From farel@med.unc.edu Thu Mar 29 10:41:55 2007
Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2007 09:37:28 -0500
From: Paul Farel <farel@med.unc.edu>
To: 'Andrew Perrin' <aperrin@perrin.socsci.unc.edu>
Subject: RE: Faculty Governance Survey


 

1.) What issues, concerns, and areas do you hope to address through

your service on faculty government?

 

Higher education was recently labeled the last significant field in
which America is indisputably the leader.  At the present time,
higher education is under increasing pressure to meet 'benchmarks,'
whether financial, managerial, or educational.  I am interested and
concerned in the extent to which the traditional values of the
university can be maintained in this environment.

 

2.) To what extent to you believe faculty interests differ from those

of administrators?

 

The criteria whereby administrators are evaluated are very different
from those of faculty.   Given this situation, it would be surprising
if the interests of each group were the same.  Most administrators I
have interacted with are managers rather than leaders.  We need more
of the latter.

 

3.) How should we maintain academic integrity in the face of

increasing financial pressures?

 

Strong faculty involvement in settings such as promotion and tenure
committee, ECFC, Chancellor's Advisory Committee, faculty council,
etc.  Effort on these committees may seem tedious and fruitless, but
in fact they all provide a bully pulpit to discuss initiatives and
assumptions that are inconsistent with traditional academic values.

 

 

4.) What are your views on increasing inequalities within the faculty

based on, for example, tenure-track vs. fixed term appointments and

differing salary levels?

 

I do not know the data that support the presumption of the question. 
This is a statement of my ignorance, not doubt.    If inequalities
are based on ethnicity, gender, etc., then we have a problem.  Gender
disparities in salary at the medical school are a case in point and
provide an example where the issue was made imperative by individuals
and committees within the framework of faculty governance.  In the
medical school, many fixed-term faculty out earn tenure-track faculty
because the former are paid market rates for their clinical or
technical service.

 

 

5.) Would you prefer to see a faculty governance system that is

focused on prominent University issues (e.g., academic freedom and

educational policy) or one that is more focused on faculty's specific

needs (e.g., benefits and salary)? Or, alternatively, how would you

seek to balance the two?

 

'If I am not for myself, who is for me?  And if I am only for myself,
what am I?  If not now, when?'  -- Rabbi Hillel   

 

Morally and practically, we need a balance between the two, and this
balance must shift with the exigencies of the time.  The point of
balance can be determined by faculty leadership most in touch with
administrators in concert with bodies such as Faculty Council..

 

 

6.) Are you a member of the American Association of University

  Professors (AAUP)?

 

Nope.

 

 

7.) Any additional comments?

 

Nope.