March 4, 2009
Faculty Governance News
vol. 3.12
March 4, 2009
From the UNC Office of Faculty Governance
200-204 Carr Building
UNC-CH Campus
Contact: Anne M. Whisnant (anne_whisnant@unc.edu)
Faculty elections kickoff coffee hour to be held Wednesday, April 8, 10:30 – 11:30 a.m., in the Faculty Commons at the Campus Y
Faculty elections season will kick off this year with an informational coffee hour for faculty on Wednesday, April 8, from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. in the Anne Queen Faculty Commons at the Campus Y. The Office of Faculty Governance, which will sponsor the event, invites all faculty members to drop by for light midmorning refreshments, including coffee and pastries.
The event will provide an opportunity to learn something about Faculty Governance from Secretary of the Faculty Joe Ferrell, pick up a sample ballot, and get a copy of the Faculty Code of University Government. We’ll also be recognizing this year’s candidates for Chair of the Faculty, McKay Coble, Professor of Design and Chair of the Department of Dramatic Art; and Arne Kalleberg, Kenan Distinguished Professor of Sociology. The election for Faculty Chair takes place every three years; the winner will take office July 1st.
The annual faculty elections will be conducted during the week of April 13-20 via a survey that will be emailed to all members of the Voting Faculty.
Thomas Jefferson Award nominations now being accepted (deadline is March 27)
The faculty Committee on Honorary Degrees and Special Awards is now accepting invitations for the 2009 Thomas Jefferson Award. The deadline for nominations is March 27.
The Thomas Jefferson Award was established in 1961 and is presented annually to “that member of the academic community who through personal influence and performance of duty in teaching, writing, and scholarship has best exemplified the ideals and objectives of Thomas Jefferson.”
The award will be presented by the chancellor at the April 24 Faculty Council meeting. Nominations can be sent to the Office of Faculty Governance, Attention: Committee on Honorary Degrees and Special Awards, Campus Box 9170, or emailed to Joseph Ferrell, Secretary of the Faculty, at jsferrel@email.unc.edu.
Complete information, including a list of former recipients, is available here.
Detailed budget reduction planning documents released
In January 2009, UNC-Chapel Hill and all the UNC system institutions were required to submit information to General Administration outlining the impact that 3 percent, 5 percent and 7 percent budget reductions would have on our operations. Last weekend, the detailed planning scenarios that formed the basis for the statements of impact were added to the University’s budget information web site. These documents include school-by-school projections of how budget cuts might be achieved. It is important to note that they are simply planning documents; they do not reflect final decisions.
Matson announces delay in implementing revisions to continuous enrollment policy
Responding to faculty and student concerns about proposed revisions in the Graduate School’s continuous enrollment policy, Dean Steve Matson today announced that he would delay implementing revisions to the policy until there was time to “revisit some of the current university constraints in order for the revised policy to ensure equitable implementation while also meeting the needs of all graduate students and faculty.” Matson’s full statement on this issue may be found online at: http://gradschool.unc.edu/policies/student/cep/.
North Carolina Conference of AAUP sponsors Marc Bousquet lecture on “Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation,” March 20
The North Carolina Conference of the American Association of University Professors will hold its annual meeting on the UNC campus March 20-21, 2009.
The meeting will kick off with a free public lecture by Marc Bousquet, author of How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation (New York University Press, 2008). The lecture will take place Friday, March 20, at 7:00 p.m. in the FedEx Global Education Center Auditorium at the corner of McCauley and Pittsboro streets in Chapel Hill. The talk, co-hosted by UNC’s AAUP Chapter, will be followed by a wine and hors d’oeuvres reception.
Conference events continue on Saturday, March 21, when the NC-AAUP will host a series of practical workshops at FedEx Global on faculty and the budget crisis, conflicts of interest with big donors, and the new corporate image of private colleges. Faculty and graduate students are encouraged to attend the workshops. Pre-register now for just $25 (fulltime faculty) or $15 (part-time faculty or graduate student). Show up at the door on the day of the workshops? The cost is $30 and $20 respectively the day of the conference without pre-registration.
Go to http://www.nc-aaup.org/ for all the details, to register, and to download a poster for the event. If you have questions, please email: ncaaup@rtpnet.org.
UNC’s College Sport Research Institute (CSRI) hosts “Scholarly Conference on College Sport” at Friday Center, April 15-18, 2009
UNC’s College Sport Research Institute (CSRI), a collaborative effort involving faculty from across the United States and around the world but based in the Department of Exercise and Sports Science at UNC, will host the second “Scholarly Conference on College Sport” April 15-18, 2009 at the William and Ida Friday Center in Chapel Hill. The conference is open to faculty, athletic administrators, students, sport practitioners, and members of the public who are interested in research, theory, and critical thinking about college sport and surrounding issues. Full information is online at: http://csriconference.org/home/.
Scholarly Communication Working Group features talk on “Publishing the Long Civil Rights Movement: A Publisher-Library Collaboration in Process,” March 11 at noon
The March UNC Scholarly Communication Working Group’s brown bag lunch meeting will feature a talk “Publishing the Long Civil Rights Movement: A Publisher-Library Collaboration in Process.” The event will take place at 12:00 noon on Wednesday, March 11, 2009 in Room 214 Davis library.
The “Publishing the Long Civil Rights Movement” project, funded by UNC-Chapel Hill and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is a collaboration of UNC Press, the University Library, the Southern Oral History Program, and the Center for Civil Rights at the UNC Law School. Sylvia Miller, the Project Director, will discuss the reasons that these four entities decided to collaborate and how the general and specific goals of the project have developed. She will review the mechanics of collaboration and lessons learned at this point, one-third of the way into a three-year project. Finally, she will describe the project team’s latest ideas about online scholarly publishing, in particular the prototype that they are currently developing for a new interactive publishing platform.
Bull’s Head seeks information on recent faculty books published
The staff at the Bull’s Head Bookshop is assembling their upcoming “Faculty Titles” newsletter featuring new faculty books. Any faculty member who has recently published a book that was not included in the fall newsletter, or who has a book that will be released before July, is invited to email the book information to fiveiron@email.unc.edu so that the book can be included in the upcoming newsletter.
Faculty Governance Reading Room
Articles, books, or other resources of interest to faculty. This week’s selection:
- How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment by Michèle Lamont (Harvard University Press 2009).
Michèle Lamont is Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies and Professor of Sociology and African and African American Studies, and Senior Adviser on Faculty Development and Diversity, Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. In this new study, she applies the tools of sociological analysis to the academic evaluation system of “peer review.” Lamont was able to observe normally closed peer review deliberations for fellowships and research grants, to interview peer review panelists before and after their meetings, to examine reviewers’ notes, and to study information on the outcomes of these decisions. This book reveals what she learned about this usually shrouded world.
Read an article about the book, “The ‘Black Box’ of Peer Review,” in today’s issue of Inside HigherEd.
About Faculty Governance News
The Faculty Governance News is published every two weeks throughout the academic year by the Office of Faculty Governance. Archived issues and the publication schedule for 2008-09 are available online here. Information to be considered for inclusion should be sent to Anne Whisnant (anne_whisnant@unc.edu) by Monday before an issue is scheduled to appear.
For more information on any of these items, please contact Anne Whisnant in the Office of Faculty Governance.
