4/10/2012 Update: The deadline is extended until 4/24.
There’s a list of current nominations here. Many committees do not have enough names.
4/10/2012 Update: The deadline to complete this form is today.
4/5/2012: This will be an important year for shared governance. The call for faculty/OA/staff participation is out:
To: University Community
From: Committee on Committees
Re: 2012 Appointed and Elected Committee Service Preference FormDear University Community,
This is your friendly reminder to please sign up for committee service. To indicate your preferences for 2012-2013 committee service, please complete the “2012 Committee Service Preference Form” located at http://committees.uoregon.edu/ and on the Senate homepage at http://senate.uoregon.edu/ by Tuesday, April 10, 2012 at the latest.
In this particularly important year, please help us to address the most crucial issues that we face. We urge you to participate in shared governance by signing up to serve on a university committee. Your time, effort and dedication are greatly valued.
Please be sure to submit your online form by Tuesday, April 10, 2012.
Typically it is difficult to get busy faculty to sign up for these committees. I am thinking that the Lariviere firing, unionization, and the current administration’s efforts to redefine shared governance to diminish the faculty role may motivate more people to get involved this year. The form is a simple survey that takes minutes to complete. Some committees are appointed, some elected. If you want to run for a Senate seat that is an option too. Talk your friends into signing up too, committees are always more fun if you go out for martinis afterwards, or bring a thermos.
Sorry, but the unionization makes me far less eager and likely to participate in committees, in anything but a desultory manner. And I’ve more than paid my dues in many years past.
I think shared governance will basically die with a union. I think UO basically would be putting itself on a trajectory to become another PSU (as one wage put it, “PSU without Portland”) — I have little desire to exert myself on behalf of communal values in such a situation, because I think it would be a waste of my time.
Unionization isn’t a done deal by any means. If the issue is important to you, like it is to me, then fight the union. For example, email [email protected] and contribute to our own representation. The administration can only fight the union on technical grounds but we can be more aggressive. Presumably an ERB hearing will be held in the near future. Help coordinate efforts to prevent TTF from being included in the union. Or whatever you feel comfortable with… But don’t take this lying down!
While Cat is not so disaffected as Disengaging Duck, my immediate reaction was much the same: under present conditions, as I read them–and they are much changed with the union mess now from the immediately post-RL-firing unity phase–I think we’re likely to see a drop-off in volunteerism and commitment shared governance and all that. Too bad, too, because a lot of committees need faculty input to fulfill basic university functions. And many of them, of course, serve student needs.
> committees are always more fun if you go out for martinis afterwards…
Word down at the faculty club is that they’ve quit serving martinis there.
I think a faculty club would do more for shared governance than a new constitution OR a union.
In the new world: Faculty senate – irrelevant. Committees – have fun working on nothing of importance. Union and Administration is all that UO matters.
Reading down this list, Senate participation is pathetic, and committees are if anything worse. One woman among the eight nat & soc sci Senate candidates. And with sincere thanks to the mathematicians and economists for their unbeatable service ethic, it’s time to mix it up a little bit: this means you, colleagues in other departments. And whatever happens with the union, the FPC is still a critical committee — so thanks (again) to Peter Gilkey, but we need some new blood. As for the IAC: more testosterone.
Nothing of importance?! Only promotion, curriculum, student conduct, etc. Don’t be distracted by the flashy stuff, like the IAC and FAC and the Senate: both appointed and elected committees do a lot of business that makes the university run–most especially for students.
But what did I tell you? TTF faculty are not, in fact, remotely in the mood to step up to the plate.