevent the signing of the document.
But, in that case, the faculty senate asks they work together to resolve those issues.
“We want them to engage with us within the next month to really start thinking about, how can we do this?” Stine said. “What can we do to work together to resolve some of these really big issues that everyone in the university community is concerned about?”
Several university officials attended the virtual meeting over Zoom. The meeting reached its limit of 500 attendees early on — attendance hasn’t reached those numbers since the pandemic — and organizers scrambled to move some to virtual waiting rooms to ensure all the faculty senators could make it.
So, although the administration and trustees haven’t formally received the agreement yet, at least the administration is already cognizant of it. (Schuyler, the trustees chair, did not return a message from the CDT seeking comment.)
“The administration is aware of the faculty senate documents,” university spokesman Wyatt DuBois said in an email. “The university administration has and will continue to work meaningfully with the faculty senate on key areas that fall under the senate’s purview within the shared governance model.”
When asked whether it was right to assume the administration didn’t intend to sign the document, DuBois responded: “Not safe to assume.”
