There was no request for a "no-confidence" vote, as some pre-meeting rumors had suggested.
Instead, Lincoln University's Faculty Senate members on Thursday discussed three proposed resolutions, and adopted two of them, aimed at improving communications with Said Sewell, LU's provost and vice president for academic affairs.
Sewell is in his second year at Lincoln, and created some controversy this fall when he announced two deans' positions - in the College of Professional Studies, currently held by Linda Bickel, and in the College of Arts and Sciences, now held by Ruthi Sturdevant - would be re-filled after national searches.
Both women have long-time ties to Lincoln and to the community.
After last month's Faculty Senate meeting included a number of people complaining about that decision, Sewell earlier this month said the national search idea had been postponed.
And the resolutions the faculty approved Thursday didn't address that issue.
"I don't think it was ever widely in dispute that the purview of the president, and the vice president for academic affairs, (includes) to conduct searches according to the rules and regulations," Bryan Salmons, an associate English professor who also is this year's Faculty Senate chairman, told the News Tribune. "They're very clearly given those powers.
"But, what was in question was the manner in which it was announced and the way the news traveled across the campus."
Thursday's faculty votes came on three resolutions proposed by the Senate's Executive Committee, which had studied several issues raised during a special, closed Faculty Senate meeting Oct. 8.
The first resolution passed by an 80-11 margin, with three abstaining.
It involved communication between the faculty and Sewell.
The Senate members discussed a recent "free day for students ONLY" announcement, where instructors were told, "Classes are NOT to be canceled nor altered," causing confusion among faculty and students.
Another example was a proposal to seek state approval for a Master of Arts in Higher Education, using a process that bypassed the established procedures for getting advice, comments and approval from the affected faculty.
Faculty also were concerned the proposal wasn't initiated at the department level in conjunction with the school's Graduate Education Council.
"The established decision-making process should be utilized when changing or creating policies that will significantly impact the university community," the resolution said. "When this decision making process is circumvented, the vice president for academic affairs' office should provide a timely rationale indicating why."
The second resolution passed by a more narrow margin, 55-33, with 11 abstaining.
It raised questions about Sewell's actions rejecting proposed promotions or tenure for faculty members who had the support of their departments and deans.
"The Faculty Senate respectfully requests that Dr. Sewell re-evaluate faculty tenure and promotion denials since he took the (vice president's) position," the resolution said. "We ask that he provide clear rationale for each denial while specifically citing the appropriate tenure and promotion policy."
Some argued the resolution was wrong because tenure decisions ultimately are made by the board of Curators.
A third resolution urged Sewell to respond to a committee's recommendations about online learning, which were submitted last April and haven't been acted on since.
That resolution failed on a 36-48 vote, with one abstention, after several faculty members noted there has been some recent discussion of online education policies.
Salmons told the News Tribune the two resolutions that passed "will be sent a number of places, but most pertinently, they'll be sent directly to (Sewell), in anticipation of a response. (And), then, we (wait and) see - because, as was pointed out in the meeting, we really don't have the authority to make what are called "binding' resolutions.
"A lot of people don't understand the distinction - binding resolutions are for law-making bodies, which we aren't."
Many times, Salmons added, "They're just statements of what's on our mind, or what we're concerned about."
But Salmons also will report the faculty's actions to LU's Curators when they meet Nov. 12 in Jefferson City - even though the resolutions don't ask the curators to take any action.
"We would like them to take notice of it," he said. "In a way, when you make resolutions like this, you're raising your voice" in an effort to be heard and listened to.
Although many of Lincoln's faculty were upset with the proposal to search for new deans, there was no motion to take a vote of "no confidence" in Sewell's work as an administrator.
"I see no-confidence votes as blunt instruments," Salmons said. "I think that, in many respects, you only go to blunt instruments when you run out of other ideas."
That's why, he said, LU's faculty wants Sewell to help improve internal communications in an era when, for more than a decade, Lincoln officially has had a shared governance policy where faculty and staff are to have input into the university's operating decisions, along with the administrators.
"It's not as though (no-confidence votes) don't serve any purpose," Salmons explained, "but why go to a vote of no confidence when you have other options on the table and when, in fact, you have not truly articulated what your concerns are?"