Category: News

Dear Colleagues

I hope the quarter is going well so far. I’m writing from the Faculty Senate with what will be a bi-monthly update on our work.

This message contains the following updates:

• Town Hall on Decarbonization at the UW: this Wednesday at 4:30.
• Provost’s Teaching and Learning initiative: please give feedback.
• Finance Transformation stabilisation, impact on research/grants.
• Wellness resources for students.
• Agenda items for next Senate meeting, Nov. 9^th

Decarbonization Town Hall. Wednesday October 25^th, 4:30-6:15 pm, Kane Hall 110 or via livestream (registration required). All are welcome at this panel discussion on the UW’s efforts to decarbonize our operations and address climate change. There will be opportunity for questions. A good opportunity to see shared governance in action. Hosted by the Faculty Senate and the Faculty Council on Campus Planning and Stewardship.

Future of Teaching and Learning. This Provost’s working group plans to send a recommendation to the Faculty Council on Teaching and Learning (FCTL) in Spring 2024 which may result in legislation. It is important that we have your feedback at every stage moving forward. See here for opportunities for feedback.

Finance Transformation. The UWFT team fully acknowledges the challenges for research and grants, and asks that we direct our frustrations to “processes, not people.” Staff we look to as experts are still themselves learning, and working extremely hard under duress.  Please see this message from the Vice Provost for Research. Forms/knowledge articles/training materials for UWFT can be found here.

Student Wellness resources. The Faculty Council on Student Affairs and the Director of the Counseling Center recently sent out information on two resources we can direct students to: Let’s Talk, for informal consultation without an appointment, and Husky HelpLine, for same-day mental health and crisis intervention support, in multiple languages.

Senate agenda, Nov. 9^th. The next full Senate meeting will include the following items (agenda subject to approval). Discussion items will include the Teaching and Learning working group’s recommendations, and artificial intelligence. New Business will include: Secretary of the Faculty Tenure Requirement; Grading System (incompletes and Xs), and academic probation.

Please reach out with any business that you think shared governance can help with. My bookings page is in my signature.

Respectfully submitted,

Louisa Mackenzie, Vice Chair, Faculty Senate

—

Louisa Mackenzie (they/she)

Associate Professor, Comparative History of Ideas

Vice Chair, Faculty Senate University of Washington, Seattle

Book a meeting with me to discuss Senate issues and concerns

All correspondence to/from this address constitutes a public record per R.C.W. 42.56.

Decarbonization Town Hall

Wednesday, October 25

4:30 p.m., Kane Hall 110

Livestream available: RSVP here for Zoom link

Join the Faculty Council on Campus Planning and Stewardship for a panel discussion on the UW’s efforts to decarbonize our operations and address climate change. The discussion will touch on existing plans, prospects for envisioning and funding decarbonization efforts, and the potential for the UW to be a leader in climate change response.

Panelists to include:

Jan Whittington, Co-chair of the Faculty Council on Campus Planning and Stewardship

Frank Hodge, Dean of the Foster School of Business

David Woodson, Executive Director of Campus Energy, Utilities and Operations

Lela Corson, Institutional Climate Action student group

Facilitator: Lisa Dulude, UW Sustainability Director

Dear colleagues,

Greetings and hello to all. I am the Vice Chair of your Faculty Senate for 2023-24. I hope you have had the chance to read Chair Dougherty’s welcome message and that you will take a moment to familiarize yourself with the various spaces of shared governance and how they represent you.

The full Senate meets every month, and I will be writing after each meeting with a summary of the business at hand. This e-mail contains that summary (below), but I would also like to take the opportunity to say that we work for and are accountable to you. Senate meetings are open to the public, recorded, and conducted on Zoom, so you are welcome to attend and see part of our process. Agendas, recordings and minutes are all available online. An easy way for you to be heard is via your elected Faculty Senator. Senators may solicit constituent feedback on specific issues, and you can also talk with them more generally about what you would like to see happening.

I also hope that you might consider running for election as a Senator at some point, or serving your school and/or the University on a Council whose charge aligns with your interests. It’s a great way to meet service-oriented colleagues from all over the tri-campus system, to interact with our President, Provost and other leaders, and contribute to institutional change. I’m happy to talk more with you about the work; please reach out if you are interested.

In the first full meeting of the Faculty Senate yesterday, 10/12/2023, the following issues were discussed. The agenda is here.

• President’s and Chair’s remarks. Remarks included the good news of the appointment of three inaugural Faculty Liaisons who will undergo training to help faculty involved in dispute resolution.
• Reports from our Faculty Legislative Representative (including salary data); the Chair of the Senate Committee on Planning and Budgeting; and the Secretary of the Faculty. Reports can be read in the agenda.
• Approval of nominees for Faculty Councils and Committees.
• Initial review of Class A legislation related to qualifications for the Secretary of the Faculty. Last year, Class A Legislation 170 was passed, removing the requirement for the Secretary of the Faculty to be tenured and thus opening the position up to Teaching Faculty. The legislation currently under review corrects a corresponding part of the Faculty Code which mentioned qualifications, thus aligning code chapters. Legislation can be read in the agenda.
• Welcoming our new Provost, Tricia Serio, into shared governance at the UW. Provost Serio expressed her deep admiration for the UW community and her commitment to shared governance.
• Budget education. The Senate heard presentations from Sarah Hall, Vice Provost of planning and budgeting, and Fred Nafukho, Vice Provost of academic personnel. VP Hall presented an overview of UW budgets to help senators understand the processes particularly as they relate to salary decisions. VP Nafukho presented a summary of key policies governing salary increases, with a focus on unit adjustment analysis. Slides are available upon request.

We welcome your engagement on these and other issues as we work together to create, improve, and sustain the best possible working and learning environment for all.

Sincerely,

Louisa Mackenzie, Vice Chair, Faculty Senate

Dear Respected Colleagues,

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

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

COVID-19 Vaccine Information

• UW Medicine COVID-19 vaccines guide.
• COVID-19 vaccine eligibility questionnaire.
• COVID-19 planned vaccine phases.

New Senator Orientation

• Recording from the new Senator orientation on October 7, 2020.