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Remarks to the Educational Policy Committee

Marcia Day Childress

Chair, University of Virginia Faculty Senate

I'm pleased to bring you an update from the Faculty Senate. I've chosen to frame my remarks in terms of partnerships in which faculty are involved - with students, with administration, with you - all to enhance the University's academic excellence and national competitiveness.

A point of pride at UVA is the degree to which students can work closely with faculty in meaningful partnerships, and the Senate works to promote this. I've previously discussed with you the Harrison Undergraduate Research Awards, a brainchild of the Senate. These awards give undergraduates up to $3000 to develop independent research projects. Each student applying for a Harrison Award partners with a professor, who guides the student in formulating a project and preparing a proposal. Harrison Award winners work with their faculty mentors in various ways - they might share a lab over the summer, the student might carry out field research or a service-learning project with faculty oversight, the professor might guide the student's development of a thesis proposal based on the student's research, and so forth. While faculty do receive a modest but welcome $1000 research account for being involved with a Harrison Award project, it's really not about the money. It's the faculty's privilege to work one on one with our undergraduates - these partnerships are a way of investing in students' future careers, of role modeling for professional life, of sharing the challenges and delights of discovery, of helping bright, motivated young people find their way and test their wings. For many faculty, these are experiences of being inspired all over again by our students' excitement and accomplishments. This year's Harrison Award winners - 42 of them from across the undergraduate schools, with 42 faculty mentors - will be formally announced later this month during Research Week. Behind every winner is a committed faculty partner.

Graduate funding being so limited and yet so crucial to the university's excellence and reputation, the Senate is pleased to sponsor dissertation-year fellowships for doctoral candidates in their final year. These awards are an important, visible investment by faculty not only in graduate education but also in the future of higher education, for these Ph.D. students represent our next generation of college and university faculty. For 2005-2006, we have six fellowships of $20,000 each to award - all will go to graduate students who have distinguished themselves in their own academic coursework, in their dissertation research, and in their classroom teaching. A selection committee is now reviewing 71 impressive applications. The winners and their faculty sponsors will be honored at a dinner on 12 April. I'd like to thank the Provost, the Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, the Dean of the Curry School of Education, and the Athletic Director for funding this year's six fellowships.

This year, we're seeing considerable faculty partnering with the administration on matters having to do with advancing the university's core academic mission. At Provost Gene Block's invitation, faculty are involved in policy reviews preliminary to the university's upcoming SACS reaccreditation; we will be involved in other activities related to the reaccreditation, in the new round of academic program reviews, and in the Provost's reexamination of promotion and tenure policies.

As UVA embarks on an ambitious capital campaign, the Senate has established a Development Committee to work in partnership with Senior Vice President Bob Sweeney and the Provost. This committee, co-chaired by former Faculty Senate chair Rob Grainger and English professor Michael Levenson, will help to engage faculty in advocating for pan-university fundraising priorities such as graduate fellowships, science and technology initiatives, research, nationally competitive faculty salaries, and interdisciplinary ethics programs. It's likely that the committee will also have a role in brokering faculty outreach to alumni and to the public, as part of larger university efforts to bring more academically rich programming to our graduates, to donors, and to the citizens of the Commonwealth.

We're entering a new era of higher education in Virginia, with the state's restructuring of its relationship with public colleges and universities. As you know, through the "charter" deliberations last fall and winter, the faculty took a careful look at what was being proposed and took a stand on certain aspects of the legislation. Faculty commitment to making UVA a top national institution is passionate. Faculty commitment to the university as an accessible, affordable, public institution is strong, as is our interest in having a socioeconomically and otherwise diverse student body and the best staff possible. It was important to us this winter that President Casteen, Provost Block, and Vice Presidents Colette Sheehy and Leonard Sandridge both listened to our perspectives and kept us in the loop as legislation was drafted and debated. Now, with a management agreement to negotiate and academic plans to prepare and be accountable for, there seems a need for continued dialogue, continued partnership. Faculty are ready to help, in whatever ways we can.

As my year as Senate chair winds down, I'd like to thank you, the Board, for the opportunities you've afforded me to speak to you on behalf of faculty. While one voice can never speak for all faculty, I do hope I've been able to give you some sense of what matters to the teachers, researchers, clinicians, and scholars here, what motivates us, what makes - and what can make - UVA important to us, and what we're willing to do for its betterment. As the Board assumes even more responsibility for the university under the new arrangement with the state, we trust you'll see the faculty as partners in this enterprise. Please call on us as resources, as allies in the thrust toward greater national eminence, as advocates along with the administration for academic excellence, innovation, sound management, and competitiveness. I've been impressed this year by the faculty's dedication to their work and to the academic mission of the university, by their willingness to serve, by their smart and thoughtful approaches to problems, by their commitment to living out Thomas Jefferson's highest aspirations for this place. I commend the faculty to you. Please do call on us.

Thank you.