Diversity in Decision Making: Minority Faculty Involvement in Governance. (1998)

The concept of shared authority has been increasingly accepted in higher education, particularly due to movements toward private sector business practices such as Total Quality Management and Continuous Quality Improvement. The net result for student affairs administrators has been attention to the involvement of various constituents in the decision- making process. Only recently has this attention begun to focus on traditionally disenfranchised constituents, including African American and Native American and international faculty members. The current study allowed these individuals to comment on the decision-making process and their involvement. Outcomes were primarily directed at respecting faculty efforts and individual accountability. Higher education institutions, in creating, refining, and transmitting knowledge, draw their strength from the variations of thought and the degree of growth demonstrated by both faculty and students. This variation often causes conflict among disciplines, but also provides a margin of intellectual tolerance and excellence, allowing institutions to develop and evolve into their desired role of academic excellence. Consistent with Howard Bowen's (1981) laws of higher education finance, institutions continue to work to achieve educational excellence, prestige, and affluence as their primary objectives. In this work, institutional administration becomes the touchstone of differentiating between institutions with and institutions without a vision of integrity, quality, and excellence. Questions about the effectiveness of academic administration have grown increasingly difficult to ignore, particularly in light of private sector attention to the concepts of teaming and shared decision making. Higher education has a tradition of involving faculty in governance activities. This governance model has differentiated between the academic and academic-support functions of the institution (Birnbaum, 1988). In particular, divisions of student affairs, working independently and with senior institutional administrators, have just begun to integrate the concepts of shared authority with faculty into decision making. The involvement of faculty-namely diverse faculty groups such as Hispanics, Internationals, African Americans, and Native Americans-in student affairs governance is an area that needs both academic and practitioneroriented research and policy development. The growing diversity of the college student population, coupled with the need to address opportunity in senior administrative ranks, provides a strong justification for exploring broader, more inclusive decision-making. Therefore, the purpose for conducting the current study was twofold: first, to examine how minority faculty view their roles in student affairs governance, and second, to examine what these faculty believe would be an ideal shared involvement in student affairs. Faculty Involvement in Student Affairs Administration The essence of effective student affairs administration is related to the ability of individuals to create and direct programs which consider and involve student-development theory. Although the administrative dimensions of the senior-level student affairs officer's position have become increasingly important and reflected in graduate school training, the concept of effectiveness relates primarily to the ability of the Student Affairs divisions to build and support an environment conducive to both student learning and student growth (Miller & Nadler, 1996). Although not a new concept, the American College Personnel Association, in pursuit of how student affairs professionals can enhance the learning environment of the college campus, included the involvement of faculty as a key to success in their Student Learning Imperative, which was developed to stimulate discussion and debate on how student affairs professionals can intentionally create the conditions that enhance student learning and personal development (Ashlock, 1996, p. …