Consultation Before the Senate Vote
A university of 18,000 students is redesigning its undergraduate business curriculum to meet new accreditation requirements. The faculty senate must approve the change in four months. The dean has run two open forums (attendance 40 and 35, mostly the same people) and declares 'consultation done'. Key groups include 240 academic staff, 3,200 students, 12 external advisory board members, the accreditation body, and professional services teams who timetable rooms. A student survey shows 71% have not heard of the changes. The staff union has raised workload concerns about moving to block teaching. The accreditation body requires evidence of stakeholder input but does not prescribe how. Two departments have submitted competing proposals and are lobbying senators. The senate meets monthly and papers close ten days before each meeting.
1. Evaluate whether the dean's consultation is fit for purpose and set out an engagement plan that satisfies accreditation evidence requirements and internal decision-making.
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Two open forums with 75 attendances, largely the same people, are not consultation for a change affecting 3,200 students and 240 staff. The student survey - 71% unaware - shows a reach failure, and the union's workload concern is a legitimate implementation issue that forums have not addressed. The dean's 'consultation done' claim also confuses activity with evidence.
A fit plan would:
- Clarify decision rights: senate approves; dean and faculty lead design; students and staff are consulted on options and involved in implementation; advisory board is consulted on relevance; accreditation body is informed and receives evidence; professional services is involved in timetable feasibility.
- Sequence backwards from the senate paper deadline: weeks 1-2 stakeholder mapping and briefings; weeks 3-6 facilitated workshops on the competing proposals using published criteria; weeks 7-9 student deliberation and survey; weeks 10-12 union discussion on workload; week 13 evidence pack and senate.
- Use existing fora (programme committees, student reps) rather than inventing new ones.
- Publish what is open and what is fixed.
- Keep an evidence log: who was engaged, what they said, what changed and why.
Accreditation needs evidence of input and response, not a count of meetings.
2. The staff union links engagement to workload negotiations. How should the engagement lead handle this boundary with collective bargaining?
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Recognise the union as a high-power, high-legitimacy stakeholder and do not try to absorb bargaining into engagement. The two tracks should be separate but coordinated.
- Engagement track: academic design, teaching approach, assessment, student experience. Staff and union representatives can contribute evidence about workload consequences.
- Bargaining track: terms and conditions, workload allocation, timetabling. HR and union negotiators own this.
Actions: agree with HR and the union what is discussed where, and communicate that protocol to staff so nobody is misled. Invite the union early to a briefing on the block-teaching model and ask for data on workload implications. Do not promise outcomes you cannot deliver; say 'this will be considered in the workload discussion'. Share meeting notes and maintain a single issues log.
Risk: if the union believes engagement is being used to bypass bargaining, it may withdraw cooperation or dispute the change. If bargaining stalls, the senate timetable may slip. Escalate early to the dean and HR, and keep the senate informed of the dependency rather than presenting a false certainty.
3. What would you record as evidence of stakeholder input for accreditation, and how would you avoid it becoming a paper exercise?
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Evidence should show input, consideration and response, not attendance. I would keep:
- The engagement plan with stakeholder groups, methods and dates.
- A decision log: issue raised, source, options considered, decision, reason, and what changed as a result.
- Summaries of workshops and surveys, including dissenting views, not just consensus.
- Examples of changes made - for example, assessment weighting altered after student feedback, or timetable constraints built into the block model.
- Communications that closed the loop with stakeholders.
- A short evaluation of reach and representativeness: who was heard, who was not.
To avoid a paper exercise, the evidence should be produced as part of the work, not reconstructed before the accreditation visit. Chairs should sign off decision logs at the time. Ask a student and a staff representative to review the evidence summary for accuracy. And test it: if a stakeholder read the pack, would they recognise their input and see what happened to it? If not, it is paperwork, not evidence.