Dear faculty colleagues:
It has been an honor and a privilege to serve as the Faculty Senate chair over the past year and to meet and collaborate with brilliant students and colleagues from across the University. I’ve appreciated the diversity of perspectives and opinions and the respectful and productive conversations in the Senate and other venues. Most of all, I’ve had great fun and have enjoyed working with faculty from all UW campuses, schools and colleges!
As in past years, the Senate and faculty councils set an ambitious agenda. We’ve achieved more than I thought we would — though perhaps less than I’d hoped! Thank you to all faculty, staff and students who have participated in shared governance in the Senate, my chair’s cabinet, committees, task forces, university faculty councils, elected faculty councils, campus councils and the Senate office.
The Senate and faculty councils have moved forward several pieces of legislation and other initiatives, though plenty of work remains for next year and beyond. For details, please see my June report to the Board of Regents. Highlights and accomplishments of the past year include:
Key faculty legislation and resolutions
Clinical Practice Faculty — Established a new faculty title (track) with multiyear contracts and voting rights for instructional faculty in clinical disciplines.
Promotion and Tenure — Incorporated community-engaged activities as potential elements of scholarship that must be recognized during the promotion and tenure processes.
DEI Contributions for Promotion and Tenure — Called on academic units to develop guidelines and rubrics to evaluate contributions to diversity, equity and inclusion.
Gender Neutral Faculty Code — Removed gendered language from the Faculty Code & Governance documents.
Diversity Course Requirement — Increased the undergraduate diversity requirement from three credits to five credits.
Diversity Courses — Created a roadmap to fortify course content and eventually increase the diversity requirement to ten credits.
Curriculum Administration — Established two notable committees on general education and curriculum administration that will be in place by the autumn quarter.
Student Affairs — Called for the creation of a spring quarter student wellness day with programming.
Shared Governance — Allowed non-tenured professors and associate professors, such as teaching and research faculty, to serve as Secretary of the Faculty.
Non-legislative initiatives
Faculty Liaisons — Worked with administration to create a faculty liaison program for dispute resolution that will begin in the autumn quarter.
Dispute Resolution — Currently partnering with the administration on facilitating local-level resolution of disputes, as well as training for chairs and deans.
Tri-campus — Emphasized inclusion and outreach to UW Bothell and UW Tacoma faculty, students and administration.
Sustainability — Currently developing resolutions on decarbonization and formation of a green revolving fund.
Merit — Launched an initiative to re-envision the faculty merit evaluation process, with work to continue during the next academic year.
State Legislation — Worked with the UW team on funding for salary increases and for UW Medicine.
Senate and Shared Governance Operations — Currently overhauling operations, outreach and communications.
As the Senate revamps its communications, we plan more direct outreach to you, our constituents. This is our first email newsletter in this format. And we are excited to launch our new website, expected early in the autumn quarter.
I’d like to thank Senate Committee on Planning and Budgeting Chair Chris Laws; Secretary of the Faculty Mike Townsend; Faculty Legislative Representative Jacob Vigdor; Deputy Faculty Legislative Representative Amanda Kost; Senate staff members Jordan Smith, Joey Burgess, Alexandra Toyoda and Amanda Paye; President Ana Mari Cauce; and Past Provost Mark Richards for their partnership and support.
The incoming Senate chair, Prof. Cindy Dougherty of the School of Nursing, Seattle, and incoming vice chair, Prof. Louisa Mackenzie of the College of Arts & Sciences, Seattle, will take the reins on August 1. They have been superb colleagues and good friends, and I wish them all the best for the coming year.
Enjoy the rest of the summer.
Sincerely,
Gautham Reddy, M.D., M.P.H. (he/him)
Chair, Faculty Senate
University of Washington
Professor and Vice Chair for Academic Affairs
Department of Radiology
School of Medicine
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