The budget travails of the early 1990s created a large number of stresses and strains on the University and its people. In protecting the core academic mission, hard decisions were made and campuses were forced to withdraw support from important areas. Departments functioned during this period only because faculty and staff put their collective shoulders to the wheel and pushed. As the budget situation improved in the years that followed, many areas of importance to the faculty were restored. There remains, however, the perception, and perhaps the reality, that staffing levels, particularly in the departments, never recovered from UC's bad budget years and the early retirements that came with them. Certainly an all-important collaboration — that between faculty and staff — was weakened by the troubles of the early 1990s; a case can be made that this collaboration is in need of its own recovery. All the signs indicate a decade of incredible growth ahead for UC; such growth makes it imperative that we strengthen our faculty-staff collaboration.

The Senate's Academic Council and the staff's Council of University of California Staff Assemblies (CUCSA) took a first step toward this goal when, last year, they charged their vice chairs to lead a task force whose responsibility was to identify campus best practices, training opportunities, and resources for resolving faculty-staff conflicts. As vice chair of the Council last year, I co-chaired this group along with Kathryn Day-Huh, who was then the CUCSA vice chair. Our panel, made up of faculty and staff from each of the campuses, took to its task with enthusiasm and soon found common ground on many points. There was, for example, broad agreement among us that UC seems to have experienced an increase in incivility in recent years, one that has damaged campus cultures and important working relationships. We also found that many faculty and staff do not understand or appreciate each other’s work lives or roles.

Our campuses have taken this issue seriously; we found many examples of effective programs aimed at improving the faculty-staff working environment and providing informal ways of resolving difficulties. However, we also found that many of these programs were unknown to large segments of the campuses and that simply locating information about them on campus web sites can be a challenge.

One outcome of our discussions was the creation of a Partnership Statement, similar to the Statements of Community adopted by many of our campuses. The statement has now been endorsed by the Academic Council, CUCSA and President Atkinson. It reads:

The greatness of the University of California follows from the excellence of its people — its faculty, staff and students; however, a mere collection of outstanding individuals will not advance the University. Our ability to excel in our missions depends on collaborations and collegial environ-ments. A collegial atmosphere can only come about through strong part-nerships based on mutual trust and respect. Therefore, in support of the University’s missions, the faculty and staff of the University of California affirm their responsibility and commitment to creating and fostering a cooperative and professional working environment.

The Task Force members learned much from each other. As is often the case when human experience is being examined, it was the process — of communicating with one another — rather than the product of reports and statements that was most valuable. Given this, the state of faculty-staff relations would be greatly improved if each campus engaged in a similar activity. I encourage campus Senate members to get together with representatives of their campus Staff Association and engage in an open discussion of this issue. My hope is that each campus might create its own Partnership Statement. The complete Task Force report can be viewed on the web at: www.ucop.edu/senate/reports.html and will soon be transmitted to the campuses.

Lawrence B. Coleman, Chair
Academic Council