The Supreme Role of Faculty in Planning: Why and How? Planning for Higher Education. Vol. 3; No. 3; June 1974.

The most distinctive organizational characteristic of universities is their bottom-heavy authority, the decentralized decisionmaking, and their strong reliance upon the judgments of individual faculty. The preservation of this type of structure is essential to the efficient and effective pursuit of the university's basic mission: to facilitate discovery and personal growth. The actions of virtually all universities reflect a strong conviction that planning should be dominated by similarly trained individuals in department-like groups and that the administration should facilitate this planning by: motivating faculty to plan for themselves; liberating faculty from habitual/traditional modes of thought; being a resource/consultant person; and providing structures and formats that allow an institution to revise and redirect its plans with minimum effort. As such, the author presents ideas to help the academic planning person become the motivator, liberator, resource person, and coordinator necessary for true faculty participation. (Author/PG)