University Times

This year’s election for the University Senate presidency pits incumbent John J. Baker, associate professor, Department of Microbiology-Biochemistry, School of Dental Medicine, against current Senate vice president Michael R. Pinsky, professor of critical care medicine, bioengineering and anesthesiology, School of Medicine.

The Senate elections are being conducted via electronic balloting for the first time. Printed instructions on how to vote electronically will be mailed the last week of March. The electronic system will be activated on April 1; faculty have until the end of April to complete their e-ballots. Short bios of the candidates’ academic and service-oriented experience, as well as position statements, will be posted online along with the ballots.

Last week, the presidential candidates responded in writing to questions posed by University Times staff writer Peter Hart.

What have you accomplished this year as University Senate president/vice president?

BAKER: As Senate president, I:

• Established the Senate ad hoc committee for the promotion of gender equity, which will work with our administration to promote gender equity at Pitt. I formed this committee after the Association of American University Professors released a November report documenting wide inequities between female and male faculty at U.S. doctorate-granting universities, including Pitt.

• Am co-chairing, with Herbert Needleman, the Senate’s March 28 spring plenary session on “Protecting Science From Bias by Private Interests.” Challenges to the integrity of science by biased private interests have never been greater than they are today. Our plenary session will illuminate these challenges and offer solutions.

• Successfully promoted and oversaw passage of two important changes in Senate bylaws begun by my predecessor, Irene Frieze. One allows Senate elections to be conducted electronically instead of by paper ballot; the other increases the School of Medicine’s elected representatives to Faculty Assembly from three to nine.

• Revived regular monthly Senate Matters columns in the University Times as a forum for discussing issues of importance to faculty, staff and the University.

• Utilized the Senate Matters column to analyze the impact of the last 10 years’ pay increase decisions on faculty salaries, and advocated equitable pay raises for faculty and staff.

• Supported efforts by Human Resources to develop new wellness initiatives for faculty and staff, and keep increases in the cost of our health insurance minimal — which will become evident during this spring’s open enrollment period.

• Conscientiously performed all official duties of the Senate president.

PINSKY: I have been promoting for the past two years as vice president faculty rights and transparency in administrative practices and striving to improve the overall effectiveness of the workplace so as to allow faculty the opportunity to realize their potential as academicians.

These initiatives that I both initiated and supported included 1) leading a University-wide coordination program to develop an effective Fitness for Life benefits program for all faculty and staff, requiring coordination between the Pitt Benefits office and UPMC insurer/provider services, which resulted in major improvements in the health care and wellness programs for all faculty and staff this year and will continue to improve in the years to come; 2) creating an awareness of need and then helping to develop a University-wide faculty distribution email information system for Senate communication that now results in our monthly Senate newsletter and the upcoming electronic voting; 3) creating a structure by which community service initiatives within the University can be used for academic credit by defining the academic principles inherent in scholarly community service activities; 4) re-populating the Faculty Assembly representative distribution to match proportional faculty numbers by increasing School of Medicine representation from three to nine members; 5) addressing overly restrictive interpretation of Institutional Review Board policies on conducting University-wide human research; 6) defining job security for School of Medicine non-tenure stream faculty when new definitions of faculty status were announced, and 7) resolving the duplicate School of Medicine email address routing errors, allowing one-half of the University of Pittsburgh faculty to finally receive their Pitt email traffic.

What are the most important issues facing the Senate in the next year?

What would you hope to accomplish as Senate president?

BAKER: Next year’s most important issues will be dealing with an insufficient state appropriation (a 2 percent increase is projected), and flat federal research funding, which could disrupt research programs and eliminate some staff positions.

Assuming the 2 percent increase that Gov. Rendell has proposed in state funding, tuition would have to be increased significantly to provide equitable pay raises to faculty and staff. Pitt is already the nation’s second-costliest public university (after Penn State). Adding another large tuition increase will only widen our competitive disadvantage compared to most other public institutions, making it more difficult for us to recruit top students.

Without a significant tuition increase under the governor’s 2 percent increase proposal, faculty and staff will not receive the equitable pay raise they deserve for their hard work and dedication. We have already endured two consecutive years of salary pool increases that were lower than the rise in the Consumer Price Index. Both years, over 50 percent of our faculty received raises below the inflation rate. If this situation persists, it will spawn serious negative academic consequences.

