April 7, 2010
Faculty Governance News
vol. 4.12
April 7, 2010
From the UNC Office of Faculty Governance
200-204 Carr Building
UNC-CH Campus Box 9170
Contact: Anne M. Whisnant (anne_whisnant@unc.edu)
Faculty elections begin Monday, April 12 — VOTE!
The annual faculty elections will be conducted during the week of April 12-19 via an electronic survey that will be emailed on Monday to all members of the Voting Faculty. While there is no election this year for a Chair of the Faculty, we do have important faculty-wide elections for positions on the eleven elected faculty standing committees and for seats on the faculty’s main legislative body, the Faculty Council.
Complete information about the elections, including a sample ballot and a voter guide with personal statements from most of the candidates for all offices, may be found online at the 2010 Elections page of the Faculty Governance website: http://www.unc.edu/faculty/faccoun/Elections/2010/index.shtml
Voting-eligible faculty includes all tenured and tenure-track faculty, professional librarians, as well as fixed-term faculty whose terms of appointment meet certain criteria spelled out in the Faculty Code. Last year, 925 of the 3545 distributed ballots were returned, for a “turnout” rate of 26%, the highest participation in several years. This year we’d like to see turnout go up again! We encourage you to consider the issues and positions expressed. Your vote counts!
April 21 Emergency Drill
The University will conduct an emergency drill off campus on Wednesday, April 21, between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. The drill will simulate the response to a shooter on campus. The drill will be confined to the Outdoor Education Center, located off Country Club Road. In conjunction with the drill, students, faculty and staff are asked to practice emergency preparedness on April 21. Shortly before 8:45 a.m., the emergency sirens will sound as a test. If you’re outside, you’ll likely hear the sirens. If you’re inside, you may not. But students, faculty and staff who have registered for emergency text messages will receive a test text message shortly after the sirens go off. For more information and details see the Alert Carolina webpage at: http://www.piersystem.com/go/site/1395/
Requesting help for annual remembrance of deceased faculty
Each year at the final Faculty Council meeting (held this spring on April 23), Secretary of the Faculty Joe Ferrell reads a list of names of faculty members or former faculty members who have died within the past year. If you know of someone we should include, please forward the person’s name and, if possible, a link to his or her obituary to David Thompson in the Office of Faculty Governance (dthomps3@email.unc.edu). Thank you.
Association for Women Faculty and Professionals holds spring luncheon April 29; register by April 15th for “early bird” rates
The UNC Association for Women Faculty and Professionals will hold its annual spring luncheon at the Carolina Inn on April 29th beginning at 11:30 a.m. Professor Barbara Fredrickson, Kenan Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Director of the UNC Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Lab, will be the speaker. All women faculty are invited to attend; reservations are required by April 23rd, with early-bird rates available for those who register by April 15th. For more information, or to register, please contact Prof. Kim Strom-Gottfried in the School of Social Work at stromgot@email.unc.edu or download the luncheon registration form at: http://www.unc.edu/awfp/documents/invitation_spring_luncheon_2010.pdf.
Association for Women Faculty and Professionals accepting nominations for Mary Turner Lane Award (deadline is April 9)
The Mary Turner Lane Award is given annually by the UNC Association for Women Faculty and Professionals to a woman judged to have made an outstanding contribution to the lives of women on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus. “Outstanding contribution” is interpreted broadly, touching all areas of the lives of women (students, faculty, staff, administrators) on campus. It includes, but is not limited to, achievements that enhance women’s lives through the following: scholarship, teaching, leadership, health services, social services, political activism, professional advancement, program development, and staff support. The award, established in 1986, is named to honor Mary Turner Lane, founding director of the Curriculum in Women’s Studies and the first recipient of the award. A list of previous recipients is online here.
Formal nominations will be accepted by email and should include:
• The nominee’s name
• A paragraph (or two) describing the nominee’s contributions to women at UNC and why she is deserving of the award
• Nominator’s name, department name and contact information (email, phone)
Please send nominations to Brooke Church at brooke_church@unc.edu by Friday, April 9, 2010.
