Faculty Senate concluded their term of the academic school year and transitioned out of their senate positions Tuesday.
Senate chair, Russell Meeuf started their last meeting by thanking everyone for their involvement with faculty senate and all the items they’ve accomplished in the past year.
“We’ve had some great discussions on a lot of topics that matter to faculty, and I think we’ve been really productive in advancing some new policies and new initiatives to improve the University of Idaho,” Meeuf said. “In addition to our role approving new curricular changes and providing advice to the administration, this year, we tackled some pretty serious business and much of it, much of that is going to head to the U.F.M. (university faculty meeting) next week.”
Meeuf said they approved a new affinity group policy supporting university employees. Robert Kirchmeier and Rochelle Smith lead this change for affinity groups.
“We endorsed the new State of Board education policy on academic rights and responsibilities and then moved to adopt this new policy as our own at the University of Idaho, establishing a more clear and comprehensive set of standards around academic freedom, which I think is important in these challenging times,” Meeuf said.
Meeuf said the senate has supported the update in policy for paid parental leave at UI.
“All this work is not yet done,” Meeuf said. “The advocacy of the subcommittee and of senate with our partners and staff counsel has been vital to this process. And I feel pretty good that we’re going to be moving towards a good policy solution for us on paid parental leave.”
Meeuf said among many other changes senate has made, is the faculty senate provided among campus.
Provost Torrey Lawerence said he wanted to acknowledge what an exceptionally challenging year it has been and how productive the senate has been throughout it.
While this has been the last senate meeting of the year, the new members of the senate have not yet been announced, including the new chair and vice chair.
Sierra Pesnell can be reached at [email protected].