Academic senate

An academic senate, sometimes termed faculty senate, academic board or simply senate, is a governing body in some universities and colleges, typically with responsibility for academic matters and primarily drawing its membership from the academic staff of the institution.

Models of university governance can be unitary (also called unicameral) or dual (also called bicameral). Unicameral models may involve leadership by either an academic senate-type body or, more commonly, a lay-led board/council-type body. In this arrangement, a senate-type body may still exist but in an advisory role to the board-type body that has full responsibility for governance. Bicameral models almost always involve both a senate and a board; these can be 'traditional' with the two bodies have distinct but equally important portfolios, typically a senate-type body having responsibility for academic matters and a board-type body having responsibility for finance and strategy, or 'asymmetric' with one body (typically the board) being dominant in the decision-making process.^[1]