Three new members to join SACUA May 1

Faculty members from the schools of social work and music, and the Medical School, are joining the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs.

The Senate Assembly March 21 elected Brett Seabury, associate professor of social work; Dr. Charles B. Smith, professor of pharmacology; and Betty Anne Younker, assistant professor of music education, to three-year terms on the committee.

Seabury

Smith

Younker

Seabury has been a member of the Senate Assembly since 2003 and serves on the Administration Evaluation Committee (AEC), which last fall implemented a system whereby faculty members can evaluate the University's top administrators.

"My experience as a member of the AEC has connected me to colleagues who have worked responsibly to plan and implement the online, administration evaluation system," he says. "This committee has moved expeditiously to produce a significant change in the organizational climate of the University.

"Hopefully, SACUA and the Senate Assembly can follow-up with the lessons learned in this evaluation."

Smith returns to SACUA after serving the committee from 1992-95. He also is completing a second stint on the Assembly, which he serves as chair of the Budget Study Committee and member of the General Counsel Advisory Committee. He was the recipient of the 2003 Distinguished Faculty Governance Award.

"Important issues for SACUA include maintaining a high-quality educational experience, the growing number of non-tenure-track instructional faculty, the University as a business enterprise, and intellectual property rights, as well as shifts in the cost of benefits," Smith says. "Administrative decisions related to such issues should be made only after consultation with the faculty."

Younker is chair of the Department of Music Education. She has been a member of the Senate Assembly since 2003 and currently sits on the Academic Affairs Advisory Committee.

"Universities have faced economic challenges in the past, but presently such challenges are requiring shifts in thinking and expectations," she says. "On the positive side, it is often during these times that creativity peaks, and in the process, involves a critical analysis of existing traditions and allows for an emergence of new thinking.

"As traditions and new thinking are examined, faculty should be vocal and play a strong role at all levels of discussion and decision-making procedures."

Outgoing SACUA members are: Chair Stanley Berent, professor of psychology, psychiatry, neurology, and environmental and industrial health; Vice-chair Silvia Pedraza, associate professor of sociology; and Dr. Bill Ensminger, professor of internal medicine-hematology/oncology and pharmacology.

More Stories

• University and GEO settle contract
• GEO, University Bargaining to resume March 31
• GEO, University return to table today
• Coleman: Cuts bad for University, state recovery
• U-M, U. of Cape Town to host affirmative action symposium
• Pioneers, victims recall polio trials
• Spotlight: Making connections
• Letter from President Mary Sue Coleman
• Howard Hughes Medical Institute taps U-M scientist
• Chaffin champions creation of ergonomically sound workplaces
• 'Slow food' movement helps develop social and cultural capital
• Three new members to join SACUA May 1
• McManus in driver's seat at OSAT
• Earnings surprises catch Wall Street analysts off guard
• America will gain 4 million jobs by the end of next year
• Women's equity advocate attacks boardrooms, not bunkers
• GELS names new fellows
• U-M professor draws attention to 'Faces of the Fallen' exhibit
• If the walls could talk: Students build plan to control drinking
• Serpentine OmniTread robot scales many obstacles
• U-M will operate as gateway to Shoah Holocaust archives
• U-M team finds evidence of elusive intermediate-mass black hole
• From fashion illustration to illustrating WWII
• Nobel Prize winner to lecture April 6
• Photo: Depression conference at Rackham
• Photo: Warming up