Amanda Hager, Associate Professor of Instruction, Mathematics
I'm excited to be joining Faculty Council for a second term. I have one year's experience on the Executive Committee, and I have chaired both the A3 Committee on Committees and the A5 Faculty Welfare Committee. I also served as Faculty Council Parliamentarian for three semesters. Connected to the curriculum work that Faculty Council does, I am serving on the Quantitative Reasoning Flag committee for UGS and I will be serving on the UGS Advisory Committee from 2022-2025.
I am particularly interested in faculty welfare and faculty affairs, and in Mathematics I work on faculty annual review, mentoring, and assessment of teaching. I also work for Texas Institute for Discovery Education in Science (TIDES) performing teaching consultations for CNS faculty; to date I have visited about 80 different instructors in 16 different departments and units. Coupled with my work in Faculty Council, I believe this has given me quite a bit of perspective in a short amount of time on the incredible diversity of teaching cultures and work cultures that our colleagues experience here.
I hope to contribute by fighting for an ever greater diversity of voices in Faculty Council and for better working conditions for faculty, tenure-stream and professional track alike. I also aspire to help safeguard the important role that Faculty Council plays here on campus regarding shared governance. Finally, I look forward to working together with Staff Council, Student Government, Senate of College Councils, and other organizations on initiatives that benefit the entire UT community.
Lisa Moore, Professor, English
I am standing for election to the Faculty Council Executive Committee as Chair-Elect because current attacks on faculty governance and academic freedom require all hands on deck. We have recently seen how effective advocacy by faculty, led by FCEC among others, denied an attempt by non-University actors to bypass the normal channels of peer evaluation in the creation of the Liberty Institute. This is a heartening development that shows how effective we can be when we remain vigilant and speak up in defense of our rights, at the same time holding administrators and the Board of Regents accountable for their responsibilities. My experience as co-chair of the President's Committee for LGBTQ+ Initiatives (2019-20) and the Provost's Council for LGBTQ+ Equity, Access and Inclusion (2019-present), has given me the opportunity to meet and work with senior staff and faculty across the University on issues of faculty, staff, and student welfare. As Director of the LGBTQ Studies Program (2019-23), I have been part of efforts by the College of Liberal Arts Diversity Committee to increase recruitment and retention of underrepresented faculty and to strengthen institutional support for gender and ethnic studies at a time when those areas have been political targets. As Faculty Council Chair, my intention is to be a strong advocate for faculty self-governance, academic freedom, and a shared sense of purpose and community on our campus. Thank you for your consideration.
Stacey Sowards, Professor, Communication Studies
https://moody.utexas.edu/faculty/stacey-k-sowards
I am a professor with tenure, holding the Mark L. Knapp professorship, in the Department of Communication Studies in the Moody College of Communication. I started at UT in the fall of 2020, having spent 16 years as a professor and research fellow at the University of Texas at El Paso. While at UTEP, I served for six years as department chair, along with many other service-oriented roles, including serving on the faculty senate, various curriculum committees, and graduate program committees. I have recently been elected to the Faculty Council at UT, and serve as the chair of my department’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee. I also serve on our college’s DEI committee and our global engagement committee.
My teaching and research interests focus on critical engagements with environment, sustainability, race, ethnicity, and gender within communication practice. Much of my research work has been in the US, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. For example, my book, on Dolores Huerta and the United Farm Workers, was published in 2019 with The University of Texas Press. Other work has looked at conservation campaigns in rural communities in Indonesia, Colombia, the Philippines, and Mozambique. I am currently serving a three-year term as the editor for a premiere journal in my field, the Quarterly Journal of Speech.
These interests demonstrate what is important to me, namely, how to engage in higher education through critical lens that lead to new ways of thinking and enhance engagement in and beyond the university. My priorities center on global, critical, and practice-based education and research as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion matters. I hope to bring these perspectives to the Faculty Council in general and would be honored to be elected as the Chair-Elect.