By MARTY LEVINE
On the heels of proposing that Faculty Assembly give part-time faculty voting rights (see Faculty Assembly story), the University Senate’s Bylaws and Procedures committee on Oct. 27 began discussing how to create more caucuses to give a way for nonmembers to give input to the Assembly.
Today, noted committee co-chair Nick Bircher, a faculty member in medicine and nursing, there is only one caucus — for health sciences faculty already in Faculty Assembly. New caucuses of nonmembers who, say, all work in the same subject area or have other affinities would give a wider variety of faculty some say in the organization.
Bircher also noted that this proposal to amend the Senate bylaws to make caucuses (actually called “constituency committees”) into formal groups may not be necessary if their creation can simply be written into Faculty Assembly’s administrative handbooks. By current Constituency Committee rules, caucus members must already be Assembly members.
Each caucus could report to one of the standing committees, or perhaps one Faculty Assembly member could represent each caucus to the Assembly, Bircher said: “That is where their voice could come to the table.”
Bylaws Committee member Candice Damiani, biological sciences faculty member, pointed out that some faculty — in particular teaching faculty — find involvement in the Senate “burdensome,” since “service to the University does not seem to be highly valued” in reviews of their work for promotion or retention.
Indeed, said Bircher, “in some departments and schools, it’s not only unrewarded, but it is strongly discouraged” with participation in the University Senate deemed “not mission-critical to our school.” In response, he said, the committee may consider a resolution requesting that the provost’s office revise the faculty evaluation format so that service is valued in a more formal way.
The committee’s next meeting was set for noon Dec. 8.
Marty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times. Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu or 412-758-4859.
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