United States
See also: Higher education in the United StatesIn the United States of America the Academic Senate, also known as the Faculty Senate, is a governing body for a university made up of members of the faculty from various units within the university. In most cases administrative units such as human resources or other university support units do not have representatives as they are not scholastic units. Individual faculty or academic departments such as the Department of Biology or units such as the library may select representatives for the Academic Senate.
The Academic Senate normally creates university academic policy that applies to the university. The policy created by the Academic Senate is restricted to and must be congruent with policy by the university system of which the university is a member institution, any accreditation bodies, state laws and regulations, federal laws and regulations, and changes derived from judicial decisions at the state and federal levels of the court systems. While a majority of universities and colleges have some form of an academic senate, the general perception is that the organization has more of a ceremonial role. However some researchers have found a negative correlation between centralization of university administration and the presence of an academic senate indicating that an academic senate acts as an organizational force for the decentralization of a university in the area of academics.
The Academic Senate meets periodically with a published agenda. Meetings normally use Robert's Rules of Order. The senate will have a set of committees, both standing committees and ad hoc or working committees, which are assigned particular areas of responsibility for policy formation.
The officers of the Academic Senate may include the President of the university and the Provost of the university. Other officers are Academic Senate members who are elected to officer posts by the members of the senate. Deans of colleges as well as department chairs may be ex officio members of the Academic Senate.
Motions, recommendations, or actions that are generated by the Academic Senate through discussion and which are passed by the body are never final and will normally be referred to the President of the university for final approval. Depending on the authorizing legislation or statutes and types of recommendations being made, Boards of Trustees, Boards of Regents or the equivalent may have to authorize senate recommendations.
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Famous quotes related to united states:
“Some time ago a publisher told me that there are four kinds of books that seldom, if ever, lose money in the United States—first, murder stories; secondly, novels in which the heroine is forcibly overcome by the hero; thirdly, volumes on spiritualism, occultism and other such claptrap, and fourthly, books on Lincoln.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Canada are the horns, the head, the neck, the shins, and the hoof of the ox, and the United States are the ribs, the sirloin, the kidneys, and the rest of the body.”
—William Cobbett (1762–1835)
“I feel most at home in the United States, not because it is intrinsically a more interesting country, but because no one really belongs there any more than I do. We are all there together in its wholly excellent vacuum.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“What the United States does best is to understand itself. What it does worst is understand others.”
—Carlos Fuentes (b. 1928)
“Of all the nations in the world, the United States was built in nobody’s image. It was the land of the unexpected, of unbounded hope, of ideals, of quest for an unknown perfection. It is all the more unfitting that we should offer ourselves in images. And all the more fitting that the images which we make wittingly or unwittingly to sell America to the world should come back to haunt and curse us.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)