Budgetary problems could also force delays in capital spending projects and renovations needed to make older buildings more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly.

If re-elected as Senate president, I will continue to fulfill the duties of the office conscientiously, as I have this year, and to advocate for equitable pay raises, preservation and improvement of job benefits and expansion of wellness initiatives. I will also advocate expansion of UPMC’s concierge program to Pitt faculty and staff, and the advancement of sustainability issues on campus.

PINSKY: The primary issues facing the Senate are the need to invigorate faculty into believing in and supporting shared governance, and a focus on sustaining the academic mission of the schools in the face of fiscal limitations.

We are seeing fewer Arts and Sciences faculty step forward to serve in the University Senate leadership. This is fundamentally bad because Arts and Sciences has the lion’s share of undergraduate teaching and is often the public face of University teaching. This general trend can be reversed by making Faculty Assembly activities central to all faculty by making them relevant.

For example, we have a sustainability subcommittee within the Senate plant utilization and planning committee that is garnering support from student groups and faculty to make our the University “greener.” We will partner with the administration to define sustainability principles and create programs and practices that we can be proud of supporting.

Our campus-wide Fitness for Life programs need local fitness leaders to help promote the weight reduction, exercise and stress reduction programs I helped develop earlier this year. We now have academic guidelines for getting academic credit for community service if it creates generalizable knowledge. Why not join schools (public health, social work, engineering, information sciences) into a cooperative to help develop translational pleuri-potential service centers that train the unemployed and under-employed during the day and teach the under-performing children in the evening to excel, and then tell the world of our success? I envision that we will build an academic neighborhood to support these initiatives and make our overall quality of life better.

Is the University’s three-pronged mission of teaching, research and public service in the proper balance on the Pittsburgh campus and at the regional campuses?

BAKER: There is no simple yes/no answer, because it depends on which school, how its dean views the three prongs and whether the context is for annual pay raises or promotion. That said, I regretfully conclude that the answer at Pitt is still too often no — especially on the regional campuses, where teaching loads are higher than at Oakland.

Many of our schools value and reward research dollars obtained far more than heavy teaching loads and service, especially for promotion purposes. For example, science and engineering faculty are generally not promoted with tenure unless they obtain at least two substantial grants as principal investigator within a six-year period. While teaching is supposed to be weighted equally with research in promotion decisions, in practice a candidate’s grant dollars and publications carry far more influence, while service is often hardly considered at all.

Research expectations for faculty carrying heavy traditional teaching loads are often unrealistic, because they are not afforded adequate time to conduct research. Consequently, they are unable to get a funded grant because they have not completed enough research, and then cannot be promoted because they have not obtained two funded grants in the last six years. Faculty in this situation are not only unpromotable but also lower-paid, because teaching is rewarded less than research.

Regarding annual evaluations, I have been a notable advocate during the past dozen years for appropriate weighting of teaching, research and service in determining annual pay raises, and will continue to do so if re-elected as Senate president.

PINSKY: I believe that our initiative to make the creation of generalizable knowledge from community service will go a long way toward making public service more universally applied. However, the issue is not imbalance but lack of overall emphasis. We are so focused on teaching loads and student evaluations, as well as defensive research to sustain research funding, that we often lose track of why we are at the University. We are here to teach the next generation of leaders today and discover knowledge that will make them and society even better tomorrow.

My platform is “academic freedom, academic merit and academic responsibility.” We need the freedom to say what is right, not just what is politically correct, and not be punished for it. We need to support existing defined academic criteria for retention and promotion and create better and more open ways of sharing those activities with the junior faculty who are so vulnerable to neglect.

I envision taking our message to the faculty at large through their elected representatives in an initiative I call “reseeding and refeeding.” The faculty are the seeds from which great universities grow. We would task the Faculty Assembly representatives to hold “town hall” meetings to discuss local issues and give faculty feedback on existing activities as well as to garner from them their concerns, which would be brought back to Faculty Assembly for debate. If general themes of discontent, concern and frustration exist, then they will be discussed with the administration to find reasonable solutions.

Legislators at the state appropriation hearings said openly that they are asking universities to tighten their belts for FY08. What targets do you see for cost-cutting?

