June 27, 2019
Dear Faculty Colleagues,
We are writing you about the 2019 edition of the Faculty Handbook. The Academic Senate and its Handbook Committee worked with the Office of the Provost over this academic year on updates.
The new edition will be posted at https://www.usc.edu/facultyhandbook. For convenience, a summary of changes is in chapter 1. Here are some of the important points:
- The section on Professionalism and Sanctioning clarifies the processes of the Committee on Professional Responsibility.
- The handbook recognizes our new Ombuds, on both the UPC and HSC campuses, who offer independent and confidential consultation.
- Confidential reports on any issues that do not meet our ethical and professional standards can be made online or by phone to the new Office of Professionalism and Ethics. See usc.edu.
- New handbook language deals with restrictions on consensual intimate relationships between faculty and students when there is a supervisory relationship, sets out requirements for disclosure, and restates strong disapproval of intimate relationships whenever there is a power differential. The Academic Senate is working on language for prohibiting these relationships in a subsequent Faculty Handbook update due to a resolution for this change having passed late this academic year.
- The handbook adds language re-affirming the shared roles and responsibilities of the faculty. Academic freedom continues to protect faculty of every track and every rank, full-time and part-time. And all faculty share the responsibility to help in the management of the academic enterprise, through eligibility to be elected or appointed to faculty governance bodies.
We hope you are enjoying your summer and that it will prove productive.
We appreciate all you continue to do for the university, and we look forward to welcoming Carol Folt as our new president.
Sincerely,
Michael W. Quick
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs
Yaniv Bar-Cohen
President of the Faculty