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University Senate urges renewed consultation, empathy in shared governance
Summary
The University Senate's Conference told the University of Illinois Board of Trustees that healthy shared governance depends on regular consultation, mutual respect and designed processes — urging trustees and administrators to resist adversarial postures during heightened public pressure on campuses.
Joyce Tolliver, associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Urbana and a longtime member of the University Senate's Conference, told the Board of Trustees on May 2025 that shared governance nationwide is under strain and that the University of Illinois system should double down on collaboration.
"The core of healthy shared governance is a mutual commitment to understand and honor each other's perspectives and concerns," Tolliver said, urging continued consultation among faculty, administrators and trustees.
Tolliver framed the problem as systemic, not personal: shared governance requires both clarity about who decides which matters and routine, structured opportunities for input. She said USC (the University Senate's Conference) meets 10 times a year, typically with wide administrative participation, and that these regular talks helped build the trust needed to resolve disputes.
Tolliver warned against an "us versus them" mindset. She cited national reporting of campus conflicts and said that when faculty or administrators resort to demonizing language, the institution loses the habit of staying at the table to work through competing priorities.
She described the AAUP-era arrangement that leaves academic matters primarily to faculty and fiduciary and external-relations matters to administrators and the board, but stressed that in practice the domains overlap and require shared processes. "Trust moves at the speed of collaboration," Tolliver said, quoting Chancellor Robert J. Jones; she added that the inverse — distrust — moves at the speed of disengagement.
Tolliver asked the board to resume regular conversations between trustees and USC members, a practice she said had existed prior to the COVID pandemic. She concluded by offering the conference's willingness to continue those exchanges and to consult on policies that clarify when the board, the president and faculty should act independently and when they should seek joint input.
The presentation was delivered during the open meeting; it was a report and not the subject of a board vote or formal action.
The board did not take immediate action on specific governance proposals during the session, but trustees and meeting packets were encouraged to use the conference's recommendations as a basis for future consultation.
