2008 Woodie Awards
A View of Her Own
A personal look into the Academic Senate
Eva Oliver
Issue date: 10/7/08 Section: News
Although a number of important issues are discussed and dissected during the Academic Senate's meetings, sometimes the subjects with more campus relevance are tackled on the SSU listserv Senate-Talk.
These last two weeks, I have seen some extremely critical discussion about the President's Campus Diversity Council (PDC).
After being visited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges' (WASC) accreditation team during the Spring semester of last year, it was announced that our campus needed to "take effective and corrective action to address the enduring lack of diversity at SSU."
As a response to the WASC findings, President Armiñana and Provost Ochoa began to assemble the PDC.
During the Academic Senate meeting on Sept. 18, Provost Ochoa announced that there would be faculty participation on the PDC and that those faculty members had already been selected.
Ochoa was met by an uprising of confused Senators. Very few of them were even aware that a selection process had been taking place.
As Senator Rick Luttmann explained in his Senate-Talk response on Sept. 19, any time faculty are being asked to step onto administrative bodies, the process must begin in the Structure and Functions Committee (SFC). The SFC then solicits nominations from the campus faculty at large. Once the SFC receives the nominations, they select the faculty members, sometimes with the help of the Senate's Executive Committee. And, finally the SFC sends those names to the administration for confirmation.
"Apparently in this instance the Structure and Functions Committee was not involved at all, and no general campus-wide announcement went out soliciting interested nominees," wrote Luttmann.
Instead of this traditional process, Ochoa asked for nominations from the School Deans, who were asked to obtain names from their council of department chairs.
"The Dean of my school [Arts and Humanities] did bring it up with the [Arts and Humanities] Council, and it was the name suggested there that wound up being appointed to the PDC," wrote Senator Tim Wandling on Sept. 20.
These last two weeks, I have seen some extremely critical discussion about the President's Campus Diversity Council (PDC).
After being visited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges' (WASC) accreditation team during the Spring semester of last year, it was announced that our campus needed to "take effective and corrective action to address the enduring lack of diversity at SSU."
As a response to the WASC findings, President Armiñana and Provost Ochoa began to assemble the PDC.
During the Academic Senate meeting on Sept. 18, Provost Ochoa announced that there would be faculty participation on the PDC and that those faculty members had already been selected.
Ochoa was met by an uprising of confused Senators. Very few of them were even aware that a selection process had been taking place.
As Senator Rick Luttmann explained in his Senate-Talk response on Sept. 19, any time faculty are being asked to step onto administrative bodies, the process must begin in the Structure and Functions Committee (SFC). The SFC then solicits nominations from the campus faculty at large. Once the SFC receives the nominations, they select the faculty members, sometimes with the help of the Senate's Executive Committee. And, finally the SFC sends those names to the administration for confirmation.
"Apparently in this instance the Structure and Functions Committee was not involved at all, and no general campus-wide announcement went out soliciting interested nominees," wrote Luttmann.
Instead of this traditional process, Ochoa asked for nominations from the School Deans, who were asked to obtain names from their council of department chairs.
"The Dean of my school [Arts and Humanities] did bring it up with the [Arts and Humanities] Council, and it was the name suggested there that wound up being appointed to the PDC," wrote Senator Tim Wandling on Sept. 20.
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