Chair Talk # 13 May 2016
Talking Stock
Another academic year draws to a close. I’ve been relatively silent for the past few months, having somehow decided that traveling five out of six weeks while also teaching an undergraduate class was a good idea. But a lot has been happening, as those of you who pay attention are aware. The Faculty officers are pleased to have accomplished a few useful things including adoption of an open access policy and a proposed redefinition of who gets to be a member of the General Faculty. Thanks to the ongoing work of the NTT Ad Hoc Committee, this important redefinition will go to a vote of the current General Faculty in the Fall. We also continued to update and streamline our bylaws and constitution, hard work done almost entirely by Bobbi McKean, our outgoing Secretary of the Faculty, who will be sorely missed. Shared Governance Committees, especially SPBAC and C-11, engaged in critical campus discussions around budgets, salary increases, fund-raising priorities, and more. Senate Standing Committees also did substantial work on policy in research and academic affairs.
We are in the middle of two important projects, involving quality and diversity, to which many faculty have already contributed. The aim of the Quality project is for faculty to define, from the bottom up: (1) what we mean by quality in scholarship and teaching/learning; (2) how best to assess such quality; and (3) how the UA can support quality, and its assessment. Groups of faculty volunteers did the hard work of putting draft position statements together, and right now these are being brought before various groups, including College Faculty Advisory Councils (where they exist), to get further input. We hope to get these statements out to the entire faculty early in the Fall Semester. Stay tuned.
Our efforts on diversity are part of a much broader campus response to issues exposed by, among other things, the Faculty Listening Tour. The recently-appointed Diversity Task Force has created a number of subcommittees, including one focused on the classroom experience. It is this group that will take up student concerns around things that happen in the classroom, under the control of the instructor. This subcommittee will be recommending strategies related to teaching practices and classroom behavior that should help make the UA the inclusive environment we wish it to be. Some of these recommendations will emerge soon, others will take shape over time. Faculty will necessarily play a central role in fostering a diverse, inclusive campus.
The budget news is better this year than last. Chances are we’ll be hearing some welcome news about compensation soon, as we struggle to close a gap that has emerged between our salaries and those of our peers.
Right now we are preparing for 2016 Commencement exercises – over 6000 UA students will be receiving degrees this year, most of them at the University-wide event on Friday May 13. Our students will be there, with loved ones and friends, to celebrate their achievements, and I urge as many faculty as possible to join that celebration, or any of the College or Program based commencement activities that celebrate this milestone. Your students will be grateful.
Lynn Nadel