University Times

Philip K. Wion (right), a longtime Faculty Assembly and Senate Council member and current chairperson of the University Senate budget policies committee, was honored for outstanding service as a Senate member by President Nathan Hershey.

In announcing the award at Monday's Senate Council meeting, Hershey called Wion "unfailingly courteous" (adding: "and in this group, that is something to remark"), "respectful of others and their views" and "a firm defender of academic values."

Chancellor Mark Nordenberg recalled meeting Wion during the 1980s, when Wion was a leader of the movement to unionize Pitt professors and Nordenberg was fighting faculty unionization on behalf of his fellow School of Law faculty members. During much of one summer, the two men worked out of the same conference room at the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board's Downtown office. "Our positions, predictably…were not quite in agreement with each other," Nordenberg said. "And yet, we got to know each other and certainly I gained a great deal of respect for him, respect that has grown over the course of other interactions and many years."

"The Senate is a body that has meant a lot to me," Wion said, urging his fellow Council members to recruit young faculty to serve on Senate groups.