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Faculty Senate & Governance

Faculty Senate Chair’s Message

Dear Respected Colleagues,

Welcome to academic year 23-24. It is my honor to serve as the University of Washington’s 76th Elected Chair of the Faculty Senate.

In my ‘campaign speech’ prior to election, my promise was to show up, be prepared, pay attention, and work for positive outcomes for all of us at UW-Seattle, Bothell, and Tacoma. I am here to work with you in addressing issues that create greatness, that keep us engaged, and make our University its best.

The autumn brings opportunity to begin anew, without the threat of COVID in every conversation or interaction. While not completely in the rearview mirror, we move forward now in joining together as perhaps we once did to more in-person meetings, classes, and events. I ask you all to join with me this year in working to improve our university for all faculty, staff and students.

Importantly, I want you to know that I care: about you as a person, about your work and its importance, and about how the UW can support your ideas, strengths, and innovations, to bring forth its best on your behalf. In the last couple of years I have felt, as you may have as well, that my work has not mattered, that I have done my best and nobody cared, and that the importance of my science has been in the shadows of a pandemic.  I do not know your experiences or hardships that were part of your COVID experience, who and what you lost, and what you strive to regain.  But, I want you to know that I care about you as we move forward to the future.

The Faculty Senate will be addressing important issues this year, some of these are included below.

  1. Welcome to our new Provost Dr. Serio. We welcome with enthusiasm and warmth, Dr. Tricia Serio who joined the UW as the Provost in August 2023. Dr. Serio comes to the UW from the University of Massachusetts Amherst where she was the Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. Prior to that appointment, she served as Associate Chancellor for Strategic Academic Planning, and as Dean of the College of Natural Sciences. She is also a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and is a highly regarded educator and researcher in the field of biochemistry and molecular biology.
  2. Dispute resolution. The Senate will be addressing how we move forward with changing and updating the faculty conduct and grievance policies. This may include changes to the faculty code. Our system has not been updated or changed in many years. Interpretations of our faculty code have resulted in adversarial interactions, prompting a need to revise and revisit our processes for working together. This last year a dispute taskforce has achieved three important milestones: appointment of faculty liaisons, revising the 25-71 interpretation and process, and training in leadership and conflict management. We will continue to work collectively to make important changes this year.
  3. Merit and Promotion. The Merit Task Force will revise legislation to impact the use of merit evaluations for salary and promotion, including how UW compensates faculty.
  4. Teaching and Learning. The Faculty Council on Teaching and Learning, as part of a Provost appointed task force on instructional quality, has developed a framework to bring together UW processes and programs to establish common criteria for evaluating teaching. This framework is being shared this Fall with your Schools and Departments for feedback to the Council. How student teaching evaluations will be used in the future is being considered.
  5. Faculty compensation. The Senate Committee on Planning and Budgeting is encouraging greater involvement of elected faculty councils in the unit adjustment process and in how faculty salary increases reach faculty members. This year we are striving toward greater transparency, ensuring that compensation keeps up with national standards, and is distributed with equity in mind.
  6. Tri-campus engagement. The Faculty Council on Tri-Campus Policy and the Senate will continue to engage in tri-campus activities, and to join forces to create workable, supportive, and welcoming environments for faculty, staff, and students. One priority of the Council will be addressing faculty resources and differing structures in promotion and tenure.

Additionally, my individual priorities are to work collectively on 2 major topics:

  1. Negotiating difference. The intersection of freedom of instruction, speech, and academic freedom within the context of social change, has impacted our ability to have meaningful discourse around sensitive topics. Instead conceptual, philosophical, and political discourse results in criticism and backlash that has resulted in the ‘silencing’ of some and anger in others. Sometimes faculty and students have conflicts or difficult discussions around differing opinions, philosophies, and ways of expression. This year I will host listening sessions with the Secretary of the Faculty and Provost’s Office to start conversation about how we uphold the faculty code, encourage the acceptance of differing views without penalty, and elevate our intellectual capacity to solve the most pressing problems of our world.
  2. Physical and mental health. Emerging from the pandemic, faculty and student wellness and morale are more important than ever. We are in an unprecedented opioid crisis with deaths from fentanyl use skyrocketing around us. We have already passed Class C resolution to get Naloxone nasal formulations located near AEDs in selected areas around campus. Students have begun to create programming around student wellness, mental health, and emergency preparedness. Keep an eye out for opportunities for engagement related to your health.

I ask you to join with me in bringing forward your superpower to engage and connect with your colleagues and with me this year.  Your superpower is your unique perspective, mindset, and a way of working or interacting that enhances everything you touch.  You probably already know of your super strengths, but others may not.  One of my superpowers is listening carefully and summarizing data, so that we create positive outcomes. You are already rock stars at what you do, you know your superpower, so together let’s move our University into the next level of excellence.

Shared governance is strong at UW, and has played a vital role in shaping our foundation and our strengths. I thank you and all faculty who have been engaged with shared governance. Without the support of our President and Provost, shared governance would not exist. We are their true partners in our work together. As I join with you and with our administration, I will continue to show up and pay attention on your behalf, to work for the best and most positive outcomes, using your and my superpowers for the best UW ever! I am committed to our main mission of knowledge generation and dissemination in solving our most pressing health and social issues in our world. Our great faculty are the central foundation of our University. As this year unfolds, I am honored and delighted to share this year with you.

PS-This welcome letter was not created using ChatGPT.