General
Faculty Address - January 9,
2002
By Gayle Marie Weitz,
2001-2002 Faculty Senate Chair
Hello
and Happy New Year.
It
has been another productive semester
for the Faculty Senate. Some
highlights include:
-
The opening of the Jimmy Smith Faculty/Staff
Lounge
- A new electronic faculty handbook (coming out this semester!)
- Faculty evaluation of the deans (happening in February)
- A new grievance process (pending approval by the administration)
Some
topics on the Senate's spring agenda
include recommendations for:
- DPC reform
- Implementing the proposed workload document
- Faculty input regarding university space decisions
- The role faculty play in the budget process
I
would like to thank my fellow senators
-- especially the officers and the
committee chairs for their
extraordinary voluntary service. (And
I encourage other faculty to come
forward and participate in shared
governance -- elections are coming
up soon!) I would also like
to thank members of the Council of
Chairs and the administration for
their efforts to improve shared governance
at Appalachian.
At
the heart of shared governance in
higher education are the issues of
academic freedom and freedom of speech the
topics of today’s forum.
What is academic freedom?
How does it relate to Appalachian's mission "the practice and propagation
of scholarship?"
Or to the broader UNC system's mission "to discover, create, transmit,
and apply knowledge to address the needs of individuals and society?"
In
the Faculty Senate office hangs an
AAUP (American Association of University
Professors) poster that reads, "ACADEMIC
FREEDOM IS NOT FREE."
So, why isn't it free?
Who controls/owns academic freedom?
Is it the faculty,
the administration,
the institution,
the university system,
the courts?
How much freedom of speech do faculty
really have?
What constitutes the public and the
private realm of speech for faculty?
I
am grateful for the expertise of
our panelists, and for their willingness
to clarify the meaning of academic
freedom and freedom of speech to
those currently working at Appalachian.
Onto
the forum (and a prosperous semester
for us all) . . . .
-
Gayle Marie Weitz
Chair of the Faculty Senate
