Faculty Senate
UD Faculty Senate holds first meeting of fall semester
2:20 p.m., Sept. 12, 2012--The University of Delaware Faculty Senate held its first meeting of the fall semester on Monday, Sept. 10, in Gore Hall. The meeting was called to order by the new president of the Senate, Sheldon Pollack, professor of law in the Lerner College of Business and Economics.
Nancy Brickhouse, interim provost, updated senators on the Class of 2016 and the 1,305 students beginning their graduate studies at UD.
Campus Stories
From graduates, faculty
Doctoral hooding
“The 3,844 students enrolled this fall were chosen from a record 26,795 individuals who completed applications for admission,” Brickhouse said. “Thirty-four percent are Delawareans, an increase of 18 percent over last year, and 20 percent are students of color. We are making some progress in diversifying our student body, but we should not be satisfied. We still have a lot of work to do.”
Brickhouse also introduced new officers in the Office of the Provost, including Ann Ardis, interim deputy provost; Charles Riordan, vice provost for research; and Nancy Guerra, associate provost for international programs.
Also new to UD, Brickhouse noted, are José Aviles, director of admissions, and Mark Rieger, dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
Brickhouse informed senators about the Student Success and Retention Conference, which will be held Oct. 3 in the Trabant University Center.
The conference is sponsored by the Academic and Student Affairs Council, and keynote speakers will be Freeman Hrabowski, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Vincent Tinto, professor at Syracuse University.
“President Hrabowski has had some particularly important successes at providing access for minority groups to the STEM disciplines. He will be talking about some of the institutional changes that were made at UMBC to effect this change,” Brickhouse said. “Vincent Tinto is a scholar in the area of student success and student retention in college. He has just written a new book, Completing College: Rethinking Institutional Action, and will be drawing from much of the data in this work.”
George H. Watson, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, briefed members of the Faculty Senate on the search for a new provost. Watson chairs the provost search committee.
Brickhouse was named interim provost after Tom Apple resigned in June to become chancellor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Spencer Stuart, an internationally recognized executive search consulting firm, is assisting the provost search committee.
“Spencer Stuart is developing candidates for us to consider. They have a very high national and international reputation,” Watson said. “The provost search committee is very involved and will write the final report which will be presented to UD President Patrick Harker, who will make the final decision.”
In response to questions, Watson reiterated that a high degree of confidentiality will be maintained by the search committee during the search process.
New Faculty Senate committee chairs
Senators voted to approve the selection of John Courtright, professor of communication, as chair of the Committee on Faculty Welfare and Privileges, and Michelle Provost-Craig, associate professor of kinesiology and applied physiology, will serve as chair of the Committee on Student and Faculty Honors.
The next meeting of the UD Faculty Senate will be at 4 p.m., Monday, Oct. 1, in 104 Gore Hall. A general faculty meeting will take place at 3:30 p.m., at the same location. At that meeting, Harker will address the faculty.
Minutes of the meeting will be posted on the Faculty Senate website.
Article by Jerry Rhodes