Dan Crump, Richard Tahvildaran-Jesswein, Beth Smith Leadership 2009

 If you don’t know the names of all your faculty members, do your best to create a system to learn names.  Meet regularly with your administration and district leaders and trustees  Review your senate committees and review their scope and functions.  Set clear goals and outcomes as a full senate, and chart your progress over the year.

 Keep an open mind, keep your adversaries close by and be receptive to remarks from those in disagreement with your ideas and goals.

 Be organized – This saves time.  Be informed – This takes time, but empowers.  Be a community – You are not alone unless you make it that way.  Be a representative – This requires the first three and you must set personal agenda aside.  Be authentic – This requires patience and presence.  Be effective – By any means you can.

 Be true to your conscience – If at the end of your term you can look back and say, “I may have made mistakes, but every action I took and every decision I made, I fully believed at the rime was in the best interest of faculty,” then no one can ask for more.  On of the hardest things about being senate president is that you spend so much time with the administrators that you learn to understand their point of view. As president you sometimes have to balance your duty to represent faculty with a sense of overall fairness in light of information and understanding you have and the general faculty – and even the senate – may not have.

 Check your ego at the door – You represent faculty, not yourself.  Bend over backwards to begin and maintain a constructive relationship with the union leadership.  Show great respect for the board of trustees so that they can respect faculty.  Work to make the senate more proactive.

 Surround yourself with and identify potential faculty leaders who bring both specific knowledge in areas like curriculum, professional development, student services, etc, as well as broad awareness of campus operations, politics – ASAP!  Never forget you are representing all faculty Need to “set aside” personal conflicts with individual (if any) faculty.

 Never hesitate to say “I’ll get back to you.”  Err on the side of consulting with your executive team too much.  You represent your faculty – THEY need to inform all positions and decisions.

 Pick your battles! You can’t fight them all!

 Remember – You can never take off the “president” hat, so anything you say may be seen as coming from the senate. Speak carefully and cautiously and be sure that your senate is fully informed about what you’re doing.  You don’t have to do it all on your own! Seek out competent people to appoint to committees (but make sure they know to report back!) and groom a good successor.  You can always call the ASCCC with questions.

 Don’t be coerced into signing a form by adminstration without having time to read and discuss it. Forms tend to come the day they need to be signed. The president is told that there’s “no time to discuss” and just sign.

 Keep a notebook and write everything in it and NEVER tear out a single page. It will be an invaluable reference.

 Really use your fellow senate executive team members and create a team.  In meeting with administrators where they come up with “great” ideas and want your immediate feedback, just say “I’ll get back to you after talking with the senate.”  Send short thank you notes to key players when they do something good. They never get thanks.  Relationships are everything – Build them during the good times so you can weather the bad times.

 Realize that your greatest resource, greatest asset, and greatest source of difficulties will be your faculty colleagues.  Mentor, invest and delegate in order to create a sustainable senate.

 Don’t second guess yourself. Trust your instincts. If it was a mistake, don’t be afraid to apologize or rectify it.  Find people you trust who will support you and who are not afraid to give you advice or tell you that you might be wrong.

 Collaborate at least one time each month with classified senate, student, and union leaders to build a united front. Find common goals – then you realize you are not alone.  Find one past senate president you admire and meet regularly with that person for advice.