As recently announced, Rhett Mayor is stepping down from his role as Secretary of the Faculty. This creates a need to select a new Secretary of the Faculty. 

A search committee comprising current and former faculty governance leaders and collaborating with the Office of the Provost, will make a recommendation to the Faculty Executive Board, Faculty Senates, and the President. 

The members of the search committee are:

Faculty: 

• Dima Nazzal, Chair, Faculty Executive Board, Principal Academic Professional, H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, College of Engineering
• Mindy Millard-Stafford, Member, Faculty Executive Board, Professor, School of Biological Sciences, College of Sciences
• Elena Garcia, former member, Faculty Executive Board, Senior Research Engineer, Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, College of Engineering 

Administrators: 

• Laurence J. Jacobs, Senior Vice Provost for Education and Learning and Professor
• Michelle Rinehart, Vice Provost for Faculty

Permanent Secretary 

The Secretary of the Faculty is a leadership role in faculty governance. They work with the Faculty Executive Board and the various Standing Committees of the Faculty, and are relied on by faculty members and the administration for counsel on how to get things done through faculty governance channels in a way that contributes to a collaborative shared governance. The Secretary is called on for ways to expedite urgent matters and for advice on resources and alternatives for resolving issues. Working with the Statutes Committee and the Provost’s Office, the Secretary ensures that the Faculty Handbook is accurate and accessible and that evolving needs for change get appropriate attention. The Secretary is also responsible for maintaining the faculty governance website (facultygovernance.gatech.edu) which comprises calendars, agendas, minutes of meetings, committee reports, participants in faculty governance, faculty election ballots and results, and online resources like the Faculty Handbook. 

Meeting Arrangements and Support 

The Secretary is responsible for approximately ten Faculty Executive Board meetings and four full-scale faculty meetings in a typical school year. The Secretary leads the process of setting the calendar of these meetings. Reservations are made and audio-visual and recording capabilities are lined up. The Secretary works closely with the President’s Office and with the Faculty Executive Board Chair on proposing, refining, and getting agreements on meeting agendas. Notices of the meeting are sent out and agendas posted on the faculty governance web site. Prior to each meeting, notes are prepared for the President or Faculty Executive Board chair running the meeting to help them have information at their fingertips for each agenda item including peripheral matters that may come up. The Secretary helps to line up speakers at such events, facilitates their preparation, and ensures that all presentation materials from people on the agenda are available in advance. Attendance and rolls for the meetings are kept where appropriate. 

Record Keeping 

The Secretary attends and prepares minutes of all Faculty Executive Board and faculty meetings and posts them to the faculty governance website. This position is also responsible for communicating with all Standing Committees, receiving their minutes, posting them, and seeing that they come before the appropriate faculty meetings for review and approval. The Secretary works with the Library to ensure that faculty records are archived. 

Support to Standing Committees 

The Secretary serves as a central resource to help the Standing Committees get answers to questions. The individual in this role arranges for liaisons from the Faculty Executive Board to be assigned to each committee and works with the liaisons to solve problems impeding progress. In the summer of the year, the Secretary communicates with each outgoing Standing Committee chair to ensure that annual reports are completed and presented to the faculty and that an orderly transition to a new chair is achieved. This role provides an interface between the Standing Committees and full faculty meetings. This includes making updates to faculty agendas with action items from the Standing Committees so that they can be considered in a timely way. 

Election Support 

The Secretary is responsible for maintaining a careful roll of all members of the faculty, administration, and student body who serve on the Faculty Executive Board, Academic Faculty Senate, Research Faculty Senate, and the Standing Committees.  

The Secretary is often the first line of communication in identifying vacancies that occur during the course of the year and works with the Faculty Executive Board nominations chair in finding replacements. 

In the late fall of each year, the Secretary receives data from official records on the number of research and academic faculty members in each working unit of the campus. Their representation to the Research Faculty Senate and Academic Faculty Senate is determined by formulas in the Statutes. The Secretary uses these formulas to construct a table of numbers of representatives for each unit and compares this with the numbers who presently represent these units and are not yet at the end of their terms. The differences represent the numbers all the units must elect for the coming year. Toward the end of summer, the Secretary writes to each head of department that elects representatives to explain who will be continuing to represent them and what number and kind of representatives they need to elect to begin in the coming fall. The procedures to follow are explained and a deadline set before the first meeting of the Senates in the fall for feedback to the Secretary. Questions are handled as they arise and follow-up is provided as necessary. 

In a similar fashion, the Secretary determines who is coming to the end of a term on all the Standing Committees and what the requirements are for a full complement of members for the coming year, paying attention to the detailed qualifications established for each committee. The Secretary also determines similar information concerning the Research Faculty Senate and Academic Faculty Senate members that are in an aggregate of the Central Services and Administration pool that are elected under Faculty Executive Board supervision. Finally, the Secretary determines who needs to be elected to the Faculty Executive Board from the two Senates to the positions of those coming to the end of their terms. From this, the Secretary draws up a ballot shell for the Faculty Executive Board Nominations Committee to use and then supports this committee in identifying and qualifying candidates to fill the final ballot. Once the ballot is approved by the Faculty Executive Board, the Secretary prepares the ballot in the OIT online election system. This position tests this for every kind of constituent faculty member to ensure that faculty members have access to vote in the races only where they are eligible to vote. The Secretary also prepares automated email notifications of the election and reminders to go out to the electorate and manages the dates and arrangements. The Secretary assembles the results, presents them to the Faculty Executive Board for approval, communicates the results to each winner and loser of the elections, updates the rolls of the committees, posts them to the faculty governance website, and alerts the committees about their new members. 

In the summer after students have elected new leaders of the undergraduate and graduate student bodies, the Secretary of the Faculty communicates with the new leaders and defines for them what student representative positions must be filled on the faculty’s Standing Committees. Questions are answered as they arise and appropriate follow up is provided. Committee rolls are updated as new student representatives are identified and then the committee chairs are alerted to their new student representatives.