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On my first day as assistant vice president for academic affairs, a department chair approached me with what seemed like a simple request: Could we expedite a curricular change that needed approval from governance? Students were waiting; the change was minor, and the governance process felt slow.
I felt an immediate internal clash. As someone who had spent seven years leading the University Academic Senate, my first instinct was to defend the governance process. Governance requires time for good reasons, I wanted to say. Faculty have priority in curriculum decisions. But in my new role, I also grasped her sense of urgency. Students would be harmed by the delay. The change was truly minor. And the governance schedule didn’t match the program planning timelines.
For the first time, I deeply understood a truth I had only thought about but not truly accepted during my Senate years: Both perspectives were valid. The tension wasn’t between right and wrong, but between competing good options that our systems hadn’t properly balanced.
A Uniquely Positioned Vantage Point
I write this article from a unique perspective. After serving two years as vice chair and seven years as chair of the University Academic Senate at Grand Valley State University (a period that stretched from 2015 to 2024), participating in an American Council on Education fellowship during which I observed executive leadership at Northern Illinois University, and then returning to Grand Valley to serve two years as assistant vice president for academic affairs, I have experienced both sides of the faculty-administration divide deeply.
The statistics on shared governance are sobering. One survey found that only 16 percent of faculty see shared governance as very or extremely strong at their institutions, compared to 36 percent of administrators. That 20-percentage-point gap isn’t mainly caused by bad actors or malicious intent. Having experienced both perspectives, I now realize it exists because of fundamental differences in access to information, accountability structures and time horizons—differences that influence how faculty and administrators view the same situations.
My goal here is not to adjudicate who is right in faculty-administration conflicts, but to illuminate the structural dynamics that create persistent misunderstandings among people of genuine goodwill, and to offer concrete strategies for genuine partnership.
What I Got Right—and Why It Mattered
Looking back from an administrative perspective, several governance practices I developed during my leadership in the Academic Senate proved more valuable than I knew at the time.
- Infrastructure supports crisis response. When COVID-19 struck in March 2020, the governance infrastructure we had established—an online tracking system we’d developed (called SHORE), communication channels and committee relationships—enabled us to quickly develop thoughtful emergency policies on teaching evaluations, grade options and tenure-clock pauses within days. This was possible because trust had been built over the previous three years. The Senate’s executive committee met almost weekly throughout the summer of 2020, and the partnership resulted in responsive, principled decisions even under extreme pressure.
- Longevity builds the kind of authority that positions alone cannot give. By year three, I knew every staff member in the provost’s office by name, had credibility with committee chairs through demonstrated follow-through and had earned enough trust with administrators that I could call the provost directly about emerging issues. This kind of authority—earned rather than assigned—takes years to build. Institutions that frequently rotate governance chairs often lose the accumulated relationship capital that makes shared governance truly effective.
- Transparency is accountability. Our annual Senate newsletters, which are 20 to 27 pages long, documented every policy change and achievement. The SHORE system made governance transparent and searchable for anyone with university credentials. This reduced suspicion on both sides: Faculty could verify what governance was actually doing, and administrators knew their decisions and rationales would be documented and accessible, encouraging more thoughtful responses.
What I Got Wrong—and Why It Matters More
Administrative experience has revealed assumptions I held as Senate chair that were incomplete, oversimplified or simply wrong. These aren’t moral failings—they’re limitations of perspective inherent in the structural positioning of faculty governance.
- Budget constraints are truly real. As Senate chair, when administrators said, “We don’t have budget for that,” I often heard, “We don’t want to prioritize that.” During my ACE fellowship, I attended budget-planning sessions and watched administrators genuinely agonize over impossible choices—spreadsheets showing actual revenues and expenditures, every proposed cut painful, every line item representing something valuable. The administrators weren’t heartless bureaucrats. They were trying to balance competing needs with limited resources. This doesn’t mean budget constraints are always genuine, or that administrative priorities are always correct. But more often than I realized, the constraints were real.
