THE STATUS OF FACULTY SENATES IN COMMUNITY COLLEGES

Shared governance plays an important role in institutional decision making. The extent to which faculty are involved in governance, though, has largely been ignored within community colleges. The current study was designed to profile faculty governance units, such as senates, in community, junior, and technical colleges in order to initiate a constructive dialogue about how best to build structures that allow faculty input into decision making. An exploratory survey of faculty governance in community colleges was mailed to a apurposive national sample of community colleges to provide geographic representation. Findings reveal that governance bodies are less common that perhaps previously thought, and that these structures tend to be more informal than in their 4-year college counterparts.