A Communications Plan for
The Academic Senate

June 1999

Aimée Dorr, Chair

Lawrence B. Coleman, Vice Chair

María Bertero-Barceló, Executive Director

David Krogh, Director of Communications

Academic Council

How can the statewide Academic Senate best communicate with its various constituencies, chief among them the University of California faculty?

In an effort to optimize statewide Senate communications, the Academic Council leadership has developed a strategic communications plan for the statewide Academic Senate. This document represents a final version of the plan. Major elements in it were presented to and accepted by the Academic Council at its meeting of June 9, 1999.

In overview, the plan calls for the statewide Senate to utilize three broad avenues of communication. The first is periodical communication, meaning written communications produced on a regular basis. Three separate forms of periodical communication will henceforth be utilized by the statewide Senate. One is a familiar publication, Notice. A second is a twice-yearly e-mail letter from the Council Chair to all Senate faculty. A third is a series of six e-mails sent out over the course of a year from the Council Chair to all faculty who are, or who have recently been, active in the statewide Senate. In addition, any Senate member who expressed an interest in receiving this communication could do so.

The second avenue of communication dealt with in the plan involves the Internet. Council leadership has decided to revamp the statewide Senate’s website. The changes envisioned for it will make it more useful, easier to navigate, and more visually appealing. The new site is intended to function as a Senate communications tool, facilitating both day-to-day Senate operations and special Senate projects. It would fulfill this function by virtue of its capacity to store and distribute information.

The third avenue of communication concerns op-ed pieces written by the Council Chair and submitted to campus publications that are distributed to faculty and staff.

This plan provides a rationale and blueprint for all these forms of communication. In addition, it provides estimates of the costs — both monetary and labor — that will be required to bring the plan to fruition. Finally, it sets forth some ideas on how communications work might be apportioned across the Academic Council staff.

Strategic Goals, Sources of Input

What should the statewide Senate hope to achieve through its communications? The Council leadership believes that an informed faculty makes for a better University. It is helpful for faculty to be made aware of issues that are confronting not only their own campuses, but other UC campuses and the University as a whole. Faculty need to be aware of what the Senate is doing on their behalf and in their name and the Senate, in turn, needs to hear from informed faculty.

Apart from these things, Senate communication ought to be aimed at fostering a sense of connection between rank-and-file faculty and both statewide and divisional Senate leadership. Senate communication ought to make clear the nature of Senate process — and the fact that any faculty member is welcome to participate in this process. Senate communication ought also to be aimed at making faculty contributions, needs, and viewpoints known to groups outside the UC faculty. Further, it ought to serve as a forum for an exchange of views on University issues. Finally, through such modern-age media as the Internet, Senate communication ought to enhance the conduct of Senate business.

Who Creates the Content?

Institutional communication generally flows from an institution to the individuals it serves. The communications plan presented here follows this model to a large extent. But Council leadership is interested in having rank-and-file faculty create Senate communications content as well as receive it. To this end, Council leadership has approved a set of interactive discussion pages for the Council’s website and it intends to continue with the letters to the editor column in Notice. Further, the leadership intends to remain vigilant about seeking out new ways for communication to come to the statewide Senate from the faculty.

Periodical Communications: Scaling Back Notice, Starting up Other Publications

For many years, Council periodical communications have essentially been limited to the publication Notice, put out since 1976, generally eight times per academic year. Council leadership has decided that Notice will be continued, but with fewer issues per year and under a different distribution arrangement. Concurrent with this, the leadership has decided upon the production of the two other forms of periodical communication noted above: electronic Chair’s letters to all Senate faculty and regular e-mails to those faculty involved in the statewide Senate. Attachment 1 to this report sets forth an annual production schedule for all three forms of communication.

The Council leadership has decided to add new forms of periodical communication — at the cost of reducing the frequency of Notice —because it believes that the statewide Senate needs a broader communications base than Notice alone can provide. The Chair’s electronic letters to all faculty are aimed at strengthening the sense of connection between Senate leadership and rank-and-file faculty. Meanwhile, the Chair’s e-mails to faculty active in the statewide Senate are aimed at keeping these faculty apprised of the bigger picture of statewide Senate work. What follows are detailed rationales and outlines for each of these forms of communication.

The Value of Notice

Notice has always been a publication of the Academic Council. Its editor is an employee of the Council and final editorial decisions for it rest with the Council Chair. The Council leadership believes Notice should continue to be published because it serves a number of valuable purposes:

• Along with the proposed Chair’s letters to the faculty, Notice is the only means the statewide Senate has of communicating directly with all Senate faculty. There are, to be sure, indirect lines of communication: Issues arise and divisional Chairs carry word of them back to their campuses, even as campus administrators issue memos about them. But Notice provides a direct means of informing faculty about what the statewide Senate is working on and what it has resolved.
  
