Despite trends toward greater corporatism and bureaucratization of the academy, some vestiges of shared governance remain, including some level of faculty decision-making in faculty senates or councils. Generalizations about faculty senates are difficult to make because they vary with regard to their level of power and faculty involvement. Nevertheless, more than 90% of four-year colleges and universities have some form of a faculty senate. As a former faculty senate chair, the author hopes that he can alert future faculty senate chairs to the problems they might encounter and offer advice on how one might approach handling those problems. He stresses that faculty senates can and should be an important component of shared governance. He believes it is essential that the position of the faculty senate chair and the institution of the faculty senate continue, despite the obstacles--the temptations of power, the tendency toward lethargy, the fixation on the inconsequential--mentioned in this article. Although in the age of the corporate university, shared governance may be seriously weakened, it is important to maintain as much of it as possible. After all, shared governance and with it democratic decision-making distinguishes academe from other institutions within the society. To maintain the academic culture, especially academic freedom, it is important to resist attempts to model the university after its corporate counterparts. (Contains 5 endnotes.)