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October 12, 2006

Senate looks at faculty representation

What is the proper proportion of faculty representatives to the University Senate from the various Pitt schools?

Faculty Assembly heard a report last week from the new chair of the Senate bylaws and procedures committee, which has wrestled with the issue since last academic year.

Senate President John Baker said the topic was discussed in detail in a Senate Matters column by Ted Rice, former chair of the bylaws and procedures committee, and Michael Pinsky, vice president of the University Senate.

(See Feb. 16 University Times.)

According to bylaws and procedures chair Thomas Smitherman, the committee faces two issues: whether the Senate elections process should convert to an electronic voting system for next spring’s elections, and whether the proportion of faculty who represent schools with the largest number of faculty, particularly the School of Medicine, should be increased to reflect that fact.

Smitherman said his committee generally agrees that the current allocation of faculty representatives should be modified. “We feel there needs to be a representative scheme more related to the number of faculty in a school,” he said.

Currently, there are four components, or units, that have representation as follows: Arts and Sciences has 15 seats (five each in its three divisions of humanities, natural sciences and social sciences); professional schools and the University Library System has 18; Health Sciences, including the Health Sciences Library System (HSLS), 16, and regional campuses, 8.

Under current bylaws, units can increase their seats by one if they grow by more than 100 faculty.

That formula has not changed since it was put in place about 15 years ago, Assembly members pointed out, when the full-time medical school faculty numbered about 1,000. Today they number more than 1,800 (not including primarily clinical faculty), according to the University’s “Fact Book.”

The medical school, with the total number of full-time faculty roughly the same as in the School of Arts and Sciences, typically has only three Senate representatives under the formula.

Assembly members from the School of Medicine have argued that the school is underrepresented, and that as a result faculty there feel both disenfranchised and uninterested in serving on the Senate.

Smitherman said no consensus on the optimal composition of the Senate has been reached by the bylaws committee, although the members were leaning toward a modification that would make the School of Medicine separate from the Health Sciences.

The proposal under consideration includes:

• For the Health Sciences unit: at least 12 members, with a minimum of two elected faculty members from each school of the Health Sciences and HSLS, excluding the School of Medicine;

• For the School of Medicine unit: at least 11 members, with a minimum of two elected faculty members from each of the two largest departments and one elected faculty member from sets of two of the other medical school departments;

• For the other units: no changes.

Under the proposal, units still would be entitled to an extra seat for each additional 100 faculty members, Smitherman said, providing an automatic annual adjustment.

Smitherman said that he would continue to keep the Senate leadership abreast of his committee’s deliberations.

Regarding the conversion to electronic elections, Smitherman said the issue lost steam in the committee when the decision was made not to convert to e-voting in time for the most recent election season. “In the fall of ’05 at a meeting with the IT people it was agreed not to try for the ’06 elections,” Smitherman said. “We wanted to have something in place that was safe and secure and that we had confidence in, and to try to have that ready for the ’07 elections.”

He added that his committee favored converting to e-ballots next spring, but was ironing out the logistics of the process to rewrite the Senate bylaws accordingly.

Assembly then heard a report from Jinx Walton, director of Computer Services and Systems Development, on electronic voting.

According to Walton, an electronic voting apparatus, developed by CSSD, already is in place and has been used successfully in Student Government Board elections, homecoming court elections and the College of General Studies student government elections.

Walton said features of the e-voting system include:

• It is accessible through the Pitt portal (my.pitt.edu) by all authenticated Pitt users, which in this case would be limited to faculty; faculty in Health Sciences who also have UPMC computer accounts would have to use their Pitt accounts to vote;

• The system keeps track of who votes, does not permit more than one vote per person and maintains voters’ confidentiality;

• The online voting site is secured behind a firewall and accessible only by select administrators for voting tabulation purposes.

• The voting site could provide postings of candidate biographical sketches and position statements;

• The system alerts voters when they’ve completed and submitted their ballots successfully;

• Voters can print out their ballots.

“One question is: How can you be sure a vote for A really means a vote for A?” Walton said. “Once we get the go-ahead, we would verify that by rigorous pre-testing before the election.”

Assembly member Paul Munro suggested for at least the first year of electronic voting that hard copy voting instructions be mailed to all faculty prior to the election period.

Smitherman said his committee would discuss that suggestion. “For the transition period, we’re also discussing whether we should have an option to vote with a paper ballot,” he said. The bylaws and procedures committee is expected to return to Faculty Assembly with a firm proposal regarding e-voting in the near future.

In other Assembly developments:

• Assembly approved the five Senate faculty members who were appointed by Baker to two-year terms as representatives on the University Review Board. The board, which also includes administrators, staff and students, has the sole appellate jurisdiction for academic and non-academic matters originating within the University Student Judicial System.

The appointed faculty members are James Craft, Katz Graduate School of Business; Irene Hanson Frieze, School of Arts and Sciences (A&S), psychology; Marah Gubar, A&S, English; Ann Mitchell, School of Nursing, and John Slimick, Bradford campus, computer science.

• Beginning Dec. 1 the UPMC Health Plan will partner with St. Louis-based Express-Scripts, Inc. to provide pharmacy benefits management services, replacing Argus Health Systems. As a result, health plan participants will have more pharmacies to choose from, Baker said. He added, however, that CVS pharmacies no longer will be health plan participants.

—Peter Hart

Filed under: Feature,Volume 39 Issue 4

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