University Senate approved the joint resolution created by university governance leaders, President Terry King and the Board of Trustees at their last meeting of the academic year.
While King said this resolution is aimed at discussing the shared values between the Board of Trustees and BSU faculty, as well as listing what the university is currently accomplishing, the withdrawn faculty council resolution questioned the Board and their approach to transparency within the university.
University Senate had a separate, yet similar resolution that had been tabled at their March meeting. Amy Harden, the chair of the senate for this academic year, said that with the new resolution now in place, the senate's old proposed resolution is no longer on the table.
"It's resolved that these things are important to the university," King said. "It stresses those positive things, what we're doing right now, all the great things that are happening at the university, as well as our commitment to the initiatives that are currently going on."
Though this resolution is meant to bring the Board of Trustees and faculty closer together, King said that it's still the faculty's job to make sure they're involved – if they want to be.
"We're indeed interested in input from everybody; students, faculty, staff. But it's been expressed here that they want to know the decision-making processes, but we still have faculty members not going to Board of Trustee meetings," King said.
Directly following the final meeting of the senate for the academic year, the first meeting of the 2016 - 2017 academic year took place. Kourtland Koch, an associate professor of special education, was elected as the new chair of University Senate.
He said he plans to see the open dialogue between the Board of Trustees and the faculty, staff and students continue throughout the 2016 - 2017 school year.
"My goal [as senate chair] is to keep that momentum being created – looking for creative solutions to challenges we're going to face," Koch said.