This study's purpose was to investigate the level of involvement of Florida's full-time community college faculty in institutional governance, their perceptions of the faculty governance body's role in institutional decision-making, and the characteristics of an ideal governance process. This study also explored the relation between a faculty member's level of involvement in governance activities and his or her perceptions of the desired roles of faculty in institutional governance as well as the relation between a faculty member's level of involvement and his or her gender, race, age, and years of employment. Certain factors that encourage or discourage faculty participation in governance were also probed. Research methods included a 25-item survey (Miller & Vacik, 1998) detailing the purpose of the study and asking questions regarding the faculty member's demographics and level of involvement in governance. The research also included 12 faculty interviews. The interview analysis used established inductive methods. This study has shown that Florida's full-time community college faculty do participate in institutional governance but often do not attend faculty governance body meetings. They are, however, actively involved in service on committees and are likely to attend committee meetings regularly. While Florida's community college faculty can identify the roles faculty governance bodies play in institutional governance, they agree less about the characteristics of an ideal governance process or their perceptions of the roles of their faculty governance bodies. Age does not seem to affect faculty involvement in institutional governance although the race of the faculty member may have some effect. The faculty member's years of experience do not have a major effect on the faculty member's level of involvement. The interviewed faculty desire a faculty voice in decision making and believe that governance structures and processes should enable faculty to make their opinions known to all members of the college community. The influence of the college president and the senate president is critical for shared governance. The senate president should have access to the highest level of decision-making at the college.

The problem with which this study is concerned is determining the degree of faculty participation in the decision-making process within six small private black colleges in Texas. The decision areas investigated are faculty personnel (which includes appointments, promotions, tenure, and merit pay increases), curriculum, and administration. Respondents to this study include 189 administrators and faculty members from six small private black colleges in Texas. A continuum designed by a task force of the American Association of Higher Education (1967), which is composed of administrative dominance, administrative primacy, shared authority, faculty primacy, and faculty dominance, was used in the survey. Data from responses are presented by number, percentage, and mean.