BAKER: Unfortunately, the easiest target for cost-cutting by administrators is the annual faculty and staff compensation pool increase. I say unfortunately because we need a make-up pay raise, not a cut. Faculty and staff have endured two successive years in which the increase in Pitt’s compensation pool has been less than the annual rate of inflation (Consumer Price Index).

Both years, more than 50 percent of Pitt’s faculty received pay increases below the rate of inflation. These faculty need a make-up pay raise just to catch up with inflation. The likelihood of getting it does not look promising if the state appropriation remains at only 2 percent as proposed.

Another obvious target is not a cut: Tuition will have to be increased higher than otherwise planned, no doubt to understandable howls of outrage by students and parents.

A third target for cost-cutting would be to delay one or more building or capital spending projects.

PINSKY: The School of Medicine has created a bridge funding process to help researchers survive these lean times. Although such funding comes with the commitment to continue to attempt to secure extramural funds, more inventive use of foundation support and the creating and notice of funded institutes within the University to support scholarly activity need to be created. We can work on these items through some of the existing Senate committees, but perhaps a new ad hoc committee composed of budget policies, tenure and academic freedom and governmental relations members could be formed to address these items specifically.

Clearly, making the University campus energy-efficient as supported by the new sustainability subcommittee will go a long way toward cost savings. Still, local activity can also help, by printing rough drafts of manuscripts on one-sided used paper, having more online teaching activities and reports that do not require printed paper and using more web-based teaching aids to reduce classroom size are all reasonable options and ones we are presently working on in the plant utilization and planning committee.

However, we can never forget our primary commitment to quality education and the mentorship it requires, nor our leadership in research, which in any cost-cutting program should be given sustainable priority.

Faculty and staff salary increases often lag behind the inflation rate. What can be done to prevent a brain drain if faculty go elsewhere for salary reasons? How can staff retention be increased in an era of low salary increases?

BAKER: The University has methods to try to keep those faculty and staff it most wants to retain. Every year a significant number of meritorious faculty receive a pay raise of more than 10.1 percent — as 5.6 percent of continuing faculty did last year. The actual percentage is much higher than 5.6 percent because the continuing faculty category does not include those who received promotions. And another 4 percent of faculty received pay raises between 7.6 percent and 10 percent.

In addition to allocating large merit/market raises to star faculty, the University has the option of trying to match or beat a salary offer from a competing institution if it wishes to retain a particular faculty member. So, Pitt has ways of keeping selected faculty when it so desires.

The University can retain staff it does not want to lose by reclassifying their job descriptions, which would in turn justify paying a higher salary to that particular staff member. Staff can also apply for a job in another unit at a higher job classification level and higher salary.

Another major factor in staff and faculty retention is job benefits, which are very good at Pitt. Many staff continue to work here at lower pay than they would receive elsewhere in order to avail themselves of our benefits, especially the tuition waiver for children, spouse or self.

If I am re-elected as Senate president, preserving and improving job benefits for faculty and staff will continue to be one of my top priorities.

PINSKY: We addressed the issue of low faculty and staff salaries this year. The University is in a cash crunch. Salary increases are capped and cannot go higher faster if we are to sustain fiscal viability. Thus, the primary way to retain faculty and staff is to make their desire to remain at Pitt greater. The campus-wide Fitness for Life wellness initiative, academic credit for academic activities associated with community service that create excellent community programs can make our living environment better, and continued critical mass of excited and dedicated faculty within each school can be the cornerstones to anchor retention of faculty and staff. Let us focus on the benefits that come with the job and the University environment to help retain faculty and staff.

Recently, accusations nationally and state-wide have been leveled against a so-called “liberal bias” on university campuses. What can the Senate do about this?

BAKER: When I first heard these accusations, my reaction was to dismiss them as laughable. But that’s precisely what the extremists behind them want, in hopes of minimizing opposition. They must be taken seriously, however, because this is a well-funded, well-organized national movement trying to use legislative and political pressure to hijack classroom content, supplant professional standards with ideological criteria and bully teachers into silence.

These extremists lost their battle in Pennsylvania last year for a so-called “Academic Bill of Rights,” but have introduced similar legislation in 25 other states thus far. For example, Missouri is considering a bill defining “intellectual diversity” in political, ideological and religious terms, instead of professional criteria; the act includes enforcement powers, and sets the stage for political policing of classrooms and an end to academic freedom. An “intellectual diversity” bill before Arizona’s legislature would forbid school district employees from advocating outside the classroom any side of a social, political or cultural issue that is a matter of partisan controversy.

