At the July 2019 meeting of Academic Senate, the model of Shared Academic Governance was approved. This new model empowers Faculty Boards to make more decisions at the Faculty level, enabling decision-making that takes place closer to the staff and students.

Professor Mariella Herberstein, Chair of Academic Senate, said “Shared academic governance introduces distributed decision-making between Academic Senate and its committees – which have oversight of academic standards and quality; and Faculty Boards – which apply standards set by Academic Senate to units and course components, such as majors and specialisations. This is a significant change for Macquarie and heralds a new era of joint collaboration between Academic Senate, its committees and Faculty Boards.”

Member of the Steering Group, Deputy Dean, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences and Associate Dean Learning and Teaching, Professor Catherine Dean, has been a supporter of the project, noting “This model recognises the role of Faculty Boards and empowers them to have a greater level of autonomy over coursework curricula, closer to where discipline-specific expertise exists.”

Further information

More information on shared academic governance, including the list of authorisations is available from the project page on Academic Senate website. More information on Faculty Boards is available on the Faculty Board websites.

A post-implementation review will take place in the first half of 2020 and may undertake any fine-tuning if necessary. If you have any feedback on how Shared Governance is working, pass your comments through your Senate representative.