Building Trust

Last week, we shared with great enthusiasm the news that two of our faculty (yes, two!) have received Guggenheim Fellowships. The Fellowship is described as thus:

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation offers fellowships to exceptional individuals in pursuit of scholarship in any field of knowledge and creation in any art form, under the freest possible conditions.

The recognition is awarded to a select few – this year 223 out of a pool of nearly 5,000 applicants received the fellowship. Please join me in congratulating Professor Gerard Magliocca (Robert H. McKinney School of Law) who received the Dorothy Tapper Goldman Guggenheim Fellowship in Constitutional Studies and Profesor Edward Curtis IV (School of Liberal Arts) who received the Guggenheim Fellowship for his work in the study of religion. Profesor Curtis was also selected as a 2026 fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies.

In addition, Professors Partha Basu and Pratibha Varma-Nelson (School of Science) were elected to 2025 class of American Association for the Advancement of Sciences fellows, and Professor David Nguyen (School of Education) has received a Fulbright Scholar Award for the 2026-2027 academic year to Vietnam.

These awards are important to the faculty, to the discipline, to our university, and, in a larger context, to all of us in higher education. These national awards underscore that expertise comes from a lifetime of study driven by curiosity and a relentless pursuit of the truth. Our scholars will tell you that their work is about the discovery of truth no matter what. Such discovery takes time, patience, talent, and courage. The reward is the journey of discovery and recognition from peers that validates the work. More importantly, the reward is trust – trust that our society places in this group. Congratulations to our award winners. We honor you for your work and are grateful to you for being torchbearers of truth and trust.

Amidst declining trust in institutions, especially in academia, it is critical we work to build and sustain it. We are in the midst of a policy realignment/review of all IU policies. The process started in the summer of 2025, and, thanks to our faculty, we have made sound progress: four policies have undergone revisions and received approval, and nine more are planned to be completed by the end of the summer. At the same time, and understandably so, there are questions about the what, the why, and the how, related to the policy revisions and the process. At the risk of repetition (given what I have shared at IFC meetings), it may be worth sharing again. Here is a quick overview of the What, the Why (or So What), and the How (or Now What).

What?

IU had more than 300 university-level policies and 1000+ additional campus-level policies, not including those at the department and unit levels. These policies were not always consistent with each other. In addition new state legislation required us to review and change some of our policies. Hence, the policy review/realignment initiative.

Why (So What)?

If we do not act promptly, this will impede implementation and result in non-compliance with the law. For instance, we needed to review our post-tenure policy so it was implementable this semester. Because post-tenure policies build on Tenure and Promotion, and Annual Review policies, all of these are best when reviewed together.

Additionally, a lack of consistency across policies means we start with one and realize it overlaps with another, so we review both simultaneously. Case in point: IU had a policy for tenure (BOT -11) and another for promotion (BOT-14), a departure from the practice at peer institutions where both policies are combined. Merging them into a single, succinct policy made more sense to the group working on the revisions, which bring us to the How.

How (Now What)?

How do we proceed with the revisions? What is the process? Here is a quick overview of the process that has been in place since last summer. The process below is a description for all Board of Trustees (BOT) policies. Policies that do not require Board of Trustee approval, such as ACA policies (i.e., ACA-17, the Faculty Board of Review policy), go through all steps except the last one.

1. We start by forming faculty working groups to revise policies. These working groups include representatives from the UFC, faculty from each campus (they may not be members of UFC but are members of the faculty councils on their respective campus), and members of the Academic Leadership Council Executive Committee (ALC-EC), typically a chancellor or a provost at one of our campuses. They discuss the policies, benchmark against peers, and draft revisions while consulting the Office of General Counsel to ensure compliance with federal and state law. For example, the BOT-11 working group included six faculty members (including UFC co-chairs) and two administrators (two chancellors). To date this group held 24 meetings – two lasting more than two hours – and spent nearly 1,500 minutes in discussions. We will be meeting again this week to incorporate the comments received during the public comment period.
2. The draft policy is then posted for a 10-day public comment period and shared via the IU Today weekly email.
3. After the comment period, the working group reconvenes to review and incorporate feedback.
4. The revised policy is then shared with UFC in advance of their meeting.
5. UFC members vote on the policy at their next policy pipeline meeting.
6. The policy is then submitted to the ALC-EC for their endorsement.
7. Following ALC-EC endorsement, the policy moves to the Policy Executive Committee (PEC) for a vote. The PEC includes IU vice presidents, executive vice presidents (some of whom also serve as campus chancellors) and staff members. Click here for more information on PEC membership.

Note: All policies have to go through the steps above. BOT policies have one additional level of approval as shown in h. below.

8. Upon approval by the PEC, the policy is routed through the appropriate committee at the Board of Trustees and then advanced to the full Board for a final vote.

Our goal is to ensure that the revisions ensure clarity, compliance with the law, and respect for norms of good governance. At the same time, and in addition to the changes, the process we use is critical to building trust. How we steward this process is as important, if not more important, than the final policies themselves. When the process fails to instill trust, people are less likely to comply and policies lose their significance.

While these meetings take up a great deal of time, as ALC-EC chair, I feel fortunate to have had the privilege of working with talented, engaged, and dedicated faculty from all our campuses. I can say without hesitation that our faculty care deeply about their faculty colleagues, staff, and students. From the questions they posed and the solutions they offered, I have learned that our strongest asset at IU is our people.

While I would like to think the process is perfect, it is not, and we will make errors. At the same time, if this year’s process is any indication of things to come, we know we can review and re-review (if that is a word) policies, and we know how to do it. We have a vibrant process and we will iterate until policies work for all of us.

Go Jags!

Latha Ramchand
Chancellor