We must remain vigilant, because such attacks will surely be renewed here. When they are, we can defend academic freedom and insist upon professional criteria — not ideological perspectives — to determine classroom content, by testifying in hearings and writing letters.

I attended one of the hearings the Pennsylvania House held here while considering the “Academic Bill of Rights.” I am also a long-time member of AAUP, and support its national efforts to defend academic freedom against extremist attacks.

PINSKY: When this accusation was first leveled at universities in general and the University of Pittsburgh in particular I was the chairman of the tenure and academic freedom committee. In that role I helped craft a proposal passed by the Faculty Assembly recommending the creation of a University academic freedom committee to address issues of extrinsic threats to academic freedom. Working behind the scenes to craft position papers and processes to oppose reactionary rhetoric from the minority of the religious right wing, the University successfully documented our commitment to academic freedom of expression for all views.

Recall that academic freedom also carries with it academic responsibility. We at the University of Pittsburgh understand that in an open forum all views must be allowed their fair time to air. But such discussion is two-way, and debate, reason and logic need to share space with the public. I am confident that as the political climate in the state and nationally swings back toward a more rational open-minded middle-of-the-road position, the voices of reason and logic coupled with scientifically documented fact will again hold sway no matter which side of the political aisle one supports.

There has been a new emphasis on wellness initiatives, including efforts to expand the Fitness for Life program. Are we doing enough as an institution in this area?

BAKER: We’ve made a terrific start in promoting wellness for Pitt employees — and additional initiatives will be introduced this spring and fall.

Human Resources began Pitt’s “Fitness for Life” two years ago. Programs have included elimination of co-payments for preventive measures such as immunizations and blood lipid testing, and advocacy of walking regimens to induce weight loss (“America on the Move”). A one-month health insurance premium holiday motivated many employees to participate in blood lipid and glucose testing.

HR will conduct a weight-loss campaign for Pitt faculty and staff this fall, with incentives for program completion. It will also improve its web site so faculty and staff can better locate existing campus wellness-related activities.

My opponent proposes electron beam computed tomography (EBCT) as a screening tool to predict risk of cardiovascular disease in Pitt faculty and staff. However, as reported in the March 7 Post-Gazette, medical doctors disagree on its value for this application. In the profiled case, EBCT was followed by a stress test and angiogram. It was the latter two tests that diagnosed the patient’s cardiovascular disease, not EBCT.

A 1998 P-G article on EBCT reveals that, even then, Pitt physicians were promoting it to predict cardiovascular disease risk. Yet, it still hasn’t gained wide acceptance after all these years. No health plan in the nation — not even UPMC’s — recommends it for this use. Moreover, EBCT is costly, available only in Oakland and would increase health insurance premiums. It does not appear to meet the necessary criteria for adoption: cost-effectiveness, achieving its stated objective and being available conveniently to all plan members.

PINSKY: We have convened a panel of world-class experts in the field of risk assessment and management whose sole goal was to develop a plan for the Pitt faculty, staff and their families that was not only cutting-edge in its approach, but also fiscally responsible. The plan centered on the primary care physician screening and management with help from an interactive web-based program that would aid patients with defined risk toward risk reduction activities and treatments and reduce the risk of developing heart disease, hypertension and diabetes using approved and locally proven-to-work programs for weight reduction and weight maintenance, smoking cessation, exercise and stress reduction.

All these programs already exist on campus and will be made available as this plan rolls out to all faculty, staff and their families through the UPMC Health Plan. I am very proud to say that I chaired the ad hoc Fitness for Life committee and saw these programs through to completion, presentation and approval by the Faculty Assembly, and then introduction to the Benefits office of the University.

So, are we doing enough? No, but we know what we have to do and are starting to do it, and I will continue to push for a healthier, less-stressful faculty and staff through the Fitness for Life initiative by leveraging the excellence of Pitt faculty leadership and their existing and developing health-quality programs.

Is the tenure system healthy at Pitt? What protections do you see for non-tenure-stream faculty?

BAKER: The tenure system here is healthier in some schools than others. The number of tenured faculty that any school can responsibly support is linked to the amount of hard money support (i.e., tuition revenue) the school generates. For example, Arts and Sciences, which generates major tuition revenues, can reliably support a high percentage of their faculty as tenured, so the tenure policy generally works well for them.

