11:54 a.m., Sept. 17, 2009----The University of Delaware Faculty Senate celebrated 40 years of faculty governance during its first meeting of the new academic year, held Monday, Sept. 14, in Mitchell Hall.

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Helping to mark the occasion were more that a dozen past presidents, including the senate's first president, Jon Olson, professor emeritus of chemical engineering.

Joining the past presidents were incumbent president Cihan Cobanoglu, associate professor of hotel and restaurant management, and John Madsen, associate professor of geological sciences, who will serve at the senate's 41st president beginning with the 2010-11 academic year.

Since its inception in January 1970, the UD Faculty Senate has approved new majors, minors, name changes, reorganizations of colleges and college mergers.

The Faculty Senate also makes recommendations concerning promotions and tenure, as well as selecting faculty and students for awards, including the Francis Alison Award, and excellence in teaching and advising awards.

Additional responsibilities include granting permanent status for new majors, approving new courses and determining multicultural and Discovery Learning Experience requirements.

Olson recalled the evolution of the UD Faculty Senate, which he said began under the tenure of President Emeritus Edward Arthur Trabant, who served UD as its 22nd and 24th presidents from 1968-90.

“In the later part of the 1960s, when Art Trabant became president, things were changing, and this became a fortuitous time to try and draw up a constitution for the senate,” Olson said. “This was done in the fall of 1969 and approved by the faculty. We had our first meeting on March 16, 1970.”

One of the first major tasks facing the Faculty Senate was forming the College of Marine Studies -- now the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment -- as the University became a Sea Grant institution.

“I'm sure the administration thought this was going to be an open and shut discussion,” Olson said. “We ended up with three meetings on the subject. It was eventually approved by the UD Board of Trustees, with William Gaither serving as the first dean of the new college.”

The University and the Faculty Senate were soon to face even more important issues of a national character with the deaths of four students during a demonstration against the expansion of the Viet Nam war in Cambodia held May 4, 1970, at Kent State University.

“With that, a crescendo of colleges voted to go on strike, really out of disgust with the Nixon Administration,” Olson said. “Classes at this institution were suspended for three and a half days. On May 10, the senate congratulated the institution for letting the students have a peaceful demonstration.”

Learning as it evolved, the Faculty Senate completed its inaugural semester, often holding three or four meetings a month, Olson said.

“We needed the experience to learn how to do it, and we needed to find ways in which important resolutions could be passed out of the committees,” Olson said. “I'm glad to see that the institution is working much more efficiently than when I first came here.”

Provost's report

University Provost Tom Apple discussed several initiatives that took place during the summer to further UD's commitment to its Path to Prominence^TM strategic plan.

“We took it as a strategy to hire faculty, and in retrospect we think this was a great idea. We hired 48 new faculty over the summer,” Apple said. “The majority of the people I talked to said we got our top choices. I think this is because we were hiring in a down market, when a lot of our competitors were off the table.”

While the University intends to continue an aggressive hiring strategy, Apple said the tight financial times require that the institution also must continue to focus on priority issues.

“We have our institutional priorities and those of our colleges,” Apple said. “We also want to look for opportunities across campus where we can hire people at the intersections of traditional disciplines to give us a competitive edge on our competition.”

Apple also noted the anticipation regarding the creation of the Delaware Environmental Institute and the Institute for Global Studies.

“Our goal for these institutes is to foster intercollegiate efforts and bring more recognition to the University as we continue on our Path to Prominence,” Apple said. “We also have a very large effort going on to increase the space available for teaching and research.”

Reflecting this initiative will be the new Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Building, which will be located off Academy Street, Apple said.

“This is a very exciting project,” Apple said. “It will actually be two buildings in one, with part of it dedicated to students and problem based learning teaching and laboratory teaching, and the other will house the Delaware Environmental Institute, the UD Energy Institute and several core facilities.”

Apple noted that the University also remains interested in acquiring the vacant Chrysler property located across from Townsend Hall on South College Avenue. This location could be crucial to forming and strengthening a number of significant partnerships.

“As many of you know, we started the Delaware Health Sciences Alliance, with Thomas Jefferson University, Nemours and Christiana Care,” Apple said. “Thomas Jefferson University is interested in the possibility of building a clinical campus here that would be for medical students, doctoral nursing students, as well as pharmacy and medical technology students.”

Apple also asked the Faculty Senate to consider the possibility of changing the weekly schedule of classes. One possibility might entail paired classes that meet two days per week in such possible combinations as Monday-Thursday, Tuesday-Friday, and Wednesday-Saturday (mornings).

“We have become a four-day campus, with a three-day weekend,” Apple said. “We think having classes in the pairing above would result in a better utilization or our classroom space. It also gives faculty more options to teach on a two day per week schedule to allow more focused research days. We also are considering requiring freshmen to take Winter Session classes.”

“A lot of students come to campus and find they are free for the first time in their lives. A lot of them also get off to a rough start academically,” Apple said. “The focus on the Winter Session classes will be on courses where they did not do well during their first semester. They can retake these courses, not to change their grade, but to better prepare themselves for the next course in the sequence.”

Name change, memorial tributes

The Faculty Senate approved a recommendation from the Committee on Undergraduate Studies to change the name of the leadership major and minor to organizational and community leadership.

At the beginning of the Faculty Senate meeting, Scott Caplan, associate professor of communication, read memorial tributes for former faculty members, including:

• Anna Janney DeArmond, a trailblazer during her 41 year career (1934-75) at UD -- she was the first woman to become a full professor, the first professor to receive UD's Excellence in Teaching award (she received it twice, in 1954 and 1972) and the first UD faculty member to be awarded the Medal of Distinction. The University also awarded her an honorary doctor of humane letters degree;
• Mary Anne Rarick Early, a UD alumna and associate professor emerita of nursing;
• Barbara Sinquefield Izard, former member of the faculty and co-founding director of the Bacchus Players at UD. Ms. Izard was the wife of Carroll E. Izard, Trustees Distinguished Professor of Psychology;
• J.A. Leo Lemay, Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Professor of English. Mr. Lemay was one of the nation's leading Benjamin Franklin scholars;
• William Markell, Arthur Andersen Alumni Professor Emeritus. In January, his son, Jack, was inaugurated as Delaware's 73rd governor in a ceremony in Mitchell Hall;
• C. Roy “Doc” Rylander, joined the faculty in 1946 and served as head athletic trainer from 1953 until his retirement in 1988. Mr. Rylander's 41-year tenure as head tennis coach, from 1953-93, is the longest for any head coach in University history;
• Joy Lynn Gooden Sparks, 57, was state 4-H coordinator for UD Cooperative Extension. Her husband of 24 years, Donald L. Sparks, is the S. Hallock du Pont Chair in UD's Department of Plant and Soil Sciences.

The next meeting of the UD Faculty Senate will be held at 4 p.m., Monday, Oct. 5, in 104 Gore Hall. The meeting will follow a general faculty meeting at 3:30 in the same location. For more information, visit the Faculty Senate Web site.

Article by Jerry Rhodes