Senate President Gerard Sandoval (PPPM) has extended the deadline to sign up for the Senate and its committees until March 8. Apparently President Scholz and his well-paid PR flacks won’t let the Senate email this news to the university, so I’m posting the signup link here, along with the original letter to the tenured faculty – who are particularly under-represented in shared governance:
Dear Tenured Faculty Colleagues,
The UO Senate needs more tenured faculty to serve as Senators and on Academic Committees.
What makes our UO Senate unique is the participation of statutory faculty (tenured track and career faculty), staff, students, and OAs in our decision-making process. It’s powerful, and it strengthens our institution. But this letter is particularly aimed at my fellow tenured faculty members. I interpret the UO’s Senate mission as maintaining the academic integrity of our university – especially as it relates to our curriculum and educational program development. Shared Governance is not just an idea but a difficult process to implement substantively. Just review the Senate’s recent and essential role in preparing the Significant Academic Disruption Plan during the potential GTFF strike.
The American Association of University Professors defines Shared Governance as: “the joint
responsibility of faculty, administrations, and governing boards to govern colleges and universities.” Shared Governance takes effort, commitment, time, and sacrifice. I’m passionate about public education; I’ve greatly benefited from the California public education system – from being a non-English speaking immigrant kindergarten student to attaining a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley – all in public schools. Our public education system will not return to being affordable and meeting its social mission to our State of Oregon – if we do not balance Shared Governance between our Senate and administration.
Faculty, students, staff, and OAs need to maintain our commitment to the public mission of the UO. A critical way of doing that is by substantively participating in our own Senate – both as Senators and in our academic committee structure, which will decide the educational future of our university. We have a new President and will soon have a new Provost. This is the perfect time to get involved in the UO Senate’s Shared Governance structure to leave your mark on the history of our university.
I’ll be transparent and frank – the UO Senate needs more participation from the tenured faculty. We all have competing commitments on our time – important and time-consuming commitments: doing research, teaching, advising our students, and providing public service to our academic units and communities. But I encourage you to think of having a healthy system of Shared Governance as drawing a line in the sand that needs to be protected by tenured faculty.
I’m calling for more Senate participation from tenured faculty at UO, both as Senators and in the
Academic Committee system that decides and protects the academic integrity of our university. Our Shared Governance system’s academic integrity and our institutional influence are on the line.
Cordially
Gerard Francisco Sandoval, PhD
President, University Senate
Professor, School of Planning, Public Policy and Management
Presumably Scholz prefers to have participants in shared governance selected by the usual JH favorites, rather than by the faculty.