In the School of Medicine, by contrast, tuition constitutes only a small portion of the revenue needed to pay the salaries of its 1,948 faculty. If all other revenues dried up, the school could support only a small percentage of its total faculty, perhaps 10 percent. Consequently, only about 17 percent of medical faculty are tenured. The rest are supported by clinical and grant revenues which are variable, hence called soft money. This policy is sound fiscally, but leaves much to be desired in terms of providing academic freedom and job security.

Another factor making it hard for many Health Sciences faculty to earn tenure is the high teaching and/or clinical service demands the schools place on them. They can’t get tenure without research grants, yet it’s difficult to get a research grant if they’re teaching in the classroom or clinic much of the time. So the tenure policy does not serve these faculty well.

Non-tenure-stream faculty can be afforded some protection by giving them a multi-year contract that provides for automatic renewal unless the person is notified one year in advance of intended non-renewal.

PINSKY: Tenure across the United States is decreasing as a final place for academic faculty. As chairman of the tenure and academic freedom committee (TAFC) for two years I was tasked to report on the tenure activity of the University. Those reports are on file in the University Senate web site. They document that some schools have greatly reduced their percentage of tenured faculty while others have remained steady. No schools have increased their percentage of tenured faculty. Clearly, the issue now is how to protect the non-tenure stream faculty.

I believe that much of the credit for protection of the non-tenure stream faculty should go to the Provost’s office because they have systematically created uniform reporting and evaluation procedures for each school. Each faculty member is given a formal evaluation each year and, if negative, is given an opportunity to respond. Clear goals and remediation need to be defined and agreed upon, so that termination of non-tenured full-time faculty cannot occur without documentation and can always be appealed through the TAFC. When I was TAFC chairman, I created a “white paper” on TAFC policies that was sent to all faculty outlining their rights and the appeals process. I am very pleased to report that as compared to 10 years ago before the new policies were in place, the number of complaints and their level of egregiousness has markedly decreased. Our faculty are, in fact, quite well protected and their supervisors are held to high standards of review and support.

Is there sufficient transparency in how the University conducts its business? What’s the ideal level of transparency for Pitt and how would you help to achieve it?

BAKER: Individuals who believe in the public’s right to know — as I do — would say there is not sufficient transparency in the ways the University of Pittsburgh conducts its business, because everything involving the spending of public tax dollars should be a matter of public record. Despite some recent improvements Pennsylvania still does not have adequate Sunshine Laws, so the University is required to reveal only a limited amount of information to the public.

In fairness to our administration, the University of Pittsburgh does make a reasonably good effort to keep Senate officers and Senate committees informed about its plans, and tries to build a consensus for decisions, although this is often done confidentially.

The University Senate cannot compel Pitt to reveal information publicly if it chooses not to, but there are things the Senate can do to ensure that decisions are not made in a vacuum. For example, we can ask to be included in decision-making committees and groups. We can publicly question decisions that are made, and encourage public debate on the issues. We can invite University administrators to explain their decisions in a closed session and encourage them to release information publicly.

The University Times — Pitt’s newspaper for faculty and staff — can play a key role as well, by covering Senate meetings and interviewing faculty and administrators who participate in decision-making.

PINSKY: It is very difficult to conduct one’s business in public. In my past seven years in the University Senate and on the numerous Senate committees, including TAFC, plant utilization and planning, computer usage, athletics and Fitness for Life, as well as vice president for the past two years, I have been extremely impressed at the openness of the senior administration to discuss very sensitive issues with us, if only behind closed doors. We have not been kept in the dark about policy, budget and building decisions as well as long-term plans.

I have a personal and mutually respectful relationship with the senior administration from the chancellor and provost on down. Though we may not always agree on what shared governance means or how to resolve specific issues, the administration has always been open to the Senate executive committee and various members of the Senate committees on most issues of which I am aware. In fact, it is that openness and willingness to cooperate that I bring to the table as a candidate, having had that role officially for the last four years.

What are other universities doing right that you think Pitt should emulate?

BAKER: Many universities are implementing new programs to increase economic and minority diversity on their campuses. For example,

• The University of North Carolina guarantees that low-income students can graduate debt-free, through a combination of scholarships and work-study. This program is increasing minority enrollment.

