2011 Chair of the Faculty Candidate Profiles

Read the University Gazette‘s Q&A with the candidates (March 30, 2011)!

Boxill, Steponaitis are candidates for  Chair of the Faculty

Chapel Hill, NC-March 21, 2011– Faculty members will vote in April to choose a new Chair of the Faculty to succeed current Chair McKay Coble, who will step down June 30.  Two longtime faculty members, Jan Boxill and Vin Steponaitis, have agreed to run for this visible faculty leadership post.

Jan Boxill

Boxill, Senior Lecturer of Philosophy and former Associate Chair of the Philosophy Department, directs the Parr Center for Ethics. Her writing and teaching focus on ethics, social and political philosophy, feminist theory and ethics in sports. She is editor of Sports Ethics: An Anthology and Issues in Race and Gender.  She is past president of the International Association for Philosophy in Sport, serves on the board of the NCAA Scholarly Colloquium Committee, and chairs both the 2011 NCAA Scholarly Colloquium and the Education Outreach Program for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA).   For 25 years, Boxil l was the public address announcer for UNC women’s basketball and field hockey; she now serves as the radio color analyst for UNC women’s basketball.

A graduate of the BRIDGES Academic Leadership for Women program, Boxill has served on the Faculty Council and its Agenda Committee, the Fixed-Term Faculty Committee, the Committee on the Status of Women, the faculty Nominating Committee and the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee.  She has received the Tanner Award for Undergraduate Teaching, an IAH Parr Ethics Fellowship, the Mary Turner Lane Award, the Women’s Advocacy Award, the Excellence in Advising Award, and a Chapel Hill Village Pride Award.  She has coordinated the IAH Ethics Fellowship Program and chaired the University-Wide Teaching Awards Committee. Through the Carolina Speakers Bureau, she has spoken on topical ethical issues to academic, business,  and community groups across North Carolina.  Locally, she has been a member of the Justice in Action Committee of the Chapel Hill Town Council.  Boxill received her B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from UCLA.

Vin Steponaitis

Steponaitis is Professor of Anthropology, Director of the Research Laboratories of Archaeology, and Chair of the Curriculum in Archaeology. His research focuses on the archaeology of the American South, and his books include Ceramics, Chronology, and Community Patterns;  Archaeology of the Moundville Chiefdom; and the award-winning Excavating Occaneechi Town, one of the first digital monographs in archaeology.

Steponaitis has served on Faculty Council and many UNC committees and advisory boards.  He now chairs the Committee on University Government, co-chairs the Advisory Board of the American Indian Center, previously chaired the Faculty Committee on Research, and was a member of the Faculty Council’s Agenda Committee.  He was chosen for the inaugural class of Academic Leadership Fellows at the Institute for the Arts and Humanities.  He spoke to civic groups across the state for many years as a Carolina Speaker and was named a Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer in 2008.

Outside the university, he has been president of the Society for American Archaeology, chair of the board for the Archaeological Conservancy, president of the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, and editor of the scholarly journal Southeastern Archaeology. He was also appointed by the U.S. Secretary of the Interior to the NAGPRA Review Committee, a national panel that oversees implementation of laws governing the repatriation of museum collections to Native American tribes.  Steponaitis received his A.B. from Harvard University and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.

The office of Chair of the Faculty is established by Article 3 of the Faculty Code of University Government.  Since 1950, this document has codified the faculty’s expectations about the powers and privileges it exercises in university decision-making processes.  The Chair of the Faculty serves as the key spokesperson for faculty interests and holds office for a non-renewable term of three years.  Candidates are nominated by the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee, an elected standing committee of the faculty.

The faculty elections will be held April 13-22, 2011 via electronic ballot. Members of the faculty are invited to a “meet and greet” with the candidates at the Campus Y Anne Queen Faculty Commons on Thursday, April 7, 2011 from 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm.