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Michigan State University

Academic Governance

From the Secretary's Desk

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Guidelines for Remarks

Guidelines for Remarks

August 10, 2021 | Tyler Silvestri, Secretary for Academic Governance

Benefits of Remarks

During the 2020-2021 academic year, the Steering Committee discussed whether to eliminate remarks from the president, provost, executive vice president for health sciences, and faculty senate chairperson at Steering, Faculty Senate, and University Council meetings. The consensus was to keep them because:

  1. Face time and conversation build and support trust.

  2. The pace of university decision-making right now is fast (given COVID, financial decisions); things change week to week.

  3. Steering Committee triages items but also provides opportunity for manageable sized discussions to coordinate efforts of groups across the university to ensure that we are working together and not at cross-purposes.  President/provost/EVPHS remarks are part of this coordination.

Content of Remarks

  1. The remarks from the president, provost, EVPHS, and chairperson should not exceed twenty minutes total. Questions should be limited to ten minutes, and the chairperson should remind participants that the question period is reserved for questions about the content of the four speakers’ remarks. Unrelated questions should be held until the comments from the floor period. 

  2. Steering Committee remarks should focus on items relevant to coordination across groups, emergent issues, FYI items, issues relevant to the Steering agenda, and issues that the representatives on Steering need to know. For example, the student groups appreciate knowing ahead of time if something is coming out in the news that they will get questions about. 

  3. Faculty Senate remarks should focus primarily on issues relevant to the faculty because they are faculty. Cf. University Council remarks. 

  4. University Council remarks should focus on items relevant to the listeners because they are Spartans. This is the time for university-wide issues.