Once again, tensions rose Tuesday as Faculty Senate discussed a memo to be sent to President Scott Green, critiquing a lack of collaboration with faculty.
The senate narrowly voted in favor of sending the memo, with 43% of the senate voting against it at last week’s meeting. The memo addressed Office of Information Technology policy changes that inadvertently restricted faculty research.
Some faculty felt that decisions made by the administration and OIT disregarded their input.
“The goal of this memo is to have a positive effect,” Faculty Sen. Jerry Fairly said.
The memo called for administration, faculty and staff to work collaboratively as equals to avoid such issues.
“The unilateral imposition of this policy has the potential to disenfranchise many members of our community, endangering morale and placing the research and teaching goals of the institution at risk,” the memo stated.
Following much discussion and hesitation from faculty senators, Provost and Executive Vice President Torrey Lawrence assured the senate that Green would react fairly.
“I’m really confident that he’s just going to say, ‘yeah, let’s talk about this,’” Lawrence said.
Non-Tenure Track Faculty Subcommittee update
Following up on a survey sent to non-tenured faculty, Associate Professor Florian Justwan said the committee has been continuing the conversation behind the scenes.
Survey results showed non-tenured faculty feel unsupported by upper administration, in addition to issues with job security and room for career growth.
Faculty are hired with a variety of contracts, making some positions more secure than others. This has led to disparities, the senate pointed out, where part-time faculty can’t receive parking passes from their unit and are limited in joining university committees.
“It became clear some non-tenure track faculty were wondering why they can’t serve on committees,” Justwan said.
Vandal Giving Day 2023
This year’s Vandal Giving Day broke records, raising a total of $819,662, according to the website.
The Vandal Healing Garden and Memorial, to be built in honor of Xana Kernodle, Ethan Chapin, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves, was the fund with the most donors. A total of $54,274 was raised with 124 individual donations.
Haadiya Tariq can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @haadiyatariq