• The University of Florida is weighing a 5 percent tuition surcharge earmarked for scholarships to low-income students.

Pitt should emulate these programs and guarantee that gifted low-income students from Pennsylvania can graduate debt-free.

I feel strongly about this issue because I come from a humble background myself. My great-grandfather never learned to read or write in his native Kentucky because his mother was married to a former slave. As an adult he moved north to rural Illinois, where my grandfather completed sixth grade. My mother finished eighth grade, married and was widowed young. She never earned much above minimum wage, but was naturally intelligent and insisted that I get a good education.

I finished high school and — thanks to low tuitions, scholarships and working — was able to earn degrees from two of the world’s finest universities, Illinois and the UC-Berkeley, without incurring debt.

It’s still the American dream to overcome poverty through education and hard work. I was fortunate to have had that opportunity, but it’s slipping away from many of today’s youth due to the high cost of even public institutions in states like Pennsylvania. We need to keep higher education affordable for all our citizens, not just the privileged.

PINSKY: I think that all universities are a product of their regional environment, funding, scholastic standing, faculty and physical plant. As I travel around the country to various universities, which I do often, I am struck by how they use their environment to match with their physical plant to improve the normal flow of daily activities from commuting and parking to eating and drinking. To a large extent Pitt is limited in what it can do and within those limitations is doing exceptionally well.

I do regret not having the football stadium on campus, but apparently student attendance at football games has never been higher. One item that has bothered me since coming to Pitt 26 years ago was the abysmal state of the faculty club and related social centers to allow faculty to mingle. This lack of social centers is to me one of the greatest flaws on our main campus.

However, the University is planning for a new Faculty Club in the recently acquired University Club building. This multi-use building will house other services, but one of them should be a Faculty Club.

This is a start. If we couple the Fitness for Life wellness program with exercise centers and other gathering places, I believe that we can create an environment of exceptional quality, one that we can all be proud to call our own.

The Senate, as an advisory body, does not wield decision-making power. Why should faculty be involved with the Senate? Why should they vote in Senate elections?

BAKER: The Senate is the University of Pittsburgh’s official shared-governance body, charged with discussing and making recommendations on all issues of University-wide concern to faculty, staff, students and administrators. The only other way for faculty to be heard is to write or speak to senior administrators directly, or submit letters to the University Times — but such communication is an individual thing, as opposed to action by an officially recognized group.

While it’s true that the Senate’s role is advisory — and our advice can be ignored by the administration, if they wish — faculty can make the administration pay a price for ignoring our counsel by calling attention to it. The administration’s protracted resistance to same-sex partner benefits brought enormous negative publicity to Pitt, as did the lengthy dispute in the 1990s, in which I played a prominent role, precipitated by (former senior vice chancellor for Health Sciences) Dr. Thomas Detre’s refusal to address administrative shortcomings in the School of Dental Medicine. Because of continued public scrutiny, both issues were eventually resolved favorably for faculty.

The Senate also played an important role in recent years in keeping Pitt’s Environmental Law Clinic on campus and prompting changes in our Institutional Review Board. As an officer of the tenure and academic freedom committee, I participated in both cases.

Thus, I know from personal experience that the Senate can indeed make a significant difference and is worthy of a faculty members’ participation. If faculty want a voice in what happens at Pitt, they can either become an administrator or participate in the Senate. And if they do not vote, they forfeit their voice.

PINSKY: The University is a living being that needs the support of its faculty and staff to function properly. Good leadership is more about understanding issues and reaching consensus than ruling by fiat. Thus, the administration wants, and probably needs, our support to create an effective educational and research program.

In my experience, they have always been receptive to our opinions, suggestions, motions and proposals. The primary reasons for not following our suggestions when the administration did not follow them, was usually financial, it cost too much, or political, it would hurt our appropriations or affiliations later on.

Furthermore, by discussing these proposals with the administration in private we have often gained great progress. More so, I believe, than if we tried to debate these issues publicly with the administration.

As I itemized in my response to the first question, as a single faculty representative, I have initiated and followed through on several programs that have changed our academic environment for the better. I have done that through finding kindred spirits with whom to team up, making sure that our conclusions were supported by well-documented facts and that our proposed solutions were reasonable. I know many faculty feel the same desire to make our University better. We are working toward those goals now and with the support of new faculty members to the Faculty Assembly we will continue to do so into the future.