The process of electing the president of the Faculty Senate and other officers for the governmental body will soon be drastically altered.

The Faculty Senate voted to change the structure of its current election process at Tuesday night’s Faculty Senate meeting.

“The change is an essential task for the university, but it is also important that the restructuring will strengthen the senate,” said Ron Peters, professor of psychology and last year’s Faculty Senate president.

The current election process votes on new officers in mid-May. These officers immediately assume their position and are often not familiar with their responsibilities, Peters said.

“Currently it’s a very tight time schedule,” said Nancy Brown, associate professor in hotel and restaurant management. “The proposal will bring a number of changes.”

Brown said the vice-president position would change to the president-elect. The president-elect will serve one year as a non-voting member of the senate and will then assume the role of president the following year.

She said sequential elections will begin in January. Voting will begin with the president-elect position, followed by council chairs and a secretary. The elections for new senators will take place early in the spring.

“Our idea is to provide a smooth transition,” Brown said.

Peters said the election reform will involve changes in the bylaws, which requires a vote by all Iowa State faculty.

“The idea is to have everything set and ready to go before the end of the spring semester,” Brown said.

Declaring solidarity with U of Minn.

After much disagreement over the wording of a letter to be sent to the University of Minnesota, the senate agreed to forward copies of the letter to the president and the faculty senate of the University of Minnesota, the Minnesota Board of Regents, Iowa Board of Regents and ISU president Martin Jischke.

The letter states the Minnesota Board of Regents wants the power to discipline individual faculty members for their attitudes, with regent members evaluating what constitutes proper attitudes.

The letter stated, “We appeal to the Minnesota Board of Regents to publicly pledge its devotion to academic freedom and then to make its first priority re-establishing an atmosphere in which the issues it has raised can be rationally worked out with the University of Minnesota faculty.”

The U of M faculty reported an attempt to eliminate a 10-year policy thereby eliminating their current academic freedom. Many universities have discussed such policies, including the University of Colorado.

“It is such a drastic proposal that it produces astonishments among us,” Peters said.

The resolution to declare solidarity was proposed by Bryan Cain, professor of mathematics.

Evaluation of President Jischke

The senate also approved the new evaluation of President Jischke.

Dick Seagrave, professor of chemical engineering, said the new evaluation process will require a number of changes in the administration.

Seagrave said the new evaluation will consist of a presidential self-evaluation, a constructive faculty evaluation, communication with the faculty and a governance evaluation.

NCAA Faculty Representative

Barbara Mack, the senate secretary, discussed the NCAA Faculty Representative search and said ISU is actively soliciting names of people who are interested in the position.

“We want to get a diverse pool of applicants,” Mack said.

The NCAA Faculty Representative is responsible for insuring that each athlete reaches scholastic requirements. Representatives must also investigate and report on any NCAA/Big 12 rules that have been broken, Mack said.

She said the representative will be appointed by the president in the near future.

Changing of Meeting time

William Woodman, the Faculty Senate president, reported the possible change of the senate meeting time.

“There is much less consensus than what you may think,” Woodman said.

Woodman said most university senates do not meet during the evening. He asked for individual input from the senate members at a later time.

The Faculty Senate will meet again on Nov. 5, 1996. The meeting will take place in the Scheman Building at 7:30 p.m.