Faculty Senate
University Faculty Senate elects new officers
(Editor's note: For more detailed information, including meeting minutes, visit the Faculty Senate website.)
8:13 a.m., May 10, 2013--New officers were elected and excellence awards were presented during the regular meeting of the University of Delaware Faculty Senate, held Monday, May 6, in Gore Hall.
Elected at the senate’s final meeting of the 2012-13 academic year were Fred Hofstetter, president-elect; Martha Buell, vice president; Prasad Dhurjati, secretary; Evelyn Hayes and Deena Burke, at-large members; and Brian Hanson, chair of the Committee on Committees and Nominations. Deni Galileo will serve as president in the coming year.
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Doctoral hooding
Senate President Sheldon Pollack, professor of legal studies, announced the recipients for the 2012-13 Excellence in Teaching Awards, including Gary Allison, assistant professor of special education; Thomas Becker, professor of management and chair of the Department of Business Administration; Michal Herzenstein, assistant professor of marketing; and Juejun Hu, assistant professor of materials science.
Excellence in Advising Awards were presented to Marsha Baumeister, assistant professor of education; Jennifer Buckley, assistant professor of mechanical engineering; Eric Furst, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering; and Jennifer Gregan-Paxton, associate professor of marketing and senior academic adviser.
Graduate student honorees recognized for Excellence in Teaching Awards were Tiffany Racco, an art history doctoral student; Furkan Cayci, a doctoral student in electrical and computer engineering; and Joseph Turner, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English.
Pollack congratulated the honorees and thanked all the members of the senate for their service this year.
“Without them there is no faculty governance at the University,” Pollack said. “I want to thank in particular all the committees and ad hoc committees and their chairs. We appreciate all the hard work you put in.”
Pollack also thanked the Office of the Provost, in particular Ann Ardis, interim deputy provost, and Nancy Brickhouse, interim provost.
“I want to thank Ann for all of her hard work,” Pollack said, adding, “We really appreciate everything Nancy has done over the last two years as deputy and interim provost.”
Provost remarks
Brickhouse noted several accomplishments over the past academic year, including continuing efforts to create a more diverse campus community.
“The University has made great progress in diversity areas and will continue to do so, with a more diverse class of undergraduate and graduate students arriving this fall,” Brickhouse said. “This is an important issue that requires and deserves sustained attention.”
Brickhouse also lauded the Transnational Encounters program for helping to raise UD’s global profile with lectures by Ha Jin, Rita Dove and Bharati Mukherjee.
Helping in the area of student learning, Brickhouse said, will be the opening of the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Laboratory (ISE Lab) this fall.
“Students will be taking classes there this fall, and a lot of faculty have been working on curriculum development to support that,” Brickhouse said. “This is something that is very challenging for our faculty and very important for our campus.”
Recognizing student involvement in community service activities, Brickhouse lauded the efforts of the University in its concern for student safety and help to the residents recovering from Hurricane Sandy.
“The work of our students is something that we should celebrate,” Brickhouse said. “I particularly like it when they go beyond what they are expected to do.”
Brickhouse noted that the Faculty Senate is a place where academic administrators and elected faculty members can work together on issue of importance.
“At the end of the day, I think we all want the same thing great successful students and academic scholarship that makes a difference in the world,” Brickhouse said. “It’s up to us to make those things happen.”
Consent agenda
The senate approved several items during the consent agenda portion of its meeting, including adding a 4+1 bachelor of science in fashion merchandising and a master of science in fashion and apparel studies.
The 4+1 program allows undergraduate majors to complete the master's degree in half the time by accelerating attainment of the degree.
Senators also approved revising the concentration in family and consumer sciences education in the human services major and to add a concentration to the family and consumer sciences education in the human services major’s apparel studies concentration.
Requests to revise history classics and Honors history classics in French, German, Russian and Spanish were approved.
Senators also gave the green light to requests to revise the master of science degree in fashion and apparel studies, and to revise the master of science in fashion and apparel studies to add a non-thesis option.
Requests to revise the master of science degree in nursing and a minor in Jewish Studies with language also were approved.
Regular agenda
Senators defeated a resolution to amend Section 4.4.4 of the Faculty Handbook to read that voting on department promotion and tenure committees be limited to faculty at or above the position for which the candidate is applying. The measure also would have limited voting on decisions involving the granting of tenure to those who hold tenure. The measure was defeated by a 33-10 vote with six senators abstaining.
Measures approved include:
- Adding a 4+1 bachelor of science/master of science in statistics in the Department of Applied Economics and Statistics;
- A resolution that all noncredit certificate programs offered by the University must first be approved by the Senate Coordinating Committee on Education; and
- Granting permanent status to the bachelor of science major in quantitative biology and the bachelor of science in psychology, both in the College of Arts and Sciences.
A motion to approve the online education policy for the course catalog and the Professional and Continuing Studies website was referred back to the Faculty Senate Committee on Undergraduate Studies for further consideration.
Article by Jerry Rhodes