When University Senate faced a number of controversial decisions last semester, Chancellor Nancy Cantor was stuck in a conflicting role as both the mediator of conversation and chancellor responding to faculty concerns.

Cantor will no longer guide USen through its agenda at its monthly meetings. Instead, Jonathan Massey, who chairs the Agenda Committee, will help USen move through the items on its agenda and call for questions from its members.

‘We were struck last spring by the tendency for the chancellor, as the presiding officer of the Senate, but also the chancellor of the university, to often get put in an odd position of managing the flow of conversation while also being the object of much of the conversation,’ Massey said.

The announcement came Wednesday afternoon at the first USen meeting of the semester. A USen subcommittee debated the relationship between the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and the College of Arts and Sciences, as well as university overcrowding. USen is the governing body of the university and meets one Wednesday each month at 4 p.m. in Maxwell Auditorium.

Having Massey manage the flow of meetings will allow Cantor to respond to questions posed by senators from her role as chancellor. Massey welcomed USen members’ feedback on the change.

‘We might be able to bring a more lively discussion, hear a broader range of ideas, and also have maybe a little bit more senatorial deliberation that doesn’t always fall into a kind of senator, chancellor, senator, chancellor pattern,’ Massey said.

During the 8-minute full-body session, USen also unanimously approved new members and shifted some existing members to different committees. The group then broke into its 17 small committees and scattered in rooms throughout Maxwell and Eggers Hall. Some of the committees had already met, but those having their first meetings elected chairs and set meeting schedules.

Twelve members of the Academic Affairs Committee met in Eggers, charged with electing a new chair. They unanimously elected Bruce Carter, an associate professor in child and family studies and psychology.

After Carter’s selection, the committee got into a discussion about the relationship between Maxwell and Arts and Sciences. Last spring, the university released a proposal called the White Paper, a text that addresses distancing Maxwell from Arts and Sciences and allowing Maxwell to create an undergraduate major, among other changes. The topic generated heated discussion within USen last year.

At its meeting Wednesday, the committee asked what progress had been made on the issue and discussed the state’s role in potentially granting Maxwell permission to award undergraduate degrees. Carter said he hopes the administration will ask faculty and USen for input before major changes are made.

‘As I’ve said in meetings, I think it’s foolish for folks to make such changes without consultation,’ Carter said.

Mary Lovely, an associate professor of economics in Maxwell, suggested the committee request an update before USen gets ‘hot and bothered.’

‘I’m worried about getting this thing too hot, before we even see what’s coming out of the oven,’ Lovely said. ‘Because I think what’s coming out of the oven is very different than what went into the oven.’

The committee also discussed an inquiry into how the increase in students has affected the campus.

Professors talked about the difficulty they’ve had with class sections filling up on the first day of registration and not having enough classroom space. A student member of the committee said common areas in residence halls have virtually dried up, as floor lounges are converted into dorm rooms.

Pat Burak, director of the Slutzker Center for International Services, talked about the difficulties facing her department.

‘In my office, with international students, over the last five years, we’ve had a 35.6 percent increase in the number of new international students, with almost no increase in resources,’ she said. ‘And you can’t handle that many people.’

The committee resolved to contact the Agenda Committee about researching how the university can adapt to future growth.

Lovely said, ‘It’s really to the point now where every individual unit is feeling it, but no one individual unit has any power to ask what is being done.’

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Published on September 15, 2010 at 12:00 pm