June 18, 1998
The Faculty
USC School of Medicine
Dear Colleagues,
As you may already know a revised Governance Document for the School of Medicine was approved by the Faculty Executive Council (FEC) at its April, 1998 meeting and by the Medical Faculty Assembly (MFA) at its May, 1998 meeting. Just prior to completing this approval process, I received some valuable suggestions for modifications to the document. Based on discussion with some faculty, graduate students, and Laura LaCorte from the Office of the General Counsel, I decided to make several wording changes before submitting the document for a faculty referendum. By doing this, I was required under the existing Governance Document to return to the FEC and the MFA for a second vote on the document. The FEC voted on these proposed changes on Wednesday, June 17, 1998, approving them by a unanimous vote of the 20 voting members present at the meeting.
The document is now being posted on the Dean’s Web Page for faculty to read. This version has all changes highlighted in the document with strikeout (where text was deleted) and underlining (where text has been added). I believe that the contributions of faculty through the MFA and particularly those of Harvey Kaslow have greatly improved the document. The next step is for the document to be considered and voted upon by the MFA. If the MFA representatives vote to approve the document, we will then arrange for a vote by the faculty at large (faculty referendum) as required by the existing Governance Document. The final step, assuming the faculty vote to approve the document, will be to submit this Governance Document to the University administration for conside ration by the Board of Trustees. Once approved by the Board of Trustees, this document will become the operative document for the School of Medicine.
As with all documents of this sort, the document will not be all things to all people. The goal of the Task Force on Governance, and all of the other more recent contributors, has been to put a document in place that is workable and better than the exist ing document (the revised document sent back to the school of the University Board of Trustees last year). I have agreed with the MFA leadership to continue our dialogue with regard to governance issues at the School of Medicine. They have proposed an o ngoing task force that will review issues on a continuing basis and that may propose amendments in the future for the document. I will meet with this task force as needed and serve as liaison to it.
What has pleased me the most is the coming together of faculty, faculty leaders, and chairs in support of the Governance Document. For this, I thank you all.
I also want to thank the members of the Task Force on Governance for their substantial contributions: Peter Laird, Robbin Cohen, Pradip Roy-Burman, Alexandra Levine, Martin Weiss, Kathryn Challoner (president of the MFA in 1997-1998), Andrew Kassinove (president of the Associated Students of the School of Medicine) and Robert Lane and Laura LaCorte (of the Office of the General Counsel).
Sincerely,
Leslie Bernstein, Ph.D.
Senior Associate Dean