UW Trustees Delay Vote on Regulation Changes
The University of Wyoming Board of Trustees will delay making changes to a number of UW regulations until their regular meeting in July, after the UW Faculty Senate raised concerns about the changes.
The regulations cover financial crisis procedures, including creating a financial crisis plan, discharging faculty and eliminating programs.
The trustees were originally scheduled to discuss and potentially approve changes to UW regulations 6-41, 6-43 and 6-44 and proposing a new regulation, 6-42 during their regular meeting this week, May 9 – 11.
Regulation 6-41 outlines the trustees’ process for declaring a financial exigency, or financial crisis, which would require the discharge of tenured faculty or other extended term academic professionals.
UW Spokesman Chad Baldwin said the trustees the changes to that regulation are mainly housekeeping and have to do with cleaning up language and definitions, including changing the term ‘financial crisis’ to ‘financial exigency.’
Baldwin said the proposed changes to Regulation 6-43, Academic Program Elimination, would decrease the time it takes to eliminate a program.
“6-43 has to do with program elimination, and there is a significant change proposed there in that it would shorten the time that it takes to eliminate a program,” Baldwin said. “It would reduce it to over a year to about half a year.”
UW Regulation 6-42, Budget Constraints, empowers the trustees to ask the UW president for a reduction plan that could include reduction of tenured faculty if there was a sudden drop in university funding. Baldwin said the trustees are already authorized to do this under the Wyoming Constitution, however it has not been laid out in a university regulation.
Baldwin said the discussion on these items is continuing and that the need for more discussion, as well as some of the Faculty Senate’s concerns, were among the reasons the discussion on these regulations is being postponed. Baldwin said the new regulations and regulation changes are still subject to change.
Michael Barker, UW Faculty Senate chair, said Faculty Senate approached the trustees with their concerns and that a sub-committee was created to work through the Faculty Senate’s concerns. Barker did not say what specific concerns Faculty Senate had.