Center for Faculty Excellence sponsoring workshop on “Designing and Implementing Effective Faculty Mentoring Programs,” April 9
The Center for Faculty Excellence invites participation in a workshop on designing faculty mentoring programs, this Friday, April 9, from 9:00 to 11:00 a.m. in the Frank Porter Graham Student Union Multipurpose Room (1505). Research indicates that well designed and carefully implemented faculty mentoring programs are highly effective at supporting and retaining early career faculty. This workshop has several goals: 1) to review the research on effective practices in faculty mentoring; 2) to identify key decisions and options when designing an effective faculty mentoring program with a college, school, or department; 3) to explore the role of chairs and heads in the mentoring process; 4) to identify skills embedded in mentoring; 5) to feature exemplary and varied mentoring models, including models at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and 6) to share resources on faculty mentoring. For more information (including registration link) please visit this link.
Student Health Insurance required beginning fall 2010
Carolina, along with all the UNC system campuses, will require students to have health insurance coverage beginning with the fall 2010 semester. Eligible students are required to show evidence of an existing “creditable” health insurance policy or they will be automatically enrolled in and billed for the UNC system-wide student health insurance plan. This charge will show on student accounts after July 1. Students who are already covered by an insurance policy (i.e. through parent plans, family plans or employer-sponsored plans including those in the RA/TA campus plan) can easily opt out of the plan through a secure online process. Details are available on the Campus Health Services Web site, http://campushealth.unc.edu.
ConnectCarolina faculty guide page helps faculty navigate the new “Faculty Center”
The Faculty Center is now available in ConnectCarolina, the University’s new integrated administrative system. This is the new version of Faculty/Staff Central and will be the location to view class rosters once registration begins for Fall 2010. Faculty Center will also be the location to view other information as more pieces move into production. To learn more, please visit the faculty guide page at http://unc.edu/connectcarolina/facultyguide. Among other information, this page guides faculty through getting access to ConnectCarolina and lifting advisor flags for student registration.
Carolina Football Blue-White Spring Football Game this Saturday, April 10
A full day of events and activities has been planned by the UNC Athletics Department surrounding the Tar Heels’ nationally televised ESPN Spring Football Game on Saturday, April 10. Admission to the Spring Game is free and kickoff is set for 3 p.m. Tar Heel Town will open at 12 noon with events scheduled for the Bell Tower quad and Kenan Stadium. Live bands will perform at the Bell Tower, and the General Alumni Association will host the popular Bell Tower climb and face painting. A Kids Zone will be set up on the stadium field with bounce houses, inflatables and other kid-friendly activities. A cheerleading clinic also will be held on the field at noon. SpringFest, a student-run end-of-the year celebration that includes music, food, games and activities, will take place from 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. at the Bell Tower, the new brick pathway from Stadium Drive and inside Kenan Stadium. All the day’s details including other athletic events and parking information can be found at www.tarheelblue.com/springgame.
Voicemail Transition Underway
Have you updated your voicemail yet? On Friday, April 30, 2010 at 6:00 p.m., UNC-Chapel Hill faculty and staff will transition to a new campus voicemail system. Between March 15 and April 30, UNC-Chapel Hill employees who currently have a voice mailbox will be required to initialize a new, personal voice mailbox on the new CallXpress platform. To learn how, visit: http://its.unc.edu/CommTechnology/engineering_and_operations/voicemail.
Faculty Governance Resource Room
Articles, books, or other resources of interest to faculty. This week’s selection:
- ITHAKA releases results of its 2009 Faculty Survey: “Key Strategic Insights for Libraries, Publishers, and Societies..” ITHAKA is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping the academic community take full advantage of rapidly advancing information and networking technologies. It serves scholars, researchers and students by providing the content, tools, and services needed to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways. It has just released the fourth in a series of surveys conducted over the past decade to examine faculty attitudes and behaviors on key issues ranging from the library as information gateway and the need for preservation of scholarly material, to faculty engagement with institutional and disciplinary repositories and thoughts about open access. For the first time this year, the survey also looked at the role that scholarly societies play and their value to faculty.
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 2009-10 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.