- Many “artificial” timelines have external drivers. For years, I pushed back against what I called “manufactured urgency.” During my fellowship, I realized that many timelines I thought were artificial were actually influenced by accreditation agency review cycles, state reporting mandates with strict penalties, federal financial aid regulations and enrollment cycles. Administrators sometimes presented issues to governance late, not because they were disorganized or trying to bypass proper review, but because the information needed to move a proposal forward wasn’t available earlier.
- Political capital is limited and must be used strategically. I have sometimes criticized administrators for not pushing harder on certain faculty priorities, unaware that they were spending political capital in areas I couldn’t see. During my fellowship, I saw a president put significant effort into pushing back on board directives that could have damaged academic programs, defending shared governance against board members who questioned its effectiveness and safeguarding academic freedom in politically sensitive situations. These battles occurred behind the scenes, and from the faculty’s view, it often seemed like “nothing happened.” Strategic leaders choose their battles carefully—which sometimes means avoiding public fights on issues that are unwinnable or when winning would come at too high a cost.
- I sometimes engaged in advocacy instead of building partnerships. Looking back, some of my public statements as Senate chair—meant to show faculty I was fighting for their interests—cast administrators as foes, even though those same administrators had been working collaboratively with me behind the scenes. This performative advocacy raised doubts about whether I could be trusted as a genuine partner. If I was going to use private conversations as ammunition for public criticism, why would administrators share sensitive information or involve me in early planning stages? There is a difference between honest public disagreement and strategic misrepresentation aimed at portraying yourself as a champion.
What Administrators Get Wrong
If my experience as Senate chair was characterized by an incomplete understanding of administrative constraints, my administrative experience was equally marked by discovering how often administrators—even well-intentioned ones—misunderstand or undervalue faculty concerns and governance processes.
- Faculty concerns are generally legitimate. I’ve seen administrators dismiss faculty worries with phrases like “faculty are resistant to change” or “they’re just protecting their turf.” When faculty opposed using median scores on student evaluations as the main metric for evaluating teaching, some administrators portrayed it as faculty not wanting to be evaluated. The real issue was documented bias in student evaluations, inconsistent score interpretation across units and the misuse of data for high-stakes decisions. Faculty weren’t resisting evaluation; they were demanding better evaluation. Their expertise in academic matters is genuine. They aren’t just being difficult.
- Poor communication practices undermine trust. Administrators often announce decisions that significantly affect faculty without prior consultation —not because they oppose input, but because they believe consultation isn’t necessary. Some have argued that the merger of two of Grand Valley’s colleges into a new college in 2021 was announced before faculty in those colleges had enough opportunity to give meaningful feedback. Even when reorganization is needed, poor process creates costs that effective consultation could avoid: high anxiety, major resistance, difficult implementation and wasted time and energy that could instead be used to ensure the change’s success.
- Many administrators simply don’t understand how governance functions. They don’t realize that Senate committees usually meet monthly, not weekly—so a review takes at least a month, and often two or three for anything significant. They overlook that major policy changes require review by multiple entities, which can mean a six-month timeline even when everything goes smoothly. They confuse consulting governance for input with seeking governance approval. This leads to unrealistic expectations, poor planning and frustration on both sides.
- Shared governance is a strategic asset, not just a compliance requirement. The COVID-19 response clearly showed this. Shared governance wasn’t an obstacle during the pandemic—it was crucial for an effective response. Faculty expertise helped shape successful policies. Faculty credibility allowed for quick implementation. Governance infrastructure offered mechanisms for fast, coordinated action. When administrators see governance as a necessary evil or a political challenge to manage, they underfund governance—with fewer course releases, limited administrative support and no systematic training—and then complain that governance is inefficient.
Why Goodwill Is Insufficient
Even among genuinely well-meaning people, the trust gap remains due to structural reasons.
