From AToews@med.unc.edu Tue Apr 10 11:01:48 2007 Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 10:59:36 -0400 From: Arrel Toews To: Andrew Perrin Cc: atoews Subject: Re: Faculty Governance Survey replies for Arrel Toews Hi, Andy - Some brief comments/answers to your questions, inserted into the text below. I hope they are in time to still be useful. Andrew Perrin wrote: > Greetings- > > I am writing as part of an effort to generate more information on > candidates running for faculty governance positions at UNC. This > survey is a project of the American Association of University > Professors' UNC chapter. Any answers you choose to provide to the > questions below will be posted to my faculty governance page at > http://perrin.socsci.unc.edu/fg and will be publicized to interested > faculty. Thank you for your service to the university! > > Best wishes, > Andrew J. Perrin > Department of Sociology > andrew_perrin@unc.edu > > 1.) What issues, concerns, and areas do you hope to address through > your service on faculty government? > Since I am a fixed-term faculty member (as I have been for 30 years and counting!), the welfare of fixed-term faculty members is one of my continuing concerns. There is basically zero committment to these faculty, even though they perform valuable services to the University. Often their contributions are greater than that of tenured faculty in the same department, yet there is no committment to them, other than possibly a moral one, should they be terminated. I think something like a minimum of 1 month of continued support for each year of service to the University should be a guaranteed benefit to fixed-term faculty. There are other related issues to be raised/discussed as well. In addition, I'd be happy to help with any other issues as well. > 2.) To what extent to you believe faculty interests differ from those > of administrators? > I think our interests are, in general and in the long term, very similar, and that's good. On a somewhat negative note, the major role of the faculty is increasingly becoming that of income generators instead of educators, so we are sadly but surely becoming more administrators than academic faculty. It may soon be the only criteria for evaluation in the medical school. > > 3.) How should we maintain academic integrity in the face of > increasing financial pressures? > I'm not sure of how to do this, but agree that it is perhaps THE biggest challenge we face. If I knew how to do this, I would certainly share it with the world (and become both rich and famous for sharing). I think we must all just do our best to keep this issue at the forefront of our academic leaders and the university leadership as well. Convincing the people of the State of North Carolina that this is a vital issue is very important, so I think our leaders (both academic and administrative) need to work overtime on this, as do we all to the extent we can. The Provost is the chief academic officer of our University, and I would hope she would be our champion on this issue, despite all the financial pressure that is exerted on her office as well. That is something I think can be improved upon. > > 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? > Those inequalities are there and they are increasing. We should do what we can to eliminate or minimize them, a daunting task at best. I think these inequalities are especially disheartening to many fixed-term faculty, because as I noted above, many of them work harder and provide more useful services than do many tenured faculty. > > 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? > We must balance these two, and work very hard at each. > > 6.) Are you a member of the American Association of University > Professors (AAUP)? > Nope > > 7.) Any additional comments? > I served on the UNC Faculty Council from 2002-2005, and enjoyed my service very much. I hope I made some meaningful contributions as well. I really miss those chocolate chip cookies the first Friday afternoon of each month, and wouldn't mind again serving on the Council at all. Arrel Toews Professor of Biochemistry (Biochemistry & Biophysics/Medical School) -- Arrel D. Toews, Ph.D. Professor of Biochemistry 420 ME Jones Building CB# 7260 Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7260 ATOEWS@MED.UNC.EDU 919-843-8727 (voice) 919-966-2852 (FAX) [ Part 2, Text/PLAIN (charset: UTF-8 "Internet-standard Unicode") ] [ (Name: "AToews.vcf") 15 lines. ] [ Unable to print this part. ]