The Faculty Senate oversees issues of the faculty, acts as a connection between the faculty and campus administration and assists in campus planning and academic policies. The Faculty Senate is regulated by the Faculty Constitution and the Faculty Bylaws. 

This academic year, they will meet twice monthly on Tuesdays from 2:00 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. On Tuesday, Sept. 14, the Faculty Senate met via Webex to discuss their meeting format and modality, goals and next steps, and the Chancellor search updates. 

For the monthly meetings, the Faculty Senate’s next meeting will be virtually via Webex Sept. 18, but they are reevaluating and planning for the month of October to bring more hybrid options to go face-to-face. The hybrid option could change based on how many Covid-19 cases there are. 

One of their main goals is to build a plan for funding professional development for faculty and staff. 

“Provost Chenoweth has already announced that faculty will have $1,000 for this year, but we would definitely like to make a long-term plan for how that can be sustainable in the future,” said Chair Tracy Hawkins.

Another goal for the Faculty Senate is working with the Academic Staff Assembly (ASA) to align student and employee email addresses. Hawkins briefly talked about how once a student graduate and becomes a staff, they still have their student emails that have numbers in them unlike faculty and staff email addresses. 

The Faculty Senate and ASA are continuing to work on that issue. 

“In May, the Board of Regents voted to establish a special regent committee on governance issues, and the goal of this special committee is to revise the search and screen process procedures for chancellors and system president and other system leadership,” Hawkins said.

The last topic discussed in the Chair’s report was a joint letter for the chancellor search and screen process that all governance groups will take part in. The joint letter explains everyone’s perspectives and ideas they think will help the search and screen process go more smoothly. 

Hawkins read the proposed edition of the joint letter. She explained that the search and screen committee should include at least one faculty member from each academic college. The floor was open to discuss the joint letter to make any revisions to the statement read by Hawkins. 

“We should ask for what we want,” James Hartwick said, agreeing with the statement. “I can’t imagine we’d be okay with just one faculty representative. Certainly, we need a faculty representative from each college.”

The Faculty Senate and other governance groups are working on this issue. If any staff or faculty want to continue to be updated on any issues discussed in their meeting, contact [email protected]. All meeting dates are online via their website: https://www.uww.edu/facsenate.