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Shared governance is one of higher education’s most enduring ideals. At its best, it offers a framework for shared responsibility, where students, faculty, staff, and administrators bring their perspectives to bear on decisions that shape each institution over time. But for those new to a career in higher education, this ideal can feel abstract or even impenetrable. The routes to participation can be difficult to navigate. Decision-making structures are often intricate and sometimes opaque, especially if you’re new to higher education.
This article offers practical suggestions for entering and engaging with shared governance thoughtfully. While governance may not be the most visible or glamorous part of campus life, your engagement in the process can help shape your college or university’s priorities and reinforce your own professional trajectory.
Understand the Landscape
The first step is learning how governance works at your college or university. Faculty senates, staff councils, bargaining units, and formal committees often operate with their own sets of procedures, histories, and expectations unique to each institution. Some groups have formal decision-making authority while others are consultative.
Spend time with your faculty or staff handbook. Review committee charters, meeting minutes, and governance bylaws if they’re available online. Ask colleagues which committees matter most and where new voices might be needed. If you’re unsure where to begin, starting with a task force or department-level group can provide valuable experience with fewer barriers to entry.
This exploratory mindset — approaching new opportunities through the lens of both career development and institutional contribution — is an important key to advancement in higher education. Aligning your talents with your college or university’s needs is a surefire way to grow both your influence and confidence on campus.
Prepare To Participate
Simply joining a committee or attending meetings won’t create change. Effective governance participation requires preparation. Review the agenda and any related materials before meetings. Learn the issues under discussion, the vocabulary used, and the existing culture of the group. If acronyms, frameworks, or past decisions are unclear, don’t hesitate to ask for clarification or context. When you are new to a group, such questions are necessary and should be expected.
Contributions don’t need to be groundbreaking, but they should be grounded. Bring in your perspective from working with students or seeing how a policy plays out in practice. Simply being new to your college or university doesn’t diminish your credibility. In many cases, it gives you an important vantage point that experience cannot provide.
Speak Thoughtfully, Build Respect
Governance environments tend to value clarity, collegiality, and consistency. You don’t need to be the most vocal person in the room, but you do want to be someone others can trust to contribute thoughtfully.
Frame your comments with the institution’s mission or strategic priorities in mind. When raising concerns, pair them with questions or solutions. Respect the formal process, but don’t be afraid to ask why things are done the way they are. Good ideas are infectious, no matter who they come from.
Many governance groups rely on formal meeting rules, but more informal alternative meeting structures are gaining traction across higher education. Shifting from parliamentary procedure to more inclusive, consensus-based models tends to improve participation and dialogue. You may be surprised how welcoming and even casual meetings can feel when the purpose, structure, and responsibilities are made clear to you.
Find Mentors, Not Just Allies
Governance is easier to navigate when you have someone who can help you get to know the players and understand the institutional context. A mentor doesn’t need to be in your department or in the group you serve with. What matters is that they have experience in governance at your college or university and are willing to share what they’ve learned.
Ask them how they got started and what they’ve seen succeed and fail within the governance structure. Such a mentor can also serve as a sounding board as you prepare for (and process) your first meeting or two. In time, you may have an opportunity to pay it forward.
Progress through Persistence
Governance moves slowly, and its outcomes can be hard to trace. You might attend meetings for an entire semester without being able to point to a single result. But don’t confuse that slowness with futility. Change happens because people stay engaged in the process.
Start with what’s manageable. You don’t need to serve on multiple committees to make a difference. A single voice, asking an honest question at the right time, can reorient an entire discussion. So can consistent attention to how policies intersect with practice, and how our decisions can affect students, staff, and faculty outside the meeting room.
Your Voice Is Needed
You don’t need an impressive title to contribute meaningfully to shared governance. What you do need is the willingness to learn how things work, speak thoughtfully, and stay engaged when the process is halting or bureaucratic. While not every committee opportunity will spark your passion, many on your campus would benefit from your voice, no matter how long you’ve served in higher education.
By stepping into governance spaces with awareness and purpose, you will not only grow as a professional, but you can help make higher education more accountable and better equipped to meet the challenges ahead.
