Routing of Federation Business
All requests from the Administration or other entities for review, consultation or approval shall be addressed to the Academic Federation (AF) Chair. This is intended to ensure that the AF as a whole is fully engaged in the Shared Governance of the University, to guarantee that the relevant committees are involved in formulating a response, and to provide central record keeping of inquiries and responses.
All requests from the Administration or other entities for the appointment of AF representatives to administrative committees should be addressed to the Chair of the AF for appropriate disposition. Requests received from other sources (including other committees, individual AF members, and other persons or entities) should be addressed to the relevant committee when they are routine in nature and to the AF Chair when they are non-routine in nature. When a committee receives an inquiry which is non-routine in nature it should forward the request to the AF Chair for processing. And when routine business is directed to the AF Chair it should be routed without further action to the appropriate AF committee.
Definitions and Handling of Business
Routine business which clearly falls within the decision-making authority of a single committee under the Bylaws shall be processed by the appropriate committee according to its established procedures.
Examples of routine business include research and travel grant proposals (handled by the Research committee), selection of the Excellent in Teaching award (handled by the Excellence in Teaching committee), selection of the James H. Meyer award recipient (handled by the Meyer award committee), etc.
Non-routine business is anything which is not routine under the above definition, including all requests for review, consultation, or approval that has an impact on the organization and the titles that it represents. Examples include proposed changes in the Academic Personnel Manual, proposed changes to AF personnel merit and promotion process, and budgetary requests.
The Academic Federation Chair (or designee) shall review, track, and direct all such requests to the attention of appropriate committees. The AF Chair shall formulate a response on behalf of the AF organization based on committee input and Executive Council feedback.
In instances where the administration appoints Federation members to administrative committees without following these procedures, such committees cannot provide advice to the Administration on behalf of the Academic Federation.
All requests that have a significant impact on the Academic Federation and the titles the organization represents should be directed to the Academic Federation Chair regardless if routine or non-routine.