Proudly representing

Spring 2021 elections brought 4 new UTIA representatives to the Faculty Senate

Perhaps somewhat overdue, but I wanted this to get formally established.

After Spring 2021 elections to the UT Faculty Community, I was fortunate to be elected to serve as one of 4 new UTIA representatives in the UT Faculty Senate.

The August 2021 orientation day did not prepare me at all, for how much a time commitment this service is. I am actively representing the non-tenure track faculties (NTTF) on the general UT Faculty Senate meetings, interspersed with the Research Council committee meetings.

We meet for about 3-4 hours every couple weeks, through Zoom. The recent decision was, to delay the in-person Senate / committee meetings for several reasons. The most important reason is obvious, but we recently discovered, how robust and effective discussion we can have using the Zoom chat option - all the while going through the agenda. This perhaps is the strongest argument for Zooming in the future: To have SO many more voices heard than the in-person meeting would permit.