Remarks to the Faculty Senate
Ricardo Padrón, Chair
April 30, 2008
Opening Remarks
Good afternoon, friends. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the final meeting of
the U.Va. Faculty Senate for the 2007-08 academic year. Let me start us off with an
update about what has been going on since we last met, in March. Afterwards, we will
hear from the President, the Provost, and from the Senate committee chairs. Finally,
Edmund Kitch, the Chair-Elect, will give us a taste of what to expect for next year, and I
will offer some closing remarks before we all head up to Carr’s Hill to celebrate the year
with the President.
When you hear from the committee chairs, or see the printed reports they have
prepared for you, I’m sure you’ll be impressed by the amount of activity and the depth of
engagement all the groups have shown. I would like to say one word, however, about the
ongoing work of the Committee for Faculty Recruitment, Retention, and Welfare. At our
last meeting, we heard from Jennifer Harvey about the results of the survey her
committee had conducted, and I promised you that we would come up with a process to
follow up on the results with University decision-makers. Since then, Jennifer, Ed and I
have met to discuss that process, and have come up with the following plan. Jennifer has
already met with various administrators, including Leonard Sandridge and Susan
Carkeek. Mr. Sandridge has reported back to us that he has distributed the survey results
to his subordinates as appropriate. On the academic side, we have designated individual
Senators to serve as the contact person in each of the schools besides Medicine and the
College. These Senators have agreed to meet with their school’s dean before the end of
May to discuss the survey results, and to get a sense of what each dean is thinking about
doing to address the concerns they raise. We will follow a similar process in Arts &
Sciences and in Medicine, although there the task will fall on a small committee of
Senators rather than on individuals. In these schools, moreover, as in other schools still
awaiting the arrival of a new dean, we ask that these meetings be held with the new
person, once her or she is in place. Furthermore, I would like to ask each and every Arts
& Sciences Senator who represents a particular department to meet with his or her
department chair about the survey results before May 30th. And I will ask everyone who
conducts such a meeting, be it with a department chair or a dean, to send a brief report of
the meeting to Jennifer. I hope that Ed and next year’s FRRW chair will be willing to
repeat this series of meetings so that we can begin to track progress and identify trouble
spots.
This leaves the thornier business of setting the priorities of the Senate as a whole.
As we learned in March, it is very easy to extract a lengthy wish list from the survey
results, and we hope that by meeting regularly with deans and department chairs we will
be able to keep our irons in a number of fires, but it will also be necessary for the Senate
as a group to decide on a very limited number of centerpiece priorities from the many
possibilities suggested by the survey results. We cannot move forward with everything
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that the survey calls for, particularly when it comes to big-ticket items. The Senate is
going to have to make choices if it is going to provide meaningful guidance to the
administration. Making those choices will have to be a priority for the fall semester.
I am also happy to report that members of the Planning & Development
Committee and the Academic Affairs Committee have been meeting with a group of
faculty members from around the University to discuss new initiatives in Sustainability
Studies, specifically a possible School or Institute of the Environment. I had hoped to
organize this group as a formal Senate Task Force, but I am waiting for a meeting that
will take place tomorrow among the Provost, the faculty members in question, and a
group of Senators. There we will discuss the status of current sustainability initiatives
and the various possibilities that exist for moving forward. In anticipation of this
meeting, I would like to reiterate what I have said to the Senate in the past. Sustainability
studies are by nature interdisciplinary, particularly if they hope to have an actual impact
upon the quality of the environment. Scientific issues intersect with matters of policy,
law, health, culture, and many other things besides. If U.Va. is to make a major
contribution to solving the urgent problem of environmental degradation, it is going to
have to learn to do very well what it has had trouble doing in the past: it will have to learn
how to organize itself in ways that foster collaboration in research, teaching and service
across traditional departmental and school divides. I should hope that the University will
lend its support to those faculty who are already engaged with these problems, and who
are eager to reach out to each other in the hope of building something that will be greater
than the sum of the parts. The Commission for the Future of the University calls for
greater intellectual collaboration, for increased attention to scientific research, and for a
reinvigorated sense of public service. I can think of no issue, no problem, no project, that
brings together these three objectives into more intimate relation than the challenge of the
environment. I hope that this initiative will therefore rise high on the list of the
University’s priorities in planning and development.
On the agenda, you will also see two pieces of business interspersed among the
reports. Ann Hamric, the Chair of Academic Affairs, will present for your endorsement a
document into which her committee has poured countless hours of work and attention.
You received this document by email last week, and you have probably noticed that it
consists of two major sections, a template meant to guide people who would like to
present a proposal for a new school to the Senate, and an outline of the process that the
Senate would use to ensure that such proposals are properly vetted by the community as a
whole. The committee would like to have your endorsement before putting these
instruments to use, and so we will submit them to an up or down vote. Afterwards, we
will hear from Chip Tucker, the Chair of the Grievance Committee. His committee has
worked to clarify the stated policies and procedures guiding the Senate grievance process.
The document presents no substantive changes, but merely eliminates some ambiguities
and clarifies some obscure points. It has been reviewed by General Counsel and is
hereby offered to you for your approval.
And now, let me hand the meeting over to the President of the University, Mr.
John Casteen.
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Closing Remarks
In looking back on this year, I am struck by the strides we have made in
cultivating a culture of transparency and consultation here at the University. We have
been fortunate to work with a Provost who maintains open lines of communication and
understands the value of collaboration. Thank you, Tim, for everything you’ve done this
year. We have also had the opportunity to produce some significant statements of faculty
opinion, statements that have been heard and are being heard by the administration. All
of us witnessed the palpable influence that the Senate’s response had on the report of the
Commission for the Future of the University, and all of us are now witnessing the
attention being garnered by the results of the Senate survey. In these very public ways,
and in myriad smaller, quieter ways, the Senate has played an active role in the life of the
University, carving out serious work for itself, and attacking it with energy and
commitment. I can’t help but be struck by the fact that today, at our last meeting of the
year, we still have real business to conduct, and that this business is tied to things we’ve
been doing all year, and will continue to work on in years to come.
Finally, a few words for those of you who will one day be approached to serve as
Chair of the Senate. As you make your decision, keep in mind that it’s an actually easy
job. It’s time-consuming, but it’s easy. In what sense? The heavy lifting in this
organization is done by the committees and task forces, and the decision-making is
collaborative, involving not only the committee chairs and the Executive Council, but
also the Past Chair and the Chair-Elect. The most important thing one does as Senate
Chair, therefore, is appoint people to serve in various capacities, and keep lines of
communication open with the other elected officers who are there to help out. And what
is most remarkable about this job is that people say “yes” when you ask them to help with
things, and that they offer thoughtful advice when you ask them for it. You learn quite
quickly that whatever we may lack here at U.Va. in support for our graduate students,
appropriate lab space, or whatever, we have no lack of intelligence, talent, commitment,
insight, and dedication. In fact, my experience as Chair has taught me that we have an
embarrassment of these particular riches. It has given me a front-row seat in the
spectacle of watching so many talented and committed people work hard and well to
make this University a better place. So, before I pass the gavel to Ed, I would like to ask
you to join me in applauding all the remarkable people in this organization who have put
on such a spectacular show.
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