Information asymmetry exists. Administrators make decisions based on confidential personnel issues, board discussions, donor negotiations and ongoing litigation that they cannot fully disclose. From the faculty’s perspective, this can seem like arbitrary decision-making or hidden agendas. The solution isn’t complete transparency—some information must remain confidential. However, explaining what can be shared, why some details must stay private and distinguishing legal requirements from administrative secrecy preferences helps a great deal.
Different accountability structures lead to genuinely different priorities. Faculty are primarily accountable to disciplinary peers, students and professional standards. Administrators are mainly accountable to boards, accrediting agencies and the institution’s financial health. When these priorities conflict, each side often suspects the other of having the wrong priorities, instead of recognizing that both sets of priorities are valid but weighted differently by different accountability structures.
Temporal mismatch causes ongoing friction. Administrative budget planning for the next fiscal year must be completed by March—precisely when faculty governance is at its busiest. External workforce demands create pressure for new program development that governance curriculum review processes, following semester timelines, cannot easily accommodate. Better practice involves maintaining multiyear calendars that align academic rhythms and administrative deadlines and establishing clear protocols for when provisional decisions pending governance review are truly suitable.
Practical Strategies That Actually Work
For Senate leaders: Build proactive relationships before you need them. Meet regularly with senior leadership even when there’s no specific business on the agenda—those meetings build relationship capital that proves invaluable during difficult negotiations. Learn to translate faculty concerns into administrative language. Not “the administration isn’t supporting faculty development,” but “we’re seeing faculty struggle to attend conferences due to travel budget constraints—can we explore alternative models?” Distinguish principles worth fighting for from preferences worth negotiating. Save political capital for issues that truly matter. And communicate administrative decisions fairly even when you disagree—criticism is more credible when it’s clear you’ve made an effort to understand the other perspective.
For administrators: Consult before making decisions, even when it’s not required. Voluntary consultation on issues where governance input would be helpful fosters trust and results in better choices. Offer more context than you think is necessary—what problem are you trying to solve, what alternatives did you consider and what constraints influenced your thinking? Respect governance timelines by including review processes in project planning from the start, rather than treating governance as an afterthought to be added at the end. When you can’t follow governance recommendations, thoroughly explain why—acknowledge the recommendation, clarify your reasoning and show how the input was valuable even if the specific recommendation wasn’t followed.
For both sides: Establish regular, structured communication that doesn’t rely solely on formal meetings about specific proposals. Create safe spaces for honest dialogue. Celebrate shared successes publicly—it reinforces that partnership is possible and models collaborative behavior for the rest of the institution. Also, develop explicit repair processes for when trust is broken, because trust will be broken. The question is whether there are mechanisms to address it directly rather than allowing violations to build into a permanent breach.
The Bridge Builder’s Dilemma
During my tenure as assistant vice president for academic affairs, I came to be viewed with some suspicion by faculty colleagues who wondered whether I’d “gone over to the dark side,” while some administrators wondered whether I was too faculty-minded to make tough decisions. This tension is real and sometimes uncomfortable, but I have come to see it as valuable rather than problematic.
The core truth I discovered is that effective shared governance isn’t about who wins—it’s about maintaining institutional health. Budget constraints are real, and administrators sometimes use them as excuses. Governance can be slow, and deliberation often helps prevent costly mistakes. Faculty expertise in academic matters is genuine, but the faculty perspective isn’t the only one that matters. Both perspectives are partial, and both are essential.
The African proverb says, If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.
Administration can move faster without governance, but those quick decisions are often poor, erode trust and require costly revisions later. Governance can uphold principles by resisting administrative initiatives, but resistance without partnership leads to marginalization.
Going far—building institutions that are genuinely excellent, genuinely equitable and genuinely aligned with educational values—requires going together. After 10 years in governance and administration, I’ve learned that the view from both sides of the table reveals truths neither side sees on its own. The health of higher education depends on institutions where faculty expertise and administrative responsibility combine through genuine shared governance to advance learning, discovery and the public good.
That’s work worth doing. That’s a partnership worth building.