  
• Notice is the only news publication in the University that brings a Senate perspective to University issues. The Office of the President and campus administrations have numerous publications that serve as vehicles for the administrative perspective, but Notice stands alone on the Senate side. Such a perspective matters not so much in the reporting Notice does — it is objective in its reporting — but it does matter in connection with story selection. The Notice Editor and Council Chair traditionally have had a single overriding question in mind when deciding whether to cover a given subject in Notice: Is this topic of importance to the faculty? The Council leadership believes that the University ought to have a publication whose essential subject matter is the faculty.
  
  
• Notice is effective in communicating Senate concerns to groups outside the UC faculty. It is widely read by UCOP and campus administrators, by the UC Regents, and by faculty from other institutions. It generally contains not only news coverage of current issues, but faculty commentary on these issues in the form of the "Notes from the Chair" column written by the Academic Council Chair. Thus, various constituencies outside the faculty become apprised through Notice not only of issues that are affecting the faculty, but of faculty perspectives on these issues.
  
  
• Notice is unique among University publications in facilitating an open discussion of University issues. Many topics that Notice addresses either are not covered at all in administrative publications, or are covered in such a limited way that the issue at hand is obscured rather than elucidated. To a remarkable extent for an in-house publication, Notice has served as a vehicle for free and frank discussions of University issues.

Changes in Notice

Since Notice began in 1976, its production costs — along with the costs of shipping it to the campuses — have been borne by the Academic Council. However, the costs of distribution to faculty within the campuses traditionally have been borne by each Senate division. This arrangement began to break down in March 1997, when the Berkeley Division greatly reduced distribution of Notice to its members. The Los Angeles Division implemented a similar decision in February 1998, essentially eliminating the printed version of Notice on campus.

The Council leadership believes that Notice should be distributed in paper form to faculty on all campuses. However, Council leadership has decided that the frequency of publication for Notice should be reduced, from eight issues per year to four, for reasons noted above. So that Notice may reach all faculty, Council leadership has decided that the Council will henceforth bear all the costs of Notice distribution within all campuses.

The format and content of Notice will remain unchanged. The Council leadership believes Notice works well as a six-page publication that reports on serious issues confronting the University. Notice has been posted to the Council website since 1995 and this will continue.

Letters from the Chair to Senate Faculty

As noted, under the communications plan, Notice will be joined by a twice-yearly letter, sent via e-mail near the beginning and ending of the academic year from the Council Chair to all Senate faculty. The letter is envisioned as being a polished, yet somewhat informal communication. It is intended to have the flavor of a personal communication between the Chair and each individual faculty member. (It is envisioned to begin "Dear Colleague" and to carry the Chair’s electronic signature.) In it, the Chair will apprise faculty of issues confronting the faculty and the University as a whole.

The letters will bracket the academic year, the first letter coming in September, the second in June. The first letter will provide faculty with a sense of the issues the Senate will be confronting in the year that lies ahead; the second will apprise them of the progress that has been made in connection with these issues, even as it looks ahead to what’s next. Hypertext links to relevant websites are likely to be a part of each letter.

E-mails to Those Serving in the Statewide Senate

The third form of periodical communication developed under this plan is the least formal of the three that are being adopted. The audience for this communication will be, first, all faculty active in a given year in the statewide Senate: committee members, Assembly representatives, and faculty serving on ad hoc panels at a minimum. The mailing list for these six e-mails also will include those faculty who were active in the Senate in the year prior to the current year. In addition, any interested faculty member will be able to subscribe to this communication through electronic means. (Likewise, faculty will be able to remove themselves from the listserve for it.)

This publication is intended to give faculty active in the Senate a sense of the status of issues as they arise and then are dealt with by the University. Given its frequency of publication, and the fact that its readership will be active to some degree in Senate work, it will be something of an insider’s publication. Unlike Notice or the Chair’s letters, it will not have to provide a first-level introduction to each Senate issue every time that issue is written about. As an electronic communication, it will contain hypertext links to relevant documents and websites. The statewide Senate will develop its own listserve for this communication.

Improvements in the Council’s Website

The Academic Council unveiled a statewide Senate website in 1995, but the site is in need of improvement. Council leadership currently is overseeing an effort to upgrade the look and capabilities of the site. The new site is not yet ready, but Attachment 3 sets forth both the content that is planned for it and some of its key structural elements.

Council leadership views the planned website changes as part and parcel of the general revamping of statewide Senate communications. The new site should provide better general information about the statewide Senate; it should allow statewide committees to use the web for their own specific purposes; and it should facilitate communication from rank-and-file faculty to the Senate.

Op-Ed Pieces from the Council Chair

Finally, Council leaders are interested in the possibility of the Academic Council Chair writing op-ed pieces for campus publications. The campus publications under consideration are those that go primarily to faculty and staff and that are produced by campus administrative units. Put another way, student-run publications and alumni magazines were largely excluded from consideration.

Op-ed pieces in campus publications would serve to communicate Senate perspectives to a broad swath of the campus community. Council leadership believes that Senate views often remain locked within the Senate, or within a circle that is limited to Senate leaders and a small group of administrators. (The same actually could be said of administrative views on various issues.) These communications would bring Senate views to a broader audience.

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