The Central Washington University Faculty Senate consists of faculty representatives from each department and the library. According to the Faculty Senate homepage, “The Faculty Senate is composed of elected faculty representatives who provide a forum for deliberation, advise the administration on academic matters and contribute to the development and review of academic policy and curriculum.” Records show active involvement in policy development and faculty welfare.

In 1946, the Faculty Council was created with eleven members total. At the time, administration members were considered faculty, as such, every vote regardless of position was equal. The following year the “Code of Personnel Policy and Procedure” was created then changed to the “Faculty Code of Personnel Policy and Procedure.” The Faculty Council was officially changed to the Faculty Senate in 1963.

According to the Faculty Senate’s webpage the Senate, “is the primary means by which faculty collectively share in the governance of Central Washington University (CWU) by shaping the university’s academic environment.”

The Faculty Senate has only ever called for a vote of no confidence once before in their 63-year history. The vote took place in the fall of 1998 on then President Ivory V. Nelson with a successful 218-81 vote.

Professors at the time cited issues with Nelson’s distribution of money, overusing part-time faculty members to replace retiring professors, among other issues. Faculty Senator and Senior Lecturer in English Ruthi Erdman, who was on the faculty during the 1998 vote of no confidence, stated that Nelson “set little value on Arts & Humanities (Philosophy, Literature, Music…) and tried to run CWU as a business whose purpose was to churn out students to be cogs in America’s economic machine.”

Nelson also denied faculty requests for a union, which 74 per cent of professors endorsed earlier in the year. Three months after the vote, Nelson announced he would retire, stating that the vote had no role in his decision to retire.

The Associate Dean of Education, Virginia Erion, was also voted no confidence in 2015. The voting ballot contained six concerns, including a pattern of inadequate leadership and lack of transparency, faculty/department coercion and intimidation, failed collaboration and consensus building, advocating for some departments to the detriment of others, privileged communications with one department and the exclusion of affected departments and inability to reduce and eliminate incivilities amongst faculty and students.

As of 2006, administration is no longer considered part of the Faculty Senate.